The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife (5 page)

I said nothing.

“Remember Anne,” Charyn added after a moment. “She came to grief because of the lust of the flesh. And it was a musician, Mark Smeaton, who caused her ruin.”

“Along with several other men who were not musicians,” I said. “Besides, grandmother always said Anne was not one of us.”

“Take care you do not prove to be like Anne. Not one of us. And stay away from that whore Joan Bulmer,” Charyn added, her tone as blunt as her words. “She will surely come to grief.”

But I did not agree. I drew further and further away from Charyn, and was more and more drawn to Joan. Joan and Charyn were very much at odds, their enmity worsening after Charyn told our grandmother the duchess about Joan’s trysts with Father Dawes. The two girls could not have been less alike, the dark-haired Joan with her air of worldly knowledge, her outspokenness and self-confidence, her contempt for more refined, protected, somewhat unsure girls of higher birth and blond Charyn with her cool aristocratic reserve, her condemnation of bed-sharing and wanton behavior, her talebearing and spying on others.

I thought Joan admirable for her strength and daring, though the truth was I found her to be a little frightening as well. I had the feeling that she would go to any lengths, ignore any warnings and that she might one day, as Charyn warned, come to grief.

*   *   *

Slowly Henry Manox reached into the mouth of a silken bag and drew out a comfit. He lifted it to my lips. I could smell the luscious sugary fruity scent.

“Open,” he whispered.

We were in Joan’s small chamber, she had lent it to us for an hour.

“Only an hour,” she had told me. “Then Edward and I will join you.”

What could happen in an hour, I asked myself. Henry and I could share a great deal of pleasure together in an hour’s time, but I would not yield to him the ultimate prize of my maidenhead. I would remain intact. Unsullied, as Charyn might have said. Only Charyn would never know. I would make sure of that.

Henry knew of a secret entrance to Joan’s chamber—through the sweets closet, which had a false back that could be opened from a storage room on the other side of the wall. He assured me that he could make his way in and out of the small chamber through the sweets closet without being seen by anyone in the Paradise Chamber. Especially not by Charyn.

“And besides, I can bring you comfits that I find there,” he said with a smile, dangling the silken bag full of fragrant candies.

I opened my mouth and closed my eyes and let him put the soft jellylike confection on my tongue, leaving his fingers in my mouth for a moment along with it. As he drew his fingers out I bit down on the sweet, but hardly had I swallowed it when I felt his mouth on mine, tasted his tartness and felt myself melt under his caress.

As we kissed his hands began moving over my body, more boldly than ever before, and I pulled back slightly from his embrace. I wanted him to go on doing what he was doing, yet I was only too aware that Master Manox was several times my size—he was a tall, hefty man and I, as I have said, was very small. He was far stronger than I was. I could not but feel some degree of alarm at this.

I freed myself from his probing hands and jumped onto the nearest of the two mattresses in the room. Looking slightly puzzled, Master Manox pursued me, only to meet the barrier of my stiffly outstretched arms. Held back, he snorted.

“What’s this? Do you mislike me of a sudden?”

The stirrings of passion turned to playfulness as I jumped on the thin mattress, clumsy in my long skirt, and he tried to follow me, but stumbled.

“Your skirt is a hindrance, madam,” he said. “Let me unburden you.”

Obediently I allowed him to unfasten my heavy, wide skirt at the waist and pull it off, revealing my petticoat beneath.

“Could we not relieve you of this petticoat as well? You will feel so much lighter and freer without it.”

His words seemed so logical, his actions in undressing me so sensible. Before long I stood in my shift, my hair spilling over my shoulder and down my back, my arms and legs bare—even my stockings removed—and Master Manox was gazing at my lightly clad body in admiration.

Rapidly he threw off his doublet and shirt, shoes and stockings and pantaloons, until he wore only the light tunic that covered him from his shoulders to his loins.

I was too fascinated to move. I had never before seen a gentleman in his underclothes, though I had seen servants and village laborers in a near-naked state many times before.

Henry Manox had a broad chest and strong legs, a thick neck with cords that stood out. Black hair covered much of his body that I could see, with wisps of grey mingled with the black. I tried to avert my eyes from his groin, but could not. I saw there what I expected to see, what Joan’s knowing talk and descriptions of lovemaking had prepared me to see. The light tunic that shielded his nakedness covered a mound, a lump, a sizable expansion of flesh. Curiosity compelled me to move nearer to him, any sense of alarm I had felt earlier dissolved.

He reached for my hand and pulled it toward him, lowering it to the mound between his legs. I touched it lightly, then quickly pulled my hand away.

“Nothing to fear, Catherine,” Master Manox said softly. “It will not bite you.”

I giggled, but kept my hand withdrawn. Gently he lifted me in his arms and laid me on the mattress, then lay down beside me. His face loomed over mine, his breath fanned me. Keeping his eyes on mine, he moved his hand upward along my thigh until it approached the cleft between my legs. I shivered, quivered. I burned. And I was afraid.

“Let me touch your sweetness, Catherine,” he said.

I was silent—and I knew, keeping my silence, that I was saying yes.

I felt him touch me. I nearly swooned. I turned my head away from him—whether in modesty or shame I could not have said. I could not look at him. But I could not tear myself away from his insistent, steady, intensely pleasurable touch. It was like no other pleasure I had ever known. And when it was over I felt as if I had been carried off into a realm of sensual delight I hadn’t known existed.

I had not given him my maidenhead. Rather he had given me a bodily rapture like no other. I fell into a deep sleep until I heard Joan enter the small chamber, bringing Edward with her, and calling out cheerfully that she had brought wine and cheese and fruit for us all to share.

THREE

THERE
was great rejoicing in my grandmother’s household at Horsham when Queen Jane was delivered of a son. Prince Edward was the name the king chose for him. Prince Edward, who would one day reign over us, in that future time when King Henry died, as all kings must, and his throne would pass to his successor.

The wait for a prince had been long and tedious. King Henry’s first queen, Queen Catherine (a good and gracious lady, but a very unfortunate one in that all her children died but one), had given him only a daughter, the Lady Mary, and his second queen, my cousin Anne, had also been unable to present him with a prince—only a princess, Elizabeth, who people said was never a princess at all because most likely the king was not her father.

But now at long last Queen Jane had had her boy, and he was said to be healthy and strong, and even my grandmother nodded her head and mumbled, yes, yes, a prince at last, and punched her bony fist against her palm.

Our prince had finally arrived—but almost at once our queen was taken from us. Queen Jane, mild and good, had been taken deathly ill as so many women were in childbed and died soon after her boy was born. We mourned her—yet we continued to rejoice over the prince, who grew bigger and stronger and gave his father the king much pleasure and satisfaction.

I was by then in my seventeenth year. I had been at Horsham for many months and had learned much about the ways of a large noble establishment. My one regret was that I had not grown any taller, though my figure had taken on a more pleasing outline and my small waist, generous curves and eager young face were drawing attention and compliments. I was certainly more sensually appealing than Charyn, though her delicate blond beauty was the more highly prized. Charyn would be married before long, just as soon as her parents settled on the right husband for her and came to terms with his family. I, on the other hand, had Henry Manox: not a suitor, not really a lover either (since I was still a virgin), but occupying some role for which I had no name. I had Henry.

I did not know just how I felt about Henry Manox, but my feelings were changing. When we were together I sank into pleasure, I abandoned myself to the warmly passionate sensations he awakened in me. I was determined to guard my virginity—something that irked and offended him—but shared my body freely and affectionately, and let him undress me, hold and touch and kiss me with an ardor that thrilled me.

Though as the months passed, I had to admit that the thrilling sensations were growing duller, and Henry’s pleas and demands more tiresome. All the furtiveness, the secrecy, his sly comings and goings through the sweets closet were beginning to seem rather silly. I began to wonder whether Henry was too old for such pranks.

“Could we not meet elsewhere?” I asked him. “Somewhere we could be alone all night, instead of having to share this stuffy little room with Joan and Edward?”

Joan did allow us to use her private chamber for an hour or so on occasion, but more often, when we were invited to use it, she and Edward were there and sometimes others as well. All of us but Henry were quite young, and we enjoyed not only romping and loving on the beds but doing the things young people did: feasting together at midnight on suckets and sugar-bread, meat pasties and oysters stolen from the kitchens and wine and ale borrowed (Joan’s word) from the cellars and malt-house, singing, joking, making fun of Grandma Agnes and Mistress Phippson and the self-important steward and pantler. I told amusing stories and Edward Waldegrave made playing cards disappear and appear again in Joan’s corslet. But Henry, because he was so much older and was not a part of the Horsham household, was left out. He sulked. He complained.

Finally Joan complained as well—only to me, not to Henry.

“Your music master is a dullard,” she said. “And as you know, you are not the first young girl he has tried to seduce. He is well known for causing scandal.”

“Nevertheless I enjoy him. He has given me much pleasure.”

“Why not meet him in the duchess’s private chapel, behind the altar screen? No one ever goes there. You know how rare it is for milady to attend to her devotions. And as for Father Dawes—” She did not need to say more. The often drunken Father Dawes was hardly ever to be seen inside the chapel. “You and your Henry can have your time together,” she went on, “and later, you can come alone to visit us—and we will be spared Henry’s moodiness.”

I followed Joan’s suggestion, and Henry and I began seeking each other out in Grandma Agnes’s dim chapel, where no priest presided and only a few candles were left burning in case the duchess should feel a need to say her prayers before the carved wooden altar. The chapel was always empty when we went there, we felt in no danger of being discovered.

At first the shrouded darkness of the narrow space behind the altar, the uncertainty of finding one another there (would one of us be called away, unable to arrive as planned? Would we encounter servants in the corridor outside, or guardsmen, or poor folk from the villages nearby seeking alms, and would we then have to pass on by the chapel door, and forego our meeting?), the mere anticipation of seeing one another was enough to excite us. Later, however, Henry became worried and discontented.

He knew that I continued to visit Joan in her small room off the Paradise Chamber late at night. He demanded that I tell him who I saw there and what I did. When I protested he grew angry, then begged for me to relieve his misery and assure him that he was the one I loved. He and no one else.

Begging and demanding, wheedling and arguing and sulking: it wearied me, and before long I could not help noticing that there were more good-looking, younger, more pleasing men in my grandmother’s large household—and in Joan’s private chamber.

Then one afternoon, when once again Henry and I were alone in the duchess’s chapel, I in my scanty shift and Henry untrousered and bare-buttocked, the chapel doors burst open and I heard a young woman’s voice.

“They’re in here, grandmother. I saw him go in. He went first, and then she came a little while later.”

“Charyn!” I cried.

Henry made a sound I had never before heard him make, between a wail and a screech.

“Where are you?” I heard my grandmother call out angrily. “Come out from there!”

In a moment Charyn had come around behind the altar and was staring at us, one hand held in front of her mouth.

“Here they are! He’s got nothing on!” And she began to giggle.

Henry scrambled to cover himself, snatching up the altar cloth and holding it in front of his nakedness. I picked up my skirt and held it at my waist, so that it fell around my legs.

“Come out at once, I say!”

I was trembling. Would grandmother beat me? Would she send me away? I cared nothing for Henry’s fate.

I came around from behind the altar, Henry following me. There stood Grandma Agnes, her face tight and frowning, her lips pressed together.

“Please, I beg you, milady, do not tell my wife about this!”

A scornful guffaw from the duchess, more giggling from Charyn.

“Put your breeches back on and get out!”

Henry hesitated.

“If milady pleases, I am still owed payment for music lessons—”

There was cold fury in grandmother’s eyes. Henry was silenced. He groped for the rest of his clothes and his boots, then struggled out.

“So! Jocasta’s daughter has come to grief! She is a little whore, just as her mother was a great whore!”

A protest rose to my lips but I managed to suppress it. I glared at Charyn, who looked very self-satisfied.

“Traitor!” I hissed at her. “Tattle-tale! Goody-goody! Killjoy!”

Grandmother was pondering, while staring at me coldly. Once again I began to tremble.