The Confession of Katherine Howard Read online

  By now, we always sat on the same mattress in our room in the evenings. Not close together, but with no one between us. And so that was what it was, what it had become: a walking side by side, a sitting side by side. Never as much as a walking or sitting together. But whenever we walked, I noticed, our pace slowed despite the cold, our footfalls became closer, became measured: making something of the time together.

  Then one afternoon he came into the herb room, where Alice and I were making up some Arabian white ointment. He’d come to see me, he said, and indeed that was precisely what he did, that and no more; just pulled up a stool, then sat down to watch me. As an explanation, he offered, ‘I’m waiting for the duke to–’ but then didn’t bother to finish. I didn’t stop my work with the pestle. We didn’t talk and it was uncomfortable but perhaps not wholly in a bad way.

  When he’d gone–Well, I reckon ol’ Tommo’ll be just about ready for me, now–Alice took the unusual step of venturing comment: ‘You really like him, don’t you.’ Incredibly, she looked pleased for me, and I didn’t want to brush her off, but, as far as I saw it, I liked him because he was likeable. My liking him didn’t seem to have anything much to do with me: it was simply how it should be, and how it was. How, really, could it be otherwise? I ended up saying, ‘He’s all right,’ although, in retrospect, I doubt she was fooled.

  The truth was that I’d begun to ponder: would my parents allow me to marry Ed? How would that be, to be married to Ed? He’d be employed in the duke’s service; we’d do nicely. I envisioned us living in a fair-sized London house, with well-stocked stables. God willing, there’d be children, and then we’d send them to grow up in Kate’s household: they’d have a Howard-sponsored upbringing, as I’d had. It could work very well. I wondered what he was hoping for, from life, and what his family was planning for him. He seemed to love his life as it was; but, like it or not, there’d be changes coming, as there would for me, and I suppose I was wondering if perhaps we could do each other a favour.

  Meanwhile, Francis’s staying late in our room continued. Not every night, but often. Mary continued to complain, which only encouraged Alice, Maggie and me to affect a lack of concern because none of us wanted to side with her. Once, when she complained, ‘This sinning is happening in my room!’ Alice countered with, ‘It’s our room,’ as if that were an answer and the last word.

  I wondered if one day–one night–I’d be doing that, with Ed. What if I was tired, though? On those late winter Lenten evenings I was so often deeply weary, longing for repose under my blankets. What if I wanted him to leave me alone? How would I get him to go? But if I wanted him to stay, how would I deal with Mary?

  He’d be warm, though: that would be something.

  One day a letter came from Jo Bulmer. She wrote regularly, but never told us much. There probably wasn’t much to tell: no doubt she was busy with her household, but not much of it would’ve been newsworthy. While we sewed, Skid read the latest letter to us, appropriately doleful when relating how Jo had had a fever, but suitably cheerful on the subject of a new gown being made. Later, when we were leaving the room, Kate caught my eye and directed it to the letter on the floor beside Skid’s stool. Smirking, she whispered, ‘D’you think she’s done it four times, yet?’ I’d forgotten that particular declaration of Jo’s: Four times is all we’re doing it. Risible, Kate was implying: the notion that there’d be four times, or anything in the region of four times, or even any limit at all. On her way through the doorway ahead of me, she added, conversationally, ‘My brothers say that men think about it all the time.’

  Her brothers had said such a thing in her earshot?

  She slid me a glance and stressed, ‘All the time.’

  Mr Wolfe slunk Lenten-stupefied across our path in the direction of the kitchens, and he didn’t look to me as if he were thinking of sex; but then he glanced at us and suddenly I was less sure.

  ‘Then they dream of it.’ Clearly, she found that amusing. ‘Every night.’ I mustered a smile as she added, jauntily, ‘I’m not saying that I don’t dream of it sometimes–of course I do–but not every night.’

  I kept the smile there on my face but I was wondering: dream of what, exactly? Of what, exactly, do those dreams consist? The only dreams I could ever recall were of being chased, being trapped, being too late.

  Her head tilted as if making the politest of enquiries. ‘Has Ed made a move on you, yet?’

  My skin prickled. ‘Move?’

  She gazed away, the cloud-crammed sky reflected on her eyes. ‘Didn’t think so. For all the talk, he’s quite shy, isn’t he.’ She sounded fond of him. The eyes came back to mine. ‘If he did make a move, you wouldn’t turn him down, would you? If he held your hand, I mean, or took your arm?’

  I didn’t know what to say; I didn’t know.

  Ahead, Mr Wolfe halted, turned and backtracked–‘Afternoon, ladies’–which allowed me to get away with a shrug.

  ‘He’s a good lad, is Ed,’ she concluded, cheerfully. ‘He’s lovely.’

  But not as lovely as Francis, I realised. It’d always been Francis, for her, from the very start, from first sight, and understandably so. Ed was all very well–funny and charming but failsafe, he was solid in every sense–but Francis was something else, with those eyes and that flaxen hair and how everything of him–the blood, the very pulse–seemed barely held in check, so that even if your fingertips skimmed the surface of him, you’d burn.

  Not long afterwards came the first fine day of spring, the scent of sap tangible in the air, almost indecent. Strolling back across the courtyard from evening prayers, Kate suggested to Francis, ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ then surprised me with, ‘Coming?’ Ed and I had been walking alongside them; it was easier to continue in step than to decline, and anyway the loveliness of the day seemed to call for it, as did the tantalising prospect of Lent soon being behind us.

  We ended up on the riverside steps, looking over the brimming river, watching it flex inside its shiny, supple skin. To my horror, though, Kate and Francis turned to each other and began kissing. I glimpsed Francis’s hand on the swelling of her bodice that was her breast, and recalled how she’d stood in our room back at the old house in Horsham and, looking down her body, made reference to a ‘good figure’. I was furious that I’d allowed myself–allowed us, Ed and me–to be drawn here and left high and dry. I couldn’t look at them and I couldn’t look at Ed, but then he managed to catch my eye and his look was such a frank admission of defeat in the face of the awkwardness of the situation that I found I was laughing. It was blissful to be laughing about it, and I was so grateful to him; he always knew what to do; he could do anything, I told myself, he really could, he was so good with everyone and in any situation. Intoxicated by relief, we talked more than usual. Settling on a step, shone down upon by a couple of big, blowsy evening stars, we talked about our families: our parents, and his siblings. There seemed to be, between us, an assumption that what Kate and Francis were doing–kissing–wasn’t for us; but as a half-hour passed, I wondered where that assumption had come from. I considered if I should challenge him: How do you know?

  Try me, I wanted to say.

  That night, Francis stayed in our room. I listened, actively listened. Well, why shouldn’t I? The pair of them didn’t care, did they; if they did, they wouldn’t be doing it. Right there, alongside me. So, just for a while, I listened. What was it that they were doing? Definitely something: there was industry in it, that was for sure.

  The following evening, in our room, was when Ed first took my hand. Done before I realised: my hand taken up into his. Not much of a move, in the end, after all. His hand was calloused from rein-holding and I relished it: the roughness, the chafe of his skin against my own. When he took his leave, he raised my hand to his lips, and, simultaneously, his eyes to mine.

  Over the weeks of that spring, I came to love that look in his eyes; I loved, too, how his eyes came to me first and last across rooms and courtyards. The very fact of his
existence surprised and delighted me. And to think how nearly I’d overlooked him. Not having overlooked him, in the end, seemed to me an extraordinary stroke of luck and was enough to humble me.

  I loved the obstinacy of the dirt under his fingernails, the grain of golden down on the backs of his hands, and how he chucked those hands through his boyish hair. I loved his unlikely fondness for rosemary–sprigs of which he’d carry as a kind of comforter–and his child-like fascination for bats. To me, back then–having been shut away with the same companions year after year–his quirks were little short of miraculous.

  There were no more moves from him: instead, on Easter Monday, on our way back from the Oratory, he pulled me into a stairwell and tendered a request: ‘May I kiss you?’

  I’d been worrying about further moves, anxious that I’d be wrongfooted and reflex would have me draw away from him. So, what came from me in reply to his earnest request was a laugh of relief, which he took as capitulation. And then there we were, kissing, and from the first touch of our lips it was as if we’d always been doing it, as if there’d been none of that walking and talking, but just this.

  And from then on, in the new world that dawned with the end of Lent, we were kissers of each other: that was what we were and what we did. There was nothing else and nothing better than kissing, and every kiss was like a pledge: Let nothing come between us.

  Nothing did. It was wonderful how everything around us accommodated our endless kissing. Days and evenings became infinitely expandable, yielding time for it before and after tasks and meals and Mass. Until then, the days had felt, to me, imposed: an endless succession had presented themselves and required me to live through them. Likewise, Norfolk House had been made up of rooms that demanded something of me–that I eat, sleep, sew, pray–but now those places were mere stop-gaps on the way to spaces in which we could kiss: staircases and walkways, porches and gateways, all of them conveniently casting their own cover of shadow. We spent a lot of time with one or other of us pressed back against a lime-washed wall or painted linenfold, coming away with our shoulderblades glowing or gilt-sparkly.

  Back in our room, though, in the evenings, Ed was the same as ever: more than ready to make conversation, to give his all to everyone else, and I was proud of him for that. Actually, I was fairly proud of myself. We were no Kate and Francis: we were able to turn to each other without shutting Alice and Maggie out. We might even have been better company than before: bolstered. But I did rest back on Ed, as Kate did on Francis; I did detect his laughter rumbling in my backbone before it reached anyone else’s ears. That was my privilege.

  Every evening there’d come the time when he’d announce his leaving–‘Right-o’–with a quick kiss to the top of my head and I’d follow him to the door, step the other side of it with him and there we’d kiss for a while, him running his hands over my face, shoulders and waist, as if to take an impression of me away with him.

  One April afternoon, Kate and I had been left in the gallery to look through fabric samples, the tailor having gone to take refreshments with Skid and the duchess. We were keen to enter into the clothes-acquisitional spirit of Easter although in fact we weren’t in a position to buy anything. Mary and Maggie had no interest and had gone off elsewhere, and Alice was ill in bed because of her monthly. Examining some black broadcloth, Kate remarked suddenly, ‘It’s awkward, isn’t it, when you’re kissing a boy and it’s digging into you.’

  Despite my surprise, I did know what she was referring to. It was a fact of nature, was my view. A foible. I didn’t want to think too closely about it–or, indeed, at all. We girls had our problems–monthlies–and boys had their own: that was how I saw it.

  Re-folding the length of broadcloth, she said, ‘They need to do it, don’t they.’ And, before I could respond: ‘Francis wants me to do it with him.’

  The floor seemed to lurch beneath me.

  She glanced at me, expectant.

  I simply couldn’t imagine her and Francis having that conversation. When? How? Ed and I would never have any such discussion. At the back of my mind, though, was an unease: had Francis talked this over with Ed?

  ‘And it is tough on him, expecting him to wait.’ She placed the folded broadcloth back on the pile. ‘And it’s not as if we won’t be getting married anyway.’

  That was the first I’d heard of it, although it didn’t come as any surprise. I’d assumed it was the aim; no one could be around the pair of them for long without coming to that conclusion.

  ‘So, in a way,’ she shrugged, ‘why not now?’

  ‘Because you’ll get pregnant.’ If nothing else, there was that: the fat fly in the ointment. I wasn’t totally naïve: I knew some people did it before they were married–between their marriages, too, and outside their marriages–but I also knew what stopped those who didn’t.

  ‘Not if we’re careful,’ she said. ‘Izzy–’ her sister–‘used a lemon.’ She slammed the side of one hand into the palm of the other, a chopping motion. ‘Half a lemon, the rind of it, the dried rind.’

  I must’ve looked perplexed–I didn’t know much about lemons but I knew they weren’t for that–because she went on to explain, ‘You put it up.’

  Up?

  Bringing her fingertips together: ‘You squash it to get it up there and then–’ fingertips springing apart, making a cup of her hand–‘it catches all the–’ you know. But then she said it anyway: ‘The stuff.’

  Stuff, again.

  Up; I did get it, then, but instantly wished I hadn’t.

  ‘Later, you take it down.’ And when I didn’t respond, ‘Well, anyway, Izzy says it’s either the lemon or you let them do it up your backside.’

  I was going to laugh, until I realised she was serious.

  ‘And you know–’ she sighed, ran her fingertips over a sample of pinked velvet, ‘I do really want to do it, I really want to feel him inside me.’ A slip of her gaze into mine. ‘Don’t you think that’d be amazing?’

  I’d honestly never given it a thought. Because all that was for later, wasn’t it? Later in life. Married life.

  ‘You can’t get closer than that, can you. You’d think it’d hurt, wouldn’t you, but, according to Izzy, it doesn’t. Think about it,’ she urged, ‘think about when you’re being kissed, how you open up. You can feel it, can’t you: how you’re widening. Well, a bit more of that and you’d be ready, wouldn’t you.’

  Think about it. Well, after that conversation, I couldn’t help but think about it; I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want to, but I didn’t seem able to stop. It was always her and Francis, though, that I found myself thinking of–imagining that I was her and Francis was whom I was kissing. I could see, now, that he wanted to do it: I could see it, I only had to glance at him to see it because he shone with a kind of readiness. Whereas Ed: Ed had never been like that. Solid Ed. Or so I thought, but, actually, it was around this time–or was it my imagination?–that something did change, and exhausted though he was from hunting all day every day in the duke’s retinue, he’d grind against me in stairwells and breathe exasperation into my ear. It was as if just by having listened to Kate, I’d started something that couldn’t be stopped.

  It was around this time, too, that a change came over Alice, of all people. One evening, after the usual card games with Skid and Oddbod, she didn’t return with us to our room, she suddenly wasn’t there with us; and then, when she did come in, perhaps an hour later, there was a different rhythm to her, to her footsteps and her taking off her hood, her settling on to her mattress. What was different was the existence of a rhythm, coming with her as if she’d been propelled. Wherever she’d been, something had been going on: she’d been somewhere and she’d been doing something, which was rare enough in our little lives but perhaps particularly in hers.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ was Maggie’s harmless enquiry.

  ‘Chapel.’

  Well, that was ridiculous: hers wasn’t the demeanour of someone who’d just come from cha
pel. Anyway, the question had elicited a frown and although Alice was forever frowning, this one was different from usual, a whiplash.

  Tentatively, Maggie touched the bottom of Alice’s gown. ‘But your gown’s wet.’ It hadn’t been raining; it hadn’t rained for days. Likely she’d been on the riverside steps–but what had she been doing there, and why had she claimed to have been in chapel? That frown, though, had made clear that she wouldn’t welcome further questioning.

  More and more often, she wasn’t around at bedtime and then, when she did walk in, late, she looked as if she were walking out on us: brisk and dismissive. I worried that she’d had enough of what was going on in our room–the kissing–and, frankly, who could blame her? It wasn’t only on evenings, though, I noticed, that she was absenting herself. Previously so punctual, she began turning up at Hall in the mere nick of time, squeezing on to the bench as Grace was about to be said.

  Then one day a Howard-liveried man was waiting for her when we left Hall, and a word in her ear had her following him away. By the time she returned, we girls were in the Spicery, the quarterly inventory having been entrusted to us.

  Looking up from a jar of pungent dust, Kate was uncharacteristically direct: ‘Where’ve you been?’

  In the corner of my eye, I detected Mary, with a handful of cloves, squaring up to object on Alice’s behalf, just for the sake of it.

  But Alice was already answering, ‘Oh–’ then suddenly not answering after all, shaking the question off as if she’d decided she could get away with it.

  Well, she was wrong about that. Kate replaced the stopper in the jar, replaced the jar on the shelf and then faced her down, folding her arms and tilting her head. Alice frowned, took a breath as if embarking on a complicated explanation but then let it go and said instead, ‘Seeing Lord William.’