The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife (2 page)

He drained the tankard that was placed before him and called for another.

“The stone, the everlasting stone! It burns me. It stabs me. I tell you, Catherine, there are times when it makes me writhe in agony.”

“I’m sorry father. I wish I could help you. Can you get no physick there in Calais? I have heard that the apothecaries of France are superior to our own.”

He shrugged.

“I have medicine—but it works over well. It breaks the stone, I void the gravel and then—” he spat into the rushes at his feet “—and then it makes me piss all night long.”

I tried not to laugh at his forlorn words. He looked over at me.

“I dare not go home because of Margaret’s wrath! She beats me when I piss our bed. I tell you, she beats me! She says, ‘Only children piss their beds, not old men!’ But I am not old, merely afflicted. I would do anything to rid myself of that damnable pain!”

“They say eating a stork’s wing will keep your water from spilling over,” I suggested.

“Not true. I have tried it. Margaret laughed at me for trying it.”

I had little love for my stepmother Margaret Jennings, my father’s blustering, bullying third wife. She had been my stepmother for some three years, and the best thing about her was that she stayed away in the country most of the time, avoiding my father and taking no interest in me. She had married him because he was Lord Edmund Howard, brother of the powerful, wealthy Duke of Norfolk, and for no other reason. He had married her because she had a modest fortune, and now that he had spent that fortune (he had none of his own, being a younger son), he had no further use for her nor she for him. Yet they still shared a hearth—when he was not in Calais—and she continued to mistreat him.

I called for a plate of comfits for my father and turned the conversation to other topics. But there was really only one topic that concerned those of us living in Grandmother Agnes’s household: that of our late cousin Anne, and the king’s new wife Jane Seymour.

Father shifted on his bench and rubbed his sore back.

“Everyone fears that the new queen will cancel all of Queen Anne’s appointments,” he said as he picked at the plate in front of him. Father owed his position as Controller of Calais to the benevolence of the late Queen Anne; he had begged her to help him and she had. Now that Anne was dead, Anne who had shown him pity, he was afraid that he would lose his office for sure.

“All we hear from morning to night is Seymour, Seymour, Seymour. I have to tell you, Catherine, I am in dread of losing my office.”

“Cannot Uncle Thomas find you another?”

“He can—if he will. There is an Englishman lately condemned whose goods are forfeit. I have written to Thomas to ask for them as a gratuity.”

“And has he replied?”

Father shrugged. “He sends me a golden toothpick and some slates for my roof. A golden toothpick! Now what is such a silly bauble worth? A golden toothpick will not keep me out of debtor’s prison, nor keep my wife from beating me when I piss my bed!”

He rose to go, and sighed once more.

“I cannot keep mother waiting any longer.”

I knew that he dreaded facing her. Yet there was the smallest of smiles on his face as he turned to leave me.

“You will be glad to hear that I am doing well here at Horsham, father,” I called out to his retreating figure, and at my words he turned back, eager for the chance to delay his interview with the duchess a bit longer. For the first time he looked at me fixedly, really taking in my appearance.

He nodded. “Yes. You are ripe. You are doing as you’re told then? Minding your manners? Staying out of harm’s way? Staying out of your grandmother’s way?” He chuckled.

“If you mean, am I whipped? I can of a truth say no. I am learning to avoid the rod—and grandmother’s wrath.”

He continued to scan my face, and it seemed to me that his gaze was more tender than appraising.

“And how do you spend your days then? Does she have you splitting wood, or baking bread, or collecting goose down for her pillows?”

Now it was my turn to chuckle. “Perhaps all that is to come. For now I am taught to dance, and to bow gracefully, and never to wipe my fingers on the curtains the way the servants do when they think grandmother is not watching.”

He laughed.

“I practice my stitching, and listen to Father Dawes while he reads to us from the Scriptures, and I practice my letters, and I go with grandmother and my cousins to the farms and villages near here when she gives out her cures.”

“Her cures?”

“Her medicines. Her gingerflower water and oil of rosemary and all the other potions and possets she says will cure the poor.”

“I wish she had a cure for the stone,” my father muttered.

“Ask her for one,” I said. “And father—”

“Yes?”

“Until you are recovered, why not stay with Uncle William? He would welcome you I’m sure.” My uncle William Cotton, my late mother’s half brother, had a large estate in Kent. He was a warm, congenial man, known for his kindness and goodheartedness. I had never heard him speak ill of my father. “No need to go back to stay with Margaret.”

Father nodded. “Yes. I’ll do that. If only his estate were nearer the court.” And with a final pat on my shoulder he went to find grandmother.

*   *   *

I never knew what I might find when I went upstairs, into the room we called the Paradise Chamber, the cold, drafty, barnlike room with the lofty ceiling where we girls spent our days and nights when not attending to our duties or our lessons.

When I first arrived at Horsham it was all I could do not to think of the Paradise Chamber as not a paradise at all but rather a sort of dungeon, a place of no escape where we girls were locked in at night and watched by our jailers. We each had a small bed, with a thin mattress and a blanket, but bedwarmers were few, and my feet were always cold at night. The Paradise Chamber was drafty, and the beds farthest from the single hearth got little heat. At the foot of each bed was a trunk that held our clothing and other possessions. Some of the girls hid things underneath their mattresses but as the mattresses were full of fleas nothing of value could be kept there, except coins, and no one dared to put coins under their mattress because everyone knew that was where they were likely to be hidden.

Nights in the Paradise Chamber were full of discomforts. We were awakened by the barking of the watchdogs in the courtyard, or by the moans and coughs of the sick girls among us, or by the cries of others awakened by nightmares.

Some girls wept. One night not long after I arrived at Horsham I was awakened by the sound of sobbing from a bed near mine. The fire in the hearth had burned low and the few candles in the room gave little light, but when I sat up and looked for the source of the sobbing I quickly realized that it was coming from the bed directly across the room from mine. The bed where Alice Restvold slept. Like nearly all the girls in the room, Alice was a distant relation of mine, a few years older than I was, a red-headed girl with a pinched face and large staring blue eyes.

The noise of her sobbing and sniffing annoyed me, I did not like being awakened. But at the same time I was curious to know what was causing her such distress. I got out of bed and, taking a candle, went to her.

“Alice!” I whispered. “What is it, Alice?”

“He—has—gone away,” she managed to say.

“Who has gone away?”

“My John.”

“He is—your betrothed?”

“No!”

“Then who is he?”

“My—beloved!”

Her beloved, I thought. But not her betrothed. I had never known love, but I had seen it, often. I had seen lovers walking hand in hand, lying together in the warm wet grass on May Day, exchanging glances in church or at table—even embracing in darkened hallways. Father Dawes lectured us sternly about lust, the devil’s temptation of the flesh, but young as I was, I knew that love was a thing apart, nobler far than lust. A treasure to be cherished. I did not yet understand how the two can be entangled, how confusing the urges and pleasures of the body can be.

“Why would your beloved ever leave you?” I whispered to Alice.

But my question only made her sob more freely and more loudly. Several of the other girls tossed irritably in their beds and tried to shush her.

“She’s at it again!” I heard one of them say. “Why can’t she just forget him! He’s gone!”

Presently I heard a disturbance behind me and in a moment another girl had come up to Alice’s bed. A girl I didn’t recognize. In the dim light I could tell only that she had long dark hair, loosely braided, and that she wore around her shoulders a thick woolen shawl embroidered in a pattern of deep blue and sparkling silver.

“Stop that noise, foolish chit!” the newcomer said tartly. “You’re keeping us all awake!” She did not bother to keep her own voice low, but barked out her words as she reached swiftly under the blanket and took Alice by the hand.

“Come with me!” she said. “I’ll give you something to put you to sleep, so we can all sleep through the night.” And pulling the weeping Alice out of bed she fairly dragged her to a door at the opposite end of the long room and, taking a key that she wore around her neck, unlocked the door.

“You may as well come along,” she said to me as she pulled Alice through the door after her.

We were in a small chamber furnished with two beds, a chest and a low table. It had a sloping roof and a little barred window, beneath which was a brazier full of red coals. The room smelled of smoke and of something else, something heavy and sweet. A scent I had never smelled before.

“You are both new to this house,” the girl with the braid said. “You are Catherine, whose mother no one mentions because she was the king’s whore. And you are the sniveling Alice, whose lover has married another.”

“What?” The shock of the girl’s words made Alice stop crying. “What did you say?”

“I said your lover, John Brockley, the gentleman usher, has married another woman. He never told you he was betrothed, did he.”

Alice, her eyes wide, shook her head.

“What other woman?”

The girl with the braid went to the wardrobe and began pouring what looked like wine into a goblet. To this she added powder from a jar and stirred the concoction.

“It matters not. When next you see him, he will have a wife.”

She handed the goblet to Alice.

“Here. Drink this.”

Alice sniffed the liquid, made a sour face, then looked at us. She flinched, but obeyed and drank the liquid in a single gulp. When she finished she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand—something we were admonished never to do—and handed the goblet back.

I stood watching, somewhat dazed.

“Who are you?” I asked the girl with the braid. “And how dare you speak ill of my mother?”

She regarded me coolly. “I am Joan. My father is William Bulmer, Lord Mannering. And everyone in this household knows about your mother, the ill-famed Lady Jocasta.”

Alice was staring at me.

“My mother was beautiful. Others were envious of her beauty, and so they defamed her.”

Joan smiled. “If you like,” she said. “The truth is known, whatever you may say. And besides, she is long dead.”

I needed no reminder that my mother had been laid to rest long before, when I was a very small child, barely old enough to remember her. My memory of her was of a great sadness, of something warm and loving that had suddenly vanished from my life, leaving only sorrow behind.

“You guard your tongue about my mother, Joan Bulmer! Or I will whip you!”

“Indeed? I would not advise it. The last girl who struck me was found much bruised and broken, beside the malt-house door.”

The menace in her tone made me wary. I knew little of the workings of my grandmother’s large household, but I was aware that every large noble household had its share of ruffians, its cliques, its back-stairs brawls. It had been that way in my father’s much smaller establishment. Things went on behind the backs of the stewards—deeds that were never brought to light. Sometimes quite violent deeds. Until I knew more about the ways of my grandmother’s establishment I would not provoke this brazen girl further.

But before I could decide how to reply, or what to do, I saw that Alice was slipping down in a faint. To my surprise, Joan reached down and tried to pick her up.

“Help me,” she said, and together we lifted Alice onto one of the small room’s two beds. She lay there, still and pale, her eyes closed. Frowning, Joan picked up a candle and held it close to Alice’s white face.

“Has she been spewing?” she asked me.

“I don’t know.”

She set the candle back down and felt Alice’s stomach and belly, making her moan.

I heard Joan swear under her breath.

“By the bones of Christ, not another one!”

I looked at Joan questioningly, our quarrel and clashing words for the moment forgotten.

“These girls! These rich, protected girls, who know nothing of the world, who come here to this lustpit of a house, and get themselves with child, and then—”

“She’s carrying a child? Are you sure?”

Joan gave me a withering look, then slapped Alice’s cheek. “Wake up girl!”

Alice protested, pushing Joan away feebly with one hand.

“Don’t hurt her!” I objected.

“Hurt her? I’m helping her! I’m going to help her get rid of this unwanted encumbrance! Before we all are whipped till our backs are raw!”

What I was seeing and hearing confused me. This forceful, unsparing girl Joan, with her threats and her slaps and her insult to my mother’s memory, seemed to be saying that Alice’s disgrace reflected on us all. That we were living in what she called a pit of lust, not a noble household—my grandmother’s noble household. How could she say such a thing? And how could she be certain that Alice was carrying a child?

As the night wore on, my confusion lessened. At Joan’s insistence (“Do you really want the wrath of the old duchess to come down on all our heads?” she demanded) I stayed on in the small room while Joan administered another drink to the drowsy Alice. This one took longer to make, and smelled so foul that I thought I would retch. The stench of it filled the room.