The Queen's Mistake (42 page)

Three days later, in the dirty, cobbled, dung-covered streets of West Smithfield, just outside of London, the bloody executions began. Henry kept Catherine tucked safely away in the verdant surroundings of Oatlands, blissfully unaware of the resurgence of the battle over religion. He wanted to maintain his bride’s blithe innocence for as long as he could.

“Is it done?” Henry asked Norfolk in a strangely hollow voice one afternoon while Catherine and her ladies played shuttlecock. He looked down at her from the wide window in his study, watching her giggle as she played and danced around.

“They are all dead. Reverend Gerard, Reverend Jerome, Dr. Pow ell, Dr. Abel, Dr. Barnes.” Norfolk reported their names blandly.

“Featherstone, as well?” the king asked.

“Hanged, drawn and quartered, as ordered, Your Majesty.”

Henry took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, the only noise in the otherwise silent privy chamber. “A good many lives were lost for speaking out.”

“The country must be taught a lesson, sire,” Norfolk said firmly. “We cannot have the clergy denying your supremacy. That sort of rebellion could spread like wildfire, and then how would you lead?”

“And Your Majesty must remember,” Stephen Gardiner chimed in, “some of them insisted that you were still married to the princess of Aragon, making your son—”

“I know what it means, Gardiner!” the king snarled.

Catherine was twirling and skipping in the courtyard by the
fountain below, while her ladies laughed in encouragement. A group of young courtiers, led by Cromwell’s son, Gregory, advanced to watch the women play. The young and handsome Cromwell was looking far too familiarly at the queen. No one on this earth dared do that. Henry leaned heavily against the window frame, suddenly angry at everything and everyone. Norfolk watched him clench and unclench the jeweled fingers of his hand into a tight ball.

“I have been generous to Cromwell’s son, have I not? I allowed him to remain at my court, despite the fact that his father was a vile traitor.”

“Your Majesty has shown incredible grace and forbearance under the circumstances,” Norfolk said, flattering while he waited to see what the king was about.

Norfolk stood beside Gardiner, cautious of his every word. He had heard this particular tone in the king’s voice only twice in their long association: the night Henry sanctioned the execution of his own wife, and the day he signed the death warrant against one of his dearest friends, Thomas Cromwell.

“I have, haven’t I?” Henry responded, still looking down at the courtyard below. His sights were locked on Cromwell’s son, as though he were a stag to be hunted. Gardiner and Norfolk exchanged the slightest glance. “Have someone follow the boy, but make certain he is not discovered. I shall find it of enormous interest if the Cromwell lad advances upon my wife. Catherine is too young, too innocent to know how to deal with the charms of a handsome and well-schooled young man. Fortunately for her, her powerful husband most certainly does.”

Norfolk was pleased to hear that the king was willing to deal with any threat to his marriage, real or perceived. He took a step closer. “There is another young man who should be made an example of. The rest of England will surely take notice, and it will quiet the malcontents.”

“The bishop of London says the boy speaks out regularly against the sacraments to anyone who will listen,” Gardiner added.

Both men saw Henry stiffen. “If that is the case, have the bishop condemn him to burning.”

The king’s pronouncement was so sudden and cold that even Norfolk shivered.

“He is fourteen, sire. Do you not wish even to know his name?”

“His name matters not. But tell the bishop to behead him first then,” Henry amended without turning around. “After all, I am not without mercy. Now, one of you take care of the Cromwell lad as well. The other, see the queen brought to me at once. I’ve suddenly a mind to see my wife privately,” he said, needing the reassurance that only Catherine could give him.

Chapter Fifteen

 

 

H
enry and Catherine rode together by barge down the river through the winding green hills, returning to the haven of Hampton Court following their wedding trip to Oatlands Palace.

Catherine had surprisingly enjoyed the eight days of spoiling and pampering by her husband, and all of the activity surrounding their marriage, so much so that both had forgotten poor little Putette and who might have killed her. Every bad moment of the past seemed very far behind them.

Though he did not appear to be a sensual lover, Henry was ardent and eager to please. Her distaste at seeing his bare, pink, waxy and rotund body was easily masked with a dozen different games and by the forgiving glow of candlelight. It was also diverted by the gifts he showered upon her each time she succumbed. In those first days, there were so many dresses, furs and jewels that her dressing room and closet literally sparkled with pearl-dotted silks, satins and velvet, all sewn with rubies and diamonds as well.

The only thing she still lacked was true friends.

In that regard, she missed Thomas and even fun-loving Gregory since her royal marriage. Now her company consisted mainly of
Jane, her elder sister Margaret, and Lady Isabel Baynton, the wife of the new chamberlain. She also had to keep her guard up in the silent yet constant presence of Mary Lassells and her new secretary, Francis Dereham, both of whom she did not trust in the least.

Only after Henry fell asleep late each night was she able to be alone with her thoughts. Henry’s glorious palaces had swiftly come to feel like prisons, and her well-dressed, noble attendants were now like her jailers. A shrewd look from Francis or an artful smile from Mary only reinforced her feelings.

It was in those moments that her longing for Thomas was at its greatest. She hoped he would walk gracefully into the king’s privy chamber, just as wonderfully nonchalant as when they first had met. Or that he would be at the king’s side when she joined His Majesty for dinner.

But that day never came.

He was still at court, Jane told her. She had seen him herself. “He is busy with his duties,” she would say. But Catherine knew it was just an excuse.

On their second day back at Hampton Court, as her ladies prepared Catherine for the banquet where Henry would officially introduce her as queen, Catherine gazed blankly across the vast, paneled room. She felt apart from the activity as they dressed her in an elegant French-cut burgundy gown, with a stylish matching pearl-dotted hood revealing her long flowing hair as it fell to her shoulders.

She’d had a dream last night that Thomas had come to her and they had told Henry everything. In a blind rage of jealousy, Henry had chased her through the corridors, his face wild with fury. He had been wielding the same jewel-handled dagger from her last dream.

She did not even notice when Jane came dancing into the room, her face lit with a smile. Her friend leaned close to whisper to her, “I
have brought you someone to cheer you up. You have not seemed yourself these past days.”

Catherine’s heart raced and blood flooded her face. Could it possibly be? It had been twelve days since her last desperate meeting with Thomas in the alcove, twelve days since she had been spirited away to Lambeth and then on to Oatlands to become queen. Twelve days since she had given up all hope.

Until now.

Jane took her by the hand and led her away from the others. Catherine’s own hand trembled in anticipation.

They passed through one chamber, then another, the hems of their wide gowns sweeping against the paneled walls. Catherine felt as if her heart were going to burst right through her very tight stomacher and the elegant burgundy silk gown over it. But when Jane opened the door to the chamber where her mystery guest waited, it was not Thomas’s face she saw.

First Mary Lassells, then Francis Dereham. Now, before her stood her two Horsham cohorts in everything bad and wrong she had ever done. Was this some sort of bad jest orchestrated by Wil Somers for the king’s pleasure—or her torment?

“Your Grace,” Katherine Tilney was the first to say with a false, unnatural smile as she curtsied.

“Your Grace,” Joan Acworth repeated with a clumsy curtsy.

How on earth had her grandmother, powerful doyenne of the ambitious Howards, and her uncle allowed Mary, Francis and these two empty-headed country girls to come to court? Catherine stared at Jane with a pale, panicked expression. She seemed genuinely surprised that the queen was not smiling.

“You do remember them, don’t you?” Jane asked. “They lived at Horsham with you.”

“I remember them well,” Catherine replied, her tongue feeling as dry as desert sand. “It seems like only yesterday.”

“I thought it might cheer you to have familiar faces among your servants.”

“This was your idea?” Catherine gasped in astonishment.

“Not entirely. But they had already written to the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, and I merely encouraged her to bring them,” Jane said, sensing that she had made the wrong decision.

“Do I not already have Mistress Lassells and Master Dereham if I feel overcome with nostalgia?” she snapped.

Jane looked at the two pretty girls, with their seemingly angelic expressions.

“What, precisely, are they to do for me?” Catherine asked angrily.

“Attend their queen, of course. Like the rest of us.”

Catherine caught a glimpse of Mary Lassells lurking, as she often did, near a tapestry curtain and scowling at the new arrivals. Perhaps rivalry between them would keep this new threat at bay. Catherine knew there was little she could say to object anyway. She did not want to arouse the king’s suspicions by protesting against the presence of her “friends.” She felt surrounded on all sides.
I am a prisoner of my past and my future . . . I have no choice.

“You shall see them settled?” she finally asked Jane, feigning a smile with every ounce of determination she had.

“Of course.” Jane smiled in return. “It is done, Your Grace.”

“You are to attend the banquet tonight and sit near His Majesty at the table. It is as simple as that,” portly, silver-haired Charles Brandon announced to Thomas. His tone, as always, had an air of impatient frustration.

“I was planning on going to London tonight for a bit of amusement,” Thomas protested.

“And deny the king in the process? That would be most unwise.”

Thomas had just returned from a brisk ride in the country in an attempt to get as far from Catherine as he could, which he did each morning after performing his required duties for the king. By calling in favors, he had managed to find hours of service early in the morning, when Henry was returning from bedding the love of Thomas’s life—not in the evenings as His Majesty went to her. Both posts were a nightmare to a man desperately in love, but this one made him feel just slightly less like choking the life out of His Majesty in angry jealousy. Now he would be forced to sit and watch the king as he fondled Catherine with his greasy hands at the table. At least he would be with Gregory. The two of them could drink great volumes of wine and commiserate over their respective losses.

“Am I at least to be seated near Cromwell’s son? I suspect he shall need the good cheer tonight as much as do I.”

Brandon tipped his head and peered at him curiously with his dark eyes. “You do not know?”

“Know what?” Thomas asked.

“Young Cromwell has left court. He was not invited by the king to Hampton Court.”

Thomas was stunned. It was widely believed that the king meant to demonstrate his own grace and forgiveness by keeping the boy at court, especially since he had played no part in the Cromwell scandal.

“That makes no sense,” Thomas muttered.

“It does if he desires something that belongs to the king.”