Boleyn Traitor, page 44
She will get little comfort from him. Charles Howard is a young man with a light heart and a lighter understanding. In her secret grief for her mother, Lady Margaret turns to her friends, the princess Lady Mary, and Mary Howard; and the three of them refuse to dance for a week and absent themselves from hunting to pray for the soul of the Tudor queen. The ladies of the queen’s room wordlessly give Lady Margaret field forget-me-nots, stems of rue, and little silver crosses. We all know that there is to be no word spoken at the Tudor court; but we sorrow with her.
Nobody even asks why the death of a royal queen should go unmourned, unrecognised by her home court. Nobody asks why we cannot speak of death. But I believe it is the conundrum that my father identified: how shall a man completely absorbed in himself ever imagine that he could be no more? How can a man who imagines himself as half a god think of his own mortality? How can a man, so vested in his material life, so heavily corporeal, imagine the death of that thick body?
The king cannot grieve for his sister; he cannot even acknowledge that she is gone. When someone he loves has died, they have – for him – abandoned and betrayed him, and the only way he can bear their loss is to persuade himself that they were never really there at all.
As if to insist that he is a young man, not an old one and the last of his generation, as if to be as young as his child bride, the king declares that instead of a service of mourning for his dead sister, we will hold a service of thanksgiving for his young wife. To make it blindingly clear that he is not thinking of the sister he has lost, he chooses All Hallows’ Eve to celebrate his young queen – as if her youth and beauty can exorcise ghosts.
‘Is he going to announce my coronation?’ Kitty asks me urgently, as she dresses in one of her progress gowns of cloth of silver. She will wear the gown with Tudor green sleeves and a green hood. ‘Is he? And what should I do? What do I do when people give thanks for me? Is it like a toast – do I return it and say a prayer to reply to them?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say, smiling at the thought. ‘No, it’s not like a toast. I think you should lower your head and close your eyes as if you were praying, too.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asks earnestly. ‘You know I like to do things exactly right. What did any of the others do? What did Jane Seymour do?’
‘He never held a service for thanksgiving for Jane Seymour,’ I say and watch her face light up at a greater honour than a queen who went before her.
‘He didn’t? Not for sainted Jane?’
‘No. This is special for you. You will pray when everyone prays, and at the end of the prayer, rise up and curtsey to him. Very low.’
At once, she calls for a chair, and I have to be the king in his gallery, and she is the queen, with her maids-of-honour and the ladies-in-waiting as congregation. ‘No giggling,’ Kitty says sternly. ‘We have to get this right.’
Alice Restwold is the priest, and she says: ‘La la la,’ for the prayers and the end blessing, and then Kitty rises and turns to the gallery, where I am the king. She curtseys to the ground before me.
‘Quite right,’ I say. ‘And watch for him beckoning you to his gallery. He might want you to kneel before him in fealty or kiss his cheek.’
‘But which?’ she demands. ‘How do I know which?’
I show her the gesture with his hands out that will cue her to kneel and put her hands together in prayer before him, and the outstretched gesture that invites her to kiss his cheek.
‘Shall I wear my hair down?’
‘She always wants to wear her hair down – ready for bed,’ Alice Restwold jokes, and everyone laughs but Kitty, who waits solemnly for my decision.
‘Yes,’ I decide, thinking that it will look like a coronation. ‘Coronet on and hair down.’
‘Is it going to take very long?’ she asks. ‘Is it instead of usual mass or as well as it?’
‘Probably as well,’ I say. ‘But no worse than Good Friday or the Easter services. No longer than that. You’ll be seated, not kneeling. It can’t go on too long, because the king …’ I break off. There is no need to say that the king’s attention span has shortened and he cannot bear to spend too long anywhere but the dining table. His bowels move unexpectedly; he sometimes farts loudly and has to be hurried to the stool room. Nobody needs to tell the preacher or the celebrant when the king is getting bored; they keep a wary eye on him and speed up the service or cut the sermon at the first sign of restlessness.
‘And you all wear my badge.’ Kitty turns to her maids-of-honour. ‘And pray in thanksgiving for me.’ She looks sternly at Catherine Tilney, who looks ready to giggle with Alice Restwold. ‘You will give thanks for me! You of all people should be glad I’m queen. Nobody else would employ you – God knows.’
Hampton Court, All Hallows’ Eve
1541
WE WAKE EARLY, and Kitty has a bath in the great royal bath in Bayne Tower. The tub is big enough for the king, huge for a slip of a girl like Kitty, and she allows her favourites, Alice Restwold and Catherine Tilney, to plunge in with her in their bathing shifts. The three romp in the hot scented water, splashing each other and holding their breath and going under the water, until I insist they come out and wrap up warmly to run back to the queen’s rooms and help Kitty to dress in her cloth of silver gown.
When we have her sleeves laced on and her green silk shoes on her stockinged feet, we stand her before the mirror and comb the waves of her bronze hair over her shoulders and put her little coronet on her head.
‘Should be a crown,’ she whispers to me.
‘Perhaps he’ll announce it today.’
We line up. In strict order of precedence, Lady Mary will go behind her stepmother, Lady Margaret Douglas behind her, and then all the ladies-in-waiting in order behind them. We file to the Chapel Royal, and Kitty curtseys to the king in his gallery, and we sit before the altar, and the service begins.
The Bishop of Lincoln leads the service and prays for all the departed and all saints and especially gives thanks for the good life that His Majesty the king leads with the queen … and hopes to lead, he adds sonorously, in case All Hallows’ Eve makes us think that the king might be mortal. I am hoping that the herald will announce the coronation; but the service goes on through the usual collects for the day, and though the sermon praises the king and queen as peace-bringers to the north of England, the king’s confessor does not seem to have been instructed to hint at a coronation for Kitty.
Of course, it suits the Seymours if she is not crowned, especially if the king dies soon. Easier for them to create a Seymour regency if there is no crowned Howard queen. It suits the Spanish party, too – a blood royal princess outranks an uncrowned commoner wife. All of them must hope that the king dies before Kitty conceives and is crowned.
If I could be sure that the king would not see another Easter, I would even think it worth the risk for Kitty to pretend to a pregnancy to win herself a coronation. Anne would have dared to do such a thing – but Anne had courage that none of us know. Anne could have sworn she was pregnant and wept at the deathbed with a pillow strapped inside her gown. Even Jane Seymour would have done it, if she had been ordered. But Kitty is too young and has none of the steely Howard ambition, nor clever brothers. She would betray herself; she is not yet fully a courtier with two faces.
Finally, the service is over, and Kitty turns to the king’s gallery and sweeps a deep graceful curtsey to show her gratitude for the honour. He kisses his hand to her, a pretty gesture, and she smiles radiantly. Then she leads the way from the chapel back to her rooms. We will change our clothes and wrap up to walk in the autumn gardens and beside the river before dinner.
We celebrate All Hallows’ Eve with a little masque of the boggarts, black dominos over our usual gowns and monster masks. Thomas and Kitty manage to steal a dance together; he holds her closely, and her eyes behind her mask are green with desire, and nobody notices them among the bobbing heads of deer and cuckold horns and antlers.
The king’s pain is eased with a constant supply of tumblers of wine, and at unmasking, when Kitty is discovered dancing with Alice Restwold, he exclaims that he had no idea who was who, and that it reminds him of just last year or the year before, when he danced with all the ladies and no one would ever have known him; but that he was the best dancer, and the only one who danced all night.
He says that next year, we shall have a grander masque, and he will lead Kitty out to dance in a minotaur mask. She holds her shoulders very still so that she does not shudder at the thought of her monstrous husband in a monster mask. Edward Seymour catches the mood before the king gets maudlin over previous glories, by telling him that his son the prince has recovered from a fever, and the king goes to bed happy, with one arm on Seymour’s shoulders and one leaning on Culpeper, and I think: and there is our regency council: the dowager queen’s husband, Thomas Culpeper; the prince’s uncle, Edward Seymour; the dowager queen’s uncle, Thomas Howard; and the queen regent herself.
Hampton Court, All Souls’ Day
1541
THE NEXT DAY is All Souls’ Day and another long church service in the morning. The king is inattentive, reading papers and muttering with the old lords, Audley and Russell, over court business. He barely looks up when we curtsey and leave. We expect the king and the young men to come to the queen’s rooms for an archery competition at noon, but only the young men come in, smiling and joking, with their bows on their backs. Thomas Culpeper and Kitty exchange a quick intense glance before looking away and talking vivaciously to other people. He makes his way over to my side.
‘I couldn’t come last night – tell her I would have been with her if I could.’
‘I’ll tell her.’
We are experienced courtiers; we speak of Kitty, but our eyes are fixed on Alice Restwold, who is miming a parody of an archer and making a circle of friends laugh at her closed eye and grimace as she aims the arrow.
‘Is the king coming?’ I ask him. ‘Should we go to the butts ahead of him?’
‘Something’s happened. He’s in a huddle with the old lords and Cranmer.’
‘Not another rebellion?’
‘Something bad. They’re not happy. But they’re very secretive.’ His young face is gloomy. ‘They flock round the king like hungry chicks around a poultry woman. Nobody under the age of ninety is allowed in. And they tell him only what he wants to hear.’
I don’t laugh. ‘We all flock,’ I say wryly. ‘Scratting and pecking in dirt.’
‘Then how will anything change?’ Culpeper demands.
We are both silent; we know the only way that there will be a change. And it is illegal to say it.
There is a knock at the door, and the king’s vice chamberlain is announced. He bows to Kitty and tells her that the king is detained with business and will not come to the archery.
Kitty glances uncertainly at me. I give a little shake of my head, and she says: ‘Then we’ll wait till His Majesty can come. There’s no competition without the greatest champion.’
‘For sure, he is certain to win!’ someone says, in the hopes that his comment will be repeated to the king.
The young men hand their bows to their servants, throw off their hats, and Kitty says that everyone may sit or stand as they wish. Thomas Culpeper goes casually across the room to her side and sits on a stool beside her great chair. Lady Mary takes a seat nearby with Mary Howard. Someone starts a riddle, and then someone enacts a charade for us to guess, and soon the young people are shouting with laughter. Nobody wonders what business has delayed the king but Thomas Culpeper and I – for everyone else, it is a holiday without the old men watching.
The archery contest is delayed this day and the next as it is so wet and cold. The king’s business – whatever it is – continues to absorb him, and we see him only at chapel in the morning. He does not come to Kitty’s bed, and he does not dine in the hall. His place is set at the high table, and the servants bow to an empty throne as if he were there, but his pages take dish after dish into his privy chamber, as if he were feasting in secret.
‘IS HE ILL?’ Kitty asks Thomas quietly on the fourth day of the month, when the king has not been seen since All Saints’ Day.
‘The doctor’s not been called,’ he says cautiously. ‘I think it must be bad news from Scotland or the north. Two lords left court after All Saints’, and Thomas Wriothesley went away today.’
‘Have they summoned the Duke of Norfolk from his home?’ I ask. ‘If they need an army against an uprising, it’ll be his.’
‘Not that I know,’ Thomas says.
‘Will you put him to bed tonight?’ Kitty whispers. ‘Or …’
‘I can’t come,’ he tells her. ‘Don’t look at me, Kitty. I can’t say no to you when you look at me.’
‘Look at Alice doing a mime!’ I prompt her.
Obediently, she looks away from Culpeper’s handsome face. He speaks to her profile, as clear as a cameo.
‘I won’t come to you until we know what’s happening,’ he says. ‘It might be that he’s ill again but denying it, and then he’ll send for me in the night. Or it might be that he’ll tell me what’s happening. With the lords away from court, he might speak to me – I’ll go to him now.’
‘Oh, stay …’ she whispers, looking away from him.
In reply, he takes her hand and kisses her cold fingers and goes from the room. Carefully, she does not look after him.
Hampton Court, November
1541
SOMETHING IS WRONG at court. I can feel the heavy air of a coming thunderstorm. It is not something in Scotland, nor far away on the northern borders. But there is something very wrong at court. I have lived my life here, and I can smell it, like the first hint of smoke in a burning building. I wonder: did Lady Mary use the progress to meet with northern Papists, and are the king’s advisors following a trail that will lead to her door? Archbishop Cranmer is seen going in and out of the king’s privy chamber – would he lead an investigation against the king’s own daughter? Or is she so determined against the marriage with France that she was planning to run away again, and have they sighted a Spanish ship riding at anchor off the north coast? Or now that his sister is dead, is the king planning a war with Scotland to teach King James greater respect for his uncle?
But none of these plans would send the old lords away from court; they would come together with the king, to plan an invasion or a new plot or a cruel punishment; they would not go individually, one by one, to wherever it is that they have gone. And where have they gone? And why does nobody know?
Only I am uneasy. Everyone else continues as usual, which makes me think that I am mistaken; I have been thrown back to the time when I held a vigil for my missing husband, going round and round a quiet palace, opening doors on empty rooms.
I use my traitor skills, I see what horses are in the stable-yard, what lords have places set at dinner. I walk slowly past Dr Butts’ chamber hoping to see visiting doctors, come to consult with him. I watch for royal messengers riding north with muster papers – but there is nothing that I can see out of the ordinary – but that the king will not eat or be merry with the queen he called his ‘rose’.
I persuade myself I am worrying about nothing, but then, Lady Isabel Baynton, Kitty’s sister, comes on the fifth day of November to complain that Francis Dereham has disappeared.
‘Just left as rudely as he arrived,’ she complains.
‘Gone?’ I ask her. ‘Or just drunk in a whorehouse somewhere?’
‘All his things are gone from his room,’ she says. ‘My husband says he took his pay for the quarter on Michaelmas Day so ungraciously that he half-thought he would leave then. He’s not made himself popular.’ She lowers her voice. ‘It’s not as if we’ll miss him.’
‘I’ll tell the queen,’ I say.
‘I doubt she’ll care,’ Isabel observes.
I fold my lips on an angry retort. Is the woman so stupid that she has forgotten how he got his place, why we endure his company? Does she not remember that her own family forced him into Kitty’s service, introduced as an old friend, because he had a cache of secret letters in the keeping of the dowager duchess? Where would he go which is a better place than this? Where else could he use the currency of indiscreet letters?
Francis Dereham’s absence is barely noticed by anyone but me, but then Catherine Tilney and her friend Alice Restwold leave court suddenly, without notice to anyone. I stand in the doorway of their shared bedchamber, as if a precipice has opened up under my feet, I have such a vertiginous sense of the past. I open the chest for their gowns. It is empty but for a little scrap of ribbon. I smell the sandalwood of the chest, and I recognise this feeling of falling. This is the feeling of being powerless, of things coming undone, of a bobbin rolling along the floor, unspooling. This is the tug of a single thread that unravels the whole picture of a tapestry.
I dare not say anything to Kitty. There is no one I can speak to; there is no one I can trust with my fear that something is happening at court, something is happening again. I would talk with Thomas Culpeper, but I don’t want to be seen on the king’s side, where messengers come and go and the privy council seems to be meeting daily, at odd times of day, with the king attending as if it is a matter if great importance to him.
Every day, one of the old lords rides into the beautiful stables at Hampton Court and goes straight to the king’s rooms without speaking to anyone else, without calling in courtesy to the queen. Every day, another man rides out. Thomas Wriothesley, who served under my Lord Cromwell and knows how to interrogate a suspect, is still absent, but Archbishop Cranmer, Edward Seymour, and William Fitzwilliam come and then go again.
