No Will But His (23 page)

She came with her own maids, who helped her remove her elaborate and bewildering German hood, and her various layers of dress.

While they were doing it, one of them said, "How nice it is that to think that the king's majesty himself will be lying and sleeping on this bed we just made."

The queen's serious countenance flashed into that smile that made her look almost beautiful, and she said brightly, "Is it not?" Her accent was still thick, but—for her short time in England—she was making remarkable progress in English. "I think I have the kindest and best husband in the world. Aye, and the most devoted, too."

Her words struck the ten or so women in the room with the kind of silence that betrays unexpressed thoughts. They looked at each other and none said anything, and the queen was suffered to continue in her bright, easy voice. "Every night he comes and sleeps with me. He lies next to me and says, ‘Good night, sweetheart.' And then in the morning, he kisses me and he says, ‘Fare thee well, sweetheart.'"

The silence stretched a little longer, and then someone said, in the kind of horribly bright voice people employ when they are saying something that they think might be reported and perhaps cost them their lives but which needs be said anyway. Kathryn could not see who spoke, but it must be someone behind, near the bedstead ornamented with a god with an enormous erection chasing a flimsy-clad goddess. "Why, madam, that's all very well, but it is what he does between good night and fare thee well that counts."

"Why?" the queen said, and looked momentarily puzzled. "What should he do? What mean you?"

Jane Boleyn cleared her throat and spoke with the madcap impulsiveness of one who already lives in hell. "Why, madam, I believe she simply wishes to know whether you might be pregnant, for it's a conclusion the entire country prays for daily."

"Nay," the queen said, sitting herself down while two of her German maids combed her fair hair. "Nay. I know well I'm not."

"But how can you know you're not?" another lady said

And then, with growing courage, Lady Edgecombe put in, "Me thinketh that our lady is still a maiden."

This brought about laughter from the Queen and a puzzled look, following the laughter. "How can I be a maiden?" she asked. "When I sleep every night with the king?" She looked around the chamber, at all the silent women. "Is this not enough?"

Lady Rutland, the chief of the maids-in-waiting, sighed heavily, "Your Majesty, there must be more than this, or we shall never have the Duke of York that all the country is sick with longing for."

Anne shook her head. "But no. It's enough. I am quite contented." She looked bewilderedly at her ladies-in-waiting, as though she suspected that something had been lost in their use of the language and her understanding of it that made them speak of different things.

Lady Rutland sighed. Kathryn thought she saw in the lady's eyes, the thought, quickly abandoned, that someone should explain the facts of life to this poor innocent and that perhaps, by rights, that someone should be Lady Rutland herself. But she could not, between the language difference and the queen's sheltered upbringing conceive of how to bring an understanding about.

Instead she shook her head. "Maybe you should speak with Mother Lowe about this," she said. Mother Lowe was the chief of the German ladies-in-waiting, who had come with Queen Anne from her native land. If Mother Lowe could not contrive to explain the facts of life to her mistress, then, faith, no one could.

But the queen only smiled the bewildered smile that she had in common with those very young or very deaf—the smile of complete lack of understanding—and shook her head. "Nay, I am contented as it is. I know no more."

"Still," Lady Rutland said. "I think you must tell Mother Lowe that the king has neglected you, madam, and not performed his conjugal duties!"

But all the queen would do was incline her head and say with that internal steel that belied her exterior mildness, "But I receive quite as much of His Majesty's attention as I wish."

Kathryn understood this to mean the conversation was over, and wondered if the poor woman at all understood what had happened and how precarious her position was.

But at the very moment she was trying to frame her mind to put words to it, she felt a hand pluck at her sleeve. Turning she saw a young boy, of the sort who belonged to the king's household and served as a page, sent here and there in the palace to take messages or packages.

"If you please, madam, are you Mistress Kathryn Howard?"

Kathryn looked at him and nodded once. Wild ideas went through her mind. That Dereham had found her and wanted back his hundred pounds, which she'd stupidly left at its hideout at Horsham. Or perhaps that her marriage with Thomas Culpepper had finally been arranged, and she was being called now to make her promises.

Instead, when she followed the page out to the hall, the page bowed to her. "If you are Mistress Kathryn Howard, the king's majesty would like you to come and play the virginal for him, for he is troubled in his mind and would like to calm himself down before he sleeps."

Kathryn took a step to follow the page, and then remembered what her grandmother had said about the king, the king's appetites, and what he was likely to try if he were not restrained. Trembling, because she knew not obeying royal orders could bring about the king's wrath as much as anything else, she said, "Wait . . . please. Please, wait a moment."

Back in the royal chamber, she touched Jane Boleyn's arm, and when the lady looked in her direction, Kathryn whispered, "Please, come with me."

That Jane followed her without asking why was either a measure of her confidence in Kathryn or how few friends she had and how much she'd come to trust in Kathryn.

She followed Kathryn all the way to where the page led them. The page opened the door, and they went in, to find the king sitting upon a chair, next to a very lovely, ornate virginal. He looked startled at them. "I sent for a song bird," he said, and forced a smile over what seemed to be a peevish expression. "And I got two. Lady Rochefort, I didn't know you sang."

Kathryn sank to her knees in her curtsey and stayed that. "I beg Your Majesty's pardon," she said, "if I have done wrong. But I know Your Majesty did not intend to injure a poor maiden's reputation by having me alone with Your Majesty in here. While I am sure this, the least of your subjects, could trust her virtue to you as she could to her own father, I will recall to you that my father, that Edmund Howard who bled in Flodden Fields in the service of Your Majesty's honor, is now gone. I have no one but myself, and no protector. Your Majesty would wish the wicked tongues at court to speak ill of one so young as I?"

For a moment it hung in the balance. Henry's mouth moved in and out, in a sort of a moue, as though it could not decide whether or not to show displeasure. And then he sighed, like a child denied a treat. He shifted his leg. He frowned. "No. You are correct." He looked at her. "Oh, stop looking so scared, child. Am I then, to you, such a terrible dragon that you should fear me so much?"

"Not afraid," Kathryn said. "But overwhelmed. It is strange to think that I am here, in this room with Your Majesty. That the power and might of England, the head of the Church itself, is here with me, and I so insignificant."

This brought a little cackle from the king. He patted his leg in a movement that would probably have been a slap had he been fully overcome by amusement. "Well, well," he said. "You are a pretty child, and you may rise. One doesn't wish always to be . . . Harry with the crown. Sometimes one just wants to be Harry the man. And for now, we'll be Harry the man, who has a headache and hopes your pretty playing can soothe it." He spared a look at Jane Boleyn, who was kneeling on the other side of him, still staring at the floor. "And you also, Lady Rochefort, rise. You are welcome here. Take a seat. You can make sure this pretty child is quite secure in my presence, and that I'm not tempted to play the seducer." He seemed to think this very funny and laughed a great deal at his own joke.

Kathryn perceived the sadness behind the joke, and all of a sudden she understood that this powerful man, so large, so ungainly, was suffering from sadness at the loss of youth, which he could never recover. She'd heard about him in the palace. How he had once been considered the most handsome, the most beautiful prince in all Christendom.

Now his youth was gone, and he was still king, but he wished—as he had told her—that Harry himself without the crown were still capable of seducing her, or any maiden he set his eye on.

She felt his sadness, and though she'd tried to follow the duchess's instructions and not attempt to carry all the weight of other's sorrows upon her shoulders, still she could not help trying to alleviate the very great sorrow of this man who was so big and so great, and yet so lost and so helpless in face of his own desires.  Of her own impulse, she rose from her curtsey and neared him, and kissed him—a peck on the side of the face—and said, quickly, for fear that if she lingered her voice would betray her lie. "I am afraid," she said, "that I somewhat deceive Your Majesty. Lady Jane Rochefort is here not to ensure that you don't try to seduce me, but to ensure I don't lose my head and succumb to your considerable charm."

She knew she had done well when she saw his mouth turn up at the corners. For a moment, very brief, she was afraid that it was an ironical smile and that he would expose her striving to impress him. But instead, the smile became fuller, and his eyes shone. "Is that so, then?" he asked. "You find Harry the man someone who might seduce you without trying?"

She inclined her head, hiding the flame in her cheeks. "Your Majesty won't be so ungallant as to tempt me out of my modesty and make me repeat what I said. Oh, I should never have said it. But there is it. Harry with the crown is too great, too strong, too much for me, a poor maiden, and he would wholly overpower me. Harry the man, now . . . Harry the man . . ." She stepped back. "He can still overwhelm but in another way." She forced herself to smile at him.

He grinned at her. "Bless you, my child. What a pretty child you are. For all that, I'll sleep better tonight, I'm sure, after your playing. Sit you at the virginal and show me what you can do, for I have heard all over the palace that there is not any other musician at court to equal you."

"Your Majesty does me great honor," Kathryn said, and sat down. She took a deep breath and she played. It wasn't difficult at all. As always, once she found herself in front of the virginal, the music just flowed as though it came from deep wellsprings within her.

"Bless you, my dear," the king said. "How prettily you blush. Like a rose. A rose without a thorn."

As she rose from the virginal, he took both her hands and kissed them with his moist, hot lips. "Bless you, my dear, for being kind to Harry himself, Harry without the crown." He turned to Lady Rochefort. "And thank you, Lady Rochefort. Bring me this child again, will you? Tomorrow? That she might play me her fair lullabies ,and I may sleep."

Chapter Thirty-two

"Come, my dear, and play for me," the king said, and Kathryn came. It was the tenth time she'd been called to the king's chambers in as many nights. She played, and Lady Rochefort watched her play and nodded off now and then.

Kathryn didn't mind that the lady should nod off, for she imagined the pain and the guilt the woman lived with during the day were quite enough to exhaust her. Her being there was enough to grant Kathryn some protection from the tongues that wagged in her direction.

Already, she noticed something strange happening, in that she saw people give her odd looks, but at the same time other people approached her. Ladies-in-waiting of far higher rank, who had never paid any attention to Kathryn, now gave her jewels or gifts of fabric, or simply complimented her on her taste, her looks, her smile.

It seemed to Kathryn that each day brought a new surprise.

She was not stupid. Well she understood the treatment she received came from these people's belief that she was either the king's mistress and therefore had his ear, or that she was the woman the king loved and therefore she had his ear.

The pageants and ceremonies of introducing Anne of Cleves as queen to the Englishmen went on, but every day another person would approach Kathryn and say, "They say the king likes her not." Or "They say she is still a maiden." Or yet "They say that he is trying to get a divorce."

Cromwell, the architect of the Cleves marriage was in the Tower and people said he had been ordered to find a way out of this marriage for the king. They wondered whether it would save his head, or if it would fall like the heads of other favorites before him and be exposed on London Bridge for the horror of passersby.

That night after she played the king looked down for a long time. When he rose, Kathryn looked toward Lady Rochefort, but the lady was asleep and snoring.

The king must have seen her look, for he smiled. "Ah, Kathryn, fear me not. I was attracted to your cleanliness, your maidenly modesty. I would neither seduce you nor allow you to be seduced by me."

He walked slowly and limped a little. She had heard he had a wound on his leg, sustained in a joust, which made him hurt and which ran continuously with some foul humors. Sometimes, she'd heard, the wound closed, and then the king would lay in great pain until all of him, even his face, turned black with the pent up humors. No one had told her but it was implicit that one day he would die of that foul wound.

Only right now, it did not seem so very bad. He had a silver-plated stick with its head an elaborate Tudor Rose, and Kathryn thought that it was of very little more import than the walking stick of the duchess that was more used to hit others than to support her.

As if to prove her point, he left his walking stick against the chair as he limped to her. He smelled of perfume, and his beard tickled the side of her face as he leaned over and said, "Kathryn, I would like to know—if by some miracle I were free of this sham of a marriage . . . would you have me?"