The Sixth Wife

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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.

Ah, yes, Kate and her strays: Henry would have liked that. He liked to have a compassionate wife. In his opinion, women should be compassionate. And he should, of course, have the best, the most compassionate woman.

So, it was Kate’s doing, and she seemed to have done it easily: the immediate saving of one life, the far-sighted saving of the children’s future so they didn’t have to grow up motherless and the saving of her brother’s sanity. I don’t know that I’d have been bothered about the latter. For a man who was pursuing the axe for the woman whom he’d married? Or indeed any woman, any person. But then I don’t have a brother. I was – am - an only child. Out on a limb, from the beginning. Which is how I like it. I’m fond of Charles’s earlier families – his daughters, their children – but glad not to be tied to them. Now that Charles is gone, my boys are the only family I have. Keeps it simple, I suppose, albeit fiercely so. Kate was like a sister to her many stepchildren. I was no more than a girl when my boys were born, but there has never been anything merely sisterly in what I feel towards them.

Kate pleaded well for her brother, and did it so that he didn’t have to know, so that he could get on with recovering. Eventually we did have with us once again a good-natured, if emotionally bruised, Will: calming down and slowly turning back into an eligible bachelor.

In the meantime, though, Kate had wanted me over at her house. She wanted help with her reluctant house guest. Entertainment for her, or at least distraction. Although Kate didn’t say as much, I knew her own ladies weren’t up to it, being an unworldly bunch. No outsiders could do it because although everyone knew where Annie was, she had to be seen to have disappeared. No one else could visit. I wasn’t included in that, never am; I do what I want. I didn’t, though, want to do this. I’d never known Annie; we’d moved in different circles. So, it was a succession of strange afternoons and evenings that I spent at Kate’s, sometimes playing cards or more often doing nothing at all. Annie clearly wasn’t in the mood for fun and games, or indeed for anything. Kate and I exhausted ourselves coming up with chatter while avoiding mentioning anyone’s name or anything that was happening to anyone, be it trouble or triumph, because we simply didn’t know what might be sensitive for Annie. She probably didn’t give a damn what we said. She’d sit well back in her chair, arms folded hard and high, making the barest of necessary responses. It was impossible for me to know what she was usually like, even how she’d usually look, this shadowed-eyed, unsmiling woman. What was obvious, though, was that she was furious: her sullenness was suppressed fury. Directed at everything and everyone, would be my guess. And whatever we did, and however we tried, Kate and I probably came into that, even if it was against Annie’s better judgement, and I’d like to think it was. I’d like to think she was grateful to Kate and understood that we were on her side, but I suspect she couldn’t help hating us. Well, we were ladies bountiful, weren’t we. That’s how it must have seemed to her. Everything was all right for us.

Whenever I think of her now, what I recall is the slow drumming of her heels against the legs of her chair, the very sound of desolation and defiance. I’ve been thinking of her a lot recently. You know what I think? I wonder whether perhaps her situation wasn’t all that bad, in the end.

She was long gone by the autumn. She’d done her time at Kate’s and had moved on to her new life – children in tow – with that lover of hers. And we were busy doing our best for Will. For Lizzie Brookes.We were at our best, perhaps, then, Kate and me. Girls together again. It was harmless fun. It was cosy. It was easy. Kate, being Useful; me, my views on love well known. Kate, convert. Me, old hand.

Old hand? I have to tell you: that’s not how I felt, as I watched Will and Lizzie fall for each other. It had been so different for Charles and me. There’d been no mystery, for us. We did fall in love, yes, but only when we were married. Risking nothing. Not that our marriage was any less for it. On the contrary. But watching Will and Lizzie, I found myself wishing that I’d gone through what they had to endure. I was so very sure, then, that autumn, that I would never know what it is to have one’s head turned and be held there, breath taken. Not to know quite what one was in for.

Twelve

It was a cosy, carefree autumn, that autumn; insular and frivolous, the autumn that was Kate’s last. We met up as usual for the feast day of our namesake: St Catherine, on the twenty-fifth of November. Because we were outspoken on the need to rid religion of folklore, we had to keep it secret, this annual exception that we made. Which suited us fine. It was ‘our day’, and our ‘feast’ was exactly as we alone wanted it: steaming bowls of furmenty, the wheat-thickened, cinnamon-scented milk, chewy with dates and raisins; and our rich cream dowcet crusted with burned sugar. We sat at the fireside with our bowls in our laps, gossiping.

November became December and suddenly – or so it seemed to me – Kate had gone to Sudeley for Christmas: gone home for Christmas, gone to her new home. Sudeley was at last ready and she seemed to leave London without a backward glance. But Christmas for those of us who remained at or close to court was fun, as usual. My boys were particularly impressed, loved being in the thick of things, acting as if none of this – the feasts, masques, music – had ever happened before and had been contrived especially for their benefit. Full of it, standing tall, they seemed to be growing in front of my eyes and I saw them, for the first time, as stars of the rising generation. True, they’d been Knights of the Garter for almost a year, since the coronation, when Harry had walked behind Eddie, carrying the orb, but I’d never taken it seriously. They’d been my little boys, nominally in attendance on a nominal boy-king. Playacting. Last Christmas, though, was a revelation: I saw them shaping up for their future as right-hand men to their monarch. Following in their father’s footsteps.

Just after Christmas, I caught a bad cold and delayed my journey back to Lincolnshire. Three days on the road would have been quite beyond me. Taking to my bed for a few days, I missed a lot of the usual London New Year celebrations although I did manage to make an appearance for the gift-giving. My boys had been easy, this year, wanting money. And, despite the expense, I was particularly pleased with the cloth-of-tinsel doublets that I’d had made for the senior members of the household. Bella seemed delighted with her red silk purse. And her present to me was a little bag, too, this one for holding lavender: Holland linen, which she’d embroidered gorgeously. To Kate, I’d sent a length of that new, bobbin-made lace; and she’d sent me a beautiful gold brooch of a bee.

Still unwell, I missed the only event that had promised to liven up the lull after Epiphany: Kate’s brother’s marriage to Lizzie Brookes. Kate, too, missed it, for the same reason: she was ill. I’d assumed that her illness was similar to mine; there was a lot of it about. She felt slowed up, she wrote to me, and was sometimes sick. Well, the sickness I didn’t have. She’d picked something up, she said, and couldn’t shake it off. Her next letter mentioned she was no better. It’s dreary, she complained: I’m bored and boring and poor Thomas must wonder what on earth he’s married.

Ah, yes, poor Thomas. A third letter came with him on one of his trips to London but he didn’t deliver it to me in person, sending it instead via one of his men. In it, among news of family and friends, were the words I’m still wretched, a bit of a wreck.

I didn’t like the sound of that.

I’m coming, I wrote back. I was fine by then. I need a good look at you, I told her. Writing those words, I was remembering how well she’d looked when I’d last seen her. This was cruel, whatever it was, keeping her laid so low when she was at last ready to live life to the full. In her letters she’d been deliberately offhand, but I suspected she was worried. How could she not be?

Don’t, came back the message. Don’t come, don’t worry. I’ll be fine, I’ll sleep this off. It’s a bad time of year for getting better, that’s all. And a look is definitely not a good idea. I warn you now, she declared: I look awful.

She knew I’d come. I’m coming, I replied. No arguments. I’ll be no trouble, I’ll keep myself to myself, but just let me see you. I need to see you.

And perhaps it’s true that this was as much for my sake as for hers, and perhaps that’s why she let me come. Everyone knows I’m no nurse. I’m hopeless with sickness, my own or anyone else’s – even my boys’, it hurts and shames me to say.

At times during the days before I set off to see Kate, I was frantic with worry about her; but at other times, I managed to reassure myself that it was a bad time of year and hardly anyone was fully well. Plague was around – Elizabeth and Jane’s tutor, William, had died of it, Kate told me, during his trip home at Christmas – but there had been no cases anywhere near Sudeley and, anyway, whatever this indisposition of Kate’s was, it clearly wasn’t the plague. Come spring, I told myself in my good moments, she’ll pick up. In the bad moments, though, I wondered: a day or two of sickness could be put down to bad food; and a week, well, it happens, particularly at this time of year. A couple of weeks of being unwell, even: yes. But this? This sickness for weeks with no let-up?