The Sixth Wife

by Suzannah Dunn

  I turned to her and said, ‘That is my opinion, and it’s a strong one.’

  Thomas broke the pause: ‘With all due respect to the dissenters’ – as if there were more than one – ‘I decree that we in this household celebrate Midsummer’s Day,’ and emphasised, with a look at Jane Grey, ‘Midsummer’s Day.’

  Elizabeth whooped, and my boys – predictably – looked pleased. Jane’s face registered nothing.

  Twenty-nine

  Elizabeth’s a protestant, of course, but not as Jane is. No one can doubt Elizabeth’s protestant pedigree: born to the pair who led the break from Rome, born because of the break from Rome. She’s grown up protestant through and through: she’s not one for a bended knee, and she is one for asking questions. I’ll give her that. And now she was being brought up by Kate, whom people were calling the Protestant Queen. How different Elizabeth is in every possible way from her elder, catholic half-sister. They even move differently: Mary making stately swishes of her skirts; Elizabeth half skipping, always looking as if she’s just been let out of somewhere. And those skirts themselves: Mary’s are bruise purple, leaf green and a brick red that wouldn’t flatter anyone, let alone her, whereas Elizabeth favours crimson, flame and gold.

  Protestantism is in Elizabeth’s blood but it’s there unthinkingly, of no great importance to her. What is of great importance is what other people think of her. No taking after her mother in that. Strange, at first thought, that it was Kate and not Anne Boleyn who was the Protestant Queen. But even though Anne Boleyn’s protestantism was strong and deep, it was secondary to her ambitions; it wasn’t what she was about. Her aim in life was to marry the king. She and the other queens – Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves – just happened to be protestant. For Kate, it wasn’t that she was a queen and she was protestant but that she made her queen-ship about protestantism, something that she worked hard for others to have.

  I’ve always believed that a woman can in principle learn and think as well as a man. Maybe it’s because I never had a brother: I was never second-best.You could call that luck. What was unlucky, though, was that I never had the education that a brother of mine might have had. Oh, my mother had excellent intentions but circumstances overtook her and then my education was no longer in her hands. In any case, I doubt her heart would have been in it, by then. Her heart had followed Queen Catherine into banishment, where their own spectacular cleverness had ended up counting for nothing. They had just become middle-aged women from a forgotten country, required to live on meagre supplies in disused castles.

  Me, meanwhile: I was in Charles’s hands. And Charles – open-minded and generous though he was – was a pragmatist. Education for its own sake wasn’t a priority. And anyway circumstances overtook me again and instead of having lessons at fourteen, fifteen, I was having children. Charles was never against education for his wife, he’d never have stopped me learning, and in fact he’d probably wanted me to do it, but it just never happened.

  So, I didn’t have much of an education, but I’ve always been sure that if I had, I’d have been as clever as most men. My lack of education is what’s at fault, not my being a woman.

  Take Hugh: my dear chaplain, my brilliant friend Hugh Latimer. He has all the time in the world to think, in his suite of rooms at marvellous Cambridge. Cambridge, where my boys will soon be going. Perhaps Hugh is better able to turn his attention to Heaven because he has fewer ties here on earth. No household to run. And I’ll do all I can to keep it that way for him.Why not? People need to do our thinking, just as people need to do our farming, and it might as well be those who are good at it, who have a passion for it. And anyway it’s what I can do, looking after Hugh, taking him in. It’s what I’m good at. As was publishing Kate. People listened to Kate; that was what she’s good at. You can preach all you like, but it’s useless if no one’s listening. So I published Kate: The Lamentation of a Sinner. Persuaded her brother to write an introduction, and had the book printed and sold. And, oh, did it sell. I’m a doer, a fixer, sometimes a funder.

  But that, I was beginning to suspect, was not good enough for Jane Grey. In Jane’s view, I’ve learned, the world is carelessly and shamelessly askew. Kept tilted by a few, while the rest blunder around like cattle. We all disgust her, is my suspicion. Even me? Enlightened me? Oh, me especially, is my guess. Because I’m enlightened. I’ve eighteen years on her, but England remains only reluctantly protestant. She must wonder what I’ve been doing. Tell me, though, what is it that Jane has been so busy doing. Gliding around, theological texts in hand, stern-faced and pure of heart. If she isn’t going to go out and dismantle churches in the name of her revolution (and it’s hard to imagine her spending her days kneeling on flagstones, packing icons into caskets), if it really is – for her – about hearts and minds, then she needs to learn to speak hers. As it is, no one can hear her. No one would want to hear her, with her face like that.

  But why does it matter to me what Jane Grey might think of me? It surprises me that it does. Perhaps it’s that I feel judged and found wanting, and I’m unused to that.

  My boys are big-hearted but keen-eyed and I trust their judgements of their peers. They’ve never taken to Jane. Only a day or so before that discussion about whether to celebrate Midsummer, Charlie had tried to tell me something. ‘Mama? You know Jane?’

  ‘I do know Jane, yes.’ I was irritable, and distracted. You see? Thomas took me not only from my best friend, but also from my sons.

  ‘Well,’ Charlie confided, ‘I don’t really like being left with her.’

  I probably said something like, Don’t you? Oh dear. Or, Nor would I, to be honest. I should have listened to what Charlie was saying; I should have listened to what was being said. If I had I might have averted disaster.

  Left with her. Left.

  Thirty

  That evening of the discussion about Midsummer, Thomas’s last words to me, as I was at the door of Kate’s room on my way back to my own, were, ‘Come for a walk with me tomorrow.’ Spoken across everybody. I dithered, taken aback. He boomed, ‘Kate tells me you’ve been going for walks by yourself because she’ – and he indicated her belly – ‘can only waddle. Well, I’m here now.’ I found I was looking to Kate. Nothing from her, though, but a benign smile. ‘A lot’s happening in the gardens,’ he continued. ‘I’ve much to show you.’

  Charlie looked up anxiously from the cushions at Thomas’s feet. ‘But we’ll still be riding tomorrow, won’t we?’

  Thomas nudged him with his foot, in a kind of reproach. ‘Of course we will.’

  Closing the door behind me, it was Charlie I felt for. Thomas no doubt would find time for him, but I was pained to see my son at his mercy. That casual prod with his shoe. I kept composed along the hallways and up the stairs, but back in my room, preparing for bed, my composure began to unravel. I was sharp in my unlacings and whipped off my layers, crushing linens and silks. Sensing Bella’s concern, I did calm down. But all I could think was: Funny, was it? Was this how it would be now, what we’d done? A little joke between us?

  I did go for that walk with him, though, the following day. He persuaded me by cajoling me, making it public again. ‘That walk, Cathy.’

  Kate: ‘Yes, do: go.’ She was preoccupied. There seemed to be some problem with Jane: Jane looked clingy; Kate, motherly.

  I said, ‘Charlie?’ You coming? Harry was nowhere to be seen. Charlie said he had to see to a litter of puppies: some Thomas-instigated task, I guessed, from which he wasn’t about to be deflected. I looked around, helpless. I’d have even welcomed Elizabeth’s company, but where was she on the one occasion I wanted her? Thomas was already explaining where he’d be taking me, what we’d be seeing. A new this, a new that.

  Outside, high-spirited house martins more than compensated for our lack of conversation. We set off under a pewter sky, the tang of rain in the air. As we walked, I couldn’t bring myself even to look at Thomas. He tolerated it, saying nothing. We didn’t seem to be going anywhere in
particular. Eventually, I said, ‘Kate’s cross with you.’ Pathetic, not least because she wasn’t. But I wanted her to be. I wanted him to be in trouble.

  ‘Oh, Kate’s always cross with me,’ he said, cheerfully and incredulously, as if I’d missed something fundamental. His confidence was audible, his belief that she wouldn’t get much more cross, that it would always be more of the same. Possibly, he was right. If she ever discovered what we’d done, quite possibly she’d be different with Thomas from how she’d be with me. Thomas was her husband and the father of her coming child. Thomas might be almost forgiven, or at least tolerated. Not me, though, of course. ‘Anyway, she isn’t,’ he countered. ‘Midsummer was her idea.’

  I shook my head. ‘Jane’s wardship.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Dismissed. Good-naturedly, he said, ‘You’re cross with me.’Then, when I went to contradict him, ‘Don’t -’ lie to me. Still good-naturedly.

  So, I told him the truth, or as close as I could get to it. ‘I don’t know what I am with you, Thomas.’

  ‘You know, I’ve never wavered in how I feel about you’

  I wasn’t having that. ‘You didn’t like me.’ I was remembering how suspicious of me he’d looked when I’d first turned up to witness their newly wedded bliss at Chelsea.

  He laughed. ‘You didn’t like me. Oh, don’t worry, I’m used to it. What I was doing was keeping out of your way. As I am now.’ Still cheerful. ‘Making life easier for you.’ Suddenly, he spoke more seriously, lowering his voice to confide,‘Cathy, I have no wish to make life difficult for you.’

  I didn’t respond.

  ‘And, anyway, even way back,’ he began again, ‘when you were Charles’s ever-so-respectable wife: remember what I told you about that? How it was so clear that in fact you weren’t? Well, that I liked.’ He laughed.

  He’d seen only half the picture, only seen what he’d wanted to see. Whatever I’d said and whatever I’d done, back in those days, was said and done with Charles. Neither of us was really all that respectable. The Suffolks, we were, England’s foremost couple after the king and queen, yet we hosted people considered to be heretics; we welcomed them to live in our household and promoted them wherever possible at court. Even I wonder now, looking back: how did we get away with it? My guess is, by never lying about what we were up to. Never hiding it. Never flaunting it, either, though. We simply stood our ground and did what we felt had to be done. People trusted Charles. My being married to him had enabled me to be who I was.

  I changed the subject. ‘Your Midsummer celebrations are all very well for now, but something tells me there won’t be many parties when Jane’s queen.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll just pretend we haven’t heard her, and carry on as usual.’

  I smiled, couldn’t help myself: the image of the Sudeley household partying while Jane stood grim-faced in the background, squeaking her condemnation, trying to make herself heard. ‘Harder to pretend that of Eddie, though.’ Not much more vocal power to the little king, but even at ten years old he’s learned how to make people listen. ‘You couple her up with him, and any party-goers have a problem.’ I was relaxing a little now. This – politics – felt safe, even enjoyable.

  Thomas complained, ‘Eddie’s a good child, he’s just in the wrong hands.’

  ‘Your brother’s hands.’ I snatched up a sprig of rosemary: verdant, oily, astringent. ‘What do you have against your brother?’

  ‘What do you have for him?’

  ‘Oh, well, now, let’s see: he’s trustworthy, clever. Diplomatic.’

  Thomas kicked a fragment of tile. ‘He’s boring.’

  It was predictable. Something Harry might have said. I felt weary. Wished even, suddenly, that my companion here was Thomas’s brother rather than Thomas. He’d be droning on about taxation or something, but I’d have the sun on my back and I’d be looking at flowers with nothing required of me but to enthuse over them.

  Thomas said, ‘I don’t think my brother knows anything of life, anything.’

  ‘And you do.’

  He didn’t rise to it. ‘You know I do. And I know you do.’ He took my hand; I withdrew it. He took it again and raised it so we could both see it. ‘You think the world is a better place if I don’t do this?’

  ‘For your wife,’ I said, ‘yes.’ And, anyway, it was never just a held hand, was it.

  He seemed amused. ‘Kate’s fine, Cathy. She has everything she wants. Certainly she has everything that she wants of me. I love her; I love her more than I can say. You know that.’

  We’d been through all this; this was old ground. Back then, it had worked, had been persuasive. But now…

  I took my hand back again.

  ‘This isn’t you,’ he lamented.

  A spark of panic, because I felt somehow exposed, as if he’d threatened to tell Kate. I wanted so much to say, You don’t know me. But he did, didn’t he; he did know me. Heavy-hearted, I walked beside him in silence. We’d done an almost circular route when we reached the mulberry tree.

  ‘There won’t be any fruit for some years,’ Thomas said, matter-of-fact, looking into the branches, as if conversing with one of his gardeners.

  For something to say, I told him,‘The berries are so fragile; at Thomas More’s, we had to stand beneath and’ – I didn’t know quite how to explain it – ‘drink them down.’ Off the branches, I meant. Put our mouths up to berries that would have disintegrated at a touch.

  ‘Did you?’ was all Thomas said, with a studied indifference to the old world, to those who were powerful before the Seymours. The studied indifference of the newcomer, the latecomer.

  Thomas More: felt like a lifetime ago to me. Being welcome in the More household: a lifetime ago. Charles and I were newly married, then. Catholic, because we knew no other way to be. In those days, the old days, there was no other way to be.

  Odd that Kate and I should have had an exchange on that very subject only the following day. It was the closest we ever came to having a row. She’d spent a couple of hours reading before going as usual to prayers. When I turned up, later, to accompany her down to dinner, she patted her pile of books and remarked,‘What would our mothers have made of all this.’ Not an actual question. Nor was her smile a smile, but a kind of wince. I was perplexed. Our mothers? What did our mothers have to do with anything? And anyway, what did it matter? Our mothers were gone.

  What I said, though, was, ‘They’d have been proud of us.’ Because we were our mothers’ daughters, as they had been theirs. Doing as they had done, continuing what theirs had begun. Acquainting ourselves with the latest books. Coming up with questions. Taking no one’s word for anything.

  Our mothers. More than a turn of phrase, no mere reference to our mother’s generation. Kate, I knew, did mean our actual mothers, Maria and Maud. Never mind what our mothers would have made of us: what, I always wonder, did they make of each other when they met? That I would love to have seen. In breezed Maria, from Spain at the heartfelt request of her girlhood friend, the new queen. Maria: not merely fluent in English but witty in it, too. More than ready for some of England’s rumoured irreverence. And there to greet her, if it could have been called that, was Maud, as English as a downpour. Long-faced, sharp-tongued, narrowed-eyed. Understimate Maud at your peril, though. Remember: she was the driving force behind the royal school, where everything was discussed, debated, either demolished or defended. With the exception of the church. Because no one, yet, in England, had gone that far. No one had any idea, yet, that anyone could go that far.

  That was left to us. Our generation. It took time, but the time has come and here we are – my generation – doing what has to be done. That’s the only difference, I said to Kate, between our mothers and us. We are bringing the church down to earth, back to the people, which our mothers never did. But if they were young women now, if they were clever young women now, this is what they’d be doing: reading the books that we’re reading, having the debates that we’re having.

  Kate
didn’t see it that way. She said, ‘They were catholic,’ and stared at me, wide-eyed, as if I’d missed something glaringly obvious and she had to confront me with it. Which was ridiculous, of course, and I laughed. Yes, I told her, I do happen to know that, I was aware of that. But listen, I said: they’d had to be catholic. Because there was nothing else to be. There was no other way to think. And now – thank God, thank God - there is. There is. So – a smile from me now, and it was a proper one, no wincing or laughing – they’d have been proud of us.

  ‘You really believe that,’ she said, the clear implication being that I couldn’t possibly.

  ‘Funnily enough,’ I said,‘I do, and you know why? Because it’s the truth.’

  ‘Oh, Cathy,’ she sighed, sounding disappointed. She’d spoken quietly, or perhaps it was that her voice had sounded quiet because – I now realised – mine had been raised. She turned around and said to the window, ‘We’re destroying everything they cared about. What they lived for. I’m not saying that’s wrong – I’m as certain as you are that it’s right – but are you telling me that you don’t ever, just for an instant, just sometimes, think how very sad they’d have been?’ She turned back for my answer, a pleading in that turn. I shook my head. There was a silence before she said, wistfully, ‘You can’t say it, can you.’

  This was absurd; I stood my ground. ‘Why should I? Because it would make you feel better if I did?’

  ‘No,’ she sounded weary, ‘because it’s the truth.’

  ‘I don’t lie,’ I warned her.

  ‘No, you just don’t always tell the truth.’

  We stood staring at each other. She was the one, in time, to look away. ‘So,’ she said, ‘anyway, it really doesn’t bother you.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Absolutely not,’ and took a step towards her, before I could stop myself, but only one, because it would be best, I judged, for me to leave. As I did, I said, ‘Because I’m not sentimental, Kate.’