Eliza Rose Read online

  I sat still as stone, wishing that I had not heard this. It was treasonous to say something like this of the king, and if it were known by any other creature that I had heard her words, it could mean my death.

  ‘Which is where Master Francis came in,’ she continued. I believe she was enjoying my discomfort. ‘You noted, of course, the colour of his hair?’

  ‘Indeed. It was red, like mine. Or like the king’s.’ I spoke slowly.

  ‘Indeed it was,’ Katherine said, ‘and his baby was likely to have red hair too. And Francis himself was well able to act as a man should towards his wife. For helping me with my great and sacred duty of trying to give the king a child, though, he was tortured, condemned and put to death.’

  ‘You were planning to trick the king!’ I cried. ‘To deceive him with Master Manham’s baby! How could you be so … so wrong and so bold?’

  Katherine looked at me – no, right through me – as if she were a hundred years old.

  ‘I had no choice,’ she said tonelessly. ‘My family wanted me to catch the king. You knew that. Once I had caught him, I had to produce a baby or I would lose him. You think I took a great risk in trying to bear the baby of Master Manham …’

  I stared back at her, dismayed.

  ‘But if I failed to produce a baby, something I realised was impossible with the king, it would only have been a matter of time until I fell from his good graces. He would have moved on to someone else. I don’t think I could have borne that. It was a greater risk to remain a good and faithful wife.’

  And now, for the first time, I think, I felt the beginnings of true pity for her. Throughout all her wretchedness of the last few weeks, I had felt sorry, yes, for her pain, but also I had felt that her behaviour had been uncomprehendingly selfish. Now, for the first time, I saw that she had been caught in a trap not entirely of her own devising.

  We were roused by a tap at the door. Suddenly we were brought back to the present day and the horrible place in which we found ourselves.

  The Governor of the Tower was back. This time, his servants brought in with them a strange lump of wood, perhaps a footstool. They laid it on the floor before us.

  ‘My lady,’ he said, ‘here is the block. I have had it brought that you might practise laying your head upon it, as you will need to on the morrow.’

  As Katherine knelt on the floor, leaning forward and sideways to the block with her neck, it was like a strange and horrible parody of the dance we had made up at Trumpton Hall, the ‘Dance of the Gentle Fawn’. I had hated to witness her twisting, spitting resistance to the guards earlier, but this was even worse. It was as if all the fight had gone out of her.

  I could no longer bear it, and strange stars and storm clouds seemed to whirl and wheel across my vision. I had to rush out of the room. Sinking on my heels on to the dirty floor of the passage and resting there, I closed my eyes and hoped that the fainting fit would pass.

  Chapter 40

  ‘Courage!’

  I’m not sure how long I spent there, squatting down on the floor, the chill of the stone seeping into my bones. It could have been minutes or hours. There was no room left in my heart for hope. It was so full of horror and despair.

  Eventually I was roused from my reverie by the tapping of little feet in leather slippers. A tiny boy stood before me in the passage. It took me a moment or two and a blink or two to recognise him as the youngest of all the pages of the royal household. He was dressed in a doublet and hose like a man, despite being only about ten years old. At the end of the corridor I saw a couple of yeomen bobbing their heads to me. I had been so lost in my own misery that I had not heard the door opening to let him in.

  Slowly, I climbed to my feet, putting up my hands to smooth my hair. I was past caring that they had seen me on the floor.

  The young page now made a careful bow, but I could see that he was trembling a little under the pressure of performing his duties. I could also see that he was holding out in his palm a folded letter. My heart leapt. A letter! This was the reprieve!

  I grabbed it, speculated whether to take it in to Katherine or to read it first. But the boy was shaking his head, his chubby cheeks wobbling a little comically from side to side. ‘For you, m’m,’ he mumbled, unwittingly bringing back a memory of Little Em, who was now missing an ear.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said huskily. My throat was painfully dry. I couldn’t bear to wait until I was alone. I ripped the paper open with clumsy fingers.

  In a second I was back on the floor, doubled up in another fit of weeping. It wasn’t the reprieve, but it was the next best thing.

  The note contained just one word: Courage!

  And it was in the hand of Ned Barsby.

  Chapter 41

  The Block

  Winter 1541

  The next morning, I felt that I was a century older and wiser than I had been the day before.

  I had stayed all night by Katherine’s bed, praying, talking to her in the moments when she was awake and, at other times, simply looking at the wall and thinking. When it got too much, I lifted my head, looked out at the moon through the window and remembered Ned’s note. Courage! Courage!

  Katherine, strange to say, did pass some hours asleep, and I think that she drew her strength from her belief that in the end her husband would still soften and commute her sentence to prison or maybe exile, like Anne of Cleves, the king’s sister.

  My misery was deepened by the realisation that I had wasted so many years hating Katherine. Now, when it was almost too late, I understood that I had been wrong to do so. She was not quite the conniving, grasping schemer I had always thought, anxious to take what others wanted.

  Of course she had been ambitious and false and selfish, but our conversation had made me see the last few years in a new light. Of course the old duchess had been training us up to be bait for the king. We were just pawns in the game of winning more power for our families. If I had played the game a little better, it could have been me instead of Katherine in the Tower. And if I had played the game quite a lot better, I could have had the crown on my head and hopefully a baby in my arms.

  It should not have been a surprise. After all, I had been told for as long as I could remember that I must do my duty for my family.

  ***

  Long before dawn, there were men and guards knocking at our door, demanding that we prepare ourselves. The priests were in and out, along with the lawyers. I was shocked by the absence of Katherine’s relatives – I was the nearest to her in terms of blood, and everyone else stayed away. I knew that I was running a risk myself, of guilt by association, in remaining with her and serving her to the last. But I could not have left now for the world.

  All of Katherine’s tears and storms seemed to be over, and if she still expected the king’s message of reprieve, she did not speak of it. I was the one who could not stop weeping.

  With a heavy heart, I brushed what had been her lovely hair. So much of it had fallen out in the last few weeks that there was little left, and that I covered with her cap. I straightened her black skirt and finally took her in my arms and sobbed. She remained stiff as a corpse, looking over my shoulder, I could tell, as if she had already gone from the world.

  The guards led us down on to the green below the window. It was hardly light yet, and a flaming torch helped us to find our footing on the stairs. A huddle of men in black stood around a small, low wooden platform, the scaffold. These were the official witnesses, lawyers and priests.

  Bearing herself like the queen she was, Katherine now mounted the platform. With dignity and poise, she knelt to say her prayers and to make a confession of all her faults to the priest. I now felt proud of her, proud on behalf of all the maids of honour, proud on behalf of all of us courtiers who knew how to smile in the face of pain, as she stood and looked at this great danger with such calmness and resolution.

  Eventually, her prayers were done. She took off her cap and knelt before the block, just as she had practise
d the night before.

  A masked figure, darkly dressed, detached himself from the crowds of waiting men and stepped up next to her. This, I realised, was the executioner, his face hidden so that men afterwards would not be able either to praise or condemn him for taking a woman’s life.

  I felt a strong grip upon each of my arms. The guards were trying to pull me back, to shield me from the sight. But I also felt that I should be there with Katherine for as long as I could. ‘Get your hands off me!’ I hissed violently, so that they were forced either to make a noise and a disturbance or let me be.

  And so, straining against the grasp of the guards, I watched as the executioner raised his axe against the dawn sky. I saw every tiny movement as he grunted and brought it down with a swift, almost graceful chop. Finally, I saw every drop of the blood that spilled from Katherine’s beautiful, broken neck.

  Chapter 42

  ‘He Needs You’

  March – June 1542

  After the execution I spent a few more days in the Tower, tidying up and disposing of Katherine’s goods and letters and trinkets. During my time there, which I spent pretty much alone, I fretted about my return to the court.

  Of course I wondered whether to return at all, whether it was better not to go back to Stoneton and consider the great game to be over. I could see more clearly than ever that Hampton Court, so glamorous, was full of fearful danger. But I wanted to see Anne and Ned and Will and the countess. They would sympathise with me over what I’d seen, what I’d experienced, whereas my father would not understand at all. And if I failed to return to court I would face his wrath. Ultimately, I did not propose to risk that. I knew my duty.

  I need not have been worried about whether I’d be welcome back at court. I was far from tainted by association with Katherine. My time in the Tower seemed almost to enhance my status. Once I had returned, and as life began to resume something more like its normal course, I began to understand that my fellow courtiers wanted – no, needed – a trusted witness to tell them about their former queen’s end. One by one, they took me aside for a quiet word. Among them was the Countess of Malpas.

  ‘And did she praise God and the king at the last?’ she asked me out of the corner of her mouth. We were seated side by side at a feast, and the room was so noisy with drunken singing and laughing that it provided cover enough for her words. At this moment Will Summers, seated opposite us, chivalrously toasted me with a glass of wine, and I paused before replying in order to raise my goblet in return.

  ‘Indeed, she died a Christian death.’

  Now the countess too was forced to pause in order to select a sweetmeat from the basket being brought around by Anne Sweet.

  ‘And was there very much … blood?’ she continued.

  ‘Yes, there was a vast amount,’ I said, raising my fan and shielding myself behind it so as not to be observed, ‘and it entirely soiled and spoiled her black velvet dress and all her linen beneath.’

  The red raspberry tart the countess held in her hand looked so disgustingly shiny and sticky that it made my stomach heave.

  ‘Ah, that’s a great pity! You should have had the use of her left-behind clothes yourself.’

  Always the courtier, the countess sympathised with me over what would normally have been a major setback in a maid of honour’s life: being cheated of an expected gift of cast-off clothing. She turned from me and bit into her tart.

  The countess, and each and every questioner, left my presence, I felt, with a sense that the story of Katherine Howard had been satisfactorily finished.

  The only person who asked me nothing was Master Ned Barsby. As soon as I had returned to court, I asked where he was, for I was eager to see him again.

  But Master Summers told me that Ned had gone from court. ‘Simple soul!’ he said to me that evening, as we walked in the procession behind the king to chapel. ‘He went off without permission, meaning that he’ll be in serious trouble if ever he tries to come back. Burnt his bridges. The king was quite cut up for two whole days.’

  ‘But where did he go?’ I asked, tucking my hand into Will’s elbow as we promenaded.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Will said vaguely. ‘The death of your cousin rattled him.’ We took another few steps, each of us nodding to the crowds of petitioners who lined the gallery whenever the king passed to chapel. ‘He couldn’t really handle court life, you know. He was too honest. If you ask me, he’ll marry that sweetie-pie friend of yours and they’ll settle down in a cottage.’

  Will suddenly looked at me sharply, as if recollecting that this might be painful news. ‘Never mind,’ he said, patting my hand on his arm. ‘You’ve bigger fish to fry, my dear,’ he said.

  It was true that my time with Ned seemed to belong to an age before the Flood in the Bible, and I had been only a child then. But the memory of his kind word in my darkest hour was fresh and vivid. The news that I would not see him again gave me such a pang that it was as much as I could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other and not to double up against the wall in pain.

  But I had to walk on. ‘Really, Master Summers?’ I said smoothly, adopting my best bland courtier voice. ‘That is most interesting news.’ My speech was so steady that he might have just confided in me his hopes that tomorrow would be a fine day.

  Of course that’s what Ned would do, I thought to myself, as Will Summers and I strolled onwards towards Mass. I had to steel myself, as I had done once before when I’d cut him out of my life. It had been weak and stupid to let him in again. Nothing must touch me ever again. The note he sent me in the Tower was just typical, I told myself. Sentimental and naive. Courtiers could not afford emotion, I said in my head. I could not afford emotion.

  ***

  In the days that followed, I did what I could to burnish the court’s memory of Katherine. I kept to myself the explosive information she had given me on her last evening alive and revealed nothing about Francis Manham’s role in the tragedy. I always professed ignorance of her motives, although I was scrupulous to say that maybe we did not know all the facts. Master Manham himself was long since dead, from the horrible traitor’s death of hanging, drawing and quartering. I did not allow myself to think about this too much.

  Instead I stressed that my cousin had faced her death with dignity, strength and Christian belief, trusting in the goodness of God and the king. I did not describe her collapse and hysterics at Syon, only her stoicism and poise at the Tower of London. But despite my efforts I knew that evil rumours were still circulating about all the misdeeds she was said to have done.

  Perhaps the strangest conversation I had of all was with the king himself. When I was summoned to his chamber, I feared the worst and felt that my days must surely be numbered. He must have decided that the former queen’s cousin was not to be trusted, and was preparing to send me too to the Tower.

  When I entered his secret, inner room, I found it lit only by the dim light of a low fire. In the gloom, I could see his great hulking body stranded on his carved bed like a whale washed up upon a beach. The hulk shuddered gently, and I perceived that the king was crying. As I drew close, I could see that his face was a horrible mess of tears and mucus. He held out a hand to me and made me sit down beside him on the feather mattress.

  ‘I loved her,’ he said over and over again, as I felt myself beginning to weep once more. ‘She was my rose without a thorn.’

  I understood why Katherine had clung to her belief that the king would spare her, for his grief convinced me that he had genuinely felt a grand passion for her. ‘I wax old now,’ he snuffled. ‘She was the last love of my life.’

  Once again the contradictions of our master overwhelmed me. How could he send the woman he loved to the scaffold, yet be this distraught about doing so? But then the king had always been a romantic man. The deeper his love ran, the more violently he reacted when it turned sour.

  I believe the king took some comfort from my presence – even though I was nothing but cowed, silent a
nd shaking – for he called me back again the next day.

  I had to steel myself to bear the stench of his ulcer, as did everyone who spent any time in his chamber. When he wasn’t lying on his bed I had to watch him wolfing great slices of pie and gingerbread, washing them down with spirits and ale, as if he could find some comfort there in his food now that he was all alone in the world.

  ‘All alone!’ he would sigh, pouring himself another drink. ‘All alone, except for my fool and my elf.’

  At that Will Summers and I would exchange glances as we stood waiting at the king’s table, and make a mock bow and curtsey to each other.

  Will Summers was another member of the select group of courtiers whose presence the king seemed able to bear. He too tried to make the hours pass, if not merrily, then at least smoothly and without paroxysms of royal tears.

  During those hours I spent sitting with the weeping king, I had plenty of time to ponder on the strangeness of the situation. I gradually grew to understand that he didn’t hate Katherine – he only hated what she’d done. And he felt that I had been a good friend to her, and was therefore a good servant of his.

  The situation was dangerous, but it was gratifying too. As I was so often in the king’s chamber, the guards now simply nodded me in. At meals I was sometimes served even before the countess. I recognised that this was not an error, but a concealed compliment from the Lord Steward. I knew that it was wrong, but it was almost impossible to resist the rising tide of pride that this brought me.

  In the summer of that year, with Katherine dead and buried for some months, my father came down from Stoneton once more. The old Howard Duchess of Northumberland and Katherine’s uncles were nowhere to be seen at court this season, as the power of their faction had been broken. But my father was riding high on the back of my position as the king’s confidante.

  When he called me to the gardens on the day after his arrival to walk with him and my Aunt Margaret, I knew already what they would say. I understood all too well where my road led.