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

by Jean Plaidy

  “My cousin...” murmured Catherine. “Grandmother...when I was at Hollingbourne...we played together. We loved each other then.”

  The Duchess put her finger to her lips.

  “Hush, child! Be discreet. This matter must not be made open knowledge yet. Be calm.”

  Catherine found that very difficult. She wanted to be alone to think this out. She tried to picture what Thomas would be like now. She had only a hazy picture of a little boy, telling her in a somewhat shamefaced way that he would marry her.

  Derham’s letter scraped her skin. The thought of Thomas excited her so much that she had lost her burning desire to see Francis. She was wishing that all her life had been spent as she had passed the last months.

  The Duchess was holding her wrists and the Duchess’s hands were hot.

  “Catherine, I would speak to you very seriously. You will have need of great caution. The distressing things which have happened to you...”

  Catherine wanted to weep. Oh, how right her grandmother was! If only she had listened even to Mary Lassells! If only she had not allowed herself to drift into that sensuous stream which at the time had been so sweet and cooling to her warm nature and which now was so repulsive to look back on. How she had regretted her affair with Manox when she had found Francis! Now she was beginning to regret her love for Francis as her grandmother talked of Thomas.

  “You have been very wicked,” said her grandmother. “You deserve to die for what you have done. But I will do my best for you. Your wickedness must never get to the Duke’s ears.”

  Catherine cried out in misery rather than in anger: “The Duke! What of him and Bess Holland!”

  The Duchess was on her dignity. She might say what she would of her erring kinsman, not so Catherine.

  “What if his wife’s washerwoman be his mistress! He is a man; you are a woman. There is all the difference in the world.”

  Catherine was subdued; she began to cry.

  “Dry your eyes, you foolish girl, and forget not for one instant that all your wickedness is done with, and it must be as though it never was.”

  “Yes, grandmother,” said Catherine, and Derham’s letter pricked her skin.

  Derham continued to write though he received no answers. Catherine had inherited some of her grandmother’s capacity for shifting her eyes from the unpleasant. She thought continually of her cousin Thomas and wondered if he remembered her, if he had heard of the proposed match and if so what he thought of it.

  One day, wandering in the orchard, she heard the rustle of leaves behind her, and turning came face to face with Derham. He was smiling; he would have put his arms about her but she held him off.

  “Catherine, I have longed to see thee.”

  She was silent and frightened. He came closer and took her by the shoulders. “I had no answer to my letters,” he said.

  She said hastily: “Jane has married and gone to York. You know I was never able to manage a pen.”

  “Ah!” His face cleared. “That was all then? Thank God! I feared...” He kissed her on the mouth; Catherine trembled; she was unresponsive.

  His face darkened. “Catherine! What ails thee?”

  “Nothing ails me, Francis. It is...” But her heart melted to see him standing so forlorn before her, and she could not tell him that she no longer loved him. Let the break come gradually. “Your return is very sudden. Francis...”

  “You have changed, Catherine. You are so solemn, so sedate.”

  “I was a hoyden before. My grandmother said so.”

  “Catherine, what did they do to thee?”

  “They beat me with a whip. There never was such a beating. I was sick with the pain of it, and for weeks I could feel it. I was locked up, and ever since I have scarce been able to go out alone. They will be looking for me ere long, I doubt not.”

  “Poor Catherine! And this you suffered for my sake! But never forget, Catherine, you are my wife.”

  “Francis!” she said, and swallowed. “That cannot be. They will never consent, and what dost think they would do an you married me in actual fact?”

  “We should go away to Ireland.”

  “They would never let me go. We should die horrible deaths.”

  “They would never catch us, Catherine.”

  He was young and eager, fresh from a life of piracy off the coast of Ireland. He had money; he wished to take her away. She could not bear to tell him that they were talking of betrothing her to her cousin, Thomas Culpepper.

  She said: “What dost think would happen to you if you showed yourself?”

  “I know not. To hold you in my arms would suffice for anything they could do to me afterwards.”

  Such talk frightened her. She escaped, promising to see him again.

  She was disturbed. Now that she had seen Derham after his long absence, she knew for truth that which she had begun to suspect. She no longer loved him. She cried herself to sleep, feeling dishonored and guilty, feeling miserable because she would have to go to her cousin defiled and unclean. Why had she not stayed at Hollingbourne! Why had her mother died! What cruel fate had sent her to the Duchess where there were so many women eager to lead her into temptation! She was not yet eighteen and she had been wicked...and all so stupidly and so pointlessly.

  She determined to break with Francis; there should be no more clandestine meetings. She would marry Thomas and be such a good wife to him, that when set against years and years of the perfect happiness she would bring him, the sinful years would seem like a tiny mistake on a beautifully written page.

  Francis was hurt and angry. He had come back full of hope; he loved her and she was his wife, he reminded her. He had money from his spell of piracy; he was in any case related to the Howards.

  She told him she had heard she was to go to court.

  “I like that not!” he said.

  “But I like it,” she told him.

  “Dost know the wickedness of court life?” he demanded.

  She shrugged her shoulders. She hated hurting people and being forced to hurt Francis who loved her so truly was a terrible sorrow to her; she found herself disliking him because she had to hurt him.

  “You...to talk of wickedness...when you and I...”

  He would have no misunderstanding about that.

  “What we did, Catherine, is naught. Thou art my wife. Never forget it. Many people are married at an early age. We have done no wrong.”

  “You know we are not husband and wife!” she retorted. “It was a fiction to say we are; it was but to make it easy. We have sinned, and I cannot bear it, I wish we had never met.”

  Poor Derham was heartbroken. He had thought of no one else all the time he had been away. He begged her to remember how she had felt towards him before he went away. Then he heard the rumor of her proposed betrothal to Culpepper.

  “This then,” he said angrily, “is the reason for your change of heart. You are going to marry this Culpepper?”

  She demanded what right he had to ask such a question, adding: “For you know I will not have you, and if you have heard such report, you heard more than I do know!”

  They quarreled then. She had deceived him, he said. How could she, in view of their contract, think of marrying another man? She must fly with him at once.

  “Nay, nay!” cried Catherine, weeping bitterly. “Francis please be reasonable. How could I fly with you? Dost not see it would mean death to you? I have hurt you and you have hurt me. The only hope for a good life for us both is never to see each other again.”

  Someone was calling her. She turned to him imploringly. “Go quickly. I dare not think what would happen to you were you found here.”

  “They could not hurt me, an they put me on the rack, as you have hurt me.”

  Such words pierced like knives into the soft heart of Catherine Howard. She could not be happy, knowing she had hurt him so deeply. Was there to be no peace for her, no happiness, because she had acted foolishly when she was but a child?


  The serving-maid who had called her told her her grandmother would speak to her at once. The Duchess was excited.

  “I think, my dear, that you are to go to court. As soon as the new queen arrives you will be one of her maids of honor. There! What do you think of that? We must see that you are well equipped. Fear not! You shall not disgrace us! And let me whisper a secret. While you are at court, you may get a chance to see Thomas Culpepper. Are you not excited?”

  Catherine made a great effort to forget Francis Derham and think of the exciting life which was opening out before her. Court...and Thomas Culpepper.

  Henry was on his way to Rochester to greet his new wife. He was greatly excited. Such a wise marriage this was! Ha! Charles! he thought. What do you think of this, eh? And you, Francis, who think yourself so clever? I doubt not, dear Emperor, that Guelders is going to be a thorn in your fleshy side for many a long day!

  Anne! He could not help his memories. But this Anne would be different from that other. He thought of that exquisite miniature of Holbein’s; the box it had arrived in was in the form of a white rose, so beautifully executed, that in itself it was a fine work of art; the carved ivory top of the box had to be unscrewed to show the miniature at the bottom of it. He had been joyful ever since the receipt of it. Oh, he would enjoy himself with this Anne, thinking, all the time he caressed her, not only of the delights of her body, but of sardonic Francis and that Charles who believed himself to be astute.

  He had a splendid gift of sables for his bride. He was going to creep in on her unceremoniously. He would dismiss her attendants, for this would be the call of a lover rather than the visit of a king. He chuckled. It was so agreeable to be making the right sort of marriage. Cromwell was a clever fellow; his agents had reported that the beauty of Anne of Cleves exceeded that of Christina of Milan as the sun doth the moon!

  Henry was fast approaching fifty, but he felt twenty, so eager he was, as eager as a bridegroom with his first wife. Anne was about twenty-four; it seemed delightfully young when one was fifty. She could not speak very much English; he could not speak much German. That would add piquancy to his courtship. Such a practiced lover as himself did not need words to get what he wanted from a woman. He laughed in anticipation. Not since his marriage to Anne Boleyn, said those about him, had the King been in such high humor.

  When he reached Rochester, accompanied by two of his attendants he went into Anne’s chamber. At the door he paused in horror. The woman who curtseyed before him was not at all like the bride of his imaginings. It was the same face he had seen in the miniature, and it was not the same. Her forehead was wide and high, her eyes dark, her lashes thick, her eyebrows black and definitely marked; her black hair was parted in the center and smoothed down at the sides of her face. Her dress was most unbecoming with its stiff high collar resembling a man’s coat. It was voluminous after the Flemish fashion and English fashions had been following the French ever since Anne Boleyn had introduced them at court. Henry started in dismay, for the face in the miniature had been delicately colored so that the skin had the appearance of rose petals; in reality Anne’s skin was brownish and most disfiguringly pock-marked. She seemed quite ugly to Henry, and as it did not occur to him that his person might have produced a similar shock to her, he was speechless with anger.

  His one idea was to remove himself from her presence as quickly as possible; his little scheme, to “nourish love” as he had described it to Cromwell, had failed. He was too upset to give her the sables. She should have no such gift from his hands! He was mad with rage. His wise marriage had brought him a woman who delighted him not. Because her name was Anne, he had thought of another Anne, and his vision of his bride had been a blurred Anne Boleyn, as meek as Jane Seymour. And here he was, confronted by a creature whose accents jarred on him, whose face and figure repelled him. He had been misled. Holbein had misled him! Cromwell had misled him. Cromwell! He gnashed his teeth over that name. Yes, Cromwell had brought about this unhappy state of affairs. Cromwell had brought him Anne of Cleves.

  “Alas!” he cried. “Whom shall men trust! I see no such thing as hath been shown me of her pictures and report. I am ashamed that men have praised her as they have done, and I love her not!”

  But he was polite enough to Anne in public, so that the crowds of his subjects to whom pageantry was the flavoring in their dull dish of life, did not guess that the King was anything but satisfied. Anne in her cloth of gold and rich jewelry seemed beautiful enough to them; they did not know that in private the King was berating Cromwell, likening his new bride to a great Flanders mare, that his conscience was asking him if the lady’s contract with the Duke of Lorraine did not make a marriage between herself and the King illegal.

  Poor Anne was deliberately delayed at Dartford whilst Henry tried to find some excuse for not continuing with the marriage. She was melancholy. The King had shown his dislike quite clearly; she had seen the great red face grow redder; she had seen the small eyes almost disappear into the puffy flesh; she had seen the quick distaste. She herself was disappointed, such accounts had she had of the once handsomest prince in Christendom; and in reality he was a puffed-out, unwieldy, fleshy man with great white hands overloaded with jewels, into whose dazzling garments two men could be wrapped with room to spare; on his face was the mark of internal disease; and bandages bulged about his leg; he had the wickedest mouth and cruelest eyes she had ever seen. She could but, waiting at Dartford, remember stories she had heard of this man. How had Katharine met her death? What had she suffered before she died? All the world knew the fate of tragic Anne Boleyn. And poor Jane Seymour? Was it true that after having given the King a son she had been so neglected that she had died?

  She thought of the long and tiring journey from Dusseldorf to Calais, and the Channel crossing to her new home; she thought of the journey to Rochester; until then she had been reasonably happy. Then she had seen him, and seeing him it was not difficult to believe there was a good deal of truth in the stories she had heard concerning his treatment of his wives. And now she was to be one of them, or perhaps she would not, for, having seen the distaste in his face, she could guess at the meaning of this delay. She did not know whether she hoped he would marry her or whether she would prefer to suffer the humiliation of being sent home because her person was displeasing to him.

  Meanwhile Henry was flying into such rages that all who must come into contact with him went in fear for their lives. Was there a previous contract? He was sure there was! Should he endanger the safety of England by producing another bastard? His conscience, his most scrupulous conscience, would not allow him to put his head into a halter until he was sure.

  It was Cromwell who must make him act reasonably, Cromwell who would get a cuff for his pains.

  “Your Most Gracious Majesty, the Emperor is being feted in Paris. An you marry not this woman you throw the Duke of Cleves into an alliance with Charles and Francis. We should stand alone.”

  Cromwell was eloquent and convincing; after all he was pleading for Cromwell. If this marriage failed, Cromwell failed, and he knew his head to be resting very lightly on his shoulders, and that the King would be delighted to find a reason for striking it off. But Henry knew that in this matter, Cromwell spoke wisely. If Henry feared civil war more than anything, then next he feared friendship between Charles and Francis, and this was what had been accomplished. He dared not refuse to marry Anne of Cleves.

  “If I had known so much before, she should not have come hither!” he said, looking menacingly at Cromwell, as though the meetings between Charles and Francis had been arranged by him. Henry’s voice broke on a tearful note. “But what remedy now! What remedy but to put my head in the yoke and marry this...” His cheeks puffed with anger and his eyes were murderous. “What remedy but to marry this great Flanders mare!”

  There followed the ceremony of marriage with its gorgeously appareled men and women, its gilded barges and banners and streamers. Henry in a gown of cloth of gold rais
ed with great silver flowers, with his coat of crimson satin decorated with great flashing diamonds, was a sullen bridegroom. Cromwell was terrified, for he knew not how this would end, and he had in his mind such examples of men who had displeased the King as would make a braver man than he was tremble. The Henry of ten years ago would never have entered into this marriage; but this Henry was more careful of his throne. He spoke truthfully when he had said a few hours before the ceremony that if it were not for the sake of his realm he would never have done this thing.

  Cromwell did not give up hope. He knew the King well; it might be that any wife was better than no wife at all; and there were less pleasant looking females than Anne of Cleves. She was docile enough and the King liked docility in women; the last Queen had been married for that very quality.

  The morning after the wedding day he sought audience with the King; he looked in vain for that expression of satiety in the King’s coarse red face.

  “Well?” roared Henry, and Cromwell noticed with fresh terror that his master liked him no better this day than he had done on the previous one.

  “Your Most Gracious Majesty,” murmured the trembling Cromwell, “I would know if you are any more pleased with your Queen.”

  “Nay, my lord!” said the King viciously, and glared at Cromwell, laying the blame for this catastrophe entirely upon him. “Much worse! For by her breasts and belly she should be no maid; which, when I felt them, strake me so to the heart that I had neither will nor courage to prove the rest.”

  Cromwell left his master, trembling for his future.

  Catherine Howard could not sleep for excitement. At last she had come to court. Her grandmother had provided her with garments she would need, and Catherine had never felt so affluent in the whole of her eighteen years. How exciting it was to peep through the windows at personages who had been mere names to her! She saw Thomas Cromwell walking through the courtyards, cap in hand, with the King himself. Catherine shuddered at the sight of that man. “Beware of the blacksmith’s son!” her grandmother had said. “He is no friend of the Howards.” Always before Catherine had seen the King from a great distance; closer he seemed larger, more sparkling than ever, and very terrifying, so that she felt a greater urge to run from him than she did even from Thomas Cromwell. The King was loud in conversation, laughter and wrath, and his red face in anger was an alarming sight. Sometimes he would hobble across the courtyards with a stick, and she had seen his face go dark with the pain he suffered in his leg, and he would shout and cuff anyone who annoyed him. His cheeks were so puffed out and swollen that his eyes seemed lost between them and his forehead, and were more like the flash of bright stones than eyes. This King made Catherine shiver. Cranmer she saw too—quiet and calm in his archbishop’s robes. She saw her uncle and would have hidden herself, but his sharp eyes would pick her out and he would nod curtly.