Page 118 of Boleyn Traitor
I never longed so much... to see you and to speak with you... it makes my heart die to think... that I cannot be always in yourcompany. Yet my trust is always in you that you will be as you have promised me... praying you that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here... and thus I take my leave of you, trusting to see you shortly again, and I would you was with me now that you might see what pain I take in writing to you.
Yours as long as life endures,
Katheryn
KITTY CANNOT SLEEPor eat while Thomas Culpeper fights his fever. A dozen times a day, she asks me how he is, and will I send to ask? I order the queen’s usher, Henry Webb, to leave his post and go into Master Culpeper’s service so that he can come and go between the queen’s household and the king’s side. All the other servants think he has been unfairly dismissed, and Lucy Luffkynn swears darkly that the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk will send another favourite into the queen’s service and that new servants will come up with the baggage train from London and replace everyone.
There are long days while Kitty goes hunting beside the king and walking with him in the garden, sits beside him through interminable dinners, and dances after dinner, going hand to hand with his handsome young companions, but never sees Thomas. The king is preoccupied with his building works, every day he goes out into the city, changing his mind on the rebuilding of the abbey, shouting for the master builder, demanding a tower be restored which is to be called Henry’s Tower and will be a lookout over the great walls of York for a thousand years, posting a man on it to warn of the arrival of the Scots king.
Kitty bears the boasting and the outbursts of complaining very patiently; but tells me that she has a pain in her belly that comes on at dinnertime, when she sits down to eat beside the king. Sometimes, she cannot swallow when he puts a great haunch of meat on her plate; she pretends she is eating for hour after hour of dining, as hecalls for another dish and another to be brought to the table.
We assume that King James will come with a riding court of some hundreds, but we have to be ready to house a thousand courtiers – the English cannot look unprepared or too poor to pay for rebuilding. The old tents from the Field of the Cloth of Gold are pulled out of storage, reburnished, and sent on their way up the North Road too. They will be set up on the meadows outside the walls, to house the Scots court overflowing from the rebuilt abbey and castle.
While the king redraws plans and spurs on the builders to throw up halls and rooms and kitchens and stables, he dreams of dominating the younger man. He will resolve the constant border warfare; he will separate the king from his alliance with France. He will win Scotland to peace. More than anything else, he will make Mary of Guise regret her choice of James of Scotland over Henry of England. This visit to York – originally just one of the many stops on the progress around the north – has become the centre of his plans, the legacy of his reign.
Every day, we rehearse the new masque. Dressmakers work on togas, and all the artists in the north of England are summoned to York to make masks, headdresses, scenery, and to build the Aurelian walls of plaster. They have to design and build pretend siege engines; this Roman army is to have cannon and thunderflashes.Aurelian, the king himself, swathed in a toga of cloth of gold with a crown of gold laurel, is to enter on a throne of gold pulled by the white mules of the queen’s litter. Stands are built for an audience of thousands.
The grander the plans, the greater the work, the more certain I am that he will announce Kitty’s coronation at the end of the masque, when he is in his golden pomp asCaesar Aurelian. I commission a masquing crown of painted gold for her, ready for his command. I keep her to the rigid schedule of rehearsals, entertaining the king, praying beside him, dining beside him, and even smiling with pretend pleasure as he comes barging into her rooms at night and is heaved up into her bed. In just a month’s time, she will be crownedQueen of England, I promise her – just endure another day. In a year’s time, she will be dowager queen, with a massive fortune, and a place on the council of regency for seventeen years until little Prince Edward comes of age – just endure another night.
‘It’s worth it!’ I tell her in the morning.
She turns her face from the stinking sheets. ‘Is it?’
WE ARE STILLpreparing for King James’ arrival when a letter comes from Falkland Palace to say that he has not even started his journey. This is an insult that Thomas Cromwell would never have allowed. We would never have gone near the border until we knew that the Scots king had started on his journey. The king blusters that it gives us more time to prepare, that he is glad. He is not waiting on his nephew but taking his own time on his works. He hides his anger and is more terrifying, seething in silence, than when he is ranting. Nothing can divert him from his silent fury: his daughter Lady Mary fades from sight – she is always at her prayers. The queen is like the kitten of her nickname – she slinks off to a corner whenever she can. The courtiers cannot escape. We have to walk with him, kneel beside him in prayer, try to divert his brooding inattention, we are all afraid of him.
One morning, very subdued, we process into the chapel and see Thomas Culpeper in his place behind the king. I am proud of Kitty; she does not betray herself for a moment. She curtseys to the king to the right depth of reverence and calmly walks to her place in the church. She kneels and closes her eyes in prayer. Only then do I see her sway on her knees, and her lips move to bless his name, but she does not glance towards Thomas until breakfast, when he bows to her as we all walk into the hall.
‘Master Culpeper, I am pleased to see you are well again,’ she says lightly, and no one can hear the longing in her voice.
‘I thank you for your kind wishes.’ He bows and goes to his place.
She watches him go.
‘Kitty,’ I say very quietly, and she turns to me with her face closed and calm.
‘I know,’ she says, and I think: we are teaching her to be a courtier. We are teaching her to be a liar.
THE KING SENDSThomas Culpeper as his deputy to bring us ladies into dinner. As he takes my hand, I feel him slip a little ring into my palm. It is a cramp ring, blessed by the king at Easter.
I look up at him and see his dark eyes are bright with laughter. ‘This is a kind gift,’ I say.
‘It’s a crime,’ he says. ‘I’ve incriminated you, Jane. I stole it from the king’s collection last Easter, and I swear it brought my fever down. I thought you might like it, in case you are ever ill.’
‘You shouldn’t have taken it,’ I scold him. ‘The queen would have given you one if she had known that you wanted it.’
‘I do want one from her,’ he says earnestly. ‘Think of it as an exchange. I want hers in return for this one.’
‘You shouldn’t ask,’ I say, then I see his mock-penitent face. ‘Oh, very well.’
‘And she must give it me herself,’ he insists. ‘This evening.’
‘If it’s safe,’ I say.
ITHINK NOTHING WOULDhave prevented him coming; nothing could have made her refuse him. He walks through the abbess’ little conversation room, up the stairs to her bedroom, and the moment he is in the door, they are in each other’s arms, enwrapped in the huge vaulted room, young lovers on a bench before the fire. She sits on his knees; she winds her arms around his neck. She buries her face in his shoulder; he grips her as if he would never let her go. They are entwined. She whispers to him that life is unbearable without him; he says that he had passionatedreams of her, that he was delirious and thought that she came for him in a beautiful barge that sailed through his bedroom window.
But still, they do not plan beyond the next night, when they can only be together if Thomas is not called to sleep in the king’s chamber. They don’t speak of her coronation, about the presentation to King James. They don’t think about the journey back to London; they don’t even think of this coming autumn or winter, nor how they will bear to be parted in the court’s daily routine when we are living in the London palaces again. They take all their joy in the present moment; they want nothing more than this now: this fierce grip of passion, the whisper of desire.
To my absolute horror, I suddenly hear the noise of several men crossing the hall outside the bedroom door and then a loud knock on the door. The couple at the fireplace freeze for a moment, and this time, they don’t leap apart; he does not run to hide, leaving her alone to face whoever is at the door. They rise to their feet; they turn towards the door. He puts his hand around her waist. They look like two beautiful lovers facing a wicked enchanter: they are poised together, confronting danger, as if ready to be turned into stone together.
