The Sixth Wife

by Suzannah Dunn

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. Harry trusts me. He was coming to me first.’

  I raged at him, albeit in a whisper, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. This is treason, Thomas.’ He tutted. ‘It’s treason,’ I insisted. Typical, typical Thomas, blind to danger.

  ‘They’re children,’ he hissed back.

  ‘They’re fourteen,’ I said. ‘Elizabeth could easily have a baby. Council will go to any length to make sure that doesn’t happen until they want it to happen. And Harry…’ Old enough, as far as Council is concerned, to be a threat. And to Council, they’re much more than children. She’s their precious second in line, and he’s heir to a family so close to the throne to need an occasional pruning back.

  Thomas said, ‘Telling them “no” isn’t going to work,’ and – how dare he? - gave me a look to imply that I, more than most, should appreciate the lure of the forbidden. ‘And, anyway,’ he shrugged, ‘who knows? Elizabeth’s going to have to marry someone soon, isn’t she.’

  Not my son, she isn’t. She’s dangerous, we don’t want the complication of having her in the family even if Council were to permit it. ‘You…’ I despaired, furious. His ceaseless ambition, for himself and anyone connected to him: his unrealistic, stupid ambitions. I came close, now, to the edge of the mattress, better to impress upon him: ‘This is about Harry, my boy, my son…’

  ‘And Elizabeth.’ His eyes, on mine, didn’t flinch.

  ‘I don’t care about Elizabeth.’

  ‘No,’ he said, quietly, ‘I know you don’t.’Then, ‘But, look, Cathy, who’s to know? We’re here,’ he reminded me,‘at Sudeley. We’re all friends here. Days away from…’ He flapped a hand: anyone who matters, Council. Then his hand was on my wrist. ‘We’re safe.’ A slow smile: ‘Now, come here.’

  ‘No.’ I extracted myself, stood up. ‘I can’t. I need to think.’ It was more than that, though. I couldn’t bear to have anything to do with someone who could be reckless with my son’s life.

  Thomas seemed to accept my leaving, and, indeed, made a move to accompany me. When I objected – this was a bad time, people would still be around and returning to their rooms – he countered that there was nothing that couldn’t be explained away about the two of us walking together. Moreover, he said, it was more credible that we’d bumped into each other and been talking together for a while than that I’d been walking alone around Sudeley for no reason at close to midnight. And so he came with me to the staircase most convenient for my room. He knew better than to talk on the way, and certainly not on the subject of Harry and Elizabeth. We met no one, kept to the shadows and kept moving. Perhaps our success made him overconfident, or perhaps he was trying to appease my obvious fury, but at the door to my staircase he overstepped the mark and kissed me goodnight, although the kiss itself was nothing but a pointedly respectful and cautious touch of his lips to mine.

  Thirty-four

  In the morning, I was woken from a belated sleep by Kate. There she was, leaning over me as best she could, her hand on my shoulder. There, in my room, at my bedside, with no attendants. I was sitting up in a flash: ‘What?’

  She shook her head – Nothing - but there was no smile. ‘It’s just that…you’re in bed so late. It’s not like you.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Eight.’

  Not late, then. ‘I didn’t sleep well,’ I mumbled, a propos of nothing. Nothing was making sense.

  ‘Nor me,’ said quickly and quietly. Then, ‘Can you come to my study when you’re up?’

  So, something was the matter. My stomach clenched. She said no more and left. I dressed slowly, shrugging off Bella’s attempts to help, desperate to be alone. Kate knows, I kept telling myself; told myself and told myself – Think, Cathy, think – but still couldn’t believe it. How did she know? How could she possibly know? And what – exactly - did she know? I had a sensation of her hands already around my throat; my own hands were there again and again, to check, to plead.

  Kate was alone in her study when I got there; she was pacing but indicated that I should sit. I didn’t want to give myself up to the chair, but nor did I want to risk my legs giving way. Doing as I was told, sitting down, I felt trapped. The room was overly draped, caked in paint and gilt, the air laden with beeswax and motes. Kate looked as she had never before looked: as if she were sick with madness. Her huge, raw eyes darted, unseeing. I had no idea what was about to come my way – nothing would have surprised me, and anything would have – or how it was about to come; no idea how I might try to defend myself, what I could perhaps try to deny. So, this is the end: it was happening, at last, and of course it was. How had I ever assumed otherwise? I was going to be cast out, in disgrace. And when, really, anyway, had it ever been any different? Me, who’d been picked up for a while by a duke. That’s all it had been, my life, the good life that I’d had. I’d never been up to it; I’d made a good show of it but I’d never, really, been up to it, and she knew it. So, this is where it ends, for me. And for me, I didn’t care: Let it come. My boys, though…No, I didn’t think of the boys, didn’t dare. Whatever was about to happen to me I deserved, but the boys, my perfect Suffolk boys, who should have been facing their perfect futures…

  Kate paused, leaned on the back of her chair, widened her already wide eyes and exclaimed,‘It’s Thomas, isn’t it!’Rushing on in a goading, sarcastic, fake-jocular tone, ‘You know, you’re going to have to help me with this one, Cathy; you’re really going to have to help me. I’m quite sure we can find a way to deal with this, you and me; there must be a way we can deal with it.’

  Me, woman of words: I had no idea what to say; there were no words inside me, none. Blood thumped in my ears, and I was trembling, shaking, quaking. How visibly? I was ridiculous, nothing but a bundle of passions and grievances. And her: unrecognisable, too, this frayed, laid-low woman. Witty and daring was how I was supposed to have been; and Kate, clear-sighted and composed. But now look at us. What I’d done had destroyed both of us.

  She said, ‘I saw Thomas kissing someone last night,’ and, having said it, she was suddenly a picture of calm. It was me, now, who was obliged to react. Someone: she’d said someone, kissing someone. When I said nothing – desperate for clarification, elaboration – she continued, ‘At one of the doors at the back. Midnight. I just happened to look out and there he was.’ A correction: ‘There they were. Kissing.’ She broke her stillness, stepped to the window.

  What had it looked like, that one, brief, reluctantly received touch of his lips to mine? There had been no passion in it. Anger burned away my breath: it had so nearly been all right but now, because of one, pointless, momentary mistake by Thomas, it wasn’t. Had she already been to Thomas with this? If so, what had he said?

  ‘Of course, it wouldn’t surprise most people, would it, but, well, you know’ – and she turned back to me, impassioned – ‘I really did think it was something I’d never have to worry about, with him. Oh, a lot else, yes. But not that. He’s always been so very, very loving to me. I really did think -’ But there she stopped. When she spoke again, it was to tell me what I needed to know: ‘I haven’t yet spoken to Thomas.’

  Just me and her, then, so far. I made myself ask, ‘Who was it? The woman.’ Subdued, my question sounded oddly nonchalant. If she’d replied, Well, it was you, wasn’t it, or, It was you, as you well know, what would I have said? Perhaps I’d have said, Oh, that kissing, you mean. Oh, that. And then perhaps, Oh, no, no, that was just…

  She frowned. ‘Who was the woman? I don’t know,’ as if this was of not much more than passing interest, or certainly not her main concern. ‘I couldn’t see.’

  Careful, Cathy. Perhaps she was springing me a trap. Again cautiously, I asked, ‘But how could you not see?’

  ‘It was dark.’ She was exasperated, genuinely: she really hadn’t seen. ‘I’m not bothered who she was, to tell you the truth; I’m bothered that it was Thomas.’

  A spark of hope had hit my heart an
d taken my breath away: she really didn’t know who the woman was!

  ‘She’s not staff, though,’ she said, and my heart flattened.

  ‘Not staff?’ I needed to know precisely what she’d seen.

  She shook her head. ‘Oh, you know how you know: dress, demeanour…The stairs she was going up, too: this side of the house, not servants’ stairs. Whoever she was, she was one of us.’

  Us. I looked down at my hands, tried to think. ‘So, how did you know it was Thomas?’

  This, she considered risible. ‘Oh, I know.’ I know my own husband. Then, more reasonably, ‘I just knew, Cathy. It was Thomas.’ She knew him enough to recognise him in darkness, across a garden, merged with someone else’s silhouette.

  I asked her what she was going to do.

  ‘Speak to Thomas.’

  What on earth would he say? He was quite likely not to lie but to tell something close to the truth. That’s the problem with him, I realised: he’s not so much a liar as a man who believes his own nonsense. ‘Perhaps it was nothing,’ I suggested. ‘Nothing much.’ A kiss, I meant her to understand: one kiss, a momentary silliness of his.

  Sceptical, she said, ‘Yes, that’s probably what he’ll tell me. But -’ She inclined her head, absently tapped the glass in the window; she was thinking. ‘There was considerable familiarity in it,’ she decided.

  Panic battered my heart, because there was to be no escape. But then: familiarity. The word had sparked an idea and there it was, bright and insistent. Elizabeth. It was Elizabeth who’d been overfamiliar with Thomas. And now this, the kissing: Kate might believe it of her.

  But no.

  No, I couldn’t.

  Could I?

  ‘You don’t think it was Elizabeth, do you?’ I only put it to her as an idea; didn’t claim it was Elizabeth. Wouldn’t have dared. I’d still been wondering whether to say anything at all as I’d somehow gone ahead and voiced it, and it sounded properly tentative.

  She looked blank. ‘Elizabeth?’

  What had I done?

  ‘Well,’ I flailed, ‘Mrs Ashley…’ but I didn’t say it. Kate, too, said nothing and I feared that this was something else that was about to go against me; she might be about to throw at me, What are you? What kind of woman are you, to suggest such a thing? When she did finally speak, though, what she said was, ‘My stepdaughter. My fourteen-year-old stepdaughter.’

  There had been a shift; Thomas was, now, accused. The accusation was out of my hands and had a life of its own. This was complicated, and could easily be exposed as nonsense. I almost said, ‘It might not have been Elizabeth.’ I could still have said it, could have checked the momentum and brought some sense to the matter.

  Kate said,‘Second in line,’ and, full of wonder,‘He couldn’t do any worse, could he.’

  She seemed to require a reply, so I had to say, ‘Probably not, no.’

  ‘Did he not think what this – whatever it is, just a few kisses or whatever it is – could do to her?’

  Her? Her? Oh, believe me, she gets what she deserves.

  ‘She’s fourteen, Cathy,’ Kate despaired.

  Fourteen, just as I was when -

  Kate said, ‘Don’t, Cathy.’ She sounded sad. ‘Don’t be angry.’

  Was I? Why was I? Unclenching my fists, I glimpsed a scattering of fingernail marks in each palm.

  ‘It’s for me to be angry,’ she said, ‘if I can work myself up to it. I’m not sure I have the energy. Problem is, I’m getting so used to stupidity from Thomas and having to deal with the consequences.’

  As if this were just another of his ill-judged plans.

  The way I saw it: even if he hadn’t done what I’d said he’d done, he could have, might have, probably would have. And what had he done? Far, far worse than I’d led her to believe. He’d had sex again and again with his pregnant wife’s best friend. ‘But this,’ I insisted. ‘How could he? And her?’

  Kate spoke wearily. ‘Oh, I doubt Elizabeth had much to do with it. Thomas can be very persuasive.’

  Had I been persuaded? Yes and no. I didn’t know, I didn’t know the truth of it. And Kate, what about her? Had she been persuaded to marry him? Were we two women who’d let ourselves be persuaded? Is that what had happened to us?

  She should rest, I insisted, and think through her approach before confronting either Elizabeth or Thomas. The truth was, I had to get to him before she did. At the door, though, opening it and glancing back, I stopped in my tracks. Because there was something odd in the way that Kate was looking at me. Sneaking a look: that was what she was doing. Moments later, I’d decide that it was as if she didn’t know me. At the time, I came up with no more than an instinctive, ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied too quickly, adding a similarly quick, utterly unconvincing smile. Then, ‘Nothing. Nothing!’ and laughing, as if giving herself a shake. Only when I was on the other side of the door did I wonder: had she been looking at me as if perhaps I fitted the shape of the woman whom she’d glimpsed with Thomas? That wasn’t it, was it? There in the hallway, hands pressed flat onto the full skirt of my gown, I wondered how distinctive an outline I’d make in semi-darkness. Not distinctive, I told myself: I might well be in other ways – certainly I’d hope to be – but not in my appearance, my size and shape. But, then…that look, that look of hers…Appraising, and quizzical.

  I shook off that sickening doubt by rushing around Sudeley to ask after Thomas’s whereabouts, all the time making sure to appear calm. Eventually, I learned that he was in chapel.

  Chapel, of all places.

  Nevertheless, it had to be done. I knocked at the door to his box but didn’t wait for the invitation to enter. My hope was that I’d find him alone; it was possible that he’d go unattended. Inside, he was indeed kneeling alone and didn’t seem to resent my intrusion, even welcomed it, looking around at me with a smile.

  Ridiculously, I whispered, ‘What are you doing here?’ Someone might be below us in the chapel; we could well be overheard.

  He took no offence at my pointless question, smiling and shrugging as if to say, Just the usual. ‘But what are you doing here?’ His question, on the contrary, was joshing, affectionate.

  I knelt alongside him. ‘Kate saw you kiss someone last night. Outside, down by the backstairs.’

  The smile plummeted, his eyes widening. ‘You,’ he breathed, as if it was this which was news to him: that it was me.

  I shook my head. ‘She doesn’t know it was me.’ Because she didn’t, did she? Dress…demeanour… Mine didn’t differ from any of her ladies’, from Elizabeth’s…

  ‘She told you this?’

  ‘Just now.’

  He looked away, unfocused, then back. ‘How was she?’

  A bit late to be concerned. ‘Fine.’ My whisper was sharp. ‘She thinks it was Elizabeth.’

  I could see that he’d been about to query, Fine? But now it was, ‘Elizabeth?’ And again, but to himself, ‘Elizabeth?’ He was amazed. ‘Why would she think that?’

  ‘Because Mrs Ashley once said she was worried -’

  ‘Oh, that…’ He dismissed it, frowning.

  ‘You knew?’

  He barely answered. ‘Kate mentioned it, but -’ It occurred to him: ‘What did you say?’

  I looked him hard in the eyes. ‘That it seemed likely to me.’

  He reeled, almost laughing at the absurdity.‘ What?’ ‘Listen,Thomas,’ I urged,‘you can say it was nothing. I don’t care what you say. You can say it was a moment that got out of hand, a one-off. You can say Elizabeth was keen for some kissing practice and twisted your arm. Or she was upset about something and you were comforting her and it went a bit too far. Say whatever you like. Say you were drunk. Both of you. Whatever you like. But say it was Elizabeth.’

  He shuffled back on his knees to make some distance between us, to be able to see me better.

  He was incredulous. ‘I will not say it was Elizabeth!’ I didn’t waver, kept calm and delivered the threat
as I’d planned. ‘If you don’t, I’ll tell her it was me, and I’ll tell her it was no one-off.’

  This he found even less believable. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’ ‘Think, Thomas, think: which is she more likely to forgive you? Going momentarily too far with an excitable, headstrong fourteen-year-old? Or three months of sex with her best friend?’

  He was taken aback to hear it, but recovered to hiss, ‘Why not a moment too far with you? Why Elizabeth?’

  ‘Because she wouldn’t believe it of me.’ And he knew it was true. I’m no fourteen-year-old girl – never was, in a sense; never had the luxury – and nor am I a woman for whom a moment could ever simply get out of hand. There’d have been more to it than that, Kate would realise.

  He sat back on his heels. ‘Have a heart. Not Elizabeth.’ A heart for whom, I wondered. ‘I’m afraid it has to be Elizabeth.’

  He saw it: ‘It’s not so much that you don’t want it to be you, is it. You want it to be Elizabeth. You want Elizabeth in trouble, don’t you. You want her – what? – chaperoned? Is that what you want? Or sent away? And you want Harry to think Elizabeth is capable of -’ He stopped, as if offended beyond words. ‘Oh, no. No, no, no.’

  I reiterated, ‘I will tell her,’ and put it to him: ‘What have I left to lose?’ and believed it, utterly. ‘Her friendship? I don’t deserve her, Thomas; I deserve to lose her. I’ve ruined it all, already; it’s already ruined. And my “good name”?’ Me? Good name? How laughable. ‘If I have to sacrifice my good name – such as it is – to save my son from the mess he’s made for himself, then I will. You know I will.’

  Oh, he knew. He tried, though: ‘Cathy, listen, there are other ways to save Harry.’

  ‘Not that aren’t patchy, leaky, and that’s not good enough. And not that will keep him on my side.’ I shook my head. ‘No, this – the Elizabeth situation – will do it. And, anyway, he needs to see Elizabeth for what she is.’

  ‘But she isn’t,’ he protested, horrified. ‘And how could you? How could you do this to Harry?