The King's Rose

by Alisa M. Libby

  “I can’t see you.”

  “Catherine, it’s me, Thomas. Don’t worry.”

  I lift a hand and touch his hair, his face, tenderly—the softness of his lips, the crinkling skin at the corners of his eyes. It is him. I sigh with certainty, but I’m still trembling. He clasps his hands around my arms, rubbing them warm. I’m about to say something else when he moves forward and kisses me.

  It is a peculiar thing to feel that you are living your dream. I had thought never to experience another kiss like this, from him, but here I am. Here we are. His lips are full and warm and tentative upon mine. There is perfection here—just like that night in the garden—sweet perfection in the gentleness of his touch that reminds me of all the hope I ever had for the two of us. It makes tears well in my eyes to think of it, my breath catching in my throat.

  “Shh, shh,” he whispers, calming me. He kisses me again and slips into the bed beside me. His hands are warm upon my skin, and there is something careful and reverent about his touch. He, too, is caught in the wonderment of this, of us, together again. That we are doing something that I know we have both spent countless nights merely dreaming of. He pulls the nightdress over my head, his bare chest pressed against my bare chest. He covers me, covers all of me, and I feel warm and protected. I feel loved and in love.

  A WOMAN LIES upon the stone floor, draped in silk, awaiting her lover’s arrival. He comes to her in darkness, hovering for a moment over her sleeping form. We can see clearly their two shapes in the torchlight: the languid, stretching body of the woman, and the body of the man standing over her, with broad white wings upon his back.

  We are in the hall of Pontefract Castle, watching a tableau unfold before us: the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Psyche is visited nightly by a lover she is forbidden to see in the light of day. The hall is silent as we watch the two of them, watching him as he watches her, gazing lovingly at her face, her body. A soft gasp and sigh pours from the crowd as the winged Cupid moves forward, waking his love with a kiss.

  When the curtain is drawn over the scene, the silent hall erupts in thunderous applause. I glance over carefully, very carefully, in the dimness—just a flash of eyes to see that Thomas is watching me.

  I try not to think about him but, like Psyche, I can’t help myself: I think about him during Mass, during royal ceremonies and banquets. I think about him as local dignitaries are presented to me, bowing over my hand in veneration. I can feel his eyes upon me, can feel my skin warm and tingling where he last touched me, can feel his lips upon my lips. I have never felt anything so intoxicating, so overwhelming. We’ve had three nights together—three stolen nights, dreamlike, unreal. But they have awoken something within me that is all too real, something that lay dormant for years, awaiting his touch.

  I look at Henry and fear what I have done. But I had no other choice to save myself, to give Henry what he thinks I already have. This is the only thing I know will please him, the one thing that is required. I imagine how happy he will be at my first announcement of pregnancy, and I feel full of joy and relief for both of us. I will have no choice but to push all thoughts of Thomas aside then so as not to tarnish this gift I am giving to Henry—the gift of a healthy son. I have done all of this for him.

  But that does not stop me from craving Thomas, now. My mind is wary, but my body follows its own responses. Kisses repeat themselves in my head through the day. I am sitting here in this hall, applauding the performers and smiling at all assembled, but only half of me is here. The other part of me is already gone, already reveling in what the night may bring. When I look at Henry I smile, and merely pretend that it is all a dream. I’ve long lived a double life with my dreams, so I am accustomed to this feeling. I am like Psyche, indulging in a night of love that will flee as soon as the sun rises.

  IT IS MID-SEPTEMBER and we’ve left Pontefract for York. My blood has arrived, again. Late, but here it is. I have no alternative, or else the date of birth would be suspect: I must seduce the king, in spite of our last disastrous attempt at coupling. I must be sweet and seductive. I must not think about Thomas.

  Upon our arrival in York, I sit beside Henry all during the evening festivities, not even getting up to dance.

  “I suppose I’m too tired,” I tell him, my voice low. “I feel already eager for bed.” My words are innocent but my eyes are seductive, and Henry does not miss their meaning. I am relieved that I can still have this effect upon him, though the effort to charm him—to be laughing and giddy and seem free of any worry or care—does tire me. I make an effort to think about Henry in the blandest, most basic sense: he is my husband, and I must do my duty by him. I drink an extra glass of wine before following him to his bedchamber.

  MY NIGHTS WITH the king have passed easily, and he seemed pleased with my affections. I am hopeful that my blood will cease, but other thoughts invade the simplicity of these prayers: Thomas’s long fingers upon my pale skin, Thomas’s full lips pressed to mine. Thomas’s dark eyes glistening in the light of a single candle, staring at my nakedness. I cannot look at myself—my own hands, lips, breasts—without imagining him kissing, caressing me. If only I had something to hold close to me so that I might always remember what it was like to be held in his arms. Some token of our love so that I might be reminded of it every day of my life.

  In the middle of the night, I rise from bed and write a brief note by candlelight.

  Master Culpeper,

  I never longed for anything so much as to see you. It maketh my heart to die when I do think that I cannot always be in your company. Please write to me in secret, for I long to relive the tender words you have bestowed upon me in private. Come to me when Lady Rochford is here, for then I shall be best at leisure to be at your commandment . . . And thus I take my leave of you, trusting to see you shortly again. And I would you were with me now, that you might see what pain I take in writing to you, my little sweet fool.

  Yours as long as life endures,

  Catherine

  I hope he will return a love letter to me, via Jane, before I arrange our next meeting. Then I can replace all of those old letters I so foolishly put to the flames. And I will be able to read his words of love over and over again, and hear his voice even when he cannot lie beside me, whispering in the dark.

  XXX

  It’s been two days and I’ve not received a visit from the king. And I’ve not received a letter from Thomas, though he did give me a message in person:

  “Tonight?” he whispered to me yesterday, in the midst of a graceful pavane. His expression remained measured, cautious.

  I only smiled in return, a picture of innocence, garlanded in pink roses in celebration of summer.

  “Please—make it be soon. I beg you.” He smiled, but his eyes were burning. “Please.”

  I had hoped for a letter, but the sight of Thomas’s ardent gaze is dangerously exciting. The king is distracted with the renovations to St. Mary’s and preparations to meet his nephew James; I know not when next he will visit me. By then I could have missed my chance to feel Thomas’s weight pressed upon me in bed. Other young women get to feel this. Why should I deny myself, if my love is here and waiting for me? How can I deny my passion? Perhaps I should be stronger, but I’m not. Besides, I have to be certain of a pregnancy.

  “I should like to meet with Thomas again,” I inform Lady Rochford quietly, when we are alone in my bedchamber. She glances at me, her eyebrows raised.

  “You’d best be cautious, Your Majesty.”

  “You’re lecturing about caution? Now?”

  “This is not a time to indulge your crude fantasies,” she informs me. “This is a means to a particular end.”

  “Yes, and don’t you agree that we should be well assured of that end? This is my chance, these next few nights. The king is otherwise occupied. Still, I ought to use the time to my best advantage.”

  “You are certainly the duchess’s granddaughter.” She sighs. I’m not sure how I feel about this comparison, but J
ane nods her head in resignation. “I will arrange it.”

  “Do not act so pious with me now,” I scold her. “This was not my idea at first, you will remember. Besides, you’ve been at court longer than I have.” I eye her carefully as I say this. “I’ve heard tell of the corruption you’ve witnessed. This is nothing so depraved as all that. It’s a means to a particular end, as you said.”

  She is quiet for a moment, and doesn’t return my gaze.

  “Are you talking about Anne?” she asks.

  “Yes. Am I allowed to talk about her?”

  Anne indulged in the most sordid, immoral, lustful impulses with a lowly court musician, as well as her own brother—Jane’s husband—in addition to the enchantments she cast upon the king, to fool him into marrying her. All I want is a baby, just like the king. And I am in love with Thomas, truly in love. What I am doing, though certainly a sin, cannot be quite so horrible as the acts Queen Anne committed for pure pleasure.

  “You should not, but I suppose you are allowed.”

  “She deserved what happened to her, didn’t she?” Jane would know this better than anyone.

  “You must understand this, Catherine. The Howards only support those who will benefit the family.”

  “I know that.”

  “No, I do not think you do. If Anne was accused of being unable to bear a son, a continuation of the king’s curse, then they would abandon her. If she was to be found a witch, then the Boleyns and the Howards would be the first to light the pyre at her feet so that they would come out of the flames on the other side: clean and pure and loyal to their king, unblemished by their daughter’s sins. And they did—just look where you are now.”

  Jane is looking at me strangely, her eyes lit uncannily by the light of the fire. Her words make my heart beat loudly in my ears.

  “If Anne had been exiled, she would have existed as a reminder of the unclean thing that was once crowned Queen of England. It was best for the family not only to remove Anne from the throne, but to dispose of her completely.”

  “I know. That was what the king wanted.”

  “True, he did—even before Anne knew it, I think. But what happened to her, in the end, was for the best for all involved. They snuffed out her very existence, as if she had never happened.”

  “I am doing what the duchess told me to do, what you told me to do,” I remind her. “All I want is to be pregnant.”

  “And you will be pregnant, and soon. I am sure of it.” She reaches out and rests her hand upon mine. “I am only telling you what I know. You are the king’s wife. Your life is in his hands.”

  “And in my family’s hands.”

  She considers this, her eyes lost for a moment in the flames. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I suppose you are right.”

  IN YORK, THOMAS utilizes a secluded back stairway to gain entrance to my bedchamber at the top of the stairs: a tower room with tall, cloudy windows draped in dusty velvet. The room is dark when he appears in the doorway, closing the door quietly behind him.

  “Joan will guard the stairway,” Lady Rochford tells me. My gaze is locked with Thomas’s. He smiles, and moves a step closer to the bed. “But it is too dangerous for me to leave this room unguarded. Are you listening, Catherine?”

  “Can you stand guard within the main chamber?”

  “Will it not seem suspicious that I am not in here, in bed? I must stay here, for your safety.” With these words she sits upon a chair, close to the door. “I’m sure that the duchess would agree.”

  Lady Rochford’s presence is not enough to dissuade me from spending a night in Thomas’s arms. The room is shadowy already, but I put a damper on the flames in the hearth.

  “I never thought you to be so concerned with privacy, Catherine,” she remarks, “with what I’ve heard about your trysts at Lambeth.”

  I ignore this comment and walk over to Thomas.

  “Your guard is at her station, I see?” he says with a grin, sitting upon the great carved bed. I blow out a few of the candles lit beside the bed, but he takes my hand in his and pulls me toward him.

  “Yes, she has insisted on staying.”

  “Do not think about it.” His voice is deep, rich. “We are alone here. Tonight is about you and me.” He pulls me closer, to sit on the bed beside him.

  “Did you receive my letter?”

  “Yes, I did,” he tells me, brushing his lips against my neck.

  “You did not write me back,” I whisper in his ear. “I was hoping that you would write so that I may replace all of your old letters that I lost so long ago.”

  “I will give you something better than a letter.” He smiles, and moves in for a kiss.

  But I want a letter, I think in the midst of the kiss. How do I explain it to him? Why do I want one so desperately? I follow the trail of this desire all the way down to the pit of my heart, my being: because a letter will be something that I can keep, and touch, and reread. It will remain real once all of this dream is over, and we are back at court and must resume our real lives.

  “Catherine? What’s wrong? You’re shivering.”

  “Nothing,” I tell him, and pull him close to me. “Nothing, my little sweet fool.” I hold him so tightly that my arms begin to ache.

  The world consists of only this chamber, this bed, and the two of us upon it. As he pulls me free of my corset, I can only wonder if he, too, realizes that this will end soon, when the progress is over and we return to London. I try to banish the thought from my mind, focusing instead on the feeling of his skin against my skin.

  Lying naked together in the dark, Thomas whispers to me: “I love you, Catherine.”

  My eyes snap open. Jane snores softly in a corner of the room.

  “Marry me, Catherine,” he whispers. “Marry me.”

  “I am married.” My voice is barely a whisper. “You know that I am married. You cannot ask me that.”

  “But I love you,” he tells me. “You were meant to be with me.”

  “He says I was meant for him, too. And he is king, there is no refusing.”

  “So you will refuse your own heart, instead?”

  “You know that it is not my decision to make, and it never was. Neither of us can make our own decisions—we were fools to think otherwise.”

  I cut my eyes at his, angry at the thoughts he is dredging up within me. I do not want to think of the king now, nor of our sad predicament.

  “Did you not know what you were doing, putting me in the king’s path all the time? Lady Rochford said you helped them arrange all of this. Is that true?”

  His gaze breaks away from mine, fractured.

  “You cannot accuse me of refusing my heart now, when you had a hand in it all along.”

  “No, no, please don’t. I’m sorry. You’re right—neither of us has ever been offered a question without first being given the response. I did what I was told, just as you did.”

  “We are obedient children.”

  “Indeed, we are,” he says, moving his hand up my thigh. I elbow him softly, a bit annoyed. I prefer not to think of this love affair as yet another of the duchess’s schemes.

  “Listen to me, Catherine. Please, just listen to me. There will be a time when you will be given the opportunity to decide for yourself. There might not be long to wait.”

  I roll over and face him. The chamber is dark; all of the candles have burned out. Only a pale slice of moonlight permeates the room. His dark eyes glitter in the silvery light.

  “Promise me that you will choose me then, when it is for you to choose.”

  When the king is dead. That is when I will be able to choose. Somehow the danger of the words he dares not say makes clear to me the graveness of our current actions. The hard glitter in his eyes frightens me. I touch his face, I kiss him, but I dare not answer him.

  “What you are saying is treason.”

  “We already share treason, Catherine. We harbor it in our hearts each day. We enjoy it upon this bed at night.”

/>   I close my eyes in shame but he presses his lips to mine, passionately.

  “Will you marry me?”

  “You know that I will,” I tell him.

  At the sound of these words coming out of my mouth, I suddenly feel that I am falling. I wrap my arms around Thomas but the sensation only persists: we are both falling, spiraling through the great black void.

  XXXI

  By the torchlight in the banquet hall, I am wary of Thomas’s presence. Tonight I sit beside the king and abstain from dancing. I am glad to be here, surrounded by people, with so many things to look at and distract me from my own thoughts. I pretend to be entertained by the antics of fools and minstrels. One fool reads a long, bawdy rhyme that makes the whole hall echo with laughter. The king laughs heartily and pats my hand.

  In my chamber, Malyn brushes my hair. Joan approaches, dropping a hasty bow.

  “My queen, you have a visitor.”

  Her voice sounds odd, stilted. I look up; her face is blanched. Her eyes dart furtively, as if acknowledging the other ladies in the room.

  “Of course,” I tell her, and manage a small smile to hide my wariness. “We will meet in the main chamber. Ladies, you are dismissed. Joan will stay with me.”

  Emerging into the main chamber with Joan, I find myself face-to-face with Francis Dereham. He smiles at my approach, then sweeps an elaborate, mocking bow.

  I knew it was him—that red-and-black mask! I curse myself for not doing anything, but what could I have done? I did not want to admit it. I wanted to imagine it was a bad dream. It is a bad dream.

  “I’m sure you are surprised to see me.” His voice is loud, brazen. I can tell that he is drunk. “Perhaps you assumed I was murdered by pirates, or lost at sea?”

  “I am pleased to see you, of course.”

  “Of course you are.” His voice is thick with mockery. “I thought this the perfect time to present myself to my queen, seeing as you’ve now appointed all of our old friends to positions in your household.” He stares at me, smiling. “Now we can all be together again.”