Hampton Court, All Souls’ Day
1541
THE NEXT DAYis All Souls’ Day and another long church service in the morning. The king is inattentive, reading papers and muttering with the old lords, Audley and Russell, over court business. He barely looks up when we curtsey and leave. We expect the king and the young men to come to the queen’s rooms for an archery competition at noon, but only the young men come in, smiling and joking, with their bows on their backs. Thomas Culpeper and Kitty exchange a quick intense glance before looking away and talking vivaciously to other people. He makes his way over to my side.
‘I couldn’t come last night – tell her I would have been with her if I could.’
‘I’ll tell her.’
We are experienced courtiers; we speak of Kitty, but our eyes are fixed on Alice Restwold, who is miming a parody of an archer and making a circle of friends laugh at her closed eye and grimace as she aims the arrow.
‘Is the king coming?’ I ask him. ‘Should we go to the butts ahead of him?’
‘Something’s happened. He’s in a huddle with the old lords and Cranmer.’
‘Not another rebellion?’
‘Something bad. They’re not happy. But they’re very secretive.’ His young face is gloomy. ‘They flock round the king like hungry chicks around a poultry woman. Nobody under the age of ninety is allowed in. And they tell him only what he wants to hear.’
I don’t laugh. ‘We all flock,’ I say wryly. ‘Scratting and pecking in dirt.’
‘Then how will anything change?’ Culpeper demands.
We are both silent; we know the only way that there will be a change. And it is illegal to say it.
There is a knock at the door, and the king’s vice chamberlain is announced. He bows to Kitty and tells her that the king is detained with business and will not come to the archery.
Kitty glances uncertainly at me. I give a little shake of my head, and she says: ‘Then we’ll wait till His Majesty can come. There’s no competition without the greatest champion.’
‘For sure, he is certain to win!’ someone says, in the hopes that his comment will be repeated to the king.
The young men hand their bows to their servants, throw off their hats, and Kitty says that everyone may sit or stand as they wish. Thomas Culpeper goes casually across the room to her side and sits on a stool beside her great chair. Lady Mary takes a seat nearby with Mary Howard. Someone starts a riddle, and then someone enacts a charade for us to guess, and soon the young people are shouting with laughter. Nobody wonders what business has delayed the king but Thomas Culpeper and I – for everyone else, it is a holiday without the old men watching.
The archery contest is delayed this day and the next as it is so wet and cold. The king’s business – whatever it is – continues to absorb him, and we see him only at chapel in the morning. He doesnot come to Kitty’s bed, and he does not dine in the hall. His place is set at the high table, and the servants bow to an empty throne as if he were there, but his pages take dish after dish into his privy chamber, as if he were feasting in secret.
‘IS HE ILL?’Kitty asks Thomas quietly on the fourth day of the month, when the king has not been seen since All Saints’ Day.
‘The doctor’s not been called,’ he says cautiously. ‘I think it must be bad news from Scotland or the north. Two lords left court after All Saints’, and Thomas Wriothesley went away today.’
‘Have they summoned the Duke of Norfolk from his home?’ I ask. ‘If they need an army against an uprising, it’ll be his.’
‘Not that I know,’ Thomas says.
‘Will you put him to bed tonight?’ Kitty whispers. ‘Or...’
‘I can’t come,’ he tells her. ‘Don’t look at me, Kitty. I can’t say no to you when you look at me.’
‘Look at Alice doing a mime!’ I prompt her.
Obediently, she looks away from Culpeper’s handsome face. He speaks to her profile, as clear as a cameo.
‘I won’t come to you until we know what’s happening,’ he says. ‘It might be that he’s ill again but denying it, and then he’ll send for me in the night. Or it might be that he’ll tell me what’s happening. With the lords away from court, he might speak to me – I’ll go to him now.’
‘Oh, stay...’ she whispers, looking away from him.
In reply, he takes her hand and kisses her cold fingers and goes from the room. Carefully, she does not look after him.
Hampton Court, November
