Chapter 6
When Kate traveled the Great North Road south to London and thence to Kent, wrapped in furs in a chariot and escorted by Sir John’s retainers, it was bitterly cold.
She felt chilled inside, too, wondering what reception she would receive at Hever.
For undoubtedly, Grandfather would be home, since he could not possibly be welcome at court now, and then there would be Great-Grandmother, who was in her right mind most days, but sometimes prone to seeing things no one else could see, which was deeply unsettling.
When the litter clattered across the drawbridge at Hever and into the courtyard, men came running out to help with the horses and the luggage. The steward greeted Kate.
“Welcome, Mistress Carey. My lady is waiting for you in the great chamber.”
“Is my grandfather not at home?” she asked, handing him her cloak as they entered the castle.
“He is at court, Mistress.”
That surprised her. Or perhaps it shouldn’t have. Had he managed to turn things to his advantage by condemning two of his children to death?
“Is my grandmother here?”
“She is away visiting my Lord of Norfolk. But my Lady Boleyn is in the parlor.”
Great-Grandmother rose shakily from her seat by the roaring fire when Kate appeared. “My dear sweet Kate,” she said, holding out her arms. “I have missed seeing you and Harry these three years. You, your mother, and your grandparents are all who are left to me now. Have you eaten?”
Kate pressed her face against the paper-thin cheek.
“I am hungry, my lady,” she admitted.
After they had been served a light lunch of broth and bread, Great-Grandmother insisted on going for a walk in the frost-rimed gardens.
When Kate wondered if she would be cold (certainly, she herself would be), the old lady sniffed.
“I’m eighty-two, child, and I’m made of sterner stuff than that. Fetch your cloak.”
Even in winter, the gardens at Hever were glorious, and they were surrounded by the beautiful, undulating Kentish countryside.
Great-Grandmother kept up a steady pace, but she suddenly stopped by the bare rosebushes.
“Everywhere I look,” she said, “there are reminders of those who are gone. I see my grandchildren playing on the grass, Thomas waiting on the drawbridge to welcome the King, and Anne peering through a window at him—she knew well how to play Henry and tie him in knots. It is hard to believe that she and George are dead now, and that I, who by the law of Nature should have died first, am still here.”
Kate felt the tears welling.
“I know what they say about your grandfather,” the old lady went on, “that he was complicit in destroying his children. God alone knows what it cost him to sit in judgment on them and declare them both guilty—and of the most disgusting crimes. But your grandmother was ill; he had to think of her. He really didn’t have a choice.
Had he refused, he might have been brought down with Anne and George, and then where would she have been?
Mark me, Kate, he came home a broken man.
They were both broken, paralyzed with grief and horror.
I remember Elizabeth sitting in her chair, rocking in her misery, and her hysterical cries when word came that the dread sentence had been carried out.
Thomas uttered no word of protest or sorrow, but you had only to look at him to know that he was suffering.
They’ve not been the same since, either of them.
They barely speak to each other, and she’s not the woman she was. ”
She sighed and walked on, the black veil of her gable hood flapping in the wind.
“But Thomas is a survivor. He might have lost his office of Lord Privy Seal to Lord Cromwell, but he did manage to retain his place on the King’s Council.
He was determined to claw his way back into royal favor, and it didn’t take much, for I believe that the King genuinely likes him—and finds him useful.
Thomas has even made an effort to be courteous to that pallid little bitch who stole Anne’s crown. ”
She stomped on, seemingly ignorant of the cold. Kate drew her cloak tighter around her and shivered. They were walking along the banks of the River Eden now.
“This is where the King used to bring her when he came a-courting,” the old woman said wistfully. “She held him off, you know—until he decided he wanted to marry her and realized he couldn’t risk getting her with child first. Think of the scandal!”
She turned to Kate, who had caught up with her.
“Well, there was scandal enough without that. Maybe it would have been to her advantage to get pregnant then. She might have borne the son they both wanted. In the end, she failed in that one crucial thing, so she was brought down. I am in no doubt that they concocted a case against her. The granddaughter I knew had her faults, but she was not that much of a monster—and neither was George. As to what was said about them—no one in their right mind would credit it. But I mustn’t think about it, or I’ll end up going over and over it all in my mind and torturing myself by wondering what it was like for her at the end, flesh of my flesh.
You said they didn’t even give her a proper burial.
I can’t forgive that, or the King for marrying again only eleven days after her death.
And I can’t forgive George’s unspeakable wife, for it was she who claimed that he and Anne committed incest. That word is bitter gall on my tongue. ”
Kate, who had only a vague idea what incest was, could see that she was near to tears, her stout-hearted great-grandmother who rarely showed any sign of gentleness.
“It has been a terrible business,” she commiserated, inwardly warding off the grief that threatened to overwhelm her when she remembered what had befallen her family.
“Aye, and it was a most unkind thing to send you to the Tower to be with her at the end, although I am glad that someone from the family was there.”
“That’s what my mother said when she wrote to me afterward,” Kate told her.
“I will not have her mentioned!” Great-Grandmother snapped. “Three grandchildren I had, and the only one left to me is the one who let the family down.”
Kate felt her hackles rising, but she held her tongue. Great-Grandmother had never had any time for Mother, and that wasn’t going to change.
“But Lady Rochford is a thousand times worse!” the old lady was spluttering, as they made their way back to the castle.
“It was she who testified against your uncle. Can anyone blame your grandfather for refusing to have her under his roof? I have not forgotten him exploding with rage when the King asked him to provide for her. I saw his pen jab the page as he asked Cromwell to inform the King that he did so only for his Highness’s pleasure.
But he made sure that that filthy whore didn’t get her hands on the widow’s jointure settled on her at her marriage.
And I’m determined she won’t have it in my lifetime either!
What galls me is that she was welcomed back to court to serve the Seymour woman.
I have no doubt that it was a reward for services rendered in bringing down her husband and her Queen. ”
Kate forbore to comment. After learning what Lady Rochford had done, she had come to loathe her, having always felt that there was something dark in her.
Gratefully, for her fingers felt like icicles, she followed her great-grandmother into the castle, where she was thankful to see that the fire in the great chamber had been stoked up. Sitting on the stool by the old lady’s high-backed chair, she took up her sewing.
“This is a sad house now,” Great-Grandmother said.
“I have ever found beauty here, and an inner peace of sorts, with quietness in abundance. Yet now there will always remain the taint of these late dark deeds.” She paused and sighed.
“I see Anne from time to time, and I wish I didn’t, but I don’t tell many people that.
Nor do I speak much of my awful gift, or that I kept seeing a sword over her head.
The gift is a curse, and it’s got me into trouble several times.
In one of his unkind moods, your grandfather once called me a witch.
But witches practice their craft willingly.
My visions come unbidden, and I have never been able to control them. ”
Kate listened, astonished. She had always been told that Great-Grandmother was mad, but she hadn’t quite understood why, for the old woman had often seemed as sane as she herself was.
Yet on several occasions she had come upon her talking to someone who wasn’t there.
But this didn’t seem like madness; it sounded like a curse—or a haunting.
She shivered to think that Anne’s wraith might be walking at Hever.
“The visions are coming more frequently now,” Great-Grandmother was saying.
“I see Hever, but not the Hever I know. The castle looks decayed and ruinous.
Sheep graze where the gardens should be.
Then—and maybe I am dreaming—I see a man in strange dark attire, with a pugnacious face and a mustache, very upright and correct.
And then my vision of the castle returns once more, only this time it is surrounded by crowds of people all trying to get in, and the gardens are restored, but looking so different, and there is a lake, where now are fields.