The Sixth Wife

by Suzannah Dunn

  ‘Told you,’ she said.Then,‘I’ve never shown you this, have I?’ beckoning for me to follow. In the adjoining room, her dressing room, she knelt at a chest, opened it and delved inside.

  ‘What?’ I wanted to know, but she gestured for me to wait, before coming up with an armful of ivory satin.

  ‘Elizabeth’s christening gown and cradle canopy.’ Shimmering, they were; immaculate. Angel-wear, again. She held them for me to take, but I found myself stepping back as if I didn’t dare. I’d never liked Anne Boleyn – who had? – and didn’t feel any warmer towards her daughter, but to think of Anne and her ladies having laboured over this…To think of – to see evidence of – the mother love to which Elizabeth had been born. Which should have been hers. Which was once hers. To sense the hopes, the expectations that Anne must have had at that time. Not unreasonable ones. Just that she should be allowed to love her little girl. Anne’s demise is spoken of as if it was her fate but – and this should never be forgotten – it was the doing of two men, Henry and his sidekick Cromwell. It’s spoken of as what she deserved, but, frankly, her only sin was to be unlikeable. I was looking at the results of months of handiwork, the products of the rainy days and interminable evenings that are, inevitably, a feature of every woman’s life, however powerful that woman. I was looking at the culmination of a lifetime of learning and practising needle skills: yes, even Anne Boleyn, who’d had her sights set so much higher than the next piece of embroidery. Suddenly I pitied Elizabeth for having had to make her way motherless in the world. What if it were my boys? Dependent on the goodwill of friends, on the survival of those friends. I wished I could like Elizabeth, and half envied Kate the easy affection she felt for her. I asked, ‘How did you come by this?’

  ‘It was just…there.’ In one of the palaces, presumably; back when she was queen. ‘I made sure it had a home, otherwise…’ She’d taken it with her, rather than leave it to discolour and dampen at the bottom of some pile of blankets.

  ‘Has she seen it?’Would I rather that she had or she hadn’t? Equally poignant, both.

  ‘She has,’but Kate knew to reassure me:‘It’s nothing much to her yet. A curiosity, that’s all. She might want to use it, though, when her time comes.’

  Trust Kate to think ahead for her like that. Elizabeth couldn’t possibly know what she had in Kate.

  Twenty-three

  My reason for going after Thomas, later that day, was that I felt there was more to be said. There had to be more to be said, hadn’t there? To clear it up, put it behind us. I spotted him in the blossoming orchard with a man – presumably the fruiterer – and a couple of the usual attendants. Approaching them, I indicated that I’d like to speak with him; and then, when he’d finished with the fruiterer and sent the men ahead back to the house, I steeled myself to walk purposefully towards him. Once there, though, in front of him, I was lost for words and could only stand with my arms resolutely folded. He took a step towards me and, sighing, laid his head on mine. So, there we were, alone, forehead to forehead, shielded – just – from the house by trees.We kissed, then, in a small way. His tongue slid against mine. I didn’t resist. It was as if he had exacted a promise. ‘Come with me,’ he whispered.

  ‘Where?’

  He led the way, which was how we ended up again in that tiny chamber of spiky leaves, where we kissed differently. None of the previous guardedness now. This was something we did now, rather than something we were merely trying.

  Gift flashed into my mind: You are – this is – a gift. He cupped my face, laid his lips to the tip of my nose, then to each eyelid, then my forehead. On tiptoe, I took his mouth back down to mine. He slipped free, this time down my throat and across to a shoulder. Again, though, I took his mouth to mine and, celebrating my catch, pushed my tongue against his. His laugh was a kind of wince. ‘Not just yet,’ he said.Then,‘Could you meet me in the bower on the island?’

  The green- and gold-painted pavilion, its columns feathery with honeysuckle, on an island in one of the fish ponds. In the furthest reaches of the garden.

  My heart shrank. ‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you.’

  ‘Never,’ he said, calmly, as if he’d been expecting this from me. Then, ‘Listen, I’m going to tell you something. There you were, back in the old days, the wife of the king’s right-hand man: deeply respectable, except that everything you said and everything you did belied it. Do you have any idea how intoxicating that was for me? Nothing’s changed,’ he urged.‘That’s still you.’And,‘I’ve never done this with anyone else. I’ve never wanted to. But, then, there never has been anyone like you, has there.’

  I didn’t listen to him; heard him, yes, but told myself not to believe him. I did say, though, ‘The bower, then: when? How?’

  ‘Late? Very late. And by moonlight; no lantern.’

  ‘Tonight?’ Again, ‘But how?’

  He considered. ‘You don’t sleep well, do you. You need a walk.’

  ‘Alone? At that time of night?’

  ‘Safest time,’ he said. ‘No one’s around, are they? Well, not a walk, then; a sit on the back steps or something. Some air. You’ve only your own maidservant to give the slip.’

  ‘Bella probably won’t even wake.’Then,‘What about dogs, though?’ I didn’t want to be surprising a dog in the dark.

  ‘All in at night here.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. And I’ll make double sure, I promise.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘How will you get away?’

  ‘Oh, me,’ he laughed. ‘I’m a law unto myself – didn’t you know?’

  If I stopped to think, I’d think No. I pressed onwards: ‘What, then? Two o’clock?’

  ‘Make it one.’

  ‘Two would be safer,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think I can wait till two.’ He laid his fingertips on my lips. ‘One o’clock.’

  So, you see? That’s how it happens. It happens, it’s already happening. Not if but how, where, when.

  All that day, my boys came and went in crowds of boys, mud-splattered, mentioning people and places unknown to me; they could have been talking in code. Running wild, they were, albeit in their own well-mannered way. Good luck to them, I decided: they rarely have the chance. Elizabeth made a show of having declined their company. She and Jane seemed embarked upon some particularly demanding project for their new tutor, heads bowed over their books in an especially studious manner. Kate met with her steward to discuss a forthcoming distribution of alms in one of the villages, and then her choirmaster came along to make a case for the household needing a new harp. Next up was the wine merchant, passing through: a meeting with him and the keeper of the cellars. Then there was some business about pilfering from the laundry, before Kate nipped across the courtyard to call in on a servant who’d recently had twins, one of whom was so far surviving.

  All day, I felt unable to take a whole breath, as if I were at odds with air itself. I watched Thomas with Kate, whenever they were together. Kate fussing in that unfussy way of hers, and Thomas humouring her. Like brother and sister, I decided: their obvious affection for each other laced with good-humoured impatience. Thomas saw to Kate’s immediate, physical comforts, and attempted to entertain her. She made a show of keeping him in line, or trying to. That’s how it’ll go on, I felt, and on, and on, and I was glad I had no part in it.

  I was half fascinated, though, because the Thomas whom I watched rearranging Kate’s cushions wasn’t the Thomas I now knew. I know you, was what I found myself thinking. I know about you and you know about me.

  You, who kisses me for dear life.

  I knew he didn’t kiss Kate like that. Don’t ask me how I knew; I just knew. Nor Elizabeth: that had indeed just been silliness, had been nothing; I knew that now, too.

  Towards the end of the afternoon, I napped; or said I was going to nap. ‘That’s unlike you,’ Kate worried, as I excused myself. ‘Are we w
earing you out?’ I sent Bella from the room and lay on my gigantic bed, its hangings tied back, and stared across the room at the closed shutters, the thread of daylight in each seam. I let the sounds of the house wash over me, sounds which, up there in my room, were few, distant and indistinct. The brief growl of a door, here and there, closing into its frame. Sprinkles of footfalls: an overburdened floorboard, the chipping of leather soles at stone stairs. Not Kate’s: she, I knew, had finally settled to some reading for an hour or two. Elizabeth and Jane, on the other hand, were having to leave their books for a dress fitting. Somewhere way below me, they were being encircled by strips of parchment into which new notches were being made to mark their growth (or, in tiny Jane’s case, probably not). Elizabeth would be voicing opinions and suggestions – that red, this style of sleeve – to a ceaseless accompaniment from Mrs Ashley and a grudging, disapproving silence from Jane who favoured only black. No sound at all from outside the house: we might have been at sail, all of us, on a calm sea.

  Hours later, I was back in that bed, now canopied, but listening hard. Quite what for, though, I don’t think I knew. Silence, I suppose. A gap opening up in all the sounds of that house as it settled down for the night; a gap I could walk through into the gardens. And a deepening of Bella’s breathing: that, too, of course. I lay there wondering how long past midnight it was, how close to the strike of one. Thinking that I should have agreed to leave my room at one, not arrive at the bower at one. I’d be late and he’d be gone, thinking I’d changed my mind. Even if I was on time, though, would he be there? Or would he have forgetten, or fallen asleep? Or had he never been serious? There’d been nothing from him all day to indicate otherwise; not so much as a catching of my eye. I lay there wondering if it was he who’d chosen the décor for my room, unknowing; unknowing that it would be me lying here looking at it one night, like this, in trepidation.

  Eventually I took a chance on it being close to one and slipped from my bed, lit myself a candle. Pulled a cloak around me. For now, I kept the hood down on my shoulders. I knelt beside Bella, dodging her ale-musty breath. Hospitality was lavish in this household; we were all plied with more food and drink than we could comfortably manage. I regretted having to rouse her, but it had to be done; I couldn’t risk her waking and finding me gone, raising the alarm. A squeeze of her shoulder did the trick, but she looked panicked as she opened her eyes.

  ‘No -’ I hushed her,‘I can’t sleep. I’m slipping outside for some air. Don’t worry about me. Yes?’

  She frowned, perhaps confused, perhaps concerned.

  I insisted: ‘Yes?’

  Her face relaxed.

  ‘Good girl.’ I patted her back down.

  My own breathing was infuriatingly shaky. Luckily for me, she was too far gone to notice.

  And then I was off on my own; gloriously on my own, almost as I’d been as a girl, the difference being that this was in darkness and someone was going to be alone with me. As I cut through the gardens, the house sank behind me, unseeing and insensible. My mind’s eye flickered to my boys, sleeping safe and sound in there, sated with fresh air and adventures. They seemed both close by and far away, and it felt right, it all felt very right: them, there; and me, off on my own little adventure. When the darkness turned jagged with bats, I lost heart somewhat and cringed beneath my hood. Statues, too: they bothered me, seemed to be stepping from the foliage because suddenly there’d be one – marble glowing in moonshine – where I could have sworn there’d previously been nothing. Here and there were cats’ eyes, scandalised or malevolent. What was gone from the gardens was the sound of the fountains. Somehow, they’d been switched off. Somewhere nearby was water, glistening and lifeless. My own silence I listened to in disbelief. How odd that, as I hurried frantically, I made no sound at all.

  I was thinking, I can’t do this. And then, But I can, and no one will know. I was thinking, I have to find out. Although what, I didn’t know. As for Kate: this was nothing to Kate, was my view. What was this, compared to what she had with Thomas? She had that fabulous house behind me, full of their friends and relations. She had her pregnancy, their growing child. She had Thomas forever adjusting her pillows. Whereas this – this running through darkness, this meeting up – was something else.

  Bess, too: I thought of Bess Cavendish, back there in the house. Bess, with whom only yesterday I’d imagined I had so much in common. The twenty-year-old newlywed who regarded Kate and Thomas as a good match.The rosy-cheeked mother-to-be of my unborn godchild. What would she make of this if she knew? She wouldn’t, would she: she’d be unable to make anything of it. No one except Thomas would understand this.

  I hesitated at the little bridge, reluctant to be marooned on the island if he wasn’t already there. Fearful of being in the deeper darkness of the bower, listening for footsteps and having no route away except for the bridge over which those footsteps would be coming.

  ‘Thomas?’ I was halfway across.

  ‘Here.’ Inside, he was invisible to me. ‘What kept you?’ he joked.

  I paused on the threshold, my eyes adjusting, Thomas’s silhouette forming. ‘What would Kate say if she knew about this?’ I hadn’t planned to say it, even to think it, but there it came, crashing in on us.

  ‘Hey, hey, hey,’ he whispered, admonished, taking my arm. ‘She won’t know about this, will she.’

  ‘Over my dead body. I love her, Thomas,’ I insisted, as if he were disputing it and I hated him for it. ‘I love her.’

  ‘Well, that we share,’ he said. ‘And now can we stop talking about Kate? Kate’s inside, asleep.’ The smells of the evening – smoke, drink – were around him like an echo. ‘She’s fine, she’s happy, Cathy. Which is what matters.’ Then, ‘I love her, remember? I chose her, she’s my wife. This isn’t about Kate; this has nothing to do with Kate.’

  He was in his nightgown, I noticed with a jolt; I don’t know what I’d expected. After all, I was in mine. So, there we were, both of us in our nightgowns like a married couple yet obviously not like any married couple. He lessened his grip on my arm and slid his hand down to mine, which could have been a kind of retreat except that he’d then turned my wrist and raised the underside to his lips. Kissing his way back up my arm to the crook of my elbow, he nosed into the sleeve of my gown. I inhaled the scent of his hair, found myself cradling his head. Then he was lower still, kneeling in front of me, pressing his face into my gown. I felt stranded, too tall, unsteady, and held onto his head. Now he was gathering up my gown – linen beating in the air – and up it came and down, covering him. So, he was gone from me, even as he came so much closer. His shrouded head was no head at all now but something strange. And his tongue was no longer the puppy of our previous kisses, rolling around, playful and unpredictable, but was sleek, strong and shocking in its precision. I stood my ground; had to. I was rooted, my feet – still shod – planted apart. He had me so still, straining in my stillness to be more and more still, straining for his touch but not daring to seek it. Nothing else mattered but the tip of his tongue. I was aware of the pleading in my stance and half ashamed by it, half thrilled. I was at his mercy, anticipating each lick as I would a pain: I was shrunk to it; there was nothing else to me.

  Then he stopped, reappeared. ‘Down,’ I think he said, with a tug to my hand. My legs were shaking so much that I could barely bend them; I got to my knees as if I were clambering down into somewhere. And there we were, face to face in the darkness, and I detected his smile, a greeting.

  ‘There’s nothing on the floor,’ I whispered.

  ‘There’s me on the floor. Get on top of me.’

  My hands were on his shoulders so, when he lay down, he pulled me towards him. And there we were, together. Moments later, he gave a low, brief laugh of surprise at how easy it was. For me, there was a clarity as if I’d remembered something vital – the key, the answer – although actually I’d never known it.

  Twenty-four

  The next morning, my lips were sore, stu
bble-scoured. Anyone looking very closely would have seen the telltale blurring, but of course no one did.

  ‘I’ve found us a room,’ Thomas whispered to me, his mouth barely moving, his eyes carefully blank and looking elsewhere, nowhere. So, it was going to happen again. We were in Kate’s room for a visit from the haberdasher. Thomas had chosen cambric for some new shirts, and Kate had bought lawn for their ruffs, fustian for lining some children’s riding jackets, and five thousand pins. She had moved on to look at small items, taking the opportunity to stock up, and was now contemplating a goddaughter’s forthcoming birthday. ‘These, perhaps, d’you think?’ she was asking Mrs Ashley, who was groaning with pleasure, stroking a pair of Spanish leather gloves which had slits in the fingers for showing off the wearer’s rings. ‘Lovely, aren’t they? And then there’s Frankie: her birthday’s next month, too, and I was wondering…’ They sorted through pearl buttons and tortoise-shaped buttons fixed to cards, through spools of ribbon.

  Thomas: I was breathing him in, taking him deep down. ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ll show you. Go to the far gate of the knot garden. Immediately before supper.’

  When the time came, I simply stepped back, and back, and drifted away as if I’d forgotten something, as if I had to attend to something. All day I’d worried about how I’d do it, but it was easy. A good time for it: the end of the day but the evening hadn’t yet quite begun; a time when most of us withdraw, to finish up the business of the day and prepare for the evening. Dressing to be done, perhaps bathing. A walk, maybe, to wind down or wake up. In a big household, everyone assumes you’re with someone else. Kate was at prayers with Jane Grey, Elizabeth and Mrs Ashley.

  The area of the gardens stipulated by Thomas hadn’t had any sun since the morning and then probably only obliquely. The air was sharp, and rather than return to my room and risk encountering Bella, I’d had to come as I was, cloakless. Thomas had been leaning back against a wall; he straightened up and came towards me with what seemed to be a genuine smile. ‘You look lovely.’ He was dazzlingly blond, boyish. My heart squeezed, but I said nothing.