The Sixth Wife

As best friends, Kate and I went back further than we could ever even know, to before we were born. Our mothers were very close friends. They came of age under the influence of the formidable queen Margaret Beaufort and the sparkling new Spanish one, and I’d often imagine their optimism as they came together over their books and in their debates and discussions, just as we, their daughters, were later doing. In our case, they were different books and ideas – our good catholic mothers would have turned in their graves if they knew – but they were books and ideas nonetheless. Excitement at the prospect that something of the world was understandable, if not open to change: that’s what we shared with our mothers. The discovery that there was a better life to be lived. For women. I have a feeling that our mothers would have often said to each other, Everything is different now; everything is possible.

For women, was what they would have meant, because Margaret Beaufort and Catherine of Aragon were women who were serious about women. One of them had seen her generation of women run the estates while the men fought the Wars of the Roses; the other had witnessed her mother reign superbly in her own right.

It’s what Kate and I were saying a generation later – Everything’s different now for women - and we considered ourselves onto something new. But, then, women had had a setback, we’d come through difficult times and so we were, in a way, having to start all over again. What I recalled of Kate’s mother Maud was an expression that implied she’d seen it all and was expecting worse, but I doubt she could have imagined just how bad the Anne Boleyn years would be. The locking away of one queen and then the execution of the next. No matter that Catherine was queen, the highest of all women in the land, or, moreover, that she was a good queen, then a fierce queen, fighting for her principles and the rights of her daughter. In the end, she was just a woman, meaning just a burden on a man, no longer pretty and not up to bearing a son. And then, in Anne Boleyn’s world, at Anne Boleyn’s court, there was room for only one woman, and no prizes for guessing whom. That was when most of us – women – slunk away into quiet lives, family lives. Then came Anne’s arrest, and suddenly the woman who was above all other women was – officially – fickle, malicious, bewitching. No doubt about it: Kate and I became women at a time when women were seen as trouble.

Maud belonged, despite that heavy-weather expression of hers, to more optimistic times. It was my mother, the optimist, who lived on to face what was, for her, the end of the world: the Reformation. My mother was a foreigner. She’d come here with the Spanish queen-to-be, Catherine of Aragon, as chief hand-holder. She was Maria de Salinas in those days. Mary Salts to you. Married, Anglicised, she turned into Mary Willoughby. Maria de Salinas, the funny, clever Spaniard, was before my time, but nor did I ever really know the Mary Willoughby who had one of the king’s ships named in her honour. Because that Mary was, by all accounts, carefree, a lover of life. Back in those days, the king had done more than name a ship after his favoured Spaniard: he found her a husband, a good one. And then she had me. And then everything went wrong: England went mad, in my mother’s view, and she followed Catherine into exile, to various tumbledown, far-flung castles. She could have seen it as her duty, even if the hand-holding days had officially long passed, but it was so much more than that, and I’m not sure I have a word for it.‘Friendship’ hardly does it justice: hardly explains leaving one’s family, one’s little girl, for ever, for a banished, tormented queen. Catherine died in my mother’s arms and now my mother is buried alongside her. It was what she wanted, Catherine’s tomb prised open for her when the time came. Two Spanish girls, Maria and Catalina, side by side in Peterborough.

Ten

It was summer when I next saw Kate. A couple of months had slipped by and suddenly it was June or July, I don’t remember which. Strawberry season. She would have been married for six months or so and she looked better than I’d ever seen her – luminous – but there was desperation in her hug when she greeted me.

‘What is it?’ I was worried. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ the agitated tone making clear it was anything but. ‘Really nothing.’

Thomas: that was my first thought. Here we go, honeymoon over. He’s done something, shown his true colours. I tingled at the prospect of vindication. We were in the hall, surrounded by my boxes. The featherbed drivers were at work that morning, in the bedrooms, beating the mattresses, driving fresh air through all those feathers. So, I was temporarily displaced even before I’d properly arrived. One of my leather-covered wooden trunks doubled as a bench for us; we perched side by side. We were alone, Bella having been sent to pick flowers and herbs for my room.

‘It’s just…’ Kate closed her eyes, hard, then opened them and stared at me, indignant. ‘Anne Stanhope.’ Ed Seymour’s wife. ‘Has Ed said anything to you?’

‘Oh, he knows better than to mention her to me.’ Not Thomas, then. Not this time. Oh, well.

She despaired, ‘What is it with her?’

‘What isn’t it?’Loathsome woman. Snide.‘What’s she done now?’

‘She has my jewels, the queen’s jewels. Not only is she keeping them from me – that would be bad enough – but she’s actually going to wear them. She’s claiming she’s first lady of the realm.’

‘Anne Stanhope?’ I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘How’s that?’

‘Wife of the Lord Protector.’

‘Oh, really,’ was all I managed; it wasn’t worth discussing. Kate was first lady of the realm, with the two princesses behind her, and then, if we were going to get down to detail, me: the Duchesses of Suffolk and of Norfolk, traditionally next behind royalty. Anne Stanhope was nobody.

Kate bit her lip. ‘Well, he is first man of the realm, isn’t he.’

‘Well, he shouldn’t be. Much as I like Ed, and much as I think it’s no bad thing he’s in control, it’s not how Henry left it, is it.’ Henry – dying – had stipulated a council of sixteen men, all equal, to oversee little Eddie in these years before he’s old enough to rule alone. But they then agreed amongst themselves to promote Ed to Lord Protector. Not a bad choice, originally, those sixteen men. They’re forward- looking enough, I’ve no complaints in that respect. But Kate should have been on that list with them. Everyone knew it. Even Henry himself knew it. She had run the country so well in his absence, and she was central to his children’s lives. It was a surprise to Kate as well as to everyone else when Henry’s order was made known. Nothing more than dowager queen: but what, quite, was that? No one seemed to know; there hadn’t been one for generations. No doubt it was an unpleasant surprise for Thomas, who’d already proposed to her, who’d assumed he’d be getting a wife on the ruling council. I can guess, though, why Henry showered Kate with wealth in his will but no power. An extremely wealthy widow would be a prize. A dead Henry wouldn’t be able to stop her falling prey personally to unscrupulous interests, but he could ensure England wouldn’t fall with her.

‘I’m dowager queen,’ Kate was saying, ‘I’m the only queen England has, for now. I was due to visit court a week or so ago and I asked Ed to make the jewels available for when I got there.’

I understood what that was about; she didn’t need to spell it out. It would have been hard to go back to court as mere dowager queen: still the queen, but pensioned off. Especially hard, though, as one who was in disgrace for this hasty remarriage to a man-about-town. Those jewels would have helped; they would have reminded people who she was, who she’d been and who, officially, she still was. Reminded people what respect, officially, was due to her.

‘Back comes this nonsense about Anne. And I know it’s not him talking…’

‘No,’ I agreed. Ed famously doesn’t stand up to his wife.

‘…but my problem is that there’s nowhere else to go with this. He’s the ultimate authority, isn’t he.’

‘Yes and no. You could go to the king.’

She recoiled. ‘He’s just a child. I don’t want to involve him.’

‘He’s a very grown-up child,’ which was a polite way of putting it. Her view of Henry’s son was one that I’ve never been able to share; I find him stiff, rather repulsive.

‘But that’s it. He takes everything very seriously; he’ll take this so seriously. But because he is still a little boy, he’ll be trying so hard to please everyone – Thomas and me because he loves us, and Ed because he’s supposed to do as Ed says. He’ll tie himself in knots.’ She looked pained. She said, ‘I can’t bear to see him do that.’

Thomas would have no such scruples, was my bet. How much did Kate know of how Thomas behaved with the king? What I knew, I knew from Ed Seymour. I learned that Thomas was paying the boy to keep him on his side. Ed had complained to me that he was trying to limit the king’s spending, to instil some financial sense into him, ‘And then along comes “Uncle Thomas” behind my back, jangling his change and undermining me.’ I’d asked if it was a lot of money. Not really, Ed had admitted,‘It’s not much more than pocket money,’ but that wasn’t the point, he’d said, because any money looks a lot to a nine-year-old who’s being taught to budget. ‘And how does that make “Uncle Thomas” look to him?’

Like a saint, I’d answered.

He’d inclined his head. ‘Exactly.’

Ed had also told me that before Thomas had married Kate, he’d turned up to see his nephew and got him on his own for a while. The boy had later reported their conversation, guilelessly, to his Uncle Ed. Thomas had appeared to confide in him: I’m thinking of getting married; would you like me to get married? Your Uncle Thomas: settle down, get myself a nice wife. And then you can come and stay with us as often as you’d like. It would be nice, wouldn’t it? So, who would you like me to marry, who would you choose for me? Eddie had obliged, having several stabs at it: his sister, Mary, for example. Oh dear: not quite the answer Thomas had in mind. In the end, he’d had to prompt: How about your wondeful stepmother? Eddie enthused, Oh, yes! His two favourite grown-ups. All done, as far as Thomas was concerned: the king’s permission. That’s how he boasted of it later to his brother:‘I have the king’s permission.’

I asked Kate: ‘What does Thomas think of this business with the jewels?’

‘Oh, he’s furious.’ Pleased with his indignation on her behalf.

An indignation that probably had a lot to do with an opportunity to take his brother to task and, into the bargain, gain some jewellery. ‘What does he think you should do?’

‘Go to Eddie.’

I bet he does.

But she wouldn’t have it. ‘This – these rivalries – it’s all beyond Eddie, and the longer we can protect him from this kind of nonsense, the better. Honestly, you’d think we adults were the children. I hate what this – she – has turned me into. Scrabbling after some jewels. But they’re England’s jewels, for England’s queens. They’re in my safekeeping. I have a duty to keep them safe. If I let Anne Stanhope get hold of them, no one’ll ever see them again. And did I mention that Anne has been saying that when I turn up at court, she’ll have me carrying her train for her? And she’s serious, Cathy, she’s deadly serious.’

‘She’s mad,’ I soothed. ‘Very mad.’

‘She calls me “Latimer’s widow”, you know.’John Latimer’s widow, as she was before her queenship. Anne Stanhope was trying to make it seem as if Kate’s queenship had never happened. ‘She says Henry wasn’t in his right mind when he married me. She says that I’m her husband’s little brother’s wife, and that’s all I am.’

All you are. Lovely, willowy, wise Kate. Anne Stanhope was never, ever, a patch on her in any way whatsoever. To lighten the tone, I said, ‘You got the handsome brother, though.’

And it worked, she laughed. And I laughed, to see her. So, there we both were, grinning away together and, for a moment, nothing else mattered. Two girls amusing themselves: we could still do that, could still be that.

Then Kate said, ‘You know, I’m glad not to be at court. This Anne Stanhope business: I can go to court and tussle over her train, or I can just not go. That’s how it seems to me now. And it’s not as if I need to go, do I. Thomas and I don’t need to go. We’re happy here; really, really happy. I did my time there, and now my time’s my own.’

I liked that; I was proud of her. Not for being happy with Thomas Seymour, but for kicking up her heels and suiting herself.

‘When Sudeley’s ready’ – Thomas’s latest acquisition in Gloucestershire, being renovated – ‘we’ll probably move there more or less permanently.’

That I liked rather less. ‘Oh, Kate, that’s such a long way.’ A long way west.

‘Good.’ She laughed. ‘The further, the better.’ Then she realised what she’d said. ‘Oh, I don’t mean from you.’ She laid a hand on my arm. ‘I’m including you; you’re coming with me. Well, for as much time as you can.’

Kate had finished telling me her woes and was ready to start getting dressed, so I nipped to check on Charlie. Harry wasn’t with us; he was, by then, boarding at court, being schooled with the king. I wanted to see how my lonesome little Charlie was settling in. At twelve, he was becoming too old to be able to occupy himself with almost nothing – a stick and some long grass, a handful of stones and a stretch of water – but of course he was still years away from being resourceful, adaptable. My suspicion was that I’d find him hanging around, looking sorry for himself and getting in everyone’s way.

I was told, though, that he was already with Thomas: in the gardens somewhere, was all the page knew. Three of Kate’s greyhounds came with me, streaking ahead and then, from time to time, checking back. The gardens at Chelsea are stunning not merely because of the work that has gone into them – so many roses that the household distils its own rosewater – but also the imagination, and I don’t mean summer houses, fountains, pools, because there’s none of that showiness. It’s the detail that’s arresting, I thought, as I cut through an alleyway planted all over with thyme; it released its lovely, warm scent as I crushed it underfoot. It’s a careful, old-fashioned garden. Rather like Kate was, in fact. It occurred to me that although Anne Stanhope is vicious, it wouldn’t be hard for someone to be deeply envious of Kate. True, she’d never had the children she’d have loved to have, and she’d had to marry Henry in his final, dreadful years. On the other hand, she had no children to fear for, she’d never been alone, she’d never had money worries and now never would. She was living a charmed life at Chelsea. It struck me that perhaps it would be easy to be as good as Kate if one were living her life.

Charlie was standing in the strawberry patch with one of his friends – another of the pages – and Thomas, who was declaiming to a huddle of giggling, basket-bristling kitchen maids. Spotting me, Charlie beamed; it wrenched my heart, that good-natured smile. You’d never know, to look at them – even to spend a few days with them – that my boys are so unalike. Harry seems so considered but actually he’s everything, all things, and not least hot-headed: it’s all there in Harry if you only know where to look or wait long enough. I don’t mean that Charlie’s any less - perhaps, indeed, he’s more - but if you could cut him down the middle, he’d be the same all the way through: Charlie and more Charlie, like a perfect stone or a healthy tree trunk. Gem, oak, he stood there in that strawberry patch, my boy, turned into a sore thumb between that peacock of a man and girls with blushes like rose-infused cream. His body, I noticed, seemed to have grown too big for him – when had that happened? During the night? – so that he was all gangle. I reined in an urge to rush to him, grab him to me and hold on fast. Absently, he greeted the dogs.

‘I mean it,’Thomas was laughing at the girls. ‘Go. Go! Go and’ – he gestured, suggesting a search for words – ‘put your feet up.’

I had to shield my eyes to get a look at him.

‘We’ll bring you some,’ he was saying. ‘How’s that: your own plateful, picked for you by Charlie’s fair hands and my own; served to you.’

The notion was too much for them: hands fluttered to mouths, renewed giggling.

Thomas was going to pick strawberries? Dressed like that? I doubted I’d ever seen a deeper green – how could so much colour have been worked into that silk? – and gold thread ran like fire across it. Those leaves around his ankles could have been made from paper, by comparison. Why was Thomas going to pick strawberries? Pick better, could he, than those bob-kneed, flutter-handed, well-practised girls?

‘So, go.’ He swooped, snatched their baskets. ‘Go!’

And they did, delighted, their honey-coloured dresses twirling around their legs.

Now, me: my turn. ‘Cathy.’ He was at a disadvantage, though, turned in my direction, his eyes screwed up against the sun.

‘Thomas.’

He put the baskets down. ‘Men’s work, you know, strawberry-picking. No, don’t laugh.’ He did, openly, unafraid of showing those good teeth of his. ‘Back-breaking work. But the boys and I’ – mock-conspiratorial glance at the two boys – ‘are here to do our best.’ My son, on cue, grinned. At least he was still in the clothes he’d worn for travelling, not his best.

‘Good for the soul,’Thomas declared,‘strawberry-picking. Don’t you think? Couple of weeks a year: you need to act quick. I like that. Blink and you’d miss it, strawberry season. As if it’s a secret.’A lazier smile this time. ‘Reminds me, too, of being a boy: stealing them. I like that, too.’

I nodded at the plants at his feet. ‘Except they’re yours.’ I addressed Charlie: ‘I came to see where you were.’ Charlie gave me a self-conscious shrug, And here I am. ‘And there you are.’ I turned to go, leaving him be. Clearly, he didn’t want saving. Then again, I doubted he’d last long; I’d be seeing him indoors before half an hour was up.

Thomas said, ‘Not for much longer he isn’t,’ and told Charlie and his friend, ‘Cabbage leaves.’

The boys – unsurprisingly – looked blank.

I interceded: ‘Cabbage leaves?’

‘As many as you can get hold of – fistfuls; no mercy – before one of our gardener-girls chases you off Thomas indicated a far corner of the kitchen garden, then knelt to begin examining the plants. ‘You’ve never tasted strawberries,’ he said to neither of us in particular, ‘if you haven’t tasted strawberries that have been wrapped in cabbage leaves.’

Charlie dithered, unsure if this was a joke at his expense.

‘Wrap them in cabbage leaves as soon as they’re picked.’ Thomas glanced up at me. ‘Ever heard that?’

‘Never.’

‘French. It’s what the French do. Or so I was told. By a Frenchwoman of my acquaintance.’

I did nothing or perhaps I did something – folded my arms, raised an eyebrow – but said nothing, because he, again, was the one who spoke: ‘I’ve always wanted to try it.’

‘Well, then,’ I said to Charlie, who immediately loped off, friend following, delighted to be in on something.

Standing there, I realised how hot it was. There was no shade anywhere near. Sunlight slammed down. ‘You have cabbages here,’ I remarked. Not having the room in our kitchen garden, we have to have ours imported.

‘We have pretty much everything here.’ He didn’t look up, and he’d spoken faintly, his tone, it seemed to me, flat. So, I left him to it.

Incidentally, he was right about the strawberries. Or his Frenchwoman was.

Eleven

After those two or three strawberry-season days at Kate’s, I didn’t see Thomas again for the best part of a year. I saw as much of Kate as before, though, or perhaps even more. Thomas was often away at Sudeley, supervising the renovations, and Kate would write: come and stay; or, could she come to me? I was at my London house most of the time: near to my Harry. Whenever Kate and I met up that summer or autumn, she appeared unchanged, or certainly less changed than she’d been in those first months of her marriage. It seemed to me, if I considered it at all – and I don’t think I did, I suspect I took it for granted – that I had my old Kate back.

She had a project that autumn which kept us busy. Her brother – divorced – liked Lizzie Brookes: that was how Kate put it when she first told me. And Kate liked Lizzie. Well, we both did.

No, she clarified, I mean he really likes her. This was new: this intrigued, knowing-eyed, matchmaking Kate. It would be so nice, she decided, if he could be happy.

There was nothing new in her wanting to make someone happy, but until now it had always been about books. To make someone happy had been to find them the best tutor. But now, matchmaking.

She had a point. Her brother had had romantic unhappiness in a spectacular fashion. The marriage that his mother had so carefully set up for him had gone bad; or, more accurately, had probably never been any good. Years into it, he discovered that his wife, Annie, had been having an affair. Wait: does that word – affair – do it justice? Put it this way: there was someone Annie loved, and that someone wasn’t Will. Someone who’d got there first, or at least before the marriage ever really got started. Will had been busy, in those years of his marriage, being a Parr, being the Parr, the heir; as Useful In All He Did as his sister was. In his view, he was doing the right thing. The problem was that he was in all the right places, and home wasn’t one of them. Two small children later, Annie upped and left.

Suddenly nothing was as Will had believed. His loving wife wasn’t loving and wasn’t his. His children weren’t his: that was what he chose to believe. There’d be no Parr heir for whom all his hard work would pay off. And then there was the shame: never in short supply at court. Kate told me that Will shook, he babbled, his hands were freezing and his forehead burned. That was what she knew. What she didn’t know to start with was that he requested an audience with Henry to remind him of the official penalty for an adulterous aristocratic wife. To plead for it. When Henry broke the news to Kate, he said, ‘It is the penalty. Officially. That’s what it is.’ That was Henry all over: official when it suited him.

‘But…’ said Kate. Where should she start? But we’re civilised, we’ve moved on. But there was Henry raising those hands of his as if to say, My hands are tied.

Kate knew what to do, of course. She knew not to argue with Henry. I’d never have been able to do that, but that’s why it was she who was his wife. She could do one better, too: she could praise him and sound as if she meant it. You’re the most forward-thinking ruler that has ever been, and perhaps above all you’re a man of conscience. Oh, and there’s the small matter of you being a man who understands women – how many of those are there? – so you know how we can be, funny creatures that we are. Something like that. It would have stuck in my throat but she was good, was Kate, she kept focused. In this case, on saving a woman’s life.

Send her to me, was what she requested of Henry. For safekeeping. For now. Will’s sick, she told him, but he’ll get better…but not if he’s responsible for his wife’s death.

That’s how she turned it around.

Don’t – please – condemn him to that, she said. Send Annie to me.