The Rose Without a Thorn (10 page)

I know now that he was the one who betrayed us to the Duchess, for surely none of the girls or the young men who came to the Long Room on those nights would have done so.

However, my grandmother received a note suggesting that, if she knew what took place in the Long Room on many nights, she would not approve of it.

As a result, one of the older women received a summons to attend the Duchess. Her name was Baskerville, I think.

She came back with a wry face.

“Someone has betrayed us,” she said. “The doors to the Long Room are to be locked at night, and the keys taken to Her Grace’s apartments where they will remain during the night, and at daybreak one of her attendants will come and unlock the doors.”

We were all alarmed to realize that the Duchess must have an inkling of what was happening.

For about a week we were disconcerted. Also, we missed our merry evenings. There was silence throughout the Long Room, broken only by complaints about how dull it had become.

And then one night, after we were all in bed, the door was opened suddenly and one of the Duchess’s waiting women was there. She stood very still, holding up the keys and shaking them. Then she tiptoed into the room in a mocking manner.

She said: “I liked not to think of you naughty girls missing your fun. Listen. Tell your gallants that they may return, but they must be very careful. I have unlocked the door and shall take the key back to Her Grace’s apartments. In the morning, I shall come again with the key, but there will be no unlocking of the door because the door will have remained unlocked throughout the night. You must make sure that before I come your friends have left for where they should rightly be.”

Then she sat on one of the beds and we all clustered round her and there was much merriment.

After that it was as it had been before—except that now we knew that the Duchess had been aware of what was happening, and it might have occurred to her that we could find a way of deceiving her—which, of course, we had.

Francis loved to give me presents. He was very anxious to make a fortune. He wanted to take me away with him. He often talked of sailing the seas, and I guessed that that was what he did during his absences. He had returned with money—far more than he could have earned as a pensioner in the Duke’s household, but still not the fortune he must have.

He was impatient. He wanted to marry me in truth. He knew that the Duke would never accept him as a suitor for his niece as he was; but if he were a rich man, his remote connection with the Howard family might carry him through.

So he would go away. It should only be for a short trip. He would earn money and come back. I did not want him to go—nor did he want to, but he was convinced that he must.

The Duchess was becoming wary. Neither of us could imagine what would happen if she knew how it was between us. We were troth-plighted and that was sacred to us, for no one could say we were not man and wife.

The Duke would doubtless have Francis removed. Who could say how? Taken to the Tower on some pretext, there to disappear, as so many had who had offended the great? And if we were caught by the Duchess and betrayed to the Duke, it would be the end of our hopes. And what would happen to me? Sent into a nunnery? Married to someone I should hate? It could be one of many things. However, once Francis was a man of great fortune, they would be ready to welcome him as a member of the great Howard family … which he undoubtedly was.

So, much as I disliked the idea of his going, he had made me see the necessity of it.

I was desolate, but he said I must not be, for he would be back ere long with the fortune which would make the way clear for us.

He already had one hundred pounds, and he would leave the money with me. I should keep it safe, for it was the foundation of our fortune. And if he did not return, that money should be mine.

Then he went away.

The days seemed long and the nights wearisome without him. I put the hundred pounds in a bag which I determined should always be with me. I kept it under my pillow at night and attached it to my waistband in the day, but it was too bulky for that, and I had to find another place for it. I had little privacy; but I did have a drawer in which I could put some of my clothes. I sewed the money up in the pocket of a petticoat and every day I took it out to make sure it was there.

At times I was tempted to spend a little on some ornament to which I took a fancy, some piece of silk or velvet which one of the women could make into a gown for me. I tried to persuade myself that Francis would have given it to me if he had been there. But I never did. It was a sacred trust. It was to be the foundation of our life together. Perhaps I guessed that, if I took a little at first, I should go on doing it again … and again. But I knew that one day Francis would come back. When he did, the hundred pounds must be his, just as he had left it with me.

One day, when I was sitting in the garden, I looked up and there was Francis. I leaped to my feet and we ran to meet each other. We could only laugh and cling together for some minutes, too moved for speech.

“Am I dreaming?” I cried at last. “Holy Mother, let me not be dreaming.”

“My own Katherine,” he murmured. “My sweet Katherine.” And I knew in truth that he was there.

It transpired that he had come back without the fortune he had hoped for, but what did that matter? All I cared for was that he was back. And how happy he was to be with me.

He asked earnestly, had there been someone else of whom I had grown fond?

No, no, no, I assured him. No one. I had spent my lonely days and nights thinking of him, longing for his return.

He was reassured. He confessed he had been afraid.

And himself? Had he been faithful?

“As I shall be all my life. Once I had seen sweet Katherine, there could be no one else for me.”

We talked as lovers do, and then he told me that he was going to ask the Duchess for a place in her household.

“So that I may see more of you,” he said. “All through the day I shall be so much nearer than I am as the Duke’s retainer.”

“What post would you have?” I asked.

“Oh … gentleman usher … or page. I would do anything if I might be near you.”

The Duchess liked to have handsome young men about her, and she agreed to make him one of her gentlemen ushers. That was what we wanted, for it did mean we could see each other far more frequently than before.

I gave him the hundred pounds and told him how carefully I had preserved it, and how glad I was that I had not been tempted to spend any of it!

Francis was delighted. The fortune would come, and in the meantime we would give ourselves up to the pleasure of being together. We had much time to make up.

It was true that the Duchess had changed. She was watchful, and especially of me. I had grown up. I was fifteen years old. I was a little alarmed, for I guessed she was thinking of the future, and, now that the once dazzling Anne was someone she did not wish to think of, her thoughts seemed to turn more and more to her humble little granddaughter.

The Maids’ Chamber was a room put to the use of the women. There we did tapestry… embroidery and listened to the music one of us would play while the others worked.

It was a duty to go there and perforce I must do my stint, but I was never any good at tapestry, and embroidery bored me. Sometimes I would play the virginals, at which I was more skilled than at needlework; but I was not so happy as I might have been doing that, because occasionally it reminded me of Henry Manox, whom I would rather have forgotten.

I was seated there with Joan one day. There were only the two of us in the large chamber, and I was reluctantly working on a piece of embroidery when Francis came in. He stood by the door, smiling at me.

“Two industrious ladies, I see,” he said mockingly. “What great work is this?”

He came close to me and laid his hand on my shoulder.

“Oh, I see. Very fine. Very beautiful.” Now he had his hands about my waist and was nibbling my ear.

“I am working,” I cried. “And, Master Derham, what are you doing in the Maids’ Chamber, pray?”

“Oh, I just came in to make sure you were working.”

“And should you be here, sir?”

“Mistress Howard, why so stern?”

He looked at me in mock menace, and I leaped up and drew away from him. He came as though to seize me, and I ran round the table with him in pursuit. Joan was watching us, smiling that secret smile which I knew so well.

I dashed round the room; he was close behind me. I tripped, he caught me and we fell together; we lay on the floor, rolling over
and over; he was on top of me when the door opened and my grandmother came in. She stood still, staring at us; her face was white, then scarlet. She was nearest to Joan and she turned to her and slapped her across the face.

Joan looked startled and my grandmother repeated the action.

“And you sit there and watch with that grin on your face! What do you think you are about, girl?”

Joan started to stammer something, but my grandmother had turned to Francis and me. We stood up. Francis looked sheepish; as for myself, I was too bewildered to do anything but wait for the storm to burst.

My grandmother stepped toward Francis and slapped him across the face in the same way as she had slapped Joan. Then she did the same to me and said: “Get out, Derham.”

He bowed and muttered some apology; she looked as though she were going to strike him again and he hurriedly left us.

Then she turned to me. She seized me by the ear and pulled me close to her. I saw the fury in her eyes. She started to shake me, then she pushed me away from her.

“Go to my bedchamber,” she said. “I will deal with you there.”

I heard her say to Joan: “As for you, girl. You deserve a beating. That you do. You sit there and watch
that
. What next, I wonder?”

I went to her room, trembling and fearful. What would happen to us now? Francis and I were troth-plighted. We might play as we did. We were doing no harm.

It was not long before my grandmother came. She was seething with anger.

“You foolish girl!” she cried. “What do you think you were doing with Derham?”

“It was naught but play,” I began.

“Rolling on the floor … his arms about you … pressing down on you. Do you know nothing, girl?”

I was very afraid of what could happen to Francis if she told the Duke how she had found us together. They would not listen
to explanations. Besides, Francis would be sent away. He had not made his fortune yet and, until then, we must not talk of marriage.

She gave me a look of contempt and I was afraid she was going to strike me; but she looked tired, exhausted by her emotion.

“You are young, I know,” she murmured, “and you were never very clever, Katherine Howard.” A sadness came into her eyes. She was thinking of that brilliant one, who had been brought to her sorry end—one might say through that very brilliance. Even she had not been clever enough. And there was I, now fifteen years old, playing childish games with a young man of the household. No … dangerous games … when I was too young, or stupid, to know they could lead to disaster.

I may not have been brilliant in book-learning like my cousin, sophisticated, with the gracious manners learned in the French Court, but there were certain things I knew about and one was the way of the sexes. It may be that there are some of us born with the knowledge. I had in any case been a ready pupil … responsive, eager. She decided however to talk to me.

“Katherine Howard,” she said. “You should know something of the ways of men. Some of them … in particular the young … think of little but what they can get from unsuspecting women. It is the nature of them. Derham is a handsome young fellow. He will swagger round boasting of his conquests, like as not.”

Oh no, I thought. Not Francis Derham. He was faithful to me, as I was to him. It might not have been so with Manox. Oh, do not think of Manox … that is unhealthy and uneasy thinking. Francis is a good man; he loves me and he is faithful. He swore it, and I believe him; and we are troth-plighted.

But I must not tell the Duchess this. I must not betray anything.

I must be wary.

I hung my head and played the young girl, innocent of the world, too stupid to know the danger she was in. That was what my grandmother wanted. What she had seen was a romp, entered into on the impulse of the moment.

I should not plead for Francis Derham or myself. I should stand there, my eyes downcast, while she sat in her chair and rambled on about the dangers that could beset young girls, and the need to keep themselves untouched; and how this applied especially to those who belonged to noble families.

“It will not be long now,” she was saying, “before it will be time for you to look to the future. There might be a place at Court. Of course, it would have been different …” Her lips trembled. If only her once-brilliant granddaughter had kept her place instead of losing her head, what glory might have been in store for little Katherine Howard.

I did not tell her that I did not want such glories. All I wanted was to marry Francis Derham, to whom I was troth-plighted.