The Sixth Wife (24 page)

He was a wreck, capless, his hair ruffled and his clothes askew: hook-and-eyes unhooked or mis-hooked. Scrambling to his feet, he looked ready to ask,
What news?
but then said nothing, probably didn’t dare.

‘Just you,’ I made clear, and he complied, not so much as glancing at his retinue. As soon as we were alone together in the hallway, I told him, ‘You’re wanted. She’s raving.’

He was horrifed. ‘What do you mean, raving?’

‘You’re a liar, I’m a liar.’

‘Oh,’ he breathed, wounded.

Oh, stop the display, Thomas
.

‘So, she knows.’ He sounded amazed.

‘She knows nothing, Thomas,’ I snapped. ‘How would she know? Did you tell her?’

His lips hardened. ‘I told her nothing. I told her what you told me to tell her.’

‘Then she doesn’t know, does she,’ I said, ignoring my own qualms. And, away from her, away from that room, I did just about believe what I was saying. Because how
could
she know? What had I been thinking? If she’d known, how could she ever have been with me as she had, up on her bed, during those long nights before her labour and then during it?

Thomas and I began to hurry. ‘What do I do?’ he asked me.

‘Nothing. Just be there. Just…reassure her.’ As if that were possible.

‘Reassure her,’ he mulled it over: keen, by the sound of it, but just as unconvinced. Then he dared to ask, ‘Is she getting better?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. She did seem stronger: all this urgent confiding and protesting. But
better?
How could what I’d witnessed be said to be ‘better’?

Thomas halted. ‘Cathy? Is she worse?’

‘I
don’t know’
, and fury shot through me, fury at being left like this – all of us – in this house, flailing around helpless while these bad humours did their dirty work on her.

He resumed walking; me, too, alongside. He asked,‘Should I…talk to her?’

I looked at him, kept looking at him.

‘Tell her,’ he clarified.

I asked,‘Tell her
what?
Which shut him up.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she managed, when he reached her bedside; she sounded surprised. Shocked, he’d have been, to his core. Me, too, suddenly seeing her as he did. I saw now that her face was little more than a skull; her glorious, golden hair
incongruous, her eyes so big that they themselves looked somehow painful.
When did you go?
Because I saw it now: she was on her way and she wasn’t ever coming back. My heart flared and plummeted. She was on her way, leaving me, and there was nothing I could say to her to change it. Somehow, it had already happened; it was happening.
How?
A mere week ago, she’d been as healthy as I was. Pregnant, so – yes – she’d been struggling, but underneath, strong-boned, strong-hearted. She should have been fine. She
had
been fine. What had
happened?
God was making a mistake, a stupid, awful mistake and there was nothing I could do but watch.

I made for the others, who’d settled – or were making the appearance of being settled – on cushions in a corner of the room. I tried to avoid the eyes of my companions, which – sleep-deprived – were so small in comparison to Kate’s. Susan made a stab at a smile, for me, as a greeting. In her hands, her lap, was some embroidery of dazzling delicacy. A distraction for her. For Marcella,
I
was the distraction, if only for a heartbeat: she watched me sit down. I sat shakily, my heart in all the wrong places in my body: in my mouth, my legs, my head. More embroidery was laid beside Marcella and could have been hers or Frankie’s, but Frankie was holding open a prayer book and merely glanced up, eyes red, before returning to it. Agnes was fingering the chain on which her own book of hours hung from her waist, but staring into space, chewing her lower lip. Mary Odell sat straight-backed, to attention, observing Thomas and Kate. Improper, it seemed to me, that attentive gaze, and I itched to slap it away. She was attending to Kate, though. As we all were, I reminded myself.

We wouldn’t be able to avoid eavesdropping on Kate and Thomas, and I dreaded whatever we might be about to hear. Now was not the time; there
was
no time. Thomas was holding one of those newly bony hands of hers.

‘It’s no good, Thomas,’ she whispered, resigned, wretched.

My throat began to ache. I focused down on my own hands, pretended to myself an interest in my rings, in the story of each of them,
This one from Charles, when Harry was born…

‘Sweetheart?’ Thomas, all kindness and concern. ‘What’s no good?’

Sweetheart
. How odd to think of Kate as someone’s sweetheart. That tall, strong woman with her cool, clear eyes and the wry turn to her mouth: how had he managed to turn her into a ‘sweetheart’? Or was it only now that he could do it, now that she was small and helpless there in that bed?

‘You and me,’ she breathed.
No good
.

‘You and me?’ Gently incredulous.

She accused, ‘You did me a wrong, Thomas.’

This one, rubies, inherited from my mother, come from Spain; Spanish treasure, as I used to think of it when I was little…

‘I know I did, darling, I know I did, and I’m sorry, you know I’m sorry.’
Sorry
. Was that how he felt about what he’d done with me? Was that all – that time in the bower, the times in those two rooms – something for which you could be
sorry?
Was he sorry that, between my thighs, his lower half would gallop like something with a life of its own? Was
I
sorry? Sorry was useless, and, as such, was an insult to Kate. What mattered was that it had stopped. Beyond that, what was done was done.

With his free hand, he was stroking her head, her hair.
‘And I know “sorry” isn’t enough; I
know
. But I don’t know what else I can say.’ Pleading, he was placing himself in her hands. Weak as she was, though, what could she do with him? He was a fool, the man was a fool, in fact he was a bastard to be asking anything at all of her. ‘Oh, darling,’ his voice was hoarse with disappointment, ‘I thought this was behind us.’

Bringing me up sharp, a flash of how it might have been for them over the past few months, only a flash but as vivid and affecting as if I’d been there: they were in her private garden for a stroll, making a point of appreciating the flowers, making sure to keep smiling.
Oh, leave her be, Thomas
. Don’t plead with her, or bargain with her, don’t even discuss anything with her.
And aren’t you, really, asking for more lies?
If it’s not behind her, it’s not behind her:
don’t make her agree that it is
. My scalp was prickling under my hood; I adjusted the hood, Marcella watching me as if it were something worth watching. I couldn’t stop a sigh, which came out shudderingly and seemed to have taken more air than the room had to give. I was going to have to watch Kate die. I’d just watched her labour, seen her rise to it with such spirit and to such a good end, and now I was going to have to watch death grind and grind her to nothing.

I thought this was behind us
. Kate said, ‘So did I,’ or I think she did. She’d spoken so quietly, and I’d been trying not to hear but, in trying not to hear, I’d been holding my breath, and into that tiny silence of mine had seeped the words,
So did I
. Then she said, ‘I
want
it to be’; that I did hear, and heard the misery in it, too. ‘I
want
to forgive you, and I
hate
myself that I can’t, and it
scares
me that I can’t, Thomas, it
scares
me.’ My heart was caving in, because how dreadful,
how dismal: Kate invaded by ill-feeling, at this time of all times, when she’d never before – I’d lay my life on it – had a single uncharitable notion cross her mind. And it was me who had reduced her to this. She was crying, ‘There are so many lies, Thomas, that I don’t know what to try to forgive.’

Could you not just let them be, these lies?
Is there no chance at all that we could just get on with our lives? But no: a jolt, the realisation afresh; the horror of it keen.
No, not in Kate’s case
. She wasn’t going to live long enough now for what I did to become an aberration; stupid and disgraceful, but an aberration. She knew what I’d done – that, again, was my suspicion, my belief – and surely she distrusted and despised me, and would die distrusting me and despising me. Leave me distrusted and despised. Which, of course, was nothing less than I deserved. I’d wanted to make amends – be a good friend – and now there was no time.

Thomas said, ‘There’ll be no more lies from now on, I promise you.’

She managed a reproachful ‘Marriage was a promise,’
and look what you did with that
.

He turned helplessly to us, and I saw that the same silence – the silence that had hold of me – was clamped over him. He couldn’t tell her now, could he, and there was only ever going to be now; and if he couldn’t tell her, there was nothing else to say.

An unfolding beside me: Susan, rising. She laid one hand on Thomas’s back, the other on Kate’s shoulder. ‘Lie down beside her,’ she whispered. ‘Just…be with her.’

He looked at her in fear and I understood it: fear that this couldn’t really be true, that he’d misheard or misunderstood or that she’d withdraw her offer – because that was what it
was; she had taken it upon herself to bestow our permission, our blessing. ‘Go on,’ she confirmed. ‘We’ll draw the hangings and leave you in peace.’

There was no peace for some time. Kate didn’t let up. Unable to fight death, she railed at Thomas. He stayed there and took it until she could no longer keep going and subsided into a kind of sleep. A couple of hours later, she suddenly asked to dictate her will, which she then did in no time by making Thomas sole beneficiary. Then we left her inside the bed’s hangings with John, her chaplain, for five or ten minutes of whispers. Then, last, her daughter: it was to be Thomas and the baby with her behind those hangings, for their goodbyes. That I couldn’t bear to witness.

Chapel seemed the obvious place – the only place – to go. Knowing where Kate kept her key, I let myself into her covered walkway, but some way down the passage, I came to a stop. Stood there. There, on the clean terracotta tiles, in that place which was neither inside the house nor outside it. How long should I give her? She’d be doing it now: wishing her baby well for the rest of her life. How could she do that, knowing how hard life can be? She’d be handing over that perfect, tiny person who looks to no one but her. I just stood there in the walkway until I didn’t any more; until I found myself walking again, my back turned on the distant chapel door.

As I slipped back into the room, Susan caught my eye and shook her head: a quick, furtive shake, not the slow one that would have told me Kate had died. Thomas had relinquished the bedside, though; he was at the fireplace, frowning at the incongruously lively flames. No one had taken his place, and the vacancy drew me to it. My instinct, too, was to check back with Kate after my absence. As if to say hello. Except that her bedside was for goodbyes now, wasn’t it. But even if that was what I wanted, even if there was anything to say, I was too late. There she was, what was left of her: a fleshed skull, and the lovely hair that looked to have so little to do with it that it might come away all of a piece. Her eyes were sunken, and stuck shut. They’d never be opening again, I now knew; I’d seen the last of them.

Gingerly, I laid a hand over one of hers, doming it to avoid much contact. The chill of her fingers confirmed how little
life remained. A single, silver-grey thread, I imagined it, deep inside her skin. I announced myself in a whisper, because I felt I should: ‘It’s me: Cathy.’

Nothing, as I’d expected. But then there
was
something. She’d
said
something. Or something, certainly, had come from her disappeared lips, and it was more than an exhalation. Something articulated, if barely. Flotsam, probably, from her sinking mind, but in case it was a request, I leaned closer. ‘What, Kate?’

She breathed, ‘Elizabeth was pregnant.’

Clear this time, but nonsense. This, then, was the depth of her confusion, and I, too, was puzzled: how had she got to this? ‘No,’ I whispered, to reassure her. I could at least tell her the truth of this. ‘No, Kate, that’s not what happened.’

Something else, now: she said something else, but I missed it.
Jenny said?
Who was Jenny? And again, something, this time sounding like
Jane didn’t
. Jane…Jane…Was this something to do with Jane Grey? Elizabeth…Jenny said…Jane didn’t…

No:
Jane Denny
. That was what Kate had said.

Jane Denny said
.

Jane Denny, who was looking after Elizabeth.

Jane Denny said
.

Elizabeth was pregnant
.

Dread slithered from the crown of my head down my back, like something dropped. ‘No,’ I said, instantly; just said it, no thinking behind it; just had to.

Nothing from Kate.

Delirium, surely, this.
Surely
.

Not impossible, though. I was thinking now. Thinking fast. Jane Denny would know, wouldn’t she? She’d be the one to
know. And she’d tell Kate, wouldn’t she. Kate would be the one she’d tell. And Elizabeth had indeed been ill this summer: that was what Kate had told me,
ill
.

Elizabeth
was
pregnant? Those had been Kate’s words. Why
was?
What did that mean? What had she meant by
was?

Was
any
of this true? Thomas was turning half awake from the fire, starting back to resume his deathbed duties; he was a mere three or four steps away. No time for me to ask questions and anyway she wouldn’t have the strength to say nor perhaps the presence of mind to know the answers. She’d said what she’d needed to say and now
I
had to say something. One more step from Thomas before he’d be in earshot of my quietest whisper. All this time, I’d been fearing that she suspected
me
. And perhaps she had, on occasions. Perhaps on several occasions. But not now. I couldn’t let her die thinking that her husband had impregnated her fourteen-year-old stepdaughter. Not when I knew otherwise. (But
did
I? What, really, did I know?)

‘Kate,’ I hissed into her ear, ‘listen to me.
Kate, listen
. That would have been’ – say it,
say it -
‘Harry.’
Say it
, because it was safe with her: ‘My Harry.’
(Was
it, though? How did I know, really?) ‘Not -’
your husband.Tried
again: ‘Not Thomas,’ was all I said. And didn’t dare say more. What had happened between Thomas and me couldn’t be the last thing she’d ever know. She gave no indication that she’d heard any of what I’d said, and died a few minutes later.