Eliza Rose Page 18

  As I approached the bower where the two of them sat waiting for me, they knew, and I knew, that they need not speak at all. They were expecting, and all the rest of our family, and indeed the whole court was expecting me to take advantage of my opportunity. Two years after our first conversation on the topic, my hour had come at last.

  ‘You, Rosebud,’ my father said. ‘It is your time. It is your turn. The king in his grief is vulnerable. He’s lonely and sad. He needs you. Your family needs you. It is your chance to make yourself, and us, great. Take the hand that the king will offer and grasp it.’

  Chapter 43

  The New Mistress

  June 1542

  Two years ago, my father’s suggestion that I should become the king’s mistress had filled me with horror and dismay. Now, however, I had nearly twenty summers behind me. As well as a failed marriage of my own, I had experienced intimacy with the great King Henry the Eighth of England, and I had seen my cousin die in front of my eyes.

  I was not shocked and did not cry, nor did I need to go running for help from Ned Barsby or Will Summers or anyone else.

  In fact, now we had come to the brink, I felt nothing at all. I could see with the clarity of expensive Venetian glass the future that lay before me. If I followed in the footsteps of Katherine, my journey might end with great success and great riches. I could be queen. With careful arrangement I could be the mother of a future king, and my family would be secure and overjoyed.

  On the other hand, if I fluffed, I could fall. One slip, one false step, and I could end up on the block like Katherine. Perhaps I was already in danger. I might even now find it difficult, having come this far, to withdraw from the king’s affection. I knew that he was starting to lean upon me.

  That evening the king’s chamber was dim and close, the air stale in my nostrils. I stepped forward and closed the door quickly, confidently, almost slamming it. Despite the gloomy, murky atmosphere of the room, I smiled.

  I was buoyed up from the admiring glances I had received as I strode through the palace cloisters. I had observed the servants and courtiers I had passed admiring my green dress, tightly belted around my waist, my shining copper-coloured hair coiled up on the back of my head, my long, white throat and my green, cat-like eyes.

  Mistress … the new mistress. I’d heard the whispers in my wake. People recognised me. I felt deliberate and confident, almost like a queen.

  And now, here in the shadows, lurching to his feet from his velvet chair, was the king himself, the great lumbering bear of a man. I could smell his sour breath from ten paces away.

  ‘Ah, my green fairy!’ he said. ‘Oh, you’ve come at last. Come and sit with me.’ He lowered himself – no, collapsed – on to the edge of his enormous ebony bed, crushing the fine furs upon it heedlessly under his massive weight. His leg must have been giving him pain again.

  I curtseyed low, with grace and poise. I remained down upon the floor in my obeisance for a ridiculously long drawn-out pause. I stole a glance up through my lashes, then quickly returned my gaze to the floor. We both knew that this was just a sham of deference. He needed me, depended upon me, desired me. In this room, power flowed from me. He drank it up; he could not take his eyes off me.

  At last he sighed.

  ‘Please come and sit here,’ he said, patting the bed. His voice was lower than it had been, and croaky. I had taken his breath away. Slowly I rose, savouring the moment, taking my own time. I took a slinky step, then another, towards the bed. I sensed that he was nervous, this great beast of a man of whom the whole world was afraid.

  Tentatively, he put out a hand towards me.

  I took it with a show of reluctance, looking away, still standing, still refusing to meet his eyes.

  This gave him confidence. ‘Eliza!’ he said huskily. He grabbed my arm and tugged me down to the bed beside him. His great paw of a hand dropped down lower – directly on to my thigh beneath the green skirt. I felt his breath on my cheek.

  My heart almost stopped. All too soon, the moment had come. This was crossing a line. I stared at his hand, the hand of an old man, which now shyly moved up my leg.

  I watched it. I waited to feel something. I had strived for this moment for years. I had steeled myself for it, trained for it. Hadn’t I?

  I sat there undecided as he slobbered all over my hand with his hot red lips. I remained still as a statue, either afraid or unwilling to draw back – I was not sure which. I don’t know how far things would have gone, but the French ambassador was announced, and I took the first opportunity to leave.

  ‘I shall see you later, Mistress Camperdowne!’ were the king’s last words as I hurried out.

  Chapter 44

  ‘Why Does Everyone Think That

  I Am in Love?’

  Later that evening I was slumped on my bed, alone in my chamber. I was supposed to be at the great court dinner, and my place beside my father would be empty. I knew that my absence would give rise to comment, but I felt so tired I could hardly stir.

  I wanted time and solitude to think about this choice before me, but it felt like no choice at all. Every lesson in my life so far had prepared me to go to the king, take his hand and offer him everything I had to give. I loosened my gown and kicked off my slippers. Feeling weary and immensely old, I leaned back on the bolster and stared up at the smoke-stained ceiling near the window. It was dirty, plain plaster, nothing like the wonderful gilded ribs and patterns in the queen’s rooms.

  Why, with success staring me in the face and the prospect of living beneath the best ceiling in the palace, could I think of nothing but the fresh wind of Derbyshire and the sound of the brook beneath my old bedchamber window? Why did I heave such a deep and loud sigh that it sounded almost like a sob?

  I went to my window in search of a breath of air, something I had not felt for an age. In the courtyard below, I heard a chuckle. I glanced out, suddenly aware that my miserable face, lit below from my candle, must have been visible for all to see, for the panes stood wide to let in the gentle breeze of summer.

  ‘You look a very picture of melancholy, Eliza!’ It was a familiar voice.

  Anne Sweet lifted the horn lantern she carried up near her face, so I could see it and confirm what my ears had already told me. I clucked my tongue with annoyance. In a palace, even to look out of the window was to broadcast one’s private business to the world. I should have known better.

  ‘Oh, Anne!’ I said wearily. ‘Are you coming up?’

  But she was already halfway up the stairs, and moments later I heard her scratch at the door. When I opened it, she was looking furtively each way along the passage.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked, a little peeved at her histrionics.

  She bustled forward into the room, a small smile playing around her lips, and made a great business of taking off the kerchief she’d had over her head.

  ‘Now!’ she said, plumping herself down on the edge of the bed to which I had retired. ‘I’ve come with some very important news. Come on, sit up and listen.’ She was snapping her fingers at me, which was uncharacteristic.

  It would not have taken a fortune-teller to deduce that my thoughts were elsewhere, my gaze once again travelling over the dirty patch on the ceiling.

  But something about Anne did catch my attention. She seemed to be full of fire.

  ‘What is it, Anne?’ I asked, turning my eyes but not my head towards her.

  There was a pause, and Anne laughed gently.

  ‘You look so sad, Eliza,’ Anne said. ‘But in my pocket here I have the very thing to make you happy.’

  It may have been my imagination, but the room suddenly seemed filled with the scent of rose petals.

  ‘I’ve come with a message,’ she said.

  I kept my face resolutely turned to the ceiling and flicked my eyes back to the vertical. ‘Please don’t,’ I said tonelessly. ‘I don’t want to see the king tonight. I’ll have to send a message that I’m ill.’

  ‘N
o! No!’ In her excitement, Anne jumped on to the bed and grabbed my shoulders, and I felt her warm breath on my cheek as she forced me to meet her eye to eye. ‘My message is from someone else altogether.’

  Now confusion and expectation must have filled my face, and I sat up to see her more clearly, sniffing back my tears.

  ‘Master Barsby,’ she said slowly. ‘Ned. He wishes to marry you. You know that already, I think, don’t you?’

  I gasped. ‘But, Anne,’ I said weakly, hanging my head in amazement and mumbling down at my chest. ‘I thought that you … liked him yourself.’

  ‘I do,’ said Anne quietly. ‘But all he ever wants to do is talk about you.’

  I took this in, silently appreciating her generosity.

  ‘But I know I can’t think of him,’ I went on. ‘You know that if I marry, it has to be an earl. You know that as well as anyone at court!’

  ‘It’s not your duty to break so many of God’s commandments,’ Anne said, ‘by lying with the king in his bed. You don’t really want to do it, do you? And you shouldn’t have to.’

  She sighed, and we both knew that my father would not agree. But he was old and weary. I flipped my head from side to side, still astonished at her words.

  ‘You should marry for love!’ Anne declared.

  ‘Lord!’ I snapped. ‘Why does everyone think I am in love?’

  ‘Oh, Eliza, everyone knows it,’ she said, and now she was laughing again. ‘You may deceive yourself, but you cannot deceive the world. You are so brave. You go into the lion’s den and put your very head into his mouth. You can stand and look even the king in the eye. But you are too proud and stubborn and dutiful to admit that Ned is kind and good and loving, and more worthy of you than that old man, and that you love him back with all your heart.’

  ‘That old man?’ I gasped at her heresy.

  ‘Eliza,’ she said. ‘I’m not saying this for your happiness, though I believe that if you go away with Ned, you will be happy. I’m saying it for your survival. There is nothing for you here. You know what has happened to all five of the king’s wives: cast aside or dead. Only by leaving now, immediately, can you escape Katherine’s fate.’

  Now she had me. ‘But I can never leave,’ I said in a toneless drone, echoing words that Ned himself had said to me.

  ‘Well, Ned has managed it,’ she said tartly. ‘And you can too. Here’s the plan.’ Gathering herself together, she rose from the bed and grasped its post. At that moment I would have taken gentle Anne for the commander of an army.

  ‘You, my dear, are about to succumb to a bout of the sweating sickness. It’s very virulent and very catching. You will not leave this chamber for some days. I will stay here and nurse you, of course, and meanwhile I will send your tiring woman, Henny, back to Stoneton to bring herbs and supplies.’

  ‘But it’s a long way! Will Henny agree to go?’

  At my words, the door swung open. I could see a familiar plump figure on the threshold, a big smile cracking her rosy face. Someone had been eavesdropping.

  ‘Indeed, she will not go,’ said Henny herself. ‘You, Eliza, wearing a goodly number of gowns to increase your girth, will go in my place, pretending to be me. That’s how you will escape!’

  ‘I sense that sickness is coming over you, Eliza,’ added Anne in mock seriousness. She was almost shaking with delight and excitement and nerves. Henny was trembling too. They were proposing that we break just about every rule in the book, leaving court without permission and sneaking off in the night like thieves.

  ‘You will need to keep to your chamber for many days for the protection of His Majesty’s health,’ Anne went on, while Henny nodded sagely. ‘And I will guard your door like a dragon. I won’t let anyone in to see that it’s really Henny in your bed. In fact, no one will even try to come in if they think the sweat is here.’

  I was left speechless, swivelling my head between the two of them in wonder. Their certainty and complicity had me in its spell. Yet one thing dogged me.

  ‘But does Ned … really … still want me? I have not been … kind to him.’

  ‘Yes, Eliza!’ They spoke simultaneously.

  ‘Ah, with all the excitement, I quite forgot,’ said Anne, plucking at her pocket and imperiously thrusting a much folded piece of paper at me. ‘Here’s the letter. He tells you himself.’

  Reluctantly, scarcely able to believe it, I unfolded the scrap of parchment. This time the message was much longer than one word. Come, Eliza, and let me give you my heart, it said. I want nothing more than to live with you, and to love you, for the rest of our days.

  Down below my chamber, I could hear horses moving around and men speaking in low voices to calm them. Over in the Great Hall I could hear the sound of musicians and the low distant hum of the palace. The courtiers were hard at work, feasting and flirting, busy with their own power play, paying no attention to our quiet courtyard.

  I could scarcely read to the note’s end because my eyes were full of tears. Through them, I dimly saw that Henny’s arms were full of cloaks and dresses, as if she had come already prepared to bundle me up to impersonate her.

  But Henny dumped the cloaks on the bed and beckoned me back out into the passage. ‘Shh!’ she said sternly. ‘Come quickly and look’. She was peering out through the window that looked the other way, not into the courtyard within but out towards the gardens rolling down to the river. Beyond the perimeter of the gardens, under the dark of the trees, she pointed out two dim shapes. Horses.

  She gave a long low whistle.

  Through the gloom I saw a figure step forward. There was the movement of a gentleman bowing low and sweeping his hat off his head. It was far too distant and too dark to see, but even so my mind filled in every detail of his wolfish smile. Ned was here! He was waiting for me!

  So I should dress now as Henny and take an evening stroll in the gardens? It seemed so natural and normal, but it would take nerve. And yet, I could now be as bold and brave as my tiny toy knights. I felt utterly changed. Inside my chest, I could feel a warm steady glow, the glow of Ned’s love and mine.

  ‘Yes!’ I said to Anne and Henny both, laughing and crying at the same time. ‘Help me! I’ll get ready at once!’

  But now that Anne had done her work of rousing me from my lethargy, I began to see just how nervous she was. She went to the courtyard window, staring and straining out, and letting us know whenever a guard went past on patrol. Meanwhile Henny was helping me to bundle up, both of us moving very quietly, but quickly, confidently. Finally, I was ready.

  Henny gave me a huge hug. At that I almost melted and decided that it would be better to stay here and not run the risk of leaving.

  ‘Go, Eliza!’ Henny hissed. ‘Go now. He’s waiting!’

  Then Anne came over, and she too hugged me for a long time. ‘I owe you, dear friend,’ I said. ‘I can’t tell you how much.’ I could tell that she was crying but she too gave me a shove towards the door.

  By now it was very nearly dark, with just a glimmer of starlight by which to see. I crept along the passage, tripping over the hem of my unaccustomedly long gown.

  Again I smelt that strange scent of roses.

  It was time to commit myself. I gathered up my heavy skirts and started down the staircase. I was out now, in the courtyard, crossing the cobbles, nodding to the sentry on the gate, then running, running through the gardens and climbing over the wall, kicking out at my ridiculous skirt. And finally, Ned was reaching to help me down from the wall and laughing.

  Within seconds I was in his arms, and he was kissing me. It felt wonderful and glorious. At last, I was where I belonged.

  ‘You came!’ he kept saying, amazed. ‘You came after all!’

  ‘Yes,’ I said into his neck. ‘I’m sorry it took me so long. I was confused. But I’d rather live on a sheep farm with you than be queen of all the world. I know that now.’

  I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was smiling. And I knew that we would never be parted
that night and the next day and all the days to come.

  Epilogue

  Why I Wrote This Book

  If you visit Hampton Court Palace today, you yourself can walk along the so-called Haunted Gallery that leads from the Great Chamber to the chapel. It has red silk hangings and is still lined with Tudor portraits of some of the people in this book: Henry the Eighth himself, his fool Will Summers, the monkey.

  The ghost that’s supposed to visit here at night is the white-dressed figure of Katherine Howard, running to the chapel to beg her husband, Henry the Eighth, to spare her life, exactly as she does in Chapter 34.

  There’s a door leading off this gallery, which most visitors don’t spot because it’s disguised behind hangings. It leads to a staircase, which in turn leads to the office where I’m usually to be found working, because I’m one of the curators who look after the buildings and collections at Hampton Court. This ghost, then, has been sighted only metres away from the place where I spend my days. Sometimes when I walk down the Haunted Gallery, especially late in the evening, I think about Katherine’s screams as the guards took her back to her lodgings.

  Personally, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I am interested in where ghost stories come from. And they often bear some sort of relationship to real historical events.

  If you read the history books about Hampton Court, though, you’ll see it firmly stated that the story of the ghost of Katherine Howard is complete nonsense. That’s because the palace’s geography dictates that the queen’s rooms – where Katherine Howard would have been – were nowhere near the Haunted Gallery or chapel. And most history books don’t have a good word to say about Katherine herself. Because she had more than one sexual partner, her execution is often explained as something that was almost her own fault. Historians have described her as a ‘good-time girl’, as an ‘empty-headed wanton’ and even as a ‘juvenile delinquent’. The general consensus is that she was a ditzy airhead.