Page 112 of Boleyn Traitor
‘Forgive me,’ he whispers, but his eyes are still dark with desire, and she is shaking. ‘Forgive me.’
I lead the way up the winding stairs, through my bedroom to the queen’s bathroom. The stool – a gloriously embroidered velvet throne with jugs of hot water and sponges and soaps – is in the corner of the room, hidden by a screen. In the main part of the room is a table holding a jug, an ewer for washing, drying sheets, a warm robe, two footstools before the little fire, banked in for the night, and a chair in the corner.
Kitty recoils. ‘Not here!’ she whispers. ‘Not here!’ Even in the most scandalous circumstances, she is still thinking about appearances.
‘This is the safest place; nobody will disturb you here,’ I point out. ‘We can lock the door, and nobody can even knock. Nobody has the right to enter at all.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he whispers. ‘Anywhere, as long as we can be together.’
He draws her to the seats before the fire. I sit at a distance, in the chair. I watch them, silhouettes in the firelight. I see the absolute beauty of the two firelit profiles, the tenderness of the inclinationof his head as she whispers and then her upward gaze to him as he replies.
I had thought, after that first plunge into each other’s arms, that they would kiss; but they hold hands like betrothed children, and whisper for hours, so softly that they can only hear each other by putting their foreheads together, their cheeks touching, their lips to the other’s neck. They speak of their childhoods, of their parents, of their families, of the lovers they have known, and for more than an hour, for more than two hours, they whisper when they first saw each other, when they knew that they were in love, how they have longed for this moment to be together. He begs her pardon for preferring another girl when she was a maid-of-honour to Anne of Cleves and confesses that he has been Bess Harvey’s lover but that he will never be with another woman after this night. I hear her soft laugh. She says that the affair has not been of great profit to Bess, who is notorious for her shabby clothes. He says if Kitty had continued as a maid-of-honour, she would have been his mistress. She says not so – that she would have broken his heart in revenge, and he whispers that his heart is hers, so she has her revenge.
Like children, they plan nothing, they don’t think of tomorrow, never mind the weeks ahead of us on progress, never mind what will happen when we all return to ordinary life in the royal castles and palaces and Culpeper must help the old king into the bed of the girl he loves. They do not speak of the king, not of his illness, not of his lust for Kitty; it is as if they are meeting in another world, where none of the cruelties of this world can hurt them.
They whisper, turn and turn about, like blackbirds settling at sunset – one speaking sweetly and the other softly replying – until I hear the nightwatchman shout the hour in the garden and the cathedral bell strikes three long notes, and I have to recall them to the real world: ‘Your Grace, Master Culpeper, that’s three in the morning – you have to go to your beds.’
They cannot bear to be parted. He goes to the door, then comes back for a kiss; she holds the ties of his cape and commands him totell her that he loves her again. I have to order her to her bedroom and open the doorway to the garden stair and shoo him from my room.
I listen at the top of the stair to hear the door at the bottom open and close and know that he is safely out in the garden. Then I go back to the queen’s bedroom and find Kitty in bed with her hair a tumble of bronze across the pillow, and she is already fast asleep.
ANYONE WHO CAREDfor her would see the next morning that she is transformed. The slight bruised violet colour under her clear eyes hints at lack of sleep, but the radiance of her face shows that she was sleepless with joy. The way she carries her head, the colour of her eyes, which shine today more green than hazel – something about her smile, which has a secret behind it... but no one in this whole court of people who depend upon her for their living – the servants who wear her livery, the ladies who dine at her table, even the criminal who goes free today because Kitty prettily asks the king for a pardon – no one cares for her at all. Among these thousands of men and women, only Thomas Culpeper and I love her for herself – my love is partly self-serving, and I don’t know about his. Surrounded by an adoring court, just as she was surrounded by servants at Lambeth, she is still a lonely little girl neglected by those who should protect her.
Surprisingly, only our uncle Thomas Howard sees a change in her. ‘Has she taken?’ he asks me. ‘She looks like a woman and not a starved waif for once.’
‘Not yet,’ I reply, but I think: he’s right – loving Culpeper may make her fertile. Desiring him, she might conceive a child from the king. I think, for only a moment: Lord, what a beautiful child Kitty and Culpeper would make! – and then I think: too risky, unless we knew for sure that the king was in his last days, and then to make her a pregnant widow would be worth the risk and guarantee her title of dowager queen and her place in a regency council.
Kitty glows, a girl in love, in her first love, a sacred love. She canthink of nothing but Thomas Culpeper. She gives Bess Harvey, his former mistress, a gown from the royal wardrobe as a private joke to him; but she makes no other public gesture. They get through the day with nothing more than a few exchanged glances.
The king goes to bed early again, and Kitty resists the temptation to stay up late and dance with Culpeper. Loving him has changed her; she does not want to flaunt him before her maids-of-honour, not even to triumph over Bess Harvey.
CULPEPER PALMS Anote to me at dinner with one word –midnight– so I have no chance to refuse him. As the bell strikes twelve, Kitty waits for him before the fire in the stool room. Tonight, both my maid and Catherine Tilney insist on waiting up, thinking we are sitting before the fire in my bedroom again. I wish they would go to their own beds, but Catherine Tilney is a kinswoman and cannot be commanded. I make them both wait in an alcove outside my room.
I tell the lovers that the maids are outside my door and they cannot stay long; but no time would be enough for them. They repeat all that they said last night, and they speak of the events of the day that have kept them apart. He tells her that he cannot take his eyes from her when she and the king are at chapel; she tells him how she has to look at the ground when she makes her morning curtsey to the king. They don’t complain that they are star-crossed; they don’t wish that they had met before the king saw her, they don’t even wish for more than they have now. They don’t plan. They are entranced with the moment: the touch of a hand, the offer of a kiss, her finger on the dimple in his chin, his hand tracing the line of her slim neck.
While they court, blind to the dangers and consequences, I sit in my chair in the corner and wonder how to profit from this development. As a courtier, I should support my principal while turning this to my own advantage. I should guard us both from risk. I amnot dizzy with love, blind to danger like her. Who knows better than I that evidence against a wife can be used to behead a queen? But the only man who could organise such a legal murder is dead, Kitty has no enemies like Anne, and her husband is blind with honeymoon love. She has no rival, as Anne did. No one has any reason to spy on her or lie about her. There is no powerful Spanish party planning to bring her down. I think, as I so often think: what would Thomas Cromwell advise me? What would he do if he were here?
While the two of them whisper sleepily to each other, I plot a course to keep Kitty safe through this love affair. A girl like Kitty was inevitably going to fall in love with someone, and I am lucky that it is an experienced courtier and a favourite of the king. My task is to keep my principal, a Howard queen, safe and smiling in her place, and Culpeper will help me. But, thank God, I don’t have to do it for very long. Everyone who sees the king sick to his belly in the morning, exhausted at night, always in pain from a suppurating wound, knows that he cannot last long. If the king crowns Kitty at York and dies next Lent, then Culpeper could marry the dowager queen, both of them in my debt, and I could guide the regent queen into power.
THE PROGRESS MOVESnorthwards. Every village on the Great North Road is a witness to the power and wealth of the king. The cavalcade is preceded by his yeoman at arms. He rides beside Kitty in magnificent costume; he is followed by Lady Mary, his subservient daughter, and by ladies and noblemen of the court in order of precedence, then archers with bows on the string, and finally behind them, the household companions and their servants and then all the baggage and supply wagons. Troops of soldiers bring up the rear, as if they can protect us from the hatred that follows behind.
Whole villages turn out to play their part of loyal peasantry, cheering and bringing gifts and even throwing flowers down in themud under the horses’ hooves. It is a daily irony that they throw dog roses from the hedgerow, so the Tudor king is greeted everywhere with the white rose of York – the symbol of the earlier royal family. The very people who now throw white roses on the road had a white rose in their hatbands in the uprising. They know their parts in this masque of loyalty, where the king rides through lands that hate him, and villages still grieving for beloved kinsmen turn out to cheer.
Lincolnshire is boggy after the rains of this miserable summer, and we can only travel short distances before the king is exhausted and his beautiful costumes stained and sweaty. It is a relief to stay at Hatfield Chase for four days to rest the horses and brush the dried mud from cloth of gold capes. Local noblemen and gentry come to pay their compliments, and there is a feast every night. We put on the spring masque again, with reduced costumes but familiar dances, and Kitty and Culpeper go hand to hand in the chain dance and pass each other by as polite strangers.
‘I will die,’ she tells me in a thin little voice that evening, as I brush her hair before bed. ‘I will die unless I see him.’
‘It’s too dangerous here,’ I tell her. ‘What with our uncle the Duke of Norfolk here and Charles Brandon the Duke of Suffolk in attendance? And all the other visitors? You’re constantly watched. Kitty, you did very well at the dance; just keep being careful.’
‘I’ll hardly see him at all tomorrow.’ She speaks as if it is a long sentence of exile. ‘He’s hunting all day with the king, and the next day they’re going fishing. Even if I went, he couldn’t speak more than a word to me. Every deer in the county has been driven into the park for the king to have an easy shot. I’m not going to see him for days, and I will die if I don’t see him.’
I try to laugh it off as childish exaggeration, and I pat her shoulder. ‘Hold on. And as soon as we get somewhere that is less public, I will bring him to you,’ I promise. ‘But not here – not while our uncle’s rooms are just over the gallery.’
Kitty shudders and closes her eyes. ‘I’d even risk him,’ she says. ‘I’d even face him for love, for true love.’
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ I say firmly. ‘Just wait until we move on. It’s only four days.’
‘Four days is like four years when you really love someone,’ she says, and I try to laugh at her; but I know it is true.
