Chapter 15 #3
“He is to be baptized tomorrow. I would like him to be called Henry in honor of the King, to whom I owe much. Do say that it pleases you, Kate.”
It most certainly did not. “I wanted to call him after you,” she protested. The last person she wanted to name her precious son for was that monster. How could Francis even think of suggesting it?
“We can save that name for another son, for I have a feeling that we will have many children,” he said, beaming. Kate flinched. Had he any idea of what she had just gone through, all thirty-seven hours of it? Trust a man to be so unthinking!
“As you please,” she said, her manner offhand.
“It would be politic to call him after the King,” he said firmly.
“And I said, as you please.” She lowered her eyes to the babe, feeding peacefully, and decided that she should be content with her husband’s choice of name because it was, after all, her brother’s. In her mind, she would be naming her son for Harry—never for the King. And she would call him Hal.
“Very well. And Kate, I trust you will not suckle him for long.”
She was shocked. “Why? It is the most natural thing.”
Francis looked awkward. “Ladies of rank do not feed their children. They engage wet nurses, so as to be able to…er, conceive again. Ask your mother, and mine. They are both concerned.”
Kate felt her temper rising. “Conceive again? For heaven’s sake, Francis! I have given you a son, at some cost to myself. Now let me have a rest before I think of childbearing again. I want to feed our son myself.”
Francis frowned. “It is not done, Kate. My mother has already let it be known that we are in need of a wet nurse and I hope to engage one soon. As soon as I do, you will let her take up her duty, and you will remember yours to me.”
She gaped at him. He had never before spoken sternly to her. But then she remembered that he liked tradition and upheld the ways in which things had long been done in his family. Yet she had little Henry’s well-being to fight for. She had lost one battle, and she was not about to lose another.
“No,” she declared. “You know me for a dutiful wife, but I also have a duty to my son, and his mother’s milk is surely best for him.”
“Your duty is to provide me with sons and to help ensure that they are well raised, well educated, and well married. You are not a milch-cow! I will brook no further argument. A wet nurse will be engaged.”
He turned and walked to the door. “I will send your mother in. I hope that she will talk some sense into you.” Then the door shut behind him, startling the babe, who whimpered and then latched onto the nipple again.
Mother appeared, looking vexed. “What’s this nonsense I hear, Kate?”
“I want to feed my son!” Kate answered fiercely.
“Well, it’s just not done by women of our rank. And if it was, you might not conceive another child while you are doing it. So put that notion out of your mind. You are not some peasant girl—you have noble and royal blood in you.”
“Oh, yes, King Edward I’s! I was told it enough when I was a child. But the blood’s a bit diluted now, since he lived centuries ago.”
“Kate! Don’t denigrate your lineage; it’s a fine one. And don’t think you can win this battle. Your husband is determined, and he is right. I strongly advise you to remember your vow of obedience and be compliant as a wife should.”
Kate nuzzled her baby’s head sadly. She had hoped for more support from her mother, and she knew she would get none from Lettice.
“Very well,” she said, feeling as if she had lost something precious. Yet she did not want to fall out with Francis, whom she had come to love deeply in the year they had been married. It was, she supposed, a wife’s part to compromise and make sacrifices.
—
Circumstances, it seemed, were on her side.
Two weeks later, Mother had gone home and Lettice had still not found a wet nurse.
It seemed that there was not a single woman for miles who had borne a child and was able to share her milk.
So Kate had her way and continued contentedly to suckle her son.
And he thrived. Her Hal became a happy, beautiful baby, forward in his milestones and not shy to go to anyone who held out their arms. Her love for him was profound and fierce.
It was a different love from that which she felt for her husband, which had recovered from the distressing hiatus it had suffered after Hal’s birth.
When Francis had seen that she was willing to obey him, he was pleased to put her small rebellion down to her deranged womb, and showed himself as loving as ever.
So she forgave him; she could not be angry with him for long.
After four months, a wet nurse was found, but when she handed over her son, Kate felt that she had at least given him a good start in life.
Mrs. Clements was kind and respectful, and plainly besotted with her charge.
She was good with the nursery maids and the rockers, too, and she got on well with Mrs. Wellgood, the efficient new nurse who ran the nursery.
Lettice, satisfied that all was well, said her farewells and departed.
Francis was pleased that everything was as it should be, and claimed Kate again as his own as soon as he got leave from the court.
Once more, she knew that glorious joy of coming together.
Giving birth had not diminished it. In fact, after the long abstinence, she became a more avid lover.
The months passed peacefully. Summer gave way to autumn, and the tranquil routine of the household ticked over smoothly.
Hal was smiling, he could turn over, he was sitting up, banging his silver rattle on the table.
Every milestone brought fresh delights. Kate had not known she could feel so much love for a child.
She wrote as often as she could to Elizabeth, still feeling that she had somehow let the child down in forsaking her (as Elizabeth saw it) for Francis.
She was delighted when Elizabeth wrote back in her beautiful italic hand.
It was a chatty letter, witty and erudite for an eight-year-old, and Kate had the feeling that she had been forgiven.
She sent a reply, and soon more letters were winging their way between Oxfordshire and Hertfordshire weekly.
Kate thought she might visit Elizabeth. Hatfield was not so far away, and she could leave Hal for a few nights, even though it would cause her a pang.
Then, in November, Francis returned with news from court.
“The Queen has been arrested!” he told Kate, as soon as he had kissed her and admired their son, and they were alone in the solar. “She is under house arrest at Hampton Court.”
“No!” she cried. History could not be repeating itself. “Why?”
“For misconduct before her marriage and adultery after.”
Kate took a moment to digest this. “I can believe the bit about misconduct before, because she was always flirting with young men, and I often wondered if she was sleeping with Tom Culpeper, as she greatly favored him. But adultery? Would she have been so foolish, especially considering what happened to her own cousin, my late aunt? Do you believe it?”
Francis shook his head. “Truly, I don’t know what to believe.
But the King believes it. He is a broken man.
If you could see him, you would pity him, for this trouble has aged him.
He had just commanded the whole realm to give thanks for his happiness with the Queen, whom he plainly adored—and then he found out that she was not the pure rose he had believed her to be.
He has shut himself away and will not see anyone.
That’s why the Lord Chamberlain gave me leave. ”
Kate was kneading her hands in distress.
“Pity him? As he pitied my aunt? Oh, yes, we were told that, rather than have her burned, he very kindly decreed that she would be beheaded, out of pity! And now it seems he will do the same to yet another wife, and a young one at that. Katheryn is only twenty! It’s her I pity, being married to that horrible old man—”
“Kate, stop!” Francis held up his hand. “I must not hear this. I have sworn an oath to be loyal to him. What you are speaking is treason.”
“But I feel for her. She must be terrified.”
“Yet she has grievously offended her lord and sovereign. If she has committed adultery, then she has also committed treason, because were she to bear her lover a child and pass it off as the King’s, the succession would be impugned. It is a very serious matter.”
“But did she commit adultery? And with whom?”
“Culpeper has been arrested, too, and her secretary, Francis Dereham.”
“I have heard her mention him. I think they were sweethearts before she came to court. And before the King began to take an interest in her, which was after I left court, she was talking of marrying Culpeper. There was something going on there, definitely. But I find it hard to believe that she would have gone so far as to commit adultery with either of them—and she cannot die for what she did before her marriage.”
Francis sighed, leaning forward to warm his hands by the fire.
“That’s true. But you’re right about Dereham.
They were lovers before she came to court.
She took him into her service earlier this year, which now looks suspicious in itself, and he began bragging of what had passed between them when she was younger.
Will Stafford heard him; he’s been questioned by the Council.
He told them he knew for a fact that they had fornicated together and that if he had been Dereham, he would never have said anything, lest he died for it, but that he himself felt he must reveal it, for the knowledge had stuck in his craw.
And, of course, he was bound by his oath of allegiance to the King to testify to what he knew. He felt it was his moral duty.”
Yes, that sounded like Will. He would do his duty, even though it was distasteful to him.
“But there is more to this than that,” Francis said, lowering his voice. “Kate, what I am going to tell you must remain absolutely secret between us.”
She wondered what was coming and felt a creeping dread.
Francis rose and came to kneel by her chair, murmuring in her ear.
“You know that I am all for reform of the Church, and that Will is, too. The Howards are Catholic reactionaries—they would bring back the Pope if they could. The reformists at court, and on the King’s Council, have now united to bring them down.
They are driving this case against the Queen, and the King is letting them do it.
Some hold views that would be seen as heretical.
Will and I are with them. We are hoping that, with the Howards’ influence removed, the King will come to look more kindly on the new religion.
After all, he has already broken with Rome, dissolved the monasteries, and pushed forward radical policies—and all in the interests of purifying the Church in England. Why should he not go further?”
Kate heard him out in mounting panic. She had hoped that his flirtation with heresy had been disposed of some time ago, but now, hearing him more or less confirm that he had embraced the Protestant doctrines of Martin Luther, she began to tremble for him.
“Francis, it is dangerous to hold such views!” she breathed, clutching his hand.
“You could go to the stake for them. By the Mass, I do fear for you, and I beg again you not to speak of your beliefs to anyone.” She was crying now, terrified in case it was already too late, and others knew his secret.
She could not bear to think of the man she loved, and the body she had come to worship, being consumed in the agony of the flames.
He kissed her reassuringly. “Only Will knows my views, and we spoke of the matter while out hunting in the park at Hampton. There was no one in sight, I promise you.”
She exhaled in relief. “Promise me that you will never betray yourself.”
“I give you my word: I would do nothing to hurt you and Hal.”
They held each other tightly for a few moments. Kate was still trembling with nerves, and still not satisfied.
“Then you are both working to bring down the Queen?” she taxed him.
“No. Will but did his duty. I have said nothing against her. But I cannot deny that I would like to see her overthrown, although not in the way your aunt was.”
“Then I pray that you will do nothing against her. Whatever she has done, she is young and foolish, and she does not deserve to die for it.”
Francis said nothing.
—
Two days later, a letter from Will arrived, informing Francis that Kate’s unspeakable aunt, Lady Rochford, had been acting as a go-between for the Queen and Culpeper. “She is now in the Tower,” Will wrote, “and gossip has it that she has lost her wits.”
Kate could feel little pity for her, remembering the false witness she had borne against her own husband and Queen Anne, accusing them of the vilest of crimes and branding their names with an enduring slur.
And where Katheryn was young and stupid, Lady Rochford was a woman of the world and, of all people, should have known better than to abet what she must have known was treason.
December came in under a cloud of gloom.
Francis had returned to court and reported that the Howards had spectacularly fallen.
The Tower was crammed with them to the bursting point.
This did not augur well for the little Queen, but the reformists were gleeful, it seemed.
Kate, sitting in the garden and bouncing a gurgling Hal up and down on her knee, was glad to be away from the court. It was a vicious place.