No Will But His (33 page)

Kathryn felt as though she'd been slapped. The idea of Culpepper sleeping with half her ladies made her throat close. She wanted to dance with him. She wanted to remind him of his letter to her—oh, she should have kept it!—she wanted to make sure he loved her as much as she loved him. That he loved her so much he would never forget her, and that no one would ever replace her in his heart.

She could not say that. Not to the king. She heard her voice, distant and even, say, "He seems like a very good sort of gentleman."

"The best gentleman that ever lived," the king said, and then cleared his throat, as though realizing that what he had just said contradicted his earlier statements. "And I'm sure if he ends up in any ladies' beds, it is as much their fault as his own. For he's a young and madcap creature, and at that age it is hard to resist a pretty pair of eyes or a fair smile. But . . . well, so it is at my age, is it not?" he said.

Kathryn nodded absently. Her mind was full of Thomas Culpepper, and she longed for him so much it hurt. And yet it must never be, never. Everything separated them, but most of all that she was married to the king. Even an ordinary man had the power to undo his wife, but the king's majesty could utterly destroy where it loved. If she crossed him, she would not rise again.

At the end of a long day, they withdrew to their lodgings at Lincoln Castle, where they had separate apartments.

As was customary, the king visited her, but he soon left to go back to his own apartments. Since his leg had stopped flowing for those few days, he seemed to have remembered his age. He would come to her every night, but often he would leave her, that they both might sleep undisturbed, he said. He did not want to keep her awake, he said, since her health was still fragile. And besides, he slept best upon his own bed.

Normally as soon as the king left, Kathryn fell asleep and stayed that way till early dawn. But this time, she could not. She kept thinking of Culpepper at the dance that evening, dancing with half of her ladies. Was he sleeping with them, too?

She got up and she paced her chamber, but it was too closed in, too hot, too confined. "Jane," she called, touching Lady Rochefort's arm, as the woman slept on a camp bed at the foot of her own bed. "Jane, I beg you, come."

Jane got up. She had that look in her face, as though she were once more seeing things that weren't there, or perhaps only things that were not there to anyone else. She would jump at shadows and look around in confusion.

However, Kathryn thought, it was as well. She was taking Jane with her, and the fact that she had Jane with her should be enough—more than enough—for people to think she was well chaperoned. And besides, she meant to do nothing too dangerous, nothing too bad. If anyone asked, she would say she was going to the king's chambers to check on her husband's sleep, having been disturbed by a bad dream.

She was going to the king's apartments, that much was true. She was going to check on the whereabouts of Thomas Culpepper, king's gentleman and the most gallant man in the court.

Outside her chamber, there was a hallway, and at the end of the hallway a door, which led to a sort of terrace. Past that door was the other side of the palace, which was built as a mirror to this part—and in that other part the king's chambers.

As Kathryn started down the hallway to the king's chambers, she saw a gentleman come the other way, carrying something. Both of them stopped. She thought she recognized in the dimly lit gentleman the form and shape of Thomas Culpepper. She must be dreaming. But he had stopped at the same time and was staring at her.

"Master Culpepper," she said, at the very same time he said, "Your Majesty."

They looked at each other across the hallway. Slowly, slowly he came toward her, as though he were afraid she would vanish. Kathryn was conscious of Jane at her elbow, and she wondered what Jane would make of this all but was afraid to turn and see.

"You see," Culpepper said softly. "I was coming to your chamber in the hopes of finding one of your women who was still awake and who would relay my gift to you."

"Your gift, sir?" she asked, confused. For a moment she thought he meant his love or perhaps his heart. But he extended the thing he'd been carrying, which on second look was a round basket of the sort rustics carried around.

"This morning," he said. "While we were riding past a market, they were selling the finest oranges, and I remembered my promise to that little girl who grew up to be Your Majesty," he said. "I thought I should fulfill it. We all know how important promises are."

"Yes," she said.

He looked around. "I see you have your woman with you, so nothing could be more proper," he said. "Than if we went out through this door and onto the terrace and ate oranges in the moonlight. Would Your Majesty like that?"

She inclined her head. "I couldn't think of anything I would like better."

Chapter Forty-seven

The oranges were sweet, and so was the company.

Jane, perhaps sensing she was not wanted, or perhaps acting solely in response to her ghosts and visions and those half-formed dreams that seemed to be more than half of her consciousness, sat a little away from them while they sat on the steps of the ancient terrace under the moonlight, the basket of oranges between them.

"You don't know how many days I spent on knees, in the chapel," he said. "Crawling to the crucifix."

"You did?"

"Yes, while you were ill," he said.

"For the king's health?" she asked.

"I love the king's majesty," Culpepper said. "And as God is my witness, I'd never wish any evil to befall him, but in truth, it was you I prayed for. When you came upon Charles and I in the king's chamber, seeing you like that, pale and wan with the blood pouring out of you . . . we thought you were dead, and that is the truth. And for days, even your women seemed to think you were dead."

Kathryn reached for a orange. Quite accidentally, her hand touched his. He did not remove his, but instead, he turned it upside down, so that her hand might rest in his palm, and then, slowly, he closed his palm, so that he was holding her hand, in the basket, over the soft, sun-warmed oranges.

He looked ahead at the little wood that bordered on the terrace, as if he expected some sort of answer from the shadows and the trees. "Do you love him very much, then?" he asked.

"Him?" Kathryn asked, quite lost.

"The king. His Majesty. The way you worried about him . . . Then way you came running so fast, and then were so distressed that the child must perforce leave your womb . . . I realized then . . . Kathryn . . ." He waited as if to see if she would object to the use of her given name. When she didn't, he inclined his head, as if this too were an answer. "When you came in like that, so anxious for his health, I realized what a fool I had been. Trying to spite the duchess by not answering her summons, I lost the opportunity at having for wife not only the most beautiful lady who ever lived, but the sweetest, too consumed with zeal for her husband's well being."

"Should I not care about the health of my lord?" Kathryn asked, and then, more angry at herself than at him or even at the duchess or the duke of Norfolk, feeling that everything she must say and live and do was a lie, and it was all her fault, she charged ahead, "If it counts, Master Culpepper, I don't think you spurned the marriage. I don't think you'd ever have been given a chance at it."

"But the Duchess of Norfolk summoned me," he said. "She sent word to the court that I was to come and that she would have a message to my father about a very advantageous marriage for me."

Kathryn, who felt as though, in the last year, she'd learned far more of the world than she'd ever meant to, gave a hollow laugh. "Oh, I know that's what she said. But I think the truth was quite different. I think, Master Culpepper, that the Duke of Norfolk and the dowager duchess went fishing. And that I was that with which they baited their hook."

"You think they meant you for the king all along?" he said.

"I would lay a wager on it," Kathryn said.

"Well then," Culpepper said. "My guilt is less but not my regret. You were always, then, too dear for my possessing, but a man can dream."

Kathryn smiled. She shouldn't say it, but there was the moonlight on her, and Jane was far enough away that she could not hear them. And it seemed for once she must tell the truth, even if she might die for it. "A woman can dream, too, Master Culpepper, and I wish it had been an earnest summons and that you had answered it."

The hand surrounding hers clenched tight upon it.

Chapter Forty-eight

The progress continued, but something had changed. Outwardly, it all was the same. The king would visit the queen's bedchamber at night. During the day they would spend time together. She played for him, or they played at cards together.

But after he left her bedchamber at night, after most of her household was asleep, two hooded shadows would often come out of her room and meet with a gentleman similarly attired in whatever garden, chase, or preserve offered.

As romance went, it was nothing like what Kathryn had experienced before. Culpepper never did any more than hold her hand and once, in a transport of passion, kiss it.

Not for him the careful explorations that Manox had made upon her body, or even lying naked abed with her, the way Dereham had.

Instead they talked.

They talked of everything. Their childhoods, their dreams, even their hopes of heaven. Like two children dreaming of the future, they imagined what their life would have been together had they married. In their dream they picked their castle from one of those that his father held. They furnished it. They chose their horses. They hired imaginary servants. They dreamed up schemes to increase their fortunes, and they imagined what their children would have looked like.

Unspoken but clear between them, so clear that Kathryn herself could not lie to herself and pretend it wasn't there, was the certainty that they would do all this, should something happen to the king. Only, of course, Kathryn wasn't sure she would be allowed to do any of it—to leave court and marry Culpepper. It seemed more like a dream than something that could ever happen. And she knew, all too well, that it could never happen unless she were pregnant or had already borne the Duke of York when the king died.

So was lost in a dream she walked with Culpepper night after night.

There were some scares. Once, in Lincoln, when trying to get back into her apartments, she'd found the door locked fast against her. Culpepper had been forced to pick the lock so that she and Jane could return to their beds without disturbing any of the other inmates of the household.

Another time, when she was going into her room, she'd met with Mr. Johns himself, who said he was coming around to investigate a sound. Kathryn had told him she was coming back from the king's apartments, and she hoped that he would not check.

And then another night in Pontefract, one of the finest castles in England, while they stayed there on an extended visit, after Kathryn had been out walking with Culpepper, Jane had looked at Kathryn as they were about to go back to their apartments, and she had said, "Pray my lady, do not take me amiss. I believe you know what love is now."

Kathryn was very afraid that she did know.

Chapter Forty-nine

The progress continued. They moved to York by easy stages, and took a major detour to inspect the fortifications at Hull. At York, Henry lingered very long, showing Kathryn what a great domain their son would hold, should he ever decide to appear.

But after they returned to Hampton Court, once more, Henry's wound closed up and the humors pent up within the leg.

That night, Kathryn met Culpepper, and she was frantic. "My lord," she said, "will die."

They were in a little landing off the queen's apartments, a stairwell where no one ever went. They stood by a window. A cold breeze blew in, playing with her hair. She'd removed her hood, because he liked seeing her with her hair loose. She'd done it automatically. She had to do everything automatically because she could not think.

"My lord," she said, "will die."

Culpepper didn't reassure her. He did not, as he had those many months ago, tell her all would be well or that Henry would live. Instead he looked worried and the only comfort he could lend her was to touch her hair softly, his fingers like sparrows. After a long silence, he said, "I will take care of you, Kathryn. I will always take care of you."

She felt tears falling down her face. She wanted to tell him that he had even forgotten the oranges, so why should she believe him now. But she also didn't want to. In a way, she dared not. Even if he were an inconstant man, she didn't want his inconstancy exposed to her and the world both. Let her dream; let her hold on to the dream as long as she might. It would not be very long.

"Aye," she said softly. "And you won't be able to. Had I a child, then it would be different. Were I carrying the Duke of York, then it would be different. But since that time, it hasn't happened at all, and more than half the time my lord—" She stopped, realizing what she was about to say was treason. But then, meeting Thomas out here was treason, aye, and what she wanted with him was treason, too. "More than half the time since that day, my lord proves incapable of performing what my grandmother of Norfolk called the office."

"Perhaps you are with child already," Culpepper said.

She shook her head. "Nothing has happened since my last flux that could make it so," she said, and realizing she sounded like Anne of Cleves laughed, her laugh tinged with a little bit of hysteria. Then her words came again, low, and she said, "If my lord left me with child, then my family . . . aye, they're powerful enough. Between them, I trow, they could manage to keep me safe. As regent or else with one of them as regent while I retired somewhere in comfort." She looked at him and frowned. "I still misdoubt I may ever marry or at least not till the child would be old enough, or till his brother ascended the throne." She shook her head. "But I would at least be allowed to live."