Chapter 1 #3
She ascended the steps and passed through a doorway.
To her astonishment, she found herself walking through vaulted rooms of great splendor, one adorned with wall paintings of angels and, in another, a high throne on a pedestal.
Then they passed along another walkway and the groom knocked at the door.
It was opened by a burly, well-dressed man with pudgy features and kind eyes.
“Sir William Kingston?” the groom asked. “I have here Mistress Carey.” He turned to Kate. “Mistress, Sir William is the Constable of the Tower. Make your curtsey.”
Kate bobbed as the Constable smiled gravely at her. “Welcome, Mistress Carey. I hope your journey was not too choppy. I fear this will be a mournful posting for you, but the Queen requested your presence, and that of three of her maids-of-honor. You are to wait on her at her trial tomorrow.”
Kate was astounded. That she, a simple girl of twelve, was to witness the trial about which everyone had been speculating and hear the evidence firsthand seemed incredible. And yet, she did not want to be there. She wanted no part in this.
It was a relief to find that her aunt was not lodged in a dungeon, but in the sumptuous Queen’s apartments.
She was shown through to the walled garden below them, where she found Anne seated on a stone bench with two older ladies, one of whom she recognized as her great-aunt, Lady Boleyn, Grandfather’s sister-in-law, a stern woman she barely knew.
Anne looked haunted; her sallow skin was pale and there were shadows under her dark eyes.
“Kate,” she said, extending a hand, her eyes glittering with tears.
Kate knelt on the grass and kissed her hand.
“Be seated,” her aunt bade her. “I am so glad to see you. I have been tormented by those creatures who were set to spy on me, women I did not like.” She cast an icy glare in the direction of her two companions. “But now, God be praised, I am allowed to have about me those I love.”
Kate perched on the end of the bench, relieved that her aunt had greeted her so warmly. The lady she did not know was regarding her with some compassion.
“You are very young, child,” she said.
“Lady Kingston, my niece is twelve, old enough to serve as a maid-of-honor and even to be married!” Anne retorted. “And she is my blood kin, my sister Mary’s daughter.”
“Even so, Anne, she is of too tender years to attend the trial, considering the circumstances,” Lady Boleyn said primly.
Anne bristled visibly and grasped Kate’s hand.
“Kate, I want you to know now that I am innocent of all the vile charges laid against me. I have never betrayed the King. Whatever you hear tomorrow, do not believe it, for it is all lies. And anyway, I think his Grace is doing this to prove me. It will all blow over, for they can offer no proofs against me.”
Brave words, Kate thought. And yet there was a brittleness about her aunt, as if she was struggling to hide the fear she must be feeling.
Lady Kingston rose. “Mistress Carey, you are to sleep in the maidens’ chamber. I will take you there now.”
“I will see you at supper,” Anne said.
—
As Kate unpacked, storing her traveling chest beside one of the four beds in the beamed, lattice-windowed bedchamber, and hanging up her cloak on the peg on the wall beside her pallet bed, she wondered why Lady Boleyn thought her too young to attend the trial.
What were the vile charges Anne had mentioned?
And what did the King think she had done to betray him? Fall in love with another?
Kate was aware that married people were supposed to stay faithful, but she knew there were those who strayed.
Elizabeth’s servants loved to gossip, and she had come to understand that there was something unmentionable that married people did with each other, which they were not supposed to do with anyone else.
It was all to do with making babies, and of course you should not have a baby unless you were married.
She had asked some of the Princess’s maids what that unmentionable something was, but they had just blushed and giggled and told her that there would be time enough to find out when she was older.
Her reverie was interrupted by the arrival of three young ladies, who had come from the court: Mary Norris, Mary Zouche, and Nan Cobham, whom Anne favored. Like Kate, they did not want to be here in the Tower and made no bones about saying so.
“And we are to attend her Grace at her trial tomorrow,” Mary Norris said fearfully. “I’m terrified that it will not be a happy outcome.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Kate.
“The word at court is that she is accused of adultery with several men.”
“And worse!” Mary Zouche added.
“I don’t know what adultery is,” Kate said.
“It’s being unfaithful to your husband,” Nan Cobham told her. “It’s becoming the mistress of another man.”
Kate asked her what a mistress was. She had heard the word before, used to describe Aunt Anne before her marriage to the King.
“It can be one of two things. A lady who is courted from afar by a suitor who serves her. Or one who has a carnal relationship with a man outside marriage.”
“What’s a carnal relationship?”
Nan blushed. “It is when they join their bodies during bed sport. It’s what men and women do to make babies. Didn’t you know that, sweet innocent?”
“I knew there was something they did, but not that.” Certain things were beginning to make sense, but still Kate was a little shocked. “How do they join their bodies?”
Nan giggled and lowered her voice. “The man puts his member inside the woman and spurts out the seed that makes a baby.”
Kate knew what a male member was. She had seen her brother’s when they were little.
She wondered how on earth he could do that with it but decided that she would prefer not to know.
She had heard enough already and was certain that she would die of embarrassment if any man tried to do that to her.
And surely Aunt Anne would never have allowed anyone but the King inside her?
“She says she is innocent,” she declared.
“Then let us hope that she clears herself.”
—
Supper, served in the Queen’s dining chamber, was a dismal affair. Anne was tense, saying little, and the older ladies looked on disapprovingly as the young ones attempted to make jests to cheer her.
Anne caught Kate looking up at the gilded ceilings and the richly molded friezes that adorned the walls.
“These are the rooms that I stayed in before my coronation,” she said. “They were refurbished for me at great expense by Master Cromwell. He helped to raise me up, and now he is determined to destroy me!”
Master Cromwell, Kate knew, was the King’s chief minister, who seemed—if you listened to what people said—to rule all.
“But why, Madam?” she asked.
“Because he fears my power! And he knows that I would destroy him if I could. So he made up all these lies about me. But the truth will out tomorrow. I am putting my trust in God and English justice.”
Kate could see, from the faces of the older ladies, that they were not as confident of a just outcome as Anne seemed to be. Again, she shivered.