Page 117 of Boleyn Traitor
The music strikes up. Kitty glances across at me anxiously andstarts the dance, but the whole court can see the king is falling into ill temper, again.
‘Aurelian?’ I snatch at an old, half-forgotten lesson. ‘Aurelian, the Emperor – conqueror of the German barbarians?’
The king scowls, racking his drink-fuddled brain. ‘I’ve never...’
‘Your Majesty will remember from your extensive reading – EmperorAureliansaved Rome from the barbarians. Famously saved them! And – Your Majesty will remember – he built the Aurelian Walls to keep the barbarians from Rome. How is that as a slight to the Scots?’
‘Just like Hadrian’s Wall!’ the king crows, finally getting the point. ‘That says everything! Of course. That’s my choice. Tell the master of revels that I command a masque based on the building of the Aurelian Walls. He won’t know anything about it, but he can ask Jane. Don’t trouble me. I’m busy enough with ordering repairs to these buildings to house them all.’
‘Would Your Majesty play the part ofAurelian?’ I ask, sweet as honey. ‘In a toga – a long toga – and crowned with laurel.’ He will look more likeNerothanAurelian, but he still loves to dress up and disguise, and a long robe will hide his rotting leg. ‘You could be carried in on a throne at the end in triumph, when the masque wall has been built by the dancers and the choristers. The queen could bePeace?’
‘Yes,’ he says, pleased. ‘That’s very good, Jane.’ He turns to my uncle. ‘What a scholar your niece is, Howard! You’d never have thought ofAurelian– I doubt you’ve even heard of him!’
‘Indeed,’ my uncle says, the falsest of smiles glozing his face. ‘She is such a treasure.’
THE KING, THEwhole court, and the city of York throw themselves into frantic preparation for the visit of the Scots king; but first, the city must be cleared of the private armies of the border lords who have fought the Scots for generations andare more likely to dig in for a siege than prepare a peaceful welcome. Orders stream from the court that buildings shall be prepared, that great tents and pavilions shall come from London, that furniture, carpets, tapestries must come north, labouring up the muddy Great North Road, and must not be delayed.
Everyone knows there is to be a great event at York; but no one knows what it is. Of course, given that Jane Seymour was to be crowned at York after the birth of her child, everyone assumes that all this fuss is for Kitty. Everyone thinks that she is secretly with child and the coronation is to be her reward.
‘What am I to do?’ she asks me, blank-faced. ‘I don’t want to deny it!’ She flushes with annoyance. ‘And I should be crowned! Why can’t the king just say he’s crowning me? So everyone stops talking?’
‘I’m hoping he will do it during the visit of the King of Scots.’
‘Then why not say that the King of Scots is coming?’
‘He doesn’t want the embarrassment of waiting for a less important man.’
‘He’s embarrassing me!’
We both know that Kitty’s embarrassment does not matter to King Henry, who – however much he pets her – will always put himself first.
‘I have to tell Thomas that it’s not true,’ Kitty frets. ‘I must tell him I am not with child. What would he think of me?’
‘You can’t: he’s still in his bed with fever.’
‘Then I’ll have to write,’ she says, as if it is a mighty undertaking.
‘You can’t write anything like that.’
‘But I have to tell him.’ She turns to me, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Jane, you don’t know what it’s like, day after day not seeing him, and only hearing that he is getting better but never seeing him. I can’t live like this. I can’t be fitted with dresses and practise dances and listen to the king going on and on about the King of Scots if I never see Thomas.’
‘Be calm.’ I try to soothe her. ‘Be calm, Kitty. This is just ordinary courtier work: dancing and rehearsing and being seen by thepeople. You can do this, even without Thomas, and, anyway, you have no choice.’
‘But let me write to him!’
I am afraid that she is going to start crying, and we have to rehearse the masque in just a few minutes.
‘Jane, I swear to you, I won’t dance, I’ll say I am ill, and I’ll go to bed and not get up again, unless I can write to him.’
‘Yes, yes, you can write,’ I surrender. ‘Shall you dictate, and I write it for you?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I want to write to him myself, in my own hand. I don’t care if it’s dangerous. I want him to know what he is to me.’
I won’t let her start until she has practised her part and is released from the rehearsal. Then she sends for a quill and a ream of paper. She asks me to comb the paper to give her invisible lines to follow, she asks me to mend the pen and get her a pot of the best ink from her secretary. Then she insists on writing the letter herself.
Her education has been completely neglected. This is a great effort for her to write even in English. She works as hard as any spy transcribing into code, she asks me how to spell ‘recommend’. Despite the guide-lines drawn across the page, her words waver hopelessly, and there is a blot from a tear. It is a letter that a schoolgirl would write – aspiring to formality but shot through with a childish longing. It is a letter that should never be written by a queen – not even if she were writing to a king, a beloved husband. It is too revealing; it is suffused with her love. I cannot bring myself to tell her she may not write this; it is far too late to tell her not to feel like this. This is the passion of a young untutored woman who has lived all her life in a heartless family, commanded by her husband, and now she has someone who cherishes her for the very first time. I could as easily repress this, spoil it, censor it, as I could slap a trusting child.
Master Culpeper,
