No Will But His (24 page)

Her breath stopped, and it would not come. In her head, as if in a dream, futures clashed. Her small self lost at the coronation of Anne Boleyn. Thomas Culpepper, whom she had not seen since that day but was to marry her, or so the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk said. Unless, of course, it were all a trap designed to catch the king and to make the family powerful again, as it had been in the days of Anne. Thomas, who had never brought her oranges. And then there was Harry. Harry with the crown. Harry without the crown . . . well, she felt sorry for him. At least as sorry as she had felt for Manox when he was her teacher.

In Henry's eyes she read the same hunger for her, the same desire, only this was not some man, some private Englishman who might have his way with a maiden in the dark space behind the stairs of some anonymous chapel and never suffer for it, or it never be known. No. This was the king and master of England, and every eye on him.

And yet for all his power, he had been married against his will, and now he bent over her, breathing hard. "Would you have me, pretty Kathryn, if I were free?"

Kathryn saw herself with the crown. She thought of her dream long ago, when she'd first come to Lambeth, that she'd marry some foreign king and be the center of everyone's attention. She thought of the game in the dormitory so many years ago. The bit of lace hitting the dusty ground, forming incomprehensible scrolls, and Alice's voice calling out, "There, it's Henry. You'll marry a Henry."

Henry with the crown. Henry whose wound would close one of these days and carry him off. And then the woman he left, if she had a son by him, that woman would be the regent. She would be as good as a king in her own right.

Behind her mind, this went on. It was like a grand procession going down the street of a city, but in the building in front of which the procession passes, the real business goes forward.

And the real business was that Kathryn, looking up, read eagerness and sorrow in the king's eyes. Desire. And, though he be the king, half a certainty that he would be rejected.

She could not stand it. She dropped from the stool on which she'd sat while playing and laid herself prostrate upon the ground, her face against the floorboards. "Your Majesty," she said. "Your Majesty, how can you offer me this? Can you not know that I am not worthy of the king?"

From above came a big gasp, as though Henry had tried to sigh but were overwhelmed, and then his voice very softly, "I am not asking you to be the king's wife, my dear. To the king you can be his dear queen and sit beside him in the throne room and bring forth, if God be willing, a Duke of York to our majesty's joy.

"But to Harry without the crown will you be his wife? And be his rose without a thorn for all your days and play your pretty music for him and laugh your pretty laugh and bring a ray of light into his dark, dark days, my dear? Will you be the youth he sees fleeing before him?"

She felt her heart beat upon her throat. What choice did she have, truly? What choice? Oh, it was very easy to say, and many would say it, that she could say no. That she could walk out of here and marry Thomas Culpepper and live the life of a country gentlewoman. Praying, working, and praying again, and bringing up children to be fair and strong. Obeying her husband. Her country squire husband.

But it was not like that. She couldn't put it in words so much, but she was sure as she was sure one day of dying and meeting her maker, that it wasn't that simple. She had talked to many people since she'd come to Greenwich, and she had heard the story of the king's pursuing of Anne Boleyn.

It was said, though Kathryn was not sure how much truth there might be in it, that Anne had in her youth been in love with the Duke of Suffolk. Only the king had been in love with Anne, and he had made sure that Suffolk was married to someone else, speedily. A woman who had plagued his days into an early grave.

And meanwhile, the king had laid siege to Anne, going round and round like a hungry wolf around a farmhouse in the dead of winter, pursuing and pursuing and pursuing, until Anne had nowhere else left to go and nothing else left to do, but marry him.

Perhaps there, too, had lain the seeds of her destruction, for by the time that Anne had married him, the seeds of resentment had been sown, and the seeds of hatred and the seeds of sorrow. Perhaps by that time he resented her so much that all he could do was turn on her.

It was a small balance, Kathryn thought, between Harry with the crown and Harry without. Harry without the crown, faith, wanted to be loved for who he was. But he would not forget Harry with the crown, and that Harry might come out at any minute and demand his royal rights.

She could not say no. And when she looked up and saw his worried look, she did not want to. "Aye, Sire. Aye, if you were free, I would be yours. And gladly, too. I think"—she smiled a little—"that your youth not be fled as far as you think, Your Majesty. It seems to me that I would bring back your youth, and together we'd rejoice in it, aye, and have a Duke of York, yes, and many other fair and strong brothers and sisters for him."

He reached down and lifted her, laughing all the while. And he held her close, her face pressed against his heavy brocaded doublet. "You are my rose without a thorn," he said. "My rose without a thorn. After so many years, I have at last deserved you."

Kathryn felt some moisture on her head, and looking up, she realized that the king was crying upon her. Confused, she reached up. She tried to stop the royal tears, which horrified her. "No, Your Majesty, no. This must not be. You must not be unhappy."

"I am not unhappy," he said, with a catch in his voice. "And you must call me Harry, my dear, when we're alone. Even if I must be Harry with the crown and do many a foolish thing as king's must do—things you don't understand nor care about, setting about armies to put down rebellion, closing down dissolute monasteries, and caring about the doings of other kings the world over—for you, my dear, I would always be your husband, Harry."

"My Lord Harry," she said.

He leaned down and kissed her softly. Her forehead. Her eyes. Her lips. His great big hands held her close. He murmured things she didn't readily understand about roses and thorns and a perfect love.

She was afraid that next he would drop to his knees and raise her skirts, this was so much like what Manox had done. But before anything so unfortunate could happen, there was a scream, and the king sprang away from her, fumbling.

He must have put all his weight upon his lame leg, for he screamed and tripped and finally fell heavily upon his chair.

Kathryn stood there, her hair disheveled and her coif askew. The scream stopped and was followed by a heavy panting, and then Lady Rochefort's voice, seeming to come from somewhere quite far away. "There was blood. There was blood all over. It was the Tower."

The king's hand clasped tight on the silver rose above his stick. Kathryn had the idea that were it not for his fear that he would scare her, he would have taken the stick and possibly broken it across Jane's head. Instead, he spoke, slowly, "Aye, Jane. Aye, the Tower and the blood, but that's all in the past now."

He looked at Kathryn then and smiled. "Mistress Howard, it would please me greatly if you would retire from the palace for a few weeks."

It was so unexpected that Kathryn failed to understand it. Only when some lady had done something wrong was she sent away from the palace, usually back to her family. What had she done, then? Had her answer to him been the wrong one? She didn't believe so, and when she looked at him, she found him smiling. But why would he be sending her away, then?

"Have I done aught," she asked, "to displease Your Majesty?"

He smiled. "No, Mistress Howard. You have pleased me greatly. But I would enjoin you to go down river a while and to lodge with your uncle Norfolk. Tomorrow I shall send for him and ask him to make suitable apartments ready for you. It is best, for propriety's sake, that you be removed from the queen and from the palace and from my presence all together. Norfolk will do the thing prettily."

Her face must have shown her confusion, for his great big hand came forth and caressed her cheek. "Fear not, my moppet, that you have to be without me for very long. This shall not happen. I will come visit that you might play me your lullabies. But now, go you to bed and dream pretty dreams, my Kathryn."

Kathryn had gone from the chamber, not sure whether she was on her feet or on her head. Out in the hallway, Jane got close to her and whispered, "Kathryn, did he ask you . . . does he wish you to become his mistress?"

Kathryn shook her head. "No. It is all very strange, but . . . I think he means to have a divorce. He said he means to marry me. Surely," she said, thinking of the foreign lady with the sweet smile, "surely he can't mean to have her executed, can he? For she hasn't done anything."

"No, surely not," Jane said. "It's not just that she's innocent," Jane said, in the tone of one who didn't put much trust in innocence itself as a protection from the king's wrath, "but that her brother is a prince abroad. The king would not want to set himself wrong with the protestant princes of Germany."

"No," Kathryn said, and was almost sure that she said right. "He asked if he were free, would I marry him. But . . . why would he have me removed from the palace?" she asked in confusion.

"Oh, that much is clear," Jane said. "It is that if he means to marry you, he means that not even a suspicion of scandal should attach to you."

"But . . ." Kathryn said. In her mind there was her affair with Manox, of which the duchess had told her all the maids knew, and then her much worse affair with Dereham, and what would people say if she became queen. But then she thought that if she became queen the king's own majesty would be wrapped up in her virtue. If he loved her well . . . If he loved her well, surely he would not believe anyone who besmirched her. Nor would he let anyone speak about her honor. Certainly not if she were the mother of his child.

Sure, he had Anne Boleyn executed, but—Kathryn thought, having listened to people in the palace—he'd had Anne Boleyn executed not because he believed she had been unfaithful, though he might in fact have believed it, but because he had found it impossible to live with her. She'd been by turns demanding and commanding, and Henry wouldn't like that, not with all his power, to find himself submitting to a woman.

No. Kathryn must do this, and of a certain surety she saw no way out of it. In fact she was sure her grandmother, and almost everyone she knew would think Kathryn a great zany for even considering escaping becoming queen. If Kathryn was to do this, then let it be that she was the mildest and sweetest of wives, ever ready to bend to his will, treating Harry without the crown as though he were Harry with the crown, and making him—what was it that the duchess had told her, so many years ago—making him believe he was her king, her sovereign deity, and that she existed only for him.

"He wants sweetness," she said, hoping that her words would make it so, and when Jane didn't answer but only looked at her with wide eyes, she added. "It is funny, you know, for so many years ago, in the dormitory at Horsham, we were playing this game with bits of lace, throwing it on the ground to form the name of the man we'd marry. Just a silly game. And my bit of lace formed Henry."

Jane was quiet a long time, then sighed. "Yes. I had a portent like that once." But the way she spoke and the way she looked ahead as though at horrors untold . . . Kathryn couldn't find the power in her to ask her what she meant by that.

Chapter Thirty-three

"My dear, dear Kathryn," the dowager duchess said. She was waiting in the duke's palace in the very sumptuous apartments set aside for Kathryn. "I always knew how it would be."

She stood in the middle of the painted rooms, which were hung all over with precious embroidery and extended both hands to Kathryn while the stick fell, unheeded from her hand to the floor. Kathryn grasped her grandmother's hands and curtseyed prettily. The hands felt papery, dry, and cool under her own, but the duchess laughed. "I knew that no man could see you and resist you. You have a look of her, my dear. That you do. And though it went badly in the end, she was the great love of his life, you mark my words. He has missed her terribly since she has gone.

"They say that right after this sham marriage of his, her daughter, dear little Elizabeth wrote to Queen Anne, if such ye call her, and told her she would be glad to come to court and meet her new mother, the king ordered Cramner write to Elizabeth and tell her that she had a mother so different as to this one that she had no business at court and this one was not mother of hers and that"—she gave Kathryn an intent glance—"I will tell you, didn't mean he thought that this present creature was better than our Anne."

Kathryn nodded. She felt it an ill omen that on this day they should be talking of her cousin, who had walked the same path and married the same king. She resisted an impulse to cross herself in order to ward off Anne Boleyn's sad fate. "The king has been all that's kind to me, madam," she said. "And His Majesty's attention to me has been like the sun coming out on an overcast day and transforming everything."

The duchess smiled. "He has been very kind to all Howards. Your uncle Norfolk is very pleased with you, my dear. For though his son tried to convince Norfolk's daughter to catch the king's fancy and be his mistress, she said she would have none. Which, mark my words, is just as well, for the girl has no spirit, and mistress is the most she could aspire to, only to be discarded like Bessie Blount. But you . . . you my dear have a fire that can't be denied, and I shall see you yet wear the crown. I hope to bear your train at your coronation, just as I bore your cousin's once."

Kathryn nodded. Again the ill omen. She clasped her little head in a fist and claimed tiredness to be allowed to lie down upon the bed in these most luxurious apartments. She had a feather mattress, as she'd never enjoyed before, and a featherbed and feather eiderdown. Lying amid it all, she felt as if she were in a cloud in heaven, dreaming.