The Confession of Katherine Howard Read online

  Francis asked, ‘Who’s Manox?’

  The name shot through me. ‘Henry Manox?’

  He shrugged. ‘Manox’ was evidently all he knew.

  Wriothesley knows about Henry Manox. But of course he did, because Mary knew about Henry Manox.

  Francis said, ‘He’s brought him in for questioning, that’s what he said. Manox. Who is he?’

  Why would Wriothesley be interested in Manox? Did he think Kate might’ve been pre-contracted to him, as well? ‘He was our music teacher. At the duchess’s. Before you came.’ To my shame, I couldn’t quite resist making it clearer: ‘He was before you.’ Did you really think you were the first?

  Poor Manox–it hadn’t ended all that well for him at the time, and now this, years later. But what was Wriothesley looking for? Why on earth would it matter, a long-ago dalliance with Henry Manox? I dreaded to think that Wriothesley’s enquiries might not be solely about pre-contract but Kate’s conduct in general.

  Then Francis was asking me to stay, his rancour gone all of a sudden as if it had never been, replaced by a heartbreaking hopefulness. Rob wouldn’t mind, he said: he’d go over to one of his friends when he found us here together. My instinct, though, was to rush to warn Kate. Questions were being asked of more than one man, now, and there had to be a way–if only I could think of it–to warn her while protecting Francis from any more trouble. I needed time to think, though. What else could happen before morning? All that would occur, if I told her now, was that she’d suffer a bad night’s sleep. There’d be nothing she could do, at this hour. And, anyway, Francis did need me. Besides, I was exhausted: I doubted I could even make it over to her rooms or, if I did, make much sense when I reached there.

  So, I ended up crawling into bed with Francis, stepping out of my clothes and leaving them where they fell. We didn’t talk; I’d thought we might, but we didn’t, not a word. I’d assumed that sleep would elude him but within a few breaths he was dead to the world. Perhaps an hour or so later, the door opened, then closed: Rob, presumably, gone on his way to someone else’s room to cadge some space in a bed or, unfortunately more likely, on a floor. I stayed awake for hours longer, listening to Francis’s breaths, guardian of them, all the time conscious of lying very still as if under observation and afraid of giving myself away. Conscious of it, but unable to remedy it. Nor did I seem able to use the time to think through what I could say, in the morning, to Kate. Instead, I pondered what she might do when she knew that questions were being asked about her past. What could she do? Go to the king? She’d been told he was in London. Was Wriothesley taking the opportunity of the king’s back being turned? Or had the king absented himself to allow this to happen, in the hope that it’d be cleared up before his return? His departure, I recalled, had been unexpected and Kate had been offered no explanation for it.

  I lay there thinking how the king was Kate’s only supporter. She’d come from nowhere. The king had chosen her, to everyone’s complete surprise. No one could’ve predicted it; she’d been no one’s project. The king alone had chosen her–liking what he saw and not looking any closer–and he’d championed her: she was only here on his whim. She had no friends with influence. Family, yes: her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, was the country’s most powerful nobleman and the king’s right-hand man; but that was all the more reason for him to drop her fast if she were in trouble, and he was wily and heartless enough to do so. Five years previously, he’d done exactly that to his other queen-niece, Anne Boleyn: turning prosecutor, even, in that case; conducting the trial and then, at its conclusion, declaring the death sentence.

  First at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox…I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body…

  Never had I thought that Kate would one day become queen–she was a Howard but from the bottom of the Howard pile, the motherless tenth child of the disappointing second son, and empty of ambition. At the duchess’s, though, she was queen of a kind from the day she arrived.

  When I first ever saw her, I’d been momentarily blinded from a dash indoors and only as my eyes adjusted did I see that I’d run in on our Mrs Scully and that she was standing beside a girl. The girl wasn’t quite standing but reclining against a hefty wooden chest. One hip on, one off. I recognised her as about my own age–twelve–but otherwise she was unlike any girl I’d ever encountered. The sling of that hip, perhaps. None of we girls at the duchess’s would’ve dared sit like that, or indeed sit at all in the presence of an adult who was standing, even if that adult was only our own dear Mrs Scully.

  Mrs Scully said to me, ‘This is Katherine,’ and she sounded very correct, as if addressing me in the presence of another adult.

  She hadn’t said, Catheryn, this is Katherine.

  ‘The new girl,’ she said. I was the new girl, though. Or had been, until now.

  Any other girl, having dimpled, would’ve bitten her lip and glanced away, but this Katherine held me in her gaze, the glitter of which, I understood, was to be taken as a smile. Faintly amused, was how she looked. It struck me, even at the time, as an adult look, knowing and appraising. Unnerved, I’d murmured the requisite greeting and scarpered back to my friends.

  I’d been at the duchess’s for six months, by that time. It would be the making of me, my parents had said, to grow up in the household of Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, the widowed matriarch of England’s foremost family. We were so lucky that she’d agreed to take me on. The duchess had been plain Agnes Tilney before she’d become the old duke’s second wife, and she and my grandfather had been second cousins. We were the poor relations.

  Aim high, my mother had been telling me ever since I could remember: Don’t settle, she’d say. There were no lullabies, for me: only Aim high. Don’t settle.

  ‘I didn’t settle,’ she’d say, and look at me.

  Back in those days I did only have eyes for her; there was no one else in my little world. What I saw of her, usually, was that long straight back of hers as she strode busily around our house. If she’d have settled, she–farmer’s daughter–would’ve become a farmer’s wife; she’d have married a tenant farmer and had a big, busy farmhouse to run. But she’d aimed high and married a gentleman’s son who himself was aiming high and had become a successful lawyer. So, she had a big, busy manor house to run, with tenants to farm our land.

  I grew up with the belief that there was work to do in the world: the work of bettering oneself. Our chaplain talked of having one’s God-given place in the world, yet we as a family seemed intent on leaving our place behind. My mother’s way around it was to believe that it was our place to better ourselves. Bettering ourselves, she said, was what God intended for the poor-relation Tilneys. ‘God has been kind to us,’ she’d say, ‘and enabled us to work hard and we’ve done well, we’ve been able to make a good life for ourselves.’ She never looked happy when she said it, though, she never looked pleased; she looked as if there was always so much more to do.

  ‘All this,’ she’d say sometimes, in wonder, when she paused in the garden and looked back at our house. But try as I might, I couldn’t see what she saw. The house was all I’d ever known, and, beautiful though it was, it was just a house. If there was no house, what would there be? Nothing: just grass and mud; openness, emptiness, a clearing. The wonder in her voice scared me, the implication that what we had–all this–was unexpected, accidental, just as likely to not be. Grass and mud and wind and no shelter were just as likely. From how she said it, all this had been built by my parents’ will alone, and the strength of their will alone kept it standing. But for how much longer? Whenever my father was home from his lodgings in London, I overheard tense exchanges on the rising cost of the stables, the expense of ordering new livery for the servants.

  I grew up knowing that I had a part to play in keeping that house standing: I could make a good marriage, make connections. A good marriage–mine–would shore us up; we’d no longer be the poor relations isolated in our beautiful hou
se in that clearing. I was my parents’ only child and their fear for me was that I’d slide away into obscurity. Little did they know that there’d come a time when my obscurity was all we’d wish for.

  Back then: Watch and learn, they urged me of my forthcoming time at the duchess’s; soak everything up and do your utmost best at all times. I’d be working hard to help run a big household, as well as learning Latin and Greek, mathematics, music and astronomy, but the reward, ultimately, would be my own wealthy, well-connected household in which–God willing–I’d be raising my husband’s heir and our many other eminently marriageable children. It all sounded good to me, or certainly good enough. At eleven years old, I knew of nothing else to wish for.

  Make people want you, Catheryn, my mother said. Make yourself the girl who people want for their family, she said. Because, yes, it’s all down to money, in the end, to dowry and social standing and there’s nothing, she’d tell me, that you can do about any of that: that’s for us to worry about, and we’re doing the very best for you that we can. But there is something else: character. There are so many girls, Catheryn–more and more, these days–and so little to choose between those of you with your kind of dowry and background, but you can tip the balance in your favour. You can make yourself the girl who people want as their daughter-in-law, their son’s wife, the mother of their grandchildren. You can be the girl who lights up the room, catches eyes, warms hearts. Make yourself the girl that people want to be running their son’s household. You’ll need to show an eye for beauty and quality, she said, but a nose for value. A head for figures and a good hand for letter-writing. You’ll need to give the impression you can deal with servants–keeping them in line whilst winning them over–and keep a good name with merchants and suppliers. Don’t stand for nonsense but curb your tongue and keep your temper, and never take sides. Have a ready smile, be quick to lend an ear, a helping hand, and have an eye for who’s to be trusted. Keep your counsel, but don’t be secretive.

  Be respectful to your elders and betters, she insisted. Never waiver in that, never be tempted for a single moment to think that you’re quicker-witted or clearer-eyed than your elders and betters, because once you start that, you’ll never be able to stop, and no one’s interested in clever girls. Wittiness never got a baby to sleep, or a draper paid.

  Make sure you’re always looking neat and tidy and clean, she’d say, but other than that, don’t worry about your appearance. You’re not bad-looking, as it happens, she’d tell me, but looks fade before you know it, and then what are you left with? Beauty draws the eye but for all the wrong reasons. Keep your eyes down, Catheryn. Don’t look at boys. Don’t even look. Don’t get distracted. Don’t let any silly girls fill your head with talk of romance. Girls can be very silly, Catheryn, when they haven’t had what you’ve been lucky enough to have: a proper upbringing. It’s a silly girl who gets her head turned. Get your head turned, she said, and you’re lost.

  You’re no one’s fool, she’d say to me, and there was something in how she said it that suggested it was a secret between us and, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, not an entirely comfortable one. A burden, almost, perhaps.

  There was such a lot to remember about how I should be; I worried I’d never remember it all, let alone one day actually manage to be it. None of this would ever have been said to Katherine: she had no mother to say it and, because she’d been born into England’s principal family, there was no need anyway for it to be said. And so she came unencumbered to the duchess’s; whereas for me, my mother had spoken so compellingly that, in my mind’s eye, I could see the woman I was to strive to become, the calm and capable, well-loved and much-valued lady, warm-hearted and cool-headed. She was a wonderful prospect, that lady, but always at a distance from me; such a distance that she seemed to have nothing to do with me, striding away into the future, and when I arrived at the duchess’s I didn’t know if I’d ever keep up or even ever dare take a step in her direction.

  All that talk at home of the Howards’ wealth, but when, on my journey from home to the duchess’s, the leading rider called back that we’d arrived, I assumed we were stopping off somewhere for an overnight stay of which I hadn’t been informed. We were approaching a timber gatehouse, behind which was a moat and what appeared to be a jumble of barns. Hours earlier, we’d ridden away from the family home that my father had had built: a symmetrical, brick-built house gazing big-windowed over formal gardens. Clattering over that old drawbridge, I craned enquiringly towards my old nursemaid, Mrs Kent, but received only a smile in return. The drawbridge took us to a porters’ lodge, beyond which was a courtyard like a farmyard: a flock of ewes being shepherded across it, and a dozen or so labourers yelling and hammering, hauling and slamming down plough-shafts, scythes, cartwheels and crates.

  A couple of labourers took our horses, and a liveried man arrived to greet us, requesting that we accompany him. Duly, we tottered across cobblestones, avoiding the smears and dollops of dung. The man’s grey jerkin had a subtle shimmer to it. My own servants were dressed in a flat, glaring blue. Someone wealthy, then, was staying here: a party from the duchess’s, perhaps, to meet us and then take us on with them in the morning to her splendid, elegant house. I asked Mrs Kent, ‘Where is this?’

  ‘It’s where the duchess lives.’ She sounded surprised that I’d asked.

  I was weary from the ride, lacking patience. Servants will believe anything, I’d been told often enough. ‘No, it isn’t,’ and I laughed to muffle my irritation.

  She laughed, too. ‘Yes, it is.’

  Poor old Mrs Kent, I felt, who knew so little of the world.

  We and our handful of attending men followed the well-dressed servant down a passageway into a courtyard which, to my relief, was serene. This, then, was where people lived, although I noticed that the windows, which were unshuttered, had linen in the frames instead of glass. Still, the place would do for an overnight stop, and, anyway, I was won over by the rich aroma of roasting meat. The servant ushered us through vast double-doors into a hall: a Great Hall, no less, the hammerbeam roof holding its decorative detail–coats of arms and sparring beasts–high above us, and the walls fortified by tapestries, their silken characters wan and fey among vines and waterfalls. The room could’ve come from stories that Mrs Kent used to tell me: stories of knights and damsels. No doubt this place had once been home to a noble family. Our own Hall was merely a room in which our staff put up a couple of tables at mealtimes for themselves and anyone visiting on household business, while my mother and I dined in the privacy of an adjacent parlour. This old Great Hall, although as yet deserted apart from a skulking wolfhound, was about to seat perhaps as many as a hundred people at several long tables: we’d stumbled upon a feast. At the far end, up on a platform, a linen-bright table bristled with silverware. ‘The duchess’s table,’ Mrs Kent whispered, delighted. She’d know, I realised: she was old enough to have grown up in just such a house. Was this the duchess’s house, then? It was impressive in here, but barely over the threshold was that farmyard with its mud and flies and indignant livestock. I would have to get word to my parents: they should know that the duchess had been misrepresented. We’d been tricked, hoodwinked. My mother’s plans for me didn’t include my growing up in a house no better than those of which she’d spoken as haunting her own childhood, the olden times before the coming of our bright new king and his subjects so keen to make better lives for themselves.

  Distraction, though, came in the form of the household steward who blundered in, twinkly-eyed and bulbous-nosed, to introduce himself–‘Mr Scully’–and, having apprehended the hound, congratulated us on arriving just in time for supper. I wondered whether I’d be sitting with any of the other girls. My mother had told me there were four other girls in the duchess’s care but she didn’t know exactly who they were. She’d explained to me that any who weren’t Howards–daughters, instead, of family friends–were in the household to be companions to those who were: that was how it worked, she�
��d said, as it had for hundreds of years in all the important households. Which, though, I now wondered, was I–family or friend? My parents considered me to be a blood relation of the duchess’s, but, standing there in that huge old room, stroking a hound whose collar was embroidered with the Howard coat-of-arms, the relationship seemed so tenuous as to be negligible.

  Nothing in how the duchess addressed me was enlightening on the matter. She’d followed her steward; I hadn’t known whether to expect personal word from her but suddenly there she was, stepping from behind rotund Mr Scully to express polite concern for my welfare after the journey. I’d know now to describe her as a handsome woman: lean, with strong features, the most striking being her bird-black eyes. At the time, her silvered hair had me thinking of her as old; in fact, she probably wasn’t even fifty. Wiry and brisk, she wore a gown of serviceable fustian and her fingers were stained with berry-juice. Presumably she’d come from the kitchen or still-room.

  The girls were a further surprise: I would never have guessed them to be my companions if they hadn’t been introduced as such, on their way into supper. I’d been anticipating composed, exquisitely dressed young ladies; but these were wide-eyed girls in barely passable worsted. Alice, Dottie and Mary were about my own age and Maggie looked to be a couple of years younger. To my relief, no distinction was made as to whom was related to the duchess, and all four were ushered to places on the high table, as was I.

  Supper was plain fare–bird pie–which was welcome after the ride, and, as soon as we’d finished, the steward’s wife–dumpy and smiley like her husband, but much younger–asked the girls to show me to their bedroom, waving us off with her babe-in-arm snatching at her coif. On the way across the courtyard to the staircase, the girls buzzed around me, full of questions. Their concerns were my horse at home–her name, her temperament–and whether I had brothers and sisters, and what was the latest I’d ever stayed up. I’d been anticipating serious-minded young ladies with firm marriage plans in place, ladies about to step up into their future lives; and me joining the ranks, the back of the queue, falling into line and following in their footsteps. Instead, there was Dottie telling me that Alice had been unwell and had an invalid’s licence allowing her to eat meat on fish days and fast days, and Alice raising her eyebrows in acknowledgement of her good fortune. That, it seemed, counted as the big news around here.