The Sixth Wife: The Story of Katherine Parr

by Jean Plaidy

  “I think,” said Lady Herbert, “you are so happy that you do not care that there is all this pother about the royal jewels.”

  “I do not care for the jewels,” said Katharine. “Marry, I am happier without them than I ever was with them. But I am angry that my sister-in-law should give herself such airs. I believe she would like to wear the jewels herself.”

  “Indeed she would. She fancies herself a Queen, I doubt not.”

  Katharine laughed. “Thomas cares not a jot for my Lord Protector.”

  “He should, Kate. The Protector and his wife are very powerful now. Dearest sister, you have come through great dangers. For the love of God, do not court more.”

  “I court danger! Never, Anne. I do not care for these jewels. Do I need jewels to make me happy? When I was the King’s wife, those precious gems were mine. But was I happy then? Oh, Anne, you know the answer to that.”

  “Then, Kate, why is there so much noisy talk about them?”

  “Thomas thinks that his brother and his wife humiliate me by holding them back.”

  “Ah…. Thomas!”

  Katharine smiled. “He is so angry when any fail, as he says, to respect me. He says I am too gentle… with others. He says it is a goodly thing that I have his strong arm to protect me, and his wits to work for me. He is always saying that he will put his fists to the ears of any that harm me.”

  “Lovers’ talk!” said Anne Herbert.

  “It is… and he means it. He looks so fierce when he says those words that I must coax him back to a merry mood.”

  “I do not think he would put his fists to the Lord Protector’s ears.”

  “He would try to do it…if he thought the need arose. I know my Thomas.”

  “If he is reckless, Kate, it is for you to be cautious. Why, to marry him when you did … and to let him visit you at night! My dear, there were rumors about you two before the marriage was announced.”

  “I know.” Katharine laughed indulgently. “Thomas cares for nothing. He said he lost me once and was not going to lose me again.”

  “Is it true that you were affianced to him within a week of the King’s burial?”

  “Oh, Anne, pray do not ask me such questions.”

  “That was very dangerous. It is said that if you had had a child, it might not have been known whether its father was Thomas or the King.”

  “You know I should not have allowed that to happen.”

  “Yet it is what people say.”

  Katharine shrugged her shoulders. She was too happy to consider any termination of her present state.

  “Anne,” she said, “how I long for a child! Do you think I am too old?”

  “You are thirty-six, Kate.”

  “I know. But I long to bear Thomas’s child.”

  “You would need to take great care of yourself.”

  “I should. I pray each night that I may have a child, and I have a feeling that my prayers will be answered.”

  Anne Herbert put her arms about her sister. She felt almost as fearful for her, now that she was the Admiral’s wife, as she had when she had been the King’s.

  Then, thought Anne, she was prepared for disaster; now she is prepared only for bliss.

  “God keep you well, Kate. God keep you happy.”

  “There are tears in your eyes, Anne.”

  “Are there, sister? It is because I am moved to see you so happy. Is it possible to suffer as you have and emerge from all that horror with your belief in men still intact? I do not know how you can be so sure, dearest sister. I do not know.”

  “Ah,” cried Katharine embracing her, “but then you do not know my Thomas.”

  THE PRINCESS MARY had spent the months, since her father’s death, in her country manors of Wanstead and Norfolk.

  This was on the advice of her friends, for her name had been mentioned freely at the time of Surrey’s execution. One of the charges against the Earl had been a proposed marriage between himself and the Princess, and some had said that Mary had been a party to what might well have been a conspiracy.

  Mary had faced death at her father’s hands and had miraculously escaped it; she had no wish to court it again. She was a Catholic and she would remain faithful to Rome till her death; the King and his Council were largely of the Reformed Party. Therefore no good could come of the Princess Mary’s residence at court, it was decided by those who wished her well.

  She knew that many had their eyes upon her and that, in the event of her brother’s death, greatness would be hers; and she would welcome it, not for personal reasons, but for the sake of Rome. She spent long hours at her devotions and she guarded her health that she might not fail if the call came.

  It was during the month of June that she received a letter from Thomas Seymour. His marriage with her father’s widow seemed to Mary an act of the greatest impropriety and evil taste. She firmly upheld all the traditions of royalty. She had been fond of Katharine Parr, although her affections had declined since she had discovered Katharine’s interest in the new learning; now her respect for Katharine had waned still further, for she simply did not understand how any lady could have allowed herself to be persuaded to such an action.

  So that when she received Thomas Seymour’s letter, she looked at it with suspicion and distaste.

  He was asking her to give her blessing and sanction to his marriage with Katharine Parr.

  A little late in the day! said Mary to herself. For I know full well that the marriage has already taken place, and that this happened in the month of May if not before.

  She sat down and wrote a curt note to the Admiral. She thanked him for asking her sanction to his marriage; “But,” she added, “I do not think the Queen can so quickly have forgotten the King as to be ready for a further marriage. As for myself, I am a maid and not cunning in the matters of wooing. You must forgive and respect my innocence.”

  She smiled as she wrote. If he could be sly, so could she. Did he think she was so cut off from the affairs of the court that she did not know he and the Queen were already married?

  Then her thoughts turned to her young sister. What a terrible position for a child, to be living under the same roof with a man and woman who had so little care for the proprieties.

  That should be set right.

  So Mary wrote to Elizabeth, suggesting that she should come and stay with her, for she was sure that she must be most unhappy living in the house with a lady who had so recently been the wife of her father and was now the wife of another.

  “See that the Lady Elizabeth receives this letter with all speed,” she said to her messenger. “I think she will welcome it. We will prepare to receive her here at Wanstead.”

  But when Elizabeth read the letter she was a little perplexed. She did not wish to offend Mary by refusing the offer, yet how could she accept it? How could she shut herself away with pious Mary, spending her days in study and prayers and the working of embroidery, when life at Chelsea, or Seymour Place, or Sudley Castle offered so many delightful possibilities?

  On no account could she bear to accept her sister’s invitation, and yet on no account must her refusal offend. Mary might yet be Queen and, as heiress to the throne, Elizabeth’s position would not be an easy one to hold.

  I should accept, she told herself. I dare not take the slightest risk of offending Mary. Yet how can I go when every day there is a possibility of meeting Thomas?

  Desire for excitement, on that occasion, triumphed over sober sense. She told herself—and perhaps this was the way in which her royal father would have reasoned—that it would be unwise to offend Thomas Seymour by suggesting she was willing to leave his roof. There was a possibility that he might be Lord Protector one day. A little accident to the elder uncle, and who would be more likely to step into his shoes than the beloved younger uncle?

  No! said Elizabeth to her conscience. I must not run the risk of offending the Admiral.

  She wrote a carefully worded letter to her sister, in whi
ch she said that she must submit with patience to what could not be cured. She deplored this marriage as much as did her greatly honored and well loved sister; yet she felt that to offer any objection—which her abrupt departure from her present home might appear to offer— would only make matters worse. They must not forget—her beloved sister and herself—how defenseless they were and always had been; they must remember against what a powerful party such behavior would set them. No, the only thing which they could do was to suppress their pain at the disrespect which had been shown to their royal father’s memory; and, deeply as she regretted her inability to join her sister and share the felicity of her roof, she feared that her place was here with the Queen whom her royal father had appointed as her guardian.

  She smiled as she sealed the letter. She was well pleased with life. She was beginning to understand herself. She was glad Seymour had married. Unmarried, he was a menace to her prospects of power; as a bachelor he put temptation in her way, while as a married man it was quite impossible for him to tempt her to the indiscretion of marriage.

  There was still left to her the pleasures of flirtation, the dangerous interlude which never quite reached the climax which he desired, and which she believed would mean little to her. She wished to travel indefinitely along erotic byways, and the only way in which she could do this was by never reaching the end of the journey.

  THERE WERE HAPPY DAYS at Sudley Castle—that ancient and noble building which had come to Seymour with his title.

  The surrounding parklands were enchanting, and during the summer months the bride and bridegroom dallied there. It was to be a honeymoon, so the Princess Elizabeth had not accompanied them.

  Seymour was glad that she was not with them. It enabled him to give his full attention to Katharine.

  They explored the castle, the park and the beautiful countryside of Gloucestershire which surrounded it.

  “Did you ever dream you would be so happy in a marriage?” he asked his bride.

  “Perhaps I dreamed,” she answered, “but I never knew till now that dreams came true. Thomas, I was always afraid that you would find the waiting too long… and marry someone else.”

  “I would have waited ten years for you, Kate. I would have waited the whole of my life.”

  He believed it. He believed that the love of the moment was the great love of his life. He had forgotten Elizabeth. Katharine was his love; he had waited years for her; he had been faithful to her; he had never thought of marriage with another; lands and possessions meant nothing to him. Thus thought Thomas Seymour during summer weeks at Sudley Castle.

  They discussed their plans as they lay on the grass away from their servants and attendants—like a pair of country lovers, he said, simple people without a care in the world.

  He talked to her of his plans. “We will get the jewels from my brother and his wife. We’ll not allow them to treat us so.”

  “I would we could rest here for ever and never go back to court.”

  “Aye, that would be a great joy to me.” But even as he said that, he could not help looking ahead to the time when he hoped to be in his elder brother’s place. “That woman rules my brother,” he went on. “She has persuaded him in this matter of the jewels.”

  “And I have said that I am happier now, without the jewels, than I ever was, wearing them.”

  “You are the dearest creature in the world, and I love you, Kate. You are right. What do we want with jewels… with rank…with ambition? What do we want but this?”

  Then he kissed her and they lay on the grass, marveling that all this joy had come to them.

  But he could not stop talking of his plans.

  “The King will be thinking of marrying soon,” he said. “I cannot contemplate a happier union for him than with the Lady Jane Grey.”

  “Indeed no. I had always meant her to have him. She is the dearest of girls—learned, kindly and of gentle birth. She will wear the crown with grace.”

  “And she loves us…even as doth the King. But my brother and his wife have a plan of marrying their daughter to the King.”

  “To little Jane Seymour! No, Thomas, that would not do. It must be Jane Grey for him.”

  “So think I!”

  “But why should we meddle…?”

  “Dearest, there is our place at court to think of. The more power my brother builds for himself, the more he will rule us. He will be taking our houses and land ere long, to lay side by side with the royal jewelery.”

  “I do not want to concern myself with our places at court now. I am happy here… I would like to stay here forever… forget everything but this.”

  He smiled, tenderly sighing with her; but he was not the man to throw aside ambition because he had achieved a happy marriage.

  “When we talk of these children,” she said, “I long for the children we may have.”

  “I also, sweetheart.”

  “And then I am afraid, Thomas. I have never had a child. I hope I may bear you one.”

  He bent over her and kissed her.

  “Kate, I too wish for children—sons and daughters. But I would not have you thinking of them if thinking makes you sad.”

  She said: “I used to listen to the tolling of the bell. ‘Sons. Sons,’ it seemed to say to me, warning me, reminding me that if I did not give the King a son, it would toll for my death. I prayed for a child then—a royal Prince. Oh, Thomas, I used to think that if I did not have a son I should die as Anne Boleyn died.”

  “I know,” he soothed her. “But that is over; that is done. That is why, much as I desire our child, I would not have you brooding on it. We have each other, Kate. If we have a child, that will be good. If we do not…we have each other.”

  She took his hand and kissed it; and as they walked home, the church bells sounded a merry peal.

  IT WAS SEPTEMBER, a few days after Elizabeth’s fourteenth birthday.

  Lord and Lady Sudley had moved to Hanworth, and Elizabeth went with them. All through the summer days, after the newly married pair had returned from Sudley Castle, Elizabeth was becoming more and more aware of the Admiral’s watching eyes.

  She was a young lady now, she believed. Fourteen seemed grownup, old enough for a girl to have a husband, if she were a Princess.

  She fancied the Admiral thought so too. He had been very bold of late. It was a situation filled with danger; she was living in the household of a man and his wife, and was slightly in love with the man, and he…how much in love was he with her?

  She did wish that the third person concerned was not her dear stepmother; and she wished too that the Queen was not so openly doting. Yet, thought Elizabeth, if it were not I who caught those stray glances of his, might it not be another? It would be disastrous if the wicked Admiral turned those bold glances of his on someone who did not know how to receive them in the right spirit!

  She put on a gown of black velvet, and told Kat Ashley that she was going into the gardens to join the Admiral and her stepmother.

  Kat Ashley protested at the dress. “My darling lady, it is too old for you. Black at your age!”

  “I am grown up, Kat. Do you not realize that I am fourteen?”

  “So you are, sweetheart, but you are but a girl in growth.”

  “Do you not think the black suits my hair?”

  “It does,” Kat admitted.

  “Then it is time I began to look my age.”

  Kat put her arms about her and kissed her. “Oh, my lady, I don’t want you to be grown up.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I am afraid. I am afraid of when you grow up.”

  “Dearest Kat, why should you be afraid?”

  “Afraid for you, sweet. Now they say: ‘Oh, she is just a child …’ And they think of you as a child…of no importance.”

  “But I am of importance, Mistress Ashley. I do not wish to be thought of no importance.”

  “It is safer so…until…”

  “Until, Kat?”

 
; “You know what I mean.”

  “Kneel and kiss my hand, then.”

  She took the bracelet from her arm and put the circlet on her head.

  “My lady! My lady!” cried Kat in dismay.

  “There are just the two of us, so what matters it? And, Kat, you are not to gossip of it.”

  “No, my lady.”

  Elizabeth took Kat’s ear and pinched it hard. “You gossip too much with Master Parry.”

  “Oh, my ear! It hurts. Stop, you wild cat. Stop…Your…Your Majesty!”

  They began to laugh, and the bracelet fell to the floor.

  “A bad sign!” said Elizabeth, growing pale.

  “Nonsense!” cried Kat, sprawling on the floor to recover the bracelet. “Here, let me put it on your wrist… where it belongs. Bless you, my love. God preserve you.”

  “Kat, you foolish woman! You’re crying.”

  “I love you, darling, and that’s the truth. So much that I am sometimes afraid.”

  “I know what you’re afraid of. You think of her of whom we never speak. Kat…I want to talk of her now … and then, afterward … never again. Am I like her?”

  “No.”

  “She was beautiful, was she not?”

  “She had more than beauty.”

  “That did not save her. All that charm and all that beauty…it did not save her from the sword.”

  “She was wild and full of levity,” said Kat, “and many men loved her. The King was among them. They say he never loved any as he loved her. But that did not save her.”

  “She was raised to be a Queen… raised quickly, and quickly put down. But I would be Queen in my own right. I am a King’s daughter. Remember that.”

  “I remember it, my lady.”

  “And if I will wear a black velvet dress, then I will wear a black velvet dress.”

  “Yes, my lady, but that does not mean I shall say I like it.”

  “Why do you not like it, Kat?” Her tone was wheedling.