Page 114 of Boleyn Traitor
It is as if they are living two lives: the daytime one of show and noise and parade of wit and manners, and this inner hushed secret life where they never speak above a whisper and they never touch more than the gentlest kiss on her hand, or her fingers to his cheek, or her hand on his heart.
One evening, someone turns the latch on her bolted bedroom door and Thomas leaps onto the bed, grasps the bedpost, and hides himself in the curtains. I fling open the door, and it is one of the maids, Lucy Luffkyn, bowling in, uninvited with a pile of newly ironed linen.
‘How dare you?’ Kitty demands, and the girl looks at her, open-mouthed.
‘I just brought your shifts for tomorrow? Same as always?’
‘The door was locked. You shouldn’t have tried it. I’ve gone to bed; I’m not to be disturbed just because the laundress has finished ironing!’
‘But you’re not in bed,’ the girl says stupidly. ‘I could see the light from under your door. I could hear voices.’
‘I’m in bed if I say I am! Go at once! And never disturb me at night again, and never try the door. I won’t be woken up by the likes of you!’
I hustle the girl from the room and take the shifts from her.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ she demands rudely. ‘She wasn’t asleep. I could see the light. Why would she lock the two of you in together? What’s she so upset about?’
‘She’s tired,’ I say quickly. ‘We’re all tired. It’s been a long day,and she’s upset that her course has come. Don’t pay any attention to it. Just don’t come in without being told to.’
The young woman, who learned her court manners when Kitty was a playmate with her ladies, is offended. ‘And why are you the only one she sees now?’ she demands.
‘I’m her kinswoman,’ I say flatly. ‘I do as I am bid, and so should you. Don’t come without invitation, don’t try the door without knocking, and don’t question your betters.’
She gives a little flounce off to her own bedroom. When I go back into the room, Kitty is unwrapping Thomas from the bed curtain, hopelessly giggling, clinging to each other, muffling their laughter.
‘What a virago you are!’ Thomas exclaims, and Kitty puts her face against his jacket to silence her scream of laughter. ‘I shall never dare to offend you, I swear. What a raking!’
‘You’ll never offend me.’ She lifts her face to his, flushed with laughter. ‘You never could.’
‘I wish to God I could come into your bedroom without knocking,’ he says, suddenly serious, as if shocked by the rush of his own desire. He puts his hands on her waist; he draws her closer. ‘I wish to God we could tell everyone we were locking the door and not to be disturbed until morning.’
PONTEFRACTCASTLE ISa long pause in this progress, which is starting to feel interminable, and now Sir Edward Baynton tells me that the court is to go to York, where the King of Scotland will meet us for talks to bring peace to the border regions and an alliance between the two kingdoms.
‘Any special ceremony?’ I ask, my heart in my mouth, not daring to say the word ‘coronation’.
For once he is smiling. ‘A ceremony in front of King James? With Mary of Guise watching? He’s having half the town rebuilt for something... I would think you could brush off the ermine and send a message to the jewel house.’
He means a coronation, but I only tell Kitty that we are to meet James of Scotland, and every afternoon for a week, we practise the exact depth of curtsey suitable for a neighbouring king.
‘At York?’ she asks.
‘At York,’ I confirm.
The king goes to Hull to inspect the defences with Thomas Culpeper and his riding court. At once, there is a holiday atmosphere for those of us left behind, and we dance for pleasure, not for appearance, and hunt at a full gallop behind hounds giving tongue; we don’t have to wait for driven game. Kitty is playful with her ladies in her rooms again, and everyone knows – but nobody says – that the court is a happier place without the king. Even Lady Mary breathes more easily when her father is not staring at her, wondering whether she is of most use to him in England, paraded as a captured trophy, or whether he should marry her to a foreign prince and send her far away.
Francis Dereham takes the new freedoms too far and sits over his wine after dinner with the senior gentlemen of the queen’s household, as if he were one of them. Of course, they tell him to leave with the other ushers, and madly, in a drunken rush of temper, he claims that he has his place by special favour, and that he will outstay them all.
‘We’ll have to see him and order him to be more discreet,’ I tell the queen. ‘Or we’ll have to dismiss him. We can’t have him speaking of you and talking about special favour.’
‘We can’t dismiss him,’ she says, her eyes dark with apprehension. ‘What about the letters?’
‘Your grandmother said she had them all?’ I check at her aghast expression. ‘Don’t tell me there are others? Oh Kitty! Nothing written by you?’
‘No, and anyway, Grandmother has them all?’
‘Then we deny them and we can dismiss him.’
She orders Francis to her presence chamber, though by rights Sir Edward should dismiss him.
