The Sixth Wife

by Suzannah Dunn

  ‘She could catch a chill.’ There’d been a heartbeat of hesitation; she wasn’t comfortable contradicting me. It crossed my mind how odd her position was, in a household. Her arrival for the hour of need, as bringer of the best news or the very worst, and then she was gone, moved on, leaving no trace. She had no position in a household, despite briefly being at the very centre of it. She was a kind of visitation. And, indeed, here she was, acting as if she were Kate’s guardian angel. As unworldly as one, too. A chill was a risk worth taking, as far as I was concerned.

  ‘If it’s Thomas you’re afraid of – answering to him if something goes wrong – I’ll take full responsibility.’

  A mistake, I saw: she was offended, her lips pursed, her eyes unblinking. ‘I’m afraid of her catching a chill.’

  I tried again, a different approach. ‘Listen, Mary, this can’t be right, can it? To leave her like this?’ I gestured at Kate. ‘Can it?’

  She sighed, regretful. ‘But that’s how fever is.’

  ‘But she’s burning up,’ I persisted. ‘How must that feel? We have to do something.This is something we can do, Mary. I can’t bear to stand by and see her suffering like this.’

  I was sure I detected the unspoken response: This isn’t about what you can or can’t bear. What she said was, ‘She’s in God’s hands.’

  I was getting nowhere; I had an urge to yell, This is Kate! And if they’d have understood – if I could have been calm and clear and made them understand – that’s what I’d have done. Kate, who’d been so busy making differences for the better in ways no one else was able to do; so much to so many people. She’d touched so many lives. And my life. She was my best friend. She was the best friend any woman could ever hope to have. I couldn’t begin to think how I’d come to betray her as I had. It was as unthinkable to me now as it would be to her, if she knew.

  She was hot and I was going to cool her down. Defying Mary, I’d be acting alone, I knew. A useless lot, they were, in that room; they’d never speak up. Not even Susan, whom I’d considered the most companionable of the women. Women: that was it, wasn’t it; that was the problem. These were girls. No one to give any real help, should Kate need it. And she needed it now, didn’t she.

  I opened the window. Outside was dark. The garden had been surprised by rain into giving up its fragrances.

  Thirty-nine

  It was later, morning; first thing, judging from the shallow light. Kate – still kneeling, still doubled up – had quietened, moaning and rocking. I wondered: was this good or bad? Could be either. Good – so good – that the pain was diminished, but bad that she, too, seemed diminished. I was doing what I sensed she wanted: leaving her alone. Doing nothing, by the still-open window; a breeze in a nearby tree. Dozing, perhaps. Someone touched my shoulder: Mary Odell. Telling me that Thomas was at the door. For news. She seemed to think that I was the one to give it. I didn’t have any, though, did I. When I said, ‘But I don’t know what to say to him,’ she misunderstood me: ‘Say she’s in God’s hands now.’

  But we’re all in God’s hands, aren’t we, Mary? Every minute of every day. What I want to know is: what is it that He’s doing with Kate?

  I headed for the door. Mary tapped my arm, stopping me, reminding me that I was undressed, nothing over my petticoat. I shrugged her off. Not that she’d know it, but Thomas had seen me rather less dressed than this. On the other side of the door, I did glimpse Thomas’s surprise to see me so dishevelled; saw, too, though, that he barely registered his own reaction. ‘How is she?’ was all that concerned him.There were men in the background, keeping back; I didn’t look, didn’t see how many – three, four. Thomas himself looked hastily dressed, not fully dressed, although I couldn’t have said what was missing. His eyes were less blue; that I did see. They were no more luminous than glass.

  ‘Her pain seems lessened,’ I said.

  ‘Oh.’ He nodded, desperately hopeful, grateful, and looked around at his men as if to share this with them. The scent of him was scribbled into the air and I shocked myself by drawing it down into me, unable to desist.

  ‘Yes, she’s quieter,’ I said in an effort to come up with something of more substance.

  ‘Quieter,’ he echoed, less convinced. ‘And the fever?’ I heard how he made himself say the word, fever, having to leap at it, refusing to be cowed by it, a man whose own sister had died of childbed fever.

  I wondered what to say. ‘Well, that’s still there,’ I admitted. Even to me, it sounded as if I had something to add. But actually there was nothing. Well, no: there was something, coming bubbling up…I don’t know, Thomas. I don’t know if she’s going to survive this.

  Until then, I hadn’t considered that she might die. I hadn’t had to. What I’d had to do was hold Kate’s hand, rub her back, offer her a drink, help change her dressings. Now Thomas’s arrival at the door had raised the question, and I had to stifle a loathing of him for it. Having realised there’d be nothing more forthcoming from me, he nodded again, although this time understandably grudgingly. He didn’t turn towards his men – who must have heard – but kept it to himself. ‘Does she,’ he tried, ‘does she want anything? Need anything?’ Me?

  ‘Just rest.’

  A nod: reluctant, disappointed. We two should perhaps have been able to comfort each other. We two, who could have claimed to be closest of all people to Kate and who had on occasions been so close to each other. But there was nothing between us; there never had been.

  ‘The baby?’ he checked.

  ‘Very well, apparently. Feeding ferociously, I’m told.’ For the sake of form, we shared a wistful smile.

  Then,‘Should I see her? Kate, I mean.’ Let me see her, Cathy. ‘When should I see her?’

  There was – as he knew – only one answer I could give him: ‘We’ll let you know if you’re needed.’ My expression – my eyes – asked for his understanding. The bitterness in his own, as he turned away, was frightening.

  A little later, Kate did ask for him. Or, at least, asked his whereabouts. ‘Where’s Thomas?’ Nothing from her for hours – impossible even to rouse her for the doctor’s latest concoctions – and now this, loud and clear. Clearly afraid, too. Immediately, I was up from my chair, glad to be able to do something for her, if only answer a question. Her eyes found mine but I was unconvinced she was seeing me or seeing that it was me; the surface of her eyes was somehow fleshlike. Unlike her lips, which were cracked, and the fissures were bloodied. How – when – had that happened? I made a mental note to get some wax for them. ‘Thomas is here,’ I said. ‘I mean, he was at the door, not long ago, asking after you, and now he’s…well, he’s probably in his room.’ Thomas, night-wanderer: who on earth knew where he was? She hadn’t known, half the time, had she. A law unto myself. Had he ever – or would he ever – do with other women what he’d done with me? It struck me as incredible, the trust I’d placed in him.

  Kate’s breath was foul, really foul: how she’d hate it if she knew, and how she’d hate that I’d noticed. To what I’d told her of Thomas’s possible whereabouts, she said nothing more and gave no reaction; I couldn’t know if it was the answer she’d wanted or expected. In the following hours, I was never sure if she was awake or asleep. Neither, quite, perhaps. Breathing alone seemed to be all she could do.

  I tried to pass those hours by writing to my boys, or trying to write to them. There’d been no time, earlier, and now there was endless time but so little that I could say. Whenever I looked up – which was often – I found myself silently imploring the figure in the bed, or willing her, perhaps even threatening her: Get well, can’t you? Can’t you get well? The others seemed to keep their entreaties for God: they prayed often, judging from the distinct stillness that I observed, from time to time, coming over one or other of them. I was always intending to pray, I was always just about to do it. Somehow, though, it never got done. It had never quite yet happened.

  I soon discovered I’d been wrong about Thomas: he wasn’t in his
room, but outside, below our window, in Kate’s own private garden. As close as he could get, in an important sense; closer to Kate than if he’d lurked a mere few paces away, on the other side of the door but in the impersonal, ancestor-hung hallway. From one side of the window, I could watch him. Sometimes he paced, kicking at stray fallen leaves; sometimes, he rested on a bench, ankles crossed, face turned to the sun.Whenever he looked up, I’d snap back into shadow. I watched him with longing, but the longing was for the sun that warmed his face. For him, I felt the same fury as when he’d first singled me out and kissed the back of my neck. That same feeling: something having been done, and my being left with it. If he’d never done it, never made that one small, stupid move, none of what ended up happening would ever have begun.

  Forty

  Kate had been asleep – and so, probably, finally, had most of us – but then, some hours later, came a sudden, awful wailing. A calling for: Mary. Mary was there, as if she had known this would happen. Kate snatched at her and gabbled – I’m so scared, I’m so scared, please, Mary, help me, you have to help me - while Mary stroked her head as if this outburst were entirely expected and indeed even necessary. She murmured, It’s fine, you’re fine, don’t worry, stop worrying. To me, she mouthed,‘This can happen with fever.’ Rather than being a reassurance, this chilled me: Mary Odell claiming Kate as one of her cases. Kate was saying.‘He’s not to be trusted; he’s not to be trusted, Mary’; she said it fierce and fast, and I paused, only then aware that I’d been moving towards her. This, from her, was new. Was she referring to his ambitions? There I stood, conscious of the women’s eyes on me, before making myself go on, stepping up. To do or say what, I didn’t yet know.

  ‘Kate?’

  She buried her face away from me, I swear it. Again, the scrutiny from the girls, their expectation – I knew it – that if Kate was troubled, her confidante should be me. Their puzzlement piled on top of my own. All I could do was try again: ‘Kate?’

  In her delirium,‘he’ could of course be anyone – a member of staff, her brother or Thomas’s, the late king, even God or the devil – but I knew he was Thomas. Kate began again, to Mary: ‘I don’t know what to do, don’t know what to do. He’s cruel, Mary, a cruel man.’ My stomach twisted. Not, then, his ambitions. Something more personal.

  Mary whispered, ‘Hush, you’re safe here. This’ll pass, this feeling frightened.’And to me, again, whispered, apologetic: ‘It happens.’ For Mary, this was the fever talking. But I knew better. Or worse, you might say.

  Why now was understandable: Kate’s defences were down, and any face-saving was abandoned. Why Mary, though? Why tell Mary? If this was how she felt about Thomas in the light of what he was supposed to have done with Elizabeth, she could have addressed those fears to me. Because I knew all that, didn’t I. As far as Kate was concerned, I knew about Elizabeth. I’d have understood. Was this not, then, perhaps, about Elizabeth?

  She began to cry for the baby. ‘We’ll fetch her,’ promised Mary, looking at me, probably only because I was nearest. But I couldn’t go, could I. Not with Kate as she was, saying what she was saying, not knowing what she was saying. I passed the request to Susan, who was keen to oblige. While we waited, Mary talked to Kate about the christening, which was due to take place later that day. As the mother, still lying in, Kate wouldn’t, of course, in any case, have been attending. Me, though, I’d have had to go, but for the circumstances; now, though, my absence would be excused. It wasn’t as if I was to be godmother. That honour had been bestowed – before Kate’s decline – upon Jane Grey.

  When the baby arrived with Susan, Kate was unable to take her. What on earth had happened to her hands? Horrid, claw-like. She’d only been ill for a day or two: how had her hands wasted away? Mary held the baby for her, and the baby’s apprehensive gaze found Kate’s before drifting over her face and giving equal attention to each feature. ‘Look at you,’ Kate wondered, although in truth the baby was nothing much to look at.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ I made sure to chip in.

  Kate began whispering to her – Well, here you are, my little girl, here you are - but almost at once became distressed: ‘What will happen to us, little one?’ Panic prickled over me. Kate wouldn’t die of this, would she? She was getting better, wasn’t she? Mary moved away with the baby as if this latest outburst, too, was entirely expected, and as she did so, Kate begged of her, ‘Why did I marry him? What future is there for us, with that man?’ My prickling burned now. Kate wasn’t thinking about dying, she was thinking about having to live the rest of her life with Thomas. She knew something, didn’t she: something more. This wasn’t about Thomas’s supposed silliness with Elizabeth.This went deeper.We were perilously close to something damning being said, but what, exactly, I couldn’t foresee – and anyway I’d have to stand there and take it when it came. And I didn’t know – still don’t – what scared me, or scared me the most: that I’d have to hear it; that others would hear it; that Kate was thinking it; or that it would be the truth.

  ‘There’s no man.’ Mary had misunderstood. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Thomas!’ Kate managed, and we all jumped; even me, and I’d been expecting it. ‘Thomas! That liar!’

  My heart seemed to spin in my chest.

  Mary spoke clearly and evenly, as if merely fulfilling another duty of her job in saying it: ‘He’s a good man, your husband, a lovely man, and he’ll make an excellent father.’ Precisely the manner in which I’d talked to my boys when they were toddlers: acknowledging what they’d said but setting down the truth against them and resisting a discussion.

  Kate rasped,‘I could tell you.’And then she looked at me, those big eyes an open confrontation. ‘Tell her, Cathy. You tell her. Tell her what we both know about Thomas.’

  Instinct whirled me to Mary, to see what she’d heard, but she was shaking her head – It happens - and I saw that it didn’t matter if Kate named Thomas, it didn’t matter what she said about him: no one would believe her. Oddly, I felt no relief; absurdly, I felt defensive of her. This is Kate, I wanted to impress upon them: queen, thinker, diplomat. Don’t you dare be dismissive of her. Instead, though, to Kate, I urged,‘You must rest.’ No platitude: she was exhausted.

  But, ‘Rest?’ she sighed. ‘How can I “rest”?’

  And then I made the mistake of trying to appeal to her, leaning close – breath held – and whispering, ‘Kate, this does no one any good.’ Again, it was no platitude: I did believe it.

  Suddenly her distress was gone; in its place, a look of cool appraisal. ‘And lies do?’

  She knew, she knew. Didn’t she? I retreated across the room. The baby was taken, to be returned to the nursery. Kate, having said her piece, had fallen silent. I tried to think. I could do as she’d asked and tell her the truth. The truth, not a truth. Because, of course, I did have it: the whole truth. Only Thomas and I had it, and I was the one who was here, and the one whom she’d asked. But did she really want to hear it? What exactly did she want to hear? They were two different things: her wanting me to say it, and her wanting to hear it.

  When Kate started up again, it was as if she was in the middle of a conversation, and indeed her tone was peculiarly conversational. ‘I don’t trust him, Mary,’ she said, as if she were answering a question. Mary, sitting at the bedside, snapped to attention. Wearily sing-song, she summed up: ‘I don’t trust him, and he disregards me: it’s deadened me.’ I made myself get up, made a move towards her with some vague notion of putting a stop to this, of getting her to settle back down and rest. Kate’s face was worryingly discoloured, as if her skin had been somehow discarded in the sun.

  ‘I’m done for,’ she informed Mary.

  Mary approached her with a drink.

  ‘A distrustful, deadened mother,’ she announced herself to Mary, turning from me. ‘What use am I to my daughter? My mother was strong. Sharp, bright.’ She recoiled from Mary’s drink, and again, when Mary persisted. ‘She wasn’t warm,’ she murmured in
to her pillow, head averted, ‘but anyone can come up with kisses, can’t they?’ She turned back to Mary. ‘My friend Cathy’ – speaking of me as if I weren’t there – ‘she’s stayed a widow. She’s no fool, Mary. She’s long known the truth about Thomas, but how could she tell me? My best friend.’ And now she did look at me, but to look me over, as if from a distance. ‘That must have been hard.’

  This was unbearable. ‘I need some air,’ I said to no one in particular, to anyone who was staring at me: at a guess, everyone in the room.

  Kate’s composure was gone again in a puff. ‘He’s a liar,’ she complained.

  Jesus Christ! I might have said it aloud.

  Mary said, ‘I think we should fetch him.’

  Inexplicably, I took her to mean the doctor – he hadn’t been for a long time – and gestured, infuriated, at the array of potions. ‘What? So he can just -’

  Mary stood straight-backed and expressionless, stood her ground, facing me with my mistake.

  I queried, ‘Thomas?’

  Mary said, ‘I think we should.’

  Kate wailed, ‘I don’t want that man in here!’

  ‘Oh, Mary!’ I flung up a hand in the direction of the wreck in the bed. ‘How on earth would that help?’

  ‘He could reassure her,’ she said.

  ‘Could he?’

  Susan’s voice came up behind me: ‘She might be right, Cathy.’

  Behind Susan was Marcella. Beside Marcella: Agnes, Frankie. All of them with that eerie lack of expression in the face of my rage. Susan tried, ‘What else can we do?’

  ‘Do it, then,’ I hissed. ‘Do whatever you want, but I’ll have no part in it.’ Once outside the room, though, I stopped dead, and not only because I had an attack of the shakes. I’d realised that, like it or not, I was in the middle of this. And that’s where I needed to stay; it was crucial that I stayed there and sorted this out. I turned back, re-opened the door and said into the room, ‘If he has to come, I’ll be the one to go for him.’