No Will But His (34 page)

"You'll be allowed to live," Culpepper said. "We'll find a way to take you far from all these court intrigues, away from people who might wish to harm you. I'll take you right away from all of this to where you may be safe and know you are."

She laughed at the back of her throat. "What?" she said. "Take me to France, perhaps?"

"Perhaps," he said calmly, as though this were perfectly reasonable. "If I must."

He couldn't know that he was, in his very different way, exactly replicating what Dereham had told her once. He didn't know how futile it all sounded. If Margaret Douglas, more resourceful than Kathryn—aye—and more forceful, too, could be separated forever from the man she loved, what would not happen to Kathryn.

In that moment she shivered, realizing it could be far worse than her death. She might live a long life in some desolate priory, some distant convent, never seeing Thomas again. Looking up at his face and thinking of never seeing it again made Kathryn's heart clench and her breath turn to a small, forlorn gasp. She reached out blindly. She took his hand and guided it, under her neckline, to rest on her breast.

At first he tried to resist, to pull back, but she kept his hand there, and little by little, as a child that learns to stand or walk, his hand started fondling her breast with slow, experienced movements. She bit her lip. She would not cry out. The slightest touch from Culpepper was better than the greatest pleasure from her other lovers.

Yet she must keep all her wits about her, and with her mind on it, she must make him want her enough that he'd forget danger and fear, aye, and loyalty and honor, too.

She worked as hard as she ever had, using all her artifice and all her power, pressing against him and begging him, then sighing and whispering. Enticing him. Telling him that only Lady Rochefort and Mary Tilney would be present. Telling him that he must save her life by taking her honor.

He asked if she knew the danger in it, and who better to know it? She had nodded and said, "I am my father's daughter." And to his quizzical look, had answered, "For though I don't know it of my own accord, it is said that my father was a great gambler, always ready to risk fortune and livelihood upon the gaming tables."

He'd nodded but looked serious. "Aye, I've heard of Edmund Howard. An excellent hero on the battlefield, but you should never let him borrow from you." He moved his hand within her bodice, so that it cupped one breast and then the other. "But I pray you're not your father's daughter, madam, for he always lost."

She shivered but laughed brightly, a bitter laugh. "I must try, must I not? All my life has been one long gamble; let me rescue my last desperate chance with yet a new one."

Little by little, she coaxed him and convinced him up the stairs and into her apartments. In there she shooed Mary Tilney away, bidding her watch the door.

Jane Rocheford had walked, as one who is not quite present, to her bed at the foot of the queen's bed and fallen asleep in that way she did that sometimes made Kathryn wonder whether she were truly alive, or if her will and her love animated what should long since have been a corpse.

Kathryn had pulled Thomas onto her bed and closed the curtains tight against prying eyes. And then everything had been different.

So many times, and since so long ago, Kathryn had let men take their pleasure with her, and sometimes she even had enjoyed their caresses and taken pleasure in their taking of them. She had thought it would all be the same. The undressing, fast or slow. The frantic caresses. And then, suddenly, the union, which always managed to be less than she expected or thought or hoped.

But everything was different and everything was new. The well-known actions could be described in the same way. They removed their own and each other's clothes. Thomas favored the slow method of undressing his lover, each piece of clothing removed, and each portion of the body beneath caressed with sensitive fingers and worshipful lips.

But his touch felt to Kathryn like no other touch. It was as though her whole lifelong she had never tasted anything but the weakest of weak ale, and now, suddenly, she were given distilled liquor, splashing headily into the glass, overwhelming all her senses.

She had to bite her lips together not to moan, and even then she was sure some moans escaped her. She didn't fear waking Lady Rochefort, who when she was in this state, would sleep like the dead, but she feared that Mary, outside the door, might hear more than was convenient. She trusted Mary Tilney with her secrets—but how many secrets can you put in a single repository before they must, perforce, overflow?

Reaching for Thomas, she undressed him in turn, undoing doublet laces, feeling the skin of his body beneath his clothes. He looked a little surprised, despite his own experienced movements. Did her touch also feel to him as no other touch on Earth? Or was he, perhaps, like Henry, unused to a woman taking what she wanted in bed?

Her fingers caressed his skin, and it felt at once all new and as if it had always been so—as though she'd known what it would feel like. As though this were not the first time that she had felt his skin, but as though they'd been born for each other and were only now consummating what had been a long-preordained union.

And this time, when their bodies joined, there was no feeling that it was less than she expected. Instead, it was as though their souls joined, too, even as their bodies did.

In that moment, her arms around Thomas Culpepper's body, as he took her for his own and made her his, Kathryn knew what people meant when they spoke of heaven and bliss. And she knew that all her gambles had been worth it.

Chapter Fifty

The king recovered. As before, the dangerous humors started flowing out of his leg again. It took days for him to be on his feet, though, and when he was, he always used his walking stick and was more ill-tempered than before.

Yet his love for Kathryn continued; and his desire for her. And if he could only rarely perform the office, he still came to her bed almost every night. And he still called her his rose without a thorn.

Kathryn didn't dare, again, admit Culpepper into her bed. In fact, conscious of how much greater their guilt now was, fearful of their own sins finding them, both had agreed they must not see each other. Or not as often.

Once more, she dared not meet him in stairways and empty chambers, in forests and parks and gardens. Instead, she was bound to walk where she knew he'd be so that they'd casually meet; she tried to look out of windows when she knew he would be below. And still she ached at the sight of him, and ached worse when he was not there.

When her flux came, as usual, the next month, she cried a little, and Harry, hearing of it from one of her maids or perhaps from one of his men who'd talked to one of her maids, had patted her awkwardly. "I know how much you wish for a Duke of York," he told her. "But if he never comes, we must be content. Is not our present happiness enough?" He'd kissed her face softly. "You are the best and most perfect of my wives, my rose without a thorn. After all these marriages that have been afflicted by all manner of strange accidents, I have finally found a wife that suits my mood and who loves me with an all-perfect love. I will be grateful, even if there are no children. Aye, we have Edward, and he's a lusty infant and full of life."

Kathryn had let him caress her and comfort her, but inside she raged: Knew he not what would happen to her if he died? Knew he not the danger she would be in? Or cared he not?

For the first time since her marriage, she'd felt rage and repulsion toward Harry with the crown and Harry without the crown as well. But she could say nothing. Saying anything would only bring danger not only to her, but to Thomas as well. For Thomas's love, she would hold her peace and simper lovingly at her ignorant husband, and contrive to keep him happy yet a little longer.

Chapter Fifty-one

All Hallows' Eve was one of the times when the king must be seen to attend mass and to take communion, and Henry decreed that it should be a day of rejoicing throughout the country for his most perfect marriage.

He had not, she thought, as he had with his previous wives, prayed that God send him issue from this union. No. He just sang praises and ordered the Te Deum be sung for this most perfect species of womanhood, his rose without a thorn.

And Kathryn, whose heart was full of guilt and of hatred even, sometimes, clenched her teeth and closed her eyes and willed herself not to protest. This would allow her to hold on to life a little longer. And maybe, by a miracle, there would yet be a Duke of York. Maybe God granted miracles to desperate gamblers.

He had never granted it to her father, but surely all that meant was that the Almighty owed her family a debt. As well pay it here as not.

That night she slept with Harry nightlong, and he held on to her as a frightened child will hold on to his mother in a storm. She understood, then, that she clung to him because it would allow her to hold her life yet a little longer, and that he clung to her for no very different reason. While he held to her, he could tell himself he was still young, and while he told himself that, he could see his life extending far into the future. As long as he loved her, he loved his youth.

In the morning he left her, bidding her "Farewell, sweetheart" just as he had, she thought, so long ago to Anne of Cleves. Only it was not all that long ago, it just seemed so to Kathryn—a long and elaborate journey at the end of which you arrive quite a different person. She understood now that her gamble might be lost, but she refused to leave the table and she refused to turn in her cards. Somewhere, somehow, there must be a way for herself and Thomas to be together. There must be a way to survive Henry's death and become neither a pawn, nor a corpse.

She lingered over her dressing, demanding that her maids make the fall of her dress just so. She broke her fast on bread and small ale, her appetites all quite sated.

And then, because it was past All Hallows', and Christmas and New Year's would be around the corner as sure as day follows night, she felt heavy and not interested in anything, but forced herself to act normally. She took her ladies into one of the larger chambers and started explaining a complex dance she had devised, which she hoped would amuse the king's majesty.

They were in the middle of it, and the player at the spinet had finally managed not to stop in the middle of a movement.

And then the door was thrown open, and there stood Cramner and two guards from His Majesty's private corps, and he gestured that the spinet player should stop, and the boy obeyed.

Kathryn turned around, fear rising in her, but rage covering it and rising with it. "What is the meaning of this, Master Cramner?" she asked. "See you not that I am practicing a dance with my ladies?"

"No more dancing now," Cramner said heavily. He looked tired. "The time for dancing is all gone, Your Majesty. You stand accused of treason, of having deceived His Majesty about your state as a pure and honest maiden when you married him, and of diverse indecencies and breaches of honor."

Kathryn shivered. She felt as though she'd not only turned into a statue, but she'd turned into a statue of ice. "What mean you?" she asked, or at least believed she had asked it, because she heard her own voice come back into her ears, but it came muffled and strange, as if from a very long way away, and she could only frown and shake her head.

"Mary Hall, née Lassells, who used to be the Dowager Duchess's of Norfolk's chamberer has spoken to us, being burdened in her conscience."

Again her voice, though she did not feel her lips move, nor—she could be sure—had she thought of the words, came back to her ears from a long way off. "Mary lies. She was always jealous of me."

Cramner shook his head. "We have apprehended two men. Henry Manox, musician, and Francis Dereham, until recently Your Majesty's secretary. They have confessed."

"How dare you?" Kathryn turned on him, screaming, even though she felt as though the real Kathryn remained frozen, locked within her. "How dare you? How dare you take the words of these knaves, these villains—"

"If they be villains, then it tells against Your Majesty," Cramner said. "For both men claim knowledge of Your Majesty, and Manox knows of a mark on your body, which the king's majesty confirms is so."

The king's majesty! They'd talked to the king. The king knew. Well did Kathryn know how Harry with the crown would react to this revelation.

She didn't think any more than she had thought about the words she'd heard herself say. She just felt her own body spring forward, instinctively ducking under the arms the guards reached out to holder, as if this were a game with Charles and Henry when they were children and she were running to stay ahead of them.

And stay ahead of them she did, down the long corridor of Hampton Court, between her quarters and the chapel, where—at this hour—Harry would be listening to mass.

Halfway through the running, as she panted and her heart beat hard, her thought caught up with her actions. She realized that her body was doing exactly the right thing. If she could get to Harry, then Harry without the crown would surely forgive her. But she had to get to him.

The doors of the chapel were closed. She pulled at the handles, but the doors wouldn't open. Locked.

She pounded with her small fists, hard, insistently, demanding the door open and screaming for Harry. But nothing happened. The door remained closed.

And then the guards were there, their hands grasping her fast and pulling her backward, toward her chamber, where they threw her and locked the door.Kathryn collapsed to the floor, crying. And all the time, as her body cried and screamed, her mind was working fast. No more time to dance now. Now the die had been rolled, the last stakes placed. Now was the time to fight for her life.

Section Six