by Alison Weir
Katheryn laughed. She was enjoying his company and his wit. “You sound grander than the Duchess! And we are cousins, too, by my reckoning.”
“But not too close, I hope,” Dereham murmured, a twinkle in his eye.
“Well, I have no fortune either.” She sighed. “I, too, live on my lady’s bounty. So maybe we are not ill-matched after all! Maybe she would approve.”
“We don’t have to have her approval to enjoy each other,” he said, downing his drink and giving her a naughty look.
“I don’t know what you mean!” Katheryn giggled, flushed with wine. “Methinks you are too old for me, Sir. I am but seventeen.”
Dereham made a face. “I am only twenty-nine,” he told her. “Not quite a graybeard!”
He took their empty plates to the table, then came back and reached for his sack, taking out a lute and a ballad book. Quietly, he began to play—and play well. The piece was the King’s own song, “If love now reigned,” and that was followed by one called “Adieu mes amours.” It was delightful, sitting there beside this debonair man and being entertained thus. The music was having its effect on others, too. Some were kissing, others withdrawing behind curtains or lolling back on the beds.
Dereham finished playing then turned to her. “Will you be my amour, Mistress Katheryn?” His allure was so great that she did not hesitate. She went into his arms and gave herself up to his kisses. Before she knew it, they were rolling together, fully dressed, on the bed, mad for each other.
“Be mine!” he urged.
“No! It is too soon,” Katheryn protested, against all her body’s instincts. “It would be wrong.”
“Why wait? We want each other.” His breath was hot on her ear.
“I want to know you better,” she whispered.
For answer, he took her hand and guided it inside his codpiece. “Now you know me better,” he chuckled.
“You’re a very bad man,” she told him, but she did not take her hand away, and soon it was too late for him to ask for anything more.
“What are you doing to me?” he groaned.
“What you wanted.” She laughed. “Don’t go to sleep. The other gentlemen will all be leaving soon. None of you must be here in the morning.” Already, there were sounds of people stirring around them.
He heaved himself up, then bent down and kissed her. “May I come tomorrow night?”
She nodded. “I would like that.”
He reached for his sack. “I’ll be here. Oh, and Katheryn—I may call you that, I trust, now that we are better acquainted?”
“Yes, of course,” she giggled.
“Please call me Francis.”
* * *
—
A maiden should be shamefast, she told herself, as she lay abed the next morning, thinking about the night before. Chastity is to be prized. But what was wrong with taking your pleasure where you found it? Why should she deny herself the delights she might know with Francis Dereham? No, she would not!
There was only one problem. Harry. She must end it and weather the storm. It was not fair to keep him under the false illusion that she loved him.
“I see you have a new admirer,” Mary said, as they stood together washing their faces.
Katheryn stole a glance at her. Was she going to start meddling again?
“Mr. Dereham is of good family,” Mary said. “You could do a lot worse, seeing as you have no portion.”
“I do like him,” Katheryn admitted, relieved that Mary was not going to make more trouble for her.
“He likes you. It’s plain for all to see,” Mary went on.
“He wants to come again tonight.” She hesitated. Given that the Duchess’s anger with her had abated, she did not want to risk arousing it again. “Mary, will you steal the key from the Duchess’s chamber and bring it to me? She would never suspect you. I’ll get some food from the kitchens and we can let the others know we’re having a little banquet.”
Mary gave her a complicit smile. “All right. I’ve done it before.”
“Oh, thank you!” Katheryn cried and kissed her.
Mary looked startled, but then she smiled. “Don’t allow him too many favors,” she warned.
“As if I would!” Katheryn turned away, her cheeks burning at the memory of what Harry had said to Mary about her.
* * *
—
Katheryn spent over an hour composing a note for Mary to take to Harry. She was trying to be as kind as possible, but it was hard to find the right words. “You have been a good friend to me,” she wrote, “but I think it best we do not see each other again. We have no future, and that which was between us is over, on my part and I think on yours, too. Farewell. I wish you well.”
She folded it, gave it to Mary, and waited for the storm to break.
* * *
—
That afternoon, Malyn told Katheryn that Mr. Manox was at the lodge, demanding to see her. “The porter says he’s in a terrible state. Oh, Katheryn, what have you been doing?”
Katheryn’s heart plummeted. “Nothing!” she cried. Bracing herself, she hurried down to the lodge and found Harry there, pacing up and down agitatedly.
“What do you mean by this?” He thrust the crumpled note at her.
“What I said. I’m sorry, Harry, but I can’t see you again.”
“Has the Duchess found out about our meetings?”
“No.” She hung her head. “It’s my decision.”
“Oh, God,” he moaned. “I love you, Katheryn! Please don’t do this.”
“You’ll thank me for it in the long run,” she blurted out and fled indoors, weeping, hating herself for having hurt him. But she had had to tell him the truth. She just didn’t love him any more, and he would have been hurt far more deeply if she had let things continue.
* * *
—
At midnight, Francis arrived with Edward Waldegrave, bringing fruit and wine, which they shared among the gentlewomen. Joan being absent, visiting her mother, Edward switched his attentions back to Dotty Baskerville, while Francis, having been very free with bestowing his kisses on every other young woman present, joined Katheryn and played his lute. Vexed as she was with that, she thrilled to his banter and the touch of his arm on hers.
“I want you,” he told her again, as they lounged on her bed, drinking. “I really want you. Say you’ll be mine!”
She had been asking herself again why she should not have a lover. Some of the girls here passed from one gallant to another. She was fed up with being virtuous. There was no marriage on the horizon for her, nor ever would be if the Duchess went on forgetting to bestir herself. Why should she not enjoy the pleasures of love here and now? She would never want any man as much as she wanted Francis.
“I will,” she breathed, and slid into his arms.
“You mustn’t worry,” he murmured into her ear. “If I used a woman a hundred times, I would get no child unless I wanted to.”
“I, too, know how a woman might meddle with a man and yet conceive no child unless she wishes to,” Katheryn told him. “One of the gentlewomen told me.”
“Then can we make love?” His grip on her tightened.
She did not hesitate. “Of course! When the others have gone to bed.”
“We can draw the curtains.”
“Let me finish my wine.” She did not want him thinking her too eager.
Francis shook his head. “Such cruelty!” He stretched out on the bed. “You know, some believe that a woman must reach her climax before she can conceive a child.”
“That’s nonsense. Why, I’ve never—” She stopped, realizing that she was about to admit to having permitted Harry certain favors.
“You know for a fact that it’s nonsense,” he said, with that sardonic smirk. “So Mr. Manox was not such
a bad lover after all! Don’t worry, Katheryn, I didn’t expect a beautiful young woman like you to be a maid.”
“But I am a maid. I was resolved to wait for the right man before I surrendered my virginity. Now I have found him!”
It was just gone three o’clock, and she would have jumped into bed with him but for Meg saying she thought she’d heard someone in the gallery outside. No one dared open the door, and they all held their breath to see if the noise came again, but it did not.
“It’s the ghost!” Francis grinned.
“What ghost?” Katheryn asked, wide-eyed.
“Oh, I don’t know.” He laughed. “There must be some headless phantom or ghastly ghoul that walks this house.”
“Don’t!” she cried, to his amusement.
“I think we ought to leave,” Edward advised Francis. “Just in case someone is about. We can’t risk our delightful banquets being banned.”
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Francis told Katheryn, and kissed her soundly, arousing in her sensations she had never experienced. “It will be a pleasure postponed, although it is misery to me to leave you.”
She went to bed feeling frustrated. All day she had longed for him, tonight she had resolved to give herself wholly to him—and now she would have to wait another twenty-four hours before they could be together again.
The hours did drag, but still they passed. When evening finally fell, Mary, whom she now looked upon as a friend, if not a close one, agreed to steal the keys again. Katheryn ran up to the dorter ahead of the others, pulled off all her clothes, inserted a rag soaked in vinegar, and got into bed, drawing the curtains on the room side behind her. Then she lay, in fevered anticipation, waiting for Francis to arrive.
He came as the bell struck midnight.
“Katheryn?” he whispered. “Are you asleep?”
“No, I’m in here, waiting for you,” she replied. When he opened the curtains, he stared at her in amazement as she lay there with her breasts exposed and her hair spread out like an auburn cloud on the pillow, then he threw off his gown and leaped in beside her in his doublet and hose, tugging at the latter to free his points.
“Katheryn!” he exclaimed, pulling back the covers and exposing the rest of her body, marble-like in the moonlight flooding through the latticed window. “You are beautiful!” His fingers explored her, lightly, then more boldly and insistently, until she was desperate for him. Pulling down his hose, he entered her and rode her like a stallion, gasping and moaning, until he paused and began shuddering. It was painful at first, but not for long, for another sensation began to build inside her. Pressing herself against him, Katheryn felt her body explode. Never had she known joy like this!
* * *
—
They were lovers all through that enchanted winter. She let Francis use her as a man uses his wife, and rejoiced in it. Their hours together flew as they pleasured each other until it was almost day, when he would usually be the last man to leave the gentlewomen’s chamber. Often, now, Katheryn stole the keys from the Duchess’s chamber herself, locking the dorter door from the inside. It was not just lust that drove her. She was in love again, more than last time, and knew that Francis’s feelings for her ran as true and deep as his desire.
The gentlewomen in the dorter knew what was going on. Some were tolerant. Even Mary teased her. Coming upon them sharing a passionate kiss, she laughed. “Look at you two, hanging by your bills as if you were a pair of sparrows!”
“Hark to Dereham, broken-winded!” other girls would giggle, hearing the couple making merry between the sheets.
Sometimes, Katheryn smuggled Francis into her own chamber for greater privacy, but there was no key and she was so worried that someone might hear them and come in that she could not relax. It was safer in the dorter with the door locked on the inside.
On occasion, she made him strip completely to make love, needing to be as close to him as possible, skin on skin, but Meg, who had heard her, warned her that it was risky. “What if the Duchess comes looking for the key and demands to be allowed in?”
“When has she ever done that?” Katheryn retorted, but, all the same, she told Francis he should keep on his doublet and hose.
Several times, when Katheryn had given up waiting for him, he arrived in the early hours, often as late as four or five o’clock, to find her sharing a bed with Kat, Alice, or some other gentlewoman whose bed was occupied by another courting couple. He would unlace his hose and lewdly wiggle his erect penis or put his hand in the bed and touch Katheryn intimately, making the other girl huddle over to her side, hiding her eyes, enabling him to climb in and frisk with Katheryn, who could not stop laughing.
Kat complained only that they kept her awake.
“I pray, Mr. Dereham, lie still!” she would hiss.
Alice, though, was angry when Francis invaded the bed, and jumped out. “Such a puffing and blowing I have never heard!” she exclaimed and stalked off in search of a space next to someone else. “For shame!”
The next morning, she cornered Katheryn. “I will not sleep with you again.”
Margaret Bennet turned on her, too. “I won’t lie with you, either. You know not what matrimony is!” Katheryn shrugged. It was no loss to her; she preferred to sleep alone. And Francis, warned of others’ disapproval, thumbed his nose at them, as it were. Sometimes, he did not even bother to close the curtains, indulging his passion in full view of whoever was looking—and Katheryn caught people staring several times.
Other nights, he would be tamer, bringing food and drink to make good cheer. It did not placate the likes of Alice. One night, when Katheryn was approaching the dorter, she heard Alice talking to someone about “Mistress Katheryn’s doings with Dereham.” Then Mary’s voice said, “Let her alone, for if she goes on as she has begun, she will be naught within a while. Everyone’s talking about her, even the porter and the grooms of my lady’s chamber. It’s only a matter of time before the Duchess hears of it.”
Katheryn marched in. “It’s a pity you encouraged me then, isn’t it, Mary? Oh, I would be well matched with Mr. Dereham, you said.”
Mary’s cheeks were pink. “I meant marriage, Mistress Katheryn, not fornication.”
“So what did you think we would be doing when you fetched the key?” Katheryn retorted.
“I thought you would be courting!” Mary snapped.
“Who knows but that we will be married?” Katheryn said.
“He’s not likely to marry you now,” Alice muttered. “He’s enjoyed all the blessings of marriage. Why would he bother?”
“He loves me for myself,” she replied, “and I think I know more about my personal affairs than you do.”
She flounced out, burning with indignation, praying they would not betray her to the Duchess. She was safe, she thought. She knew too much about Alice’s dalliances for Alice to risk telling on her, and Mary had not spilled the beans about Manox.
Malyn was another matter. Katheryn and Francis had now thrown caution to the wind and bedded together when they pleased, morning, afternoon, or evening. One morning, they were lingering in bed after the others had gone down to Mass, when Malyn walked into the dorter with a velvet gown in her arms. At that moment, Katheryn was lying naked on the bed and Francis, wearing only his jerkin, had his hand on her privy place. Malyn dropped the gown and fled.
Desire extinguished, Katheryn sprang up, bade Francis help her hurriedly dress, and went after her, finding her in the still room.
“Don’t tell on me, please, Malyn,” she begged. “I love him and we are doing no harm to anybody.”
“You do not care that you risk bringing shame on the Howards and the Tilneys?” Malyn’s voice was cold.
“I hardly think my doings are of any importance. The Duchess seems to have forgotten that I exist. Am I to wither away here at Lambeth without some pleasure in
my life?” Katheryn was weeping now.
Malyn, ever soft-hearted, took pity on her. “Just stop what you are doing, sweetheart. Get Mr. Dereham to approach my lady and ask for your hand. She may not object, for he is cousin to us all. You could do a lot worse. That would be the right way of going about things.”
Katheryn thought about it, but decided it was better not to take Malyn’s advice. What if the Duchess said no? She would then know that there was something between her and Francis and would certainly forbid them to see each other. Francis would be sent away, like Harry. No, it wasn’t worth the risk.
* * *
—
Francis seemed unbothered. He thrived on taking risks and urged Katheryn to be ever more daring. Once she would have been more cautious, but she was so avid for him that caution abandoned her. They spent long hours together in her chamber when everyone was downstairs during the day, not undressing fully lest someone come in. Francis even insisted on their making love in the Duchess’s own bedchamber while she was at Mass or at table, and ofttimes they would kiss and lie together on her great bed with its carved posts and crimson velvet counterpane, not caring if a servant came in from time to time.
“Shh!” Dereham would say, holding a finger to his lips and winking. “Not a word to anyone!”
At other times, he insisted they use Mother Emmet’s bed, or even the privy. Once he left the door open, and as he thrust his penis into her hand, Katheryn turned her head and noticed Margaret Bennet staring at them. She came to wonder if Margaret was spying on her to gratify her own lust, because on another occasion she saw her peeking through a door watching Francis lift Katheryn’s skirt and gaze at her body.
The dorter was divided between those who disapproved of the love between Katheryn and Dereham, or were shocked by it, and those who felt the couple should be let alone to make their own choices. This was invariably the opinion of the young ladies and gentlemen who themselves consorted in the night hours.
