When she arrived at Fyfield, she found James upstairs in the solar, half-drunk and refilling his cup. The room stank of wine. He looked at her with glazed eyes and set his drink down. He tried to rise and fell back. “Catherine—” he lisped drunkenly, unable to wrap his tongue around the word. She went to him, picked up his cup, and threw the wine into his face. “You are despicable!”
Leaving him to sputter, she turned on her heel and left the house, hurrying through the orchard until she reached the meadow’s edge. The autumn day was brisk and the wind stirred the line of tall poplars against the sky. It seemed to Catherine that they waved a welcome to her, but that only reminded her how much Fyfield meant to her.
She managed to get through that day, and the next, and all the ones that followed, week after week. November arrived on a hailstorm, and winter passed into spring, bringing the news that King Harry was mounting a second invasion of France. James was not asked to supply men or gather munitions. And in June, when King Harry left for France, James did not go with him.
Catherine couldn’t reason with him, and she gave up trying. Often, as they sat silently by the fire on cold winter evenings, a faraway expression would come over him. He was over fifty now, and she knew he was thinking of his lost youth. Their fifteen-year age difference had meant nothing to her when they’d been at court, but since he’d returned from France, his health had deteriorated. He had brought the bloody flux back with him, and each time they thought it cured, it returned with more severity than before. A myriad of other ailments plagued him as well, requiring constant visits by a physician. Some days he had difficulty even mounting his horse. Seeing how he suffered, she felt pity. If he hadn’t proved himself so disreputable, she might have been able to forgive him, but the trust between them was irretrievably broken. Ever since she’d returned from the meeting with Somerset and Cradock, she had locked her bedroom door to him at night.
Had Catherine known the truth, she would have dispensed with the precaution. When she spurned his advances one night, he rode off to Fremont’s house to drown his sorrow in bed sports with the baudy women ever-present there. But he found himself unable to perform. He thought the problem would pass, but it didn’t. He was as useless as a eunuch. He could not admit to himself that he was only half a man now, and he didn’t want Catherine to ever know. That was what kept him drinking. The pain. He needed to bury it, and he buried it in wine—wine and silent dinners and locked bedroom doors.
Itinerants came and went, stopping for a meal or shelter along the way, and injecting news and conversation into Fyfield. From a gray friar seeking harborage for the night, Catherine learned about the last de la Pole brother left alive. “Richard de la Pole, brother to John de la Pole, Edmund, and William of recent memory, is in France, and has sworn to fight King Harry when he invades, my lady,” the friar said. “They call this Richard the last White Rose.”
Catherine excused herself to escape to the yew-tree walk that edged the summer garden where she had cut an arched opening into the greenery and set out a table and chair for her pleasure. The secluded spot afforded her solitude along with a view of flowers, and she often sat there in quiet contemplation and prayer, for it adjoined the church grounds. The bells of St. Nicholas chimed more loudly there, the song of the chantry priests drifted more clearly, and the only eyes that watched her belonged to the sweet linnets and other small birds that sought refuge in the foliage as she did. Edmund de la Pole had not been one of her favorite people at court, but he had always shown Richard respect. Now his brother, Richard, was the only male left alive of the four de la Pole boys. The royal blood in their veins had cost them their lives, and Catherine knew it would not end with them.
Matters between Catherine and James deteriorated rapidly. Swept by memories of a time when the season of love had meant laughter and the pleasures of the flesh, James fell into a deep melancholy. Catherine tried to alleviate his spirits by taking him to the warm springs of Leamington, which were said to cure many maladies, and by sending for leeches to bleed him. Sometimes, when he fussed over the nasty potions he had to swallow or objected to something the physician had ordered, she would try to soften him with light banter.
“The only way to keep healthy is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not, James. Then you’ll be well in no time.”
Not that he would admit it to her, but James had tried all kinds of remedies himself, both for the flux that plagued him, and for his manly problem. He’d slept with a spider web across his brow and kept three candles burning beside him for three nights. He’d hung a wreath of garlic bulbs around his neck, and worn a bag of arsenic against his skin. He’d eaten crushed ram’s testicles and swallowed viper fat and even dead man’s flesh, dried and mixed with wine. But nothing helped. He grew convinced he had been cursed by the earl’s daughter whose child he’d fathered years ago and had refused to wed. As his afflictions worsened, he grew angrier, especially at Catherine. For she was a constant reminder of what he desired most and could not have.
There was another grief that troubled him. Ill health and his bad leg had cost him an invitation to go to France with the king. His pride had been deeply hurt, and he felt discarded, forgotten, and useless.
Catherine took pains these days to avoid his company. More often, she sat alone among the yews and communed with Richard. I do not search for happiness, she told him, only for peace. As she drank in the flowery scent that wafted to her on the breeze, she decided to gather a posie for the great hall. On her way back to the house, she caught the clippity-clop of hooves from along the roadway. Shielding her eyes against the sun, she moved closer to the front path and peered into the distance.
“My Lady Catherine,” said Matthew Cradock as he drew up to her at the head of his retinue. She stood before him, tall and statuesque, her head held high and a profusion of brightly colored flowers in her arms—a fairy queen in a jeweled tapestry of black silk. Her dazzling smile of welcome sent his pulses pounding. He dismounted and threw his reins to the boy who had come to take the horses, glad for the chance to recover his composure.
“I vow you grow lovelier each time we meet,” he said, creases bracketing his smile as he kissed her elegant hand.
“Thank you, Master Cradock,” said Catherine, noting that he had not let go of her hand. For a moment she was so lost in admiration that she forgot her duties as a hostess. She tore her eyes from his at last and sent Alice for wine and sweetmeats as she led Matthew Cradock and the members of his retinue into the great hall.
“Very pleasant,” said Cradock, letting his gaze roam over the ornamented chamber with its massive hearth and multi-colored stone floor. Pointed archways decorated the walls on both sides and led into a honeycomb of smaller chambers only glimpsed from where he stood, and sunlight poured through the open windows on the south. What he found most interesting, however, was the soaring ceiling, supported with lovely foiled braces and an artwork of ornate wooden trusses.
“There is much work to keep a manor running smoothly, is there not?” Cradock said, settling in to dine on wine, sugar cakes, and sweetmeats. He watched Catherine’s graceful movements with pleasure and admiration as she arranged the flowers into a brass pot.
But Cradock’s comment had reminded Catherine of the prime reason she had wed James, and her hand, in the motion of picking up a peony, stilled. “Indeed there is,” she said, her smile fading.
Cradock’s sharp glance had missed nothing. But, reluctant or not, he had to bring up what he feared was a painful subject. “’Tis, in fact, estate business that brings me here,” he said at last.
“Oh.” She had hoped that somehow the king would forget, or the paperwork would get lost, but of course, that was merely an idle dream. She lifted her gaze to him.
Cradock dismissed the men in the great hall who had been conversing among themselves, and when the last of his retinue had gone, he took out a wad of documents from a leather pouch left on a coffer. “I shall
need your signature, my lady.”
Catherine stared down at the packet he brought to her as if she were a victim tied to a stake and here was the torch to ignite the flames. She wanted nothing to do with this—it was all being done against her will. And whose fault is that? a small voice asked in her head. You brought it on yourself, you fool.
She carried the papers to the desk by the window and sat down, drained. Her hand shook as she poised her pen over the paper, and she struggled to control her trembling. Then she forced the pen down and scribbled her signature hastily, furiously, before she could change her mind; before she could collapse and weep in front of the king’s messenger.
The deed was done. She felt sick. Taking a handful of sand from the small crystal box, she scattered it over the parchment to dry the ink, then closed her eyes, her head dizzy.
Cradock had watched her keenly as she brought pen to paper. Her struggle served to confirm the initial impression he’d received at Westminster, that she had been tricked into this move by her husband. As a man of honor, he was offended by such conduct. His heart went out to her, and disgust for Strangeways flooded his mouth with a sour taste. Yet the mystery remained. Such a woman must have had many admirers. Why would she have married a man of ill repute: a known gambler, a drinker, a rake? A heartless rogue who, aware of what she had suffered in life, could strip her of her single comfort?
He looked at Catherine helplessly as she rose from the desk, her face pale.
“Tomorrow is the Feast Day of Saints Peter and Paul,” she said, lifting her gaze to his face. “I would be delighted—I mean we would be delighted—if you could stay for the festival.” She felt so bereft; she didn’t want him to leave, this man who reminded her of her father.
Cradock had business in Oxford and could scarcely afford the time, but tomorrow was Sunday, and—as she had reminded him—a feast day as well. The king’s business could wait. “It would bring me and my men much pleasure to accept your offer, Lady Gordon.”
A silence fell between them again, for she could think of nothing more to say. “’Tis close in here, is it not?” she managed at last, taking a feather fan from the mantelpiece, and fanning herself.
“I was thinking the same.” Cradock threw a glance at the window. “There is a pleasant breeze outside. Would you care to go riding? I should like to see the estate—that is, if you have time.”
A thrill of excitement ran through her. “Nothing would please me more.”
Catherine escorted Cradock outside, and together they walked the length of the manor house, through the stables, the kitchen garden, and past the new bake house.
“How delightful,” he said. “I’ve never seen a conical bake house, or a kitchen garden where woven willow twigs fence the herbs.”
“In Flanders it is the custom to use such branches instead of hedges. My lord husband Richard described it to me. He would have liked to see it done this way.”
For a moment, their eyes met and Catherine felt his sympathy. She turned abruptly and led the way into the orchard. “These are young trees, planted when I first came to Fyfield. And over there, by the church, are my flower beds.” She waved a hand to the west. Leading him past the yew-tree walk, she entered the garden. “But now look—”
Cradock gazed at the expanse of lilies, hyacinth, hollyhocks, and Persian lilies laid at his feet like some gigantic, colorful Saracen carpet. Beyond bloomed golden narcissus as far as the eye could see. He turned behind him and threw a glance at the church. “Well, Lady Catherine, I must say that you and the Creator have between you done a grand job on this ground.”
“Maybe so,” Catherine replied. “But you should have seen it when the Creator had it all to Himself. It took two years to clear the ground of weeds, brambles, and nettles.”
Cradock threw back his head and laughed.
She took him into the yew-tree walk. “This is where I love to sit—welladay, one of my favorite spots, for I have several. It affords me a view of the flowers and also of the birds that visit. We have kingfishers here, and heron, and larks.” They quitted the walk through the opening in the hedge and passed to the lawn behind the house that was set with a table and chairs. “From here I can see everything all at once. Fyfield is beautiful, you know, even in winter. Especially in winter. Freshly fallen snow turns it into a fairy landscape then, and deer come up to the house to feed, but perhaps it is loveliest now, in spring. For as you can see, blossoms drape the branches and birds chirp loudly—aye, I do think spring is fairest of all the seasons.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe autumn is even more splendid than spring, when pears glisten gold and ripe apples hang on the branches, shiny and red—oh, I know not which season is more beautiful!” she finally exclaimed, leading him back to the front of the house, where their horses awaited. “I love them all.”
Cradock was enchanted by her delight in her property. He himself had many manors, far larger and more impressive than Fyfield, but none had ever engendered that kind of emotion in him. They were scattered mainly in southwestern Wales, and he had a few smaller manors even in England, as well as a large house in London. Mostly, however, he lived in the Welsh castles that he managed for the king.
They rode together through the farmlands and golden wheat fields, the wind in their faces, and passed into the meadows, where cattle mooed to see them.
“Cattle, too? Doesn’t seem large enough a property for this many head.”
“We had a large number of calves born last spring. We could use more land, but we must make do.”
Catherine pointed out the crops of barley, beans, peas, and turnips, and paused to greet the peasants tilling the fields. Passersby along the road welcomed them with smiles, and tenant farmers brought apple-cheeked children out from their cottages to meet them. As she enjoyed the beauty of the scenery, the friendliness of the people, and Matthew Cradock’s camaraderie, Catherine forgot her troubles. Laughing together, they cantered into the woods. The fragrance of fern scented the quiet air and trees embraced one another in the dappled sunshine. Picking their way through delicate underbrush, beneath trees overhanging with flowers and berries, they exchanged smiles over the deer and small creatures of the forest that drank from gurgling brooks and peered at them through shrubbery before darting away.
By the time they returned to Fyfield, the sun was setting in the west, and Matthew Cradock had come to fully understand how much this manor meant to Catherine. The delicate thread that had begun to be woven between them at Westminster had hardened for him into something of far greater significance. As he dropped down from his saddle in front of Fyfield and gave Catherine his hand, he knew that, somewhere along this ride, he had also given her his heart.
Trestle tables were set up for dinner in the great hall when they arrived back at the house, and James was home, awaiting supper. Catherine was relieved to find that he was sober and playing the role of gracious host with the old decorum she remembered. He’d had a keg of ale brought in for Cradock’s men, many of whom he knew from court, and was engaged in light banter. Seeing an echo of the man she had married, she felt a rush of sadness that he’d changed so much.
James set down his beer mug and limped forward to give Matthew cordial greeting, for he knew him to be an influential man. Cradock’s star had been in the ascendancy under three kings, and office after office with increasing authority had fallen to his lot. He had served Richard III with distinction as a young pirate when he was captain of a ship of war of the realm, and old King Henry had also valued him highly, granting him for life the office of constable of Caephilly Castle in Cardiff and many other lucrative appointments. In King Harry’s 1512 war against France, which had proved so disastrous for James, Cradock had resumed his piracy with great success, capturing a French vessel and booty worth a king’s ransom. His attachment to Somerset had garnered him a host of honors meanwhile, and he practically ran Glamorgan for him as his deputy in Wales.
James knew that all things Welsh greatly interested Catherine, and as
he took in the heightened blush in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes, he suspected they came not so much from fresh air, but from Cradock’s company.
At dinner, James took the high-backed chair at the head of the table. “What news of King Harry?” he asked Matthew as they dug into the sweet and sour spiced rabbit and frumenty that had been served. “Has he left for France yet?”
“King Henry departed for Calais a few days ago, leaving young Queen Katherine as Regent. Barring bad weather, he should make landfall soon, God willing,” said Cradock, thinking that James had aged much since he’d seen him last. He’d shed weight and his doublet hung on him as loosely as if it belonged to another man, while his complexion had turned florid from drink. Deep furrows ran along his cheeks down to his mouth, giving him an ill-tempered expression, and clearly, vigor had seeped out of him. He had noticed that James never looked at his wife, and there seemed to be an excessive restraint between them. Here might be the reason.
“I heard at the court house that King Ferdinand let King Harry down again,” said James.
“He did indeed. He concluded his own peace with France, just as he did last year.”
“I assume you shall be leaving shortly to join the king in France, then?” inquired James, chewing hard to keep his emotion in check, for he had not recovered from the hurt and anger of not being invited to go. He had been made to feel old and useless, and he hated this man who had achieved so much in life, and who had everything he himself wanted and would never get.
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