The Confession of Katherine Howard

by Suzannah Dunn

  If I was hoping for sympathy for having had to endure Culpeper’s company, I was disappointed. Francis just looked disgusted. ‘He’s a shit.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that was obvious.’

  ‘Thomas Culpeper!’ he despaired.

  I didn’t know what to say–a rush of responses came to mind, many of them contradictory.

  He made it easier: ‘How can she?’

  ‘Well, it’s just–’ what she does. ‘I mean, that’s just her, isn’t it.’ Realising too late that this could be taken to reflect badly on him.

  He didn’t seem to have noticed. ‘I’d’ve–’ But he reigned himself in: I saw him do it and heard the unsaid words:…gone anywhere, done anything for her.

  I spared him, looked away, across the courtyard. ‘I know.’

  And now he looked at me–halted, drew my focus back to him–and his frank look said, Stupid, wasn’t I.

  I didn’t know how I should respond, so I said nothing and, again, looked away. Sunshine was stripping down the frost layer by layer before my eyes, everything sopping. Looking back, I discovered to my surprise that he was smiling, and I thought I understood why: I hadn’t lied to him.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said to himself as much as to me, ‘let’s go and do something nice.’

  ‘It’s February,’ I objected. ‘And it’s Lent.’ What is there that’s ‘nice’?

  ‘A fireside,’ he decided. ‘We need a fireside. Come on: my room.’

  Firewood: up to his old tricks, then. I gestured towards the stables: ‘But aren’t you supposed to be going to work?’

  He grinned. ‘D’you know–’ he encircled his throat with a hand–‘I think I’m coming down with something.’

  In his room, we settled on cushions as close as bearable to the fire. I’d envisaged that we’d take the opportunity for some catching up after our two weeks apart, but in the event we spoke very little at first–a minimal swapping of news of acquaintances–and then not at all, captivated by the constant shifting of the flames and lulled by the heat. I’d envisaged, too, that being in such close proximity might feel uncomfortable but, eventually, it was the space between us that came to feel odd. I really don’t remember either of us making the first move; it was just that we reached for each other and then there we were, holding hands. Incredibly, I don’t remember even thinking about it, but simply receiving the weight of his hand and letting him take the weight of mine. I don’t remember wanting any more of him; I felt as if I had everything I could ever want. And besides, he’d be there–I knew, now–when I did want more. We stayed sitting there, holding hands, until I said that I’d better go or Skid would be missing me.

  We took our time, in the weeks to come, getting to know each other. Certainly he made much of getting to know me: dwelling, I felt, on the least glamorous, most incidental parts of me, my protrusions and hollows. A brush of his lips across the heel of my thumb and a little kiss to a knuckle; a breath on an earlobe and the pressing of his lips to an eyebrow, the bridge of my nose, the bud of my own top lip, then along my hairline and, when I’d untied it, to the ends of my hair. All the while he’d breathe a laugh too low to hear, but definitely there: a hum, detectable. The tip of his tongue to the inside of my wrist, dabbed on to the scribble of veins. His lips down the flank of my throat and into the hollow at the base, then along my collarbone, that most gawky of bones. Sometime he’d cup my wool-clad heel as if to demonstrate how perfect a fit, as if it mattered that my heel fitted into his palm. A dip of his lips into the arch and then to the knob of ankle bone and the well of it, which, he’d insist–as if I were disputing it–was kiss-sized.

  With his scattered kisses he was busy doing, I suspected, what he hadn’t done with Kate: doing anything and everything but. This, with me, was to be different. And perhaps he was taking me apart, too, piece by piece, and putting me back together again as a new me, his me. You, you, you, said each laying of his lips: this is what you are, to me; all this. As for me, I did at last get to slide my thumbnail between those front teeth. ‘Careful,’ he relished warning me: I might bite. A squeaky-tight fit: if I were to take it all the way, we’d be stuck.

  And then, too soon, it was time again for Kate’s return. We’d begun to talk about Kate while she was away–I suppose we both recognised that we’d be increasingly uncomfortable, otherwise–but never, by mutual understanding, about what she’d meant to him or the time they’d spent alone together. We were careful to talk of her as our friend, which, of course, she was. Now that she was due to come home, I was worried that Francis would back away from me, perhaps even deny me. When it came to it, though, he was respectful of her feelings but he didn’t stint with me, and I loved him even more for it. Neither of us had told her what was going on between us but she’d seemed to sense it; and if she was surprised, she didn’t show it. When, though, did she ever show that she was surprised? I’ll leave you two to it, she’d say, breezily. She often referred to us as ‘You two’, and I would’ve been grateful but for the faintest unease that our affair was only happening because she permitted it.

  She was with us less often, anyway, this time: she was more often dining in the duke’s palace lodgings and returning late across the river. She was moving in a very different world from ours, and was increasingly at home in it. I didn’t envy her, and, of course, I was grateful to be left alone with Francis.

  What, though, of her and Thomas Culpeper? There was no mention of him, nor any visits from him; so, the day before her return to the palace, I braved it and asked her. She was busy packing her finery and didn’t even look up when she replied, ‘There is no me-and-Thomas-Culpeper.’ I waited for her to elaborate, but of course I should’ve known better. So, it was to be that Thomas Culpeper was nothing to her and never had been. Well, I could certainly understand that.

  When I summoned up courage, the following day, to mention to Francis that she and Culpeper had come to nothing, he was similarly dismissive. He was polishing his boots and, like Kate, he barely raised his eyes when he responded. ‘Well, he can’t have her, now, can he?’

  What did that mean? He seemed to know something. Did he mean that Kate was getting married? Would he know, if I didn’t? He might, I supposed–being close to the duke.

  He must’ve detected that I was baffled because then he did look up at me. ‘Didn’t she say anything?’

  It struck me that he probably didn’t know that she never told me much. I suffered a flash of anger at her, that she so often kept me in the dark. And now here I was, being kept in the dark by the pair of them. I did my best to sound offhand: ‘About…?’

  ‘The king.’

  The king could, of course, have plans for Kate’s marriage, or at the very least some preferences concerning the placing of a minor Howard, either the shoring up or curtailing of certain allegiances among his nobles.

  I was going to have to admit I didn’t know. Offhand, again: ‘What is it, then, that the king wants?’

  He put down the boot and stared at me. ‘Her.’ As if I were being deliberately obtuse.

  I heard it only as a sound; it made no sense. ‘Her?’

  When he said nothing more, I laughed. ‘What, as a mistress?’ But he didn’t need a mistress. It’s a wife that he needs.

  He frowned. ‘Didn’t she say where she’d been going, all those evenings across the river? To supper with the king?’

  ‘Yes, but–’ Supper with the duke, when the duke was hosting the king: that was what it was. ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’ I was disappointed in him, he was being dramatic, attempting to magnify his own loss: the girl he’d loved was special enough to be pursued by the king. Kate? Seventeen-year-old Kate with nothing, really, to say for herself? Kate, with her sideways glances. Kate, who’d never really done anything or been anywhere. Anyway, the king had so very rarely had mistresses, people said, he’d had wives instead and look whom he’d gone for: soulful Catherine, witty Anne Boleyn, and then, when he was sick of clever women, Queen Jane with her lower
ed eyes and held tongue. Kate had nothing in common with any of the ladies who’d turned the king’s head. Not only did she have nothing much to say for herself, but–it was clear from that glittering gaze of hers–she was in no way pious.

  I laughed it off. ‘And where was it that you heard this little rumour?’

  He maintained his incredulity that I’d not known. ‘The duke; and his household’s full of it.’

  Well, they were all being ridiculous, I decided: over-excited, and deluded. So, I rolled my eyes, making quite clear that I wouldn’t discuss it any further.

  When Kate was next due home, in March, she didn’t turn up. Francis told me that the duke had managed the impossible and found accommodation for her at the palace. She wouldn’t be returning to the backwater in which she’d grown up uneducated, where she’d been just some girl. The duke, Francis said, was pretending that she hadn’t ever been left pretty much to her own devices in Horsham and at Norfolk House but, on the contrary, had been raised by the duchess in a manner befitting a king’s consort and, moreover, that she’d always been his own favourite niece. I wondered how she felt about that.

  Wondering was all I could do, because no word came from her. Every day, I was hopeful that a letter would arrive: every horse at the gatehouse and every boat at the steps had me pause, expectant, before disappointment descended. I wondered if Francis might be the courier, and delved into his pockets whenever I could, anxious that he might’ve forgotten that he had a letter to relay. Kate had never written before–she’d never learned to write with any ease–but then there’d never been any need. I considered writing to her, but what would I say? I imagined dropping by–I’d find my way to that duke-wrangled room of which Francis had spoken–but then what? Hadn’t seen you for a while, so… In my mind’s eye, I saw her look of relief as she drew me aside to tell me what had been going on. Or I could offer a leading question–How are things?–and my carefully composed expression of concern would then enable her to unburden. Maybe I’d even go so far as to challenge her: So, come on, then: what’s this all about? Eye to eye, as girls–as friends–should be able to do.

  Every night when my own wicks were extinguished, I’d stare across the river at the palace’s glowing windows and ponder which was hers and what she was doing. If I ever did go to her, what would she tell me? That she was scared? That she was thrilled? That it was just a joke? Perhaps it happened all the time and was of no consequence; perhaps it was simply a part of life for a maid in the queen’s service. I had no way of knowing.

  Come May, I wasn’t seeing much of Francis, either, as he hunted daily from dawn until dusk in the company of the duke. Whenever we found each other, though, he did now have news of Kate. No letter, still, but news. And what news! Kate was being given gifts by the king, and soon not just–just!–clothes and jewellery but, within weeks, a manor house somewhere, then a second, a third. Kate had tenants, she had income. I could guess how she’d be spending that money: somewhere in London, there’d be a very busy tailor. What, though, was the king getting, or expecting to get, in return?

  I trusted Francis to have the facts, first hand, yet still, with the news he brought me of each gift of the king’s for our friend, I’d find myself checking, You’re sure?

  Of course I’m sure! Wide-eyed and laughing, he regarded this extravagant favouring of Kate as hilarious spectacle, and in his laughter was a note of admiration as if she were at least in some measure responsible for her drastic turn in fortune. I had my doubts, though. She might well be as perplexed by it all as we were. After all, those whom the king favoured had no choice but to accept it. I doubted, too, that Francis would’ve relayed the news quite so happily had the suitor been not the king but Thomas Culpeper.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t laugh along with him because I was afraid, all the time, that she’d be uncovered. The king–for all that he was king and should know everything–seemed to be under the misapprehension that Kate was a lady worthy of his devotion. Well, I knew differently. What I knew was that she was just a girl, and, moreover, a girl who liked boys.

  Francis saw her often enough at court, but only ever in passing, he claimed–making sure to appear unbothered–and at a duke-chaperoned distance. I couldn’t stop myself, though: I’d ask if she’d said anything to him. His reply was always the same: that she’d asked after me.

  Had she? ‘How?’

  ‘What d’you mean, “how”?’

  ‘Well–’ I don’t know–‘what does she say?’

  A shrug: ‘“How’s Cat?”’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What do you say?’

  ‘Well, you know…’

  No.

  ‘Well, I say you’re fine.’

  Was I? Was I fine?

  I’d ask, ‘How does she look?’

  A shrug. ‘The same.’

  But Francis was a man: what did he know! And although he might’ve considered that he knew her well, he hadn’t had my years of experience of reading her. One look at her and–I was sure–I’d know what’d been happening to her and how she felt about it.

  I never stopped asking him what was going to happen and he’d always say he had no idea. I’d ask what others were speculating, and he’d say they had no idea either. Not even the duke: the duke was utterly flummoxed, he said; bowled over by it, but clueless. Because nothing like this had ever happened; because this time there was the new wife, a really very new wife, married to the king a mere couple of months ago.

  One day, though, he didn’t say as usual that he had no idea; he said, instead, ‘Word is that the king’s going to go for non-consummation.’

  The king was intending to have his marriage annulled?

  ‘And then–’ Francis spread his hands, which I took to imply that there’d be no obstacle to re-marriage, and his knowing smile intimated that Kate would be the bride. But the king was a towering monarch decades into his rule, he was challenger of the pope and defender of the faith, a patron of world-renowned scholars and artists, the richest man in Christendom. And for his wives he’d had impeccably schooled Spanish Catherine, French-raised and reform-minded Anne Boleyn, devout Jane Seymour with her meticulous embroidery, and alliance-building Anne from Cleves. It was absurd, surely, that he’d have any interest in marrying a little girl from across the river?

  No one could tell me what I needed to know and there was no one, even, with whom I could talk it over. Francis seemed caught up in keeping tally of the properties Kate now owned, whereas I was desperate to know something of the understanding–if any–between her and the king, and how she felt about it. Maggie would know nothing and understand even less, and Skid’s response to my tentatively ventured observation, once, that Kate was doing well at court was a mere, oblivious, ‘I’m sure she is, dear.’

  But, then, Skid, like everyone else, had a more pressing concern. There’d been no rain for more than a month–day after day, the sky burned blister-white–and the talk everywhere was of moving to residences with deeper wells. At Norfolk house, stink squatted around every corner; and a mile downriver, plague arrived in the city. Thomas Cromwell sailed into the thick of it, one June morning, and along to the Tower: the arch-fixer, and fixer latterly of the king’s marriage to the plain-plain Dutch-speaker, had finally fallen from favour. Midsummer’s Day, the queen herself boarded a barge, but for Richmond Palace, upriver, the pestilence in London the official explanation. Her notoriously health-conscious husband hadn’t accompanied her, though, Francis reported to me, nor had her youngest maid-in-waiting. The duke, too, was staying put nearby in his palace rooms.

  As for Maggie and me: the following day, the duchess told us that we were to return to our homes and stay until we heard from her that it was safe to return.

  Francis had gone to Norfolk on business for the duke, so we were unable to say goodbye and he’d be returning to find me gone. I had no way of getting word to him that I was leaving, and for where and why, although no doubt he’d guess. As
for how long, though, no one knew–and my fear was that it’d end up being for ever, my parents finding it convenient to keep me home while they set about marrying me off. Francis would know not to risk writing to me because the arrival of a letter–indeed, my sending of one, too–would alert my parents to a situation for which we had yet to prepare them, for which it was crucial that we properly prepare them.

  Up in our room, packing my case, I became distraught, which frightened poor Maggie, too, into tears: Please, Cat, please, please stop this. I wished I could, if only for her sake, but what was happening was more than I could bear.

  Back home, the estate was parched: anxieties were running high and energies low. My parents were preoccupied with the calamity, and barely recognised that I was there. In the fields, the labourers were doing their best to beat the clods: dust hurtling all day every day into the house, but no water spare for dampening it down and wiping it away. I was crazed with that dust–each individual hair sheathed, the folds in my palms caked–and it built up at the base of each eyelash to raise little swellings so that even when I wasn’t crying my eyes were red-rimmed and sore. Every day, I tried to do my bit–I wanted to pull my weight, and would’ve welcomed the distraction–but there was less and less that could be done: no sweeping, no laundry, and the heat put paid to any butter-and cheesemaking. So, as early as possible in the evenings, I’d retreat to my room to reel and weep in the relative cool of my linen nightshirt.