The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife (6 page)

“You could send her to the kitchens,” Charyn suggested. “To be a turnspit.”

I’d like to turn you over the fire, I thought. Miserable traitor! False friend!

“Are you with child by that fellow Manox? Tell me the truth!”

“No, grandmother. I am still a virgin.”

“Hah! And I’m the Mother Superior of this convent! I warn you, girl, don’t lie to me or I’ll have you beaten until your head is soft as a boiled apple!”

She looked me up and down.

“Drop that skirt!” she ordered. I obeyed. Then, “Take off that shift!”

“But I have on nothing underneath.”

“Take it off at once!”

I had not felt embarrassed before, only afraid. Now my modesty rose to hinder me—though why it should, given what had just happened, I couldn’t imagine.

“I cannot.”

“What did you say?” I had never before seen my fierce, commanding grandmother look incredulous.

“I cannot, for shame.”

Her gaze narrowed.

“Are you deformed then?”

“No, grandmother.”

“Because if you are deformed, you will be sent to Saint Frideswide’s at once.”

A girl had come to Horsham only a short time before, a distant Howard relation, and she had suffered from a palsy. She shook and quivered. She was sent at once to the convent of Saint Frideswide’s.

“I am not deformed. I am merely shamefaced.”

“Except in front of Master Manox.”

I thought quickly.

“He forced me to meet him, to allow him liberties. He said that if I did not, he would kill my father.”

It was a lie. Henry had never threatened to harm my father, and I had always met him willingly, even eagerly.

“You are a comely enough wench,” the duchess said after looking me over. “Though dwarfish. And you have spirit. I should beat it out of you, but at the moment I haven’t the strength.”

I saw that she looked tired. She was after all very old. No doubt she tired swiftly, as the old do. My fear began to grow less. I was no longer trembling.

The duchess sighed. “I will send my chamberer to dress you. If you let Manox near you again you will be beaten. Should he threaten you, or your father, come to me at once.”

She walked to the chapel doorway, then turned back toward me.

“Manox’s wife will hear of this. She will beat him senseless.”

“Pray, grandmother, for my sake, do not tell her my name, else she will beat me too.”

But the duchess only pursed her lips, then turned back toward the door and was gone.

*   *   *

“Guess who they made Controller of Calais!” my father said in wry tones. “You cannot imagine.”

“I cannot.”

“John Parker! Yeoman of the Wardrobe! A servant! Barely a gentleman’s son!”

That his own cherished but forfeited position should pass to a servant of much lower birth was irksome in the extreme to my father. He felt he had been unjustly deprived of the post, and dishonored by the loss of the revenues that went with it. But to be replaced by such a man, a Howard replaced by a nobody—ah, that was a cruel humiliation.

“Was there no compensation for you, father? No other post offered you?”

“Thomas spoke to Lord Cromwell and arranged a loan,” father mumbled. “And I will be appointed commissioner of the sewers for Surrey.”

“Well, that is something,” I said as father sat down, slowly and carefully, on a cushioned bench. I sat nearby.

“Oh, and I am to receive licenses to import Gascon wine and Toulouse wood.”

“Trade in Gascon wine must be quite profitable.”

He rolled his eyes.

“But the wine trade, Catherine, is for men of low birth. Not for a Howard, whose brother Thomas is Duke of Norfolk, the highest nobleman in the realm.”

He shook his head. “At least they did not send me to Sark, or Orkney, or to live among the wild Irish—”

“Father, I must speak to you—”

“But then, the best appointments are sure to be those in the new queen’s household.” He nodded sagely. “If only she would make me her chancellor, or her emissary to foreign courts, or—”

“Who is to be the new queen, father? I have not heard her name spoken.”

“And you will not, until the marriage contracts have been drawn up.”

He made a wry face. I knew at once that he was in pain from the stone.

“If you please, father, I have need—”

He raised his hand. “Not now, Catherine. I have too much else on my mind.”

But whatever was on his mind, did not find its way to his lips. Not for many minutes. He was lost in his musings. Finally he spoke again.

“Lord Cromwell is dealing with the Clevans, Catherine. Yes. The Clevans. Of all people!”

He paused again. “There is a Clevan woman, Lady Anna. Lord Cromwell wants her to be our next queen.”

He looked over at me. “There will be many appointments to her new household. Highborn young women. Good-looking, godfearing, chaste young women. Not young women who disgrace themselves with their music masters—”

“Father, I—”

“Oh yes, mother told me. I know all.”

“She forgave me. She understood.”

But father merely gave a low chuckle. “You are your mother’s daughter,” he said quietly. “And besides, the man has a poor history. He has been sent away. We will say no more about it.”

“I need clothing, father,” I burst out. “My gowns are too small for me. They cannot be let out or patched or re-hemmed any more. Please let me share some of your new loan to pay a dressmaker.”

He slapped his knee. “Ask your uncle William, Catherine. He always has coins in his treasure chests. Don’t come to me. I am left to go a-begging while others flourish. Don’t come to me!”

*   *   *

My need for money was great, and growing greater. I had been borrowing small sums from Alice and Joan, from my cousins Malyn and Catherine Tylney, even from Henry and Edward Waldegrave ever since I first arrived at Horsham, for my father gave me no pocket money and my stepmother Margaret, who I never saw, scarcely acknowledged that I was alive.

I was a poor relation. That needed to end.

In the Horsham household, I noticed, people acted not according to the moral laws in the Bible but according to what chance and opportunity offered. Do what you can, take what you need, act as you must: this was the guiding rule. I was not slow to learn it.

I knew that Grandma Agnes, who was very very rich, had small chests of coins scattered here and there throughout the household. She was forever taking handfuls of coins from these chests to give in alms, or to pay tradesmen or servants, or to give out to the steward or chamberer to buy provisions. The chests were kept locked, to be sure, but she kept the keys in the pockets of her gowns and I had seen them fall out more than once. I had also noticed that she sometimes forgot to fasten the locks securely.

I began paying closer attention to her goings and comings and taking careful note when she took money from one of her chests. My opportunity came when a commotion arose in the courtyard just as Grandma Agnes was handing a pouch of coins to her head ostler. Two of the grooms were brawling. Others were threatening to join in.

“Stop that at once!” she shouted, and stalked out among the men, heedless of the mud and dirt that was staining her hem and equally heedless of the unlocked chest she had left behind.

I quickly rushed to the table, reached into the chest, snatched a pouch—a rather heavy pouch—of coins and hurriedly put it in my pocket. Then I went outside and joined the others.

Not until after supper did I allow myself to open the pouch and count the money I had taken. It was nearly eight pounds! A fortune!

My first thought was an unkind one: I must not let my father know that I had this money, for he would be sure to try to convince me that he needed it far more than I did and that it was my duty to give it to him. I hid the gleaming coins in a little closet next to the chamber of easement, under a bundle of rags. Each time I visited the chamber I extracted a few coins. Gradually I paid my debts. And I paid the duchess’s dressmaker, Master Spiershon, to make me five day gowns and two court gowns, suitable to wear in the presence of the king. For I had decided that I had had enough of Horsham, and was determined to travel to the capital at my earliest opportunity.

*   *   *

I had been hearing about Grandma Agnes’s great house at Lambeth for a long time. It was said to be far larger and more grand than Horsham, with three times as many servants and far more elegant grounds. Most important, Lambeth was just across the Thames and a little ways upstream from the royal court of King Henry and the great capital, London.

The hub of the realm, Henry Manox had called London. The center of the universe. He had often spoken to me of the splendor of the royal court and how he regretted the shortness of his stay there.

Imagine my delight when I heard from Joan that the duchess was going to Lambeth and we were all going with her!

“She wants to place as many Howards as possible in the household of the new queen,” Joan announced. “In order to do that, she must be as near the royal court as possible. Lambeth it is.”

Everything was packed up and moved—and when we arrived, I glimpsed, for the first time, an immense ducal household with (so my father told me) some seven hundred servants and three hundred horses in the stables and a great hall larger than all the upper chambers at Horsham combined.

Lambeth Great House was an establishment fit for the wealthiest duchess in England—my grandmother Agnes—and for England’s premier duke, my uncle Thomas, who was often present in its spacious halls.

I was only too glad to move in to my new and much larger quarters, which I shared with only a dozen other girls. My bed was larger and the mattress much more comfortable, the blankets thicker and warmer, the hearth larger and with more wood kept piled at the side so that we almost never ran out and suffered from cold on chill nights. I had not only a trunk at the foot of my bed to hold my possessions but a wardrobe as well, though I had to share the wardrobe with two other girls. In my new gowns and kirtles, sleeves and petticoats I no longer looked like a poor relation but a privileged, highborn young woman. A true Howard. I was proud in them—even though I could never forget that they had been bought with stolen coins.

Soon after we moved into the large residence Uncle Thomas gave a banquet for the Clevan ambassador in the great hall, with its high ceiling painted in bright blues and reds and greens, its tall gilded columns, its magnificent parquet floor and its wide high doors that opened onto the vast fragrant gardens. Long tables were laid with cream-colored napery and gleaming silver candlesticks, bowls of greenery and fresh flowers, silver and gold plate in abundance.

I had never seen the like, and I marveled at the sight.

But then, I too was in fresh array, and when I entered the great hall in company with some half dozen of my cousins, I was aware that I was much admired.

The new wardrobe made for me by Spiershon the tailor was proving to be of great benefit to me. Master Spiershon had been only too glad to create a wardrobe for a niece of the great Duke of Norfolk, and his gowns were sumptuous: gowns of silk and velvet and Venetian brocade, in flattering colors of ash and lady blush and bear’s ear, carnation and dove grey and violet blue. There were light silk petticoats to match (for the season was warm), and full sleeves embroidered in silk ribbon, and stomachers and headdresses and fine woven silk for garters.

“Not too large in the bodice!” Master Spiershon had barked to his assistants as the gowns were being fitted. “She is young. She must appear shapely but maidenly!”

I hoped I did appear maidenly, and youthful, not coarsened by my experience in the duchess’s household. When I looked in the pier glass as I was being dressed on the night of my first banquet at Lambeth I saw a fresh-faced, happy, cheerful young woman. Not a knowing, shrewd one like Joan, or a timid, fretful one like Alice, or a superior, self-satisfied one like Charyn. I saw a face lit with anticipation, the eyes filled with jollity and the hope of amusement. The face of a girl who might be chosen to join the household of the new queen.

“Is she going to be here tonight, the king’s new wife?” Alice asked me as we took our places at the long banqueting table.

“Hush! No one knows for certain who his wife will be. The king’s men of business are merely talking to the ambassador from Cleves.”

I felt very superior, knowing what little I did about the talks between the king’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, and the Clevans. The household was abuzz with rumor; I did not have to listen very long or very hard to gather what was going on. My uncle William Cotton had come to stay at Lambeth and he was well informed. He was fond of me and was usually willing to answer my questions, provided I did not pester him.

I knew that the king needed a new wife, to give him more sons in case the young Prince Edward died. She had to be royal, or from the highest nobility. She could not belong to the Romish church, or owe obedience to the pope; that had been decided when the king married my cousin Anne. No more papists!

The Clevans, it seemed, were not papists. So it was possible our king might marry one of them. But nothing was determined yet.

I noticed Uncle Thomas and Grandma Agnes talking together and looking toward me and my cousins. Grandma Agnes glittered in a gown of gold bawdkin, while Uncle Thomas, his slight upper body covered in an elaborate doublet of quilted green velvet, a cap with a jaunty grey feather on his small dark head, stood out boldly from the handsome younger men around him.

In another moment Uncle Thomas beckoned to us. Obediently my cousins and I rose at once and went to where he was sitting with the duchess. We dipped our knees in reverence. He scrutinized us, taking his time, scanning our bodies, then our faces.

“Which of you is Jocasta’s daughter?” he asked.

“I am Lord Edmund’s daughter,” I answered, speaking up and holding my head high. “My mother was the Lady Jocasta.”

“Proud,” the duke said. “But fetching.” He looked more carefully at my lovely gown, his gaze lingering on the full yet maidenly bodice. He raised one eyebrow critically, then turned to his mother. He was about to speak when she silenced him.