Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (208 page)

I feel as if I have been hiding myself from the truth for all these years, but it took that hard man the Duke of Norfolk to spell it out to me, and it took these cold walls to make it real for me. I was jealous of Anne and her love for George and his devotion to her, and I bore witness not from what I knew to be a fact, but from what would harm them the most. God forgive me. I took his tenderness and his care and his kindness for his sister, and I made it into something dirty and dark and bad because I could not bear that he was
not tender or careful or kind to me. I brought him to his death to punish him for neglecting me. And now, like some old play in which the gods are furious, I am still neglected. I have never been more alone. I have committed the greatest sin a wife could do, and still I have no satisfaction.

The duke has withdrawn to the country; neither Katherine nor I will ever see him again. I know him well enough to know that his sole care will be to protect his own old skin and guard his well-loved fortune. And the king needs a Howard to march and fight and execute for him. The king may hate him for this second adultery, but he will not make the mistake of losing a commander as well as a wife. Katherine’s step-grandmother, the duchess, may lose her life for this. If they can prove that she knew that Katherine, in her care, was little more than a slut, then they will accuse her of treason: for failing to warn the king. She will be tearing open documents, swearing servants to secrecy, sacking old retainers, and cleaning out her rooms, if I know her. She may be able to hide enough to save herself.

But what about me?

My way is clear. I shall say nothing of Thomas Culpepper, and the evidence I can give of Francis Dereham is that he was secretary to the queen at the request of her step-grandmother, and that nothing passed between them under my eye. If they discover about Thomas Culpepper (and if they look only a little, they are certain to discover all about Thomas Culpepper), then they will see it all. If they see it all, I shall tell them that she lay with him at Hampton Court, when the king first was ill, all through the royal progress when she thought she was with child, till the very day that we all went down on our knees and thanked God for her. That I knew she was a slut from that first day, but that she ordered me, and the duke ordered me, and I was not free to do what I thought right.

This is what I shall say. She shall die for it, and the duke may die for it; but I will not.

This is all I should consider.

My room faces east, the sun rises in the morning at seven, and I am always awake to see it rise. The Tower throws a long shadow across the bright grass of the green where she died, as if it is pointing a dark finger to my window. If I think of Anne, in her beauty and her allure, in her cleverness and her wit, then I think I shall go mad. She was in these rooms, and she went down those stairs, and she went out to that piece of grass (which I could see if I went to the window, but I never go to the window) and put her head down on the block and died a brave death, knowing that she was betrayed by everyone who had benefited from her rise. Knowing that her brother and his friends, the little circle who loved her so well, had died the day before, knowing that I gave the fatal evidence, her uncle gave the death sentence, and the king celebrated it. I cannot think of this. I must take good care of myself and not think of this.

Dear God, she knew that I betrayed her. Dear God, he went to a traitor’s death on the scaffold knowing that I betrayed him. He perhaps did not realize that it was from love. That’s the worst thing. He will never have known that it was from love. It was such a murderous thing to do; it was such a gesture from hatred that he will never have known that I loved him and I couldn’t bear that he should look at another woman. Let alone Anne. Let alone what he was to her.

I sit and face the wall. I cannot bear to look out of the window; I cannot bear to trace the writings on the walls of the cell for fear of finding his initials. I sit and fold my hands in my lap. To anyone watching me I am composed. I am an innocent woman. I am as innocent and composed as—say—Lady Margaret Pole, who was also beheaded outside my window. I never said one word for her either. Dear God, how can I even breathe the air of this place?

I can hear the shuffle of many feet on the stairs. How many do they think they need? The key grates in the lock; the door swings
open. I am irritated by the slowness. Do they think they can frighten me with this theater of threat? Then they come in. Two men and the guards. I recognize Sir Thomas Wriothsley, but not the clerk. They fuss about, setting up the table, putting out a chair for me. I stand and try to look unmoved, my hands clasped. Then I realize I am wringing my hands, and I make myself be still.

“We wish to ask you about the queen’s behavior at Lambeth when she was a girl,” he says. He nods at the clerk to indicate that he should write.

“I know nothing about it,” I say. “As you will see from your own records I was in the country, at Blickling Hall, and then in service with Queen Anne, to whom I gave good and honorable service. I did not know Katherine Howard until she came to serve Queen Anne.”

The clerk makes one mark, only one. I see it. It is a tick. This means that they knew what I would say, that it is not worth writing down. They have prepared for this interview; I should not trust a word they say. They know what they want to say and what they want me to reply. I have to be ready. I have to be armed against them. I wish I could think clearly; I wish my thoughts were not such a whirl. I must be calm. I must be clever.

“When the queen took on Francis Dereham as her secretary, did you know that he was her old friend and previous lover?”

“No, I knew nothing of her life before,” I say.

The clerk puts down a tick. This, too, is expected.

“When the queen asked you to fetch Thomas Culpepper to her room, did you know what were her intentions?”

I am stunned. How do we go from Francis Dereham to Thomas Culpepper in one leap? How do they know of Thomas Culpepper? What do they know of Thomas Culpepper? What has he told them? Is he on the rack vomiting in pain and sicking up the truth?

“She never asked me,” I say.

The clerk puts down a dash.

“We know that she asked you to fetch him, and we know that he came. Now, to save your life, will you tell us what took place between Thomas Culpepper and Katherine Howard?”

The clerk’s pen is poised; I can feel the words in my dry mouth. It is over. She is ruined, he is a dead man, I am on the brink of betrayal: again.

Anne, Richmond Palace, December 1541

The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk has been questioned on her sickbed as to the behavior of her granddaughter. She will be tried for letting the girl go to the king without warning him that she was no virgin. This is now called treason. She will be accused of treason because her granddaughter took a lover. If she is found guilty, that will be another old lady’s head on Henry’s block.

Dereham is accused with Culpepper of presumptive treason. The cause is that they both had intercourse with the queen. Dereham is accused even though there is no evidence against him and most believe that he laid with her long before she was queen, before even I was queen. Nonetheless, this is to be called treason. The king has named Katherine Howard as a “common harlot”—oh, Kitty, that anyone should speak like that of you! Both young men plead guilty to presumptive treason in the hopes of forgiveness. Both deny having lain with the queen. Their judge—unbelievable though it is to anyone but a subject of King Henry’s—is the Duke of Norfolk, who knows more of this than any man can say. His Grace the duke has returned from the country to hear the evidence of his niece Katherine promising to marry Dereham, admitting him to her bedroom and to her bed. He has heard the evidence of Dereham coming into her household when she was queen, and that is apparently enough to prove the young couple guilty. For why, the inquisitors indignantly
demand, would Dereham come to work for the queen if not to seduce her? The idea that he would hope to profit from her success as all the rest of them have done, her uncle among them, is not mentioned.

Culpepper started by denying everything, but once the queen’s ladies had given their statements, Lady Rochford among them, he could see that he was finished and he is now pleading guilty. Both young men are to be half hanged and then their bellies slit open, their guts pulled out, and then butchered as they bleed to death, for the crime of loving the pretty girl who married the king.

This foreshadows Katherine’s fate. I know it, and I am on my knees for her every day. If the men accused of loving her are to be killed in the cruelest way that England can devise, then the chances of her being forgiven and released are slight indeed. I am afraid she will spend the rest of her life in the Tower. Dear God, she is only sixteen now. Do they not think that two years ago she was too young to judge? Did her own uncle not think that a girl of fourteen is not likely to resist temptation when she is constantly encouraged to indulge her whims in everything? I don’t even consider what Henry thought; Henry is a madman. He thought of nothing but his own pleasure in her, and his own belief that she adored him. That is what she will pay for: for disappointing the vain dreams of a madman. As I did.

When I turned away from him in disgust at Rochester, he hated me for it, and he punished me for it as soon as he could, calling me ugly and fat with slack breasts and belly, no virgin, full of noisome airs, stinking, in fact. When Kitty chooses a young handsome man over his bloated, rotting body, he calls her a scandal and a whore. He punishes me with shame and exile from the court, and then takes pleasure in showing his generosity. I don’t think she will get off so lightly.

I am on my knees in my privy chamber at my prie-dieu when I hear the door behind me open quietly. I am so afraid of my shadow
in these dangerous days that I spin around. It is Lotte, my lady secretary, and her face is white.

“What is it?” I am on my feet at once. Stumbling as my heel catches the hem of my gown, I nearly fall and have to catch onto the little altar to save myself. The cross wobbles and crashes down to the floor.

“They have arrested your maid Frances, and they have taken your squire Richard Taverner, too.”

I gasp in terror, and then I wait until I can breathe out again. She mistakes my blank face for incomprehension, and she repeats the awful thing she has just said in German: “They have arrested your lady-in-waiting Frances, and they have taken Richard Taverner, too.”

“On what charges?” I whisper.

“They don’t say. The inquisitors are in the house now. We are all to be questioned.”

“They must have said something.”

“Just that we are all to be questioned. Even you.”

I am icy with fear. “Quick,” I say. “Go to the stables at once and get a boy to take a boat downriver to Dr. Harst in London. Tell him that I am in grave danger. Go at once. Go by the garden stairs, and make sure no one sees you.”

She nods and goes to the little private door to the garden as the other door to my presence chamber is thrown open and five men walk in.

“Stop right there,” one of them orders, seeing the open door. Lotte stops; she does not even look toward me.

“I was just going to the garden,” she says in English. “I need to take the air. I am unwell.”

“You are under arrest,” he replies.

I step forward. “On what grounds? What is alleged against her?”

The senior man, one I don’t know, steps toward me and bows slightly. “Lady Anne,” he says. “There are reports circulating in London
that there has been grave wrongdoing in your household. The king has commanded that we investigate. Anyone attempting to hide anything or failing to assist our investigation will be regarded as an enemy to the king, and guilty of treason.”

“We are all good subjects of our lord the king,” I say quickly. I can hear the fear in my own voice. He will hear it, too. “But there is no wrongdoing in my household; I am innocent of any wrongdoing.”

He nods. Presumably Kitty Howard said the same; as did Culpepper and Dereham.

“These are trying times, and we have to root out sin,” he says simply. “If you please, you will stay in this room, with this lady as companion if you wish, while we question your household. Then we will come to speak with you.”

“My ambassador should be informed,” I say. “I am not to be treated as an ordinary woman. My ambassador will need to know of your inquiry.”

The man gives me a smile. “He is being questioned at his house right now,” he says. “Or rather, I should say, at the inn where he stays. If I had not known that he was an ambassador for a great duke, I should have thought him an unsuccessful merchant. He does not keep a great estate, does he?”

I flush with embarrassment. This again is my brother’s doing. Dr. Harst has never had a proper fee; he has never had a proper establishment. Now I am being taunted for my brother’s meanness.

“You may question whom you like,” I say as bravely as I can. “I have nothing to hide. I live as the king bid me when we made our agreement. I live on my own; I entertain no more than is right and proper; my rents are collected and my bills are paid. As far as I can tell my servants are under good and sober discipline, and we attend church and pray according to the king’s rule.”