The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife (10 page)

I heard him say something about artichokes, then he glanced up at us, and—I could swear that he looked right at me.

He looked at me, his broad, handsome face pleasant and wearing a smile of welcome—and then, the merest instant later, full of shock. I thought I heard a sharp intake of breath, certainly there was a brief moment of absolute silence. Then he looked away and was his relaxed, carefree self again, coming toward us to greet us.

“Ladies, beautiful young ladies,” he said in a joyful tone, rubbing his hands together, “won’t you join me for a light collation? Come, sit down, all of you, and tell me all about yourselves. I have seen your beautiful persons, now I must hear your beautiful voices.”

We joined him around a table laid with linens and gold trenchers and goblets and a great round Suffolk cheese. He encouraged us to put all ceremony aside and in fact his manner was quite disarming. He waved away the men of business and ordered food to be brought in. As we were being served we each said a few words, with the king’s eager encouragement. Charyn was cool and reserved, Mary Sidford intelligent and soft-spoken, Alice nervous and jittery, overwhelmed by her surroundings. My cousins Dorothy and Margaret looked pretty but lacked charm and sparkle, I thought. Malyn’s words were clever, but her tone detached. Elizabeth Holland, self-assured and very sensual in her dress and manner, was evidently not to the king’s taste and he turned aside as she was speaking. It was an awkward moment; she knew he was spurning her and was offended.

When my turn came I was very conscious that many pairs of eyes were on me. I rose to my full height—actually to higher than my full height, thanks to my new slippers—and thanked the king for his gracious invitation to visit the palace and added, with a smile, that I wondered how he knew I was fond of artichokes and haggis and Suffolk cheese. At this he burst into laughter and the others at the table tittered dutifully—all but Elizabeth Holland, who gave me a scornful look. I noticed that Malyn narrowed her eyes and looked me up and down, no doubt wondering whether I was being artless or conniving. I looked back at her with amusement.

“My physician Dr. Chambers tells me,” the king began, “that I am of a sanguine temperament, cheerful, gamesome, insouciant and overly fond of women and drink.” He winked at us. “On such an afternoon as this, surrounded as I am with so much beauty and charm, I am inclined to think he is right.”

He took a long draught from his goblet.

Listening to him, and watching the gems on his remarkable coat flash with fire whenever he moved, it was difficult for me to remember that it was King Henry who had ordered cousin Anne Boleyn to her death—that gruesome, ghastly death I had been forced to watch—and in recent months had ordered more than a dozen of his other relations to die as well, assuming my father’s count was correct. How could one man be so amicable and pleasing and at the same time so dangerous and cruel? According to my father, some of the relatives King Henry committed to the Tower were small children, rumored to have been strangled by their guards or left to starve on the king’s orders.

But then, he was said to be a man of quicksilver moods, genial one moment and furious the next. And he had recently been very ill, deathly ill, and all of us at Lambeth had been summoned to Grandma Agnes’s chapel to pray for him.

His legs gave him great pain, and his surgeons had to bleed him and purge him to tame the fatal humors that threatened to end his life. Right before Grandma Agnes moved her household from Horsham to Lambeth his legs swelled and tormented him yet again. Only this time no amount of bleeding or purging, no medicines prepared by the royal apothecaries could bring him back to health.

We prayed for him. Processions were held, holy relics brought to his bedside. But he only grew worse, full of fever and choking and gasping for breath. The crass serving boys wagered with one another, guessing when he would die. Uncle Thomas went to the palace in hopes that the dying king would name him regent for the baby Prince Edward, but he was not allowed to see the king. Lord Cromwell forbade it.

For twelve days we gathered to pray, morning and evening, wondering whether the baby prince would become our new king, with Lord Cromwell as his regent and guardian, or whether Princess Mary would rally her supporters and seize the throne.

We grew tired of waiting. But in the end the king recovered, though his legs still pained him, and we felt greatly relieved. Since that anxious time he had not had any further serious illnesses. But there were those who said that his changeable temperament had grown more unpredictable, his moods more extreme.

“Would it amuse you ladies to see some of the gifts I’ve received in recent days?” the king was asking as the table was being cleared. He drank deeply from his goblet and a servant refilled it.

We could hardly refuse—and besides, the array of objects being carried in by valets and grooms looked very intriguing. There were velvet purses and hawks’ hoods of silver and gold, paintings and other art works of many kinds, books with covers stamped with filigree gold work, jeweled coffers and a long leather scabbard with an edge of thick gold braid. Most intriguing to me was a small monkey in a gilded cage, its tiny hands grasping the bars, its piteous little face peering out at us, as if to plead for its freedom.

“What if I told you that each of you may choose a gift of your own from among these things here arrayed?”

Several of my cousins gave cries of delight at this, and Bess Holland’s face lit up in pleasure, a gleam of avarice in her hard grey eyes.

“There is only one thing I ask of you,” King Henry added, raising one finger in caution. “You must explain the reason for your choice.”

We set about examining the beautiful, precious objects and before long we had each chosen one we wanted to keep. Charyn decided on a gold dog collar studded with pearls.

“For your future husband to wear, perhaps?” King Henry remarked.

Mary Sidford chose a carved chest full of embroidered shirts.

“For my future husband to wear,” she said gently, echoing the king and earning his nod of approval.

Alice chose a long knife with a silver hilt, chased with elaborate Spanish work.

“To do away with your future husband, perhaps?” was the king’s darkly teasing query—which caused the uneasy Alice to burst into tears.

My cousin Dorothy chose a painting of a forest scene, with hunters and their dogs pursuing fleeing nymphs. Margaret’s choice was a small but lovely Turkey carpet.

“To decorate your palaces,” was all the king said—and all he needed to say. Neither of my duller cousins had captivated him, that much was plain.

Malyn took one of the purses of coins.

“Ah,” said King Henry. “And is it your hope to enrich your future husband, or to enrich yourself, so that you need not marry?”

Malyn did not shrink from the king’s scrutiny, or from his frank question.

“I hope my future husband will praise me for my prudence, in choosing what will make me more secure.”

“Then you must marry a moneylender!” the king retorted, making us all laugh.

Elizabeth Holland selected a heavy gold trencher from the table of gifts.

“Beware of getting fat as you age,” was the king’s remark. “Husbands prefer slender women.” His tone was dismissive.

Elizabeth, insulted, looked back at the king, at his thick, big-bellied body, burly and fleshy, his plump cheeks, his long swollen legs.

“And wives prefer slender men,” was all she said, but in a cutting tone that made the king leap at once to his feet, so quickly and so athletically that one could almost forget how heavy he was.

He glowered at Elizabeth, then summoned one of the attendant chamber gentlemen.

“See that this woman and her trencher are returned to Lambeth. And that she is banished from court!” he said loudly. In a moment she was taken away.

In the uncomfortable silence that followed, the king, looking angry, muttered, “Better a soft bed than a hard harlot,” but this time no one laughed.

“Well, she is Lord Norfolk’s harlot, is she not? It offends me that he should send her here, his old, used-up whore!”

I wished with all my strength, at that moment, that I had never come to the palace. That I could slip away, quietly and unseen. The others around me were ill at ease, shuffling their feet, looking down at their laps, fingering their chosen gifts.

I was the only one who had not made my choice. The king was watching me. Was he still angry? I could not read his features. I sat where I was, tense and anxious.

But he was coming toward me, his tread light. When he spoke his voice was soft.

“And you, dear lady? What will be your choice?” I looked up at him, standing before me, dazzling in his sparkling coat, his light blue eyes enigmatic, questioning. Once again I felt many pairs of eyes on me.

“Your Majesty,” I managed to say, “I am awed by your generosity. So many beautiful things to choose from, and all from your bounty.”

He nodded in satisfaction, a smile on his thin pale lips.

“But I must choose the monkey. I must free him.”

“Well said, Catherine,” was his soft reply. “Well said.”

He went to the table and, lifting the gilded cage, brought it to me and laid it at my feet. The monkey tilted his head back and lifted his small face to regard me gravely, sadly, as it seemed to me.

“He is a marmoset, from Brazil. He is the only one who survived. Thirty were captured, but the others perished on the voyage home.”

I bent down to put my hand on the gilded bars of the cage. The creature slowly put its own small hand opposite mine.

“Catherine! Don’t let that horrid thing bite you!”

It was Charyn’s scolding voice.

“I don’t think he will.”

Even through the bars I could feel the warmth of the small hand, with its delicate fingers and pink palm. Then, without warning, the creature seemed to smile, baring its teeth. Was it a smile, or a grimace?

I pulled my hand back—and the king grasped it in his far larger one.

He bent down to whisper in my ear. I could hear the dangling ornaments on his cap jangle as he did so. His breath against my cheek was hot—and so foul that I wanted to draw away from him.

“I would not have this little hand be hurt—not for anything,” he whispered, squeezing my hand. Then he released it, and straightened up.

“Now, ladies, I must return to my papers.” He clapped loudly, and his men of business came back into the room. One by one we curtseyed to King Henry and filed out, carrying our gifts. The marmoset had begun to screech. The king put his hands over his ears, and smiled at me, letting his gaze linger. Then he turned and went back toward the cabinet of polished wood, leaning against it comfortably, and reaching for the papers being handed to him.

Our interview had come to an end.

*   *   *

“Never! Never!” Charyn said forcefully once we were back in our coach, on our return to Lambeth.

“I would never even
think
of becoming the wife of that man!”

“Nor would I,” put in cousin Margaret, “though he is terribly rich. And I suppose he could command any of us to do anything. He is the king.”

“He is terrifying,” Alice said, her voice thin. She began to cough.

“I don’t suppose we will have to make that decision, whether to marry him or not,” said Malyn, with a sly glance at me, “though he did seem to favor you, Catherine.”

I chuckled. “He will think of me as the monkey lady, if he remembers me at all.” The gilded cage was at my feet. The marmoset had curled itself into a ball and was asleep, though how it could sleep with the jolting and jouncing of the coach I couldn’t imagine.

“No! Never!” Charyn was repeating. “I would rather cut my own throat than share the bed of that fat dying old man.” She shuddered.

“You won’t have to, will you?” was Margaret’s dry comment. “You have your lordling, Lord Morley’s boy.”

“Yes,” said Charyn loftily, smoothing her satin skirt. “And I shall do my best to see that we are wed as soon as possible.”

Though I made light of what Malyn said about King Henry’s showing me particular favor, I was well aware that he had indeed singled me out for his special notice. His whispered words, his squeezing of my hand, his praise (“Well said”), his lingering glance were all eloquent. And there was something more, though I had no idea what to make of it. On first glimpsing me he had seemed startled, taken aback. Why?

There were other moments when I noticed him looking at me—looks I found disturbing: a slight wrinkling of his brow, a vague air of unease that seemed to descend over his features and then disappear as quickly as it came. Something about me troubled him, breaking in on his jocular, disarming manner. Yet he seemed pleased that I had chosen the marmoset as my gift, and he hadn’t whispered in any other ear but mine, or taken any other hand.

I decided to call the little monkey Jonah, after the prophet in the Bible who was saved from drowning at sea. He became a great favorite among the women of Grandma Agnes’s household—after I assured them that he did not bite and that his annoying habit of tearing off their headdresses and loosening their hair could be controlled. His cage had to be kept clean and his daily platters of apples and nuts supplied (if I did not attend to this he screeched horribly) but as long as he was cared for he made a very affectionate companion. I became very fond of him, and sometimes took him with me, carrying him under my arm or draped over my shoulders, when I went about through the house.

I thought of taking him with me when Uncle Thomas sent for me not long after my visit to the palace, but then decided not to risk uncle’s disapproval. I found Uncle Thomas in Grandma Agnes’s private closet, his mood for once hospitable and his manner almost welcoming. With him were Grandma Agnes, looking equally agreeable, and my uncle William Cotton, who came forward to embrace me as I entered, and two others, one a priest and the other a soberly dressed man, a landowner by his appearance, with several books under his arm and a sheaf of papers in his hands.

“Now then, niece Catherine,” Uncle Thomas began, “we have something to tell you. The king has been asking after you. Ever since you and the others went to the palace he has been wanting to know everything about you.”