The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife

by Erickson, Carolly

  Father looked at me balefully, then grew exasperated.

  “Must you always argue, Catherine? Can you not be womanly and silent? Especially about things that do not concern you? Francis Dereham is not a meet husband for a Howard! And there’s an end to it!”

  I hung my head.

  “But I love him, father,” I murmured.

  He got to his feet and began pacing, one hand held to his lower back.

  “When will you understand! Love doesn’t enter in, Catherine. Love is just a silly girl’s fancy. And it passes as quickly as a dream.”

  He winced, then sat down again, his hand still pressed to his back, his forehead creased. I knew he was in pain, the familiar pain of a kidney stone.

  “I loved your mother once. But the king took her from me. She disappeared, into that brothel of his. The Maidens’ Bower. Maidens, hah! The Whores’ Chamber, more likely!”

  I had never before heard my father speak of my mother, and why she had vanished from our lives. I knew that my Howard relatives had nothing but contempt for her, and that she had died, but how and why remained a mystery.

  On an impulse I got down on my knees.

  “Please, father, I beg you. Tell me how mother died. No one will ever speak of it.”

  “Hush, child! Hush!” He looked around, quickly and furtively, to see whether my words had been overheard. But no one was nearby.

  He swore then, and got to his feet, and left me. I knew it would do no good to follow him, for when the pain of the stone attacked him his mood grew sour and there was no approaching him. I watched him go, feeling let down, discouraged. I had been on the brink of discovering what had happened to my mother, but then, as always, I had failed to find out the answer.

  I was happy to know that Francis had chosen me as the girl he wanted to marry, yet at the same time upset that father thought so little of him as a potential husband for me.

  I wanted him. Oh, how I wanted him! What was I to do?

  * * *

  Francis was persistent—and clever. My father would not agree to a betrothal, but he did not shout at Francis and send him away either. For once Francis discovered my father’s weakness—his constant shortage of money, and his worries about never having any more of it in the future—it was easy enough for him to use that knowledge to his advantage.

  He began bringing father gifts, shirts of fine linen, costly boots, a handsome gold belt buckle. He offered to bring an Italian moneylender to Lambeth who, he said, would put an end to father’s seemingly endless cycle of worsening debt. He boasted of having a rich relation in Ireland who, he was assured, was growing richer all the time, and was sending him larger and larger sums. (“Perhaps the wild Irish are not so bad as we think,” father remarked to me after one of Francis’s visits.)

  At the same time, Francis was wooing me with greater fervor, ending my longing to see more of him and promising me that his heart was mine and only mine. He presented me with lengths of fine satin and velvet to be made into gowns, a quilted cap of silver sarcenet, coils of gold and silver braid, French gloves of the softest doeskin. He brought minstrels to sing to me, he gave me a small whimpering lapdog whose collar was a golden love knot bearing our initials. Each day brought new proofs of his devotion, until finally, one evening, he showed me two silver rings and said that they were meant for us.

  “One day, dear Catherine, when you are willing, we will don these rings and promise ourselves to one another. Then I will call you wife and you will call me husband. No one will ever be able to separate us, for we will be handfasted, pledged and promised in the eyes of God.”

  I knew about handfasting, the ancient way of marriage that had been known since before churches existed. I was touched that Francis had bought the rings and imagined us vowing our love in the old way.

  There was no Mistress Phippson at Lambeth, and no Paradise Chamber. But Grandma Agnes did have a special chamberer, Mary Lascelles, who oversaw the unmarried girls of the household, and who, in return for a generous money gift, would unlock special rooms she called her cupboards.

  The cupboards were small but comfortable, with rushes on the stone floors and soft mattresses and pillowed benches. Mary knew well enough who entered and left the cupboards and when, but she did not tell Grandma Agnes or anyone else (at least she promised not to tell) and we felt safe and private there.

  Joan and Edward Waldegrave, Francis and I took our pleasure in the privacy of these cupboards, just as Henry and I and the others had at Horsham, and before long Francis and I put on the silver rings he had bought for us and promised to love each other for the rest of our lives.

  It was as solemn, as beautiful a pledge as I had ever made, and I meant the words I spoke with all my heart. I had no doubt that Francis was equally sincere in promising himself to me, and when he took his vow, I saw such love in his beautiful eyes that it made me cry.

  At last I knew what it was to be a wife, for once we were pledged, I gladly offered Francis my body, my maidenhead, my greatest treasure. He loved me tenderly, and very gently, eager not to hurt me, and with none of the huffing and puffing I had grown accustomed to with Henry. But then, I had denied Henry the ultimate pleasure, while with Francis I opened myself fully to his rather quick glance and entry.

  I felt him inside me, I felt an odd unfamiliar mixture of pain and pleasure. But what I did not feel—and this puzzled me greatly—was excitement. The warmth of passion. The passion I had felt so strongly with Henry that I almost burst. The strong tide of desire—desire thwarted, with Henry, but now unleashed, with the man who was my husband. Where was desire?

  Perhaps, I thought, when one is married to one’s true love, romance and affection take the place of that heated craving Henry had brought out in me. I prayed that this was true, but had no way to find out.

  Besides, I did not want anyone to know of our secret pledge. I did not want to reveal the fact that I, a Howard, had married a distant relation with no living parents and Irish blood.

  At least I could be sure that there would be no child to give our secret away. I remembered well what Joan had taught Alice about how to make certain she would not become pregnant. I used my knowledge and felt certain I would not be a mother any time soon.

  And in fact, Francis and I did not share a bed very often. On many nights he was kept busy until long past midnight, in attendance on Grandma Agnes at banquets or other evening entertainments, accompanying her when she visited Horsham, escorting her to the royal palace at Hampton Court or Greenwich or across the river at Cardinal Wolsey’s old palace of York Place, now renamed Whitehall.

  When at Lambeth Francis slept in quarters with the other gentlemen pensioners, I in the wing with the other unmarried young women (for of course no one knew of our handfasted vows) who served the duchess. Only on occasion did Francis pay Mary Lascelles to let us use one of the cupboards where we could be together undisturbed. Even less often we shared a cupboard with Joan and Edward, who had their own duties and obligations and seemed less and less available for carefree nights and midnight feasting.

  Francis continued to be an affectionate partner and lover, embracing me tenderly when we met, exchanging stolen kisses in the duchess’s apartments when no one was near to see us, giving me gifts and calling me wife.

  “Catherine, my dear wife,” he would often say, relishing the words. “My own dear wife Catherine Howard Dereham.”

  Unlike Henry, Francis never sulked, he was not jealous, he seemed always to maintain a pleasant, calm manner. He was exceptionally courteous. Younger, more handsome men (there were few at Lambeth who were more handsome than he was) did not make him envious. In fact he seemed to take a particular pleasure in the company of good-looking men—men such as my slim, boyish, fair-haired tutor. He never became demanding, as Henry often had, and did not insist that I tell him everyone I saw and how I spent my time.

  His talk, when we were together, was nearly always of the new queen’s establishment: how many people were to be appointed to
her household, which appointments had been made and which were still undecided, who was in favor with the king and who was not. According to Francis, Lord Cromwell was still the most powerful man at the royal court. It was entirely his idea that King Henry should marry the Lady Anna of Cleves, though the king was said to be nervous and uncertain about marrying a woman he had never met. Opposed to Lord Cromwell was my uncle Thomas and my grandmother and any among the nobility who thought an obscure German princess with a very small dowry was not a suitable wife for our king.

  It wearied me to hear about the endless wrangles over offices and fees and favors, whose position took precedence, who had the ear of the Lord Privy Seal and who he disliked. It wearied me, not only because I would have preferred hearing words of love and concern from my new husband, but because I had to hear about matters of court offices and conflicts from my father as well as from Francis. Father was still waiting in great discontent to hear whether or not he was to be made under-cellarer to the next queen. Between Francis and my father, I had more than my fill of dull and (to me) trivial matters.

  But then came a change. Suddenly I myself was drawn into the swirling fog of intrigue, and before I knew it the things I had been hearing about from others began to concern me, very immediately and vitally. In fact, they began to concern me in ways that changed my life from then on.

  * * *

  An order was sent to Lambeth, to Uncle Thomas, by King Henry himself. “Assemble eight of the fairest young women from among your relations,” it read. “Have them attend me at Whitehall so that I may make their acquaintance.” A date and time was set forth. It only remained for my uncle to make his choices.

  “Which of us do you think he will choose?” Malyn asked, her deep blue eyes bright, clearly anxious to be among the favored few.

  “I’ve heard he wants Charyn to be there. But she’s already betrothed.”

  “Betrothals can be broken,” Joan put in thoughtfully. “At the king’s command.”

  “Mary Sidford,” was my comment. She was certainly very lovely, among the loveliest among us—blond, pink-cheeked, dimpled and with a generously ripe figure.

  “Does this mean he isn’t going to marry the old maid from Cleves?” Alice asked tentatively. “I thought it was all arranged.”

  “Nothing is arranged until all the official papers have been drawn up,” Joan told us. As usual, she was the best informed of us all. “Lord Cromwell has not been able to persuade the king to agree. So nothing is settled. Edward told me that he heard from one of the king’s chamber gentlemen that the marriage documents have not been written yet, much less signed.”

  Edward Waldegrave, Joan’s lover, went back and forth between Lambeth and the royal palace often, on Grandma Agnes’s business. He was on familiar terms with the king’s chamber gentlemen and passed on to Joan the most recent news from court and even the newest bawdy jokes.

  “Edward says King Henry asked the French to send their prettiest girls to Calais for him to look over. And do you know what they said? They said, ‘What next, do you want to lie with them all too?’ He says the king actually got red in the face when he heard that.”

  The request from the palace caused a great stir at Lambeth. It indicated that King Henry was openly shopping for a bride—and that the power of Lord Cromwell was waning, since the choice of the Lady Anna of Cleves had been his and not the king’s.

  We heard that all sorts and conditions of girls and women were being delivered to Whitehall for the king’s perusal.

  “He’ll love that,” was the comment of my bitter cousin Catherine Tylney. “He can’t get enough of women.”

  “At least we know you won’t be sent to Whitehall,” Joan retorted. “King Henry likes gentle, softspoken women, not shrews. Oh, and they must also be young and sweet, not old and sour.”

  Francis told me that my uncle Thomas could not have been happier at Lord Cromwell’s loss of influence over the king. Now he himself could rise, his own views on the choice of a bride might yet prevail. He began, Francis said, by tempting King Henry with one of his former favorites, Margaret Shelton. He went on to offer the king another girl, barely fourteen years old, who had been a maid of honor at the Flemish court, and another—his own ward—who was not yet twelve.

  “If you are among the girls chosen to appear before the king, Catherine, you will have an advantage,” Francis said. “You are quite young. Therein lies your advantage.”

  “But Francis!” I burst out, “We are married! We are handfasted. I cannot even be considered by the king.”

  Francis looked thoughtful. “It would not be a bad thing if he were to choose you. Think of what it would mean for us both: wealth, lands, the title of queen for you, no doubt a position as chief bedchamber gentleman for me, if not something even higher—” The gleam in his eyes told me all; he would gladly give me to the king, if only it meant that his dream of riches and high status could come true.

  “But what of our vows? What of our pledge to love and honor one another?”

  Francis shrugged. “If we were lucky enough that the king showed you favor, either as his mistress or his wife, we would still continue to belong to each other. You would simply belong to the king as well.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. Francis, my husband, was telling me he would be willing to share me with the king in return for money and a high position. To sell me, in effect. To barter my honor, my future, my reputation, in exchange for a few coins and a title in the royal household.

  Francis smiled down at me and stroked my cheek.

  “Remember Mary Boleyn,” he said. “Wife and royal mistress both—and much much happier than her sister Anne.”

  “Mary Boleyn was a whore. Everyone says so. Cast out by her relations, dishonored by everyone.”

  But Francis only laughed. “She had her reward. You must learn, my dear wife, to adapt yourself to the ways of those around you. Be supple, be wise!”

  * * *

  Uncle Thomas made his choices. There were to be eight of us sent to the king: Charyn (despite her betrothal), Mary Sidford, Alice Restvold, my cousins Malyn Tylney, Dorothy Baskerville and Margaret Benet, and me. Yes, me. And there was one other, Uncle Thomas’s mistress Elizabeth Holland. Like Francis, Uncle Thomas was apparently willing to share his lover with the king. Elizabeth Holland was much older than the rest of us, sensuous and alluring, with lustrous chestnut brown hair and a sly smile. I wondered if she was too old to bear the king children.

  But I had no time for such speculations, for the eight of us were far too busy preparing ourselves to meet the king. We had to look our best, our garments and behavior had to show us to greatest advantage, that was obvious. Grandma Agnes brought in seamstresses and tailors, lengths of gleaming satin and sarcenet, cut Genoa velvet and shimmering bawdkin in dozens of colors, from the London warehouses, lengths of lace and ribbon and jeweled trim. As our gowns were cut and sewn and fitted she inspected each of us, noting where a stomacher could be tightened, a bodice lowered, a petticoat made more flirtatiously full.

  As my gown was taking shape she stood back and looked at me with a very critical eye.

  “Can that girl not be made taller?” she asked. “Her mother was taller, was she not?”

  My mother! I looked over at grandma, but she was directing her question to the tailor.

  “I did not know the lady,” he said. “I cannot say. But the shoemaker can easily add to the heels of Mistress Catherine’s slippers, to make her appear taller.”

  “Tell him to do so. And see that her headdress is raised up as well.”

  At last we were ready, our gowns and petticoats fluffed and glimmering, our hair neatly and modestly—and most becomingly—arranged beneath our headdresses, our eyes brightened with a drop of belladonna and our cheeks delicately pinked with red ochre. Together the eight of us set off in two coaches for the royal court at Whitehall, our hearts in our mouths, our hopes soaring.

  For I too was caught up in the excitement of being shown
off to the king. I loved Francis and cherished our bond and pledge—but if fate should lead me to a higher destiny, who was I to refuse it, especially since Francis was more than willing to share me with King Henry?

  “Seek the king’s fantasy, all of you!” Uncle Thomas called out to us as our coaches rumbled out of the courtyard of Lambeth. “Remember who you are, and make our family proud!”

  His words echoed in my ears as we left the precincts of the great house and set out along the crowded high road toward the river and the capital. And I remembered too what Francis so often said, though the memory was chilling: Do what you can, take what you need, act as you must. I vowed to make this motto my watchword in the days to come.

  FIVE

  I will never forget, not if I live to be a hundred, my first sight of King Henry. We were shown into the grand, high-ceilinged presence chamber, the eight of us, and the king was leaning casually against a large cabinet of polished wood. Half a dozen men were near him, one of them writing on a scroll, another handing him papers, another standing back, surveying the scene, others waiting to do his bidding.

  As we approached I heard the king say, his voice warm and resonant, “At my age, better a soft bed than a hard harlot.” The others laughed—not the polite, feigned laughter of flatterers but the genuine, hearty laughter of companions.

  He was much taller than the others, and much more stout, though his beard was still thick and red-gold and there was little of the old man about him despite his age. He was quite old, nearly fifty. He wore a coat such as I had never seen before, so rich a coat that I can hardly describe it, braided all over in glimmering gold and set with clusters of large orient pearls and sparkling emeralds and diamonds, among them other gems in colors new to me, pale yellow and blood red and bluish purple, with enormous diamonds for buttons. Oh, how he gleamed! The slightest movement he made set the gold braid dancing, and the jewels flashing.

  As we came closer I saw that his swordgirdle and sword were studded with large emeralds, and his bonnet too was heavy with gleaming stones and shining golden aglets. He was dressed with such magnificence, yet there was not the least formality about his manner. He continued to joke and laugh with the others, all the while glancing at the papers handed to him and reaching for a pen to sign one or two of them.