“Milady Latimer,” he said politely, “I have a letter for you, from a gentleman at the royal court.” He pulled a thick square of yellowish paper from his jerkin and held it out to me. I bent down and took it. “He sent me here. He said I was not to give the letter to anyone but you, and not to speak of it to anyone.”
A letter—and from the royal court. A very private letter. Puzzled, I reached into my purse and drew out a few coins. “Here you are,” I said to the man. “Thank you. Can I trust you not to tell anyone of this?”
“You can.”
I put the thick packet in my saddlebag and rode on. Not until I reached the privacy of an orchard on the outskirts of Grundleford did I allow myself to read the mysterious message.
And when I read it, I could hardly believe it.
“My dearest Catherine,” it began, “I am in agony. I miss you and want you near me. I believe that despite all, you want this too. I know you. I know that I am in your heart, as you are in mine. I did not tell you the truth about myself because I didn’t dare. It would only have harmed us both.
“You must know of Queen Jane’s death. The queen was my sister, and my heart is full of sorrow at her passing. I am Thomas Seymour, brother-in-law to King Henry and uncle to our future king, Prince Edward.
“I came to Yorkshire because the king sent me, to inspect the building of the new palace. I stayed because of you. I stayed too long. I left in secret because I am a coward. I was afraid I would never be able to leave you if I tried to say goodbye.
“The king wanted me to marry his niece Lady Margaret Douglas but I couldn’t do it. My heart would not let me. One day you will be free. I will wait for you. When you are free, you will be mine. Please, dear Catherine, say you will be mine.
“Come to court, Catherine. Come and be near me. The king is going to marry again. Come and serve his new wife. He will send for you.
“I am the man who loves you,
“Tom”
My joy, as I read Tom’s letter, was indescribable. I clutched the letter to my fast-beating heart. I danced around the nearest tree and ran through the orchard, shouting my delight, not caring who might hear me or see me. I do not think I was observed, but had anyone seen me, they would surely have thought me mad.
He loves me, I repeated again and again. He loves me. He wants me near him. He is going to wait for me to be free.
I could not put the letter out of my mind, not even after I returned to Snape Hall and went in to see John, to read to him as I usually did each evening.
“Ah, Gwennidor,” John said when he saw me come through the doorway. I went up to the bed and bent down to kiss his dry cheek. He lay against a thick bolster, with red satin pillows behind his back. He was smiling but his voice was weak.
“Isn’t—isn’t—”
“No, dear, Margaret isn’t with me. You know she never comes in to see you in the evening, only in the afternoon. You remember. In the evening she studies her French and Latin.”
John frowned, his brow furrowed.
Lying there, his face crinkled and lined, he looked old enough to be my grandfather. I felt no wifely connection to him, only pity and affection. It was hard to believe I had ever slept with him.
One day you will be free, Tom wrote in his letter. One day you will be free. In truth I expected to be free before long. John’s health was failing. He slept much of the time, and his hand shook when he reached for me. Often he could not remember my name, or Margaret’s.
I had brought my Bible with me, along with several books of John’s. He pointed to his favorite, the romance of Gwennidor. I sat down, opened the book and began to read. Within a few minutes he had dropped off to sleep, his mouth agape, his breath raspy.
I closed the book and took Tom’s letter from my pocket. I reread it, the beloved phrases warming my heart. I miss you and want you near me. I know that I am in your heart, as you are in mine. When you are free, you will be mine.
When would the king send for me, I wondered. How soon? And who would his new bride be?
As it happened, the royal summons was not long in coming. Thomas Cromwell, the king’s chief minister, sent a message to inform me that I had been appointed as lady-in-waiting to the Lady Anne of Cleves, who would be coming to England early in the new year of 1540. I would be allowed to bring three servants with me, the message read. Two maidservants and a laundress.
“How would you like to go to court?” I asked Anne when I went to take her the news of my letter from Tom and the message from Lord Cromwell. “As my laundress?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Court! King Henry’s court! I suppose it might be amusing, to see all those old faces again.”
“You would go as my laundress, Anne Daintry. No one need know who you really are. I am allowed to bring three servants with me when I become lady-in-waiting to the new queen.”
She raised her eyebrows in interest. Now I had her attention.
“Who is he marrying this time?”
“A German woman, I hear. A reformist no doubt, not a papist. Her name is Anne of Cleves.”
“A German? But German women are mannish, and loud, and stubborn. Henry will never tolerate that.”
“Perhaps he will if she is beautiful.”
“In all my travels I have never seen a German woman who was beautiful. Not beautiful in the English way, with skin like alabaster and soft, sweet blue eyes and pink lips. Like you.”
I shrugged. “King Henry is no longer young. It may be that his eyesight is failing.” We laughed. “Besides, none of this matters to me. All I care about is that I will be with Tom again.”
I read Anne Tom’s letter, pausing for emphasis between each precious sentence.
“He’s not a very eloquent man, is he? I’ve had my share of love letters, and they were full of flowery phrases. How my breasts were like two warm ripe pears, or my lips were like juicy red cherries, or my eyes—how does that phrase from Catullus go, ‘Your eyes, my stars’?”
“A laundress that quotes Catullus! Now, that’s a rarity.”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. He’s terse.”
“And sincere.”
“How can you believe him now, when he was so deceitful before?”
“But he explains that, here in the letter. He couldn’t tell me everything before.”
“He won your love under false pretenses. Nothing can excuse or explain that.”
I thought over what Anne had said. “Love comes unbidden,” I answered at length. “He didn’t ask for it to happen, any more than I did. Love came over us.”
“Like plague.”
“You are a cynic, even if you can quote Latin love poetry.”
“I’m merely seeing things as they are, instead of as I would wish them to be.”
I went over to look into the cradle, to admire Anne’s sleeping son. Will I have a son of my own, with Tom, I wondered. When John is no longer here, and I am married to Tom, will I be a mother at last?
“My laundress can bring her children with her, of course. We leave in three days, if you decide to come.”
Anne smiled. “I will think it over.”
22
WAVES OF RICH MUSKY SCENT ENVELOPED ME AS I STOOD UNDER THE canopy of cloth of gold. Perfumed coals were burning in a brazier, and their smell was almost overpowering.
“I dislike those heavy German perfumes, don’t you?” the plump, short girl next to me whispered. “The scent of English roses or gillyflowers is so much sweeter.”
I smiled down at her. “I agree. But I suppose we mustn’t be too critical of the new queen or her perfumes.”
“And we must kneel in her presence, and bow to her when she speaks, and bring her German beer whenever she asks for it. Yes, yes. I’ve been tutored in what I must do as maid of honor. They say she is very grand. She demands to be treated like a goddess, and not like the sister of the Duke of Cleves, whoever he is.”
I looked more closely at the outspoken, opinionated girl. She was quite you
ng, and pretty, with pale skin, dark eyes and auburn hair escaping from under her peaked hood. Her expression was piquant and engaging, the look in her eyes saucy.
We were standing under the queen’s tent, with several dozen other ladies-in-waiting and maids of honor, waiting for the king’s new wife-to-be to make her appearance.
She had only been in England for a week or so, but already crowds were gathering wherever she went, eager to glimpse their king’s fourth wife. It was known that she was not King Henry’s first choice as his newest consort. Other highborn women had been invited to share his bed and enjoy the title of queen. But they had all said no. Only this spinster German princess, Lady Anne of Cleves, had said yes.
In truth the crowds came, in part, because of the widespread belief that whomever King Henry married would die a terrible death. Queen Catherine of Aragon had died of loneliness and grief, imprisoned by her cruel royal husband. Queen Anne Boleyn had been executed on false charges (everyone believed they were false) of adultery with her own brother and others. Queen Jane Seymour, Tom’s sister, had been killed through neglect after she contracted childbed fever—some even said that Henry had taken her to a village near Hampton Court where many villagers had the plague and left her there to die.
All the king’s wives were cursed. What would happen to this new one?
“She’s late,” the plump girl was saying. “She’s keeping us all waiting, choking on these fumes.”
We moved away from the smoking brazier but then were too cold. The January day was raw. I felt chilly in my satin gown, though I wore woollen petticoats under it and woollen undersleeves as well. We were gathered on Hampstead Heath, under a gray sky weeping rain, to greet the Lady Anne. Our tent—the queen’s golden tent—was one of many tents, spread over the wide heath in a long sprawl, each sheltering an array of dignitaries and nobles. Thousands of Londoners waited impatiently in the open, held back by guardsmen and soldiers, eager to see the Lady Anne and the king and to watch them all process in parade to the royal palace at Greenwich.
At last we heard, in the distance, the sound of trumpets and a golden coach came into view. Surrounding the coach was a mounted escort, the horses in gilded trappings and the riders in silver armor with plumed helmets and banners woven with the heraldic crests of Cleves and Guelderland. The roar of the cheering spectators seemed to fill the broad heath as King Henry stepped out from his own tent to await the arrival of the golden coach.
His massive body was awash in cloth of gold, and rubies and amethysts and garnets shone from his every garment. Ermine encircled his neck. He wore a velvet cap with many jewels and a white egret plume, and his fat fingers were weighted down with heavy rings, each of which held a great ruby or emerald or sapphire. Standing at the opening of his tent, the king leaned against a thronelike chair, so that some of his weight was shifted off his sore leg. I remembered him showing me the terrible wound on that leg, and imagined that it must still cause him pain. I wondered how Lady Anne of Cleves would react to the stench of the sore, and to the great wrinkled bulk of her aging husband when he made love to her. The thought made me shudder.
Beside the king stood Princess Mary, Queen Catherine of Aragon’s fair daughter who, it was said, still clung to the old faith of Rome. She looked careworn and sour, I thought, much older than her twenty-three years. There was a good deal of gossip about her at court, and my plump companion was repeating some of it as we watched the royal figures emerge from the king’s tent.
“They say Princess Mary still worships in the old way, and that the king punishes her by not letting her marry. She’s very sad. She tried to get away across the sea to the Low Countries but she couldn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe the king caught her and punished her.”
In her arms the princess held her half-brother, the baby Prince Edward. He was two years old but looked much smaller than a two-year-old ought to look, bundled in his golden blanket. The king barely took any notice of him. The king’s other legitimate child, Anne Boleyn’s daughter Princess Elizabeth, was not present; no child of Anne Boleyn was allowed to come within the royal circle on such an important occasion. But standing next to Princess Mary was a very beautiful young woman, striking and statuesque. Her gown of lilac silk flowed in becoming folds over her shapely body, slim-waisted and voluptuous; her fair skin was delicate, her blond hair abundant and curly, her features far more pleasing than those of Princess Mary, who had once been thought very handsome.
“Who is that young woman?” I asked the plump girl beside me.
“That’s Lady Margaret Douglas, the king’s niece. The one who was in the Tower for agreeing to marry one of my relatives without the king’s permission. She was in disgrace for awhile, but now the king loves her again, as you can see.” And indeed King Henry was smiling on his lovely niece, and talking with her, as he waited for Lady Anne’s gold carriage to make its slow approach.
So that was Lady Margaret Douglas, the woman my Tom was supposed to marry. The one he couldn’t bring himself to accept, because of his love for me. I felt proud, gratified that his love for me was so strong—until I saw Tom himself come out of the royal tent and take his place beside the lovely Lady Margaret!
The look he gave her as he came up to her was one of affection and familiarity, far too much affection for my comfort. They smiled at one another, he leaned over to kiss her delicate pink cheek and she gave him her slender hand in friendship—or was it in love? I was too far away to see the look that passed between them, but their gestures were eloquent. Was Tom in love with Lady Margaret? Was he going to marry her after all?
My ungovernable thoughts ran wildly. Had Tom’s decision about marriage changed since he wrote his letter to me? Was there to be a double wedding, of the king and Lady Anne of Cleves and Thomas Seymour and Lady Margaret Douglas?
I shivered, and moved closer to the perfumed brazier once again, trying to ignore the musky odor that poured forth from it along with thin columns of smoke.
Trembling, I returned to stand beside the plump girl. Bravely I asked her whether she had heard any rumors about Lady Margaret marrying Thomas Seymour.
She giggled. “Sir Thomas is afraid of marriage, they say. And the women won’t have him, though he is handsome and rich and the uncle of the baby prince. My cousin Mary Howard, the one who was married to Fitzroy, said no to him. And Lady Margaret Douglas did too, so they say.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “There is a story. An awful story. Some believe it, some don’t.”
“What story?”
The girl pulled me deep into the interior of the large tent, away from the front where all the other ladies and waiting maids were clustered, watching for Lady Anne to alight.
“Something happened at his estate at Sudeley,” she whispered. “It was said that a woman died because of it.”
“What happened?”
“I heard from Francis—from a friend—that Sir Thomas was out hunting with one of the gamekeepers and the man’s wife came along. She was very pretty, and Sir Thomas desired her. He had some of his servants hold her while he raped her, with her husband right there, tied to a tree so he couldn’t help her. She screamed and one of her brothers came and attacked Sir Thomas and Sir Thomas killed him. Afterward, the woman fell into low spirits and stabbed herself to death. That’s the story.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“The gamekeeper swears it is true.”
Tom? My sweet, gentle, loving Tom? Impossible!
“You shouldn’t repeat such wicked things. Who are you anyway?”
“I am Catherine Howard. Queen Anne Boleyn was my cousin.”
My eyes widened. “I have heard that the Howards and the Seymours are rivals. They spread lies about each other.”
“I think that story is no lie. But I cannot be certain. No one can—unless she was present.”
Angrily I left the girl and rejoined the other ladies-in-waiting. I tried to shut the awful image out of my mind, of Tom ordering his servan
ts to restrain the woman while he—while he—
A blast of trumpets announced that Lady Anne of Cleves’s carriage had come to a halt before the king’s tent. Grooms rushed out to hold the heads of the stamping horses, the harness bells jangling in the wintry air.
A lady stepped carefully down out of the carriage, the heavy embroidered skirts of her gray gown cumbersome around her. A wide, strangely-shaped hood, made in a fashion I had never before seen, all but hid her face. From beneath it hung long fair hair. She was tall and strong-looking, confident and forceful in her movements. It was the Lady Anne of Cleves.
A shout went up from the crowd. The king stepped forward, took his future wife’s hand and kissed her on the cheek—not on the lips, as was customary between husband and wife. His lips barely grazed her cheek. A murmur of astonishment spread among the ladies around me. They too had noted the chaste kiss.
We were summoned to the royal tent and one by one, we knelt before Lady Anne and were introduced to her, first the ladies-in-waiting, then the maids of honor among whom was my new acquaintance Catherine Howard.
As I drew near, taking my turn to be introduced, I studied the new queen. She was neither ugly nor beautiful, but something in between. Her small gray eyes were kind and surprisingly full of merriment—they made me think of my brother Will with his jokes and pranks. Her nose was straight, her mouth small and primly shut. But I was shocked to see that her skin was of a dull brownish hue, and covered with the marks and scars of the pox. The blemishes were unmistakable; as with all such disfiguring marks, they made one want to turn away.
When presented to Lady Anne, I was very near to the royal family—and to Tom, who kept his place next to Margaret Douglas. I did not look directly at him, but watched out of the corner of my eye. He seemed restless, uncomfortable, standing first on one foot, then the other, fidgeting with his long fur-lined sleeves, laughing nervously at a pleasantry of the king’s. I thought, he’s nervous because I’m near by.
The Last Wífe of Henry VIII Page 16
