No Will But His (31 page)

Kathryn had turned out just like her father.

Chapter Forty-three

That night Kathryn lay awake till late, waiting for the king, but the king did not come. She wondered if someone had her heard her talk with the duchess, and woke up feeling battered and bruised and weakened inside in a way she couldn't describe.

It was as though, she thought, something inside her were speeding up—something that wasn't her heart or, indeed, any organ she could name, but something that was part of her, nonetheless. Speeding, speeding, rushing, until it presently would go so fast that she would lose consciousness or perhaps go all to pieces, like all those gods in Rome and Greece who got taken to pieces and thrown all over the sky.

She didn't want to ask her chamberers, and she didn't want to ask her maids if they knew where her husband was. Her grandmother's advice came to her, if Henry played on her, she should pretend not to see it, as others before her had.

But pretending not to see it and in fact not seeing it were different things. And Kathryn feared that if some other woman should attract his attention . . . Why had Anne Boleyn died? Because she was headstrong and made the king's life difficult? Or because the king preferred that "whey-faced wench" Jane Seymour? Kathryn couldn't answer, and she doubted anyone could.

She sped out of her chambers as soon as she was attired, ignoring her maids requests that she wait or that she take company with her. She could half hear the noise of feet behind her, catching up with her. One or two, perhaps three, of her ladies-in-waiting were following her. She didn't care.

She ran like a mad woman through the hallways. She ran as though she were not the queen of England, but still Kathryn Howard, the youngest maid of honor to the queen. She ran headlong and heedless, along paths she hadn't taken since she'd come to the king's quarters, every night, to play for him.

What would she do if she found another woman playing for him? Did she want to see this? Did she intend to make a scene.

Oh, she wasn't jealous of the king, though perhaps she was—she was jealous of the affection, of the attentions of Harry with the crown, of the things he could give, and more importantly, of the importance he bestowed on whomever he loved.

She wasn't jealous of Harry without the crown—his clumsy caresses, his confused attempts at pleasuring her.

But the thing was this, wherever Harry without the crown went, Harry with the crown followed. The two were one being only and linked to each other in ways that could never be prized apart.

Panting, her heart beating in her chest as though it would crack out of her ribcage, she made it into the king's quarters. Out of breath, out of hope, out of patience, she entered the first room—the antechamber, where a few of his gentlemen were playing at dice.

"Henry!" she said. And looking blindly at the men, not recognizing any, "Where is the king, my husband?"

Two men rose. One of them said, "Kathryn? Are you well? Kathryn!" She recognized the voice of her brother, but she couldn't see him clearly. There was nausea clenched in her throat, her heart was beating fit to tear her chest. Her breath came in ragged, painful gasps.

But worse of all was the pain in her stomach. Fear and anxiety it must be. She remembered her stomach hurting a few times, when she was first at the duchess's. She remembered the clenching pain of not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go and being quite sure that everything she might do was wrong.

She clasped both hands around her stomach. Those times, at the duchess's, it had never hurt as though a sharp-fanged, evil-clawed beast had seized hold of her middle and was tearing at it with ravenous hunger, seeking to tear her apart. It had never felt like this. Never felt as though she might die from it.

"Madam," another voice said. Two pairs of hands grasped her, one hand at the arm, another supporting her back. "Your Majesty looks quite ill."

There was a feeling of moisture upon her thighs and for a moment she wondered if she'd forgotten herself so far as to lose control of her bladder, but none of it mattered very much.

What mattered, instead, was that the king had failed to come to her last night. The king was already tired of her. What did anything else matter? It wasn't just the king's wrath that could kill you. The king's lack of love could also.

"My husband," she said. "My lord husband, the king? Where is he? Is he within? Who is with him? Does he . . . does he love another?"

"No," the voice she only now identified as Thomas Culpepper's said. He sounded as though he were only denying it perfunctorily, though, as though it didn't matter very much and something else were holding his attention. "No, no, Your Majesty. His Majesty suffers from a blocked wound upon his leg—he is in great suffering."

"I must see him," Kathryn said, and tried to take a step forward, only it felt as though the entire room were swimming—as though she had drunk too much and couldn't see, couldn't feel things right. The floor under her feet seemed quite fluid, and her knees bent as she tried to walk, and the pain in her middle was worse than ever. "Let me see my husband," she said, trying to flail at the two men on either side of her. She knew one of them was Thomas Culpepper, and she yelled at him, intemperately, "Let me see my husband, Master Culpepper. If he's suffering, I must go to him."

"Kathryn," the other man said. "Don't play the fool. The king ordered his door barred against you. He doesn't wish you to see him in this state."

"Charles," she said. "Charles," and she clutched at her brother's sleeve with desperation. She remembered the conversation with the dowager just the day before about what would happen if the king died before she gave him a child. How she would become either a pawn or would be killed so that one of the rival factions could take power. "Charles, the king must not die. The king's majesty must stay alive. He must stay well, Charles!"

"We are doing all we can, sister. His physicians are closeted with him, and they are a cunning lot. His wound has stopped flowing, and it is said the humors have turned him all black. Sister, he is in great pain, but this has happened before, and he survived. Don't disturb yourself. You truly don't look well."

Her ears were buzzing, loudly. Through the noise, she heard Thomas Culpepper's voice, as from a long distance away. "Howard, I think the queen is bleeding. Look you on the floor."

She tried to deny that she was bleeding, but she had not strength to do it. She felt them lift her bodily, between them. She heard them scream, "The queen is bleeding. Send for her women. Send for a physician."

She tried to protest that she wasn't bleeding, that she couldn't be bleeding. Her flux had stopped. She was pregnant with the king's child. The Duke of York. She would be the mother of the Duke of York and the regent.

"Beshrew my soul!" Jane Boleyn's loud and shocked voice. "I believe Her Majesty is miscarrying."

Chapter Forty-four

She woke up in her room between the soft sheets. She felt tired and somehow distant, as though the entire world had departed her, going to some place remote and far away and leaving her, Kathryn, here in this soft island of safety.

Lying on the feather mattress, the feather bed, she imagined to herself that she was lying upon a cloud of heaven, and sighed softly. For a moment it came to her how lovely it would be to be dead, far from everything, not caring. No more to battle in the joust of life. No more to try to stay safe and ahead of those forces that would destroy her.

But the problem was that she had never believed very much in another life. Oh, it wasn't that she disbelieved. They told her in church that there was another life after this, and she didn't see very much reason to disbelieve it.

It was like the tales that travelers brought of distant lands where strange people lived and strange fruits grew. Why would anyone bother making them up if they weren't true?

In the same way, she believed it might be possible that the life after this one was true. After all, everyone told of it. And there were stories of ghosts and demons, of angels and holy apparitions, coming down from heaven to encourage the faithful and punish the wicked.

But did those tales tell the truth—had anyone ever really come back?

And what if they hadn't? Then there was not very much after death. Only the tomb, dusty and deep, and being forgotten forever.

There would not be dancing or music or love. And she would never see Thomas Culpepper again. And though seeing Thomas Culpepper hurt her—though even thinking of seeing Thomas Culpepper hurt her—the idea of never again seeing him hurt her yet more, and she feared that somehow she would go on suffering after death in that life that didn't exist.

Suppose for a moment that this afterlife existed, somehow. And that she neither got to heaven—which she had some vague idea required more holiness than she possessed—nor was quite so wicked as to merit hell? Then where would she end up? Could she perhaps remain a ghost, haunting the vast corridors of Greenwich Palace?

And would that ghost see Thomas Culpepper, long to touch him, and be unable to?

She heard a sound and rather thought that she had exclaimed, an exclamation of fear and sadness. In response to it, the curtains of the bed were open, and she found herself staring at Lady Rutland's motherly countenance. She had come back to manage the queen's household when Lady Margaret Douglas was sent to Syon.

"I see you are awake, my lady. How feel you?"

"Tired," Kathryn said. "So tired."

"Well, that is only to be understood, when you realize how much blood you have lost."

"Blood?" she said. "But I . . ."

"You lost the child," she said. "It happens sometimes. You worried too much about the king's majesty and his infirmity. It is not good to worry too much."

"The king," Kathryn snatched, convulsively onto her covers, holding them tight, and trying to rise, as though the pliable coverlet could give her enough support to get on her trembling feet. "The king. How is the king, is he . . . ?"

Lady Rutland only shook her head. "He is the same way, madam. The wound won't flow and the humors are poisoning his body. More than that I don't know, as only his physicians and his chamberers are allowed to go in and see him. Even his gentlemen must stay in the chamber outside his room and get their news from those allowed inside."

"The king mustn't die. He mustn't."

"Praise God's mercy," Lady Rutland said, "he shall not. He'll be preserved to be a husband to you for many years yet."

Kathryn murmured again, "The king mustn't die," as she fell back upon the bed.

She'd never know if she'd fallen asleep or lost consciousness. For the next few days, her memory was a confusion of half-understood words and of things being done to her rather than by her. She felt people raise her, and people clean her, and she had some idea that she had been force-fed some bitter-tasting concoctions.

After a long time, feeling as though she'd been running a long race, or perhaps lost in a labyrinth unable to find the way out, she woke up.

Her bed, and she herself, smelled of sickness and sweat. She woke up with a starting cry, as though it had surprised her to find her way out of her nightmare. Then she blinked. The air on her face felt very cool. She opened her eyes. It was dark but not completely. The sort of dark before the full light of dawn, or else the sort of penumbra you get when night is falling. She sighed as she turned, then started a little, as she realized the king was by her side, looking down at her.

He looked sad, perhaps disappointed. "There, sweetheart, there," he said softly. "They tell me you miscarried a child."

"Was it a son?" she asked. She remembered, vaguely, from long ago that her cousin Anne Boleyn had miscarried her son and that everyone had said she'd had a miscarriage of her savior. Her savior.

"It was too early to tell," Henry said. "You should not have worried so much. This leg of mine . . . sometimes it stops, but then it starts again. I have no intention of dying, sweetheart. It's very important that you worry not. A child that is growing within the womb is very sensitive to this sort of upset."

Kathryn started apologizing. She felt as though she were a little girl being scolded, and she cried and begged and implored the king not to take back Anne of Cleves. She held with both hands onto the clumsy, rough hand that was attempting to smooth her hair, "Your Majesty, give me another chance. Do you not discard me, yet. I can give you a Duke of York, I can."

There was a chuckle from the king, and then the soft voice, speaking, "An' you do not, you will still remain our entirely beloved wife." He patted her hair. "I don't know why you'd think I'd ever take back Anne. I never intended to. I never want anyone but you, my Kathryn. It is fit perhaps that my first queen should be Catherine and also the last. Come, do not cry. I will not die, and if God wills, we shall have fruit to our union. Little princesses who look like you, and strong princes like I once was. Do not cry, my dear. There is nothing to cry about. You are young, and we have much time."

But Kathryn held his hand tight with both hands and thought that she, too, might have had a miscarriage of her savior. If the king had died, she would, even now, be fortune's orphan, tossed about by fate and the whims of men. No. It must not happen.

"I must have a child," she said, crying. "I must have a Duke of York, for Your Majesty's joy and the peace of the realm."

"Well, then, my dear, you will have a Duke of York. Only you rest now."

She rested. When she woke up, it was full day, and Lady Rutland was waiting, cheerfully, to help her bathe.

It was three days before Kathryn was fully on her feet again, and a good week before she felt like herself. In the meantime, weak and slow, she found that Dereham, who had arrived sometime while she was unconscious, had been causing problems in her household.

Chapter Forty-five

"It is that Francis Dereham, my lady," Lady Rutland said softly, while Kathryn was getting dressed in the morning.