The Sixth Wife (11 page)

I stayed on at Sudeley for just short of a week. Kate’s bleeding persisted for a few days, but then, when it had stopped, I remained there for a few more days, just in case. She consulted her own doctor, didn’t need to see mine. She was cheerful enough but didn’t move far from her rooms and didn’t do much. Her pile of books was never more than shuffled. She had no concentration for reading but talked often, instead, with Hugh. She was tired, of course, but it was more than that, this listlessness of hers. She was distracted, and any tentative confidence in her pregnancy had gone. She carried herself differently, I noticed. Well, much of the time she didn’t carry herself at all. We sat around for hours on end, and she’d nap in the afternoons and then go off early to bed. I spent a lot of time with her and a lot of time without her; that’s how I remember those days.

On two days, I travelled with her chaplain, John, and Hugh
to churches in nearby villages to see what had been done or still needed to be done. To see what, perhaps, we could do. To check, for instance, that there was not only a Bible in English but – often overlooked – that it was also made properly available to everyone. I’ve seen a lot of Bibles in cupboards. Mainly, though, of course, we were concerned what
shouldn’t
be there: rood screen, icons, relics. Kate’s motto might well have been To Be Useful In All I Do and I don’t deny that she was, she was always very useful, always thinking about what needed to be done and how it could be done, but I’m
practical
and there’s a difference. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty. I’d happily strip a church with my own hands.

And that’s what we did. Well, we took down some artefacts and removed them. And we arranged for a couple of walls to be whitewashed. That’s all we did. But, then, that’s all that needs to be done, in my opinion, to reform the church. Glorified housekeeping. Kate tended to overcomplicate it. For me, it’s about clearing away the clutter. Getting to the truth.

I know what some people say, that we are ripping everything that’s beautiful from our churches, but, believe me, they can’t have been to many village churches such as those around Sudeley Take those paintings: centuries-old patchy dragons, and gawky, blank-faced Adams and Eves. It’s rubbish, most of it. I have nothing against beauty. On the contrary, I’m all for it. I’m hardly known for my austerity. The problem is when decoration is a distraction. I’ll rephrase: it’s not beauty that I have anything against, but the covering up of the truth.

Consider this. When I was a child, I revisited the little church where I’d been christened. The reason for our visit
I’ve forgotten, or more likely never knew. I accompanied my mother. The story of my christening, at that time, when I was six or seven, was fascinating to me, not that it was in fact much of a story. But it sounded like a story, it could be made to sound like one, and I had so few in my childhood. Or, more accurately, so few people around who would bother to tell me any. And, better still, this story was spun around me: me, who was no one at Parham Manor, or at most someone very small. The font at Ufford was beautiful. Carved with roses. I reached up and touched the roses which other hands had so long ago coaxed from stone and which more hands, ever since, had been smoothing back into it. I wonder if they’ve survived the changes. There was nothing complicated about those roses. They were just roses that weren’t in fact roses. That was the extent of their deception.

It’s heresy, I know, but I wonder, sometimes, if I need a church at all. I wonder if it’s a church that I need, or simply somewhere quiet so that I can hear what’s in my heart. God was a kind of king to my mother, a king of kings, so she needed guidance on how to approach Him. But for me, He’s in my heart. Even as a child, I’d look at our priests and wonder: does God talk any louder and any clearer to those men than to me? Those book-dusty, shut-away men; those never-married men. What did they know about love? And it
is
love, it is
love;
that’s what faith is. I’m convinced of that. It’s not duty. Duty’s too easy: you do your duty and it’s done.

When I was a child, there were Masses at chapel all through the day. I should have been there every few hours, but there was no one to check up on me so of course I didn’t go. I spent my days in the Parham gardens. And it didn’t seem to matter. I didn’t feel any further from God. Indeed, I felt
nearer, out there, than whenever I was in the gloom of chapel, my throat clogged with incense. Left to my own devices in Parham’s grounds, I chatted away to God. There was no one else to talk to. And when I was sent to the Suffolks, the habit stayed with me: when I was alone, I talked to God. And when I was married, I talked to Charles; but when I wasn’t talking to Charles, I was talking to God. That’s what silence was, for me. And solitude: that was what solitude was. Anything but.

And Jesus: Jesus was there, too, when I was young. Like a brother to me, an older brother away somewhere but nearby if I should need him, as if – like others’ brothers – he were at court. He’d understand, if I should need him to. He’d be full of good humour, sometimes, and, other times, full of righteous indignation on my behalf. I’d learn everything from him. I admit it: whenever I
did
make it to chapel, my heart would give a little kick at the sight of him. He was my hero. We were on the same side, he and I; I knew it. So, you see, I had a lonely childhood, but I was never alone.

When Charles died, I carried on talking to him, under my breath. In my heart, you might say. Nothing special, usually: often not much more than what the boys and I had done that day. A few worries, perhaps. And it took me a long time to stop talking to Charles, perhaps a year or more. But when I did stop – it strikes me now – there was also no more talking to God. I don’t know when exactly that had stopped, but – I now realise – there was no more of it. There was instead a silence and solitude so deadening that I never even knew, until now, that it was there.

Naturally Kate’s absence made no difference to the frantic pace of Sudeley evenings, with so many people to be fed and entertained. We had the distraction, that week, of a rather unusual travelling band of musicians. Nothing unusual in their stopping by, of course, and asking if we’d have them; what made them unusual was the music they chose to play. Spanish music. That’s what they said it was when I enquired. Me, half-Spanish, having to ask. I took to it, which surprised me. Despite my mother, I’d always regarded myself as English through and through, as being utterly of this little kingdom of cynics with its unprepossessing landscape of standing water. But now the sound of the Spanish music, for me, was like being whispered to, whereas English songs suddenly sounded like a lot of bleating and complaint. That Spanish music, when I took it away with me to bed, humming it as best I could remember, brought to mind my mother as a girl
stepping ashore here in England and taking a wry look around, while Maud, designated to meet her, stood straight-backed and ankle-deep in cold dew. The musicians stayed for a third evening because I was persuasive and tipped them more than I’d usually tip a band of players, which got me into some trouble with my steward, who would have to stretch what remained, when we departed, as tips for the Sudeley staff.

Even when Kate was with us for an evening, understandably she didn’t dance. So, I had to do a lot of dancing that week, with Thomas. As did Elizabeth. Elizabeth, though, was keen. The difference in our enthusiasm could have been put down to my weariness from the day’s riding to those villages in freezing rain, whereas Elizabeth had been cooped up by a fireside at her lessons and was raring to go. She was a confident dancer, for someone of her age. For anyone of any age. Her performance always went further, too, than fancy footwork. Sometime towards the end of each evening, when she was returning to the table from the dance floor, she’d loosen her hair and then affect not to notice the collective intake of breath as she shook that cloth of gold down her narrow back.

Once, she went further still, sitting in Thomas’s lap. True, it was he who yanked her down but she didn’t resist, not really, not more than for show. She sat there with his arms around her waist and his chin on her shoulder, and together, like that, they watched a whole dance. Why on earth would Thomas do that when there’d been rumours, only a year ago, of his interest in the girl? Mrs Ashley looked on, glazed, as if it were beyond her. When the dance ended, Elizabeth leaped up, pulling Thomas with her back to the dance floor.

Kate was with us only on the second evening of the musicians, which was when Thomas made an announcement.

He confided down the table, ‘We had some news today from my brother.’

Kate clearly knew the news, because she wasn’t included in the addressed audience and didn’t look up. She continued tackling her roast apples, her spoon breaking through caramelised sugar and squelching into spiced dried fruits.

Thomas continued: ‘There’s going to be a Seymour baby’ – he winced, theatrically – ‘just before ours.’

A child of pallid Ed and the horrendous Anne Stanhope? Poor child, was my immediate reaction, when the very best that could happen was for it to take after Ed.

Amid the flutter at the news, Kate did look up, but still expressionless, to say, levelly,‘It’s not a competition, Thomas.’

He looked about to turn contrite, but then glinted mischeviously and said, ‘If that’s what you think, you don’t know me very well.’

And I laughed. I didn’t mean to, but out it came, a single note, because I hadn’t expected him to own up so readily or cheerfully to what was his glaring weakness. Kate’s response to him was a roll of her eyes, with no hint of amusement or indulgence. Nor any of impatience or despair, either, though, to be fair. Just resigned.

Thomas’s eyes I’d become rather interested in. Our dancing together had placed us in close confines whilst holding us at a formal distance, which had given me opportunities to scrutinise him. I’d look up into that perfect face and try to see where the perfection resided. To catch it out. A sham, it had to be. There couldn’t be anything genuine about Thomas. His eyes intrigued me, not because they were beautiful but
because they weren’t. Other people look out from their eyes but Thomas’s eyes themselves seemed to be doing the looking. His gaze slid over the surfaces, dispassionate. There was a flatness to it, which I now know I mistook for frankness. And frankness, as I say, I like, I respect and respond to.

On the last evening, during one dance, I found myself making a comment to him about his looks. ‘Are you really forty?’ Stupid of me to say it, because of course I’d have to go on to explain myself, I’d have to elaborate.

‘I am.’ He sounded amused and, indeed, expectant.

‘You could be…’
So much younger
was what I’d meant, and we both knew it. I went for a simple, rounded. ‘Ten years younger.’

‘Thirty.’ He considered. ‘I’m glad I’m not.’

‘No?’

He gave me a rueful smile. ‘I wasn’t very grown up at thirty.’ Then more of a smile, ‘You wouldn’t have liked me at thirty.’

Oh, and I like you at forty, do I?

He said, ‘You’re not even thirty, yet, are you.’

I laughed it off. ‘But I’ve had children.’ No doubt I look older than my years. Certainly I feel it. Sometimes I feel twice my years.

The dance was ending, the languid applause beginning. Releasing my hand, he said, ‘You know, Catherine, you have two tiny lines,’ and he traced in the air at one side of my mouth. ‘There’ – the same flick of a fingertip at the other side – ‘and there.’

This was unexpected – both the scrutiny, and his telling me.

And
Catherine:
how come the formal rendition of my name sounded so intimate?

Unprepared, I managed only something weakly sarcastic:
Oh, how attractive
, or some such phrase.

‘Actually they’re…’ But he stopped, inclined his head, seeming to think.‘They’re very…’And then the slow smile, before he bowed and walked away.

That I remember. And something else, later. As we were parting from our last dance of the evening, he remarked to me, ‘People think you’re unapproachable, don’t they.’

I said, ‘Is that what
you
think?’

There was that same knowing smile, and all he said was, ‘No, that’s not what I think.’