Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (194 page)

I find I am clenching my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering. ‘What do you think I should do?'

‘Get away,' she says. ‘Get away before he comes for you.'

After she has gone I feel as if my last friend has left court. I go back to my rooms and my ladies set up a table of cards. I let them start to play and then I summon my ambassador and take him into the window bay where we cannot be overheard, to ask him if anyone has questioned him about me. He says they have not, he is ignored by everyone, isolated as if he were carrying the plague. I ask him if he could hire or buy two fast horses and keep them outside the castle walls in case of my sudden need. He says he has no money to hire or buy horses, and in any case the king has guards on my doors night and day. The men who I thought were there to keep me safe, to open the doors to my presence chamber, to announce my guests, are now my gaolers.

I am very afraid. I try to pray but even the words of the prayers are a trap. I cannot appear as if I am becoming a Papist, a Papist
like Lord Lisle is now said to be; and yet I must not appear to have held to my brother's religion; the Lutherans are suspected of being part of Cromwell's plot to ruin the king.

When I see the king I try to behave pleasantly and calmly before him. I dare not challenge him, nor even protest my innocence. Most frightening of all is his manner to me, which is now warm and friendly, as if we were acquaintances about to part after a short journey together. He behaves as if our time together has been an enjoyable interlude that is now naturally drawing to a close.

He will not say goodbye to me, I know that. Princess Mary has warned me of that. There is no point waiting for the moment when he tells me that I am to face an accusation. I know that one of these evenings when I rise from the dinner table and curtsey to him and he kisses my hand so courteously will be the last time I ever see him. I may walk from the hall with my ladies following me to find my rooms filled with soldiers and my clothes already packed, my jewels returned to the treasury. It is a short journey from the palace of Westminster to the Tower, they will take me by river in the darkness and I will go in by the watergate, and I will leave by the block on Tower Green.

The ambassador has written to my brother to say that I am desperately frightened; but I do not hope for a reply. William will not mind me being sick with fear, and by the time they learn of the charges against me it will be too late to save me. And perhaps William would not even choose to save me. He has allowed this peril to come about, he must have hated me more than I ever knew.

If anyone is to save me, it will have to be me, myself. But how can a woman save herself against the charge of witchcraft? If Henry tells the world that he is impotent because I have unmanned him, how can I prove differently? If he tells the world that he can lie with Katherine Howard but not with me, then his case is proved and my denial is just another instance of satanic cunning. A woman cannot prove her innocence when a man bears witness against her. If Henry
wants me strangled as a witch then nothing can save me. He claimed that Lady Anne Boleyn was a witch and she died for it. He never said goodbye to her, and he had loved her with a passion. They just came for her one day and took her away.

I am waiting now, for them to come for me.

A note, dropped into my lap by one of the servers at dinner as he leans over to clear the meat platter, bids me go to my lord at once, and as soon as dinner is over, I do as I am told. These days, the queen goes into her bedroom straight after dinner, she will not miss me from the nervous huddle of those of us that are left in her depleted rooms. Katherine Howard is missing from court, gone back to her grandmother's house at Lambeth. Lady Lisle is under house arrest for her husband's grave crimes, they say she is quite frantic with distress and fear. She knows he will die. Lady Rutland is quiet and goes to her own rooms at night, she must be fearful too; but I don't know what accusation she might face. Anne Bassett has gone to stay with her cousin under the pretence of illness, Catherine Carey has been sent for by her mother, Mary. She asks permission for Catherine to come home as she is unwell. I could laugh at the transparent excuse. Mary Boleyn was always skilled at keeping herself and hers far from trouble. A pity she never exerted herself for her brother. Mary Norris has to help her mother in the country with some special tasks. Henry Norris's widow saw the scaffold last time the king plotted against his wife. She won't want to see her daughter climb the steps that her husband trod.

We are all of us guarded in our speech and retiring in our behaviour. The bad times have come to King Henry's court once more,
and everyone is afraid, everyone is under suspicion. It is like living in a nightmare, every man, every woman knows that every word they say, every gesture they make, might be used in evidence against them. An enemy might work up an indiscretion into a crime, a friend might trade a confidence for a guarantee of safety. We are a court of cowards and tale bearers. Nobody walks any more, we all tiptoe, nobody even breathes, we are all holding our breath. The king has turned suspicious of his friends and nobody can be sure that they are safe.

I creep to my lord duke's rooms, walking in the shadows, and I open the door and slip in, in silence. My lord duke is standing by the window, the shutters open to the warm night air, the candles on his desk bobbing their flames in the draught. He looks up and smiles when I enter the room, I could almost think that he is fond of me.

‘Ah, Jane, my niece. The queen is to go to Richmond with a much-reduced court, I want you to go with her.'

‘Richmond?' I hear the quaver of fear in my own voice and I take a breath. This means house arrest while they inquire into the allegations against her. But why are they sending me in with her? Am I to be charged too?

‘Yes. You will stay with her and keep a careful note of who comes and goes, and anything she says. In particular, you are to be alert for Ambassador Harst. We think he can do nothing, but you would oblige me by seeing that she has no plans to escape, sends no messages, that sort of thing.'

‘Please …' I stop myself, my voice has come out weak. I know this is not the way to deal with him.

‘What?' He is still smiling but his dark eyes are intent.

‘I cannot prevent her escaping. I am one woman, alone.'

He shakes his head. ‘The ports are closed from tonight. Her ambassador has discovered that there is not a horse to buy or hire in the whole of England. Her own stables are barred. Her rooms closed. She won't be able to escape or send for help. Everyone in her service is her gaoler. You just have to watch her.'

‘Please let me go and serve Katherine,' I take a breath to say. ‘She will need advice if she is to be a good queen.'

The duke pauses for thought. ‘She will,' he says. ‘She is an idiot, that girl. But she can come to no harm with her grandmother.'

He taps his thumbnail against his tooth, considering.

‘She will need to learn to be a queen,' I say.

He hesitates. We two have known Queens of England who were queens indeed. Little Katherine is not fit to touch their shoes, let alone walk in them, years of training would not make her regal. ‘No she won't,' he says. ‘The king doesn't want a great queen beside him any more. He wants a girl to pet, a little filly, a young brood-mare for his seed. Katherine need be nothing more than obedient.'

‘Then let me say the truth: I don't want to go to Richmond with Queen Anne. I don't want to bear witness against this queen.'

His sharp, dark eyes look up quickly at me. ‘Witness of what?' he demands.

I am too weary to fence. ‘Witness of whatever you want me to see,' I say. ‘Whatever the king want me to say, I don't want to say it. I don't want to bear witness against her.'

‘Why not?' he asks, as if he did not know.

‘I am sick of trials,' I say from the heart. ‘I am afraid of the king's desires now. I don't know what he wants. I don't know how far he will go. I don't want to give evidence at a queen's trial – not ever again.'

‘I am sorry,' he says without regret. ‘But we need someone to swear that she had a conversation with the queen in which the queen made it clear that she was a virgin untouched, absolutely untouched, and moreover quite ignorant of any doings between a man and a maid.'

‘She has been in bed with him night after night,' I say impatiently. ‘We all put her to bed the first night. You were there, the Archbishop of Canterbury was there. She was raised to conceive a son and bear
an heir, she was married for that single purpose. She could hardly be ignorant of the doings of a man and a maid. No woman in the world has endured more unsuccessful attempts.'

‘That is why we need a lady of unimpeachable reputation to swear it,' he says smoothly. ‘Such an unlikely lie needs a plausible witness: you.'

‘Any of the others can do that for you,' I protest. ‘Since the conversation never happened, since it is an impossible conversation, surely it does not matter who says that it took place?'

‘I should like our name entered as witness,' the duke says. ‘The king would be pleased to see our service. It would do us good.'

‘Is it to prove her a witch?' I ask bluntly. I am too weary of my work and sick of myself to pick my way around my ducal uncle tonight. ‘Is it, in fact, to prove her a witch and have her sent to her death?'

He draws himself up to his full height and looks down his nose at me. ‘It is not for us to predict what the king's commissioners might find,' he says. ‘They will sift the evidence, and give the verdict. All you will provide is a sworn statement, sworn on your faith before God.'

‘I don't want her death on my conscience.' I can hear the desperation in my voice. ‘Please. Let someone else swear to it. I don't want to go with her to Richmond and then swear a lie against her. I don't want to stand by while they take her to the Tower. I don't want her to die on the basis of my false evidence. I have been her friend, I don't want to be her assassin.'

He waits in silence till my torrent of refusals is finished, then he looks at me and smiles again, but now there is no warmth in his face at all. ‘Certainly,' he says. ‘You will swear only to the statement that we will have prepared for you, and your betters will decide what is to be done for the queen. You will keep me informed of whom she sees and what she does in the usual way, my man will go with you to Richmond. You will watch her with care. She is not to escape.
And when it is over, you will be Katherine's lady in waiting, you will have your place at court, you will be lady in waiting to the new Queen of England. That will be your reward. You will be the first lady at the new queen's court. I promise it. You will be head of her privy chamber.'

He thinks he has bought me with this promise but I am sick of this life. ‘I can't go on doing this,' I say simply. I am thinking of Anne Boleyn, and of my husband, and of the two of them going into the Tower with all the evidence against them, and none of it true. I am thinking of them going to their death knowing that their family had borne witness against them, and their uncle passed the death sentence. I am thinking of them, trusting in me, waiting for me to come to give evidence for their defence, confident in my love for them, certain that I would save them. ‘I cannot go on doing this.'

‘I should hope not,' he says primly. ‘Please God that you will never do it again. In my niece Katherine, the king has at last found a true and honourable wife. She is a rose without a thorn.'

‘A what?'

‘A rose without a thorn,' the duke repeats. He keeps his face perfectly straight. ‘That is what we are to call her. That is what he wants us to call her.'

Now, let me see, what do I have? I have the murderers' houses that the king first gave me, and their lands. I have the jewels I earned by a quick squeeze in a quiet gallery. I have half a dozen gowns, paid for by my uncle, most of them new, and hoods to match. I have a bedchamber of my own at my grandmother's house and my own presence chamber too, and a few maids in waiting but no ladies as yet. I buy dresses almost every day, the merchants come across the river with bolts of silk as if I were a dressmaker on my own account. They fit me with gowns and they mutter with their mouths filled with pins that I am the most beautiful, the most exquisite girl ever to be stitched into a too-tight stomacher. They bend to the floor to hem up my gown and say that they have never seen such a pretty girl, a very queen among girls.

I love it. If I were more thoughtful, or a graver soul, then I know I would be troubled by the thought of my poor mistress the queen and what will become of her, and the disagreeable thought that soon I shall marry a man who has buried three wives and maybe will bury his fourth, and is old enough to be my grandfather, as well as very smelly … but I cannot be troubled with such worries. The other wives did as they had to do, their lives ended as God and the king willed; it is really nothing to me. Even my cousin Anne Boleyn shall be nothing to me. I shall not think of her, nor of our uncle pushing
her on to the throne and then pushing her on to the scaffold. She had her gowns and her court and her jewels. She had her time of being the finest young woman at court, she had her time of being the favourite of her family and the pride of us all; and now I shall have mine.

I will have my time. I will be merry. I am as hungry as she was, for the colour and the wealth, for the diamonds and the flirting, the horses and the dancing. I want my life, I want the very, very best of everything; and by luck, and by the whim of the king (whom God preserve), I am to have the very, very best. I had hoped to be spotted by one of the great men of the court and chosen for his kinswoman and given in marriage to a young nobleman who might rise through the court. That was the very pinnacle of my hopes. But instead, everything is to be different. Much better. The king himself has seen me, the King of England desires me, the man who is God on earth, who is the father of his people, who is the law and the word, desires me. I have been chosen by God's own representative on earth. No-one can stand in his way and no-one would dare deny him. This is no ordinary man who has seen me and desired me, this is not even a mortal. This is a half-god who has seen me. He desires me and my uncle tells me it is my duty and my honour to accept his proposal. I will be Queen of England – think of that! I will be Queen of England. Then we shall see what I, little Kitty Howard, can count as my own!

Actually, in truth I am torn between terror and excitement at the thought of being his consort and his queen, the greatest woman in England. I have a vain thrill that he wants me, and I make sure that I think about that, and ignore my sense of disappointment that although he is almost God, he is only a man like any other, and a very old man at that, and an old man who is half-impotent at that, an old man who cannot even do the job in the jakes, and I must play him as I would any old man who in his lust and vanity happened to desire me. If he gives me what I want, he shall have my favour,
I cannot say fairer than that. I could almost laugh at myself, granting the greatest man in the world my little favour. But if he wants it, and if he will pay so highly for it, then I am in the market like any huckster: selling myself.

Grandmother, the duchess, tells me that I am her clever, clever girl and that I will bring wealth and greatness to our family. To be queen is a triumph beyond our most ambitious dreams, but there is a hope even beyond that. If I conceive a son and give birth to a boy, then our family will rise as high as the Seymours. And if the Seymour boy Prince Edward were to die (though God forbid, of course), but
if
he were to die then my son would be the next King of England and us Howards would be kinsmen to the king. Then we would be the royal family, or as good as, and then we would be the greatest family in England, and everyone would have to thank me for their good fortune. My uncle Norfolk would bow his knee to me and bless me for my patronage. When I think of this, I giggle and cannot daydream any more, for sheer delight.

I am sorry to my heart for my mistress Queen Anne. I would have liked to stay as her maid and to see her become happy. But what cannot be, cannot be, and I would be foolish indeed to mourn over my own good fortune. She is like those poor men executed so that I can have their lands, or the poor nuns thrown from their homes so that we can all be richer. Such people have to suffer for our benefit. I have learned that this is the way of the world. And it's not my fault that the world is a hard place for others. I hope she finds happiness as I will do. Perhaps she will go home to her brother in wherever-it-is. Poor dear. Perhaps she will marry the man that she was betrothed to marry. My uncle tells me that she was very wrong to come to England when she knew she was bound to marry another man. This was a very shocking thing to do and I am surprised at her. She always seemed such a well-behaved young woman, I cannot believe that she would do such a naughty thing. Of course when my uncle speaks of a prior betrothal I cannot help but think
of my poor, dear Francis Dereham. I have never mentioned the promises we exchanged, and really, I think it best that I just forget all about it, and pretend that it never happened. It is not always easy to be a young woman in this world that is full of temptation for sure, and I do not criticise Queen Anne for being betrothed to another and then marrying the king. I wouldn't do it myself, of course, but since Francis Dereham and I were not properly married, nor even properly betrothed, I do not consider it. I didn't have a proper gown, so clearly it wasn't a proper wedding or binding vows. All we did was the daydreaming of little children and a few innocent kisses. No more than that, really. But she could do worse, if she is sent home, than to marry her first love. I myself shall always think of Francis with affection. One's first love is always very sweet, probably sweeter than a very old husband. When I am queen I shall do something very kind for Francis.