The Queen's Mistake (46 page)

The king kissed Catherine’s cheek for the dozenth time. “Very well. The lot of you go. Southampton and Surrey, give the French a good scare. I’ve dealt with them before, and they do not frighten me.”

“Indeed you have, sire.” Norfolk nodded just as he caught another angry glare of disapproval, this time from Cranmer, his new rival. Cranmer had been at court for years, but only now, after Cromwell’s demise, had he made himself a much greater force and threat.

“And, Norfolk, when we leave for Greenwich tomorrow morning, see that Master Culpeper is not among us. It seems he might have a touch of the ague. I cannot allow anyone, no matter how fond of them I might be, to inflict that risk upon my court, or my queen.”

Culpeper
, Norfolk thought in surprise, rolling the name around in his mind. It was a name he had not contemplated for weeks. There were enough complications ahead without looking backward to the old ones.
Catherine is not foolish enough to dally with Culpeper now that she is queen
, he thought.
She would be risking not only her own life, but the entire Howard family, and Culpeper as well
. If only he had a niece with beauty and half a brain. But no one got everything in life. No one, that was, but him.

“I shall see to it myself, Your Majesty,” Norfolk promised without looking at Cranmer or Seymour.

Cromwell was dead, and his minions were no threat to Norfolk now.

Well, well, well. Master Culpeper, is it? So perhaps the great Howard family has an Achilles’ heel after all
, Cranmer thought. So taken was he by the revelation that he was the last to leave the counsel table. He steepled his hands and watched as every man stood, acknowledged the king and queen, and backed out of the room. His thin lips were stretched tightly into a sneer as he digested the new information. He saw it as a final message from Cromwell. Or God. Or both. Such must be the glorious perspective from heaven.

The only question was what to do with the gift. Time, he was quite certain, would tell him that. But he would be on the watch, just like all the other Protestants at court, to unseat the little Catholic queen when the time was right. They had all come too far to let the king’s lust, and thus his poor judgment, trump the true path for England.

Thomas Cranmer silently swore that oath to himself.

It was ten days before Catherine dared to write a letter to Thomas, who had been sent to London amid a drought and a plague. She sat alone beneath a trellis heavy with musk roses and honeysuckle vines just beyond the timber-framed tennis courts, reading her words one final time and missing him all the more.

“Are you certain you want to do this?” Jane asked as she came up and stood before Catherine under the trellis. She had enlisted Jane’s help in securing a messenger who would hold his tongue for the right price. To that end, Catherine held up the necklace that her mother had given her. The small, precious ruby at its center glistened in the soft sunlight.

“No, I am not certain. But there is no other way. I need to know that he is all right. I saw the way Henry looked at him. You did as well. We both know his temper.”

With a heavy, anxious heart, Catherine folded the missive and handed it to Jane, along with the last connection she had to her mother. She was giving away a part of herself to ensure that another part was safe, she told herself.

“You are certain, Jane, that your messenger will wait for Thomas’s reply?”

“He agreed to, yes,” Jane confirmed.

Catherine let out a small sigh. “Then go now, please. I will not be able to breathe until your man returns.”

AUTUMN

The Third Season

“No Other Will But His.”

—MOTTO OF CATHERINE HOWARD

Chapter Seventeen

 

 

T
he English victory over the French at Calais was swift and thorough. Indeed, winning had taken no more time than it had for the French to deliver the threat in the first place. The French ambassador, the Duke of Vendôme, gave Henry Francis I’s assurance that no aggression had been intended. Surrey and Southampton returned victoriously to England, just in time for Christmas.

Catherine busied herself with the organization of the Yuletide festivities. Two of the king’s three children, Elizabeth and Edward, as well as the princess of Cleves, had just arrived at Greenwich for the holiday celebrations. Only Mary had declined the queen’s invitation with a polite but cold explanation that her physicians believed it unwise for her to risk travel during the harsh months of winter.

Catherine put a brave face on for her husband’s sake, but bringing everyone together for the new year had been intended as a wedding gift for Henry. Catherine knew how much it would have pleased him.

Mary had known it as well.

At the end of November, Thomas had been admitted back to court, but he and Catherine rarely saw each other and did not interact
beyond the occasional polite nod or glance. The king’s arm was always tightly linked with hers as she and Thomas passed in the corridor. She knew Henry was sending a message for the entire world to see—particularly Thomas.

But she was glad he had returned. A painful glimpse of the man she still loved was better than no glimpse at all, she reasoned, trying her best to be happy and see the good in life.

She remembered even now how her anxiety about him, during his absence, had tortured her, and it was painful still to recall his response. He had sent an impersonal note assuring her only of his safety. That had been so much worse, she thought, than even a glimpse of him at a distance.

As Christmastide approached, Catherine decided to turn her failure with Henry’s daughter into a victory with another relative.

She could never get over the idea that an old woman like the poor Countess of Salisbury, cold, alone and frightened for her life, had been consigned indefinitely to the Tower. Margaret Pole was Henry’s nearest blood relative and the last of the Plantagenet line. She was a frail woman of sixty-seven and had been in the Tower for nearly two years. Catherine did not understand how a venerable relation and the last tie to his much-adored mother could be treated with such cruelty. Treason was a term that was easily bandied about and used to dispose of anyone objectionable. It was the charge that had brought down Anne Boleyn and Cromwell. Now the same fate loomed for the countess. Catherine shook off a little shiver of fear, seeing a pattern to her husband’s anger.

But perhaps she could change the pattern.

Catherine needed to prove to herself that she could bring out Henry’s gentleness for all the world to see. She wanted to be a positive force in his life and mend his reputation for cruelty. Accomplishing
that, she believed, would give her the reason her heart craved to make peace with this marriage.

Those thoughts weighed heavily on her mind and heart, even as she let him chase her naked around their bedchamber early one evening before Christmas. She used a large chair as a barricade between them, her hair long and wild around her shoulders.

“Come on, Hal,” she said, giggling. “Don’t be slow.” They were playing a seductive version of blindman’s buff, and Henry could barely walk straight with the blindfold on.

“If you catch me, I shall give up the notion,” she said, though she was serious at heart. “And if you surrender, then you shall allow me to send a Christmas parcel to the Tower for the countess. Only a few warm clothes for the winter.”

Henry laughed with a great bellow, barely able to catch his breath. His breathing was as heavy as his laughter. “If we are going to play rough, I shall demand a great deal more than your surrender of a notion, my little Cat.”

“It is a deal. I shall surrender anything you like, if there is anything left of me you wish to have.”

“All of you! You are deep in my blood, woman!” he declared, dodging and weaving around the furniture. “I can never get enough!”

She tipped over the chair, and he finally capitulated, sinking down, flushed and out of breath, onto the edge of the great feather bed. As he tore off the blindfold, her smile was open and genuine.

“So, will you allow me to send some things to the countess?”

He slumped, then sighed, his smile fading. “Why must you press me so, Catherine, on things you know nothing about?”

“I know an old woman will be cold this winter, and we have the power to change that.”

“Why do you concern yourself? She is a traitor to England, to me, and thereby a traitor to you.”

“She is your blood relation, Hal. It just seems wrong. The poor woman has been locked up there for two years already.”

For a moment he seemed angry, until he saw the tears in her eyes. They were genuine tears, not just for the prisoner, but for the notion that the gentle man she had come to care for was capable of brutality against his own family. She wanted desperately to prove the world was wrong. Finally, Henry pulled her into his arms and pressed a kiss onto her forehead.

“You have a heart too tender for your own good, dearest one,” he said.

“Oh, I am not finished. I plan to ask you to spare her life as well in a grand show of mercy from a great and beneficent king.”