No Will But His (5 page)

The streets, filled with people who pushed her this way and that, were like a landscape one sees in dreams, which shifts and moves if you try to focus upon it. There was nothing but people everywhere she looked. Some very well dressed, some beggars in rags, all of them intent on going about their own business and paying no attention at all to her—or so it seemed to Kathryn.

None of them was familiar, and to none of them did Kathryn feel she could entrust herself. Her nurse's and her mother's dark muttering about people who did great evil to young girls, or else who held them for ransom, had not made much sense. They still didn't. But the warnings did come back to haunt her mind like remnants of a half-forgotten lore. All the strangers around her seemed menacing and strange.

She walked past a fountain that seemed to be running with red wine and from which many men jostled to fill cups and flagons and jugs, each man carrying at least two vessels, one in each hand, and one man—making his tottering way across the road—seeming to carry three jugs in each hand through some great feat of balance.

Hurrying past the throng around the fountain, she found herself grabbed, her hands held by some very dirty, ragged man, who smiled at her from an almost-toothless face and led her in a mad reel, faster and faster and faster, while someone she could not see played upon a flute.

Faster and faster, till he let go of her, and she went reeling against a wall, which felt greasy against her palms. Someone else tried to grab her, but she shied away and covered her face with her arms and ran headlong down a street.

With her arms wrapped over her head, she could not see which way she was going, and presently, she felt a hand stay her about her middle, and a voice say harshly, "Halt, mistress, else you be trampled."

She looked up just in time to see a horse go by, passing so close that the hand at her middle had to press her hard against the wall.

The hand, she saw, looking down because it was more pleasant than looking up at the steaming body of the animal who'd almost trod her down, was a well-made one, and encased in a suede glove of pearly grey. The hand of a gentleman. The gloves disappeared into a sleeve edged all around with lace. Her gaze continued up to a  sleeve of dark burgundy velvet slashed through to display a vivid blue silk, which was attached to a doublet at a broad shoulder, which in turn led to a manly neck, and hence to the face of a young man, just a little older than Kathryn, who might have been the foreign prince of her dreams save that his fair-skinned face split in a smile and the voice that emerged from his lips came in a good English accent. "Faith," he said. "You are but a little girl. What are you doing alone here? Are you lost?"

She wanted to tell him she was lost and also that she must find the duchess's retinue, but the way he said she was but a little girl stung, and instead, she stomped her foot—to little effect for there was only mud underneath—and tilted her face up, her chin sticking out proud and defiant, and said, "I am not but a little girl. I am Mistress Kathryn Howard, the daughter of Edmund the hero of Flodden field."

The merry blue grey eyes looked like they would like to laugh, but something of recognition flitted across the man's gaze. Caught between laughter and something that might very well be admiration, he bowed low, and said, "Well, I beg your pardon, then, Mistress Kathryn Howard. All the more so as we are in the way of being cousins on your mother's side. My name is Thomas Culpepper." He frowned a little. "But if you're Edmund's daughter, what are you doing in London? Is he not the comptroller of Calais?"

"Yes, or at least—" Or at least Kathryn had heard of his new post in Calais, though in that as in all else, no one told her exactly what it all meant. "But I'm not living with my father and his wife. I am a maid of honor to the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk."

"Oh," Thomas Culpepper said, and pursed his lips. "And Her Grace being busy today, I suppose her maids . . ." He frowned again. "Well! It is not done and it is not right."

His voice sounded so put out that Kathryn shied away. But he laughed a little. "Oh, fear not, fair Kathryn. You're with me now, and you are safe. We'll find those who should have kept you close."

He took Kathryn's hand in his and led her trippingly through the streets. And Kathryn found all was different. The drunks and revelers who before would skirt too close to her, close enough to scare her, now took one look at Thomas and gave them a wide berth, so that they walked, as it were, in a safe aisle of their own amid the pageantry and revelry of the night.

And the revelry itself, which had seemed such a disorganized dance, now resolved itself into tableaus in honor of the Queen—here four nymphs held up tablets praising her and the son she would bear the king; there another tableau compared her to Saint Anne, Mother of the Virgin Mary; still farther ahead, a group of musicians played music in her honor.

Thomas, Kathryn's hand on his arm, explained all this to her, seeming very amused at her naive curiosity. And then at long last said, "Aye, but the maidens of Norfolk are hard to find are they not?"

Kathryn nodded, obligingly, but she cared not at all, now, if they ever found them. Or at least, she thought they would have to find them, and sooner rather than later, for Kathryn surely couldn't stay the rest of her life with Thomas Culpepper, no matter how handsome he might be or even that they indeed might be cousins.

Still, she didn't want to find them very quickly. Oh, no. She'd feign stay with Thomas as long as she could.

Ahead there were royal servants dispensing meat and bread, and Thomas procured food for them both, then wine from one of the running fountains, in cups that he procured Kathryn knew not where. He led her to a little space where stairs ran up to the fifth floor of a house, and they sat on the steps side by side eating, while he asked Kathryn where she was staying and where she'd lost her companions.

He listened, also, with just the slightest smile of amusement, to Kathryn chirruping about her new clothes, the greatness of the Palace at  Lambeth and even of Horsham, the strictness of Dame Margaret and the great injustice of her never having got oranges.

Kathryn knew other boys her age. Charles, her brother, must be close to it, if not the same. But Charles and her friends were always impatient of Kathryn. They'd never listened. Thomas Culpepper listened and didn't call her a goose or ask her if her wits had gone wondering or inform her, in a stern voice, that well brought up maids did not talk to young men. No, Thomas listened and asked questions, and if his blue grey eyes sparkled with amusement, it was always an amusement mingled with delight, as though he found her amusing beyond all other entertainments.

"And now," he told her, when they finished their meal. "I shall take you back to the palace at  Lambeth myself, and deliver you to the duchess's household. If those maids be not at home, they're in amusements no young lady should partake."

He led her, through the streets, but not in any great hurry, showing her many more tableaus on the way and delighting her with explanations, particularly when she presented to him the notion that nymphs or not, ladies should not be dressed only in transparent fabric. "For it just isn't decent."

"Is it not, Fair Kathryn?" Thomas asked.

She shook her head, and he laughed. "But that is what they wore, you know, in antiquity, when they roamed the world."

"What?" she asked. "Like the lady my nurse told me about, who went all naked through the forest, till a king found her and chose to marry her?"

"Likely," Thomas said, with a whoop of delight, though Kathryn could not think where the delight came from. "Likely she was a nymph."

"Well, if she were so," Kathryn said, thoughtfully. "It was ill done of him to marry her, for she was not used to clothes, and what will people think of a queen going naked about the palace? And you know," she added, , "likely they made her uncomfortable, like when people are used to going about barefoot and are forced to wear shoes. They don't like it, and no more would she." She stopped because Thomas had pressed his free hand to his mouth and looked like he was about to burst into loud laughter.

"Likely," he said, from behind his hand. "Likely you are right. The king ought to have remembered that Caesar's wife must be beyond reproach." With this cryptic remark, as though it had helped him control his humor, he uncovered his mouth, and said, "I see you are wise as well as beautiful. I trow, if you're not spoken for when I come of age, I'll speak for you myself. Would you like to marry me when you grow up, Kathryn?"

And Kathryn, who till then had thought that nothing but a prince would do for her, looked up into the impish eyes and smiled. "Likely," she said. "Likely I might."

He laughed loudly and picked her up and carried her the rest of the way, which turned out to be very little, till he delivered her to the palace at Lambeth where one of the housekeepers opened the door and made many exclamations of surprise at seeing Kathryn alone with a gentleman.

Kathryn was that tired by then, that she could not follow everything Thomas Culpepper said. But words emerged from his haranguing of the servant. "Too young," he said. "Too fair." And "Too innocent." And then a lot about how someone of her station shouldn't go about unattended.

The housekeeper bobbed so many curtseys she looked like one of those mechanical contrivances that move up and down as a handle turns—or perhaps as though she were trying to learn some difficult dance. "I'm sure, sir," she said, a lot, and twisted the corner of her overdress, as though to punish it for her shortcomings. "I'll tell the young ladies, sir," she said. And "It was very badly done, sir."

None of her words seemed to stop his lecture of her, which took a long time to come to its proper conclusion, which was "She is a Howard, and she should be watched and cared for as such. Remember, woman, that your house has the cousin of the queen herself in its charge. If the king should hear!"

This caused at least three bobbing-up-and-down curtseys, and finally Thomas bent to speak to Kathryn herself. "Thank you for the pleasure of your company, Mistress Kathryn Howard. You have made what would have been a night of revelry something quite other—and I don't think I am displeased." He bowed to her. "When I next see you, I shall bring you oranges."Kathryn, led to the maidens' dormitory by the apologizing housekeeper, thought of Thomas Culpepper's tall, straight back disappearing into the London streets and thought that though she was not at all sure what he meant, she was sure of two things: One that he would indeed one day bring her oranges. And the other that she wasn't sure she cared at all, as long as he brought himself.

Section Two

Opening Rose

Chapter Six

"The queen," the duchess said, and let her hand, and with it the letter she was holding, fall. "Has delivered herself of a princess."

For a moment silence reigned in the room in which all the maids of honor had gathered around Her Grace. Outside the mullioned window of the chamber, the wind blew bitter and harsh, denuding the last leaves from forlorn trees. Drops of rain clung to the windows, diminishing the light received from the slate grey skies above.

The duchess sighed, and as if this were the signal, Mary Tilney piped up. "But, sure . . ." She cleared her throat. "Didn't the astrologers say she was carrying a son?"

Kathryn looked down on the embroidery she was doing—with twisted, uneven stitches. Mary had insisted she must learn this—one of the graces of womanhood—but Kathryn felt about it much the same way she felt about forming letters. It was a skill requiring much application and, at the end of it all, not seeming to produce enough satisfaction. Mary had drawn the figure for Kathryn to embroider, Kathryn's initials in a design of thistles, and said it would make a right handsome cap, but Kathryn looked doubtfully at it. Perhaps it would. When seen from a distance in ill light.

"Don't be a fool, girl," the duchess stormed. "Astrologers are, like all learned men, capable of going wrong. Anne has produced a daughter . . ." She chewed on her lip. "The king will never forgive her for this. She's done no better than the old queen."

"How can the king hold her guilty for it," Kathryn asked, so suddenly that it surprised even herself, and it took her a moment to realize that the words had issued from her own mouth. "How could she control it?"

She got a chilling look from the duchess. "There are things," she said, "that a smart woman can do, thoughts she must think and prayers that would allow her to give her husband a son, if she only took care."

Kathryn looked at the duchess's awful eyes, intent and far to keen and fixed on her, and knew that she was meant to just accept the words as the gospel truth. Or else, she thought, I'm supposed to lose control of my bladder, like my brother. Instead, she smiled back, "But then," she said, "if it were so easy, would it not be something that Queen Catherine, herself, would have done and thereby avoided being set aside?"