Queen of This Realm - Plaidy Jean. Страница 4

“Four wives so far,” said Kat. “I wonder, my lady, who will be the fifth, do you?”

I said it would be interesting to wait and see.

“We shall not wait long I fancy. The King has his eyes on a relation of yours, young Katharine Howard. She is a young beauty, if ever there was one.”

“You gossip too much.”

“So it is Madam Princess today, is it? Very well, I will keep my news to myself.”

But she did not of course. I would not let her. So I was well aware of my father's courtship of Katharine Howard. My father was infatuated by her, I heard. She was a lovely girl and she took an interest in me because not only was I her stepdaughter to be but she had been my mother's first cousin. I guessed she would do her best to restore me to my father's regard and I was right. She pleaded with the King that I should be allowed to go to Court, and as he could deny her nothing, gladly I went.

I had reached my seventh birthday then and although I had read a great deal and my tutors agreed that I was exceptionally talented for my age, I was a little childish in my knowledge of the world; and when I saw my mother's cousin in all her youthful beauty and vivacity with so much affection to give to anyone who asked it, I felt that all would be well. My father seemed to see no one but Katharine. I heard it said that only once before had he felt such unstinting passion, and that was for my mother Anne Boleyn in the days when she had had his favor.

The memory of my mother's fate was always somewhere in my mind and when I saw my father I often recalled that look he had given us in the courtyard and it sent a shiver through me; to see him happy with this young girl helped to soothe me. She was a Howard…a little like my mother, they said, and if she lacked her cousin's wiles, her vast sophistication, her wit and her lively mind, she made up for it with an infinite sweetness and good nature.

“Just fancy,” she said, “I am your stepmother. And I hope you will let me be your friend.”

Who would have expected a queen to talk thus to a girl who had been brought out of obscurity at her request?

The King smiled on me now because the Queen was fond of me. She talked round-eyed of my achievements and what my tutors had told her, opening her beautiful eyes wide and declaring that even to contemplate such learning was beyond her. At which the King said he was thankful for that, since she was perfect as she was—his rose without a thorn.

On the first night she dined in public with the King, she insisted that I be there as well. So there I was, opposite her, unable to take my eyes from her lovely laughing face, and watching the King touch her arm and her hand with such loving tenderness, calling her sweetheart in a voice which was soft and overflowing with love.

Kat said: “All will be different now. We shall have our rightful place. We shall be recognized as the King's daughter, which we are, of course. But our new Queen has a fancy for you, my Lady, and if she asks for your company, rest assured the King so dotes on her that she will have her way.”

If only it could have stayed like that I believe it would have made a great difference to us all. The King would have been happier for undoubtedly he loved her and, as Kat pointed out, she was not under the same stress to produce a son as my poor mother had been. “Moreover,” said Kat wisely, “the King is no longer in his first flush of youth. Don't whisper a word that I said so or it might cost me my head… but it is the truth and even kings cannot change it. No, His Grace the King has a delightful wife. Let us hope that he never wants another.”

But it seemed inevitable that the rumors must start. Kat told me of them.

“Wicked and unscrupulous men are plotting to bring a case against the Queen,” she said.

I could not understand but Kat explained that when the Queen was very young she was overflowing with affection. She was loving and giving…and that sort drew men to them like bees to the flowers and wasps to the honey. The Queen was so kind and tender to men that she found it hard to say no to them. When she was quite young it seemed she had said yes when she should have said no; and now those cruel people were looking back into her past to uncover some scandal.

“They think the Howards are getting too strong,” said Kat. “My faith! A little while ago it was the Seymours … now it's the Howards. The most dangerous thing on Earth is to be married to the King. A woman is better on her own. It may be that our little Queen would have been happier as the wife of Tom Culpepper, who they say adores her—and she not indifferent to him—than as the Queen of England.”

I did not see Katharine again. I heard terrible stories. They were accusing her of treason—that simple child whose only purpose was to be happy and make others so too. How could they? But even she, who had harmed no one, had her enemies. Thomas Cranmer questioned her about her past, accusing her of having entered into marriage with someone called Francis Dereham and thus in marrying the King committing adultery. There were tales of her wanton behavior with other men and she was arrested.

Kat said that the King was most distressed and would not at first believe those accusations against her. I was glad of that and hoped he would forgive her, but I suppose he was angry at having been deceived in her, thinking that all her loving had been inspired by him alone, and to learn that others had enjoyed it would be galling to a man of his nature.

I was very moved. I was reminded more vividly than ever of my mother. I kept wondering what she, who had held off the King's demanding passion for so long before she had submitted to him, had thought in her lodgings in the Tower, knowing that she was going to die, falsely and maliciously accused. And now poor little Katharine. She must have known what her fate was going to be. It was history repeating itself.

She was distraught, hysterical and terribly afraid. She was so young to die; and she did not believe that the King would agree to her death. She believed that all would be well if she could only see him and explain what it had been like in her grandmother's household where she had been brought up with all those young and lively people about her, and how they had been amused by her flirtations, which had grown into something more, and had helped her evade the rules laid down by her grandmother, the Duchess of Norfolk. She must have felt that she could make the King understand that she was older and wiser now and that she truly loved him and wanted to be a good wife to him. He was in chapel one morning when she escaped from those who were guarding her chamber and tried to reach the King; she ran along the gallery screaming but they caught her before she could get to him, and dragged her away. I wondered what would have happened if she had been able to speak to him. Would her life have been spared? I like to think that it might have been.

That February day stands out clearly in my memory. I had been thinking of her constantly since I knew that the King had given the royal assent to her attainder. Only two days later she was taken to the scaffold.

The poor child faced death meekly, they said, almost as though she did not understand what it was all about.

They buried her close to my mother in the Church of St Peter ad Vincula.

I felt ill for several days after. I dreamed of her mangled corpse and I shivered with a terrible fear for the fate of women in the hands of cruel men.

THE FOLLOWING YEAR my father the King took yet another wife and the result of this was that I was brought right into the family circle and began to feel more important than I had since the death of my mother. It was the first time in my life that I felt I belonged to a family.

Katharine Parr had been married twice before and of course Kat knew a great deal about her.