The Queen's Mistake Page 4

  It was blue velvet lined with silk and dotted with real pearls. The absurdity of its elegance amid her worn things was bittersweet, she thought on a sigh.

  But Catherine knew perfectly well why she was being spirited away to court: She would be trotted out like a fat, delectable Christmas goose, to be given over to whomever her family chose for her. She had heard how every worthy courtier patterned his behavior on the king’s own. Having had four wives, and a string of mistresses, King Henry had a reputation that escaped no one in England or beyond. In spite of his middle age and how stout he had become at forty-nine, she had heard that he was still athletic, and still a powerful magnet for every girl who met him. At least, that was what she had been told.

  She had personally been in his presence three years earlier, when he and Queen Jane had made their progress toward Richmond. They had stopped for the night at Horsham and been entertained by the dowager duchess.

  As a girl of fourteen, Catherine had been surprised by how plain the queen was, her face pale, her features simple. Her voice was thin. She was the complete opposite of her cousin Anne Boleyn, and Catherine now realized that had likely been the point.

  The king had not even noticed Catherine for the presence of his newly pregnant bride. Catherine had stood in the entrance hall amid a collection of others. Having dropped into a deep curtsy as the royal couple entered, she was singled out by her grandmother in no way, and not noticed by anyone except the young, unassuming queen herself. As Catherine had risen, she remembered now how their eyes had met, each holding the other’s in an odd way, as if each knew the other. Catherine shivered now with the memory. She was thinking how that poor girl was dead nearly three years already, and that the child that had swelled her body that day had become the tragic cause of her premature death, as well as the king’s heir.

  The child was Prince Edward, the king’s only legitimate son.

  Perhaps it was that she was going to court now, to live in the household of the queen who had replaced Jane Seymour, that made the memory of that single meeting between them come alive for her again.

  “Your Grace,” Catherine had said softly.

  Jane Seymour’s smile in return had been small and yet regal. “You look very like her.”

  Catherine knew she had meant Anne Boleyn, and there was just a hint of spite in her words. The Seymour family ambition was nearly as strong as the Howards’.

  “I do not remember her well, even though she was my cousin. I was too young when she . . .” Catherine thought whether to say “died” or “lost her head.” She chose neither.

  “I have seen the portrait at Windsor Castle, although it hangs in an alcove near the back stairs now.” Jane Seymour had met her gaze then. “Walk with me, will you?”

  Coming from the queen it was more a command than a request.

  Catherine was full of fear that she would say the wrong thing and face the wrath of a spiteful grandmother absolutely bent on improving the Howard place with the king. The four ladies who accompanied her and Jane were more fashionably dressed than the startlingly plain queen, Catherine thought. Each was draped in velvet, sleeves slashed with gossamer silk, their gowns adorned with ribbons or pearls. Jane herself had begun as a maid of honor to Anne Boleyn when it was the Howard family in favor, not the Seymours. Things at court kept shifting.

  “Do you find pleasure here?” she had boldly asked the queen as they strolled together beneath an arbor with pale pink roses tumbling over the sides of a painted lattice.

  “I find I miss the peace of a simple life. Especially now,” she added, folding her hands over the large swell of a royal child beneath her breasts.

  “In truth, Your Grace, I think a country life is overrated.”

  “As court life most definitely is as well, believe me.”

  Again they exchanged a glance as they walked, each biting back a slight smile.

  “Seymours are not to find pleasure in the company of Howards, you know,” Jane said so softly that no one but Catherine could have heard her for the sound of the birds trilling from the lacy canvas of trees around them, and the brush of a delicate spring breeze over the gently rolling emerald landscape beyond.

  “Nor are Howards to find friends among Seymours.”

  “Doubtless you are told that, and wisely so. There is something unique about you, though, Cat. May I call you Cat?”

  “Your Grace may speak to me as you wish in all things.”

  Jane smiled again as she turned to look straight ahead. “I would enjoy having you about me to speak of the country idylls, which you know so well, and to remind me from time to time of them. I will speak to the king on the matter.”

  “Respectfully, Your Grace, a Howard girl come to court, one who looks so much like Queen Anne as they tell me I do? The king would not want me in your company, I should not think.”

  “She was never the queen; remember that, Cat,” Jane replied with a surprisingly firm tone. “The marriage was never truly valid, the courts found. His Majesty came to see that after the bloom of his passion for Mistress Boleyn had faded.”

  After my cousin could not give him a living son, was more to the point, Catherine thought.

  “I shall speak of you to him presently, though.”

  Again, Jane Seymour pressed her hands to her rounded belly—the pride in that gesture nearly as obvious as the pregnancy. “Just now I do believe the king would give me the moon and the stars if I asked them of him. What is a simple duke’s niece compared with that?” She softly chuckled. “He shall grow fond of you once he knows you, as he is fond of all my ladies, Cat. I know he will see you are nothing like Mistress Boleyn once he knows you.”

  But Queen Jane’s desire was never fulfilled. The child, Edward, had brought about his mother’s death within three months of her offer to bring Catherine to court.

  Catherine had never seen Jane Seymour again. Nor had she ever forgotten her.

  “You’ve still not told him you are to leave, have you?”

  Mary Lassells’s question brought Catherine back to the present, and she again looked around the room strewn with her belongings. It was a moment before she realized the stout, malcontent girl had meant Francis Dereham. In a place like Horsham, with little to do but trifle, then gossip about it later, Catherine was surprised he did not know already. It seemed nearly impossible that he would not.

  “I imagine he knows.”

  “The only person who might have dared to tell him, out of spite, is Master Manox, and your music instructor seems quite mute on the subject.”

  There was judgment in her voice, something Catherine had heard before, but never so fervently.

  “You’ve taken his heart and used it, Catherine. A most uncharitable thing to do before God.”

  “Francis took other parts of me, Mary, so I trust before God it shall be viewed as an even exchange.”

  Mary looked away. “I shall pray for you in it.”

  “Your prayers sound like pity, and I do not need that, since I am going to court.”

  Catherine glanced over at the new headpiece, symbolic of so much promise and duty, and the next moment she noticed the hem of Mary’s dress, which was frayed and worn. The disparity seemed glaring in this odd moment when the stout, homely girl had revealed more of her envy than ever before. Catherine watched Katherine Tilney place two folded nightdresses into one of the open chests. The more blithe of her companions was unaware of the rivalry stirring only a few feet away. Catherine had never felt uncomfortable with any of the Horsham women, because she had believed herself one of them, and learned to behave so. Now, in an instant, everything had changed.

  “Pray for me then, if you like,” Catherine finally amended. “Only make certain He is the Catholic God of the true and proper church that you know I follow.”

  “I shall keep that in mind as with the many things I know about you already, Mistress Howard,” said Mary Lassells.

  In a plain thatch-roofed cottage down a dirt road from Horsham, John L
assells, a little pig-faced, freckle-cheeked young man, pushed a gray, lukewarm leg of mutton around on his dish at the table. His sister, Mary, sat across from him, eating as well, and beyond her through the open window a bee droned, then disappeared.

  They were not far from the manor house, yet they might as well have been a million miles for the difference between the dowager’s residence and the cottage where Mary Lassells had spent her own childhood.

  “She has not told Dereham yet, has she?”

  “Nor has anyone else.”

  “Surely he has been told of the packing. Yet the poor fool goes around the estate like a lovesick pup, still bringing her tokens of devotion.”

  “As he should have done for me, if he’d had any sense.”

  Mary turned to gaze out the open window through which the fresh spring breeze gently blew. Everyone knew about the tokens Francis Dereham had given Catherine, as well as the scarf she had given him in return, embroidered inside with their initials. But with Dereham’s tokens had come the understanding that they would one day marry. Catherine owed him the truth of the real destiny that lay before her now—even if he should have known it himself all along.

  “Mistress Howard would say it began as a lark to them both, something to pass the time,” Mary murmured flatly. “Yet it became much more to Master Dereham along the way. Because of the trothplight he actually speaks of her as his wife to any of us who will listen.”

  Mary took a sip of ale and let out a sigh. “And yet it is a question whether that should be made her fault when he knew perfectly well she was a Howard. Her own uncle is the most notorious person in England for his ruthless ambition.”

  “Surely his reputation does not exceed the Seymours’.”

  “They are the same, I think,” Mary answered.

  “I tried to reason with her myself, but she is still such a frivolous girl,” said the older Dorothy Barwick as she sat down beside Mary on the rough-hewn bench, and lowered a dish of mutton onto the table with theirs. “She seems completely incapable of understanding the consequences of her actions. For all of the education you girls seem to have foisted upon her, Catherine remains dangerously naive.”

  “The ‘poor girl,’ as you call her, has traded on her ability to seduce every man within a day’s ride of Horsham to a future of luxury living beside the queen,” Mary said bitterly, her own envy overtaking her.

  “I don’t suppose it is the queen with whom she is actually being taken to live. Not if the old duke has anything to say in the matter,” Dorothy answered.

  “You don’t honestly feel pity for her, do you?” John asked Dorothy, his lips parted in an expression of pure incredulity, a spoon poised at his mouth.

  “I pity anyone being tossed to the wolves. Especially a girl who goes to her fate with a smile because she has absolutely no idea what truly lies before her. You all bear a responsibility for the wanton girl Catherine has become. It was love she was searching for while the lot of you were purely pleasuring yourselves.”

  “You know not what you are saying,” Mary snapped irritably. “I have changed, and I have tried to bring the others away from that pagan world. My brother and I have prayed for our sins and begged God’s forgiveness for what was youthful folly.”

  Dorothy leaned back, gazing critically at the brother and sister at the table. “There is a price to be paid for all folly; make no mistake about that. It is only a pity that the poor dear who is about to meet that debt at court is poor Cat Howard. She has been trained here like a whore, while the old duchess turned a blind eye in case there would be some benefit. Catherine has absolutely no idea at all what is in store for her or what to do with it. You would both be wise, before God, to pity and not envy that.”

  In a rich yet outdated riding costume of dun velvet, one she had borrowed from her grandmother, Catherine glanced around a final time at the dormitory as she waited for the horses to be brought to the front of the manor. She had lived much of her life here like a servant, and yet her heart was racing now at the thought of the great unknown that lay ahead. And, while she no longer loved him, and perhaps she never truly had, she realized as she was preparing to leave without even seeing him to say good-bye that a part of her would actually miss Francis.

  Somewhere along the way, while learning how to play the game and to toy with men, Catherine had for a while actually cared for him. She felt a little pull of guilt upon remembering that. She did not love him any longer. She was uncertain whether she could ever truly love anyone, for the urge to survive overpowered her desire for anything else. But he had most definitely made an impact on her life.

  “So then it is true?”

  The sound of his voice, uncharacteristically reedy and trembling, startled her. He was so close behind her that Catherine could feel his breath on the back of her neck. But she did not turn to face him.

  “How can you go when you are my wife?”

  “Surely you realize we are not really married, Francis. Our troth-plighting was a game only.”

  “Not to me.”

  She turned around slowly to see him standing there, entirely bereft. His eyes, which were normally so brightly blue and full of mischievous pleasure, were bloodshot and misted with tears. His hands hung limply at his sides, as if all the life had gone out of him. His desperation brought a sensation of revulsion from Catherine rather than compassion. It made her think too much of Henry Manox, who had pleaded tearfully when she had ended things with him.

  “I haven’t any choice, Francis,” she said in a low voice. “It is the will of my uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. You have always known who I am, not just who my grandmother treated me as.”

  “Ah, but you haven’t known it.” He shrugged his shoulders slightly. “And it was that part of you I foolishly allowed myself to love.”

  “You should not have loved me. It was folly. They were games we played, all of us.”

  “It would have been easier to cut out my own heart than not to fall in love with you. You have become a great beauty, Cat, full of promise. The Duke of Norfolk sees that as clearly as any of us. But he alone has the power to take full advantage of it.”

  “They say I look too much like my cousin Anne Boleyn to find any real favor at court. Her memory still looms large with the king. I suspect my uncle plans to use me rather as a set of eyes and ears to spy for him in the queen’s household.”

  “And to make a good match with someone of his choosing.”

  “Yes, likely that.”

  Catherine glanced back at Dereham. “I’m sorry I did not tell you myself. I just really did not know how. Forgive me?”

  “One last embrace in the bargain?” he asked, his charming grin for the moment returned.

  Catherine laughed blithely for the first time in days, and let him fold her into his arms. She would miss that—the challenge and the little victories of seducing a handsome, sensual young man like Francis. She could only guess at the complications of the royal court before her.

  “My lady grandmother and the Duke of Norfolk both believe I am still an innocent, you know.”

  Francis held her away with mock incredulity. “Do they truly?”

  “Of course.”

  “And yet sending a kinswoman into the very seat of all power without the armor to do battle and triumph seems unwise.” He lowered his gaze. “You are, after all, of an age, Cat, a babe in arms no longer.”

  “You are saying the Duke of Norfolk knows what I, what we—”

  “Your grandmother does, at the very least, I should think.”

  “But she beat me for any sort of defiance or, worse, for any interest in men.”

  “To maintain her hold, quite likely, not halt your education. Did you not ever wonder why the keys to your dormitory were so easy for me to obtain?”

  Catherine felt faint. “You are saying she has raised me up like a trained whore?”

  “Perhaps she allowed things for the greater good. You said it yourself: You are a Howard, and one to whom much is
given and from whom much is expected.”

  “And what do you expect of me, Francis? Is that not far more to the point?”

  “What I expect is for you never to forget who your friends are, Cat.”

  As Catherine gazed into his crystal blue eyes for the last time, she could not help thinking that there was far more to his words than what he said. Thank the Lord she would be getting away from her past, for good. A new life, no matter what surprises it held, seemed better to her in light of what would be here for her if she stayed.

  Chapter Three

  April 1540

  Whitehall Palace, London

  Something grand must be done before Catherine’s ar rival, and it must go with the precision of clockwork, Norfolk decided. There could be no error if this was to succeed as he intended. His son Henry was only one of two people whom he dared trust with his ambitious plan, the other man being Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. He was a man who despised the enemy Cromwell almost more than Norfolk did himself. They were a triumvirate in his plan to bring the true Catholic Church back to prominence, to unseat Thomas Cromwell as King Henry’s chief minister, and return the Howard family to ultimate favor with an increasingly volatile monarch.

  The risks in it were nearly as great as the potential reward.

  Norfolk sat in his apartments in the east wing of Whitehall Palace at his ornate writing table, with a crystal pot of ink and a box of sand before him. Wearing elegant gray velvet, with black slashings in his wide sleeves and a heavy silver chain across his chest, he was a formidable figure as he paused to consider the next sentence in the directive he was writing to his son, who was at their family home at Lambeth.

  Until the moment was absolutely perfect, until he was satisfied that the groundwork was meticulously laid, they must bide their time. The marriage to the German Anne of Cleves was unraveling, as he had expected.