Boleyn Traitor, page 39
‘You could say that you were meeting a lover!’ she suggests, giggling. ‘Go on, Jane. You’re young enough and pretty enough. Why shouldn’t you be sneaking out to meet someone? It could be Culpeper?’
‘Because if the queen’s chief lady-in-waiting is sneaking out to meet a lover, then it reflects badly on the queen!’ I reprove her; but I can’t help smiling.
‘He says he’d meet you the moment you invited him. He says any of them would.’
I laugh. ‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous, Kitty! I can’t meet a young man any more than you can.’
‘Just once. I swear, just this once.’
‘It’s not possible.’
The brightness drains from her face, and she brings her horse beside me and reaches out to clasp my hands on the reins. I have never seen her so serious. ‘Jane, I am not laughing now. I really cannot bear …’ She breaks off. ‘It’s hard for me to do what I have to …’ She stops herself saying more. ‘I don’t see how to get through these days … these nights …’
She pauses for a moment and lets my hand go, takes up her own reins. Her face is grim; she looks like a woman in lifetime imprisonment. I think: we have driven her too hard; she cannot break down now.
‘I have to have something, one thing that makes me happy!’ she says piteously. ‘If I am to smile all the time and dance every night … If I have to greet him when they roll him into my bed … if I have to let him … Jane, if I have to let him do what he must … and it’s not like … it’s not like lovemaking … I swear to God, I have to have some moment in the day when I am happy, when I am myself.’
There is such a bitter contrast between her fine gown, her bejewelled hat, and the deadness of her hazel eyes. I think: if I can just get her to York, he will crown her there, and then she is queen and we are halfway to the prize. I think: I have to get her through this year; he cannot last another winter. I think: I am a hardened courtier, but even I balk at forcing an unwilling young woman – really, a girl – into the bed of an old man for what is no better than a rape. This is brutal work; it is wicked work. If the price of her obedience is to see Thomas Culpeper once, I cannot refuse her. Better for me that I make the meeting safe than the two young lovers betray themselves. Better for me that I am Venus in this story of courtly love than that Catherine Tilney steps into my place and wins the power of a confidante.
‘Very well – just this once, I’ll see if there is a stair or a gallery or somewhere you can meet, but it can only be this once and only for a moment.’
‘Just once, just for a moment,’ she promises, and at once, childlike, she is transformed. Her face is radiant; the colour floods into her cheeks. ‘Just once, Jane, and then I can face Lincoln and tonight. I swear I’ll never ask you for anything again.’
WE MAKE A grand entry to Lincoln, the streets cleaned, ankle deep in silvery sand, the bells of the cathedral pealing, the citizens on their knees to beg pardon for the uprising, the clergy of the church and the officials of the town bringing gifts and reciting welcomes. Kitty is bored to tears by the Latin addresses, but her eyes are so wide, her mouth naturally upturned in a smile, that even when she is most sulky, she looks angelically beautiful.
We enter the cathedral for a long church service where Kitty kneels and stands and bows her head in prayer and kisses the crucifix and listens to a long welcome in Latin and a hymn in her praise without fidgeting. She does not glance towards Thomas Culpeper, who stands behind the king. She is as queenly as if she were born to it and not effortfully playacting.
The thanksgiving service lasts for hours; only Lady Mary pays attention all the way through, and when it is finally over, the royal couple leave the cathedral under the soaring west door and walk down the hill hand in hand over the swept paving stones to the bishop’s palace. I can see from Kitty’s awkward walk that he is leaning on her. The favourites close up, fearing that Kitty will stagger under his weight; but they don’t dare to offer help.
He is flushed and sweaty by the time we get down the hill, dragging his foot over the hard cobbles of the entrance. As soon as the gates are closed on the gawping faces, he rounds furiously on Katheryn and sends her to her rooms. He beckons Culpeper and Seymour to either side, and they half-lift him indoors. As they manhandle him up the stairs, we hear a muffled groan of pain, and Kitty hurries out of earshot, with us running behind her.
She has a beautiful suite of rooms with large Venetian glass windows where she can see both cathedral and castle and the people still lingering in the streets below. My bedroom is the next floor up, adjoining her bathroom. It is the bedroom for the captain of the watch, and it guards a stair that runs directly to the rear of the palace, the stables, and the garden. I unpack my own things and then open the locked door and go down the little circular stone staircase to the inner ward, where the garden runs down the hill. It is perfect for a secret entrance.
The king has recovered his temper by dinnertime, and there are long speeches of praise that cheer him, but it is not going to be a late night. He eats hugely; every dish goes first to him and then to the queen and then out to the court in order of precedence. Nothing comes from the king’s place untouched; he takes a spoon of everything and often double or even treble portions. Kitty beside him, pecking at her food, looks more and more birdlike, more and more ethereal. It seems quite impossible that she should be his wife. She looks as if she would break beneath his weight when he mounts her and be smothered by the fat of his chest.
But he will not get to her bed tonight. My uncle shoots me an angry look, but no one can stop the king eating himself into a torpor. By the time he is hauled to his feet and stands swaying, he is sodden with drink and flatulent with food. He thanks the bishop for good company, kisses Kitty’s hand, and beckons his favourites to help him to his rooms. The young maids look hopefully at the queen, hoping for dancing and a merry night now that the old king is going to bed, but Kitty disappoints them by rising and going to her rooms.
We pretend to get ready for bed, dressing Kitty in her nightdress and ornate night robe, tying her nightcap on her head and ordering the maids to their beds. Kitty tells Catherine Tilney that she will sit with me for a while in my bedroom.
Catherine watches as I set the queen a chair and stoke up my little fire. ‘Shall I wait?’ she asks.
‘No, I’ll put the queen to bed,’ I tell her, and close the door on her surprised face.
As soon as she is gone, Kitty leaps to her feet.
‘Not yet,’ I say. ‘Not until they are all quiet and the lights are out all around the palace.’
‘But he won’t wait in the dark!’
‘He has to wait,’ I say firmly. ‘We’re not letting him in until I am sure that the whole palace is silent.’
She takes off her nightcap and frees her hair from the plait in a tumble of golden-brown waves. ‘You’re never meeting him like that,’ I say flatly. ‘Put your cap back on.’
Instead, she borrows a velvet hood of mine and puts a dark-velvet cape over her night robe. ‘There.’
‘Better,’ I say. ‘But we still have to wait.’
I let half an hour go by the cathedral bells, and then I open the stair door. With Kitty at my heels, I creep down the twisting stair, a hand on the cold walls on either side. I open the door at the foot, and suddenly, just across the gravel, there is the nightwatchman, making his rounds with a flaming torch in his hand.
I jump back into the shelter of the doorway and push Kitty back up the stairs. I close the door as we wait, trembling. I can hear his footsteps approaching the door, and we dash up the stairs, our slippered feet making no noise, until we are hidden by the curve of the staircase. Down below, I hear the creak of the lock as he turns the key on the outside and then takes the key away, leaving us locked in.
Above me, her face pale in the moonlight that filters through the arrow slit, Kitty is horrified. ‘He’s locked us in, and Thomas out!’
‘You’ll have to go back to bed,’ I say quietly. ‘We’ve lost our chance tonight.’
She looks as if someone has knifed her in the heart. ‘I can’t,’ she says flatly. ‘I can’t not see him. Jane, you must run around, go to the garden and find …’
‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘We’ll just have to try again, later.’
‘I’ve spent all day waiting for tonight.’ Her voice trembles on the edge of tears. ‘All day. He’s the only thing that gets me through these days. I don’t think I can bear—’
‘I know,’ I interrupt. ‘We can try another night.’
‘I don’t want another night. I can’t wait for another night. I want tonight!’
‘We’re locked in. The watchman has the key. There’s nothing we can do.’
‘Oh, Jane!’ She gives a little shuddering sob. She is beyond argument.
‘Kitty, be sensible. Go to bed now, and we’ll try again tomorrow.’
She shakes her head. ‘I can’t stand another day without seeing him. What if the king comes to my bed tomorrow? I’d rather die than go another day. I tell you, I would rather die than have the king in my bed.’
‘Stop. Stop this. Be calm – don’t say such things. Think! You’re the luckiest girl in—’
She catches my hand. ‘Look at me!’ she demands.
I look at her: her eyes are filled with tears, her face twisted with grief.
‘I can’t live like this,’ she says.
She clutches my arm as we hear a noise on the door to the garden. It is not the watchman returning; it is a rhythmic little rat-tat-tat.
We creep down the stairs again. I go first, Kitty silent behind me.
‘Who’s there?’ I whisper.
‘Um … Sir Lancelot!’ comes the laughing whisper.
‘It’s him!’ Kitty breathes in my ear. ‘He’s come!’ At once, she is restored, vibrant with desire. She would get past me to the door to whisper through the keyhole, but I hold her back.
‘We’re locked in,’ I hiss. ‘There’s a nightwatchman. Take care he doesn’t see you.’
‘He’s gone round the other side,’ Culpeper says quietly. ‘I think I can pick the lock.’
‘He can pick a lock!’ Kitty whispers adoringly.
We wait, listening to the sound of a thin blade being pushed into the barrel of the lock and the noise of metal against metal as it is jiggled into place. Then the lock yields, and it swings inwards, and he slips through. His servant, who picked the lock, steps discreetly back, but he has seen the two of us.
Kitty is in Culpeper’s arms in a moment. I cannot stop her leaping forward or stop him wrapping his arms around her. They hold each other, her face buried into his shoulder and his brown head bent into her neck as he inhales her perfume.
‘Get inside,’ I say urgently. ‘Come on. You can’t stay here.’
In a moment, Kitty recovers herself. She steps back; he releases her. He bows; she bends her head.
‘Forgive me,’ he whispers, but his eyes are still dark with desire, and she is shaking. ‘Forgive me.’
I lead the way up the winding stairs, through my bedroom to the queen’s bathroom. The stool – a gloriously embroidered velvet throne with jugs of hot water and sponges and soaps – is in the corner of the room, hidden by a screen. In the main part of the room is a table holding a jug, an ewer for washing, drying sheets, a warm robe, two footstools before the little fire, banked in for the night, and a chair in the corner.
Kitty recoils. ‘Not here!’ she whispers. ‘Not here!’ Even in the most scandalous circumstances, she is still thinking about appearances.
‘This is the safest place; nobody will disturb you here,’ I point out. ‘We can lock the door, and nobody can even knock. Nobody has the right to enter at all.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he whispers. ‘Anywhere, as long as we can be together.’
He draws her to the seats before the fire. I sit at a distance, in the chair. I watch them, silhouettes in the firelight. I see the absolute beauty of the two firelit profiles, the tenderness of the inclination of his head as she whispers and then her upward gaze to him as he replies.
I had thought, after that first plunge into each other’s arms, that they would kiss; but they hold hands like betrothed children, and whisper for hours, so softly that they can only hear each other by putting their foreheads together, their cheeks touching, their lips to the other’s neck. They speak of their childhoods, of their parents, of their families, of the lovers they have known, and for more than an hour, for more than two hours, they whisper when they first saw each other, when they knew that they were in love, how they have longed for this moment to be together. He begs her pardon for preferring another girl when she was a maid-of-honour to Anne of Cleves and confesses that he has been Bess Harvey’s lover but that he will never be with another woman after this night. I hear her soft laugh. She says that the affair has not been of great profit to Bess, who is notorious for her shabby clothes. He says if Kitty had continued as a maid-of-honour, she would have been his mistress. She says not so – that she would have broken his heart in revenge, and he whispers that his heart is hers, so she has her revenge.
Like children, they plan nothing, they don’t think of tomorrow, never mind the weeks ahead of us on progress, never mind what will happen when we all return to ordinary life in the royal castles and palaces and Culpeper must help the old king into the bed of the girl he loves. They do not speak of the king, not of his illness, not of his lust for Kitty; it is as if they are meeting in another world, where none of the cruelties of this world can hurt them.
They whisper, turn and turn about, like blackbirds settling at sunset – one speaking sweetly and the other softly replying – until I hear the nightwatchman shout the hour in the garden and the cathedral bell strikes three long notes, and I have to recall them to the real world: ‘Your Grace, Master Culpeper, that’s three in the morning – you have to go to your beds.’
They cannot bear to be parted. He goes to the door, then comes back for a kiss; she holds the ties of his cape and commands him to tell her that he loves her again. I have to order her to her bedroom and open the doorway to the garden stair and shoo him from my room.
I listen at the top of the stair to hear the door at the bottom open and close and know that he is safely out in the garden. Then I go back to the queen’s bedroom and find Kitty in bed with her hair a tumble of bronze across the pillow, and she is already fast asleep.
ANYONE WHO CARED for her would see the next morning that she is transformed. The slight bruised violet colour under her clear eyes hints at lack of sleep, but the radiance of her face shows that she was sleepless with joy. The way she carries her head, the colour of her eyes, which shine today more green than hazel – something about her smile, which has a secret behind it … but no one in this whole court of people who depend upon her for their living – the servants who wear her livery, the ladies who dine at her table, even the criminal who goes free today because Kitty prettily asks the king for a pardon – no one cares for her at all. Among these thousands of men and women, only Thomas Culpeper and I love her for herself – my love is partly self-serving, and I don’t know about his. Surrounded by an adoring court, just as she was surrounded by servants at Lambeth, she is still a lonely little girl neglected by those who should protect her.
Surprisingly, only our uncle Thomas Howard sees a change in her. ‘Has she taken?’ he asks me. ‘She looks like a woman and not a starved waif for once.’
‘Not yet,’ I reply, but I think: he’s right – loving Culpeper may make her fertile. Desiring him, she might conceive a child from the king. I think, for only a moment: Lord, what a beautiful child Kitty and Culpeper would make! – and then I think: too risky, unless we knew for sure that the king was in his last days, and then to make her a pregnant widow would be worth the risk and guarantee her title of dowager queen and her place in a regency council.
Kitty glows, a girl in love, in her first love, a sacred love. She can think of nothing but Thomas Culpeper. She gives Bess Harvey, his former mistress, a gown from the royal wardrobe as a private joke to him; but she makes no other public gesture. They get through the day with nothing more than a few exchanged glances.
The king goes to bed early again, and Kitty resists the temptation to stay up late and dance with Culpeper. Loving him has changed her; she does not want to flaunt him before her maids-of-honour, not even to triumph over Bess Harvey.
CULPEPER PALMS A note to me at dinner with one word – midnight – so I have no chance to refuse him. As the bell strikes twelve, Kitty waits for him before the fire in the stool room. Tonight, both my maid and Catherine Tilney insist on waiting up, thinking we are sitting before the fire in my bedroom again. I wish they would go to their own beds, but Catherine Tilney is a kinswoman and cannot be commanded. I make them both wait in an alcove outside my room.
I tell the lovers that the maids are outside my door and they cannot stay long; but no time would be enough for them. They repeat all that they said last night, and they speak of the events of the day that have kept them apart. He tells her that he cannot take his eyes from her when she and the king are at chapel; she tells him how she has to look at the ground when she makes her morning curtsey to the king. They don’t complain that they are star-crossed; they don’t wish that they had met before the king saw her, they don’t even wish for more than they have now. They don’t plan. They are entranced with the moment: the touch of a hand, the offer of a kiss, her finger on the dimple in his chin, his hand tracing the line of her slim neck.
While they court, blind to the dangers and consequences, I sit in my chair in the corner and wonder how to profit from this development. As a courtier, I should support my principal while turning this to my own advantage. I should guard us both from risk. I am not dizzy with love, blind to danger like her. Who knows better than I that evidence against a wife can be used to behead a queen? But the only man who could organise such a legal murder is dead, Kitty has no enemies like Anne, and her husband is blind with honeymoon love. She has no rival, as Anne did. No one has any reason to spy on her or lie about her. There is no powerful Spanish party planning to bring her down. I think, as I so often think: what would Thomas Cromwell advise me? What would he do if he were here?
