Hampton Court, All Hallows’ Eve, 1541
Hampton Court, All Hallows’ Eve
WE WAKE EARLY, and Kitty has a bath in the great royal bath in Bayne Tower.
The tub is big enough for the king, huge for a slip of a girl like Kitty, and she allows her favourites, Alice Restwold and Catherine Tilney, to plunge in with her in their bathing shifts.
The three romp in the hot scented water, splashing each other and holding their breath and going under the water, until I insist they come out and wrap up warmly to run back to the queen’s rooms and help Kitty to dress in her cloth of silver gown.
When we have her sleeves laced on and her green silk shoes on her stockinged feet, we stand her before the mirror and comb the waves of her bronze hair over her shoulders and put her little coronet on her head.
‘Should be a crown,’ she whispers to me.
‘Perhaps he’ll announce it today.’
We line up. In strict order of precedence, Lady Mary will go behind her stepmother, Lady Margaret Douglas behind her, and then all the ladies-in-waiting in order behind them.
We file to the Chapel Royal, and Kitty curtseys to the king in his gallery, and we sit before the altar, and the service begins.
The Bishop of Lincoln leads the service and prays for all the departed and all saints and especially gives thanks for the good life that His Majesty the king leads with the queen .
. . and hopes to lead, he adds sonorously, in case All Hallows’ Eve makes us think that the king might be mortal.
I am hoping that the herald will announce the coronation; but the service goes on through the usual collects for the day, and though the sermon praises the king and queen as peace-bringers to the north of England, the king’s confessor does not seem to have been instructed to hint at a coronation for Kitty.
Of course, it suits the Seymours if she is not crowned, especially if the king dies soon.
Easier for them to create a Seymour regency if there is no crowned Howard queen.
It suits the Spanish party, too – a blood royal princess outranks an uncrowned commoner wife.
All of them must hope that the king dies before Kitty conceives and is crowned.
If I could be sure that the king would not see another Easter, I would even think it worth the risk for Kitty to pretend to a pregnancy to win herself a coronation.
Anne would have dared to do such a thing – but Anne had courage that none of us know.
Anne could have sworn she was pregnant and wept at the deathbed with a pillow strapped inside her gown.
Even Jane Seymour would have done it, if she had been ordered.
But Kitty is too young and has none of the steely Howard ambition, nor clever brothers.
She would betray herself; she is not yet fully a courtier with two faces.
Finally, the service is over, and Kitty turns to the king’s gallery and sweeps a deep graceful curtsey to show her gratitude for the honour.
He kisses his hand to her, a pretty gesture, and she smiles radiantly.
Then she leads the way from the chapel back to her rooms. We will change our clothes and wrap up to walk in the autumn gardens and beside the river before dinner.
We celebrate All Hallows’ Eve with a little masque of the boggarts, black dominos over our usual gowns and monster masks.
Thomas and Kitty manage to steal a dance together; he holds her closely, and her eyes behind her mask are green with desire, and nobody notices them among the bobbing heads of deer and cuckold horns and antlers.
The king’s pain is eased with a constant supply of tumblers of wine, and at unmasking, when Kitty is discovered dancing with Alice Restwold, he exclaims that he had no idea who was who, and that it reminds him of just last year or the year before, when he danced with all the ladies and no one would ever have known him; but that he was the best dancer, and the only one who danced all night.
He says that next year, we shall have a grander masque, and he will lead Kitty out to dance in a minotaur mask.
She holds her shoulders very still so that she does not shudder at the thought of her monstrous husband in a monster mask.
Edward Seymour catches the mood before the king gets maudlin over previous glories, by telling him that his son the prince has recovered from a fever, and the king goes to bed happy, with one arm on Seymour’s shoulders and one leaning on Culpeper, and I think: and there is our regency council: the dowager queen’s husband, Thomas Culpeper; the prince’s uncle, Edward Seymour; the dowager queen’s uncle, Thomas Howard; and the queen regent herself.