Pontefract Castle, Summer 1541 #2
She gives a little flounce off to her own bedroom. When I go back into the room, Kitty is unwrapping Thomas from the bed curtain, hopelessly giggling, clinging to each other, muffling their laughter.
‘What a virago you are!’ Thomas exclaims, and Kitty puts her face against his jacket to silence her scream of laughter. ‘I shall never dare to offend you, I swear. What a raking!’
‘You’ll never offend me.’ She lifts her face to his, flushed with laughter. ‘You never could.’
‘I wish to God I could come into your bedroom without knocking,’ he says, suddenly serious, as if shocked by the rush of his own desire. He puts his hands on her waist; he draws her closer. ‘I wish to God we could tell everyone we were locking the door and not to be disturbed until morning.’
PONTEFRACT CASTLE IS a long pause in this progress, which is starting to feel interminable, and now Sir Edward Baynton tells me that the court is to go to York, where the King of Scotland will meet us for talks to bring peace to the border regions and an alliance between the two kingdoms.
‘Any special ceremony?’ I ask, my heart in my mouth, not daring to say the word ‘coronation’.
For once he is smiling. ‘A ceremony in front of King James? With Mary of Guise watching? He’s having half the town rebuilt for something . . . I would think you could brush off the ermine and send a message to the jewel house.’
He means a coronation, but I only tell Kitty that we are to meet James of Scotland, and every afternoon for a week, we practise the exact depth of curtsey suitable for a neighbouring king.
‘At York?’ she asks.
‘At York,’ I confirm.
The king goes to Hull to inspect the defences with Thomas Culpeper and his riding court.
At once, there is a holiday atmosphere for those of us left behind, and we dance for pleasure, not for appearance, and hunt at a full gallop behind hounds giving tongue; we don’t have to wait for driven game.
Kitty is playful with her ladies in her rooms again, and everyone knows – but nobody says – that the court is a happier place without the king.
Even Lady Mary breathes more easily when her father is not staring at her, wondering whether she is of most use to him in England, paraded as a captured trophy, or whether he should marry her to a foreign prince and send her far away.
Francis Dereham takes the new freedoms too far and sits over his wine after dinner with the senior gentlemen of the queen’s household, as if he were one of them.
Of course, they tell him to leave with the other ushers, and madly, in a drunken rush of temper, he claims that he has his place by special favour, and that he will outstay them all.
‘We’ll have to see him and order him to be more discreet,’ I tell the queen. ‘Or we’ll have to dismiss him. We can’t have him speaking of you and talking about special favour.’
‘We can’t dismiss him,’ she says, her eyes dark with apprehension. ‘What about the letters?’
‘Your grandmother said she had them all?’ I check at her aghast expression. ‘Don’t tell me there are others? Oh Kitty! Nothing written by you?’
‘No, and anyway, Grandmother has them all?’
‘Then we deny them and we can dismiss him.’
She orders Francis to her presence chamber, though by rights Sir Edward should dismiss him.
‘You have upset the gentlemen of the queen’s household,’ I accuse him, quietly. ‘We had an agreement – Master Dereham – that you would keep to your place. You are not at Norfolk House now.’
‘I know it,’ he says, with a bow to Kitty and a sugary smile to me. ‘We were merry company there. But here Master Johns and Sir Edward are such pompous old—’
‘Their place is above you,’ I interrupt. ‘You may not even comment. You were told to keep to your place and show respect. In the circumstances I have no choice . . .’
‘I think you do have a choice,’ he interrupts me. ‘I won my place as an old friend of the queen. I’ve never failed in my friendship to her, even though certain honourable promises were made that were not honourably kept.’
‘Oh, Francis, stop it!’ Kitty says irritably.
‘I can’t have you being rude to Master Johns, and you know very well you can’t say anything about old friendships.
Grandmother gave you back your money – and you probably stole it from her in the first place.
Here—’ She pushes a little purse into his hands. ‘Take that, and stop causing trouble.’
I am horrified that she is bribing him. He weighs it in his hand as if he might ask for more.
He bows to us both; he looks as if he is biting his cheek to keep from laughing in our faces.
‘Why, Your Majesty, Lady Rochford, I thank you for this charming gift. You’ll have no more trouble from me, I promise you.
’ He goes to the door, opens it himself, and steps out.
‘Unless I need more money!’ he laughs, popping his head back in, and then he is gone.
‘Why give him money?’ I demand. ‘We were going to dismiss him, and the moment he said—’
‘I’m queen, aren’t I?’ she returns. ‘I’m the richest woman in England, aren’t I?’
‘Well, not really . . .’
‘I’m rich enough to buy a fool like Francis Dereham a hundred times over,’ she says irritably. ‘And neither you nor anyone else can tell me what to do with my money.’