The Sixth Wife

by Suzannah Dunn

  When I came along, much later, I only knew about it second-hand, and knew very little. I still don’t quite understand what happened. Nor, though, in a way, did Charles. Or that was the impression he wanted to give on the one occasion I persuaded him to talk about it. The story was that he’d been in love, was keen to marry, and she was pregnant. And then suddenly, somehow – somehow? - he was married to her aunt. The aunt did have land, which seemed to have something to do with the change of plans. She was a better prospect, quite a catch. But it was wrong, of course; wrong, and, as such, uncharacteristic of Charles. As always, if belatedly in this case, he did the right thing, had the marriage annulled and returned to Anne. His first love, his second wife. Perhaps they’d have stayed happy together if she hadn’t died a couple of years later, giving birth to their second daughter.

  His third wife was Mary Tudor and people think of her as Charles’s great passion because, in not seeking permission to marry her, he defied her brother, the king. Ironically, it was the sheer audacity of the deed that saved him, so impressing Henry that – despite his initial, dreadful fury – he settled on crippling fines rather than the death sentence. Actually, Charles and Mary Rose’s marriage had been long anticipated. Henry had promised Mary Rose that if she did as he ordered and married the old French king, she could, when widowed, marry the man of her choice. He’d have known, as everyone did, that the man of her choice was Charles. The permission was there, albeit tacit.

  When the French king died, it was Charles whom Henry sent to fetch Mary Rose. And there, immediately, in France, they married. He said he did it because she begged him, terrified that her brother would go back on his word. ‘I’d never seen a woman cry so much,’ he told me, still a little dazed, all those years later, and he shrugged: what else could he have done? For a secular man, feet so firmly on the ground, Charles was deeply chivalrous. Mary Rose would have known full well that if she cried enough, he’d do what had to be done and marry her.

  So, over the years, Charles had married for love, and for money. With me, coming last, it was both. Charles married me because I had lands to my name and because, when Mary Rose died, he no longer had a wife. My lands solved a big, persistent problem for him. Before me, despite his best efforts he’d only managed to accrue small, scattered estates. He’d been promoted fast and far above his station – by Henry, his friend, his king – and it was a job for him to keep up. He hadn’t the necessary means to fund the life of a duke and had to work hard and cut corners. Which didn’t always go unnoticed by others at court. Not that he cared: he wasn’t proud, and he was always scrupulous in his dealings, which is more than could be said for most.

  Love? Well, if Charles didn’t, perhaps, understandably, at first love me, or not as a wife rather than a stepdaughter, he did love being married. In that sense, he married me for love. He was a man who enjoyed the company of women in a way I’ve rarely, if indeed ever, encountered since. Take Thomas, I thought as I lay there in my bed: Thomas gives the impression of liking women, but it’s all show. Women provide an audience for him. That’s what he likes. Charles had many genuine, abiding friendships with women, as well as with men. And with staff, as it happens, as well as equals. If sometimes his friendships got him into trouble – which, of course, he weathered without complaint – they more often did him well. Not for him the factions of courts. For a forward-thinking man, there was a quaintness to him: he was an old-fashioned courtier rather than a modern-day, ambitious councillor. Unfortunately, a tougher world awaits our sons.

  I never envied any friend or acquaintance of mine her husband. As far as I was concerned, Charles was everything that a husband should be. Uneducated, admittedly, but true to himself. Slightly world-weary, perhaps, but all the warmer for it. I learned from Charles how to be married and I couldn’t have had a better teacher. He’d made his mistakes and he’d done the right thing, he’d married for money and he’d married for love, he’d waited for years and then he’d acted impetuously at the risk of death. He’d had a brief, disastrous marriage, a long and happy marriage, and he’d had children, both boys and girls. By the time he got to me, he’d done it all.

  Nineteen

  I stayed on at Sudeley for just short of a week. Kate’s bleeding persisted for a few days, but then, when it had stopped, I remained there for a few more days, just in case. She consulted her own doctor, didn’t need to see mine. She was cheerful enough but didn’t move far from her rooms and didn’t do much. Her pile of books was never more than shuffled. She had no concentration for reading but talked often, instead, with Hugh. She was tired, of course, but it was more than that, this listlessness of hers. She was distracted, and any tentative confidence in her pregnancy had gone. She carried herself differently, I noticed. Well, much of the time she didn’t carry herself at all. We sat around for hours on end, and she’d nap in the afternoons and then go off early to bed. I spent a lot of time with her and a lot of time without her; that’s how I remember those days.

  On two days, I travelled with her chaplain, John, and Hugh to churches in nearby villages to see what had been done or still needed to be done. To see what, perhaps, we could do. To check, for instance, that there was not only a Bible in English but – often overlooked – that it was also made properly available to everyone. I’ve seen a lot of Bibles in cupboards. Mainly, though, of course, we were concerned what shouldn’t be there: rood screen, icons, relics. Kate’s motto might well have been To Be Useful In All I Do and I don’t deny that she was, she was always very useful, always thinking about what needed to be done and how it could be done, but I’m practical and there’s a difference. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty. I’d happily strip a church with my own hands.

  And that’s what we did. Well, we took down some artefacts and removed them. And we arranged for a couple of walls to be whitewashed. That’s all we did. But, then, that’s all that needs to be done, in my opinion, to reform the church. Glorified housekeeping. Kate tended to overcomplicate it. For me, it’s about clearing away the clutter. Getting to the truth.

  I know what some people say, that we are ripping everything that’s beautiful from our churches, but, believe me, they can’t have been to many village churches such as those around Sudeley Take those paintings: centuries-old patchy dragons, and gawky, blank-faced Adams and Eves. It’s rubbish, most of it. I have nothing against beauty. On the contrary, I’m all for it. I’m hardly known for my austerity. The problem is when decoration is a distraction. I’ll rephrase: it’s not beauty that I have anything against, but the covering up of the truth.

  Consider this. When I was a child, I revisited the little church where I’d been christened. The reason for our visit I’ve forgotten, or more likely never knew. I accompanied my mother. The story of my christening, at that time, when I was six or seven, was fascinating to me, not that it was in fact much of a story. But it sounded like a story, it could be made to sound like one, and I had so few in my childhood. Or, more accurately, so few people around who would bother to tell me any. And, better still, this story was spun around me: me, who was no one at Parham Manor, or at most someone very small. The font at Ufford was beautiful. Carved with roses. I reached up and touched the roses which other hands had so long ago coaxed from stone and which more hands, ever since, had been smoothing back into it. I wonder if they’ve survived the changes. There was nothing complicated about those roses. They were just roses that weren’t in fact roses. That was the extent of their deception.

  It’s heresy, I know, but I wonder, sometimes, if I need a church at all. I wonder if it’s a church that I need, or simply somewhere quiet so that I can hear what’s in my heart. God was a kind of king to my mother, a king of kings, so she needed guidance on how to approach Him. But for me, He’s in my heart. Even as a child, I’d look at our priests and wonder: does God talk any louder and any clearer to those men than to me? Those book-dusty, shut-away men; those never-married men. What did they know about love? And it is love, it is love; that’s what fai
th is. I’m convinced of that. It’s not duty. Duty’s too easy: you do your duty and it’s done.

  When I was a child, there were Masses at chapel all through the day. I should have been there every few hours, but there was no one to check up on me so of course I didn’t go. I spent my days in the Parham gardens. And it didn’t seem to matter. I didn’t feel any further from God. Indeed, I felt nearer, out there, than whenever I was in the gloom of chapel, my throat clogged with incense. Left to my own devices in Parham’s grounds, I chatted away to God. There was no one else to talk to. And when I was sent to the Suffolks, the habit stayed with me: when I was alone, I talked to God. And when I was married, I talked to Charles; but when I wasn’t talking to Charles, I was talking to God. That’s what silence was, for me. And solitude: that was what solitude was. Anything but.

  And Jesus: Jesus was there, too, when I was young. Like a brother to me, an older brother away somewhere but nearby if I should need him, as if – like others’ brothers – he were at court. He’d understand, if I should need him to. He’d be full of good humour, sometimes, and, other times, full of righteous indignation on my behalf. I’d learn everything from him. I admit it: whenever I did make it to chapel, my heart would give a little kick at the sight of him. He was my hero. We were on the same side, he and I; I knew it. So, you see, I had a lonely childhood, but I was never alone.

  When Charles died, I carried on talking to him, under my breath. In my heart, you might say. Nothing special, usually: often not much more than what the boys and I had done that day. A few worries, perhaps. And it took me a long time to stop talking to Charles, perhaps a year or more. But when I did stop – it strikes me now – there was also no more talking to God. I don’t know when exactly that had stopped, but – I now realise – there was no more of it. There was instead a silence and solitude so deadening that I never even knew, until now, that it was there.

  Twenty

  Naturally Kate’s absence made no difference to the frantic pace of Sudeley evenings, with so many people to be fed and entertained. We had the distraction, that week, of a rather unusual travelling band of musicians. Nothing unusual in their stopping by, of course, and asking if we’d have them; what made them unusual was the music they chose to play. Spanish music. That’s what they said it was when I enquired. Me, half-Spanish, having to ask. I took to it, which surprised me. Despite my mother, I’d always regarded myself as English through and through, as being utterly of this little kingdom of cynics with its unprepossessing landscape of standing water. But now the sound of the Spanish music, for me, was like being whispered to, whereas English songs suddenly sounded like a lot of bleating and complaint. That Spanish music, when I took it away with me to bed, humming it as best I could remember, brought to mind my mother as a girl stepping ashore here in England and taking a wry look around, while Maud, designated to meet her, stood straight-backed and ankle-deep in cold dew. The musicians stayed for a third evening because I was persuasive and tipped them more than I’d usually tip a band of players, which got me into some trouble with my steward, who would have to stretch what remained, when we departed, as tips for the Sudeley staff.

  Even when Kate was with us for an evening, understandably she didn’t dance. So, I had to do a lot of dancing that week, with Thomas. As did Elizabeth. Elizabeth, though, was keen. The difference in our enthusiasm could have been put down to my weariness from the day’s riding to those villages in freezing rain, whereas Elizabeth had been cooped up by a fireside at her lessons and was raring to go. She was a confident dancer, for someone of her age. For anyone of any age. Her performance always went further, too, than fancy footwork. Sometime towards the end of each evening, when she was returning to the table from the dance floor, she’d loosen her hair and then affect not to notice the collective intake of breath as she shook that cloth of gold down her narrow back.

  Once, she went further still, sitting in Thomas’s lap. True, it was he who yanked her down but she didn’t resist, not really, not more than for show. She sat there with his arms around her waist and his chin on her shoulder, and together, like that, they watched a whole dance. Why on earth would Thomas do that when there’d been rumours, only a year ago, of his interest in the girl? Mrs Ashley looked on, glazed, as if it were beyond her. When the dance ended, Elizabeth leaped up, pulling Thomas with her back to the dance floor.

  Kate was with us only on the second evening of the musicians, which was when Thomas made an announcement.

  He confided down the table, ‘We had some news today from my brother.’

  Kate clearly knew the news, because she wasn’t included in the addressed audience and didn’t look up. She continued tackling her roast apples, her spoon breaking through caramelised sugar and squelching into spiced dried fruits.

  Thomas continued: ‘There’s going to be a Seymour baby’ – he winced, theatrically – ‘just before ours.’

  A child of pallid Ed and the horrendous Anne Stanhope? Poor child, was my immediate reaction, when the very best that could happen was for it to take after Ed.

  Amid the flutter at the news, Kate did look up, but still expressionless, to say, levelly,‘It’s not a competition, Thomas.’

  He looked about to turn contrite, but then glinted mischeviously and said, ‘If that’s what you think, you don’t know me very well.’

  And I laughed. I didn’t mean to, but out it came, a single note, because I hadn’t expected him to own up so readily or cheerfully to what was his glaring weakness. Kate’s response to him was a roll of her eyes, with no hint of amusement or indulgence. Nor any of impatience or despair, either, though, to be fair. Just resigned.

  Thomas’s eyes I’d become rather interested in. Our dancing together had placed us in close confines whilst holding us at a formal distance, which had given me opportunities to scrutinise him. I’d look up into that perfect face and try to see where the perfection resided. To catch it out. A sham, it had to be. There couldn’t be anything genuine about Thomas. His eyes intrigued me, not because they were beautiful but because they weren’t. Other people look out from their eyes but Thomas’s eyes themselves seemed to be doing the looking. His gaze slid over the surfaces, dispassionate. There was a flatness to it, which I now know I mistook for frankness. And frankness, as I say, I like, I respect and respond to.

  On the last evening, during one dance, I found myself making a comment to him about his looks. ‘Are you really forty?’ Stupid of me to say it, because of course I’d have to go on to explain myself, I’d have to elaborate.

  ‘I am.’ He sounded amused and, indeed, expectant.

  ‘You could be…’ So much younger was what I’d meant, and we both knew it. I went for a simple, rounded. ‘Ten years younger.’

  ‘Thirty.’ He considered. ‘I’m glad I’m not.’

  ‘No?’

  He gave me a rueful smile. ‘I wasn’t very grown up at thirty.’ Then more of a smile, ‘You wouldn’t have liked me at thirty.’

  Oh, and I like you at forty, do I?

  He said, ‘You’re not even thirty, yet, are you.’

  I laughed it off. ‘But I’ve had children.’ No doubt I look older than my years. Certainly I feel it. Sometimes I feel twice my years.

  The dance was ending, the languid applause beginning. Releasing my hand, he said, ‘You know, Catherine, you have two tiny lines,’ and he traced in the air at one side of my mouth. ‘There’ – the same flick of a fingertip at the other side – ‘and there.’

  This was unexpected – both the scrutiny, and his telling me.

  And Catherine: how come the formal rendition of my name sounded so intimate?

  Unprepared, I managed only something weakly sarcastic: Oh, how attractive, or some such phrase.

  ‘Actually they’re…’ But he stopped, inclined his head, seeming to think.‘They’re very…’And then the slow smile, before he bowed and walked away.

  That I remember. And something else, later. As we were parting from our last dance of the evenin
g, he remarked to me, ‘People think you’re unapproachable, don’t they.’

  I said, ‘Is that what you think?’

  There was that same knowing smile, and all he said was, ‘No, that’s not what I think.’

  Twenty-one

  My next visit to Sudeley was planned for late March – me to Kate again, because she could hardly be expected to travel – and this time the boys were to accompany me. ‘Bring them,’ Kate had urged. ‘They’ll like Elizabeth, they’re nearly the same age, they’ll get on.’ As if age has anything to do with it. The eight years between Kate and me hadn’t stopped us being the best of friends.

  Our friendship had grown, too, during difficult times. I’d begun coming back more regularly to court when Anne Boleyn had gone. Even so, the next queen, Jane Seymour, had been and gone before I was much around. And then I was asked to be one of the ladies-in-waiting for the next, Anne of Cleves, when she came from Flanders. Being foreign, she’d need the best of the English ladies, was the thinking. The request was flattering. And, anyway, Charles was keen for me to resume a role at court. So, that’s how I came to be newly returned, hapless, during the Anne of Cleves débâcle. Kate was around, too, and that odd time – the setting aside of the newly arrived Anne and, in her place, the sudden, brief rise of the silly little Howard girl – was the unlikely backdrop to our intensifying friendship.

  I remember one evening when Kate and I were sitting watching the two queens, the recently deposed one and the new one. There was Anne of Cleves, dumpy and fun, dancing away, drinking away, making the most of her unorthodox new position at court; and with her, her successor, the slip of a girl who was now queen, all a-giggle. Kate said to me, in an incredulous whisper, ‘She’s your age.’ I could have been a generation older than that waif who was skidding around on the dance floor. That’s how I felt. I was the mother of two growing children; I’d been married for five years. I felt that she could have been my daughter. If she’d been my daughter, though, of course, she wouldn’t have been on her way back across the room to be pawed at by that varicosed lump. It was all too depressingly easy to see how it had happened. For almost twenty years she’d been just another of the Norfolk girls, one of the dispensable ones, a nonetity, so unimportant that no one had even bothered to make marriage plans for her. There’d been something to say for such a life, though: it had always been her own. Suddenly that was no longer the case and her tragedy was that she didn’t realise it.