Murder Most Royal: The Story of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard

by Jean Plaidy

  Henry was disturbed and not a little alarmed; he had done a bold thing, and not even Cranmer knew he had intended to do it in this way. For, by marrying Anne as he had, he had irrevocably broken with Rome and placed himself at the head of the English Church. The Council could do nothing but accept this state of affairs; Henry was their King. But what of the people, that growling mass of the populace who had come through pestilence and poverty, and were less inclined to bend the knee than his courtiers? In the streets they murmured against Anne. Some murmured against the King.

  If the King trembled, Anne was triumphant. She was Queen after four years of waiting; Queen of England. Already she carried the King’s child within her. She was mentally exhausted by the long struggle, and only now did she realize what a struggle it had been, what nervous energy she had put into maintaining it, how she had feared she would never reach this pinnacle of power. She could now relax and remember that she was to be a mother. Love was not to be denied her then. She carried a child, and the child would inherit the throne of England. She slept peacefully, dreaming the child—a son—was already born, that her attendants laid it in her arms; and her heart was full of love for this unborn child. “September!” she said on waking. “But September is such a long way off!”

  George Boleyn was preparing for a journey; he would leave the palace before dawn. Jane came gliding to him as he buttoned his coat.

  “George . . . where are you going?”

  “A secret mission,” he said.

  “So early?”

  “So early.”

  “Could I not accompany you?”

  He did not answer such folly.

  “George, is it very secret? Tell me where you go.”

  He contemplated her; he always felt more kindly towards her when he was going to leave her.

  “It is a secret, so if I tell you, you must keep it entirely to yourself.”

  She clasped her hands, feeling suddenly happy because he smiled in such a friendly way.

  “I will, George! I swear I will! I can see it is good news.”

  “The best!”

  “Tell me quickly, George.”

  “The King and Anne were married this morning. I go to carry the news to the King of France.”

  “The King . . . married to Anne! But the Pope has not given the divorce, so how can that be possible?”

  “With God—and the King—all things are possible.”

  She was silent, not wishing to spoil this slight friendliness he was showing towards her.

  “So you are the Queen’s brother now, George, and I am her sister-in-law.”

  “That is so. I must away. I must leave the palace before the day begins.”

  She watched him go, smiling pleasantly; then all her bitter jealousy burst forth. It was so unfair. So she was Queen of England, and she would be more arrogant than ever now. Why should a man displace his wife because he tired of her!

  A marriage had been arranged for Isabel; she was leaving the Duchess’s retinue. Catherine was not really sorry, never having liked Isabel; and then she was too absorbed in Henry Manox to care much what happened to anyone else.

  Manox had been to the dormitory on several occasions; he was recognized now as Catherine’s lover. There was much petting and caressing and whispering, and Catherine found this a delightful state of affairs. She was grown up at last, reveling in intrigue, receiving little gifts from Manox; she never wrote to him, since she had never been taught how to write properly; but oral messages were exchanged between her and Manox by way of their friends.

  During the lessons they were very conventional in their behavior—which seemed to Catherine a great joke. The old Duchess might fall into a deep sleep, and all Manox and Catherine would do was exchange mischievous glances.

  “I declare, Manox,” said the Duchess on one occasion, “you are too stern with the child. You do nothing but scold!”

  They would laugh at that when she lay in his arms in her bed with the curtains drawn. Catherine, though a child in years, was highly sexed, precocious, a budding woman; over-excitable, generous, reckless, this affair with Manox seemed the high spot of her life. He said he had loved her ever since he had first set eyes on her; Catherine was sure she had loved him ever since her very first lesson. Love was the excuse for everything they did. He brought her sweetmeats and ribands for her hair; they laughed and joked and giggled with the rest.

  It was the Duchess who told Catherine that she was engaging another woman in place of Isabel.

  “She is from the village, and her name is Dorothy Barwicke. She will take Isabel’s place among the ladies. She is a serious young lady, as Isabel was, and I feel I can trust her to keep you young people in some sort of order. I’ll whisper something else to you, Catherine . . . We really are going to Lambeth ere the month is out! I declare I grow weary of the country, and now that my granddaughter is in truth the Queen . . .”

  She never tired of talking of Anne, but Catherine who had loved to hear such talk was hardly interested now.

  “Imagine poor old Katharine’s face when he took Anne to France! If ever a king proclaimed his queen, he did then! And I hear she was a great success. How I should have loved to see her dancing with the French King! Marchioness of Pembroke, if you please! I’ll warrant Thomas—I beg his pardon, the Earl of Wiltshire—is counting what this means in gold. Oh, Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, who would not have beautiful daughters!”

  “Grandmother, will you really go to Lambeth?”

  “Don’t look so startled, child. Assuredly I shall go. Someone must assist at the dear Queen’s coronation. I feel sure I shall be invited, in view of my rank and my relationship to Her Majesty the Queen.”

  “And . . . will you take the whole household?” asked Catherine, her voice trembling. But the Duchess was too absorbed by her thoughts and plans for the coronation to notice that.

  “What foolish questions you ask, child! What matter . . .”

  “You would take your musicians, would you not, Grandmother? You would take me?”

  “Ah! So that is what you are thinking, is it? You fear to be left out of the excitement. Never fear, Catherine Howard, I doubt not the Queen your cousin will find a place at court for you when you are ready.”

  There was no satisfaction to be gained from the Duchess; in any case she changed her plans every day.

  “Isabel! Isabel!” said Catherine. “Do you think the whole household will remove to Lambeth?”

  “Ah!” cried Isabel, who in view of her coming marriage was not interested in the Duchess’s household. “You are thinking of your lover!” She turned to Dorothy Barwicke, a dark woman with quick, curious eyes and a thin mouth. “You would think Catherine Howard but a child, would you not? But that is not so; she has a lover; he visits her in our bedroom of nights. He is a very bold young man, and they enjoy life; do you not, Catherine?”

  Catherine flushed and, looking straight at Dorothy Barwicke, said: “I love Henry and he loves me.”

  “Of course you do!” said Isabel. “And a very loving little girl she is, are you not, Catherine? She is very virtuous, and would not allow Manox in her bed an she did not love him!”

  “And, loving him,” said Dorothy Barwicke, “I’ll warrant she finds it difficult to refuse his admittance.”

  The two young women exchanged glances, and laughed.

  “You will look after Catherine when I leave, will you not?” said Isabel.

  “I do not need looking after.”

  “Indeed you do not!” said Dorothy. “Any young lady not yet in her teens, who entertains gentlemen in her bed at night, is quite able to look after herself, I’d swear!”

  “Not gentlemen,” said Isabel ambiguously. “It is only Manox.”

  Catherine felt they were mocking her, but she always felt too unsure of all the ladies to accuse them of so doing.

  “I shall expect you to look after Catherine when I have gone,” said Isabel.

  “You may safely leave that to me.”<
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  Catherine lived in agony of fear while the Duchess set the household bustling with preparations for her journey to Lambeth. She talked perpetually of “my granddaughter, the Queen,” and having already heard that she was to attend the coronation—fixed for May—was anxious to get to Lambeth in good time, for there would be her state robes to be put in order, and many other things to be seen to; and she hoped to have a few informal meetings with the Queen before the great event.

  Catherine was wont to lie in bed on those nights when there were no visitors to the dormitory and ask herself what she would do were the Duchess to decide not to take Manox. Catherine loved Manox because she needed to love someone; there were two passions in Catherine’s life; one was music, and the other was loving. She had loved her mother and lost her; she had loved Thomas Culpepper, and lost him; now she loved Manox. And on all these people had she lavished unstintingly her capacity for loving, and that was great. Catherine must love; life for her was completely devoid of interest without love. She enjoyed the sensational excitement of physical love in spite of her youth; but her love for Manox was not entirely a physical emotion. She loved to give pleasure as well as to take it, and there was nothing she would not do for those she loved. All that she asked of life was to let her love; and she was afraid of life, for it seemed to her that her love was ill-fated; first her mother, then Thomas Culpepper, now Manox. She was terrified that she would have to go to Lambeth without Manox.

  There came a day when she could no longer bear the suspense. She asked her grandmother outright.

  “Grandmother, what of my lessons at Lambeth?”

  “What of them, child?”

  “Shall Henry Manox accompany us, that he may continue to instruct me?”

  The Duchess’s reply sent a shiver down her spine.

  “Dost think I would not find thee a teacher at Lambeth?”

  “I doubt not that you would, but when one feels that one can do well with one teacher. . . .”

  “Bah! I know best who will make a good teacher. And why do you bother me with lessons and teachers? Dost not realize that this is to be the coronation of your own cousin Anne!”

  Catherine could have wept with mortification, and her agony of mind continued.

  Manox came often to the dormitory.

  “Do you think I could ever leave you?” he asked. “Why, should you go to Lambeth without me I would follow.”

  “And what would happen to you if you so disobeyed?”

  “Whatever the punishment it would be worth it to be near you, if but for an hour!”

  But no! Catherine would not hear of that. She remembered the tales Doll Tappit had gleaned of Walter the warder. She remembered then that, though she ran wild through the house and her clothes were so shabby as to be almost those of a beggar, she was Catherine Howard, daughter of a great and noble house, while he was plain Henry Manox, instructor at the virginals. Though he seemed so handsome and clever to her, there would be some—and her grandmother and her dreaded uncle the Duke among them—who would consider they had done great wrong in loving. What if they, both, should be committed to the Tower! It was for Manox she trembled, for Catherine’s love was complete. She could endure separation, but not to think of Manox’s body cramped in the Little Ease, or rotting, and the food of rats in the Pit. She cried and begged that he would do nothing rash; and he laughed and said did she not think he did something rash every night that he came to her thus, for what did she think would happen to him if her grandmother were to hear of their love?

  Then was Catherine seized with fresh fears. Why must the world, which was full of so many delights, hold so much that was cruel! Why did there have to be stem grandmothers and terrifying uncles! Why could not everybody understand what a good thing it was to love and be loved in this most exciting and sensational way which she had recently discovered!

  Then Catherine found the world was indeed a happy place, for when she left for Lambeth in her grandmother’s retinue, Manox was in it too.

  Lambeth was beautiful in the spring, and Catherine felt she had never been so completely happy in her life. The fruit trees in the orchards which ran down to the river’s brink were in blossom; she spent whole days wandering through the beautiful gardens, watching the barges go down the river.

  With Manox at Lambeth, they were often able to meet out of doors; the Duchess was even more lax than she had been at Horsham, so busy was she with preparations for the coronation. Anne visited her grandmother, and they sat together in the garden, the Duchess’s eyes sparkling to contemplate her lovely granddaughter. She could not resist telling Anne how gratified she was, how lucky was the King, and how, deep in her heart, she had ever known this must happen.

  Catherine was brought to greet her cousin.

  “Your Majesty remembers this one?” asked the Duchess “She was doubtless but a baby when you last saw her.”

  “I remember her well,” said Anne. “Come hither, Catherine, that I may see you more closely.”

  Catherine came, and received a light kiss on her cheek. Catherine still thought her cousin the most beautiful person she had ever seen, but she was less likely to idealize, because all her devotion was for Manox.

  “Curtsey, girl!” thundered the Duchess. “Do you not know that you stand before your Queen?”

  Anne laughed. “Oh, come! No ceremony in the family . . . No, Catherine, please . . .”

  Anne thought, Poor little thing! She is pretty enough, but how unkempt she looks!

  “Perhaps Your Majesty will find a place for her at court . . .”

  “Assuredly I will,” said Anne, “but she is young yet.”

  “On your knees, girl, and show some gratitude!”

  “Grandmother,” laughed the Queen, “I would have you remember this is but our family circle. I am weary of ceremony; let me drop it awhile. What do you like doing, Catherine? Are you fond of music?”

  Catherine could glow when she talked of music. They remembered how they had once felt affection, which was spontaneous, for one another, and as they talked it came back to them.

  After Catherine had been dismissed, Anne said: “She is a sweet child, but a little gauche. I will send her some clothes; they could be altered to fit her.”

  “Ah! You would dress up Catherine Howard! She is a romp, that child. And what a sheltered life she has led! I have kept her away in the country, perhaps too long.”

  A new woman joined the Duchess’s household while they were at Lambeth. Her name was Mary Lassells, and she was of lower birth than most of the Duchess’s attendants; she had been nurse to Lord William Howard’s first child, and on the death of his wife, the Duchess had agreed to take her in. During her first week in the Duchess’s establishment, Mary Lassells met a young man who was dark and handsome with bold roving eyes, and to whom she felt immediately drawn. She was sitting on an overturned tree-trunk in the Lambeth orchard, when he strolled by.

  “Welcome, stranger!” he said. “Or am I wrong in calling you stranger? I declare I should recognize you, had I ever seen you before!”

  And so saying he sat down beside her.

  “You are right in supposing me to be a stranger. I have been in the Duchess’s establishment but a few days. You have been here long?”

  “I made the journey up from Norfolk.”

  His bold eyes surveyed her. She was well enough, but not worth risking trouble with little Catherine, who, with her naivete, her delight, her willingness, was giving him the most amusing and absorbing affair he had enjoyed for a long time.

  “I rejoice to see you here,” he continued.

  “Indeed, sir, you are very kind.”

  “It is you who are kind, to sit thus beside me. Tell me, how do you like it here?”

  She did not greatly like it, she told him; she found the behavior of some of the ladies shocking. She was rather bitter, acutely feeling herself to be low-born, inexperienced in the ways of etiquette, having been merely a nurse before she entered the Duchess’s household
. She had been delighted when she was offered the position, and owing to the unconventional ways of the household Mary had been accepted into it without ceremony. But among these ladies she felt awkward—awkward in speech, awkward in manners; she fancied that they watched her, sneered at her behind her back. This was pure imagination on Mary’s part, for in actual fact the ladies were much too absorbed in their own affairs to give much attention to her; but she nursed her grievances, aired them to herself with great bitterness, until they grew out of all proportion to the truth. She occupied a bed in the dormitory with the rest, but there had been no feasting nor love-making in her presence yet, as at the Lambeth house the dormitory was not so conveniently situated. Still, she could not help but notice the levity of the ladies; young gentlemen had looked in on some of them during the day; she had seen many a kiss and indications of greater familiarity. Mary had thought bitterly: And these are those who would look down on a good woman such as I am!

  She told him that she did not like what she had so far seen of the conduct of those who were called ladies.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “There is much familiarity between them and the young men.”

  Manox laughed inwardly, thinking it would be amusing to lead her on. He feigned shocked surprise.

  Warming to the subject, she went on: “Gentlemen—or those who would call themselves gentlemen—look in at the dormitory at all hours of the day. I was never more startled in my life. There was one, who would doubtless call herself a lady, changing her dress, and a gentleman looked round the door and she pretended to hide herself by running behind a screen and was much delighted when he peeped over the top. I declare I wondered whether I should not go at once to Her Grace!”

  Manox looked sharply at her. The severely practical headdress, the thin disapproving lips, the pale eyes—all these belonged to a bearer of tales. She was a virgin, he doubted not—a virgin of necessity! he thought cynically; and of such material were made the tale-bearers, the really dangerous women.

  He laid a hand over hers. She started, and a flush spread over her face, beginning at her modest collar and running swiftly to her flat and simply-arranged hair. She was nearer to being pretty at that moment than she would ever be.