The Queen's Mistake (10 page)

She sank heavily into a carved chair beside the hearth, and he came to her just like always. She was angry that he was here, but she would have been angrier if he had not come at all.

Ah, the discontent of age, when mirrors and memories were the enemies almost as much as time . . .

As Francis knelt before her, she held out her bare left foot. He pressed back the hem of her dress in the way that months ago had become their custom and their prelude. It was the one thing he could do for her that she actually missed from a man.
Ah, Thomas,
she thought
. Look what has become of me with you gone. Once I was the social center of court. Entertaining all, confidante to the queen . . . Now I am reduced to seducing a lowly page boy.

He was plying her toes with deft fingers, and her eyes rolled to a close with the pleasure of the sensation. As Catherine’s life was beginning, her own felt nearly at an end, and the constant realization of that—along with the reason such a young man was truly here—made her angry all over again. Aging was repulsive.
At least that is over for you, my love,
her mind said silently to her husband, dead
sixteen years already. He had been more of a companion in battle than a lover, but she missed his reassuring counsel most now. Yet she resented him nearly as much as she did her stepson, the current Duke of Norfolk, for making her a dowager. For making her feel so old.

For making her vulnerable to young men like this.

Francis pressed himself fully onto her, touching featherlight kisses onto her neck as though she were a mistress he actually desired. As though she were Catherine. Agnes pressed away her own sense of disgust, knowing what he likely felt by touching a woman of her years when there were so many willing girls upstairs in the dormitory. But age had its privileges. So did money and power.

After he had pleasured her and she had done the same for him, he stood to refasten his codpiece and Agnes yawned. It was an audible sound.

“You do not wish me to stay the night?” he asked, feigning a note of hurt.

“I have never wished it.”

“I only thought that perhaps now, with your granddaughter gone, a woman like you might be lonely.”

“A woman like me?” she repeated, angry anew for putting herself in this position.

She was useless here and slightly more than pathetic. Manipulating was the only aphrodisiac left in the world to a widowed woman of a certain age, and it had begun to occur to her only after Catherine’s departure that even that paltry joy was now escaping her.

My house in London,
she thought as Dereham smoothed back his hair, so predictable in his speed, so disappointingly like a colt rather than a stallion. He was more a bother now than the game piece he was when she knew she was sharing him with her own granddaughter behind the clueless chit’s back. Youth really was such a predictable
bore. As she watched him straighten his jerkin, Agnes realized, for the first time in years, that she missed court. She missed the danger. But most of all, she missed the sight of a man, his passion newly spent, gazing down on her with adoration rather than duty.

London. Yes. To the city. To the activity.

To the power.

She would leave this boy behind because she could.

Unlike Francis, her only duty was to herself.
Pitiful fool,
she thought.

Chapter Five

 

 

C
atherine woke to a shaft of sunlight in her eyes.

As they fluttered open, she saw Lady Rochford looming over her, hands on her hips, gown in hand. Clearly, Jane was in no mood to tarry.

“Well, come on then. We haven’t got all day. The queen is an early riser.”

“Won’t the king be—”

“I thought we made that situation clear to you yesterday.” Jane gave a small chuckle, then pulled back Catherine’s bedcovers. Catherine’s skin turned to gooseflesh as she lay in a plain cambric shift and no cap. “Bets are being placed as to how long the Cleves woman will remain queen. Other wagers have gone out as to whether she will actually keep her head if she objects to a divorce. And Boleyns do know a little something about that.”

Catherine struggled to sit up, sunlight shining in her eyes. That seemed an oddly callous remark from someone capable of such kindness. Boleyns and Howards were indelibly joined by divorce and death.

“They are married barely four months’ time.”

“I am told the king calls that a
lifetime.
”

Then I am here for nothing,
Catherine thought, feeling a little shiver of panic. Now that she had at last broken free, she dreaded an expedited return to Horsham, Manox, Dereham and the sour dowager duchess, which would certainly happen if there were no queen to serve.

Jane helped her into her shift, stockings, underskirt and the new blue gown from the duke, cinching the pearl-studded bodice tightly. Catherine smoothed out the long, wide sleeves and skirts, thinking the silver thread-lined blue velvet was the most elegant thing she had ever touched. She tried not to think about the hard boning of the stomacher, which prevented her from breathing. She stood before the mirror as Jane bound her hair tightly, drawing tears. A moment later, Jane placed the hood onto Catherine’s head as Catherine watched her own reflection in the mirror before her.

“Perfect,” Jane proclaimed. “Now a bit of alum. Your cheeks are pale as flour.”

“I’ve not yet worn color,” Catherine said hesitantly.

“There are a great many things at court you have not yet done, my pretty little cousin,” Jane replied with a cryptic little half smile that faded quickly. “But Howards do them all sooner or later.”

Jane went to the dressing table and selected a small silver pot from among the vials and bottles. Swiftly, she spun Catherine toward her, tapped a small bit of the contents onto each of her cheekbones, and rubbed it in roughly with each of her thumbs. “There now. You are presentable. We must go. We’re late as it is.”

Catherine followed close at Jane’s heels, like a little dog, through the maze of rooms comprising the queen’s apartments. They passed meticulously dressed ladies lounging, laughing and chatting in low tones, all of them glancing up at her appraisingly without missing a beat. Clearly she was nothing to any of them.

Finally they arrived before two liveried guards who still wore the black lion of Cleves as they stood ready. Jane nodded to them and, magically, the tall, carved oak doors were parted.

Catherine noticed the aroma of the queen’s bedchamber before anything else. It was pungent, foreign. The grand room had few furnishings, save the massive oak bed, with the royal arms embroidered in silver onto its tester, and a row of chairs along the walls beneath huge, dark tapestries on heavy rods. As they crossed the carpeted floor and neared the bed, they passed by a large coterie of women and two men speaking in a clipped, guttural, foreign tongue. She felt her heart begin to race, and she wondered if she would understand them if they spoke to her, and if the new queen would be displeased that Catherine could not address her in her native tongue.

There was a duo of ladies at the foot of the queen’s bed as she neared. The headboard bore the initials H and A above the year 1540 and was adorned with carvings of cherubs, one of them clearly pregnant. Catherine glanced over at the two women. She recognized them as her own half sister Isabel, Lady Baynton, with whom she was not close, and the fair-skinned, doe-eyed Anne, Countess of Hertford. As Catherine and Jane neared, the others instantly fell silent, glancing up guiltily, as if they had been speaking of her. Catherine felt her knees weaken further still.

She was quite terrified.

At the foot of the queen’s heavily carved bed, where the embroidered drapes parted, Catherine and Jane each made a deep curtsy.

“This is her then?”

The queen’s English was clotted, as if she had stones caught in her throat. Catherine realized that the aroma she had noticed upon entering the room was coming directly from the bed. A musky, odd perfume swirled around Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Although she was propped up against a row of overstuffed pillows, Anne of
Cleves appeared to be drowning beneath embroidered bedcovers and a heavy fustian nightdress and cap. Her corn-colored hair beneath the cap was straight and matted, like a cobweb, but after the memorable beauty of Anne Boleyn and the quiet elegance of Jane Seymour, it was her face, more than anything, that surprised Catherine. Although she did not want to have an unkind thought about the queen, she could not deny that the woman was ugly.

She sat with a little pet marmoset on her lap, both of them eating apples and nuts from the same silver dish.

When nothing but silence followed the queen’s question, Catherine dared to answer herself. “Your Grace, I am Mistress Howard,” she said in her sweetest and most dutiful tone.

The queen looked up at her appraisingly in the awkward silence, as did the other women. A door clicked to a close behind her. There was the echo of shoe heels. A small half cough. Someone whispered.

“Approach,” the queen directed. It was a single, taut word.

More unintelligible words followed as an older woman standing beside the queen, dressed in a gown of German design, leaned in to converse with her.

Catherine held her breath.

“Her Highness desires that the rest of you leave us,” the woman instructed. Her accent was thick, but her words were articulate and understandable. The maids of honor quickly complied. Jane touched Catherine lightly on the arm, as if giving her a spark of courage, then vanished along with the others. Again, the sound of a door closing cut through the awkward silence.

“It was your cousin who was my husband’s second wife,” the queen sputtered out in words so awkwardly articulated that it took a moment for Catherine to understand them. “It was Mistress Boleyn
who stole the king from his true wife. Pray tell me that ambition does not run in families.”

The older woman who stood beside the bed, with her hands linked before her, rephrased the queen’s comments until Catherine understood her entirely. Despite the challenge in her words, Anne of Cleves wore a gentle expression, and there was great kindness in her wide brown eyes. She, too, was a stranger at court, trying to find her way through an already tumultuous history of wives and mistresses. Doubtless the queen herself knew the rumors of her husband’s dis favor and wondered what was to become of her.

“I am to tell you, on Her Grace’s behalf, that I am called Mother Lowe. I translate for her and protect her interests.”

“I am at court only by Her Grace’s leave. My goal is only to serve her,” Catherine replied.

The queen spoke in German in reply to that, and Mother Lowe translated: “‘And to help me play the lute,’ she says. She was told that you are tolerably skilled, and the king favors a woman who can play.”

Catherine inclined her head. “It would be my great honor to try.”

“See that you do more than try,” Mother Lowe replied in warning. “Her Highness needs to depend upon those around her to help her standing with her husband, not hinder it.”

“It will be my honor to do what I can,” Catherine amended, unsure of what she could teach anyone on the lute that might impress the very discerning King of England. The queen recommenced feeding pieces of apple to her pet marmoset. Catherine knew this meant the conversation was over. She was led to the door without ceremony by the short, silver-haired Earl of Waldeck.

“You did well, Mistress Howard,” he said in a lowered voice,
thick with the same accent as the queen and Mother Lowe. “Her Grace is pleased.”

“May I ask how you can tell?”

“She invited you to help her, of course. That is a rare thing in a place where none of us are yet free to trust anyone.” He leveled his eyes at her, which were nearly as gray as his hair. “See that you do not disappoint her. Everything is at stake for her right now.”

She curtsied clumsily to him as he motioned for the guard to open the door. The meeting was over. In less than three minutes, Catherine had met the queen.

And she felt as if she had taken on the weight of the world for all of the expectations surrounding their new relationship.