Page 129 of Boleyn Traitor
Thomas Cranmer speaks to her gently, respectfully. He says that Francis Dereham has made allegations which suggest that he behaved to her as a husband – did they exchange promises and court, when she was a girl?
‘No,’ Kitty says, widening her eyes. ‘No. That’s not true.’
Cranmer ignores this flat denial, so he must have evidence against her word. I am standing in frozen silence; but I listen intently to Cranmer’s questions, like a scholar tracing the source of a quotation. I am the daughter of a translator: I think about sources, I am a spy; I can hear a voice behind the words, and identify him.
Clearly, they have interviewed Dereham himself, but also, I think I hear the echo of gossip from some maid in the old duchess’ household. I am sure it is a woman who has told them the detail of kissing and late-night parties in the maids’ rooms. Francis Dereham,boasting or fearful, would have forgotten strawberries and midnight feasts, but this girl remembers it vividly.
They say nothing about the damning evidence of the purse of a hundred pounds, and – absurdly, incompetently – they don’t seem to realise that Dereham has been working in the queen’s household under their noble noses, for the last month. This sounds like an old song, half-forgotten, that someone has sung to the archbishop in late-blooming autumn malice. He says nothing about Kitty’s behaviour as queen. There’s nothing against Dereham after he left for Ireland; there’s nothing against Kitty since her marriage. Best of all, there is no suggestion of adultery against the king.
Standing impassively at her shoulder, I keep an expression of attentive concern on my face; but inwardly, I am grinning like a mask ofThalia. All they have is spiteful old gossip, nothing to set in the scale against the king’s massive vanity. He will have told them to make a proper inquiry and clear Kitty’s name. This is what they are doing. We are safe. This is going to be all right.
‘None of this is true at all,’ Kitty says clearly. ‘And besides, my grandmother is very strict, and she agreed to my marriage to the king. How could such a thing be true?’
I note my uncle grimace as Kitty invokes the dowager duchess and drags in our family dignity; but none of them have any appetite to pursue the question or answer it.
‘And where is my husband?’ Kitty demands indignantly. ‘Is he back from hunting? Does he know that you are asking these questions of me?’
‘His Majesty has gone to Whitehall,’ Thomas Cranmer says gently. ‘He asked us to inquire.’
‘He will have asked you to inquire into the wicked people who are making up these lies!’ Kitty says, brilliant in her indignation. ‘He would never have asked you to say them as true! What d’you think he will say when I tell him that you have brought these lies to me, said them to my face, in front of my ladies-in-waiting? That you have upset me? That you made me cry? Don’t you think he will be angry?’
I see from the hidden anguish on Thomas Cranmer’s face that he is very sure that the king will be angry, and whether or not they find any mud that sticks, the king won’t thank them for this work. He has not told them – as he twice told Lord Cromwell – to get a marriage dissolved at any price and get rid of the unwanted wife.
I imagine they’ve had very ambivalent instructions: he will have told them to leave no stone unturned to find the truth; but they know well enough that the only truth the king wants to hear, is the one he believes already. Their task is to find out what he believes, and prove it as incontrovertible fact.
They mutter urgently among themselves, and then they apologise to the queen for disturbing her in her rooms, and they bow themselves out.
Kitty, flushed with triumph, turns to her ladies. ‘They’re shitting themselves,’ she says, and the young maids scream with laughter.
THE NEXT DAY,Thomas Cranmer comes back again after breakfast to speak to Kitty and takes a seat beside her at the head of the table, like the father of a family, while the rest of us nibble sweetmeats at the far end and pretend we are not straining to listen. He does not look much like a man who is shitting himself: he looks like a kind old grandfather who is ready to hear a confession. I cannot think how to signal to Kitty that she should trust this kindness no more than the most frightening men of the kingdom who tried to bully her yesterday; but then I see her talking earnestly to him, and his whispered replies, and I think: not to worry – she will wrap him around her little finger.
At first, she has him dancing to her tune; but then I see him get graver and quieter, and now Kitty seems to be stumbling as she speaks, and now she is more and more distressed, and I can tell that she is frightened. I beckon to one of the youngest maids-of-honour.
‘Go ask the queen if she wants some wine and water,’ I tell her.
She looks across the room. ‘I don’t dare, Lady Rochford,’ she says. ‘He’s raking her over.’
She’s right. Thomas Cranmer is no longer grandfatherly; but has become the terror he can be in the pulpit. His fluffy white hair is standing on end, his bright-brown eyes never leave her face, and I can see him speaking urgently, insisting, overbearing.
Kitty blushes hot scarlet, and then she bursts into tears.
It is agony watching her being bullied into saying things that might damage her. She cries more and more, mopping her flushed face on her priceless sleeves and on her table handkerchief, and he does not give her a moment’s pause but still goes on speaking, low-voiced, until she slides from her chair at the head of the table and collapses onto the floor in floods of tears.
Now I can interrupt, and I go forward to help her up, and he stops, gets to his feet, puts his hand with the great ruby signet ring on her head, and he blesses her and leaves her, the Queen of England, on the floor of her own presence chamber.
I had hoped that she was playacting despair; but even when he has gone, she continues to cry bitterly, her breath catching, her sobs getting louder. Her wet face is in the strewing rushes; she throws off her cream and pearl hood and spreads herself on the floor in a frenzy of distress.
She is not pretending. Over and over again, she says: ‘My husband the king!’ but nothing else is clear. At any rate, I think, nobody can say that she has confessed anything, for she is quite beyond speech.
I take her head onto my lap to let her have her cry, and I see, from the corner of my eye, the door close behind the skirt of a gown. Someone has gone running to tell their spymaster that the queen has collapsed in tears.
Isabel Baynton, her sister, gets awkwardly gets to her feet. ‘I’d better tell my husband.’
‘Tell him that she will die of grief if they try rough handling,’ I say over her weeping. ‘Who could doubt her innocence? Her heart is breaking at these questions. Tell him that they will have her deathon their conscience. She is too fine and too pure to be accused of anything base. Ask him how they will answer to the king if they kill her?’
I see the tiny gleam of understanding, and she nods and goes out. I think – they’ll never dare to push the king’s little sweetheart into collapse. They have had a denial to their faces. Cranmer has frightened her into uncontrollable weeping, and none of this is evidence.
I raise her from the floor, still crying, and take her to her bedroom, sit her in a chair by the fire and dry her face and pat her hands with lavender water, as if she has fallen from a horse and is still shaken.
