Chapter 38
At New Year, Kate was touched when Elizabeth gave her three covered gilt bowls, which weighed more than anyone else’s gifts of plate. It was a measure of her love for her. Elizabeth had been very kind when Kate said that she was missing Lettice.
“She’ll be having a fine time,” she said. “She’ll have been presiding over her first Christmas as mistress of Chartley and leading her husband a merry dance in bed, I’ll wager! She won’t want her mother fussing around, I’m sure!”
Kate hesitated. Lettice was not the only one who had been having a fine time in bed. “I have something to tell you, Bess,” she said. They were seated in the Queen’s chamber by a roaring fire, while the other ladies were tidying Elizabeth’s bedchamber. “I am with child again.”
“What? You’re nearly thirty-eight! It’s almost indecent…”
“We were surprised, too, I assure you. I thought I had done with childbearing. Catherine will be three this year.”
“So this one will make—how many?” Elizabeth was always forgetting.
“Sixteen, in all. But I lost two some years ago.” Her heart still bled for little Maud and that tiny child who had barely breathed.
“So when is the babe due? When will you need to leave court?”
“In May. I want to have this child at Greys Court. With your permission, I should not tarry here beyond Easter. I am told that childbirth becomes more risky as one gets older.”
“Hmm.”
Kate had known that Elizabeth would make difficulties.
“I really cannot spare you, yet I know you must go home then. But be back as soon as you are churched.”
“Thank you, Bess. I am most grateful for your kindness.”
It had been quite easy, this time. Freedom beckoned.
—
Francis was as proud as a peacock that Kate was expecting again. Despite his advancing years and sober exterior, he rejoiced in this latest proof of his virility.
“I have asked Master van der Meulen to paint your portrait to mark this fine achievement,” he told Kate.
“He did that wonderful full-length of the Queen, and he has just painted your brother. I was lucky to secure him, as he is in much demand. He doesn’t come cheaply, though. ” He made a rueful face.
When Kate finally sat—or rather, stood—for the artist, it was March, and she had a high belly.
She wore a rich black gown edged with white fur and gold embroidery over a white damask kirtle, and a white cap on her head.
The gown was parted in the front to show her unlaced stomacher.
She had donned a pendant of pearls and diamonds and hung an oval tablet from her gold girdle.
It was chased with an image of Francis in his livery as a Gentleman Pensioner.
It took a week for Master van der Meulen to finish his preliminary sketches because Kate could not stand for long periods. She had left court by the time he started work on the painting and did not see it finished until Francis brought it to Greys Court on a flying visit in May.
“What do you think?” he asked, pulling off the wrappings.
There was herself to the life. But there too, unmistakably, was her father, King Henry. The likeness was striking.
She wished that Elizabeth could see it. Confronted with the strong resemblance, she could hardly have failed to make the connection. But maybe one day she would see it, although Kate doubted that, in reality, Elizabeth would ever visit Greys Court.
Francis also brought troubling news. “The Archbishop of Canterbury has ruled on Lady Katherine Grey’s marriage,” he said, as he and Kate sat up late into the evening that first night, with her newly hung portrait looking down at them from above the hearth in the hall.
“Sadly for her, the only witness is dead and the priest could not be traced. So the commissioners pronounced the union null and void and its issue illegitimate. For their unlawful copulation, Katherine and Hertford are sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower at the Queen’s pleasure.
It is fortunate that her Majesty did not demand the full penalty for treason provided for by law. ”
“But they will suffer punishment enough,” Kate observed. “They are cruelly parted, and Lady Katherine can say farewell to her hopes of being designated the heir to the throne.”
“Indeed. There is a certain amount of sympathy for her. Many think her marriage was good and valid, and some say that she and Lord Hertford have been too sharply handled. Others say that if the Queen had done her duty by marrying and producing an heir of her own, the proceedings against these young people would have been unnecessary.”
“Ooh,” Kate said suddenly, as a dull pain forked through her lower back.
“Are you all right, darling?” Francis asked, instantly concerned.
“I think so,” she said. But several minutes later, the pain came again, accompanied by a gush of her waters. “It is begun,” she told him. “The babe is coming.”
—
Her child was born at half past two the following afternoon. It was a girl. Summoned in to see them both, Francis cradled the swaddled infant, looking down upon her lovingly. “I think we should call her Dudley, as a compliment to Lord Robert. It will please the Queen greatly.”
“Dudley? But that’s a boy’s name, surely? Or, rather, a surname.”
“Darling, where have you been hiding? It is the fashion to give such names to girls. The Howards called one of their daughters Douglas. Someone else I know called one of their girls Parnell. Dudley suits our little one, do you not agree?”
“If it is your pleasure,” Kate said, glad only to have emerged from her travail with a baby safely delivered.
So Dudley it was. The Queen was delighted to hear the news, and the name, and offered to be godmother, a great honor; she sent three more gold basins as a gift for the child, and money as a reward for the midwife.
And Elizabeth Tailboys, Countess of Warwick, Lord Robert’s sister-in-law, agreed to stand as the other godmother.
She was the daughter of Bessie Blount, who had borne King Henry his bastard son, the Duke of Richmond, and when she arrived for the christening, it was plain to see that Bessie had also borne his late Majesty a daughter.
We are sisters, Kate thought, amazed. Yet she said nothing. It would not have been appropriate.
Two weeks after the christening, Kate became aware that little Dudley was not thriving.
She was small and unenthusiastic about taking her milk.
The wet nurse was in despair; none of her efforts made any difference.
Kate took a clean cloth dipped in cow’s milk and put it to her baby’s rosebud lips.
At last, the child responded, so she handed her to the nurse to be suckled, then lay there watching until she was satisfied that the babe was getting the nourishment she needed.
Greatly relieved, she found herself desperate for sleep, so that night, the nurse offered to take Dudley into her own bed to keep her warm and feed her when she needed it.
“Yes,” Kate agreed. “If she cries, I will come and take her in with me.”
In the morning, she and Francis were aroused by the nurse’s frantic screams. Barely awake, they leaped out of bed and ran to the nursery. The woman was howling her heart out. She could only point to the bed. And there lay the little babe, white as marble.
“You have killed her!” Francis wailed. “You overlaid her!”
“No!” cried the nurse, beating her breast. “I woke early and was sitting up in the chair, watching over her. She seemed normal. Then…” She gulped. “Then I noticed a change in her breathing—and almost immediately, she wasn’t breathing anymore.” She broke down again, sobbing.
Kate felt numb. As a mother, she should have seen the danger signs.
But last night, she had put her need for sleep first and given her child to a stranger to be warmed and comforted.
If she had kept Dudley herself, the child would have departed this life secure in her mother’s love.
But I was not there. The knowledge tortured her.
“It’s not your fault,” she whispered to the nurse. “It is God’s will.”
She turned to Francis and threw herself against his breast, clinging to him as to a life raft. “Our little girl is dead!” she wailed. “Oh, God, how will I bear it? How will I live?”
He held her wordlessly, bleakly, devastated in his misery. “I am sorry,” he said at length, to the nurse, speaking over Kate’s head. “Leave now. I will send your money. My wife and I would be alone to take our powerful sorrow together.”
—
The days passed in a fog of misery. Kate carried out her daily tasks, even when she could hardly stand as she rose from her bed in the mornings.
The little body was prepared for burial and tied in its shroud.
When the day came, it was laid in the vault Francis was having constructed in the aisle of the church.
Maud was there, and Kate caught a glimpse of her tiny form, shrunken to skeletal proportions inside its winding sheet.
She caught her breath and looked away, clinging to Francis as this other little one was laid to rest. The tears kept coming and coming.
This could not be happening. Her empty arms ached for her child.
She had nothing to give Anne, Thomas, and Catherine, the three who most needed her.
There they stood, solemn in their black garments, bewildered by the tragedy that had befallen them.
How hard it had been to explain to Catherine what death meant, and that Dudley was never coming back.
“She is with God now,” she’d said. “He is looking after her.”
And that was just what the vicar was saying. “Jesus said, ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’; there is room for everybody. You must not worry about Dudley anymore. She is in God’s care.” His face was filled with compassion.
Kate took that comforting thought away with her.