Chenies Manor, Buckinghamshire, Autumn 1541 #2
FRANCIS DEREHAM, HAVING been quiet and at peace, a discreet beggar for occasional purses, now strolls into the queen’s room while she is sitting with Lady Russell and the ladies after breakfast. The king is in too much pain to hunt, but he is taking a ride around Lord Russell’s new park on a steady horse.
‘Your Majesty,’ Francis Dereham says, with his oily smile. ‘I bring you a friend from our happy childhood, a friend from Norfolk House!’
I rise to my feet, dreading the introduction of one of the tutors, schoolmasters, or pages who seemed to have spent their time flirting with the girls, or one of the indiscreet cousins that litter Norfolk House. Kitty is watching him like a bird watches an approaching snake.
‘Oh Alice!’ she says in relief as a young woman comes in and makes a demure curtsey. ‘Alice Restwold!’ She leaps to her feet and kisses her on both cheeks. ‘How glad I am to see you! What a long time it’s been!’
She turns, smiling and pretty. ‘Lady Russell, may I introduce my friend Mistress Alice Restwold. We were brought up almost as sisters in my grandmother’s house, and I’ve not seen Alice since I left for the court!’
Yes, I think at once. So why are we seeing her now?
Lady Russell greets the young woman, who curtseys politely to her and then to the rest of us. Her manners are elegant, there is no reason to refuse her a place. I would just rather not add another pupil from that school of vanity at Lambeth.
‘You can lodge with Catherine Tilney,’ Kitty says. She looks at me. ‘She can come to London with us, can’t she, Lady Rochford?’
‘Of course,’ I say, feigning a welcome. Since the girl is introduced by Francis Dereham, he is sure to have told her that childhood friends are welcomed and will be well provisioned if they play their cards right.
Catherine Tilney takes Alice off to her room, and before dinner, Kitty gives her a pair of gowns and a couple of hoods. They are the same height and build.
‘We used to be bedfellows,’ Alice says, admiring her reflection in the queen’s long looking-glass. ‘Together night and day.’
‘That was a long time ago,’ I say repressively. ‘And Her Majesty is called to a different station now.’
‘Oh, of course,’ she says quickly, her gaze going from the new gown to my grave face, reflected over her shoulder. ‘Her secrets are safe with me!’
‘I should hope there are no secrets,’ I say firmly. ‘Nothing can be said in the king’s court that cannot be said to the king himself. And nothing can be said that would displease the king.’
‘No, no,’ she says again. ‘You can rely on me, Lady Rochford. I’m very glad to be here.’
‘You’re very welcome,’ I lie.
WE STAY AT Chenies for several days, and though Lord and Lady Russell are extravagantly generous hosts, the king’s temper scarcely improves.
He is a Zeus Xenia who demands godlike hospitality for merely arriving at their door.
They lay on hunting and fishing, and they lose money to him playing cards every evening; but the insult at York burns in his belly and makes him belch after every enormous meal.
I can see the same strain in Lady Russell’s face that I see in my mirror every morning.
I have some sympathy for her. For her husband, Lord Russell, a couple of days of feasting and driving deer towards the king is amply rewarded by the wealth that he will skim from England as a trusted favourite.
But Lady Russell, who has to supervise the household, provide the entertainment, simulate admiration and even desire for an impossible guest, it is thankless work.
I see her glance at Kitty with genuine pity: she knows that to be a queen to a sick and dying king is no way to spend young womanhood.
‘D’you think she might get with child?’ she asks me. My heart plunges at the thought that for the first time, I think the answer might be ‘yes’.
‘There’s no reason why not,’ I say firmly, denying the reality of an ill-tempered, sick man who wants to be a father at fifty.
‘It’s the only thing that would make him happy,’ Lady Russell says ambiguously.
This is a woman who reported to Thomas Cromwell just as I did. She learned spy-craft from him, as I did. She knows how to hear meaning in silences, what words would fill the gaps in conversation. She can make a casual comment and note the reply – just as I do.
‘Yes, she delights him.’
‘And in the future – would she be kind to Lady Mary . . .?’ She lets the question trail off.
I could smile that we once thought the Spanish party was defeated and Lady Mary’s last defender dead. Yet here is another, quietly working for her. ‘The queen loves all her stepchildren,’ I lie.
‘Would she speak against a French marriage for Lady Mary?’ she whispers. ‘I know Lady Mary would rather stay in England than be sent abroad. And she would be a good stepdaughter to the queen if she could stay?’
I see, this is how it will be for me; I will be the advisor behind the throne of the widowed queen.
I will keep the balance between the Spanish party for the old faith and the reform party for the new.
Kitty – who could not care less either way – will be guided by me, so that we gain the most power and benefit from whichever party is on the rise.
‘Are you sure that is Lady Mary’s wish?’ I ask. ‘Did she ask you?’
She is far too well trained to name her principal. ‘We who love her must wish for her to stay in England,’ she says carefully. ‘We would not want her to go to a country like France, without friends. But I fear that some of the king’s advisors do not think of her happiness.’
‘Oh we do,’ I say reassuringly, wondering how long it will take for my words to reach Toledo. ‘The queen is the best stepmother that Lady Mary could have. If she were crowned queen, she would take Lady Mary as her first lady and most beloved daughter.’
And that’s our price for Lady Mary to stay in England!
– I could almost laugh aloud. That’s your stake in this gamble!
You support Kitty’s coronation, and her inheritance as dowager queen and her position as queen regent, and in return we will prevent Lady Mary’s exile now and we will see her restored to the line of succession after the prince.
Cromwell-trained, Lady Russell betrays no pleasure that we have made an agreement.
‘I am so glad the weather has been so fine for your visit,’ she says.
‘The queen has enjoyed your gardens and parkland,’ I say. ‘A most beautiful setting for a beautiful house.’
Kitty impresses me in these last days of the progress at Chenies.
I start to imagine her as a young dowager queen.
Exquisitely dressed in her hunting costume, she stands beside the king as he sits on his bowman chair and shoots deer that are driven towards him, and her pity for the terrified creatures and her disgust at their agonising deaths never crosses her pretty face.
She does not mount her horse until the king has been hauled into his saddle, so that she is never above him, looking down, so that he never feels that he is old and slow.
She never shows a moment’s impatience when the horse staggers under his weight, when he is pale and bad-tempered, she says that she is tired, how exhausting the day has been!
She only dances when he asks her to lead out the dancers, and even when the music sets everyone’s feet tapping and the man she adores is on the floor with another girl, she sits beside the king and tilts her head to hear his new complaint over the poor quality of the music, and how he was the best dancer in England.
When he comes to her bed, dragging his stinking leg, she smiles in welcome and ignores the men who help him mount into the high bed.
She looks straight past Thomas Culpeper as he gently lifts the king’s bandaged leg, and she smooths the richly embroidered coverlet over the mountain of the king’s belly and does not turn her head, not even by a fraction of an inch, from the stink of his rasping breath.
She knows as well as I do, that if she and Culpeper happened to make a child on that one, irresistible time, then she has to bed the king for the rest of this month, so that he thinks it is his.
Culpeper’s seed has to be followed by whatever the king can squeeze out, so that any baby can be named as royal.
I don’t have to tell her this. These are the politics of the stable-yard, of the hound kennel.
This is about breeding, not love. It is dirty and ordinary and unconcealed, and we set to it like kennel masters.
As we call at Windsor on the way to Hampton Court, I think: we won’t have to do this for long; the king is dying by inches.
Every day, he does less; all he maintains is his enormous appetite, and as he belches and farts and sweats from every pore, it looks as if his digestion is breaking down, too, and foul juices and stinking gas are oozing out of his skin.
I think of the Seymour expectation of a regency in the spring, my alliance with Thomas Seymour, of the promise from Lady Mary’s supporters and the Spanish party to support Kitty, of the Howard army that is quietly mustering more men, and I know I am prepared.
I really doubt that the king will get through Christmas. Kitty will be widowed in the new year.