The Queen's Mistake Read online

  “I’ve not yet worn color,” Catherine said hesitantly.

  “There are a great many things at court you have not yet done, my pretty little cousin,” Jane replied with a cryptic little half smile that faded quickly. “But Howards do them all sooner or later.”

  Jane went to the dressing table and selected a small silver pot from among the vials and bottles. Swiftly, she spun Catherine toward her, tapped a small bit of the contents onto each of her cheekbones, and rubbed it in roughly with each of her thumbs. “There now. You are presentable. We must go. We’re late as it is.”

  Catherine followed close at Jane’s heels, like a little dog, through the maze of rooms comprising the queen’s apartments. They passed meticulously dressed ladies lounging, laughing and chatting in low tones, all of them glancing up at her appraisingly without missing a beat. Clearly she was nothing to any of them.

  Finally they arrived before two liveried guards who still wore the black lion of Cleves as they stood ready. Jane nodded to them and, magically, the tall, carved oak doors were parted.

  Catherine noticed the aroma of the queen’s bedchamber before anything else. It was pungent, foreign. The grand room had few furnishings, save the massive oak bed, with the royal arms embroidered in silver onto its tester, and a row of chairs along the walls beneath huge, dark tapestries on heavy rods. As they crossed the carpeted floor and neared the bed, they passed by a large coterie of women and two men speaking in a clipped, guttural, foreign tongue. She felt her heart begin to race, and she wondered if she would understand them if they spoke to her, and if the new queen would be displeased that Catherine could not address her in her native tongue.

  There was a duo of ladies at the foot of the queen’s bed as she neared. The headboard bore the initials H and A above the year 1540 and was adorned with carvings of cherubs, one of them clearly pregnant. Catherine glanced over at the two women. She recognized them as her own half sister Isabel, Lady Baynton, with whom she was not close, and the fair-skinned, doe-eyed Anne, Countess of Hertford. As Catherine and Jane neared, the others instantly fell silent, glancing up guiltily, as if they had been speaking of her. Catherine felt her knees weaken further still.

  She was quite terrified.

  At the foot of the queen’s heavily carved bed, where the embroidered drapes parted, Catherine and Jane each made a deep curtsy.

  “This is her then?”

  The queen’s English was clotted, as if she had stones caught in her throat. Catherine realized that the aroma she had noticed upon entering the room was coming directly from the bed. A musky, odd perfume swirled around Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Although she was propped up against a row of overstuffed pillows, Anne of Cleves appeared to be drowning beneath embroidered bedcovers and a heavy fustian nightdress and cap. Her corn-colored hair beneath the cap was straight and matted, like a cobweb, but after the memorable beauty of Anne Boleyn and the quiet elegance of Jane Seymour, it was her face, more than anything, that surprised Catherine. Although she did not want to have an unkind thought about the queen, she could not deny that the woman was ugly.

  She sat with a little pet marmoset on her lap, both of them eating apples and nuts from the same silver dish.

  When nothing but silence followed the queen’s question, Catherine dared to answer herself. “Your Grace, I am Mistress Howard,” she said in her sweetest and most dutiful tone.

  The queen looked up at her appraisingly in the awkward silence, as did the other women. A door clicked to a close behind her. There was the echo of shoe heels. A small half cough. Someone whispered.

  “Approach,” the queen directed. It was a single, taut word.

  More unintelligible words followed as an older woman standing beside the queen, dressed in a gown of German design, leaned in to converse with her.

  Catherine held her breath.

  “Her Highness desires that the rest of you leave us,” the woman instructed. Her accent was thick, but her words were articulate and understandable. The maids of honor quickly complied. Jane touched Catherine lightly on the arm, as if giving her a spark of courage, then vanished along with the others. Again, the sound of a door closing cut through the awkward silence.

  “It was your cousin who was my husband’s second wife,” the queen sputtered out in words so awkwardly articulated that it took a moment for Catherine to understand them. “It was Mistress Boleyn who stole the king from his true wife. Pray tell me that ambition does not run in families.”

  The older woman who stood beside the bed, with her hands linked before her, rephrased the queen’s comments until Catherine understood her entirely. Despite the challenge in her words, Anne of Cleves wore a gentle expression, and there was great kindness in her wide brown eyes. She, too, was a stranger at court, trying to find her way through an already tumultuous history of wives and mistresses. Doubtless the queen herself knew the rumors of her husband’s dis favor and wondered what was to become of her.

  “I am to tell you, on Her Grace’s behalf, that I am called Mother Lowe. I translate for her and protect her interests.”

  “I am at court only by Her Grace’s leave. My goal is only to serve her,” Catherine replied.

  The queen spoke in German in reply to that, and Mother Lowe translated: “‘And to help me play the lute,’ she says. She was told that you are tolerably skilled, and the king favors a woman who can play.”

  Catherine inclined her head. “It would be my great honor to try.”

  “See that you do more than try,” Mother Lowe replied in warning. “Her Highness needs to depend upon those around her to help her standing with her husband, not hinder it.”

  “It will be my honor to do what I can,” Catherine amended, unsure of what she could teach anyone on the lute that might impress the very discerning King of England. The queen recommenced feeding pieces of apple to her pet marmoset. Catherine knew this meant the conversation was over. She was led to the door without ceremony by the short, silver-haired Earl of Waldeck.

  “You did well, Mistress Howard,” he said in a lowered voice, thick with the same accent as the queen and Mother Lowe. “Her Grace is pleased.”

  “May I ask how you can tell?”

  “She invited you to help her, of course. That is a rare thing in a place where none of us are yet free to trust anyone.” He leveled his eyes at her, which were nearly as gray as his hair. “See that you do not disappoint her. Everything is at stake for her right now.”

  She curtsied clumsily to him as he motioned for the guard to open the door. The meeting was over. In less than three minutes, Catherine had met the queen.

  And she felt as if she had taken on the weight of the world for all of the expectations surrounding their new relationship.

  Outside in the privy chamber, the king’s two nieces, Lady Douglas and the Marchioness of Dorset, stood with their ears pressed against the door. The royal guards stood at attention, ignoring their eavesdropping. The women were too highly placed by king and queen to bar them.

  “Well?” said Frances to her cousin. “What do you think? Is she a threat?”

  “That depends,” Margaret answered with caution. “For whom do you fear the threat?”

  “For the poor queen, who is foolish enough to befriend her. Catherine Howard is a threat beyond measure. She is everything Henry always craves. The precise type for which he gives up everything. Surely you can see that. She is rather like a cat alone with an unsuspecting little mouse. A fat German mouse without the sense to see that her greatest rival is staring her in the face.”

  Later that afternoon, Catherine watched silently as the queen was dressed in a costume different from the one she wore to matins. It was not the intricate, somber ritual she had been educated to anticipate. There was much low laughter and chatter in German between Anne, Mother Lowe and the queen’s stout personal maid, Gertrude.

  The rest of the day was straightforward enough. The women attended matins in the king’s chapel and walked the gardens with the clumsily movi
ng queen in her square, heavy dress. In both situations, Catherine walked behind the others, and the only words spoken between the queen and her ladies, or the Earl of Waldeck, were ones she did not understand.

  Her disappointment was immediate. She was not liked, understood or utilized. She was like a painted fixture, an ornament. She was up at dawn, dressed, bejeweled and perfumed, then bored beyond belief by the monotony of her day. At least Queen Anne laughed frequently, Catherine thought, as they strolled amid the trellised walks, fountains and marble pillars of the royal gardens. The only thing she had decided for certain since coming to court was that Anne of Cleves seemed a happy woman in less than happy circumstances. Her husband was displeased with her, and she could not even make her case in a language that would win him.

  Three days passed and Catherine still had not been presented to the king; although in that time not even his wife had been granted the courtesy of being admitted to his presence. There was such monotony in waiting. In sewing. In listening to music. In reading. In the endless walks. In her self-enforced silence as the hours stretched on. She realized that life at court was not much different from at Horsham. His Majesty was either dining, resting or praying, according to the reports.

  Each night, Catherine slept alone in the little anteroom above the queen’s apartments, and early each morning, as a show of friendship, Jane Boleyn herself came to talk with her and help her into a new dress and stylish hood, like those of the other women. Yet she was not one of them. Jane seemed the only one willing to speak with her as the long, idle days passed. There was an ongoing competition for the queen’s favor, as well as the king’s, among the ladies of the queen’s world, she quickly realized, but she was not considered a player in the game at hand.

  On her fourth day at court, when she had begun to regret yearning to leave Horsham, she met her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, on his way back from vespers on a stone path beneath a heavy gray sky. He matched her stride easily as they walked behind the queen’s attendants near the sundial and a little garden of primrose shaped into a heart and a star. He held his hands behind his back and did not look at her as he spoke. As always, he was dressed forbiddingly, in a coat of black velvet with a collar of rare lynx.

  “So you have found your place easily, I see.”

  “As easily as a lamb lives among lions.”

  Catherine had never seen the duke smile, but a slight expression of amusement turned up the corners of his mouth now. “Much is changing, child. You are where you are meant to be.”

  “I suppose it matters not that I do not wish to be here.”

  “You are in the household of the Queen of England. Be patient for your turn.”

  “I am ignored in her household, my lord.”

  “These days are difficult ones for the queen. When you are called upon, take solace in knowing that you will be ready,” he said encouragingly.

  “But exactly who is it you expect to call upon me?” she asked petulantly, and loudly enough that the Marchioness of Dorset glanced back and gave a little scowl.

  Catherine lowered her head.

  “I do not yet know the path. Only the destination.”

  “How could you possibly know the future?”

  She was angry, tired and suddenly more homesick than she had ever thought possible, and she really did not care what he had meant by his comment.

  “I have asked the queen’s leave to allow you to dine in my apartments this evening. It will do you good to reunite with your cousin, who has just returned to London.”

  Catherine did not like her cousin Henry, Earl of Surrey, any more than she liked the duke. She thought of him standing there at Horsham, leering at her. Like his father, he was the sort of pompous lout who was too interested in himself to be manipulated by a pretty girl or to actually care about her either. She trusted neither father nor son. But under the circumstances, an evening with family was difficult to refuse.

  “Thank you, Uncle, for the invitation.”

  “There now.” He smiled, looking more like a cat stalking its prey than an uncle concerned with his niece’s future. That, of course, did not surprise her. “See how much nicer it is when you are accommodating? Even your color changes to that very pale pink that is so comely.”

  At the place on the grounds where two stone urns met the knot garden planted long ago by Henry’s first queen, Catherine of Aragon, Norfolk stopped suddenly. Catherine glanced at the ladies as they continued on ahead of her, but remained with Norfolk. Control of her was his in all things. “I am told the queen desires that you help her improve her skill with the lute. I spoke highly of your ability, so the request comes as little surprise.”

  “She did mention it at my introduction. But I am no music instructor, Your Grace.”

  He chuckled at her, and the sound was condescending. “You will learn quickly enough here, Cat, that you shall be anything you are asked to be, so long as it helps you get ahead. I shall send an escort for you at two. See that you are ready,” Norfolk said as he turned to leave.

  Catherine had to run to catch up with the queen’s other ladies.

  She wore the blue velvet to supper, her first gift from the duke, in hopes that it would please him. Jane had ornamented Catherine’s hair with a circlet of pearls, much as a mother might have, but she did not wear her mother’s necklace. Catherine did not wish to make herself vulnerable to a man who had so much power over her, especially a man she did not trust.

  She and her escort were silent as they left their horses in the courtyard of Lambeth House, an imposing brick-and-ivy gated manor that lay across the river from Whitehall. In London, the duke stayed in accommodations at court, but he had been left this estate upon his father’s death, which he shared with Agnes when she chose to come to the city. Catherine had heard the story many times. Since the duke was in the city most often, the house was done to his own taste, all of Agnes’s things placed there during her marriage now removed. In their place were dark, masculine furnishings, walls covered by tapestries and heavy silver torches. Little of the duke’s father’s imprint or his wife’s remained on the house. The slight to his stepmother, whom he had always only tolerated, was intentional.

  “Welcome,” said a young nobleman who greeted her nonchalantly at the door with an unexpected, easy smile. Catherine raised her guard against it. No one here seemed to show kindness without a purpose. “Please follow me. His Grace and the Earl of Surrey await you inside.”

  Catherine noticed that the well-dressed young man was handsome, near her own age, with rich, dark eyes. Perhaps the evening would not be a total loss if he was kept nearby, she silently mused. She could hear muted conversation as she neared the sealed, carved oak doors. But silence fell sharply when a liveried page opened the door with gloved hands to formally admit her. She found her uncle and cousin much as she had at Horsham—the duke in a high-backed leather chair near the fire and Henry Howard standing beside his father. Yet there were others present. A small, stout man with thinning white hair sat in the chair opposite the duke, and two servants stood beside him. To her greatest surprise, Jane Boleyn stood with them, along with Catherine’s own elder sister, Margaret, Lady Arundel, whom she had not seen in over a year. By their expressions, it was more than obvious that they knew something Catherine did not. Jane was the first to step forward. She held out her hands in welcome.

  “We were speaking of the queen,” she said with a smile.

  Kindness and sincerity. It made her wary. “That concerns me how, precisely?”

  Jane’s expression was alive. “Only that Her Grace, the queen, expects you to work with her tomorrow and the day after in preparation for a banquet where she hopes to play the lute well enough to impress the king.”

  “Your appearance is much improved since I last saw you, cousin,” Henry said kindly, yet his tone sounded stiff and insincere. “You do surprising justice to costly clothing.”

  She thought better of the sarcastic reply she longed to deliver, waiting until she coul
d fully determine what this evening was about and what they expected of her beneath what seemed like their wafer-thin cordiality.

  A liveried servant announced supper, and Catherine walked beside Jane down the long corridor behind the duke and his son. She longed to ask Jane for the truth. She longed for a friend in this new and complicated world. Yet she had sworn at Horsham not to trust anyone until she knew the game players well enough. Out of habit, she nervously reached for her mother’s silver chain, remembering only then that she had chosen not to wear it. As the party moved into the hall, with the aroma of cooked meats strong and inviting, she regretted its absence. She thought of the necklace as an amulet that could fend off harm, as her mother had once done for her.

  At her uncle’s long and polished trestle table covered with glittering silver, Catherine was seated between Jane and the pleasant-looking young man with the dark tousled hair who had first greeted her. As they dined on the first course of sturgeon, he affably introduced himself as Gregory Cromwell, son of the king’s powerful minister Thomas Cromwell.

  On her other side sat another distractingly handsome young man. He was taut and muscular, like Cromwell, with brown, slightly shaggy hair over his forehead, vivid blue eyes, and the trim whisper of a beard along the square line of his jaw. It struck Catherine, as the next course was served on silver trays, that he seemed as wholly inattentive as young Cromwell was attentive.

  Something about the young man’s eyes made her chest palpably ache. He was that attractive, near to physical perfection. Yet his cool demeanor put her off, and Catherine resolved to speak to Gregory Cromwell instead.

  “Are you at court in my uncle’s service then?” she asked, taking a swallow of wine from a gilt cup emblazoned with the Howard family crest.

  “I always serve myself first.” He smiled slyly. “But, in truth, I accepted a position in your uncle’s household as a favor to my father, who wanted me to keep an eye on the duke on his behalf. But, of course, your uncle invited me to join his household only so he could keep an eye on my father through me. That’s simply the way court works.”