The May Bride

by Suzannah Dunn

  Fortyish, she was a good handful of years younger than my mother, but my mother – even hard-worked and careworn as she was – had a vitality that this pale and pouchy queen lacked. Not that the queen didn’t work hard in her own way, the work she chose for herself being worship: she was relentless in her routine, rising after a few hours of sleep to be at her altar at midnight, and back there again to start each day at five. All that kneeling had taken its toll, I saw, in that she always rose with a wince, needing the arm of one of her ladies.

  After Mass every morning, she wrote to her daughter, the eleven-year-old princess. I should’ve been writing to Dottie and Margie, but what would I have said? There was too much to say, it seemed to me, and nothing to say: that was how it felt to me. Most days, the queen received a letter in return, which she read avidly, commenting fulsomely in Spanish to her closest attendant and I’d listen, captivated, even though I didn’t understand a word. My mother didn’t write to me, nor me to her, and I couldn’t imagine how that would ever change.

  Afternoons the queen devoted to needlework, her basket of silks at her feet like a faithful little dog, and it was disconcerting, initially, to glance up and see her baring her teeth before I realised she was snapping a thread. She always had to pass the needle, beseechingly, to someone else for threading, and within a day or two of my arrival, probably to have me feeling welcome, she was reaching over several heads with her gentle smile to pass it to me.

  I was glad of something to do for her. My father and Edward had served the king by going into battle for him, but how was I to serve the queen? I’d come into her household knowing how to sweep floors and polish plate, wash and dry and fold linen, feed pigs and hens, harvest vegetables and bottle fruit, roll pastry, make candles, lay tables, amuse babies and mind children – but a maid of honour did none of that.

  And hadn’t I dreamt of an end to daily drudgery? I was scared, though, of inadvertently neglecting some vital duty and thereby showing myself up, although, of course, everyone would’ve known at least something of what had just happened in the Seymour household (Isn’t she the sister of—?Didn’t—?)

  Thankfully, there were practicalities to concern me: where to be and when, and when to kneel and to rise, when to stand in attendance or settle on a cushion; and which essentials were due to me – food, firewood, clean laundry, candles – and when and from where to fetch them. I even took a few days to be able to find the way undirected to my own room (which staircase? Which floor, which door?) and at least as long to distinguish among the three Annes with whom I shared the bed.

  What did come easily, every day, was dinner. The aroma from the queen’s private kitchen would deepen all morning and when, at last, the meal was carried up the stairs and served, I definitely did have something to do: eat, eat, eat, and all the more so when I learned how frequently and strictly the queen observed fast days. Within weeks, I was letting out my kirtle, and I’ve had to do so at intervals ever since.

  During those difficult first days at court, I marvelled at the queen, at how very much worse it must have been for her, at sixteen, to have travelled so far from home to so foreign a land. Within months, it had all been over for her: she’d been widowed and shut up in that old house on the Strand in the clothes she stood up in, reduced to foraging for berries in its tangle of riverside garden while her father refused to have her back – because the deal was done – and her father-in-law refused to pay for her upkeep.

  It had been seven long years before her young brother-in-law had come along: the new king, but a mere boy, eighteen to her twenty-three. He’d known his own heart and mind, though, and he’d come as soon as he could. It was the first decision of his reign, to go against the advice of his councillors, who were looking elsewhere for a match, to marry his neglected, impoverished sister-in-law. He could have had anyone, but he chose her. The big-hearted boy-king rescuing the ragged princess: no wonder the queen could never quite believe, to the end of her days, that her husband would ever do anything but right by her.

  Each morning, I’d watch the Annes dress excitedly and speed down the staircase from our room then billow across the courtyard. Why hurry, I wondered, just to sit sewing for hours on end with no distraction save the thud of one’s own blood inside one’s ears. Those panelled rooms of the queen’s could have been sunk into the ground for all that was evident of the outside world. At some point in each day, though, something did happen, in that the king came to visit his wife. The considerable ceremony in his wake always looked faltering and fussy because he’d duck in through the doorway ahead of the attendants, as if giving them the slip. Close behind him would be a chosen few, one of whom, often, was Edward, and another my cousin Francis, sporting an eye-patch after having been blinded in one eye while jousting.

  Then, somehow, it was as if we girls and ladies were interrupting them, those gentlemen: they acted cheerfully put-upon, making much of a good-natured reining in of exuberance, which we, in turn, it seemed, were supposed to regard indulgently, Oh you bad boys. Fantastically dressed, they were, those few favoured gentlemen: I’d never seen anything like it and had to remind myself not to gawp. Every fabric was embellished and embossed, and I couldn’t help but imagine an army of tailors and embroiderers behind the door, eyesight burning down like candles.

  Those gentlemen might draw the gaze, but the king shone: he was everywhere in a room like light, underneath every reverently lowered eyelid. Half the height again of his companions, he was dressed in white, gold, blood red and venous purple. He himself was a palace, a living, breathing, cavorting palace; there were whole rooms of him, it seemed to me, rooms furnished with treasures and towering one upon the other from the shoes upwards, those shoes soled with Spanish leather, stitched in thread-thin gold, buckled by clustered rubies.

  He’d sling himself into his chair beside the queen’s. She was bulkier than him but neater, sitting composed with her hands linked in her lap; she could have been his well-meaning aunt, fond and indulgent but a little shy of him. Often they played cards. He’d leap up and fetch a table before it could be fetched for him and they’d rearrange themselves at it, calling for a couple of companions: perhaps Lady Maria, with an uncharacteristic gleam in her eye and coins jingling in the purse which, cheekily, she held aloft; and once in my first week, Edward, stepping dutifully from the crowd when it was his name that was called.

  When I first glimpsed Edward in the king’s entourage, I was struck by how young he looked. Among those joust-solid men of the king’s, he was so lean as perhaps to have been considered delicate. I knew, though, that he was all the stronger for it. Watchful, his dark eyes were brighter than any others; when they looked for me, I took mine away.

  One afternoon towards the end of my first week, a black-haired girl came walking into the queen’s room as if she owned it: a tilt to her chin and a swing to her narrow hips. No, actually, she was no girl: girl-sized and girl-shaped, but my second stolen glance revealed her as the wrong side of twenty-five. We maids and ladies were sitting there stuffed into our clothes to show them to the best advantage, but she looked about to shrug hers off. Our pretty colours – rose, apricot, sage – tried hard to please, but she wore black and was strewn with jewels. She flew in amid us, as clever and cocky as a crow. Half the roomful of maids and ladies returned their attention pointedly to their cards, their needlework, their lapdogs, and half turned to welcome her. She approached the queen but stopped short and bobbed cursorily: a mockery of a curtsey. I flushed as if it’d been me who’d been flung this disrespect. Who – what – was this woman? She turned her back on the queen and joined a huddle of ladies who were keen to ingratiate themselves with her. As if she were someone.

  The queen continued her stitching, but now looked stranded up there on her chair. I wanted to help her but didn’t know quite what was wrong and, anyway, it wasn’t my place. Following her lead, I resumed my needlework but a lapse of concentration sent the needle into my finger, the shock of which – rather than pain – dr
ew tears to my eyes. Steadying my breathing, I puzzled over who that woman was, why she hadn’t shown proper deference to the queen and why the queen had turned a blind eye.

  Minutes later, the king arrived. All smiles as usual, he greeted the queen with his customary kiss but, rather than sitting with her, strode across the room to the black-haired woman who was rising, laughing delightedly, to receive him. They, too, kissed, and were instantly in conversation about a forthcoming party. Was this his sister Mary, perhaps? But he and his sister, I’d heard, shared the Tudor colouring. And anyway, my instinct told me that this woman, for all her mock-curtseying and king-kissing, was one of us, here to serve the queen. Why, then, was she kissing the queen’s husband and – with such ease and familiarity – making plans with him? I couldn’t believe she was his mistress because I’d once overheard praise of the king’s impeccable discretion and there was nothing discreet about this. I shouldn’t be witnessing it, that I did know. How, though, could I avoid it? An averted gaze was no more than that; they’d still be here, the pair of them, in the middle of the queen’s room, laughing and making their arrangements. Whether we liked it or not, we were all spectators; and the queen, up there on her chair, more so than any of us.

  The king didn’t stay long and the woman left with him: there was mention of a stroll, the gardens, a lovely evening. Without a word, a handful of our company accompanied her, as if accustomed to doing so. Those of us who remained sank into silence, no chatter, not a sweet nothing to a lapdog, not even the slapping down of a card, which persisted until, some minutes later, the queen seemed to notice it.

  ‘Music, please,’ she requested smilingly of her musicians, and, as they first drew their bows across their strings, we all sighed with satisfaction, as if that was exactly what we’d wanted, as if that was all that’d been missing.

  The following day, I learned who the black-haired woman was. Until then, no one had breathed a word. My fellow maids of honour probably assumed that my brother kept me informed; little would they know that he barely spoke to me and certainly not about love affairs.

  Francis was the one who took it upon himself to tell me, sidling up to me so that I was on the side of his good eye and making polite enquiries about my time so far at court. I had an uneasy sense that there was more to come, and suddenly he lowered his voice to say, ‘So, now you’ve seen Anne Boleyn.’ He’d sounded amused. I wanted to resist, to refuse to be drawn in, but found myself staring fearfully into his one eye with my unvoiced questions: Who is she? What’s happening?

  The eye slid away when he whispered, ‘Won’t be his mistress; wants to be his wife.’ I was trying to make sense of this – the king already had a wife – when he added, approvingly, ‘She’s ambitious.’ Then, bowing minimally to take his leave of me, he advised, ‘Keep in with her.’

  Oh, but I couldn’t have kept in with Anne Boleyn if I’d tried; it didn’t take me long to learn that. As far as she was concerned, I was one of the many maids and ladies who didn’t exist. I didn’t read books, discuss ideas, have opinions, didn’t make witty conversation or, indeed, any conversation. Didn’t dress in anything my mother wouldn’t have chosen for me. Something else I learned, though, was that I couldn’t care less. Because although I’d known everything there was to know about what I wasn’t, Anne Boleyn’s saunter into the queen’s room, that day, had shown me, at long last and to my considerable relief, what I was, which was the opposite, in every imaginable way, of her.

  2

  And so, coming to court, I’d walked in on the king leaving his queen. Literally: when the queen noticed a pearl hanging loose on her gown one afternoon, it was me to whom she turned – her trusty new needle-threader – for the quick repair of the offending stitch, which was why I was on my knees at her feet when the king arrived. He came unannounced and unexpected; as far as we all knew, he was still away at Beaulieu, hunting. Even with my back to the door and my face in the queen’s skirts, I knew it was him because in his presence everything transforms – even silence, which somehow rings differently. Then there was the kerfuffle of silks as ladies rushed to bended knee and the queen was foisted from her chair. I dropped the needle, left it dangling, to turn and perform my own genuflection, but the queen’s hand was on my head to hold me still and there was nothing I could do. There I was between the pair of them but with my back to the king, which, for all I knew, was treason.

  The queen must have sensed from first glance that he’d come with no kiss for her; he’d be coming no closer, so she kept me there as if I could be the reason. He usually made a show of affection but this time there were no niceties. He spoke her name softly, to warn of serious business, and said, ‘We should—’ Go somewhere more private. But her hand on my head was heavier – we were going nowhere – and he accepted it. What he had to tell her would be public soon enough and she’d be distressed to hear it, but could be trusted to be dignified. And, anyway, who was I? No one. Whoever I was, down there between the two of them, I was of no consequence.

  ‘Catkin,’ his voice was low for only her, and me, to hear, ‘I am so very, very sorry to have to tell you this . . .’

  And so there I was, listening for the second time in as many months to a man telling his wife that she was, as he saw it, not in fact his wife.

  Differently, though, this time; told differently, with no accusations, no recriminations. A mistake, was how the king ruefully put it, there’d quite likely been a mistake; someone, somewhere along the line, had quite possibly made a regrettable, reprehensible mistake whereby the king had been given poor advice all those years ago, as to the legitimacy of marriage to his brother’s widow. In front of me, that pearl-glorious gown was so still that there might have been no one in it, but actually she was letting every grain of sound settle on her so that she could weigh it up: she’d have needed to know exactly what she was being told. And duly he talked on, getting it done. Their lack of a son, he said, which was the immense sorrow of their lives, was probably God’s punishment.

  She spoke up. ‘The Pope—’

  ‘Was wrong, quite probably.’ The dispensation of all those years ago, he said, should probably never have been granted. ‘Forgive me,’ he murmured, ‘my best girl,’ because he’d acted in good faith, he assured her, and from his deep and abiding love. But she’d been his brother’s, first, and no man – according to the Bible, he said – should take his brother’s wife. The queen’s hand, on my head, steadied me. The king told her there was to be an investigation to settle the matter and if they were both exonerated, as he sincerely hoped, then he’d marry her all over again and with more pomp and ceremony than she could imagine.

  I wouldn’t have known that she was crying had he not then implored her to desist as if it were the crying itself that was hurting her. And I only realised that her tears weren’t for herself when she whispered to him, ‘My poor darling, that this woman makes you do this.’ Which was when I realised, too, that unlike her I had, until then, been taken in.

  Which I shouldn’t have been, given what had only recently happened back at Wolf Hall; I should have been wise to lies. Three years before, my sister-in-law had come across our threshold like a fall of light and there we’d stood, we stymied Seymours, never having seen the like; and for a while, for a summer, that was who Katherine had been to me: the girl incapable of hiding anything. But I’d learned that I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not that I blamed her, or not by the time that I was kneeling there before the queen, because, I knew, Katherine had been unable to help herself: she’d been, more accurately, the girl who couldn’t help herself. It was me, I felt, who should have seen what was coming. I should have been the one to know.

  ‘You have to tell them,’ was what I’d said to her when at last she’d told me the whole truth, up in her desolate room on that dreadful February day. Now, I meant.

  Incredibly, she shook her head, an anguished, tight little refusal.

  But it wasn’t her choice to make: it wasn’t her truth, for her to disp
ense as she wished; it was the truth. And the truth is what gets told in the end: that’s what the truth is. It’s what finishes all the lies. I should have said, ‘Listen to the word, Katherine: hear it rip through the air and come to a thud of a stop; just the one, single note; you don’t mess it about or meet it halfway.’

  Her sigh was shaky. ‘Everyone knows your father had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Jane,’ she turned impatient, too tired for this, ‘he knows. Edward: he does know.’ She was round-eyed, unyielding. ‘He knows. You saw him—’

  Hit Thomas.

  She relinquished me and turned back to the window. ‘He knows.’ Flatly, accepting.

  I was confounded, unable to think how to make her see sense.

  And, anyway, she got in first, coming back at me with the challenge, ‘Oh, so, what? You want me to go ahead and announce it? Do you? You want me to do that?’

  I burst out, ‘You have to tell the truth about my father!’

  But she seemed bored, as if I were merely being tiresome: ‘Everyone knows the truth about your father,’ and she batted away the anticipated objection. ‘They do, Jane, you know they do. No one’s doubting your father.’

  And, actually, wasn’t that exactly what I’d thought, all along? Wasn’t that what I’d told myself? That no one could possibly believe it of my father.

  ‘But if I tell them what I just told you,’ she spoke emphatically slowly, to make clear that she’d already thought it through, ’then they’ll know the truth about Thomas, too.’ She held me hard in her gaze, letting it sink in. ‘And that’d ruin Thomas.’