The Sixth Wife (10 page)

For weeks, Kate had told me, she’d been too sick to read. Like seasickness, was how she described it: she’d been quite unable to look down. Persuading herself that she was feeling better, she was keen to catch up. That’s how she saw it: catching up. She was forever anxious she’d miss something. As I’d left her room, she’d indicated a pile of books. ‘Look at these! Hugh brought them.’ Hugh, my chaplain. ‘Did he tell you about any of them?’

I glanced. ‘That one, yes,’ I said. ‘Sounds good. But that one…’ I wrinkled my nose. A recommendation from Hugh, but it hadn’t appealed to me.

‘I’m going to sit very still here for a while after prayers and read,’ she told me, quietly jubilant.

‘Good,’ I said, ‘because then you can tell me what they say.’

A joke, but I was also serious. It was how we worked.
Perhaps it was
why
we worked so well together. I’m not much of a reader, but I relish discussion, debate. Kate had an eye for details, but she’d hold fast to them, was afraid to peek beneath them or throw them up and see how they’d land. Whereas I love all that. So, it’s not that I don’t like ideas: give me some to work with, and I will. It’s the books themselves that are the problem. Perhaps because I was never favoured – as Kate was – with an education. Reading books was easy for her, came as second nature, whereas I had make-do schooling and am forever having to translate what I read into words with which I’m comfortable. Perhaps it’s more basic than that, though, too. The truth is, I’m no good at sitting still. This is how I see it: life is short and there’s work to be done.

There was a fundamental difference in temperament between Kate and me. Think of Hugh, my chaplain: we shared Hugh Latimer as a great friend but I’m closer to him than Kate ever was, and I think I know why. There he was, an ardent Papist, dedicating his life to defending Catholicism, and then one morning he listened to a sermon and changed his mind. He heard what Thomas Bilney had to say, and it made perfect sense to him so he never looked back. Isn’t that how it should be? I understand that. I
applaud
that. Kate, though, would have politely asked Bilney for a list of references in support of his argument so that she could go away and study them.

Having left Kate to her books, I headed off for a walk, avoiding the cultivated gardens in favour of the surrounding woods, the trees clotted with rooks’ nests. The advantage of being a visitor: being unaccompanied, being unoccupied, able sometimes to slip away unnoticed. In the near distance, beyond
some magnificent holly bushes, was a pond like a spillage of ink. And Thomas. Alone, too. As I saw him, he saw me. Saw, too, that I was about to try to shrink back unseen.

Caught out, I halted, and we both half laughed, half acknowledged it. He was chill-roughened: red eyes and nose. I joined him – had to, now – and there we stood, side by side at the edge of the water, its dull jade surface snagged by fussy ducks. Tightening my cloak around me, I enquired what he was doing.

‘Same as you, probably.’

‘Which is?’

‘Being alone.’ And then, hurriedly, ‘Oh, I didn’t mean -’
to be rude
. Apologetic smile. ‘I just meant, getting out of the house.’

‘It’s a lovely house,’ I countered. A humourless smile from him: he wasn’t going to play along. Fair enough. ‘Lovely gardens, though, as well,’ I said.

‘Thank you.’

The ducks, with their ratchedy chatter, sounded comically affronted.

‘You must be very pleased with the gardens,’ I added, for something more to say. He said nothing, probably not least because nothing needed to be said.‘
I
am,’ I said, and laughed, and cringed.

‘Good,’ he managed. ‘That’s good.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ but as I crunched back over fallen leaves, he called – ‘Cathy!’ – and said, ‘You think I should be more cautious.’ Referring, I presumed, to his telling Elizabeth about Kate’s pregnancy. Before I could respond, he said, ‘I’m no good at it,’ and then, with a mere nod, was off, in the opposite direction.

I should have called after him,
No
. Because:
cautious? No
. I don’t like anyone thinking of me as cautious, and particularly, I found, I didn’t like it of him. I should have said,
It’s nothing to do with caution, Thomas – life’s too short for caution – but everything to do with knowing what you can get away with
.

I decided that I’d leave in a couple of days’ time. Just as soon as we could get ourselves back on the road. I’d done my bit. Kate was fine; she’d be fine, left to Thomas. There was no more I could do. I’d be in the way. But then, that very night, something happened.

Two of Kate’s ladies came for me, in the early hours; came bobbing with apology, pop-eyed in the darkness. One, I now knew to be Kate’s usher’s wife, Susan; the other was the useless Agnes. Behind them, lighting their way, was a man, a liveried servant, his torch billowing the stench of tallow. The ladies were a mess of cloaks and hastily tied hair. Ungowned and unjewelled, they looked as if they’d been used up by the previous day and as yet unreplenished. They were polite but kept to necessities; there were no niceties. ‘She’s in pain,’ was what I heard. I asked my own Bella to stay. Nevertheless, we comprised quite a troop, hurrying
wordless along the hallways under the dead-eyed stares of Kate’s ancestors, our slippers whispering on the matting.

What – who – I saw first, in Kate’s bedroom, was Thomas.
Thomas was there
. My first, sleep-slowed reaction was that he’d somehow broken into the room: this must be the moment between him doing so and someone coming to escort him from it. Because this was a place for women. Kate’s ladies, though, were mere shadowy, peripheral presences. On the bed sat Thomas, white and gold: white nightgown and golden hair. Holding Kate’s hand and stroking her hair, and talking, talking and talking. Some of it I could catch:
He’s looking to us, so let’s stay calm, for his sake; he wants to stay put, so let’s make it easy for him; this is nothing but a bit of a clamour for attention from our little one
. I wanted to listen, just stand there and listen; I, too, wanted the reassurance of his words.

Kate was kneeling on her bed; kneeling down, folded up, as if to make as little of herself as possible. Perhaps to tighten herself, to hold fast. Her face was expressionless except for the faintest stain of a frown, and, if I hadn’t known what was happening, I could have mistaken her pallor for anger. She looked up at me and there was nothing in the look. I had the sense that although she’d known I was on my way, it wasn’t she who’d sent for me. That would have been Thomas, I realised, and he’d been right to do so even if there was nothing I could do.

I probably just said, ‘Kate?’

‘I think the baby’s coming away,’ she said to me. She’d spoken so flatly it was as if she’d been made to repeat it.

‘Is it pain?’ I took some steps towards her; I couldn’t get closer because of Thomas. I stopped at a respectable
distance. It made my heart clench to see her a prisoner of her pain.

‘Blood, mostly,’ she replied.

Blood
. No mistaking blood, it’s not like pain, it’s so clear a signifier and yet there’s no telling what it signifies. Both triumphant and sly, is blood.

She seemed to have to rouse herself for these minimal responses. I doubted she’d be telling me if I hadn’t asked. I had to ask her how much blood.

‘A cupful,’ she guessed.

Admirably, Thomas didn’t flinch.

I refrained from comment. ‘And the pain?’

She shook her head.

‘The pain,’ I tried again. Not some polite enquiry about how she was feeling: I did need to know. I felt all their eyes on me: hers, Thomas’s, the ladies’. Perhaps simply because I was the most recent arrival in the room, they were hoping I’d do something.There was no midwife, of course: a midwife hadn’t yet been engaged, it was too early in this pregnancy for that. And no doctor – hers, or my marvellous Doctor Keyns – would be any good for this. This, a doctor would say, if it’s happening, is natural.

She shook her head again. ‘It’s more a heaviness.’

‘All the time?’

She nodded.

I hadn’t got it right. ‘So, it’s constant?’ I felt awful, having to push, to question. What I wanted to know was if the pain was cramps, but I didn’t want to use the word, didn’t want to say anything that could imply the possible loss of the baby although in fact she’d already raised it and indeed raised it first of all.

‘It’s just a feeling of heaviness,’ was all she would say, and seemed sullen.

Dashed:
that was the look of her. All expression dashed from her face. I’d never before seen her like this, and clearly she didn’t like to be seen like this. Kate, I realised suddenly, was one for a brave face. I glanced around and there was Thomas, his eyes wide with expectation of something from me.

‘It’s probably nothing,’ I said, uselessly. I wasn’t lying; it was a kind of truth. I’d known pain and bleeding to happen to pregnant women and be of no consequence. But, then, we all knew of such cases. What mattered was whether Kate was just another such case. Nevertheless, I said to Kate, ‘It happened to Brigid, and there was no problem. And Joanna. And Honor. You know that, don’t you.’ I’d felt I should say it.

She nodded, but her heart wasn’t in it. I splayed my hands, a gesture of helplessness and perhaps of bowing out. There was nothing to be done, now, but make her comfortable and be reassuring, and Thomas had elected to do that.

Kate managed, ‘You go back to bed, Cathy,’ raising her head to say it. ‘Get some sleep.’Then she said something to Susan about needing the closet.

Thomas stood up.
‘I’ll
take you back, Cathy.’

As soon as we were outside the room, I started again, felt obliged to. ‘This’ – indicating Kate’s door – ‘really means nothing -’ It was distracting, disconcerting, that he was in his nightgown. It was
unnecessary:
had he really not had time to throw on some basic clothes? Would any other man of any other household appear like this in front of ladies?

He shook his head. ‘I wish there was something I could do for her.’

Yes, well, we’re all in that boat
. Dutifully, I reassured him. ‘You’re doing it, Thomas. You’re doing fine.’

Again, though, a shimmer of his hair in the candle glow. ‘I always feel like this with her. I do so much want to make everything all right for her. Perfect for her. I do so much want her to be happy.’

‘She
is
happy, Thomas.’ I was weary. ‘Not -’
now, of course
. ‘Generally, though.’ I started walking, and he, with the candle, had to join me, hurried to join me, releasing into the stone-coldness the fresh-bake scent of his warm skin. The glare of his nightgown, I averted my eyes from. Think of him as being like my boys, I told myself, as being no more than a boy. Because that’s what he was like. He must be freezing, I realised, wearing just a nightgown, and I almost turned to check with him before stopping myself because he
wasn’t
a boy, he could look after himself.

He said, ‘I’m not up to it, am I.’

Now what?
‘Up to what?’

‘Being married.’ He spoke conversationally. ‘I really did think I could do it, but now I’m letting her down. I started too late. I don’t have a clue.’

I didn’t look at him, kept going. ‘You seem to be doing fine.’ Then, lax with tiredness, I couldn’t resist: ‘Maybe you try too hard.’

I sensed him look at me. ‘I do, don’t I.’ He sounded surprised. ‘Try too hard: yes, I do, don’t I.’

I said nothing. I’d said enough.

‘Whereas you,’ he said, ‘it’d be natural to you. You were married practically your whole life.’

‘Yes, and I’m not now.’

‘Yes’ –
that was stupid of me -
‘I’m sorry.’

We walked the rest of the way in silence.

Back in bed, my thoughts turned to Charles. He’d never have had a crisis of confidence about being married. Or not when I knew him, but of course not, because by then he was well-practised. I didn’t mind, in fact I’d liked it that he had a history. I was his third or fourth wife, depending on whether you counted the first marriage, and he didn’t. Yes, he’d made mistakes, he’d not have pretended otherwise. Not that he could have pretended otherwise in the case of his first marriage, the disgrace being public. But that was back when he was no more than a boy, a silly boy. He lived it down and more than made up for it, and people had forgiven and forgotten.

When I came along, much later, I only knew about it second-hand, and knew very little. I still don’t quite understand what happened. Nor, though, in a way, did Charles. Or that was the impression he wanted to give on the one occasion I persuaded him to talk about it. The story was that he’d been in love, was keen to marry, and she was pregnant. And then suddenly, somehow –
somehow? -
he was married to her aunt. The aunt did have land, which seemed to have something to do with the change of plans. She was a better prospect, quite a catch. But it was wrong, of course; wrong, and, as such, uncharacteristic of Charles. As always, if belatedly in this case, he did the right thing, had the marriage annulled and returned to Anne. His first love, his second wife. Perhaps they’d have stayed happy together if she hadn’t died a couple of years later, giving birth to their second daughter.

His third wife was Mary Tudor and people think of her as Charles’s great passion because, in not seeking permission
to marry her, he defied her brother, the king. Ironically, it was the sheer audacity of the deed that saved him, so impressing Henry that – despite his initial, dreadful fury – he settled on crippling fines rather than the death sentence. Actually, Charles and Mary Rose’s marriage had been long anticipated. Henry had promised Mary Rose that if she did as he ordered and married the old French king, she could, when widowed, marry the man of her choice. He’d have known, as everyone did, that the man of her choice was Charles. The permission was there, albeit tacit.

When the French king died, it was Charles whom Henry sent to fetch Mary Rose. And there, immediately, in France, they married. He said he did it because she begged him, terrified that her brother would go back on his word. ‘I’d never seen a woman cry so much,’ he told me, still a little dazed, all those years later, and he shrugged: what else could he have done? For a secular man, feet so firmly on the ground, Charles was deeply chivalrous. Mary Rose would have known full well that if she cried enough, he’d do what had to be done and marry her.

So, over the years, Charles had married for love, and for money. With me, coming last, it was both. Charles married me because I had lands to my name and because, when Mary Rose died, he no longer had a wife. My lands solved a big, persistent problem for him. Before me, despite his best efforts he’d only managed to accrue small, scattered estates. He’d been promoted fast and far above his station – by Henry, his friend, his king – and it was a job for him to keep up. He hadn’t the necessary means to fund the life of a duke and had to work hard and cut corners. Which didn’t always go unnoticed by others at court. Not that he cared: he wasn’t
proud, and he was always scrupulous in his dealings, which is more than could be said for most.

Love? Well, if Charles didn’t, perhaps, understandably, at first love
me
, or not as a wife rather than a stepdaughter, he did love being married. In that sense, he married me for love. He was a man who enjoyed the company of women in a way I’ve rarely, if indeed ever, encountered since. Take Thomas, I thought as I lay there in my bed: Thomas gives the impression of liking women, but it’s all show. Women provide an audience for him. That’s what he likes. Charles had many genuine, abiding friendships with women, as well as with men. And with staff, as it happens, as well as equals. If sometimes his friendships got him into trouble – which, of course, he weathered without complaint – they more often did him well. Not for him the factions of courts. For a forward-thinking man, there was a quaintness to him: he was an old-fashioned courtier rather than a modern-day, ambitious councillor. Unfortunately, a tougher world awaits our sons.

I never envied any friend or acquaintance of mine her husband. As far as I was concerned, Charles was everything that a husband should be. Uneducated, admittedly, but true to himself. Slightly world-weary, perhaps, but all the warmer for it. I learned from Charles how to be married and I couldn’t have had a better teacher. He’d made his mistakes and he’d done the right thing, he’d married for money and he’d married for love, he’d waited for years and then he’d acted impetuously at the risk of death. He’d had a brief, disastrous marriage, a long and happy marriage, and he’d had children, both boys and girls. By the time he got to me, he’d done it all.