Page 96 of Love, Remember Me

"The king believes he has provided generously for you, Your Grace," the chamberlain answered the queen stiffly. "I cannot complain to him."

"Oh, very well," Cat said. "I shall write him myself."

"Perhaps we shall not be here very long," Nyssa said gently, attempting to cajole the queen. "By the time you write to the king, and he thinks it over and then answers you, your circumstances may have changed for the better, Your Grace."

"That was very nicely done," Lady Baynton said to her afterward. "You know how to handle her, and I am most grateful for it, Lady de Winter. Despite it all, she is imperious, and very difficult."

"She is afraid," Nyssa said.

"You would not know it," Lady Baynton replied.

"No," Nyssa answered the good woman. "She does not show it. She is a Howard, after all."

HENRYManox, the lutanist from the dowager duchess's household, was the first person to be questioned by the Privy Council. He readily admitted to attempting to seduce Catherine Howard when she was but twelve and a half years of age. "She was very well-formed for a girl of her tender years," he related. "She had the breasts of a maid of sixteen, I'll vow, my lords."

"Did you know her in the biblical sense?" the Duke of Suffolk questioned the man. "The truth now! Your life is at stake," he warned.

Manox shook his head. "I was the first man ever to handle her. With an untried maid, one must go slowly," he explained to them. " 'Tis like introducing a mare to the bridle for the first time. By the time I had her accustomed to it, she bolted and threw herself at that bloody Dereham. For all my trouble, and time, he was the one to have her maidenhead, damn him! Even so, I'd have liked a bit of her. She had a great taste for passion, did Cat!

"I tried to rid myself of the Dereham fellow so she would have to come back to me, but I failed, alas. I told the old dowager that if she were to pretend to retire at her usual time, and then an hour later visit the dormitory where Mistress Catherine Howard slept, she would see something that would both displease and shock her."

"And did she go?" the Duke of Norfolk asked sharply.

"Nay," Manox said. "She smacked my face, and said I was nothing but a troublemaker, and I would lose my living and her patronage if I did not cease my wicked and scandalous innuendo. I could do nothing more."

The Duke of Norfolk's narrow lips stretched themselves narrower in a grimace of disapproval. His stepmother had behaved very, very stupidly.

The Privy Council debated. They decided that Henry Manox could be of no real help to them. He was obviously not important in the scheme of things. To the musician's great relief, he was released from custody and sent on his way. He disappeared from London soon after, and was never heard from again.

The Privy Council next called Mistress Katherine Tylney, the chamberer who had been with the queen both before and after her elevation. She was a very distant relation of the queen's, a plain young woman with nothing special to recommend her.

"You have been with Catherine Howard for some time, is that not so?" the Duke of Suffolk asked the woman.

"Aye," she said. "Since we were girls at Horsham. She, of course, being a Howard, was of better birth than I was. I considered myself fortunate to go up to Lambeth with her."

"What kind of girl was she?" the duke queried further.

"Headstrong," came the blunt reply. "Catherine Howard must always have her own way in everything. Not that she wasn't pleasant about it, for she was. And she has a good heart, but she is headstrong."

"What happened on progress this summer, Mistress Tylney?"

"Please be more specific, my lord," she asked him.

"Tell us about the queen's behavior," Suffolk gently prodded her. "Was she all that a good wife should be to her husband, or was she perhaps duplicitous in her conduct toward the king?"

"Actually, she began behaving strangely in the spring," Katherine Tylney said, now given the direction they required her to go in. "At Lincoln the encampment was set up complete with the royal pavilion, but the king and queen stayed in the castle. Two nights during our stay the queen left her room late, usually after eleven o'clock. She did not return until four or five in the morning."

"Do you know where she went?" Suffolk said, and his companions on the Privy Council leaned forward to hear what the young woman would say.

"Lady Rochford had rooms two flights up from the queen's own apartments. The first time the queen left, she took Margaret Morton and me with her. When she reached Lady Rochford's chambers, she sent us away and then entered. I heard the door's bolt thrown. The second time she went, she only asked me to come with her. I was required to sit outside of Lady Rochford's chamber with Lady Rochford's servant that time. Again we did not return until five o'clock in the morning. I was most uncomfortable, for the hallway was quite damp."

"Was Lady Rochford in the room with the queen?" Bishop Gardiner asked Mistress Tylney.

"I do not know, my lord. The queen liked me, and so I think she trusted me more than some of the others. I was always taking odd messages to Lady Rochford, and returning with odder messages. It was not that the words were funny, it was just that I could make no sense of them at all."

"Was it possible that the queen was with Master Dereham?" Suffolk wondered aloud.

"Master Dereham did not join the progress until Pontefract, my lords," Katherine Tylney said. "That would have been impossible."

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