The Sixth Wife

Just as I was ready to move on from nursemaids and governesses to the school, it closed. Anne Boleyn was coming to the fore, and Señor Vives had unwisely been persuaded to say a little something in Queen Catherine’s favour. The consequences were worse than he’d anticipated. His services were no longer required. Whatever I’ve learned, I had to learn from Kate: a hand-me-down education, with which she was unstintingly generous.Which wasn’t how she claimed to see it. Once she claimed that it was from me she’d learned what mattered in life. Incredulous, I’d challenged: Learned what? This was how she put it: to have the courage of her convictions. I couldn’t see it. She was courageous, she had convictions. Whereas me, I follow my instincts and I’m stubborn: it’s as simple as that.

She’d tried to explain: ‘What’s your dog called?’

‘ Which dog?’ And, anyway, she knew what my dogs were called.

‘You know which dog. Gardiner.’ My lapdog, named after our principal catholic bishop who also – bad luck – happens to be my godfather. Our principal catholic bishop, preaching celibacy whilst installing a succession of mistresses in his palace. ‘You called him Gardiner,’ she said, ‘so you could make us laugh by calling him to heel.’

‘That’s just me being silly.’

She gave me her wide-eyed look. ‘You’re never just being silly.’

I was determined not to let her take it seriously. ‘It was nothing.’

But she wasn’t having it. ‘Well, here’s something that isn’t nothing then. I was there, remember, that evening, at your house, with all those people, when Charles said every lady had to choose the gentleman they’d most like to take in to dinner, and what did you say?’

Oh, she had me now; I couldn’t suppress a smile at the memory. What a good pair we’d made, Charles and I, if an unlikely one, me being half his size and half his age. (Lucky that I could never have been mistaken for any daughter of his: him, a genial, greying bear of an Englishman, and me a snub-nosed, sharp-tongued half-Spaniard.) The evening in question, I’d gone up to the repellent Stephen Gardiner and said, ‘I’ll do things a little differently; I’ll take the man I like least and that’s you.’

I said to Kate, ‘It was a joke.’

‘He didn’t find it funny, though, did he? He laughed along with everyone else, but you could see he didn’t like it.’

‘Yes, which is why he’s the butt of jokes like that.’ Pompous ass. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘you’re nice, Kate, and I’m not, and that’s all it is.’ I didn’t like the way the conversation was going, her implication that she was somehow lacking. Something I loved about her was her quiet certainty. And why, in any case, should she want to make cheap jokes? That was for me to do.

‘You make your point, Cathy,’ was what she replied. ‘You make people think. You go out on a limb to do that. And I’ve never in my whole life taken even the smallest risk.’

I wonder, now, what Señor Vives would make of what happened to her in the end. Advice to his girls was something he’d undertaken seriously. Yes, there were languages to learn and translations to do, there was astronomy and maths and music, but he was keen, too, for his girls to do well in general. In life. To be happy, no less. Kate told me that he’d advised them never to marry for love. For a man, it was of no consequence, he’d said: a man could marry for love. But not a girl. Because it would render her vulnerable.

Of all the pieces of advice from him, Kate chose to ignore this one.

Eight

It was this, with Thomas: he was often onto something, but he never knew when to stop. That was Thomas’s problem. He was unstoppable. Take that night of the stars. Was he content with a few special moments that arose there in the dark garden? No, because next morning – barely morning, barely even dawn, a mere few hours later – he decided it was the turn of the girls.

I was awake, just; must have been, because I was unaware of being woken. How early was it? Very. I’d heard the clock strike four, but couldn’t recall it striking five. Not dark, nor light.What I’d heard was a girl’s voice, outside, in the grounds. Not the voice of a resentful servant on some extra-early duty, perhaps in the bakehouse, half asleep and matter-of-fact. This was someone wide awake, excited, momentarily forgetting herself before being hushed. And from my window I spied them: Elizabeth – it had been her voice – with little Jane, being led through the garden by Thomas. Only nightgowns beneath their cloaks, the three of them, and the girls’ hair was down; I’d never before seen Jane with her hair down. Her walk was brisk but she was well behind the other two, her reluctance clear. Elizabeth’s hair was like a fox fur. Her lolloping sideways canter was keeping her abreast of Thomas while she chattered at him in a theatrical hush. She loves drama, I realised as I watched.Why do people say there’s none of her mother in her? Her father would have either woken the whole household to join him, or he’d have genuinely enjoyed the secrecy. But her mother would have done exactly as Elizabeth was now doing: making a show of stealing away. The old king had been a showman but Anne Boleyn had loved show, and there’s a difference: Henry had drawn people in, Anne had wanted them to see what they were missing.

Unwittingly, I was Elizabeth’s audience. I’m all for high jinks, believe me, but this? A grown man prancing around in his nightgown in the early hours with two girls entrusted to his wife’s care? A man who had been suspected of having had too close an interest in one of the girls. A girl who wasn’t just a girl but a princess. Was that why Jane had been drawn into the escapade, as alibi, chaperone? They slipped from view and I attempted to follow them, leaving my room without waking Bella, but then I saw Elizabeth’s governess, Mrs Ashley, in her nightdress, at a window far down the hallway. ‘Mrs Ashley?’

‘Oh!’ She slapped a steadying hand over her heart. I apologised for unnerving her and asked what was happening.

She glanced at the window as if she had to look again before she’d know, and answered slowly, flatly. ‘He says it’s going to be a beautiful morning.’Then she sounded anxious: ‘Do you think they’ll be all right?’

It was her job to know that. Or in Elizabeth’s case, at least; Jane’s nursemaid would be held to account for Jane. I quelled my irritation. ‘Where’s he taking them?’ She shrugged, which frankly wasn’t good enough. I answered myself: ‘To the river.’ Because that’s where I’d go on a beautiful dawn.

‘He woke her before I could stop him.’ She chewed her lip, contrite.

‘He came into her room?

She, too, now sounded surprised. ‘Yes. But he does. That’s what he does.’ The surprise seemed to be at my not having known. ‘In the mornings.’ She half laughed. ‘Just not usually so early.’ And then when I said nothing – flummoxed – she continued, ‘He likes to come in, get her up, play with her.’

‘Play with her?’

She shrugged. ‘Tickle her. Tease her. Chase her around the room.’ She must have realised how it sounded because she explained, ‘That’s how he is: friendly, very friendly, never on ceremony. Everyone’s favourite uncle.’ She gave a quick, worried smile as I turned away, gave up on her and returned to my room.

I raised it with Kate later. She was having breakfast in her chamber. Who but children ever have breakfast? But there she was, with eggs. I declined to share. Since when had she been sitting around in her bedroom in the mornings, eating breakfast? She checked whether I’d slept well and I lied that I had. ‘Thomas, though,’ I added, ‘he was up early.’

‘Oh, he woke you,’ she concluded. ‘I’m sorry, Cathy.’

He didn’t, I reassured her. I was awake, I said; half awake. ‘But he woke the girls.’

‘Girls?’ She was unfolding the linen in which her bread was wrapped.

‘Jane and Elizabeth.’ I declined her offer of some of the soft, white bread; picked up, instead, one of the mound of cushions from her bed, hugged it to me.This particular cushion I recognised; remembered her embroidering it, back in the days of Henry. Stunning embroidery. Was there anything Kate didn’t do, and didn’t do perfectly? I’m a poor needlewoman, don’t have the patience. ‘That’s a habit of his, is it?’

‘Waking early?’ Before I could clarify, she said, ‘I don’t think Thomas has “habits”.’ And flicked her gaze skywards. ‘He just…does whatever he wishes. I lose track. I didn’t realise he was up early but…’

Kate’s response – if it could be dignified as such – was not as I’d expected, not as I’d hoped. Irritated, I persisted, ‘He was taking them to the river, as far as I could see.’

Chewing, she frowned. It was a question.

‘Said it was going to be a beautiful day.’ I put the cushion back. ‘Said to Mrs Ashley.’

She looked at the window. ‘Well,’ she began, dreamily, ‘it is.’ Her eyes caught the light, shone.

This was no good, she was letting herself get carried away and this could well turn out badly. She should be extra-careful, in charge of a princess; she should realise that. Especially this particular princess, but presumably she didn’t know what I knew about Elizabeth and Thomas.

‘Bet the girls’ll be tired,’ I said, because I was uncertain what else to say. ‘It was very early. Before five.’

‘Before five?’ That had her attention. She seemed to stop and think. ‘Well,’ she continued, ‘they should have a good, long nap after lunch. I’ll tell William,’ their tutor.

I almost laughed. The girls, miss a lesson?. And Kate herself rising late. What was going on? I tried to look merely mildly interested. ‘Does Thomas do this often?’

‘Wake the girls?’ She dabbed a damask napkin to her lips.

I shrugged. ‘Wake people.’

She stood, indicated to her maid that she’d finished. ‘Well, he’s always waking me,’ a quick smile, ‘but not to take me to the river.’

I was shocked, to be honest. Which in itself shocked me. Because I’m unshockable, aren’t I? Everyone knows that. Yet there I was, feeling flushed and – deeper – chilled. That’s shock, isn’t it? But why? What on earth had I been thinking? That they didn’t sleep together? Newlyweds? Happy newly-weds? In truth, I hadn’t been thinking about it at all. There was so much else about them that was a puzzle. Was it, then, Kate’s mention of it that shocked me? Her direct mention of it? No, because sex wasn’t a popular topic of conversation with her, but it certainly wasn’t unmentionable. And, anyway, it wasn’t direct, what she said. But nor was it coy. I didn’t quite know what it was. An aside, a quip; it had felt like a brush-off. I realise, now, what it was that shocked me. It wasn’t what she said, but how she said it. As an aside, while she stood up and turned away. Allowing me a glimpse, but only so much, as if it were nothing of significance.

It was something I thought about as I lay in bed that night. Kate, like me, had probably had only one lover. Three marriages, but probably only one lover.Ted, her first husband, had been too old; I remembered now that she’d told me, ‘There was none of that.’ I hadn’t known her really in those days, the brief time of Ted; not properly. ‘It wasn’t a bad life for a girl,’ was what she later told me about it; and indeed she was a girl – fifteen, sixteen – in those days, younger than her own stepchildren. Her next husband was John and he, too, was a lot older than she was, but he wasn’t too old. Come to think of it, when they married he was probably younger than Thomas is now. John and Kate were married for fifteen years. John had been her lover. And then Henry, the king: nothing much doing there. I’d wanted to know, of course; everyone had wanted to know, but she actually did tell me. He’d tried, was what she whispered; he’d tried, a couple of times, and then given up. She gave me a look, and I pulled a face, said, ‘Thank God,’ to which her response was nothing more than a wan smile. Because the less said, the better. Not that it was news in Henry’s case. Anne Boleyn had famously decried his stamina – it was one of the misdemeanours for which she died – and, frankly, the record had been poor since then, with his fifth queen, little Catherine Howard, too stupid to realise that it didn’t mean she could take her pleasures elsewhere.

Pleasures. Me, like Kate: just the one lover. My husband. I bet people assumed that Charles and I were lovers for all twelve years of our marriage. Because we were clearly in love; because Charles was what they call a full-blooded man, a ladies’ man, he was so evidently all man; and because – I know what they think – I’m what’s known as hot-headed, headstrong, which is taken to mean hot-blooded.Well, people know nothing, do they. I spent the first couple of years of our marriage having babies. And then there I was, sixteen, with two babies under two. Enough, as far as I was concerned: I’d done my duty and was anxious not to get pregnant again. Really anxious. And Charles was anxious not to hurt me. I hadn’t recovered from the second birth, no doubt because I hadn’t healed from the first. Charles – much married, good at women – understood. And what they don’t tell you – unless they’re Anne Boleyn – is that the all-jousting type of man doesn’t actually have much energy left for the bedroom. Not when he’s over thirty, certainly.

Charles must have considered that he was doing me a kindness by mostly leaving me alone and of course in a way he was. But months became years and then it had been so long – practically all my adult life – that I wouldn’t have known how to start if I’d had to. That was something I pondered that night: how had Kate known how to start, when it came to it? I had to conclude that Thomas – resolutely non-jousting Thomas – had taken the trouble to show her.

Nine

The day I set off back home from that first visit, Kate was up late and then at prayers, then talking with the girls’ tutor. Having sent word that I’d like to be fetched when she was free, I remained in my room and helped Bella pack up. Or tried to, but Bella’s too capable to need or probably even welcome my help. I had none of my own ladies for company; I’d come unattended, this trip – Joanna being due her first child, and Nichola having returned to her family home. I used the time to tackle some correspondence. When I finally got to Kate’s room, she was treating herself to a bath. Her ladies Marcella and Agnes seemed to have exhausted themselves preparing it, and were reclined on cushions by the fire, reading. I ducked through the canopies, brushing aside bunches of lavender, and there was Kate amid more lavender in a tub of deep oats-creamy water.

‘Bath time,’ I said, pointlessly – a mere envious purr – and she smiled in response, closed her eyes and smiled even wider. On a table beside the tub was a big brass bowl: she’d be washing her hair, then, too. In the steaming water, among the usual cinnamon and liquorice sticks and cumin seeds, were slices of lemon.

I queried: ‘Lemon?’

‘It’s good. Lightens your hair.’ Her eyes sprang open. ‘Not your hair,’ she retracted. ‘Lightens light hair.’

Yes: no good for me. Cloves and rosemary for me.

‘Do you really have to go?’ she asked.

I pulled up a stool, sat. ‘Houses don’t run themselves, do they.’ I’ve an excellent steward – a legacy of Charles, who appointed well and inspired loyalty – but there’s only so much he can do, or is willing to do. There’s only so much that it’s fair of me to expect him to take on. I do the household accounts. More than a hundred people look to me, ultimately, to keep them fed and clothed and educated. All those people needing to be encouraged, placated and sometimes, unfortunately, reprimanded: ladies and gentlemen, senior members of staff and the servants who work under them, and all their children. In kitchens and storehouses, chapel, gardens, laundry, the farm and stables. Permission to be given and funds found for orders: four or six hundred oranges this month, and four hundred or five hundred eggs? Each head of department will know his or her own requirements, but it’s me who has to bring them together. We need barrels of soap for the laundry, but we also need soap for the kitchens and for our bedrooms. Wax for candles, of course, for the chandlery; but also for the laundresses, so that they can seal the edges of some of our clothes. We need bolts of fabric for me and the boys, and for our ladies and their children, and ushers and pages and maidservants; but we also need kitchen aprons and chapel robes, tablecloths, saddlecloths, blankets, curtains. And boots, the children have to be kept in boots: that’s what always seems to catch me out, and – it seems to me – most often with my own children. How many times have we been ready to journey between London and Lincolnshire and I’ve glanced down to see holes in Harry’s or Charlie’s boots? And then we’ve had to delay for a new pair to be made. As lady of the household, I did all this when Charles was alive; I don’t understand why it’s been so much more tiring since he died. I said to Kate, ‘You should come and see me, stay with me.’

She settled back in the bath, seeming to consider it. But she wouldn’t. I knew it, somehow. Something had changed – everything had changed – and willowy, light-footed Kate was somehow more solid; she was unbudgeable. It was me who was going to have to do the running from now on. She surprised me by saying, ‘If only you could just stay here for ever, you and the boys. I wish we all lived here, don’t you?’

I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. It’s usual, isn’t it: that desire to share a new-found happiness. To feel blessed and thereby magnanimous, keen to spread your blessings around. I’d been like that when I’d just had the boys: I’d wanted everyone to have children; I’d wanted so badly for Kate to have children. It took me years to calm down on that score.

Then she confided, ‘It wasn’t sudden, Thomas and I. It’s not been sudden.’

I smiled at her: if you wish; whatever you say. No flash in the pan, was what she was understandably keen to imply. But even if it was sudden, I wondered, why assume that I wouldn’t understand? Me, of all people. Me, who knows all there is to know about sudden. Me, the girl who married Charles a mere three months after the death of his previous wife. Less sudden, yes, but still sudden, especially considering that the dead wife was the woman for whom he’d defied the king and risked the death penalty. Charles’s elopement with the king’s sister had been the love story of the century. And it really was; they did genuinely love each other. Then I came along, tripping along in the footsteps of everyone’s favourite, fairytale princess. That was difficult, that’s what difficult means. That was a scandal.

No, it’s not the suddenness of it, I wanted to say as I smiled down at her: it’s Thomas; why Thomas? But I couldn’t say that, could I. Not then. Too late. It was done and dusted: she’d married him. And if she got wind of my distrust of him, she’d decide I should spend more time with him. So that I’d grow to like him, to love him. That was Kate all over: a plan of re-education for me. Well, I couldn’t be bothered with that; that was to be avoided.

‘I mean,’ Kate said, ‘he asked me to marry him before,’ and clarified, ‘before I married Henry.’

Well. This was new. ‘But you were married to John.’ Before Henry had come John, and there’d been very little time in between them.

‘When John died.’

‘What, he just’ – I laughed – ‘came up to you and asked you?’ In passing? Because there couldn’t have been time for much else.

She laughed with me – ‘No!’ – before turning contemplative. ‘No, no. We talked about it a lot, at the time.’ She smiled.‘He’s a surprisingly devoted sort. I mean, you wouldn’t think it of him, would you, but he waited for me.’

Well, either that, or she was one of his options, the one to which he returned when he couldn’t get Elizabeth.

‘We talked and talked…And I couldn’t tell you, Cathy; it wouldn’t have been fair on you. Henry was around by then, making his intentions clear. You remember that. I couldn’t draw you into this mess. It was…frightening.’ She winced: ‘It was miserable. We could talk all we liked, Thomas and I, but there was no choice, really, was there. We all knew what Henry wanted, so in the end there was no choice.’

True: if Henry asked you to marry him, there was no saying no. However much he made it sound like a question – and he’d have been careful to do that; he had his pride – there was no saying no to a king, particularly when that king was Henry. All that we’d stood for, Kate and I, was nothing in the face of Henry because he wasn’t a man but a king. And I suppose I’d assumed it hadn’t mattered all that much because, yes, it’d be unpleasant and quite possibly dangerous for Kate, but if anyone – any woman – was up to it, she was. And, crucially, it wasn’t going to be for long. She’d only have to be patient for a few years at most, taking what she could from the situation. Obviously it wasn’t without its compensations, being queen. But I hadn’t known that there was more to it, for her; that there was an actual loss involved. Not only had she had to take something on, but she’d had to leave something – someone – behind. Now, belatedly in on the secret, my heart throbbed for her. ‘You should have told me,’ I protested. ‘Since when have I cared about “frightening”?’Thomas, forgotten; it didn’t matter that it was Thomas. This was about Kate. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. You should never have had to go through that alone.’

‘Oh -’ She waved a hand, dismissive, weary. ‘I wasn’t totally alone. Anne knew, of course. And because Anne knew, Will knew.’

Of course, of course: Anne, Will, her sister and brother. Family. A family which had then done very nicely from the royal marriage. As families always do. Don’t misunderstand me, I like Anne, Kate’s sister, very much;Will, too, but particularly Anne: we’re good friends. There’s no denying, though, that she and Will stood to do very well from Kate’s marriage to Henry. They were hardly impartial advisors.

‘I had to do it,’ Kate was saying, ‘and so I did do it, and I think I did it very well.’

No question of that. ‘You did.’ Her motto, I remembered: To be useful in all I do. Useful to her family in this case certainly.

I cut in: ‘Does she – Anne – know now?’ Of this marriage to Thomas.

Kate nodded, a by-the-by nod.

‘And Will.’ It wasn’t a question, I already knew the answer, and indeed she didn’t bother to confirm or deny it.

‘I wish you’d told me.’

‘I did,’ she tried.

That was disingenuous of her; I gave her a look.

She relented a little. ‘You’re busy, Kate; you’ve the boys.’

I didn’t relinquish that look.

‘I couldn’t have burdened you.’

‘Oh -’ Exasperation: words failed me.

‘And you…you tend to talk me round.’ She tried a smile.

‘Yes, and perhaps that’s why you should tell me what you’re up to.’

I wasn’t sure what had just been said; I wasn’t sure, all of a sudden, where we were with this. Except that we were on uncertain ground.

‘You scare people, you know, Cathy.’ She was careful to make it sound good-humoured.

I rolled my eyes: That’s nonsense, that’s ridiculous. ‘Everyone knows that’s just me.’ I speak my mind and I don’t give an inch. ‘The only people I frighten are the ones who deserve it,’ I said. ‘I don’t frighten you’

She smiled; her knowing smile, the mysterious, infuriating one that she favoured when declining to go on, when putting a stop to something. I found her towel, handed it to her. Listen: the truth is that no one ever scared Kate, even if it suited her on this occasion to think otherwise.