Chapter 38
Catherine Parr
Henry Tudor was an easy mark.
It had almost been too simple. Parr had spent less than a month in Lady Mary’s service before Henry began wooing her with sonnets written by poets whose work he passed off as his own.
Gifts were next, each more decadent than the last: gowns, jewels, even estates put into Parr’s name.
All she needed to do was pretend to find him charming.
She laughed at his stories when she knew he wanted laughter and hung on his words when she knew he wanted awe.
She ignored his flaws—which were many—and allowed him to believe he was young and hale and handsome in her eyes.
False smiles, demure looks, and the occasional glimpse down the front of her dress were all it took.
She could have been any woman, at any time, in any place—that was how little Henry seemed to discern.
Parr would never understand why people called this love.
At best, it was a mating dance. At worst, it was an excuse to avoid confronting their own loneliness.
Parr had never felt lonely, or then again, perhaps she always had and had ceased to recognize it as anything but her natural state of being.
She had grown up on a rural estate in Kendal, a land of rivers and bogs and forests and very little in the way of proper civilization.
Though she had two younger siblings, she preferred to keep to herself, wandering the grounds of the manor along with the foxes and badgers and stoats and rabbits.
If she could have soared like the birds, she would have left humanity behind and never thought twice.
Her mother had been married at sixteen, widowed at twenty-five with three children, and the executor of a massive inheritance from her husband.
After his death from a sweating sickness, she moved the children from London up to crumbling Kendal Castle for cleaner air and the lure of green and wild places.
It was there, from age five to age seventeen, that Parr had finally felt at home, roaming the woods and cataloging every plant, animal, and insect that crossed her path in a small notebook that hung from a string around her neck.
Parr pressed leaves and flowers between the pages, sketched the forest creatures who would sit still long enough for a portrait, and made notes of which berries and mushrooms the cook would serve at supper.
It was there, among the trees, that she had found the little cottage and the woman who lived inside.
Parr had read enough fairy tales to know that an evil hag must have been waiting on the other side of the door, but she had knocked anyway.
It came as a shock when a woman no older than her mother had opened the door, her hair black as midnight and her eyes a tawny gold that made even the unflappable Parr uneasy.
“You’re a long way from home, little one,” the woman had observed. She had a soft Irish lilt to her voice despite being a sea away from her own island.
Parr had drawn herself up tall—she was nine by then, and did not like to be called little. “These are my family’s lands. They are all my home.”
The woman laughed. “These woods belong to no one but themselves. We are merely visitors to them. They were standing before we were born and will go on standing long after we are dead.”
Parr looked up toward the endless emerald canopy overhead and found she could not disagree. “Who are you?” she asked with the directness that only a child can possess.
“I am called Eilíse,” the woman replied. “And you are the eldest Parr girl.”
“My name is Catherine, but I do not like it.” Every other girl Parr’s age seemed to be named Catherine, after the queen, of course.
“Well, then I shall just have to call you Parr.”
This suited the nine-year-old just fine, and she nodded her acceptance. Then, before she could think better of it, she asked, “What are these berries called?”
From the little bag at her waist, she pulled out a stem laden with small red fruit and thrust it toward Eilíse. The flesh of the berries curved and nearly hollowed out to make room for a green-brown stone at the center. Parr had never seen anything like it.
“Those came from a yew tree,” Eilíse answered. “The red part of the berry is edible, but if you eat the seed, your heart will stop, and you will die.”
Eilíse said it so calmly that at first Parr was certain she had heard incorrectly.
She was holding something that could kill.
That seemed dangerous, but also exciting.
Even at nine, Parr understood the way the world worked for a woman; she would grow up, marry, have children, and die.
There was unlikely to be much in between, save for some books to read and walks in the forest, though the latter depended on finding a husband who liked the country over the city.
Parr didn’t much like to think about that future, and somehow it made her feel better to know that she had uncovered a special kind of power in the palm of her hand.
And so began Parr’s education in poisons.
Eilíse taught her more than just the deadly plants of the forest, requiring that Parr study the healing herbs in equal measure.
As often as she could, Parr slipped away to the cottage in the forest and helped Eilíse collect and measure and mix the ingredients that she put into medicines for nearby villagers.
Everyone in the village thought Eilíse was a druid or a witch, but Parr knew the woman had no proper magick, just a powerful mind and an aptitude for learning the secrets of nature.
It was years before Parr brewed a poison that would kill someone.
Her lady’s maid, a sweet woman named Cordelia, married when Parr was fifteen.
A fortnight later, she came back to the castle, her face a patchwork of bruises and cuts, her gentle smile swollen and missing two teeth.
Her husband had beaten her for burning dinner and would likely as not kill her when he did it again.
Parr’s mother was away at court, so Parr took Cordelia in and nursed her back to health.
Once her maid had recovered, Parr invited Cordelia’s husband to the castle to see his wife and make amends.
He came. He drank the wine and ate the food that Parr had specially prepared.
And he was dead before the dishes were cleared.
That was when Parr discovered she also had a talent for acting. She screamed for help at the sight of the body and cried full, round tears as the men of the castle took the dead husband away. As soon as they were gone, her face smoothed out and she returned to her day’s studies.
The Sisterhood found her a few years later, and Parr’s talents for doling out life and death became a proper job.
[*1] She never took the responsibility lightly, never reveled in her ability to kill, even when the deaths of terrible people may have deserved a bit of revelry.
Poisoning was simply something she did, like eat supper or get dressed or breathe or blink.
The job with Henry was no different. Yes, the stakes were high for all involved, for Parr knew that if she was caught, her life would be forfeit and the Sisterhood could be exposed.
But Parr was very good at thinking three or four or seven moves ahead, and so that was what she did every day as Henry courted her, proposed to her, and planned their wedding.
Now, Parr stood in a room at Hampton Court Palace wearing a dove-gray dress over a cream petticoat.
She had insisted the wedding be an intimate affair, with only a few witnesses and the children, of course.
And the children, of course, had become a refrain of hers when she spoke with Henry.
It was a silly thing to say, as Mary was only four years younger than Parr and certainly not a child, but Parr brought the king’s daughters into the fold with every chance she had to continue to show Henry how marvelous and brilliant they both were.
Luckily, she didn’t have to lie: Mary was a fierce young woman who had inherited her mother’s intellect, and Elizabeth, while gentler than her older sister and not yet as prone to witchery as her mother, already spoke three languages.
Parr adjusted her veil one last time, then exited her room, a bouquet of magenta foxglove in her hands.
Witch’s gloves, they were sometimes called, and Parr had always loved the name.
The plant was toxic, if not deadly, but the flowers were so pretty, and Parr had always liked holding something beautiful and dangerous in her hands.
She had convinced Henry to host the wedding in the queen’s chambers, and just twenty people were in attendance, several of them lords and ladies whom Parr did not know.
But she smiled at everyone, especially the princesses, as she crossed the floor toward where Henry stood with the priest. Mary looked serious, as always, her red hair parted severely down the center, her dress just a shade lighter than what most would consider mourning, and a golden cross at her neck to remind her father and everyone else that she was still firmly Catholic despite all the changes in the English church.
They deviated wildly on religion, as Parr preferred Mother Nature to any made-up male deity, but Parr could admire the young woman’s stubbornness.
In every interaction they’d had, Parr had found that Mary was studious, straightforward, and a little bit angry.
Parr was a little bit angry too, mostly because she found nearly all adults to be dense and exhausting.
There were exceptions, like Eilíse, but Parr often felt she was surrounded by people who actively embraced stupidity.