The Queen's Mistake (33 page)

Mary Lassells, who was riding beside Jane Boleyn and behind Catherine, listened with bitterness to the exchange between the king and the empty-headed Catholic.

“I pray he takes your head one day, as he did Mistress Anne’s,” she muttered cruelly beneath her breath. “May God have mercy on your foul soul.”

But Jane did not hear her. Jane was also trying to eavesdrop on their conversation, maneuvering her horse closer to the girl who everyone knew would be the next Queen of England.

Catherine had been given the most luxurious apartments within Hampton Court, save the king’s. They included a suite of rooms facing the grand gardens, orchard and tiltyard beyond, and were the queen’s rooms.

She twirled around, then collapsed on the grand mahogany bed with its tester of elegant blue silk. She was happy to be free of her horse so she could enjoy these continual indulgences to which she was so quickly growing accustomed, along with her lavish new lifestyle.

Mary Lassells appeared suddenly at her bedside, looming over her with a new green satin gown over one arm and a blue one over the other. “Which do you desire to wear to supper, Mistress Howard? I understand there will be a surprise this evening, so you should look your best.”

Catherine caught something in Mary’s tone, though she could take no umbrage at her words. She sat up, casually pulled her long hair free of her pearl-studded hood and draped it neatly across her shoulders. She saw that Mary was looking at her with a peculiar expression. Was it envy or something more? Whatever it was, she knew she had to be wary of Mary’s every word, movement and expression. Catherine had not forgotten why she was here.

But then a new voice distracted her.

“I prefer the green. It will go best with your eyes.”

The words from behind her were unmistakably Henry’s. He stood in the doorway, hands on hips, legs wide apart, cradling in his meaty arms the tiny white kitten he had given to her.

“And we really do need to give this little thing a name.” He chuckled.

“Would Putette do well enough?” she proposed, referring to the French word
peut-être,
meaning “perhaps” or “perchance.” It was cleverly representative of their relationship, since Catherine had not yet committed to him or his romantic overtures. Henry tipped his head back with laughter.

“I believe it will do splendidly. Now that we have solved that, would you like to take a walk with me?” he asked tentatively.

Catherine, charmed by his seeming shyness, accepted the invitation.

They walked slowly, to accommodate Henry’s painful leg, down a long, vaulted corridor with a high hammer-beam ceiling, down a twisted staircase with pillars supporting small statues of Welsh dragons, and out into the last of the afternoon light. A bloodred sunset played across Henry’s face, and the strong scent of ambergris nearly masked the foul odor coming from the open ulcer on his leg. He was, in this moment, magnificent and normal. They strolled together without servants or aides, as if they were not the King of England and his soon-to-be queen. They stopped beside a long, neat hedge, and he took her hand.

“So tell me, my Cat, does Putette’s collar please you?” he asked.

“It is extraordinary, sire.”

“Dearest Catherine, when we are alone, please remember to call me Hal; otherwise I feel positively ancient and distant from you,” he gently scolded her.

“But there is a great distance between us. You are the king, my lord,” she said, smiling gently, “and I am merely a girl at your court.”

“But I am also a man who has not felt loved for a very long time,” he said huskily, growing emotional.

She tipped her head as a shadow crossed his face, which was fat and lined yet full of history and loss.

“Do you feel loved now, Hal?”

“I am not certain yet.” He squeezed her hand, then changed the subject. “I see now that emeralds are the perfect complement to your flawless skin.”

With his other hand, he withdrew a necklace of diamonds and
emeralds from a pocket in his doublet. “It is the companion piece to Putette’s collar. It once belonged to Queen Cleopatra, who enslaved men with her beauty, just as you have enslaved me.”

As he awkwardly held the necklace in his hand, Catherine felt a surge of warmth toward him. He was a powerful king, yet he stood before her like an adolescent boy, spouting hackneyed lines, desperate to please a young girl from the country who had owned only two proper dresses before she came to court.

Henry gently turned her around and clasped the piece of jewelry around her neck. “There. Perfect. Just as I knew it would be.”

She fingered the unspeakably luxurious stones, cold against her throat, as she turned to face him. “Hal, they are too much.”

“I want to give you the world, Catherine, and all I ask in return is that you go on making me feel as young and hopeful as you do when I look at your sweet face. If they make you happy, a few trifles are nothing compared to the joy you bring me.”

She touched the necklace again, the jewels in it hard, smooth, reassuring and powerful. “They do.”

“That is all I hoped to hear,” Henry said, smiling. “At least for now.”

Framed by a blacked-out window and dressed in stiff black fabric, twenty-four-year-old Princess Mary fingered her rosary beads angrily. Her Spanish features betrayed her indignation.

“I am not going to see her, no matter how much you plead, my lord. Your future wife is younger than I am! It is an abomination.” Mary voiced her disapproval with uncharacteristic bravery, reminding Henry of her steel-tempered mother, Catherine of Aragon, and her grandmother Queen Isabella. “I know I shall despise her, so why should I bother?”

“Nonsense, nothing has been decided upon yet, and your opinion of her matters to me,” the king pleaded.

“That vile Boleyn woman caused my mother’s early death and her own, and I expect no less from her cousin. And, forgive me, Father, but you failed to consult me about your other three wives, so why does my opinion matter here?” Mary demanded, crossing her arms, with her long bell sleeves over her chest like a punctuation mark. She boldly turned her back to him, a gesture so reminiscent of her mother that it sent a chill up Henry’s spine.

There were few in the world who could get away with such flagrant acts of disrespect. Before his daughter, he had been most lenient with his beloved sister Mary Tudor, but she was dead now. Ah, how he missed her. Though she had caused him some trouble in the past, their candid interactions had made him feel like a regular man. His courtiers bowed and scraped and praised his name, but he had no idea whether any of them truly loved him for himself.

But his sister Mary had always loved him just for being Hal.

His daughter was fortunate to have her name, which reminded him of those lost days and endeared the girl to him. “I still want you to come to dinner,” he coaxed. “There is a visiting troop of acrobats from Spain to entertain you and Elizabeth, and musicians from Venice who are incredibly skilled on the recorder. I remember how much you love the recorder.”

“I’ll not be nice,” she warned.

He tipped his head, smiling. “Elizabeth will be nice.”

“My half sister is six. She knows no other way to act when she sees you.”

Of his three children, Elizabeth, who had suffered greatly from his wild anger toward her mother, was most like him—not Mary, not even his precious only son. With her copper Tudor tresses, pale blue eyes and stalwart heart, Elizabeth was just like him.

“Elizabeth knows her place,” he said.

“My place was beside my mother, the true queen, and in the true faith.”

“I thought you and I had worked through this years ago, Mary.” The king sighed.

“So did I. But that was before you decided to propose to another Howard girl.”

“Mary, look. I want you to like Catherine. It is important to me, not as your king but as your father. Will you at least try?”

Mary carefully considered his words. “I cannot promise anything. She is too young. I do not trust her already.”

Henry left his daughter, hoping she would relent, or at least try to see Catherine’s positive qualities. It did not help that his future bride had the same name as Mary’s mother. He understood that. It would be difficult for any child.

With a ring of nobles surrounding him, Henry limped down a long, wide corridor lined with tapestries and flaming torches to his presence chamber. He passed guards in scarlet livery, their tunics embroidered with the Tudor rose, and more nobles, who bowed and tried to flatter him. In the banquet hall he was received with even more tiresome, solicitous bows. Their pretensions could be wearisome, particularly when his leg pained him. He sat beneath the huge canopy of state on a raised platform, breathed a great sigh, and waited, yet again, for the evening’s festivities to commence around him.

After he drank half a cup of spiced wine, Henry found himself searching the room in almost humiliatingly adolescent anticipation for the bright, pretty eyes of Catherine. He was uncomfortable and weary after a day on horseback, and his leg was more painful than he dared to admit. But neither his age, ill health, nor steadily decaying body mattered a whit at that moment. He would be a free man soon,
God willing, and everything would change once Catherine accepted his offer of marriage.

A moment later, little Elizabeth was escorted into the room by one of His Majesty’s most important aides as a show of her stature, the perpetually elegant Thomas Seymour, who was dressed in a doublet of silver satin with black slashings. Henry’s little copper-haired daughter walked proudly, he thought, amid gossipy whispers and polite applause. She wore a gray silk dress studded with pearls, and her hair was drawn back and crowned with a matching circlet of pearls. She was completely self-possessed for what was not yet even her seven years. It was quite remarkable, for he had not seen her for several months and was struck anew by her demeanor. Perhaps it was his age or his new hope for the future, but Henry suddenly wanted to spend time with all three of his children. Their circumstances were not their fault, particularly in the case of Elizabeth. The little girl had suffered the most, knowing as she did that she was the only one of the three royal children whose mother had lost her life by execution.

Elizabeth approached him and dipped into a full and proper curtsy. “Your Majesty,” she said with impeccable diction.

Henry smiled and held open his arms, relieved to see nothing of Anne Boleyn’s bewitching sparkle in his daughter’s young eyes. It felt good to embrace the child, he thought, taking in the fragrance of her sweet young self and relishing her genuinely loving grasp around his neck.

“Sit beside me,” he said, directing her to the empty gold-and-velvet-covered chair on the raised platform to his left. Above them, the ceiling was still decorated with red, blue and gold badges displaying Anne Boleyn’s and Henry’s intertwined initials. “Tell me all about Hatfield. Does it still suit you?”

Elizabeth hesitated for only a moment before sinking into the
chair, her young back straight as the blade of a knife. “Well, they still call me Lady Elizabeth because of what happened with my mother, not Princess, though everyone knows I am. But otherwise, it is not horrible.”

Henry bit back a smile. He knew how grand and lovely the estates were in Hertfordshire, where Hatfield was situated. “I am pleased to hear that.”

“Is my sister coming? They told me she was.”

Henry did not want to disappoint the child, but neither did he wish to lie to her. “I hope she joins us. It would please me if we were all together.”

“But we are not all together. There is still Edward,” Elizabeth reminded him.

“I was informed by aides at Windsor that your brother has caught a summer cold, unfortunately, and his attendants thought it wise for him to remain there for now.”

“Yes, a king must protect his heir first and foremost.”