The Queen's Mistake (36 page)

The next afternoon, at Hampton Court, the dowager duchess and the duke appeared unannounced in Catherine’s apartments. The duke was still wearing his riding clothes. His boots were mud-caked, his ruddy, veined cheeks were flushed, and his long, gray kid gloves were bunched in his hand. The scents of wool and leather swirled around him.

As they entered the room, Catherine rose from her embroidering hoop, surprised by the unexpected visit. Jane rose beside her. Mary Lassells was folding linen across the room, but available to hear every word should there be some interesting exchange.

“We must speak privately,” Agnes announced with an uncharacteristically broad, beaming smile, revealing gray, uneven teeth that people rarely saw because she so infrequently smiled.

Catherine glanced at Jane.
Oh, Lord, no
, she thought, feeling a sudden, cold rush of panic. Both of them coming together to speak with her could not be good. She cleared her throat, then straightened the folds of her dress, trying to prepare herself, but the room began to spin and her legs went weak. Catherine was quite certain, as the duke rubbed his hands together, that she would not survive this.

“Lady Rochford has my complete confidence. Can she not remain? Her presence has become a comfort to me.”

“Catherine, this is not a time for childishness,” said the dowager. “Did we not leave that behind at Horsham?”

“Oh, now, Agnes, the girl is right. Lady Rochford may actually be of assistance to us, with her broader female perspective,” said Norfolk, casting his gloves onto a table with Catherine’s Bible, bound in worn red leather. There was a glass flagon of wine beside it. He poured himself a silver cupful and swallowed the entire contents before he turned to Catherine.

“It has happened at last. Glory be to God. I have just come from Parliament. The last of the testimony has been given and the details finalized. His Majesty is officially a single man, and I myself delivered a petition from Parliament to the king begging him . . . Let me remember . . . ah, yes: ‘For the good of your people, we implore you to enter into a fifth and final union with a new queen, so that God may bestow upon His Glorious Majesty many fine, strong sons.’ That last bit, of course, was my own elegant turn of phrase.”

“Saints be blessed,” Agnes murmured, steepling her hands and pressing them to her lips with a dramatic flourish.

“What of the poor queen?” Catherine dared to ask, not certain she even wanted to hear the response.

Norfolk chuckled. “You are not to worry about her. The princess of Cleves will want for nothing, since she had the good sense to comply throughout the divorce proceedings. The details have been worked out.” He poured himself another cup of wine, then held the silver cup to the sunlight as if looking for flaws. “She is to remain in England as the king’s ‘dear sister,’ which is how she shall be formally known henceforth. She will be given Richmond Palace and Hever Castle, Anne Boleyn’s family home.”

He feigned a little expression of regret before he continued.

“She will also be given precedence over every other lady at court, after the king’s daughters and the future queen, of course. Thus, I arrive at our purpose for this visit.” The duke drank the wine in one gulp, then set the cup back down with a flourish. He was smiling. But it was nothing mirthful. Rather, it was a cool, calculated grin.

“Naturally, as we spoke of his being free, and even obligated to remarry, the subject between His Majesty and myself shifted away from Anne of Cleves.”

Catherine sighed audibly, causing the dowager to shoot her an angry glare. She tried to maintain her composure, but the room was
stifling and unbearably hot, made worse by the tension in the air. Catherine felt the sweat pool in the space between her breasts beneath her heavy silk gown, and the hard boning of the stomacher pinched so tightly it made it impossible to catch her breath. She hated summer.

“He asked me if he would meet with an objection if he pursued your hand, my dear.”

Catherine was in a panic.
Did you tell him yes, most definitely yes?
She longed to throw herself at the duke and cry out these words
. Did you tell him he is old and decaying, that he smells worse than death? Did you tell him that I would object and shriek Thomas’s name?

“Of course, I said His Majesty’s consideration of so unworthy a girl as my niece is an honor to all Howards.”

The dowager was beaming. Jane shifted beside her.

I shall not survive this
, Catherine thought, her heart thumping wildly against her chest
. I know I shall not!

“He wishes to speak privately with you during a walk beside the river in an hour’s time.”

Catherine’s heart was in her throat. She had known all along it might come to this, yet now that it was here, it felt more like a sentence of death than a great honor.

Save me
, she thought
. . . .
But no one could.

She was on her own.

Henry preened before a full-length, gold-trimmed mirror while a group of his gentlemen-of-the-chamber, including Thomas Culpeper, stood behind him. As he studied his reflection, the king allowed Wriothesley to douse him liberally with musk-scented oil. He lifted his chin, straightened his bell-shaped sleeves and turned sideways before the mirror, trying to catch a glimpse of the man he once
had been—a man who could actually make Catherine Howard fall in love with him.

Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset and husband to Henry’s niece, took a smoothing comb to the king’s clipped copper beard. As his courtiers fussed over him, the king caught a glimpse of Culpeper in the mirror. He was a damnable god of perfection, Henry thought with an uncharitable burst of envy. Thomas reminded him of what he once was. Women of the court had flocked to him, not because he was their king, but because he was as gorgeous as Thomas Culpeper. He had been thought the most handsome man in England, and he knew it.

How much he had taken for granted in his youth. He had given only scant attention to the women who adored him. Now he saw them grimace when he touched them, even the grateful and most ambitious ones. Life had made him many things. A fool was not one of them. But ardor never vanished, nor the needs of a man—even a royal one.

“So tell me, Tom,” he said, turning around and feeling a sharp pain shoot up his ulcerated leg. “How do I look?”

“Perfection, as always, sire,” Thomas said with skilled aplomb, which irritated Henry.

“Ah, Tom, you disappoint me, when it is your honesty that I most favor.”

“I desire only to please Your Majesty.”

“You may desire that, my boy, but you should also strive for honesty. As with Wil Somers, it is the main reason I keep you around.” Henry smiled at the thought of his favorite fool, but it faded when he saw Culpeper’s smile. Those perfectly straight, white teeth, so like the keys of a virginal. Henry tried not to scowl.

“So tell me, Tom, what news have you of the fair sex these days? It is odd that I have heard no tales of your exploits recently, and with poor Wil ill, I fancy a good tale to lighten my mood. I am nervous as a cat right now, and uncertainty is not a state I favor.”

“Nervous, Your Majesty?”

Henry turned back to the mirror while Thomas waited for an answer. Dorset laid a thick gold baldric over the king’s neck and arranged it over the shoulders of his sleek, thin, lynx brown coat. The adornment glistened with rubies and pearls and a diamond pendant in the center.

“I am going to take a wife,” the king confided in a gentler voice than usual. “That is, if she will have me. I am no fool, despite what people may say—‘There goes the king, married four times. Who would want to take him on?’ I hear gossip, just as the rest of you do. But she is different. She can make me different, if she will take me into her heart, not just her bed. Though I cannot resist the thought of her perfect body beneath my bedcovers.”

To Henry’s surprise, Culpeper grimaced and paled. He looked as if he might be ill. They had spoken many times of women and their exploits. It was the thing Henry valued most about their relationship, so Thomas’s reaction was odd, to say the least.

“May I say how pleased I am for you, sire?” Thomas managed to say.

“You may say what is in your mind, Tom.”

Thomas hesitated before going on. “If that is true, sire, then it would please me if you would grant me leave to retire from court for a time.”

Henry had been adjusting the feather hat that the Earl of Southampton had placed on his head, but he froze and stared at Thomas’s reflection in shock. “What the devil?”

Culpeper turned away from the mirror, his discomfort palpable. Suddenly Henry leaned back and gave a boisterous laugh.

“A jest like that was not what I had in mind when I asked you to lighten my heart, Tom. Of course you cannot leave me. I’ve grown accustomed to you. I need you here, especially if she accepts me.
After all, it has been a long while since I have sought a young beauty like Catherine, and I know you cannot say the same.”

Henry saw a blanched, uncharacteristically panicked expression transform the young man’s perfect face.

“Do relax, Culpeper,” he directed affably, giving himself one more approving glance in the long mirror. “I am not calling you a knave, or trying to insult you. I merely mean you have experience and can offer me guidance as I proceed.”

Thomas interjected, “But I had planned to retire to the country and—”

“Silence!” Henry cut him off with a flick of his jeweled hand. He was growing irritable indulging such petulance, when all he wanted to think about was the beautiful girl who waited for him outside.
Fool boy, he thinks his desires are more important than my needs
, Henry silently grumbled as he hobbled toward the door, putting Culpeper out of his mind.

Was this how Anne Boleyn felt when she walked to her death on Tower Green?
Catherine thought dramatically, as two palace guards led her to the place where she would meet Henry.

The king had not arrived yet, so she paced nervously along the grassy banks of the river and watched ducks cut across the water, which sparkled like jewels in the late-morning sun. Long willow branches hung heavily and dipped into the water where they met the spongy shore.

She looked far more exquisite than she felt in another new gown, her auburn hair swept back and covered with a gold mesh coronet. Soft, wispy tendrils at her forehead and temples prevented the style from appearing too severe. At her throat was the emerald necklace that the king had given her, although it felt more like a hangman’s noose.

Catherine now knew that this day, this moment, had been her
uncle’s goal all along and the reason she had been brought to court in the first place. Yet still, the thought of what she was losing by accepting her royal destiny caused Catherine’s eyes to fill with tears.

Suddenly she caught sight of a shadowy figure beneath one of the willows. She recognized the figure and sprang back with a gasp. It was the last person in the world she expected to see. Leaning cavalierly against the trunk of the willow was Francis Dereham.

It was like looking at a ghost, and in a way she was. The specter of her past, in the form of Mary Lassells, and now Francis Dereham, was rising up to haunt her and destroy her family’s well-laid plans.

“What are you doing here?” Catherine managed to sputter.

Francis gave her a mocking bow. “Now, is that any way to greet the man you are going to marry?”

He was still handsome, but in a noticeably countrified way, she realized. He was not urbane and elegant like the men she knew at court . . . like Thomas.

Catherine was annoyed by the reminder of their marriage pact. “Those were childhood games, and you know it!”

Francis laughed bitterly. “Alas, it was never a game to me. Besides, you were sixteen, sweeting, well past a babe’s age. Remember the sarcenet scarf you made for me?” He drew it from a pocket in his beige jerkin and held it up to her. “I still have it, just like every memory of what happened between us. Look at our initials stitched into the fabric, so prominently entwined together, which anyone would take as proof of our great love for each other.”