The Confession of Katherine Howard Page 17

  Myself, I was finding Kate’s impending departure a more troubling prospect than I’d anticipated. I was disoriented by the depth of my feeling. We were so very different, I reminded myself; we had nothing in common. There’d been the one good summer, and, before that, there’d been a year or so when circumstances had drawn us together, when Jo Bulmer had left, and Dottie, too, and Kate and I had just happened to be the two who’d had romances. But that was all.

  She was just a girl, I told myself: a girl who wanted nothing more than to turn heads. Why, then, faced with the loss of her, did I feel so bereft?

  ’Just a girl’ was, funnily enough, how she’d described the new queen to me. ‘She’s no princess, you know,’ she’d said, one day while we were embroidering. ‘She’s just a girl; a duke’s daughter.’ She’d have known what I’d be thinking: ‘Yes,’ half-smiling down over a row of little Tudor roses that she’d created in red silk, ‘just like me.’

  But this duke’s daughter wasn’t homegrown, as Kate was; this duke’s daughter was coming from somewhere important–or important to Thomas Cromwell, was what her uncle had told her–at a time when both France and Spain were proving troublesome. This forthcoming marriage had the purpose of making an alliance.

  ‘With where?’

  ‘Cleves.’

  ‘Cleves?’

  ‘One of the Low Countries.’

  Small countries, more like, against the might of France and Spain. I’d never heard of any Cleves, but, then, I suppose, I hadn’t heard of many places. I did know, though, that the Low Countries were Protestant. We, in England, were Catholics: our king was a Catholic–he might well refer to the pope as the Bishop of Rome and himself instead as the head of the Church of England, but the Church of England was Catholic and he’d decreed that Protestants were heretics. I asked Kate how we could have a heretic for a queen.

  ‘Well, yes, that’s what my uncle says.’ She grimaced: ‘At length, and not so delicately. But she’s promised she won’t practise her faith here; she’ll be Catholic when she’s here.’

  ‘So,’ I dropped my embroidery into my lap, ‘she’s been chosen because she’s from a Protestant country–against France and Spain–but when she gets here, she’s to stop being a Protestant?’

  ‘Apparently. And–’ Kate winced–‘she only speaks Dutch.’

  Dutch? I’d never heard of it.

  ‘A kind of German. The king speaks a lot of languages, but Dutch isn’t one of them. No one speaks Dutch.’ Then, ‘My uncle says the king’s nervous about choosing a wife from a portrait. I mean, the others all do it–all the other kings–but ours never has.’ She shot me an amused look. ‘Likes the personal touch, does ours; a bit of a romantic. Stays close to home in matters of the heart.’ She smirked: ‘Marries his widowed sister-in-law and his friends’ daughters.’ Then, ‘I hope she’s a laugh, anyway, this latest one.’

  I was doubtful: ‘Are queens ever “a laugh”?’

  ‘Well–’ she raised her eyebrows, ‘they can dance, can’t they? Dancing’s what I’m after, when I’m there.’ She set her handiwork aside, and stretched expansively. ‘Not needlework. I mean–’ gesturing towards the embroidery, dismissive–‘I can do that here, can’t I.’

  The weeks went by with Kate and Francis still often at each other’s side, but it’d become a deliberate stance, the joy gone from it. And how they held hands–he’d reach for hers and she’d allow it, let hers lay there in his, lifeless. I dreaded to think how they might be conducting themselves in private. I knew what she was doing, I just knew it–she was trying to get away from him without a confrontation. She was seeing it out until she was off, away, and then, I suspected, she wouldn’t look back. He probably suspected it, too, but I knew she’d be denying it to him, or at least refusing to confirm it for him, so what else could he do? Except be there at her side, as usual, and take her hand in his, and, probably, in the evenings, while Maggie was at prayers and I made sure to linger in Skid and Oddbod’s company, take her to bed.

  The royal wedding was planned for Christmas Day but gales delayed the duke’s daughter’s channel-crossing. She stayed for two weeks in Calais, news of her reaching our household from Lord William who’d been sent ahead in the welcoming party. Word from Lord William was that she’d grown up without ever learning to dance or play cards, but she was a willing student. Similarly, she’d been denied the pleasures of good food but was now more than making up for it. One evening, she’d even invited her new friend the Lord Admiral to her rooms for supper, apparently unaware that this was improper conduct for a betrothed lady. He hadn’t known what to do, Lord William reported back: to go would be to risk the king’s displeasure, but, on the other hand, he didn’t want to refuse a kind invitation from a lady of whom he’d grown fond. In the end, he’d braved it. Hearing this tale, Kate raised her eyebrows. ‘I have high hopes that my needles are going to stay in their box.’

  Finally, on St Stephen’s Day, the queen-to-be set sail for Deal; then from Deal she headed for Dover, before suffering more atrocious weather on the day’s ride to Canterbury, where she dried off and warmed up in the king-appropriated, extensively refurbished abbey. Next stop was Sittingbourne; then Rochester, where the duke was in charge of the welcoming party. One of his accompanying horsemen was Francis, and it was Francis whom the duke despatched back to us with the news. No one official would miss Francis: he could dash home to the Howards with a forewarning.

  As soon as he’d had his audience with the duchess, he came crashing in on Kate and me in the gallery, where we were practising dance steps. Clearly, it’d been some ride: he was mud-caked and the smell of him came into the room as a whole separate entity.

  ‘Big trouble,’ he announced, obviously shattered but with barely suppressed glee.

  Kate and I demanded, ‘What?’

  Kate’s future, as she saw it, depended on this royal match proceeding without a hitch.

  ‘The new queen.’ He swiped the moist, still-red tip of his nose with the back of his hand.

  ‘What?’ We’d both said it, but Kate stepped up close to him and I winced in anticipation of her grabbing his shoulders to shake it from him.

  ‘The king. Doesn’t want her.’ All of a sudden, his excitement had vanished and he looked defeated.

  Kate voiced our confusion: ‘He’s met her?’ The king was only supposed to meet her when she reached her destination of Greenwich.

  Francis nodded. ‘Went ahead, couldn’t wait.’ He began pacing and I sensed that he wanted to sit down but there was nowhere and anyway he’d have been too filthy. ‘Turns up in Rochester, sneaks into her room in disguise and doesn’t like what he sees.’

  Kate bridled. ‘He’ll get over it.’ I could almost hear her telling herself, No great emergency.

  Francis rounded on her to insist, ‘No, I do mean that he really, really didn’t like what he saw.’

  I interrupted: ‘But he’d seen a portrait, hadn’t he?’

  A contemptuous look from the pair of them put me right: painters paint over imperfections.

  Kate challenged him, ‘Well, what’s he going to do?’ Meaning, what can he do?

  ‘He’s ridden off to Greenwich, calling a Council meeting.’ He stopped by a window, appeared to be looking into the distance but although I couldn’t quite see his eyes, I knew they were glazed. ‘The duke says he’s furious, frantic. Just kept saying No; came out of that room saying No, no, no.’

  She said it again: ‘But what’s he going to do?’

  Francis shrugged and there was a sharpness to it, Advent fasting having taken a toll on him.

  Could the king–I could hardly think it–send the Dutch lady back? All that pomp and ceremony and procession and then having to go home: how on earth would that poor lady feel?

  Kate wanted to know: ‘Is she really that bad?’

  Another shrug: he didn’t know, did he; he hadn’t seen her. He turned around to offer, ‘She’s plain, is what I’ve heard.’

  ‘Plain,’ I di
sparaged, meaning that it couldn’t be so bad, especially when there was everything else at stake.

  Kate muttered, ‘But there’s plain and there’s plain-plain, isn’t there.’

  Francis said, ‘She’s tall, I know, and…’ he was searching for a word, ‘…angular. And dark.’ He looked away from Kate, who was comely and pale, to address me instead. ‘Well, this I do know: when we got to Rochester, Lady Browne called for the duke–’ Lady Browne, who was to be head of the queen’s ladies–‘and she said to him, “Look, this won’t do, we’re heading for a disaster, there’s been a mistake because this is just some girl.” That was what she said: “just some girl”.’

  We took a moment to consider: a lack of polish, then, was the problem; she was raw, somehow, perhaps.

  ‘So then the duke goes haring round to Lord William, wanting to know why he hadn’t said anything when he’d first seen her in Calais and there might’ve still been time to call a halt, and Lord William said–’ Francis puffed an incredulous laugh–‘you know what he said? He said that the only time he was close enough for a good look at her, they were firing off all these celebratory rounds and he couldn’t see her for all the smoke.’

  Despite everything, we all smirked.

  Then Kate snapped, ‘Lord William wouldn’t have known, anyway,’ and shot me a look. Alice, the look said: Think how plain Alice is, and he doesn’t see that.

  Nevertheless, the royal wedding went ahead: not on the first day of Christmas but the last, Twelfthtide, in the Chapel Royal at Greenwich. Years later, I heard that when the king had challenged Cromwell with a desperate What’s to be done? Cromwell’s shamefaced reply was Nothing. The man who’d separated England from Rome couldn’t come up with a convincing excuse to send back that gauche, goodwilled Dutch duke’s daughter.

  When, some weeks later, she came from Greenwich to Whitehall, her attendants returned to Cleves and her English ladies reported for duty. Kate was to be in attendance for only two weeks in every four, the pressure for places and lack of accommodation at the palace meaning that maids-in-waiting would follow the same schedule as the proper ladies-in-waiting who regularly returned home to their own families.

  Those first two weeks when I was left alone at the duchess’s, I spent more time than usual in the company of Skid and her children, and accompanied Maggie more often to the Oratory although there, in the midst of so many people, was where I felt most alone. As for Francis: he all but disappeared from the duchess’s household. Only from an occasional glimpse of him as he crossed the courtyard to or from his staircase did I know that he was still officially in residence. Presumably he was being more dutiful towards the duke than he’d previously been, and perhaps, as a consequence, he was invited to dine in the duke’s company, because I never even spotted him in Hall.

  Then, on St Bride’s Day, in the second week of Kate’s absence, I did come across him. I’d been indoors all day and, late afternoon, headed for the river in the hope of clearing my head and working up an appetite for the coming feast. The day had already given up the ghost, rolling over into dusk and sinking fast, giving up the pretence of anything other than darkness, and the air was clogged with woodsmoke and recently fallen rain. I’d not expected to find anyone lingering around the steps at such an hour on such a bleak day but there was a figure squatting on a step, hunched into a cloak, hood up, crouched below lions whose grandeur was redundant in the murk. I don’t know how I knew it was Francis, but I did. With an alarming whiplash of one arm, he skimmed a stone across the black, breeze-furred water and away it raced into the darkness with no one but him to track it. I halted–fearing that to distract him would be to break some kind of spell–and began to retreat, picking up each numb-soled step that I’d made and laying it down in reverse to take me back around the corner of the gatehouse. Somehow, though, he detected me, and swivelled to give me an approximation of a smile, his face scoured by the cold. ‘Hello!’

  I bounced the greeting back with a little too much enthusiasm, compounding my awkwardness with, ‘I was just–’ Just what, though? Passing, going, on my way. Standing there and not, in fact, going anywhere.

  His nod–forlorn, resigned–seemed to say, You, too, then. So then, of course, I couldn’t. Nor, though, could I just stand there, so I stepped closer, which slackened my hold over him, permitted him to return to the river, to skim another stone. Again came the considerable force and flex of his arm, which had me taking a step backwards even though I was nowhere near. Near enough, though, to sense how he was taken up by it: the leap of his heart into his throat and the snap of his focus on to that bouncing, dashing stone. Then came a small sound–no more than a breath–of satisfaction. ‘Oh, I’m good at this,’ but he was joking because he wasn’t one to care in the least about stone-skimming and would be likely to make fun of anyone who did. ‘What are you good at?’ It was an entirely pleasant enquiry, judging from his expression and tone, yet it had me wary and again I took an unintentional step backwards. Which gave him what he was looking for. ‘Ah!’–all smiles, still–‘Good at leaving.’ Like your friend was unsaid, but I heard it in the silence and didn’t appreciate it. He was being unfair. I was nothing like her. Stupid boy, was what came to mind: stupid enough to have fallen for Katherine Howard. Don’t take it out on me.

  He’d turned back to the water and was once again taking aim. ‘Don’t go.’ He lobbed the pebble. ‘I’ve missed you.’ No plea, just an observation.

  ‘Well, I haven’t been anywhere,’ I objected, folding my arms hard against the penetrating chill. Chance would’ve been a fine thing.

  ‘Would you, though?’ and he glanced around at me, interested.

  I didn’t follow.

  ‘Would you want to go there?’ A dismissive nod at the opposite bank, the palace. A proper question, I detected; the nod might’ve been dismissive but he was after a proper answer.

  ‘I’ve no place there,’ and he knew it.

  He looked amused. ‘But would you want it?’

  The best behaviour and best clothes, Lady This and Lady That. ‘God no.’ I couldn’t help but laugh, tipping back my head and breathing deep to relish the sour river air.

  He laughed, too, and flung a stone, setting this one on a path of long, confident strides over the water.

  Quickly, I dared: ‘She had to, Francis.’ As a Howard, Kate had a job to do: the job of promoting family interests. I hadn’t liked saying it–my heart snatched at my breaths in panic–but it was the truth and we should both accept it.

  Rising from the step, he gave me a long look but I couldn’t tell what conclusion, if any, he came to and he said nothing as we walked back to the courtyard together, our footfalls ringing hollow on the freezing flagstones, before going our separate ways.

  The following day, Candlemas, my longing for like-minded company had me slip from the beeswax-scented haze in the Oratory towards the riverside steps even though it was too much to hope that he’d be there. But there he was. My heart spied him before I did and dealt me a lightning strike. Recovering myself, I went down those steps to join him and, that afternoon, he taught me how to skim stones so that, come suppertime, I was better at it than he was.

  From that day onwards, we were the pair who’d been left behind: that was the part we played. Stuck there at the duchess’s when Kate had moved on, we were sticking together. Terrible twins, making much of our separateness, together, from everyone else: turning up late for everything–Mass, meals–and sitting apart from everyone, or, better still, staying down by the river.

  We were friends, of our own accord; we didn’t need Kate to help us. He was quite different from her, which surprised and pleased me. Free from her, he had a lot more to say, all of which was funnier and more affecting than I’d anticipated. Whereas Kate focused on what others tried to hide or overlook, Francis was expansive and inventive: What if…? He never overdid it, though: unlike Kate, he never assumed that I wanted his company; he always approached me cautiously, courteously.

 
; Then Kate was back before I knew it. I’d been waiting for her, or certainly I’d started the fortnight that way but had lost sight of her impending return because she took me by surprise. One afternoon, I dropped by our room for a pair of gloves and there in front of the window were clothes which I didn’t recognise and which didn’t belong in the girls’ dormitory at the duchess’s, clothes which looked to have a life of their own as they stood stiff with stitching and with enough fur as lining and trimmings to give them hackles and an underbelly. Those clothes were turning towards me and inside them was Kate. Around her neck was a crucifix so large and heavily jewelled that I half-expected it to clank. Howard jewellery, no doubt, which had been lain aside for dressing up any Howard girl making it into a queen’s household. The crucifix’s rubies made her look paler than ever but her eyes still glittered as she greeted me: ‘Hello, you.’

  They were only clothes, I reminded myself, and it was only small, colourless Kate inside them, but later, when we went to supper, I saw awe on others’ faces. In their eyes, Kate was really special, now: properly special, a lady of the queen’s household. And under their stupefied gazes, she walked slower than ever. In just fourteen days, she’d become regal in her bearing.

  That first evening, I watched Francis watching her, and saw how he tried to hide it. His helplessness frightened me, I despaired to see him so reduced: my funny friend Francis turned mute when she walked into a room. Don’t get taken in, I willed him. See her for what she is: nothing much, a little girl in a lovely dress. Who was I, though, really, to talk? Me, who loved her, too. I wouldn’t have said it, then: I wouldn’t have used the word and would’ve been surprised if anyone else had, but that was what it was. I, too, wanted nothing but this: to have her back.

  She was slow to divulge to me anything of life at the palace, giving the impression that nothing much ever happened there, but I was unconvinced. Was she playing it down from a respect for my feelings? Or did she judge that it wasn’t my place to know? On her second morning home, I decided I’d ask: ‘So, is the queen a laugh?’