Of course, this is no help to Kitty, who must be practice-perfect in every dance. So I put a chair in her privy chamber to serve as the throne of the barge, and the maids-of-honour walk past shouting: ‘I am the guild of vintners!’ and ‘I am the guild of fishmongers!’ and ‘I am the lord mayor!’ – and the ladies shout ‘bang!’ for the boom of the Tower guns, and some of them sit in the window seat and cheer to represent the people of the City on the riverbank to see their new queen.
The maids-of-honour turn this into a romp and throw strewing herbs at each other for river water and pretend to fall in the pretend river, overawed by Katheryn’s beauty, and roll about miming drowning. In the old days, Kitty would have rolled on the floor with them; but today, she is very serious and tells them to do it properly or not at all and asks me the exact level of her seated bows to thelord mayor or to the guild of fishmongers. She orders all the gowns of cloth of silver brought from the royal wardrobe, and we send to the Tower for extra jewels. She is determined to dazzle the City that knows her only as an unimportant daughter of a disgraced nobleman, the lowly maid-of-honour to the former queen of royal blood.
‘They loved Anne of Cleves, didn’t they?’ she demands nervously in the privacy of her bedchamber, as I hold one gown after another against her, while Catherine Tilney holds the long looking-glass and rolls her eyes.
‘They didn’t know her,’ I reassure her. ‘They’ll love you. You just have to smile and wave.’
‘And get into the barge without tripping,’ she reminds me. ‘And acknowledge the lord mayor and everyone at the Tower, and then do the river parade just right.’
‘They’ll love you,’ I tell her again. ‘And His Majesty will be at your side.’
‘And he’s had plenty of practice proclaiming queens,’ Catherine Tilney says sourly.
But Kitty looks more anxious than ever at the thought of the king’s brooding presence. ‘Is he all right now?’ she whispers.
‘Am I to go on holding this mirror, because my arms are about to drop off?’ Catherine Tilney demands rudely.
‘Oh, don’t be cross,’ Katheryn pleads with her maid. ‘Just hold it up. You’d be terrified if you were me.’
‘I’ll prop it.’ The young woman leans it against the wall.
‘Anyway, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,’ Kitty says desperately, choosing a gown at random. ‘I’ll wear that one, with my pearls.’
The Tower of London, March
1541
OF COURSE, SHEdoes not wear that gown – she changes her mind two or three times before her state entry to London. Overnight in the Tower, she changes her mind again, and then all progress grinds to a halt when she cannot decide on her shoes for the river parade from the Tower to Greenwich Palace.
‘You’ll be in the barge; no one will see your feet,’ I say patiently.
‘I shall know that they are hideous,’ she says. ‘And anyway, I can change my shoes a dozen times if I want to.’
‘You can change as much as you like, but you can’t keep the king waiting, and the council and the aldermen can’t bob about on the river while you change your shoes,’ I warn her.
The merest mention of the king throws her into a panic, and she is in the shoes she called hideous, out of the door of the royal rooms and down the stone stairs as the clock strikes the hour. She’s so quick down the stairs that I cannot get beside her and guide her away from Tower Green.
She turns towards the Green; she walks past it – after all, it means nothing to her. I keep my eyes on the hem of her gown. I don’t look up or look around me; I won’t see Tower Green where they beheaded my sister-in-law, where the new grass grows fresh. I won’t look up at the windows of the Tower where Thomas Wyatt – George’s friend and fellow poet – may be looking down on me now, as he did on Anne on that day, looking out and wondering if he is to be freed as he was before, killed like so many of his friends, or just left here until he dies like Thom Howard.
I don’t want to see his face. The ghost of my husband could be looking over his shoulder; these were his rooms, too. Francis Weston, Henry Norris, William Brereton, Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, andmy spymaster Thomas Cromwell all gazed from these windows as they waited to die. I don’t look for any of them; I don’t want to see any ghosts.
I step forward to help the queen down the damp steps to the quay, where the royal barge is waiting, bobbing on the dark water, inside the water gate, which is lowered shut, a portcullis barring the light from the river. Her face is pale in the shadow of the archway. Housed in the rooms above us, on the south side of the Tower, is Lady Margaret Pole and the little Pole boy and his cousin, the Courtenay child. They will have heard the trumpets of the royal barge; they will hear the roar of the cannon to honour Katheryn Howard. I don’t look up at their windows either; I don’t want to see my old schoolmistress’ face looking out.
The bargemaster helps Kitty up the gangplank of the barge and settles her in her throne at the back. The curtains are open so she can be seen by the waiting Londoners lining the riverbank and the gentry on their barges. The king comes down the steps leaning on Thomas Culpeper on one side and Edward Seymour on the other. Bishop Gardiner follows them as they load the king like cargo into his seat on the opposite side of the barge.
I think: if Margaret Pole sees Bishop Gardiner, an enemy of the reform of religion so favoured, she will think herself due for release. I think: how terrible to be inside these damp walls when outside the sun is shining on the river and the gulls are wheeling and crying over the water, and spring is coming, May Day is coming. Then I think again: May Day has never been a happy day of promise in the Tower.
‘It is rather gloomy,’ Katheryn remarks feebly as the rowers pull away from the dark water gate and it rolls down behind us, the mechanism rumbling in the tower above, the dark water washing between the grille of the gates and the seaweed trailing like drowned hair.
‘It is,’ I agree.
‘Sort of sad,’ she says. ‘When you think of all the people who have been prisoners. And worse if you think of the ones who died.’
I really cannot chatter away about prisoners in the Tower and their execution.
‘I suppose I could ask the king for mercy?’ She glances uncertainly towards him. He is saying something to Thomas Culpeper; he pays no attention to her at all. ‘I mean, asking for mercy is a good thing to do, isn’t it?’
We pull into the centre of the river, where the London City barges are moored. The gun salute roars over our heads, and she waves and smiles at the City barges and the London merchants ships and the cheering people. The king has his back to us, waving to the other bank.
