‘I don’t think so,’ I say, smiling at the thought. ‘No, it’s not like a toast. I think you should lower your head and close your eyes as if you were praying, too.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asks earnestly. ‘You know I like to do things exactly right. What did any of the others do? What did Jane Seymour do?’
‘He never held a service for thanksgiving for Jane Seymour,’ I say and watch her face light up at a greater honour than a queen who went before her.
‘He didn’t? Not for sainted Jane?’
‘No. This is special for you. You will pray when everyone prays, and at the end of the prayer, rise up and curtsey to him. Very low.’
At once, she calls for a chair, and I have to be the king in his gallery, and she is the queen, with her maids-of-honour and the ladies-in-waiting as congregation. ‘No giggling,’ Kitty says sternly. ‘We have to get this right.’
Alice Restwold is the priest, and she says: ‘La la la,’ for the prayersand the end blessing, and then Kitty rises and turns to the gallery, where I am the king. She curtseys to the ground before me.
‘Quite right,’ I say. ‘And watch for him beckoning you to his gallery. He might want you to kneel before him in fealty or kiss his cheek.’
‘But which?’ she demands. ‘How do I know which?’
I show her the gesture with his hands out that will cue her to kneel and put her hands together in prayer before him, and the outstretched gesture that invites her to kiss his cheek.
‘Shall I wear my hair down?’
‘She always wants to wear her hair down – ready for bed,’ Alice Restwold jokes, and everyone laughs but Kitty, who waits solemnly for my decision.
‘Yes,’ I decide, thinking that it will look like a coronation. ‘Coronet on and hair down.’
‘Is it going to take very long?’ she asks. ‘Is it instead of usual mass or as well as it?’
‘Probably as well,’ I say. ‘But no worse than Good Friday or the Easter services. No longer than that. You’ll be seated, not kneeling. It can’t go on too long, because the king...’ I break off. There is no need to say that the king’s attention span has shortened and he cannot bear to spend too long anywhere but the dining table. His bowels move unexpectedly; he sometimes farts loudly and has to be hurried to the stool room. Nobody needs to tell the preacher or the celebrant when the king is getting bored; they keep a wary eye on him and speed up the service or cut the sermon at the first sign of restlessness.
‘And you all wear my badge.’ Kitty turns to her maids-of-honour. ‘And pray in thanksgiving for me.’ She looks sternly at Catherine Tilney, who looks ready to giggle with Alice Restwold. ‘You will give thanks for me! You of all people should be glad I’m queen. Nobody else would employ you – God knows.’
Hampton Court, All Hallows’ Eve
1541
WE WAKE EARLY,and Kitty has a bath in the great royal bath in Bayne Tower. The tub is big enough for the king, huge for a slip of a girl like Kitty, and she allows her favourites, Alice Restwold and Catherine Tilney, to plunge in with her in their bathing shifts. The three romp in the hot scented water, splashing each other and holding their breath and going under the water, until I insist they come out and wrap up warmly to run back to the queen’s rooms and help Kitty to dress in her cloth of silver gown.
When we have her sleeves laced on and her green silk shoes on her stockinged feet, we stand her before the mirror and comb the waves of her bronze hair over her shoulders and put her little coronet on her head.
‘Should be a crown,’ she whispers to me.
‘Perhaps he’ll announce it today.’
We line up. In strict order of precedence, Lady Mary will go behind her stepmother, Lady Margaret Douglas behind her, and then all the ladies-in-waiting in order behind them. We file to the Chapel Royal, and Kitty curtseys to the king in his gallery, and we sit before the altar, and the service begins.
The Bishop of Lincoln leads the service and prays for all the departed and all saints and especially gives thanks for the good life that His Majesty the king leads with the queen... and hopes to lead, he adds sonorously, in case All Hallows’ Eve makes us think that the king might be mortal. I am hoping that the herald will announce the coronation; but the service goes on through the usual collects for the day, and though the sermon praises the king and queen as peace-bringers to the north of England, the king’s confessor does not seem to have been instructed to hint at a coronation for Kitty.
Of course, it suits the Seymours if she is not crowned, especially if the king dies soon. Easier for them to create a Seymour regency if there is no crowned Howard queen. It suits the Spanish party, too – a blood royal princess outranks an uncrowned commoner wife. All of them must hope that the king dies before Kitty conceives and is crowned.
If I could be sure that the king would not see another Easter, I would even think it worth the risk for Kitty to pretend to a pregnancy to win herself a coronation. Anne would have dared to do such a thing – but Anne had courage that none of us know. Anne could have sworn she was pregnant and wept at the deathbed with a pillow strapped inside her gown. Even Jane Seymour would have done it, if she had been ordered. But Kitty is too young and has none of the steely Howard ambition, nor clever brothers. She would betray herself; she is not yet fully a courtier with two faces.
Finally, the service is over, and Kitty turns to the king’s gallery and sweeps a deep graceful curtsey to show her gratitude for the honour. He kisses his hand to her, a pretty gesture, and she smiles radiantly. Then she leads the way from the chapel back to her rooms. We will change our clothes and wrap up to walk in the autumn gardens and beside the river before dinner.
We celebrate All Hallows’ Eve with a little masque of the boggarts, black dominos over our usual gowns and monster masks. Thomas and Kitty manage to steal a dance together; he holds her closely, and her eyes behind her mask are green with desire, and nobody notices them among the bobbing heads of deer and cuckold horns and antlers.
The king’s pain is eased with a constant supply of tumblers of wine, and at unmasking, when Kitty is discovered dancing with Alice Restwold, he exclaims that he had no idea who was who, and that it reminds him of just last year or the year before, when he danced with all the ladies and no one would ever have known him; but that he was the best dancer, and the only one who danced all night.
He says that next year, we shall have a grander masque, and he willlead Kitty out to dance in a minotaur mask. She holds her shoulders very still so that she does not shudder at the thought of her monstrous husband in a monster mask. Edward Seymour catches the mood before the king gets maudlin over previous glories, by telling him that his son the prince has recovered from a fever, and the king goes to bed happy, with one arm on Seymour’s shoulders and one leaning on Culpeper, and I think: and there is our regency council: the dowager queen’s husband, Thomas Culpeper; the prince’s uncle, Edward Seymour; the dowager queen’s uncle, Thomas Howard; and the queen regent herself.
