King Henry, his swollen, bandaged leg exposed and propped on a cushioned bench, his face contorted and red with pain and furious anger, lashed out with his silver-tipped ebony cane at the servants who, gagging from the overpowering stench of his suppurating ulcer, were attempting to remove the bandage.
It was a ghastly sight: the pus-stained linen sticking to the sore, the dark red clotted blood, the fat, white fleshy leg with its red veins standing out like welts. The cruel instruments laid out on a table, sharp knives, tongs, pincers. More bandages, clean and white. Bleeding-bowls and salves in jars and bunches of juniper to burn and cleanse the air.
Dr. Chambers stood by, holding a pomander to his nose, watching the king’s torment, waiting for the bandage to be removed so that he could cut open the angry crimson sore and release its poisons.
He had done it often before, and I had watched it before, for the king found my presence heartening when he was suffering and invariably summoned me when his pain was at its worst. He allowed me to govern him when others could not.
“Ayee!” the king wailed, taking aim at one of the hapless grooms who was bravely attempting to pull the bandaging off and whacking him with the cane.
“Can’t you give him valerian to drink like last time, so that he will sleep through what you have to do?” I asked the doctor.
“He won’t have it. He refuses. He wants vengeance first, then relief. Frankly, I am heartily weary of his tantrums.”
“I heard that! Take care I don’t send you to be tortured!”
“Serving you, your majesty, when you carry on in this way is quite torture enough.”
The king opened his mouth to retort but was overtaken by a spasm of pain so severe that he screamed instead.
“Cat! Cat! You must help me, Cat! I am in extremis!”
I moved closer to him, careful to stay out of range of the long ebony cane.
“Sire, I have brought you a soothing poultice. But before I put it on you must let Dr. Chambers do his work. It is the only way. You know that.”
He swore, a long and vehement oath, and the grooms went scurrying.
“Will you do as I tell you, as you did last time? Or do you want more pain?”
“Damn you to hell, Cat.” He cursed me, but I saw his shoulders slump. He was giving in. I nodded to Dr. Chambers who handed me the cup of valerian tea.
“Drink this, sire. You know it will help you. Just drink it, and all will be over soon.”
He glared at me, but reached for the cup.
“Drop the cane,” I said.
Obediently he let it fall with a clatter to the floor.
I handed him the cup and he drank, swallowing some and spitting out the rest.
“This tastes of goat piss.”
“The more you drink, the easier it will be for you to get through your ordeal,” I said, handing the cup to Dr. Chambers who filled it again.
In the end he drank deeply, drowsed, still muttering curses, and at last snored. Swiftly the bandaging was removed, the twitching leg was held down by the doctor’s servants and Dr. Chambers did his work. Fetid toxins spewed forth from the sore, making me want to run away, but I did not. I wanted to be there when the king awoke, to put the cooling, healing herbal poultice on his leg and receive his grateful and contrite thanks.
I was living at Richmond Palace now, still serving Anne of Cleves though she was no longer queen. As I expected, he had had their marriage officially annulled and within days thereafter had married Catherine Howard. He offered Anne a home in England, under his protection, so that she didn’t have to return to Cleves to face the wrath of her unkind brother. Her dear mother came often to visit her, and as King Henry had given her a generous income she was entirely comfortable and wanted for nothing.
At my request John was brought from Snape Hall to Richmond also, and John, Margaret and I shared a suite of rooms overlooking the deer park.
John had not been capable of overseeing the running of his immense estate for a long time; all was left to stewards and managers. He had been removed from the Council of the North. He spent nearly all his time in bed, except for the hour or two when he was put in a wheeled chair and placed in front of the hearth.
He slept a great deal of the time now, a peaceful sleep. I thought it a mercy that he was not in pain. In his mind he seemed to dwell in the land of faery, the enchanted world where knights fought dragons and ladies saved their beleaguered lords from dark fiends who threatened them.
When he was awake he smiled at Margaret and me through misty eyes. Sometimes I felt that he knew us, at other times I wasn’t sure. He rarely spoke, and when he did, his words made little sense. Sometimes he spoke gibberish.
Remembering the well-intentioned strong man he had been when I first knew him, a man capable of making thoughtful decisions and of being a good lord to his hundreds of tenants and the members of his large household, I cried at times to see him in his present state. Some of my tears, I knew, were tears of remorse. I was no longer his faithful wife, I was betraying him. He did not know it, of course, he could not know it. Yet he had a right to command my loyalty nonetheless.
We had been through a great deal together, John and I, and even though my heart was now Tom’s, I still felt much affection for John and above all, I did not want to see him suffer pain, either in body or mind. I hoped that the comforts of Richmond Palace would ease his last years.
His last years! The thought made me shiver. I knew that Tom and I would marry when John died, and I often thought that I was in limbo, waiting for the end to come and for my glorious new life to begin, my life as Tom’s wife.
In the meantime I was at the beck and call of two old men, my husband and King Henry, who often summoned me to Whitehall when his leg was causing him pain or when he needed someone to talk to—someone who was not a member of his royal council or an ambitious courtier out to get what he wanted through flattery.
I sat patiently through hours of the king’s rantings and musings, occasionally answering when he asked me for my opinion but mostly giving the appearance of listening to him while actually thinking of Tom. I missed Tom. King Henry sent him away on diplomatic missions, and he was sometimes gone for months at a time.
“Crum,” the king was saying one afternoon when I had been sent for. “Now tell me, Cat, what did you think of Crum?”
“I had the impression that Master Cromwell was a very efficient servant—though in the end he must have betrayed you because you had him executed.”
“Hah! Betrayed me! He was the best servant I ever had, and the cleverest! They deceived me, you know. My councillors. They lied to me about my good, faithful Crum. They made me break him. I would give anything to have him back.
“The truth is, I don’t know whom to trust any more. They’re all a pack of deceivers, every last one of them. And they’re all vultures, hovering over my head, circling endlessly there, just waiting for me to die! Yes, I know it. Then they’ll move in and pick my carcass clean. My carcass, and all the gold in my pockets and the rings on my fingers.”
He paused and looked at me. “You are not a deceiver though, are you, Cat? You read your Bible. You are a gospeller. You do what is right. I can trust you.”
I felt uncomfortable. I did not want the responsibility the king appeared to give me. And I knew that if, even once, I gave him an answer that he disliked, he could send me to a dungeon or toss me aside, as he had the Lady Anne of Cleves, sending me away from court and away from Tom.
“Can you not confide in your wife, sire?” I asked hesitantly. “Can you not trust her?”
He laughed loudly. “Confide in an empty-headed twenty-year-old? An innocent, vacuous girl who knows nothing of life? No, Cat, I cannot confide in her.”
He took my hand and, limping, led me into Queen Catherine’s bedchamber. A huge bed filled much of the room, with a high headboard shimmering with iridescence. Hundreds of pearls were embedded in its lustrous wood, and hundreds more gleamed from the gauzy hangings that c
urtained the wondrous bed, that seemed to float in its own light.
“There, you see? That’s where my innocent young queen belongs. In her great pearl bed, in all her naked loveliness, waiting for me to give her sons. That is what she was made for, that and nothing more.”
He limped back into the adjacent sitting-room. I followed him. The oversize chair he sat in creaked under his immense weight.
“My wife is very dear to me. She will stay beside me, loyal and sweet, until I make my exit from this sorry world. Of that I can be certain. And she gives me pleasure, much pleasure. But as the whole court knows, it has been many months now since we were married, and she shows no signs of motherhood. None! Not even a miscarriage.”
“Your majesty is fortunate in having a son and heir already.”
The king looked at me balefully “Do you know what the doctors tell me, Cat? About my son’s fevers, that never seem to end? In private, behind closed doors, they say he is in danger of his life. He is a weakling. He could die at any time.”
“I tell you, Cat, I MUST have a son! A strong, thriving, kicking and screaming boy. Sons like that are born every day to country women, strapping fat infants that grow up to be robust men. I must have one of those. Heaven knows I’ve worked at it, there in the great pearl bed. I’ve huffed and puffed and—”
“Sire! You forget yourself.”
The king erupted into hearty laughter.
“Where’s Will? Will could make a joke or two about it. In any case, I’ve made an effort. I’ve even hung my piece of the True Cross around my neck while I’m beavering away, so to speak—and still there is no result.”
He paused, then went on in a resigned tone, his voice flat. “I fear God has cursed me, Cat. With my first wife I told myself she had a diseased womb, and could not conceive a healthy boy, only a girl. With the Witch I was convinced she was sent by the devil to put a spell on me, and was not worthy to bear the next king, so we had no son. Poor meek Jane lived just long enough to present me with a weak little runt of a boy, and no strong brothers. The German woman—ah! let nothing be said about her! And now my adored girl, my unsullied rose, my wife Catherine, is barren. Barren! I am cursed.”
“We must all pray for the queen to conceive, and that the king may be granted patience.”
King Henry sighed, a great heaving sigh, and closed his eyes.
“You are right, of course. Send me my chaplain.”
“Before I do, sire, may I ask a favor?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“My stepdaughter Margaret is of an age to marry. I am hoping to find a good husband for her, but with your assistance I know I could not possibly do better. Do you know of some worthy man?”
He thought for a moment. “I’ll ponder it, Cat. I’ll give it some thought. In the meantime, come here and rub my sore leg. You give me relief when no one else can.”
“Gladly, sire. I’ll do what I can.”
26
I THINK THE QUEEN HAS A LOVER.”
Anne Daintry, as she continued to call herself, nodded as she spoke, as if to underscore her conviction.
“I hope not,” I replied, much dismayed. “Do you know for sure?”
Anne, officially my laundress, but in fact my trusted companion, came to sit beside me in the anteroom of Lady Anne of Cleves’s sitting room, where I was in attendance, waiting in case Lady Anne summoned me.
“I would wager my inheritance on it—if I still had an inheritance. She’s as devious as a woman can be, I’ve thought so from the first time I saw her. And clever. She was no virgin when she married the king, all her aunts and cousins know that—though they don’t dare admit it openly.”
I had always found Anne to be well informed, and shrewd. She had become my eyes and ears at the royal court, my primary conduit of gossip and information. She knew what was being said, and often what was being done, behind closed doors and in private closets. As my laundress, she mingled with the other servants in the queen’s household whenever she accompanied me to the royal palace. Inevitably she learned a lot, and passed on to me what she learned.
“She had other lovers before her marriage?”
Anne nodded. “And now there are signs that another man besides the king is joining her in the great pearl bed.”
“Someone ought to warn her.”
Anne snorted. “That’s just like you, Cat. Always thinking of another person’s danger when you should be thinking about yourself! Can’t you see, if the queen’s a foolish layabout, then we all look guilty. It looks as if we’ve been keeping her secret. We’re all guilty of treason!”
“All the more reason to warn her. To keep the rest of us safe.”
“If I were you I wouldn’t go near her. I’d take my leave and go back up north to Yorkshire, where it is truly safe.”
“But the king and queen are about to go north themselves, on progress. They will be away for many months, it is said. Besides, we are not in the queen’s household, we serve the Lady Anne of Cleves. And when I am summoned to Whitehall or Greenwich, it is to the king’s presence, not the queen’s.”
“Say what you like, Cat, we are all in danger.”
All that day I pondered Anne’s revelations, and toward evening I spoke to her again.
“Tell me exactly what you have heard, and from whom.”
Keen to tell me what she knew, Anne launched into her story, her eyes gleaming with pleasure.
“An old porter, the one they nicknamed Ganymede because he brings the queen her wine, got drunk late one night and stumbled into her bedroom. The king was away at a hunting lodge, but the queen was not alone. She was in bed, and the king’s groom, Thomas Culpepper, was there in the room with her.”
“Were they actually in bed together?”
“No, but the porter thought Culpepper was beginning to undress. He had his boots off.”
“Go on.”
“Well, you know how every time the king goes to the queen’s bedroom there is a great ceremony about it. A dozen grooms of the bedchamber go with him, and pages carry torches as he walks through the rooms and corridors, all making a great deal of noise and laughing and the king laughing loudest of all.”
“Yes.”
“Now, he doesn’t visit her every night, only one or two nights a week. Which nights those are are well known. Yet her washerwomen tell me that there are stains on her sheets nearly every night, the kind of stains only a lover leaves behind. They have to hurry up and wash the sheets clean every morning, before one of the busybodies from the royal council finds out the truth through his spies.”
“What else?”
“Culpepper bribed one of Catherine’s ladies, Lady Rochford, to keep silent about his coming to see the queen at night, and a chamber servant witnessed the whole thing.”
“I gather there is more.”
“Much more.”
“But I have heard enough. I will talk to the queen.”
Despite Anne’s efforts to persuade me against it, I went on the following day to see Queen Catherine. I found her in her apartments, sitting amid her ladies-in-waiting while a chaplain read to them from the Book of Proverbs. I knelt when entering and a moment or two passed before Queen Catherine, who looked quite thoughtful as she listened to the Bible reading, realized I was there and indicated that I should join the others and sit down.
She looked older and paler than when I had last seen her, her dark eyes troubled. The splendid gown she wore, with its golden sleeves and skirt of ruby-colored velvet, set off her coloring to advantage, yet she lacked the animation to make her attractive face come alive. I took note of the costly necklace she wore, made entirely of table diamonds, and remembered what I had often heard about the extravagantly expensive jewels the king had showered upon her.
The chaplain was reading, his tone sober, admonitory.
“Stolen waters are sweet, says the wicked woman, secret bread is pleasant.” “A woman comes, with the attire of a harlot, and a crafty mind. She says, I have decke
d my couch with coverings, colored sheets of Egyptian linen. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love till the morning; let us delight ourselves with love, for my husband is not at home; he has gone on a distant journey.”
The text was shockingly apt, I thought. The queen sat still, listening without any apparent reaction. The chaplain turned the page.
“There are three things that are never satisfied,” he read, “and that say not ‘Enough’ and one of these is a barren womb.”
This passage stirred a response.
“Thank you,” the queen said, rather tartly. “I believe we have had our fill of proverbs for today.”
The chaplain bowed and left the room.
Queen Catherine turned to me. “Lady Latimer.”
I knelt. “I beg your highness’s attention for a few moments,” I said.
“Yes? What is it?” Her gaze was skeptical.
“If we might speak privately, your highness.”
“My ladies are quite discreet.” Her eyes were steely. She had hardened, I saw. She had come a very long way from the chatty, bubbly girl who talked to me so openly on the day of Lady Anne of Cleves’s reception on Hampstead Heath. She was guarded and wary. Lines of worry were beginning to etch themselves into her young brow.
“What I have to say is best communicated without being overheard.”
There was the merest hesitation. I saw, or thought I saw, in that brief instant that the wary queen wondered how much I knew, and realized that she had to find out.
She rose and led me into a smaller room where tables held box upon overflowing box of necklaces, rings, earrings and bracelets, all with the soft gleam of gold, or the flash and fire of brilliant diamonds and sapphires, and the warm iridescence of pearls.
“I have just finished supervising the packing of my jewels for our progress journey. The king has been generous with me, has he not?”
“Generous indeed. He treasures you, much more than you treasure these gems.”
She turned and fixed me with her narrow stare. “I know how you view me. I also know that you yourself covet the king’s company. I am an obstacle.”
The Last Wífe of Henry VIII Page 18
