I am surprised he is coming with me, I would have expected him to distance himself from Kitty, from me too. ‘You’re accompanying me?’ I ask him. ‘Are you joining us at Syon?’
‘You’re not going to Syon,’ he says grimly. ‘You’re going to the Tower. This is an arrest. I am arresting you for treason. Another Boleyn traitor.’
The Tower of London, November
1541
ONCE AGAIN,I watch the metal grille of the Tower water gate rise up and hear the clanking of the chains and see the water swirl. The barge glides in, and the new constable of the Tower, Sir John Gage, is here to greet me. He takes my hand as respectfully as if I am stepping out of the royal barge behind the queens I have served: Katherine of Aragon, my sister-in-law Anne, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Kitty in her pomp, on her entry to London. His face is grave, and he tucks my hand in his arm, as he walks me to the White Tower, up the outer steps, up the inner stair, and then we turn right and go to one of the good rooms, with a fireplace, a window overlooking the green, a privy chamber and, beyond that, a bedchamber, and a little room off for a servant.
I pause on the threshold, but I don’t have to ask: I know this was George’s room. This is the room where my husband waited for his trial, waited for his pardon, and then waited for his execution.
I stand for a moment in the doorway, and I can almost see him. I can almost see Anne, the woman he died for. I think how incredible it is that I should have been spared arrest then, that the two of themshould have died together then, leaving me utterly bereft without them – and now I am here anyway!
Aghast, I turn to Sir John and see nothing but compassion in his face.
‘Could I not have another room?’ I whisper.
‘We’re full up,’ he says grimly. ‘And expecting more. This is the best room available. The dowager duchess and her daughter are to have the royal rooms...’ He breaks off in embarrassment.
Agnes Howard the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk is arrested? And her daughter the Countess of Bridgewater? This makes no sense: the two of them knew nothing of Culpeper; but everything about Dereham. This changes everything again! The privy council must be charging Kitty with precontract, after all. The Tower is filled with Howards and their servants who know about Kitty’s childhood – they will all offer evidence and we will all come out again! There is no law against Mistress Kitty Dereham taking Culpeper as her lover, the king has chosen the most merciful route, the one that shows him in the best light. They will release Kitty from Syon; they will release us all from the Tower.
All I have to do, for the next few days, is keep my wits about me when I sleep in my husband’s bed and search the stone walls for the carving of his name among the many others imprisoned in this room. I trace it with my fingers as if it was a message for me. All I have to do is stay very calm. I am going to be released. I will stay calm and wait.
MY MAID SERVESmy dinner in my privy chamber, but I find that it tastes of nothing. The maid is a spy, of course – not the spy that I was, in my heyday, when I was taught and mentored by the greatest spymaster in England. She is a conniving, snivelling, poor thing, the sort that we employed to listen at keyholes. I know she lingers at my bedroom door, hoping for heartbroken prayers of confession. But I have nothing to confess.The queen is being investigated about her childhood, long before I knew her. Her guardian, her step-grandmother, will have to answer for that. As soon as this dawns on the slow intelligence of Thomas Audley, I will be released. As soon as he realises that the queen is guilty of nothing but marrying the king while married to Dereham, he will order the release of everyone but Kitty, who will probably stay at Syon in disgrace, for the rest of the king’s life. If the doctor is right, that will be in the spring. At the very worst, we all have to get through the next six months.
I ask for books to study and papers to write, but they say I can only have paper and ink to write my confession. I am so furious at this that I scream at my maid that I am the best-educated woman in England – except for Margaret Roper, daughter of Sir Thomas More – and she curtseys and dashes out of the room. The next thing I know, in comes Sir Thomas Wriothesley with a writing desk and pen and ink and papers, to ask me what part Margaret Roper played in this adultery.
‘She is as guilty as me of being a clever woman,’ I snap.
‘What do you know of her?’ he asks keenly.
‘You will drive me quite mad!’ I say unguardedly. ‘Margaret did nothing. The dinner is ill-cooked so I cannot eat, and you have lodged me in my husband’s rooms – I sleep in my husband’s bed...’
He looks quite shocked, and then he makes a note on the paper. ‘D’you speak of Margaret Howard? And George Boleyn – you know that he is dead? D’you remember that you are a widow, Lady Rochford?’
We look blankly at each other. For once in my life, I cannot think. What is this fool asking me? Why drag Margaret Howard into it – who never did anything in her life but what her mother-in-law ordered? I never saw her in Kitty’s rooms after she presented Francis Dereham.
‘Margaret?’ I ask him, buying time, but really, I cannot think what he wants of me. ‘Which Margaret?’
‘Do you know the name of the king?’
‘I should think I do,’ I say bitterly. ‘And the queen’s name is Katheryn.’ I cannot hold back a bitter laugh. ‘Katheryn again. Katheryn the second.’
He makes another note; his breath is coming faster. I see him glance to the door. ‘I am going to send a kind gentleman to talk to you,’ he says. ‘Do you understand me, Lady Rochford?’
‘I don’t want to talk to a kind gentleman. I don’t want to talk to anybody. I can’t eat the dinner here. I can’t sleep in my husband’s bed. I can’t stay here. I can’t stay here for six months. I want to go home.’
‘Why six months?’ he asks quickly.
I look at him mutinously. ‘Why not?’
‘Where is your home?’ he asks, as if he does not know what I did to win the ownership of Blickling Hall.
‘You know as well as I do!’ I exclaim. I think of my house and lands at Blickling and that they were given to me by Lord Cromwell in return for saying nothing. But I chose to live in palaces, I have spent more time at Greenwich Palace than anywhere else. My certainty dies away.
‘Here,’ I say desolately, thinking that this is my family vault; my husband and sister-in-law are buried in the Tower chapel. ‘This is my family home, don’t you think? I am in the Boleyn rooms? Isn’t it our name on the wall? Isn’t it our family vault across the green?’
He is stuffing papers and inkpot into his neat little writing desk and cramming down the lid on them. ‘I will send Dr Butts,’ he tells me. ‘For your appetite and sleep. You can tell him. He is the one to judge... I will ask him to attend you...’
