Chapter 32
The next morning, Elizabeth rose early, demanding that Kate help her to dress, as she planned to go out for a brisk walk around the gardens. “No need to attend me,” she said. “Blanche can do that. Go and break your fast.”
Relieved to have some time to herself, Kate threw on her clothes and hurried away to Francis’s lodging, praying he would be there. And he was! He was still abed, and when he saw her, his face lit up with joy and he stretched out his arms to her.
“My darling wife! How I have longed to hold you…”
Their coming together was sublime, a fusion of hearts and bodies that left them smiling at each other delightedly. Lying in her husband’s arms, Kate felt perfectly contented, and yet she knew that their time together would be brief.
“I have to go back,” she murmured, sitting up, her long hair rippling over her breasts. “The Queen will be needing me.”
“Not so soon, surely?” He reached out and clasped her around the waist.
“Yes, so soon!” She told him what Elizabeth had said about never being parted again and the demands she was making on her. “I fear I will have no life of my own, and that we will have to snatch time together—and Heaven knows when we will see our children!” A tear trickled down her face.
Francis drew her into his embrace. “We will find a way. We must be permitted some leave. I have estates and my political duties to attend to; you have the children. The Queen is imperious, I know, but she has been good to us. There is a price to pay for it.”
“It is too high a price.”
“Let us see how things work out. If it all becomes too much for you, I will speak to her.”
“No!” Kate did not want to lose credit with Elizabeth so soon; somehow, she knew that any complaint would not go down well. “You’re right. Let us see what transpires. It may not be as bad as I fear.”
—
When she returned to the royal lodgings, she found Kat in the privy chamber, seated at her embroidery.
“Is the Queen back?” she asked.
“Not yet. She’s gone riding.” Kat looked up. “You’ve been crying, child. Can I help?”
Kate turned away to hide her tears, gazing unseeing out of a window, and poured out her woes. “No one can help me. I have just had to leave my husband, when all I want is to be with him. What I most desire, after years of exile, is just to lead a normal life as a wife and mother.”
Kat laid aside her tambour and thought for a while.
“Some would kill for a place such as you occupy. The Queen likes to advance her mother’s kin, but usually only on their merits.
She loves you for yourself. You and your brother are her closest blood relations on the Boleyn side, and I have noticed that she behaves toward you yourself with far more familiarity than she uses to other members of her court.
She has welcomed your daughters into her household, which will doubtless lead to them making good marriages.
You are all basking in her favor. You are in a very strong position.
And she loves you, Kate, more than any other, even me. ”
Kate sighed. “So you think I should be grateful?”
“I do.” Kat resumed her embroidery.
—
That afternoon, while the Queen was receiving ambassadors, Kate found Francis in the garden, strolling along with William Cecil, who had been appointed the Queen’s Secretary of State and was now riding high in royal favor and very influential. Both men bowed to her and Cecil smiled.
“I will leave you with your good lady,” he said. “I am sure you will find better things to talk about with her than the troubles in Scotland.”
Francis took Kate’s arm, and they walked along by the Thames. It was cold, but sunny, and it was good to have some time to themselves. Kate told him what Kat had said.
“She does have a point,” he agreed. “We are both privileged to have our positions at court. I like to think that my preferment demonstrates the Queen’s faith in me and my abilities, and I want to do my best for her.
She has made me one of her leading councillors and I sense that my opinions carry some weight, although I suspect that she thinks my Protestant views too radical. ”
“She likes moderation in religion. She told me.”
“She’s going to come up against some opposition there, for many of her subjects hold extreme views, both Catholic and Protestant. But what I can’t understand is why she has advanced me so rapidly. Is it because I am a stout Protestant?”
Kate wondered. Francis’s promotion had happened very quickly.
Prior to that, Elizabeth had hardly ever mentioned him, and she suspected that it was chiefly his connection to her that had secured him the Queen’s favor, although she would never voice that opinion to him.
Let him believe that he had got so far on his own merits—which, of course, he deserved to do!
“I’m not sure that that is the reason,” she replied.
“No, I rather thought not. She’s already made it clear that she finds my views extremely annoying. And for my part, I can only deplore her own. Do you know that she worships in private with all the trappings of the Catholic faith?”
“She has always had a love of ritual. Yet I do not doubt the soundness of her beliefs. She is a convinced Protestant.”
“That remains to be seen,” said Francis. He pulled Kate to him and hugged her. “I cannot help but wonder if you are the cause of my sudden advancement! She makes no secret of that fact that she loves you above all other women in the world.”
“Nonsense!” Kate reproved him, anxious not to betray her suspicion that he might be right. “You were advanced on your own merits and for your loyalty.”
“And you, my darling. Lady Fortune has been gracious to you. You are in favor with our noble Queen well above the common sort!”
They had reached the far end of the gardens when a bell chimed four.
“Is that the time?” Kate cried. “I must go back.”
“Come to me tonight!” Francis bade her.
“I will if I can,” she called, as she hurried away.
—
“You’re late!” Elizabeth reproved, when she arrived breathless in the privy chamber, having run all the way. “Where were you, dearest cousin?”
“I beg your Majesty’s pardon. I met my husband while taking the air in the gardens, and I’m sorry to say that I forgot the time.”
“Such a lovely man,” Blanche Parry said, before Elizabeth could reprimand her. “And such a friend to the Gospel.” Kate looked at her gratefully.
“You were supposed to be in attendance on me an hour since,” the Queen said peevishly.
“I did not realize it was so late. I apologize again. But Madam, I do love my husband, and the time we spend together is precious. We have had too many partings.” She could feel tears welling up.
“Well, be mindful in future,” Elizabeth said tartly.
As her mistress turned away, Kate struggled not to cry.
It had just been made more than clear to her that the Queen’s insistence on her presence would preclude her enjoying any kind of normal existence.
She was doomed, it seemed, to a life of eternal frustration.
Yes, she could see Francis and Lettice daily, if she could snatch the time, but not the rest of her family.
She would have to subordinate her children’s needs to those of the Queen, and she did not know how her heart would stand it.
—
In the middle of January, two days before her coronation, Elizabeth rode in procession through London.
When she left the Tower, all dressed in virginal white, in a white litter, Kate and Francis were in the procession, but not together.
Wearing crimson and gold, Kate rode with the other ladies-in-waiting who followed the Queen.
Not far behind them, similarly garbed, were the maids-of-honor, among them Lettice and her cousin Katherine Carey, Harry’s daughter, and, despite her youth, Beth, who had just been appointed to the post, while Mary was also here today.
They lodged at the Tower that night. Kate hated being there.
She had shivered as she rode through the Lion Tower entry, unable to shake off her recollections of the horrific event she had witnessed in the fortress nearly twenty-three before.
Queen Anne’s face as she stood on the scaffold facing her end still haunted her, as did the memory of her aunt’s bloody, broken corpse.
Yet it must be a thousand times worse for Elizabeth, who could only imagine her mother’s gruesome end.
She could not but be thinking of Anne and what she had suffered in this place—and there was a poignant reminder of her the next day, when, making her state entry into London, she passed through a triumphal arch in Gracechurch Street, for above her, as part of one of the pageants mounted in her honor, the citizens had erected life-sized figures of King Henry and Queen Anne, crowned and seated together, with a pomegranate—the symbol of their fortuitous fertility—between them; and above them both towered the figure of Elizabeth herself, in majesty.
Kate felt tears well in her eyes at the sight.
How proud Anne would have been of her daughter.
It was heartening to know that, in her own way, Elizabeth was paying homage to her on the auspicious day of the coronation itself, for the lightweight crown she wore after the ceremony in Westminster Abbey was the one made for her mother to wear at her coronation.
During the celebrations that followed, Kate watched Elizabeth as she presided over her court.
The Queen was in her element, reveling in all the feasting and the merry pastimes, and flirting with the gallants who clustered around her, showering her with flattery.
She watched her older daughters, too, as they made eyes at the ardent young men.
They were now around the age she had been when she met Francis, and soon he and she would have to think of finding husbands for them.
But for now, she would let them enjoy themselves.
Youth, after all, lasted for no time at all.
—