The Confession of Katherine Howard Read online

  At the time, she merely told me that Maggie and Alice were already in residence.

  ‘Alice?’ She’d taken Alice from Lord William? Poor Alice.

  ‘Lord William’s abroad. Oh, and–’ conspiratorial–‘guess who’s written, asking for a place.’

  I was in no mood for guessing games. I’d had a long ride, my legs were shaking and there was a tightening around my eyes. She hadn’t yet asked after me, and hadn’t given me a chance to ask after her. I seemed to have walked in on the middle of a conversation that she was already having with me. My physical disorientation wasn’t helping. I’d been taken through gatehouses and across courtyards and up staircases. I felt that if I could just glance from a window and see the river, I’d know where I was and be better able to concentrate on what she was saying.

  ‘You’ll never guess,’ she rattled on, before providing the answer: ‘Jo.’

  ‘Jo Bulmer?’ Even having to say the name was bad enough.

  ‘Pleading for a place.’ And she raised her eyebrows before letting it slip: ‘Unhappy marriage.’

  Four times is all I’m doing it: hanging there unsaid in the air between us, no longer a laughing matter now that one of us was married.

  ‘But you’ll say no, won’t you.’

  She inclined her head, teasing but also taking me to task. ‘She’s unhappy, Cat.’

  ‘Not as unhappy as I’ll be if she comes here.’ It was the first time I’d referred to my dislike of Jo Bulmer, but I knew it’d come as no surprise to her. She’d only tolerated Jo Bulmer because she’d known she’d do her bidding. And she had a palace full of people to do that, now.

  ‘Not your choice, though, is it?’ she said, half-joking, but only half, and I could hardly believe she’d so casually pulled rank.

  All I could manage in retaliation was, ‘I am not sharing a room with her.’

  That, though, she barely bothered to address. ‘Talk to Bay, he deals with rooms.’

  Well, if we weren’t going to bother observing niceties, I could get straight to what mattered to me: ‘Where’s Francis?’

  I hadn’t known if she’d know but in fact she didn’t miss a beat. ‘Ireland.’

  I felt as if I’d been shot. ‘Ireland?’

  ‘Business opportunity,’ she quoted. ‘Just for a couple of weeks, he said to tell you.’ And she rushed to reassure me: ‘He’s keen to make money, Cat, so he can set up a household of his own.’

  A household of his own would make him a marriageable gentleman. I trusted to taking a breath again.

  ‘And when he gets back,’ she was heading back to the roomful of ladies, ‘there’s a place here for him.’ She flashed me an amused look: ‘Can’t have you moping, can I. No use to me like that, are you.’ Then, opening the door, ‘You’ll be meeting my husband, this evening.’

  I never did meet the king; I was often in his presence but it was never my place to meet him. The first time I laid eyes on him, what floored me wasn’t his size–extraordinary though that was–but that his bulk was so nakedly physical: his lips over-wetted; follicles more visible than the hairs themselves; and his lame tread so heavy. All the silks stretched over him and gold chains around him served not to distract from the flesh but to accentuate it; there was no escaping it. That first evening–and indeed every evening–he made a show of doting on his new wife and demanded the same from everyone else, his gaze sweeping up all others to her. Under such scrutiny, she held herself perhaps a little more stiffly than I’d remembered–although that could’ve been down to the sheer weight of her clothes–but otherwise she looked the same as ever: the high-held head, the stubborn Norfolk chin, the cryptic half-smile. That very first evening, I felt that I could see what it was about Kate that had attracted the king. He could’ve had any of the women in that room, but however modest they contrived to appear, they were intending with those demurely downturned gazes to show themselves to their best advantage. There was none of that from Kate. I could see how he’d think that there was a kind of honesty to her. More likely, I felt, it had something to do with how–as she’d once told me–she was scared of nothing.

  Her ladies hadn’t taken to her, I didn’t think; despite their efforts, I saw it even on that first evening. I understood how they felt because, until I’d known better, I’d felt the same. Kate appeared to give so little of herself: that was the problem. And although that was only right and proper now that she was queen, most of the king’s previous queens had probably still managed to endear themselves to their ladies. The first queen, the first Catherine, so gracious and so very kind, had been much loved; and the latter one, Anne, from Cleves, cheerfully giving herself over to her ladies’ guidance, had been well liked. Jane Seymour must’ve been harder to warm to, but her beady eye on her ladies’ behaviour was because she’d wanted the best from them and perhaps thereby also for them. She’d been determined to make something of them, if only good Christian ladies. And Anne Boleyn? Well, the best that could be said was that her outbursts would’ve rendered her vulnerable. Kate’s problem, I realised that first evening as I watched her through others’ eyes, was that she gave the appearance of being invulnerable.

  True to his word, Francis returned within a couple of weeks, on St Matthew’s Day. There he was, at supper, watching for me to spot him; and when I did, my heart slammed into my throat, almost suffocating me. My gorgeous, joyful boy, even more so than I’d remembered, and despite his days at sea and on the road. A table-length away and amid bustling servers, he was laughing to see my helplessness, mouthing, Meet me later.

  Where? I panicked that there’d be nowhere.

  His response was an infuriatingly unperturbed little shrug: We’ll find somewhere.

  As it happened, we didn’t need to, because later that evening was the first time Kate offered us Thomas Culpeper’s bed. The king had retired early, leaving his gentlemen to be entertained in Kate’s apartment. Dancing was about to begin–she was still seated, changing her shoes–when she whispered to me, ‘You and Francis can have Thomas’s room for the night.’

  A room, the night: that was what I heard first, and–a little drunk, still dizzied by Francis’s surprise re-appearance and distracted by the music that had struck up–I had enough trouble making sense of that. Had she said that the two of us could have a room? But when did lovers ever have a room to themselves for a night?

  And Thomas’s? I doubt I’d have known who ‘Thomas’ was, if Thomas Culpeper hadn’t, at that exact moment, been first to step into the cleared centre of the room, reaching blindly behind him for one of the Annes.

  Thomas Culpeper?

  I looked back at Kate. She was watching him, too, intently.

  Thomas Culpeper’s room? But how would that work? ‘Won’t he–’ mind? Be there?

  She half-smiled. ‘Not if he’s in my room with me.’

  A joke, I assumed, but she confided, ‘Roch’s on duty–’ Jane Rochford, on sleep-in duty–‘so she’ll watch for us,’ and then she was telling me which staircase Thomas Culpeper’s room was on, and which floor, and making me repeat it to check I’d got it. I had got it, but–

  ‘And if I were you,’ she said, supple shoes on and equipped for dancing, rising from her chair, ‘I’d stop wasting time.’

  I was still trying to think my way through what she’d said. Jane Rochford? Watch for them?

  Thomas Culpeper, in Kate’s bedroom?

  It was a joke, wasn’t it?

  But her hand was on my shoulder, giving me a little shake to send me on my way. ‘Go,’ impatient, insistent, ‘Go.’

  Had she said–?

  Across the room, Francis was teasing Maggie, the pair of them laughing and her hand held bashfully over her heart.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, but she was already laughing it off: ‘Go.’

  So we did. A word in his ear had him follow me at a discreet interval to the door and slip demurely along the line of yeomen before, unobserved, bounding down the stairs to join me in the courtyard’s neares
t corner. There, he swayed into me, something of the sea journey still in his limbs like an echo in a shell, and I opened my mouth to his. Despite our racing hearts we took our time, pausing several times on our shadowed route to the staircase, and once on the stairs and even in the doorway, but although I came close on each occasion to losing myself in the intriguing gentle roughness of his lips on mine and the slide of my tongue on his, something was holding me back: Thomas Culpeper, I kept thinking. And wondering: did Francis know? Was I supposed to have known? Thomas Culpeper; her room; Jane Rochford keeping watch. She’d told me as if I’d already known, but I hadn’t. Had I? Then, though, the inner door in Culpeper’s rooms opened to reveal the bed: a big, sheet-strewn bed like a storm-rattled boat, and, ahead, the calm stretch of a whole night on which to sail away.

  In the cool light of the following day, though, I set about observing Kate in the company of Thomas Culpeper. She professed herself tired; the most she could face, that morning, was a stroll through her garden and orchard. The king remained indisposed, and only a few of his gentlemen were retained in his rooms for the more intimate duties; the others were at a loose end and they joined us. Of Kate and Thomas Culpeper, as we ambled down the yew-edged paths, there was absolutely nothing to witness. They barely acknowledged each other. Kate idled with Izzy and me, complaining of backache and waving everyone else ahead, while Thomas Culpeper larked about with her brothers and paid undue attention to Lizzie Fitzgerald. But if Kate and he failed to exchange so much as a glance, that was–I now knew–because they’d had their fill, the night before, of looking into each other’s eyes.

  The door to the orchard was locked, everyone except Culpeper stepping aside as Kate came through with the key. Oblivious, he was standing with his back to her, expansively relating an anecdote to Charlie, and Kate had to push past him. Watching her do it, I recalled her first touch to Henry Manox: her hand on his shoulder as she’d passed behind him, the feigned nonchalance of it and its teasing lightness. There was nothing feigned in this shove of Thomas Culpeper. She really was just moving him where she wanted him, and, I saw, she was used to doing so.

  That evening, she made clear what she expected of me. There’d be no summoning of her to the shared bedchamber–the king was still unwell–and nor was Thomas Culpeper on sleep-in duty, so they were both free and she needed me to keep watch for them. She didn’t have to explain that Jane Rochford couldn’t do two consecutive nights on duty: no lady ever did, so, to avoid raising suspicion, someone else would have to do it. I’d been right, it seemed, in thinking that only Jane Rochford and I knew. Kate told me to swap sleep-in duties with that night’s designated lady, Lizzie Seymour, having taken care to fabricate a convincing reason. All of this was voiced as a request but was in fact an order, and, duly, she didn’t wait for my response but was gone across the room before I’d had time to absorb fully what she’d demanded of me.

  There was only an hour before she’d be retiring for the night and I couldn’t think fast enough as to how I could stop what would otherwise happen. With time closing down on me, I found myself taken up by the pressing problem of what reason I could give to Lizzie Seymour for needing a swap. And so it ended up having happened before I knew it: Kate and I were left alone in her bedchamber. Nightshirt-clad, she was lounging on the bed, eyes closed, candlelight spangled in the gold-embroidered neckline and crowning her loose, rosewater-refreshed hair. I should’ve been undressing but I dithered, only too aware that there was still an opportunity for me to say something but at a loss as to what might be effective. Dithering near the door as if my proximity to it might absolve me.

  Just say something, I urged myself. Anything. If I could get started, something would come to me. ‘Kate…’

  She opened her eyes, widened them: What?

  But she knew damn well what. ‘Please…’ Please don’t make me say this. Please don’t draw me into this. Please don’t take this appalling risk.

  ‘Oh, stop fussing.’ She sat up, hugged her linen-swathed knees. ‘No one knows.’

  As if that were an answer. And so I was left glancing despairingly around that panelling-fortified, tapestry-wadded room, wondering and worrying. ‘But how–?’

  She directed my gaze to the little door in the far wall, the door which led to a dark, narrow staircase, an escape route to which only she and, presumably, her head of household had the key. A route to which, somewhere in the courtyard below, there’d be an entrance.

  My heart thundered. ‘What if anyone sees?’

  ‘No one will.’ She flopped back on to the pillows, luxuriated in them. ‘They’d have to be looking, and no one is.’ It was breathtaking, that confidence of hers, but probably not misplaced because in the eyes of the world this queen could do no wrong. She laced her fingers over her stomach, settling herself comfortably, and said, ‘He’s very, very careful, because–don’t forget–it’s his life that’s at stake.’ She was impressed by that, I heard, and understandably so. She was almost certainly right, too: if by any chance he was caught on the stairs to her bedchamber, she’d be beyond suspicion and it’d be assumed that he’d intended to lay assault to her. His only hope–an impossibly slim one–would be to persuade the authorities that he’d been acting in jest, perhaps on a dare.

  ‘Listen…’ She gazed at the gilded ceiling, gathering her thoughts, then sighed with the effort of making herself clear to me: ‘I deserve this.’ And slid me a look that had me catch my breath. The king, her frank stare implied: think of having to endure sex with the king.

  But even if by any stretch of the imagination Culpeper could be said to be compensation, ‘What if you get pregnant?’

  She blew away my concern on a humourless laugh. ‘Oh, I need to get pregnant.’

  My scalp tightened in horror. I’d been hopelessly naïve. She had a plan, and future kings of England were going to be descended from mindless, preening Thomas Culpeper. That was an abomination. And even if no one ever knew it from Culpeper’s bragging or perhaps from the looks of the child, God would know. Kate would go to Hell for it. I’d go to Hell for having known of it.

  Belatedly, though, I registered her look of scorn. ‘Christ, Cat, do you really think I’d risk that?’

  ‘But–’ How? A half-lemon, again? Was that good enough? Although certainly it’d worked before.

  She raised herself on her elbows, to stress, ‘I am so careful. I have to be, with Thomas. He’s not like–’ she faltered, lay back down–‘some.’

  Francis, she meant: I knew it, although I wished I didn’t. And it was true: Francis was good with his timing. Not that it mattered much for me because if I found that I was expecting a baby, we’d just marry sooner. Francis had said, though, that he’d prefer not to start a family just yet: Let’s give ourselves time, first, to enjoy each other. Whereas Thomas Culpeper, I suspected, would have no regard beyond his own immediate pleasure.

  Suddenly she slipped from the bed and over to one of her jewellery cases; she drew from it a handful of rubies which hung dolorous in the half-light. Shaking the necklace at me, she indicated that I should fasten it for her. What was happening? Where on earth was she going–hadn’t she’d only just undressed? Turning abruptly, she splashed the rubies into the air behind her so that I had no choice but to lunge and catch them. Baring her nape to me, she remarked, indulgently, ‘Thomas is a horror, he likes me in the crown jewels,’ and, tutting, ‘just the jewels, and–can you believe this?–preferably kneeling.’

  The stones slithered over my palm, darted between my fingers, spilled on to the carpet. Cursing, crouching, scrabbled at them, I suffered a scratch from the goldwork to the tender skin between two fingers. Rising, trying again, I still couldn’t manage the catch and she snatched the necklace from me, slew it around her neck so that the catch was at her throat, before–frowning at me, reproachful–fastening it herself, ‘There.’

  Cowed, I retreated to my most basic concern: ‘Where should I sleep?’

  ‘Jane just takes the mattress over th
ere–’ she gestured vaguely across the room. ‘Because these hangings–’ and then she flapped the hand at the hangings, which were as thick as walls and would make something like a tiny room inside the bedframe.

  Even so, I didn’t want to chance hearing anything. It’d been bad enough when it was Francis, but Thomas Culpeper? I indicated the airlock between the bedroom and the golden room: ‘I’ll sleep in there.’

  She misunderstood me. ‘God, no, not in my day room, that’s far too risky: a chamberer coming in extra-early, finding you there…they’d know I was alone, and how would that look?’

  ‘The airlock,’ I corrected.

  A bleat of disbelief. ‘But you can’t sleep in there!’

  Surely the least she could do was allow me to decide for myself where to sleep. ‘Why not?’