‘Trai-trai—’ He can’t get the word: traitors out of his tight throat.
I grab his cold hands, and I force him to turn to look at me. ‘You speak of her,’ I command him. I hiss the words into his ear as if Iwould spit them into his stupid, handsome head. ‘Put the queen, our queen, in his mind again. Say she is distraught with grief and worry for him.’
‘How can I?’ he says feebly. ‘He’s surrounded by Seymours, speaking of Jane and her son, their heir.’
‘She has to be dowager queen!’ My gripping hands are as cold as his. ‘She has to be on the council of regency. You have to make sure he names her to the regency.’
‘I tell you, he’s going to die unshriven, without a will. He’s going to die a madman.’
Hampton Court, March
1541
SHROVETUESDAY ISthe first of March this year, but I think Lent came earlier, heralded with drumbeats as the king’s barge docked at the palace pier and brought us a Fisher king – a man who only wants a kingdom of silence and sorrow. There will be no masques or jousts or feasts. The master of revels orders no musicians; no scenery painted for the jousting arena and no costumes sewn for masques. We hardly know that it is Fat Tuesday at all – there is no special food at dinner; there is no lord of misrule. Will Somer the fool stays in the king’s rooms and can raise no laughter: the muttered Lent prayers are like a spell that has spread a brooding silence, down quiet galleries, through echoing halls.
‘This isn’t like being queen at all,’ Kitty whispers to me. ‘It’s worse than Lambeth. It’s worse than Horsham! I might as well have stayed at home, a nobody and nothing; but free to do what I want.’
‘Wait,’ I tell her. ‘These might be the most important days of your life.’
We observe Lent strictly in the queen’s rooms, wearing modest clothes in dark colours, fasting at meatless dinners, and attending mass in the chapel, swept bare of any colour. We watch, in silent envy, as great mountains of food are marched into the king’s rooms: meats and creams, butters and cheeses, puddings and rich morsels, flagons of deep red wines.
Kitty, on Lenten fare of fish and white meat, starts to lose weight; her round girlish face gets thinner, and never flushes with pleasure.
‘You have to eat!’ I urge her. ‘You can order some game meat.’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t feel like it,’ she says. ‘I don’t feel like anything. When’s the king going to come out, d’you think? Is he ever going to come out? Are the young men never going to be free again?’
The whole court starts to predict that the king will stay enclosed like the monster the pilgrims named him – the mouldwarp who lives feasting in dark tunnels underground. Will he hide in his rooms until Lent has ended and only come out at Easter? Can it be possible that he will sleep until the weather warms and not come out until Whitsun?
WITHOUT WARNING, THEguards are gone from the door to the king’s rooms, the great doors to his presence chamber are swung open, and when we go to early mass in the chapel, there is the king, in his usual seat, with Sir Anthony Browne in Cromwell’s place, bending over him and sliding letters before him, as if nothing has changed and he has never been away.
A giddy sense of relief sweeps through the court. People fall to their knees on the chapel floor for the first sincere prayer of thanksgiving in their lives. We courtiers, safe behind high walls, we landowners at war with our tenants – how would we survive if the king died? Who would keep us so richly, riding so high?
When the priest prays for the health of the king, everyone bows their heads; everyone is fervent in their prayers for his wellbeing, for his health and happiness, and for the life and fertility of his queen.
Katheryn glances across at him all through the service, her face pale behind the lace of her veil, and I know that she is afraid of this man who has come back from the dead, returned to us from his own earthly purgatory. It has been horrible to see the mountainous dinners going in and the dirty plates with bare bones and broken pastries coming out hours later. She feels like a bride in a fairy story, married to a monster.
The king does not take his eyes from the papers that are carefully placed, one after another, before him. But he does not sign them; he stamps each document, as if banging down an angry fist, and each paper is taken away for his signature to be inked-in later. Has he grown too lazy to even scrawl his name? Has he given away the sign that makes a whim into law? Who holds the stamp of his signature? Who is ruling the country if the king, who never read the decrees that he issued, does not even sign them now?
‘Should I curtsey to him?’ Kitty whispers to me as the mass ends with the bidding prayer.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Curtsey and look up smiling with joy, and if he wants to speak to you, he will beckon you forward.’
She looks aghast.
‘Smile,’ I tell her. ‘Look as if you are happy that he is well. Say something like God is merciful to us all, that you are well... something like that.’
She looks full of dread, but she rises to her feet, curtseys to the altar, and then turns and curtseys to the king. He waves a pudgy hand that she must come forward. She goes to him and, obedient to another wave, bends over him and kisses his cheek.
Without warning, he grabs the back of her head and pulls her mouth to his, kisses her wetly and lets her go.
Kitty straightens up as the court applauds. I can see she is shaking, but she manages a trembly smile. ‘God is merciful...’ she parrots. ‘Merciful.’
‘I am under His special protection,’ the king tells her. ‘God has restored my health and vigour.’
LONDON IS FREEfrom plague, and the king is well enough to be seen in public; he wants to enforce his recovery on us all. He demands a public ceremony to show he is as healthy and as fit as a man half his age, with a beautiful young queen at his side. At least Katheryn gets her ceremonial entry to her capital city. There will be no coronation until she is pregnant – never again is he going to be stuck with a childless queen – but he wants to show Kitty off to an admiring crowd and celebrate himself as the potent husband of a beautiful bride. He comes to her bed even though it is Lent, as if he does not care if it is a godly act or not, and he limps past me with a sly smile.
Katheryn blooms again at the attention and the promise of a public appearance. Over and over again, she asks me and her vice chamberlain, her brother-in-law Sir Edward, to describe the formalities and where she should sit and when she should move and the queenly gestures of acknowledgement for applause. Sir Edward, who has no patience with female vanity, begrudgingly tells her that she will be steered and guided throughout the day, and just to watch him and he will tell her what she would do.
