The Sixth Wife

by Suzannah Dunn

  For all the spectacular nature of the girl-queen’s fall, I don’t think Kate and I spoke much about it, which isn’t as strange as it might sound. What happened to Catherine Howard, after she’d done what she’d done, was as predictable as it was appalling. There was nothing to say. And if we never said to each other, as others said, Why on earth did she do it? Why take such a risk? it was, I suspect, because we could imagine very well why. She’d been doing as she was required to do, being married to that old man, being queen, and perhaps she assumed that she’d earned some pleasures of her own. And perhaps kissing some lovely-looking boy didn’t seem all that bad and if it went further than kissing, well, it wasn’t that different, was it. It was more of the same, in a way, and anyway it was inevitable, wasn’t it, really, which made it sort of right or at least not so very wrong. And, actually, which was right? Submitting to a lecherous old man who’d abandoned his previous wives or had them killed, or kissing the young love of your life in an occasional stolen moment on someone’s backstairs? I’m ashamed to say, though, that at the time of Catherine’s disgrace what preoccupied me was that – according to her own testimony – those treason-implicated backstairs were Charles’s and mine.

  My March visit to Kate had us at Sudeley for the start of the new calendar year, 1548. The second new year of the year – second-best, simply official and needing none of the fuss of the first of January – but this one was celebrated in style at Sudeley. Any excuse at Sudeley. Several neighbouring families were invited for an evening of dining and dancing, and already staying were one of Kate’s stepdaughters and family, plus two of Kate’s goddaughters, and our friends the Cavendishes. The feast’s centrepiece subtlety was of Sudeley itself: Sudeley, perfectly rendered in sugar paste and carried into the hall on a board on the shoulders of six men.

  Late in the evening, when the immense meal had been cleared away, a troupe of acrobats had finished their performance and our own dancing had begun, Kate said into my ear, ‘I need some air.’ Stepping outside was lovely, like being doused in fresh, cool water. The sky was a mess of cloud lit by an almost full but somehow small, distant moon. Kate mimed fanning herself, before taking a deep, appreciative breath. ‘You can smell that spring’s here, can’t you.’ Then, almost as if announcing it, but also listening to how it sounded: ‘Forty-eight.’ Good is how it must have sounded to her, because she smiled. ‘My year, I think,’ she said, tentatively, adding, with a self-conscious little laugh, ‘Big changes for me.’ Then, cautiously: ‘Whatever happens.’ She wrapped her arms about herself. ‘I can’t believe that I…have all this.’ She corrected, ‘I don’t mean -’ and gestured vaguely: the house, the gardens. Sudeley ‘Even if everything goes wrong from now on: to think it’s already been this right -’

  Behind us, the hall door opened. Thomas. My spirits dipped: now we’d have to pay court to him. He claimed to be checking that we were all right. ‘Of course,’ Kate chided, but she reached for him, drew him to her. ‘I needed some air.’

  He pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘Well, there’s plenty of it out here.’

  ‘Can you smell springtime?’ she asked him.

  ‘I can,’ he humoured her.

  ‘Are you happy, Thomas?’ The same silky tone; she didn’t doubt that he was.

  ‘I am.’

  I whispered,‘I’m off back inside now.’

  Kate roused herself: ‘No, I’m going; I’m hostess, after all. You two can stay here, if you like.’

  The three of us, though, turned together to the door. Thomas reached to open it, then stepped back to let us through. Kate was ahead of me when he stepped up close behind me, lifted the veil of my hood and laid his lips to the back of my neck. Yes, there it was: the burn of his breath, in a place I hadn’t even really known I had. I turned to find him already walking away into the gardens, blurring like the sweep of a torch. Kate was turning, too, holding open the door for me. My skin bore the faint dampness of Thomas’s mouth. ‘Actually,’ I managed, backing into shadow, my blood shrill in my ears and scalding in my face, ‘there’s something I need to ask Thomas.’

  She frowned, puzzled, squinted past me. ‘Where is he?’

  I glanced into the gardens.

  ‘Oh,’ she accepted, shrugged, and smiled, turning back: back to her guests.

  And so there I was. Alone. Kate, gone, swallowed back into the hall; resuming, unthinking, unknowing.

  Thomas, scarpered. Deed done.

  And me, kissed by the husband of my pregnant best friend. When she was there!

  Behind her back.

  Behind my back.

  Outrage clamoured inside me, beneath a prickling of disbelief that even Thomas would do this. Especially not with me, and not like that. But he had, hadn’t he. It was done.

  No. Oh no. A righteous rage fortified me. I never liked you anyway, and now this!

  I’ve got you now.

  I never shirk a confrontation. That, I knew, I could do.

  He was already well ahead, and getting further away with every stride. Rushing along in his wake, I felt small but also brisk, strong, ready for this. Then he disappeared. I came to the arched breach in the yew hedge through which he must have gone, and halted. It was at least as deep as a castle wall. The inside was made of grotesque spans of bony branches, scythe-severed. I steeled myself, stepped in, and was suddenly slam up against someone. Him, of course, having stepped back in from the other side. I knew it instantly but still my intake of breath knifed my heart and my hands were at my breastbone as if to catch it. He said nothing, but then sighed: a slow exhalation. Mine – huge, in a rush – joined it. He placed a hand over my splayed, pressing pair and there we stood, for a moment, steadying each other.

  When I was more composed, I looked up to begin saying what I’d planned to say, albeit with the forcefulness gone, but suddenly he was very close and there was a touch of his lips to mine. Just a touch, but then he didn’t move away, didn’t back off. His hand was still over my mine. My blood hammered in me, crazily clockwork, but the rest of me had stopped dead. What was happening was so utterly unexpected that I could do nothing but watch it unfold.

  He did it again: that brush of his lips over mine, his breath hot with wine. That tiniest touch had somehow lit a wick in me, and I was ablaze. And now, invisible in the darkness, there was no Thomas: there was just a man who had kissed me, or half kissed me, or almost kissed me. So I did it back, put my lips up to his. And then his came to mine again, and again, and again, but each time you couldn’t have called it so much as a kiss. Our hands, though: he had taken one of mine, laced his fingers with mine, and was gripping hard – hard enough, perhaps, even, to break them. I stood there, ready for the first snap. And then, suddenly, I didn’t; I broke away. Walked away, telling myself it was nothing. It was a moment gone astray. A mistake. Only my heart knew differently, slamming itself against my breastbone.

  Relieved to detect that he wasn’t following me, I hurried back towards the hall to make my excuses and head for bed. Ending the day on which this had happened: that would be sufficient, it seemed to me in my confusion and panic. Yes, that would do the trick. Back inside the hall, I dodged dancers – including my own son, Harry, with Elizabeth – to reach Kate. Pleading a headache, I told her that I was retiring early. Concerned and disappointed, she dispensed a solemn little goodnight hug. Crossing the hall and talking to Kate, hugging her, I felt nothing, there was no me inside me. I could have been watching myself from up on one of the gilded beams. There she was, the Duchess of Suffolk, self-possessed, beyond reproach. I didn’t tell Kate what had happened in the garden because next to nothing had happened, and I knew that it wouldn’t be happening again.

  Twenty-two

  My heart knew differently, though, and remained insistent that night. Indignant, demanding. I seemed too big even for that immense bed. I felt different, yet also more me than ever before. I wasn’t the woman I’d assumed I was, in control and rather cynical: not only, or perhaps even mostly, her. And you
know what? I didn’t mind.

  And Thomas: he, too, was different from how I’d imagined. The Thomas of the yew arch, with those mere dabs of his lips onto mine, was reticent and tender. No use pretending otherwise, because I’d experienced it first-hand.There’d been nothing practised, it seemed to me, in what he’d done, in how he’d done it: not the actions of a philanderer. A surprise, it was, the tenderness, reticence, lack of confidence, and not an unpleasant one.

  And Kate’s marriage, of course: not so perfect after all.

  That’s how it all seemed to me, that first night, as I lay there in my bed, thinking. I wondered what Thomas was thinking.Wondered if he was wondering what I was thinking. And had he planned this? That I dwelt on. And what was it that he was after? That, too, of course.

  And Kate: oh, yes, rest assured, I did think of Kate. I made sure to. Kate, Kate, Kate, my oldest, my very best friend. But for all my summoning – Kate, Kate, Kate - she stayed stubbornly beyond reach, like an echo: distant, fading, unreal. And, anyway, Kate being Kate, whatever had happened in the garden – and something had happened, hadn’t it – was nothing she’d ever understand.

  The next morning, Thomas wasted no time in finding me, intercepting me not far from my room. Along he sauntered, accompanied by the usual adoring, fawning attendants, and asked me if he could have a word, which was for the benefit of those around us: a signal for them to retreat. Then we stepped away, back into the bay of a nearby window. All neatly done, but the situation was a mess and I had to have it cleared up. We stood side by side – had to, in the window casement – looking down onto the knot garden. Made for being looked down on, that little garden displayed its designs. One hyssop-hedged square of coal-dust and ground-up yellow tiles yielded an entwined K and T. And then Harry and Charlie: I saw them; there they were, below me, hurrying along with Elizabeth, shimmering in the diamonds of faintly green glass.

  Thomas began, whispering: ‘Last night: that was unforgivable of me and I apologise unreservedly. I was drunk and I should never have imposed myself on you like that. Thank you for having the presence of mind to get rid of me.’

  When he’d finished this little speech, I had to make myself look at him. There he was, very Thomas: lying, in the hope of getting away with it, whatever it was. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been that he’d been drunk. I fought to contain my irritation, and simply said, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell her.’

  He looked at me: I mean, really looked; stopped in those slimy tracks of his, shut up and looked. He clearly didn’t know what to think. Good. You try it. I left him to it. Continued on my way. The very picture, I knew, of cool and calm, but inside hounded by my heart.

  Later that day, I did something that I didn’t understand: went back to the yew arch. What I’d been expecting, I don’t know, but of course there was nothing to see. Just the underside of some yew: roof and walls of thin, splayed branches. Up close, the minuscule leaves looked less dour than during winter: a dustier green, perhaps, and perhaps a tad plumper. I breathed in, deep, but the yew gave nothing away; there was only the warmth of foliage in general, and soil. It was nice to be enclosed, though: sheltered, greenery around me and dried mud beneath my shoes. Nice to be away from the relentless Sudeley chatter and Sudeley clamour: the slamming of shutters and scuffing of flagstones; the constant, careless hollering of servants in courtyards, and the dogs everywhere chipping away at any peace and quiet. The usual. Sudeley was no noisier than my own homes, but it wasn’t my noise, the noise of my own servants, companions, children, dogs. Perhaps I’d returned to the scene in the hope that it would reveal to me why I’d done what I’d done. Or, indeed, what exactly I’d done. Acquiesced? Encouraged him? No clues, though. I coudn’t make any sense of it.

  I arrived back indoors to a flurry because pedlars were at the gatehouse. Some of the household’s children had gathered – the head cook’s two infants, the steward’s five, the doctor’s daughter – and I contributed a coin to each child’s funds, with the obligatory mock-serious warning to spend it wisely, which was a tall order, I knew, for a small person looking down into a big basket of dolls and puppets, and drums, whistles, tambourines. Kate was going down there with them, keen to witness their excitement.

  ‘You know,’ I called to her as she was leaving the room, ‘I still have the best of my boys’ toys’ – a wooden castle, metal knights – ‘you should have them, for the baby.’ Then I realised and said more to myself than to her, ‘I haven’t asked: how the nursery’s coming along?’

  ‘Too early to see much,’ she called back, ‘but Thomas can tell you, he has it all under control.’ She stepped aside and there he was, arrived beside her.

  Seeing me, he shrank back. ‘Yes,’ he responded distractedly to her kiss, ‘making myself busy, best I can.’ Kate was moving off, behind the gaggle of children.

  ‘Very impressive,’ I said, flatly, for only him to hear.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, in exactly the same tone, and – thank God – followed her away.

  With the children gone to the gatehouse, the house was relatively peaceful. Kate’s stepdaughter’s crowd had gone hunting, all of them except one of the sons who was in chapel, practising the organ. One of Kate’s goddaughters, pregnant, was consulting the doctor about swollen legs; the other was visiting a neighbour with whom, on a previous visit, she’d struck up a friendship. While my boys played tennis Bess Cavendish and I were able to take a walk in the gardens, and have a proper conversation: houses, family, mutual acquaintances, the religious changes. I like Bess enormously. She’d taken on a lot, at twenty. Older than I was when I became a wife, stepmother, and lady of a household, but not so much so. We have a fair amount in common.

  It was she who raised the subject of Kate and Thomas, as we strolled, remarking how well suited they seemed and who’d have thought it? I agreed: who, indeed. But she said no more on the subject. She herself was pregnant – the first of her own children – and she asked me if I’d be godmother. I was honoured, of course. I hope I do a good job for my godchildren; no one takes on the role of godparent lightly, and I’m no exception. Even better, she told me she’d be asking my Harry to be godfather. How he’s growing up, she said, in a tone of admiration.

  When I came back into the house, the children were dispersed, occupied. Kate was embroidering and, when I asked, held it up to show me.

  ‘Oh, Kate, that’s gorgeous!’ Any embroidery I ever do shows the effort gone into it; hers could have been untouched by human hand, could have dropped off some passing angel.

  ‘Frankie’s design,’ she demurred, ‘she’s the brains.’

  Frankie Lassells dimpled, delighted.

  ‘And you’re the brawn,’ I said.

  Kate flexed her fingers. She turned serious, though, then, and came over to me.

  ‘I worry it’s too early,’ she confided, steering me to a window. To start preparing for the baby, she meant.‘But they’ – her ladies – ‘wanted to get started.’

  ‘Don’t they always?’ I remembered with horror how one’s pregnancy becomes everyone else’s business. Particularly hard on me, at fourteen.

  She said, ‘I mean, I haven’t felt him move yet.’ I heard the longing in her words, and the dread.

  Please, God, I found myself thinking. Please. Please let this baby move.

  ‘But you will,’ I insisted. ‘Give it another month. Now’s too early, you know it is.’ Oh, for the blissful ignorance of a fourteen-year-old: I hadn’t known that babies should move. Second time around, though, of course, I did know. Which reminded me:

  ‘Some barely do, you know. Charlie didn’t much.’

  Those big eyes of hers widened further.‘He didn’t? I never knew that. You never said.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’

  ‘Did you worry?’

  I tried to remember. ‘Well, I noticed. Don’t know if I worried. I don’t know if I knew to worry. I got used to it. Realised he was just different.’ Different from Harry. ‘And, I mean, he is different, isn
’t he?’

  She was lightening up now; she’d been distracted. ‘What are they up to, those boys of yours?’

  Playing tennis, I told her. Or Harry was playing tennis, thrashing one of her pages, who was, it should be said, taking it valiantly. ‘He would,’ she said. ‘He’s a good boy.’ Charlie had been holding a racket when I turned up, but was subjecting his partner – another page, Anthony – to close questioning about snails.

  ‘Snails?’ Kate wondered. ‘Does Anthony know much about snails?’

  ‘In Charlie’s view – to judge from the intensity of the questioning – he knows all there is to know.’

  ‘Is there much to know?’

  ‘Again…’

  ‘Well,’ she shrugged, ‘the things one doesn’t know about one’s nearest and dearest.’

  ‘Or, indeed, it seems, about snails.’

  She laughed. ‘And are they getting on well with Elizabeth, your boys?’

  ‘Think so.’ I hadn’t heard to the contrary. Harry had even deigned to dance with her, hadn’t he.