No Will But His

by Hoyt, Sarah A.

  “Yes, or at least—” Or at least Kathryn had heard of his new post in Calais, though in that as in all else, no one told her exactly what it all meant. “But I’m not living with my father and his wife. I am a maid of honor to the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk.”

  “Oh,” Thomas Culpepper said, and pursed his lips. “And Her Grace being busy today, I suppose her maids …” He frowned again. “Well! It is not done and it is not right.”

  His voice sounded so put out that Kathryn shied away. But he laughed a little. “Oh, fear not, fair Kathryn. You’re with me now, and you are safe. We’ll find those who should have kept you close.”

  He took Kathryn’s hand in his and led her trippingly through the streets. And Kathryn found all was different. The drunks and revelers who before would skirt too close to her, close enough to scare her, now took one look at Thomas and gave them a wide berth, so that they walked, as it were, in a safe aisle of their own amid the pageantry and revelry of the night.

  And the revelry itself, which had seemed such a disorganized dance, now resolved itself into tableaus in honor of the Queen—here four nymphs held up tablets praising her and the son she would bear the king; there another tableau compared her to Saint Anne, Mother of the Virgin Mary; still farther ahead, a group of musicians played music in her honor.

  Thomas, Kathryn’s hand on his arm, explained all this to her, seeming very amused at her naive curiosity. And then at long last said, “Aye, but the maidens of Norfolk are hard to find are they not?”

  Kathryn nodded, obligingly, but she cared not at all, now, if they ever found them. Or at least, she thought they would have to find them, and sooner rather than later, for Kathryn surely couldn’t stay the rest of her life with Thomas Culpepper, no matter how handsome he might be or even that they indeed might be cousins.

  Still, she didn’t want to find them very quickly. Oh, no. She’d feign stay with Thomas as long as she could.

  Ahead there were royal servants dispensing meat and bread, and Thomas procured food for them both, then wine from one of the running fountains, in cups that he procured Kathryn knew not where. He led her to a little space where stairs ran up to the fifth floor of a house, and they sat on the steps side by side eating, while he asked Kathryn where she was staying and where she’d lost her companions.

  He listened, also, with just the slightest smile of amusement, to Kathryn chirruping about her new clothes, the greatness of the Palace at Lambeth and even of Horsham, the strictness of Dame Margaret and the great injustice of her never having got oranges.

  Kathryn knew other boys her age. Charles, her brother, must be close to it, if not the same. But Charles and her friends were always impatient of Kathryn. They’d never listened. Thomas Culpepper listened and didn’t call her a goose or ask her if her wits had gone wondering or inform her, in a stern voice, that well brought up maids did not talk to young men. No, Thomas listened and asked questions, and if his blue grey eyes sparkled with amusement, it was always an amusement mingled with delight, as though he found her amusing beyond all other entertainments.

  “And now,” he told her, when they finished their meal. “I shall take you back to the palace at Lambeth myself, and deliver you to the duchess’s household. If those maids be not at home, they’re in amusements no young lady should partake.”

  He led her, through the streets, but not in any great hurry, showing her many more tableaus on the way and delighting her with explanations, particularly when she presented to him the notion that nymphs or not, ladies should not be dressed only in transparent fabric. “For it just isn’t decent.”

  “Is it not, Fair Kathryn?” Thomas asked.

  She shook her head, and he laughed. “But that is what they wore, you know, in antiquity, when they roamed the world.”

  “What?” she asked. “Like the lady my nurse told me about, who went all naked through the forest, till a king found her and chose to marry her?”

  “Likely,” Thomas said, with a whoop of delight, though Kathryn could not think where the delight came from. “Likely she was a nymph.”

  “Well, if she were so,” Kathryn said, thoughtfully. “It was ill done of him to marry her, for she was not used to clothes, and what will people think of a queen going naked about the palace? And you know,” she added, , “likely they made her uncomfortable, like when people are used to going about barefoot and are forced to wear shoes. They don’t like it, and no more would she.” She stopped because Thomas had pressed his free hand to his mouth and looked like he was about to burst into loud laughter.

  “Likely,” he said, from behind his hand. “Likely you are right. The king ought to have remembered that Caesar’s wife must be beyond reproach.” With this cryptic remark, as though it had helped him control his humor, he uncovered his mouth, and said, “I see you are wise as well as beautiful. I trow, if you’re not spoken for when I come of age, I’ll speak for you myself. Would you like to marry me when you grow up, Kathryn?”

  And Kathryn, who till then had thought that nothing but a prince would do for her, looked up into the impish eyes and smiled. “Likely,” she said. “Likely I might.”

  He laughed loudly and picked her up and carried her the rest of the way, which turned out to be very little, till he delivered her to the palace at Lambeth where one of the housekeepers opened the door and made many exclamations of surprise at seeing Kathryn alone with a gentleman.

  Kathryn was that tired by then, that she could not follow everything Thomas Culpepper said. But words emerged from his haranguing of the servant. “Too young,” he said. “Too fair.” And “Too innocent.” And then a lot about how someone of her station shouldn’t go about unattended.

  The housekeeper bobbed so many curtseys she looked like one of those mechanical contrivances that move up and down as a handle turns—or perhaps as though she were trying to learn some difficult dance. “I’m sure, sir,” she said, a lot, and twisted the corner of her overdress, as though to punish it for her shortcomings. “I’ll tell the young ladies, sir,” she said. And “It was very badly done, sir.”

  None of her words seemed to stop his lecture of her, which took a long time to come to its proper conclusion, which was “She is a Howard, and she should be watched and cared for as such. Remember, woman, that your house has the cousin of the queen herself in its charge. If the king should hear!”

  This caused at least three bobbing-up-and-down curtseys, and finally Thomas bent to speak to Kathryn herself. “Thank you for the pleasure of your company, Mistress Kathryn Howard. You have made what would have been a night of revelry something quite other—and I don’t think I am displeased.” He bowed to her. “When I next see you, I shall bring you oranges.“Kathryn, led to the maidens’ dormitory by the apologizing housekeeper, thought of Thomas Culpepper’s tall, straight back disappearing into the London streets and thought that though she was not at all sure what he meant, she was sure of two things: One that he would indeed one day bring her oranges. And the other that she wasn’t sure she cared at all, as long as he brought himself.

  Section Two

  Opening Rose

  Chapter Six

  “The queen,” the duchess said, and let her hand, and with it the letter she was holding, fall. “Has delivered herself of a princess.”

  For a moment silence reigned in the room in which all the maids of honor had gathered around Her Grace. Outside the mullioned window of the chamber, the wind blew bitter and harsh, denuding the last leaves from forlorn trees. Drops of rain clung to the windows, diminishing the light received from the slate grey skies above.

  The duchess sighed, and as if this were the signal, Mary Tilney piped up. “But, sure …” She cleared her throat. “Didn’t the astrologers say she was carrying a son?”

  Kathryn looked down on the embroidery she was doing—with twisted, uneven stitches. Mary had insisted she must learn this—one of the graces of womanhood—but Kathryn felt about it much the same way she felt about forming letters. It was a skill r
equiring much application and, at the end of it all, not seeming to produce enough satisfaction. Mary had drawn the figure for Kathryn to embroider, Kathryn’s initials in a design of thistles, and said it would make a right handsome cap, but Kathryn looked doubtfully at it. Perhaps it would. When seen from a distance in ill light.

  “Don’t be a fool, girl,” the duchess stormed. “Astrologers are, like all learned men, capable of going wrong. Anne has produced a daughter …” She chewed on her lip. “The king will never forgive her for this. She’s done no better than the old queen.”

  “How can the king hold her guilty for it,” Kathryn asked, so suddenly that it surprised even herself, and it took her a moment to realize that the words had issued from her own mouth. “How could she control it?”

  She got a chilling look from the duchess. “There are things,” she said, “that a smart woman can do, thoughts she must think and prayers that would allow her to give her husband a son, if she only took care.”

  Kathryn looked at the duchess’s awful eyes, intent and far to keen and fixed on her, and knew that she was meant to just accept the words as the gospel truth. Or else, she thought, I’m supposed to lose control of my bladder, like my brother. Instead, she smiled back, “But then,” she said, “if it were so easy, would it not be something that Queen Catherine, herself, would have done and thereby avoided being set aside?”

  The duchess rose. She walked over to Kathryn and stood by her, looking down with that glare. “You have a tongue in your head, girl. And if you want to keep both head and tongue, you’ll learn to control it.” She looked around the room, with its rich hangings, and the fifteen girls crammed into it. Kathryn and Mary sharing the window seat, others in benches, and a half dozen on the floor, all working some form of sewing, or at least doing so in appearance—in truth they’d been keeping Her Grace amused with gossip about the court and the various rumors crisscrossing London, until the matter of the queen’s labor was resolved.

  But the duchess who’d been smiling and nodding to their chatter had gone, all at once becoming grim and brooding. The walking stick, which she’d rarely used lately and not used at all during Queen Anne’s coronation, was sought for with the questing hand. One of the girls ran out and returned almost immediately carrying it. The duchess took it in her hand and leaned her weight into it. “We are,” she said. “Going back to Horsham. I have had enough of the court for the nonce.”

  She left the room, and the frenzy started. Mary jumped up immediately and said, “Come, Kathryn, we have trunks to pack. And to be traveling in this weather, too. How dreary it will be. If only you’d kept your mouth shut!”

  “Why should I?” Kathryn asked. “And how could I, when the duchess is saying that the king will now love Queen Anne less for not having given him an heir? Surely … I have many siblings, and I have heard talk in the kitchen, too.” Various kitchens, including some of the rooming houses where they’d lodged between her father’s marriages. She wasn’t about to tell Mary that whole story. “And forsooth, if there were, indeed, something a woman could do to determine she has a boy, all women would know it.”

  Mary sighed. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “And yet you had no business speaking to the duchess on it, for you must know that everyone will blame the queen for not giving the king an heir. It is just the way of the world.”

  “Well,” Kathryn said, as they entered their dormitory and Mary started gathering arms full of dresses that had been scattered all about. “Well, then the world is wrong.”

  This brought a peal of laughter from Mary, laughter of the kind that Kathryn had often brought to her when she’d first come to live in the duchess’s household. The beauty mark on the side of Mary’s mouth wiggled up and down. “Indeed, Kathryn. Wouldst though change the world? Most of us,” she continued, the mirth subsiding, “would be glad enough to change our station. Particularly now as we must go to Horsham, and Horsham is so deadly dull in winter. There’s nothing to do and nothing to see, it’s all mud and fields all around, and more …” She sighed. “There isn’t even a good New Year celebration. I’d hoped we’d stay at court …”

  “We’re not at court,” Kathryn said sensibly. “We are only some miles from London proper, close enough, I trow, to visit, but no has asked us to visit.” In fact, since the events of the coronation night, Kathryn had not been out of the house, though Mary Tilney and her sister Katherine, Alice Restwold and Dorothy Baskerville had often been out together and often spoke to each other when they returned from the city as though they had shared some great secret or some wonder they could not communicate to the rest of the household.

  “Do you perhaps leave friends behind?” Kathryn asked, and looking up, was surprised to see that Mary Tilney was blushing dark and looking around, as if to see if anyone was close enough to hear them.

  “Have I said ought—?” Kathryn started, but Mary, having asserted there was no one nearby, shook her head and nearing Kathryn spoke into her ear in a fierce whisper, “Speak not of friends, Kathryn, for those are such as we are not allowed to have.”

  “Oh, but … are we not friends?” Kathryn asked back curiously.

  Mary sighed as though she were speaking with the feebleminded, and shook her head hard, then hissed again, her breath hot against Kathryn’s ear, “Kathryn Howard, no maiden is supposed to be friends with men.”

  “Men!” Kathryn said, thinking of the night of the coronation and the way the maids of honor of the duchess had met the men at the dock when they came forth to the coronation. She remembered the smiles, the easy looks, and the way she’d been foisted off with Henry Manox, as though all the other ones were spoken for. She felt her own cheeks heat, both at the thought of what might have gone on the rest of the night—while she was wandering lost about London and being squired by Thomas Culpepper. Not that she resented being escorted by Thomas, even if he had not yet visited or brought her the desired oranges.

  However, she thought what her friends had been about had, force, been far more interesting than her own adventures. “Men,” she said again lower, and as Mary moved to step away and resume her task, Kathryn reached over and held onto her sleeve, pulling her close. “But Mary,” she said, whispering back. “You’re the one who told me that the woman is to blame if she displeases her husband and that …”

  Mary shrugged her shoulders and threw her head back. “Listen to me, Kathryn Howard, for if you’re going to get any joy out of life, you must know this—there is but one thing certain—after marriage a woman is her husband’s and his every whim is to her like God’s upon the Earth. Which is why she must do what she can to have a life and enjoy it before marriage. Understand you this, Kathryn?”

  Kathryn nodded, but was not sure at all she understood. After all, what life could she have—she who was all but a prisoner of the temperamental duchess’s household, taken here and there as suited that noble lady’s mood, and never her own woman? How could she have her own life, then? Oh, perhaps Mary and Alice and Catherine had managed it, but faith, they weren’t Howards and they weren’t the cousin of the queen—whom, though she’d seen her only once, Kathryn inexplicably felt herself linked to.

  It was as though a thread united their fortunes, and one must rise and fall as the other did.

  Chapter Seven

  If her fortunes were tied to Queen Anne’s, they looked bleak indeed. Oh, no one told Kathryn everything, but even after they retreated to Horsham, where the countryside was a sea of mud, news filtered to them.

  There were rumors that all was not well at court. The king avoided the queen. He showed impatience at her. There were rumors about various young ladies who had captured his fickle majesty’s interest. There was no more talk among the maids, or even among the staff, who were ever more apt to talk of romance and intrigue than the household, of a romance such as would be immortal to history. And no songs filtered down from the court when the rare visitor came—or at least no songs that were said to have been composed by the king for the q
ueen.

  Songs became very important to Kathryn that winter. The masters at Horsham were shared by all the ladies, and—she thought—not all that knowledgeable. At least, she had some vague idea her Leigh sisters had Italian masters for the spinet and virginal, for the lute and harpsichord.

  Kathryn was one of many under the tutelage of these masters, who seemed to have gotten their learning of music from their church choirs—or else perhaps from itinerant jugglers.

  But they did well enough to teach her the basics: how to pluck the lute in a fashion pleasing enough to accompany her still-piping little girl’s voice to the tune of the current songs from court. And while she sometimes noticed that Alice or Mary spent a goodly amount of time waiting for a particular rider from the court or another, she herself cared only to know what songs were sung at court now.

  It was her amusement, picking up a lute from the practice room and finding a solitary place in which to sing all her newly learned songs, while accompanying herself with the lute.

  And when spring took too long to turn warm, much less acknowledge the nearness of summer, on a dank, dark day when the rain wept against the mullioned windows and all outside was an indifferent sodden mingle of grey sky, brown mud, and trees caught halfway between the two, with their branches raised up to the sky like penitents imploring in vain for mercy, Kathryn had taken the lute and walked to the corner of a far-off hallway.

  Gone were all her dreams of ever marrying a prince. It would be lucky enough, she thought, if Queen Anne didn’t get divorced and end up put away in some forgotten castle, as old Queen Katherine had. Kathryn had heard in one of the recent bits of gossip from court that one of the foreign ambassadors had called the queen “that old, thin woman.”