The Confession of Katherine Howard

by Suzannah Dunn

  For the rest of the afternoon, I agonised: was it something that could happen to a woman, to be driven to men like that? If what Kate said was true, people were believing it of our queen. The great and the good, no less, were believing it, with sufficient confidence to stage a trial. I couldn’t help but recall those bitches I’d seen subjected to the assaults of dogs: why would a lady ever lay herself open to anything like that? Perhaps the queen was, in her own way, like the mumbling, wild-haired madwoman we’d once glimpsed at the Michaelmas Fair, slashing at herself with a knife. But Kate had said that the queen had been uncovered, which suggested that for a while she’d kept it secret and I was puzzled because that was nothing like the madwoman with the knife. The queen’s madness was such that it had been unknown for a time even to her own husband, which, it seemed to me, was no madness at all.

  By the time that an ashen-faced Skid informed us, a week later, that the queen had been executed, her fate didn’t seem inexplicable to me. Grisly and shocking, yes, but not inexplicable because–this was how I understood it, back then–there’d been something terribly wrong with her. Something within her had broken, she’d been wild and malign, almost inhuman: much as a witch might be, if only witches did exist. That was how I understood it back then, when I didn’t understand it at all.

  On the day of Queen Anne’s beheading came more bad news for the Howards: the king’s betrothal to Jane Seymour. The Seymours were everything that the Howards weren’t: they were newcomers and reformists, they were forward-looking and on the up. And that wasn’t the half of it, that summer, for the Howards. The duke had managed to get his only daughter married to the king’s teenage son–illegitimate, but adored and favoured–only for her to be widowed within the year. Then the duke’s hothead son had an all-too-public spat with the Seymours, becoming obsessed with the new queen’s sister-in-law and refusing to take no–both hers and her husband’s–for an answer. Last, and worst of all, the duke’s young half-brother, the duchess’s handsome son, was imprisoned in the Tower for having fallen in love with that prime piece of royalty, the king’s niece, Lady Margaret Douglas; and there, within a month, he died of a fever.

  All that we girls knew was that he’d died. The duchess took herself off to the family’s Norfolk home to mourn. We didn’t know it, but the family was seriously adrift from royal favour and would have to lie very low indeed. Around that time, my mother sent for me and I had a week at home. No doubt wary of alarming me, she avoided all mention of Howard-problems and I remained none the wiser. There was no talk, either, of marriage for me–my parents would’ve been acutely aware of the disadvantages of trying to make plans for me, associated as I was with the family, before any turning of the tide of royal favour.

  It wasn’t unusual for me to go home–each year I had several trips back–but I was finding it harder every time. I missed my friends’ company, their chatter, and sleeping alone had me feeling oddly conspicuous. Then there was my mother’s misconception of daily life at the duchess’s–her belief in demure, beautifully dressed young ladies undergoing scholarly instruction–with, I sensed, her dread of being enlightened to the contrary.

  That week, I made myself busy around the house and garden, eager to show my mother what I had learned at the duchess’s (the duchess’s dairy produced quite a range of cheeses, her herbery was renowned for its medicines, and I’d become by then a more skilled confectioner than my mother), but, in truth, just as keen to hide what I hadn’t, avoiding any situations in which she might ask me to read or write at length or to translate something from Latin or Greek. It was exhausting to keep up the pretence that the duchess’s household was all that she’d hoped it would be; and there was a sense in which I envied Kate, who had no mother to go home to.

  That autumn, the duke redeemed himself in the king’s eyes to some extent when he was despatched north to suppress the growing rebellion against religious reforms. Having been defeated by a clutch of wayward, lovelorn young Howards, the duke could be a lot more impressive in a military campaign. No matter that he and the rebels were on the same–Catholic–side; he didn’t hold with insurrection, judged it impractical. In the end, he secured his victory with matey assurances of a royal pardon, which he’d have known very well hadn’t a hope in Hell of being granted.

  Back at the duchess’s, we girls had been made aware that the new queen–Jane–was expecting a baby. When news of the prince’s birth reached Horsham, it came accompanied by a smidgeon of hope for the Howards: the duke was to be a godfather. Nevertheless, as the duchess ushered us into the obligatory celebratory Mass, she’d have been gritting her teeth because the rival Seymours now looked to have it well and truly made. Only a week later, though, came word that the queen had died. For we girls, this was the stuff of legend: the new queen–meek and mild and much loved by the king–had succeeded where the others had failed, delivering the longed-for prince, only to die as she did so. Skid informed us that the duke was in charge of the obsequies. He’d have had some homework to do as to how to proceed, because at no time in the king’s long reign had there been the death of a queen who’d not already been exiled or executed.

  The year I turned sixteen, there was still no talk at home of marriage for me. My parents were biding their time because, for as long as there was a vacancy for a queen, everything was up for grabs. With any forthcoming royal marriage, there’d be new allegiances to consider. I had no complaints: I was in no rush.

  It was when I returned from one of my trips home around that time that Kate asked me about my mother. We’d endured morning prayers and would be going to Mass, but first, as usual, there was sweeping to be done and Kate and I found ourselves at the same end of the gallery. Brandishing my broom, I made a sarcastic remark about the joys of being back, which was when Kate asked, ‘Is your mother nice?’ She’d glanced up to deliver the question and there was nothing in the glance that I could detect, no clue as to why she was asking or what exactly she wanted to know. If I’d been asked the question about anyone but my mother, I could’ve answered instantly. But my mother? And, anyway, did she mean nice in general, or nice to me? Being nice in general would involve being polite, I supposed, and my mother was certainly that. Kate’s question, though, I sensed, had concerned me. But it wasn’t my mother’s job, surely, to be nice to me. She had a job to do for me and she did it, she did it assiduously, but the job was to hope for the best for me and do the best for me. It was Skid’s job, surely, to be nice to me, which she was: obliging and generous and reassuring. In any case, ‘nice’ wasn’t a Kate-like word. Was this a trap? At the very least there was an expectation and if I answered incorrectly, my mother would be found wanting. I’d be letting her down. Only when Kate prompted, ‘What’s she like?’ did I realise that I was wrong to be harbouring suspicions. She had in fact spoken easily: it really was just a simple question. ‘Is she kind?’ she asked. It was possible, I realised, that Kate had little or no experience of what a mother could be; just this notion, perhaps, that a mother should be kind.

  Instead of answering, I found myself wanting to know, ‘Do you remember your mother?’ I knew that her mother was dead–as was Alice’s, and Dottie’s–but knew no more, no details.

  With one of her half-smiles, she announced, ‘Jocasta Culpeper,’ as if needing to hear the name. Then she was back to her sweeping. ‘No.’ Brisk, but cheerful enough. ‘I was three.’ When she died.

  A pang to think of Bobo, Lilyflower and Pie, those of Skid’s babies who were three or younger: how painfully they’d miss their mother if the worst were to happen.

  ‘I do remember a lady, though,’ she said, ‘and I think perhaps it was her. There’s some reason I remember this lady. Lifting up a girl, she was, the lady: that’s what I remember.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s all I remember. I think it was Izzy that she was lifting, although I’ve no idea why I think that.’

  ‘Does Izzy remember her?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kate resumed the sweeping. ‘She says she was nice.’

&
nbsp; At the beginning of 1539 the duchess made a bid for a return to royal favour by moving her household to the Howard residence in Lambeth, opposite the king’s principal palace of Whitehall. Probably the duke had impressed upon his stepmother–respected matriarch of England’s foremost family–that while the king was actively seeking a new bride, it would do no harm to make her considerable presence felt close to the seat of power. A new queen would mean places for new ladies in positions of influence at court, and there were several eligible Howard girls languishing on various branches of the family. A couple of years had lapsed since the various disgraces. The duke probably judged that it was time for the Howards to make a move, to try to regain some ground–and there was certainly no more central ground than that Lambeth residence. The move would make clear to their rivals that they intended to get back to business.

  The Lambeth residence–Norfolk House–was more palace than house. Behind the red-brick, two-storey gatehouse were paved courtyards rather than the rutted mud and matted straw of Horsham. The house was brick-built and glazed, draught-proof and water-tight–there was water inside, in places, but, incredibly, it was on tap. Even more incredibly: also indoors, tucked away here and there, were single-occupancy water-closets. Every room of the house was clear of musty, dusty rushes, the floor painted instead to look like marble. The Hall opened on to a garden of yew-bordered rose beds, and the gallery running from Hall to Oratory was no bare-boarded thoroughfare like Horsham’s but a long, furnished room displaying Howard treasures: vivid portraits and gleaming tapestries, Venetian glasses, intricate clocks and compasses. The Oratory was as grand, I imagined, as a cathedral. And the stables were packed with the duke’s horses. Being a town house, so close to London, there was space only for a garden and orchard: no outhouses or farm. So, laundry was collected, and most of our food delivered. Meat and fish came fresh from the London markets, whereas at Horsham we’d lived half the year out of briny barrels. The river delivered visitors, too, not the farmhands and wheel-wrights of Horsham but noblemen and ambassadors, their oarsmen liveried and their vessels fluttering canopies and banners. They disembarked on to a sweep of stone steps guarded by mythical creatures flourishing gilded teeth and claws.

  Only Dottie didn’t come, her parents keeping her closer to home with a placement in the Carews’ Sussex household. We never saw her again, never even heard from her. The rest of us embraced the drastic change in our circumstances, smartened ourselves up. No more worsted. It was time, too, because all of us but Maggie would be turning seventeen, that year. We really were ladies, now, and needed to look the part. My parents were good enough to send funds for me to be fitted for a couple of new gowns: one winter, one summer. It was the duke who had to stump up for his niece: good quality gowns but nothing too fancy, certainly not as fancy as she’d have liked.

  With no laundry to do and little food preparation, nor any tutoring–we were deemed old enough, after the move, not to need it–we girls found ourselves with more time on our hands, a fair proportion of which, in those first few weeks, despite the stinging chill, I spent on the steps by the river. The river-traffic was glorious. Even the smallest wherry had an air of self-importance as it sped along; even the dungboats hauling London’s waste to distant fields. And the water itself: muscular, contemptuously strewing eddies. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I’d see the great royal barge, towed and flanked by a flotilla from where the drummers’ oar-driving rhythm came scattered across the water, snatching up my own heartbeat.

  The duke enjoyed the privilege of a suite in whichever palace the king was occupying, but even the most generously proportioned suite accommodated no more than himself and a couple of servants, so whenever he was in or near London he stationed his retinue at the Lambeth house, as did his London-lodging half-brother, Lord William. They were forever turning up, trailing various attending men. We’d hear them clattering up to the gatehouse on horseback, frostnails on the flagstones, or bounding up the riverside steps, the courtyards ringing with chill-banishing claps of leather gloves, with jangling spurs and buckles. Wherever we turned were men with razor-raw faces.

  Our first glimpse of Francis Dereham came towards the end of our first week, one evening at supper. Despite his youth–he looked, at most, a couple of years older than us–he was important enough to be sitting beside the duke. We’d soon learn that he was a new gentleman pensioner of the duke’s: the son of a family friend, taken on as a retainer, taken under the duke’s wing in the expectation that over the years he’d become one of his closest assistants, one of a handful of right-hand men. He stood out from those other men, given away by his too-new clothing and by being fine-boned and fresh-faced, quick to smile. There was the hair, too: like a dandelion-seedhead.

  He stood out, and he was Kate’s: she laid claim to him when she first lay eyes on him. I glimpsed her do it at supper that first evening: the widening of her eyes and tightening of focus which was always the sign of her embarking on a campaign of watchful pursuit–of falconer, or tenant farmer, clockmaker’s apprentice, apothecary, caterer’s assist ant–around the duchess’s house and grounds. To my knowledge, that was as far as it’d gone since Henry Manox, probably because no man or boy had dared take it any further.

  That evening, when we were back in our room, there was a rap at one of our windows: unmistakably the sound of a thrown pebble. Alice, who was nearest, made the move: opening the window, leaning out, immediately drawing herself back in and re-fastening it. ‘Boys,’ she reported, returning to unpinning the side-seam of her bodice.

  ‘Boys?’ Mary was scandalised.

  ‘Which boys?’ Maggie, puzzled.

  Me, too: puzzled. Pages? Stable boys?

  ‘Those two,’ Alice replied, absorbed in the pins, ‘of the duke’s.’

  To my surprise, I knew instantly: the boy with dandelion-seedhead hair, and the companion sitting beside him at supper. No one else asked for clarification, either–they, too, all seemed to know. I glanced at Kate, but she didn’t meet my eye. Removing her hood, she asked Alice, ‘What did they want?’

  Alice was momentarily taken aback–what did it matter what they wanted? Whatever it was, they wouldn’t be getting it–and barely responded. ‘I didn’t–’ ask? listen?

  Maggie re-opened the window and, below, something was said.

  ‘They have almonds,’ she relayed back.

  ‘For us?’ I asked, stupidly.

  ‘Well, so they said.’

  ‘Get them up here, then.’ Kate sounded bored: bored already by the delay.

  Predictably, Mary protested, ‘No!’

  ‘One of us could nip down there and take the almonds off them,’ suggested Maggie.

  Kate tutted. ‘Just tell them to get up here,’ but instantly did so herself, flinging open the window with a put-upon lunge and whistling into the darkness as if for a pair of dogs.

  We were all stunned into silence, except Mary. ‘What did you do that for?’ When Kate offered no response, she declared, ‘Well, I’m going,’ and, despite being in her nightshirt, slammed from the room to who knew where. Maggie dithered as to whether she too should go–then, panic rising, made a run for it, her hair wild.

  Alice, who’d only just managed to free herself from her gown, snapped, ‘Get me back into this,’ to neither Kate nor me in particular, and neither of us made any move to help her. I decided not to bother with mine: my kirtle would have to do, and I didn’t mind too much that my head was uncovered. We were, after all, still officially girls, still maidens: it was perfectly acceptable for us to be hoodless. The duchess required us to wear our hoods around the house but we weren’t around the house: we were in our own room. And, anyway, I’d have looked silly if I crammed it on, as Alice was now doing with hers.

  When the knock came, Kate didn’t hesitate, reaching decisively for the door before standing back with her arms folded, adopting an expectant air, requiring them to account for themselves. Duly, they looked self-consciousness as they shuffled in, their exuberance checked
. The one who didn’t have the fluffy hair–the stockier of the pair–took the lead, head bowed, deferential. The fluffy-haired, fresh-faced one, following, had none of his caution, the ice having been broken, the way paved for him: he sauntered in, slope-shouldered and grinning.

  They came into the middle of our room. ‘Ladies,’ the stockier one greeted us, nervously, and they both bowed and announced themselves: Ed Waldegrave, the leader; Francis Dereham, his friend. We three said our names, then Kate gestured impatiently towards a mattress (Mary’s, as it happened): Come on, then, let’s see what you have for us. They knelt on it and we gathered around.

  As we crunched on the almonds, the talk was of supper: the quantity and quality of it (both found wanting); the seating arrangements (also unsatisfactory, apparently); and then, from Ed, ‘Do you ever get any decent music around here?’

  ‘Never,’ said Kate, deadly serious and absolutely correct but still somehow making it sound as if they were sharing a joke.

  Ed did most of the talking, that evening. He was the conversation-maker: engaging, garrulous, keen to ingratiate himself. Francis chipped in, often to bring him up on something: he was sharper-eyed, keener-eared, and less concerned with keeping the peace, although he didn’t stint with that unguarded smile of his. They stayed for perhaps as long as an hour.

  Over the following couple of weeks they came many times to spend their evenings in our room. That time of year, mid-winter, after the Christmas festivities, there was so little else to do. They came calling with sweeteners–apples, or dried fruits–which they’d filched from the kitchens, and, just as importantly, with firewood, the origins of which remained a mystery. So, our evenings were transformed: we were sugar-stoked, toasty, and thoroughly entertained. Mary didn’t like it, of course–but, then, she didn’t like anything, and she didn’t present much of a problem, choosing to keep company more often with the duchess and the Scullies.