Chapter 28
Kat
Hampton Court Palace wasn’t home, but returning to the royal residence in time for Christmas did have its advantages.
Twenty new gowns had come in from France in advance of her arrival—one for each day of the season—and they were each so beautiful Kat had almost cried when she saw them.
The new clothes put a small dent in her tender heart, which hated to be parted from Thomas for the next few weeks.
There were too many eyes and ears about, what with half of England’s upper crust packed into Hampton Court, and they would feign simple acquaintance until they could be reunited after the New Year.
Kat was already planning which of her new royal estates she would whisk him away to once her duties here with Henry were done.
She had grown spoiled by a fall spent making love and whispering declarations, and a return to their secret bubble of bliss could not come soon enough.
One of Kat’s maids of honor was finishing the last button of the dress before Kat was to make her grand entrance in the Great Hall.
Kat admired herself in the mirror: The navy silk was offset with a white-and-gold brocade petticoat, and each of her sleeves ended in sapphire drops that rested on the backs of her hands, connected to rings on her middle fingers with slender gold chains.
Layers of pearls dropped from the choker around her throat nearly to her waist, giving the illusion of modesty over a daringly low-cut bodice.
A delicate gold crown nested in her hair, which had been heaped atop her head in the latest style.
Thomas would hardly be able to stand the sight of her, knowing he could look but not touch, and Kat couldn’t help but give her reflection a sly smile.
Her good mood was interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by the entrance of John Lassells, Cromwell’s former second-in-command and one of Kat’s least favorite people in the world.
Like Cromwell, Lassells was a Protestant reformer, though young—he had only been in Cromwell’s service two years.
With Cromwell dead barely five months, Lassells was the obvious successor to his mentor’s agenda.
This made him equally popular and maligned by the court, depending on where one fell on the issue of Catholicism and Henry’s split with the pope.
But his waxing and waning popularity wasn’t why Kat disliked him. No, her troubles with holier-than-thou John Lassells went back much further. The nerve of him to enter her suite without an invitation—Kat could feel an angry flush rising from her belly to her chest, inflaming her cheeks.
“Your Majesty,” Lassells said, giving a mockery of a bow. “A word, please?”
Kat nodded to her attendants. “Leave us, please, ladies. If you’ll wait for me in the outer room, I’m sure this business of the church won’t take but a moment.”
It was not lost on Kat that several of her ladies-in-waiting and maids of honor exchanged suspicious glances, but she would have to deal with that later. Once she was alone with Lassells, she put away the polite, queenly smile she’d welcomed him with, crossing her arms and frowning.
“What do you want, John?” she demanded. “I’m already running late.”
Lassells was looking around the suite, eyes narrowed. “You’ve come a long way from Lambeth, haven’t you?”
Kat bristled further. She had had the misfortune of knowing Lassells and his sister, Mary, since her youth. They were dull, spiteful types, the both of them, and they had never been any fun as children or adults.
Kat had grown up in the care of her stepgrandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk.
The household had been something like an aristocratic orphanage, with a mix of poor Howard relatives and their attendants, which included Mary Lassells.
Grandmam’s rules had been lax and punishments light, and Kat had largely appreciated the freedom, except when there was no one around to help her parse up from down, right from wrong.
Trouble had certainly found her a time or two during those years, and not always in a good way.
There had been moments when Kat had loved living at Lambeth, and plenty of others she’d like to forget. Anything involving the Lassells family fell firmly into the second category.
“What do you want?” Kat repeated, her tone flat.
Lassells smiled, the effect snakelike with his thin lips and dark eyes. “I’ve heard a rumor, Your Majesty. Involving a gentleman named Thomas Culpeper.”
Kat did not allow herself to react, though her heart was pounding loud enough she thought certainly Lassells could hear it. “And what is the rumor?”
His serpentine smile grew. “I think you know. You’ve heard it before, haven’t you? Back at Lambeth with Francis Dereham?”
This time, his words cut deep enough to show, and Kat’s hands started to shake. Francis Dereham was Kat’s first suitor, and using his name was as good as a threat.
Lassells continued. “It would be terrible, wouldn’t it, for the king to hear all those rumors? What would he think of the state of your soul? Or indeed, your body?”
Kat balled her hands into fists and thought fast. Lassells knew too much, that was clear.
He’d already known about her past, or at least thought he knew, which was even more dangerous.
And Kat felt sure he was not the type to be easily bought into silence—he would bleed her dry with blackmail and outrageous requests and then still report her to the king once he had taken every last coin and jewel she owned.
There was likely an elegant, queenly solution to this, but Kat couldn’t think of it. There was nothing to be done now but deny. With passion.
“How dare you,” she said, the words quiet. “How dare you come into my chambers and try to accuse me of anything.” Her voice rose. “I am your queen! I could have you killed for less than this, you know.”
Lassells paled slightly. “That hardly seems—”
“You know nothing of which you speak,” Kat continued.
“You have come here with unfounded lies and poison in your heart. Shame on you.” She was shouting now, and she saw that the door to her outer chambers, where her attendants waited, had been cracked open.
“You’re nothing more than you were as a child—a greedy, ambitious wretch trying to get by on a gentleman’s name and half a brain. ”
She unfurled a finger and pointed toward the door. “Get out of my chambers! I never want to see you again.”
Lassells looked as though he wanted to protest, his mouth hanging open. Kat took advantage of his hesitation.
“Guards!” she called. “Guards!”
Two royal soldiers were in the room in a heartbeat, swords drawn and their attention on Lassells. He held up his hands, taking a step away from Kat. The queen’s ladies poured into the room a second later, filling the air with shrieks of surprise at the sight of weapons on display.
“This man sought to impugn my honor,” Kat told the guards. “Take him away immediately.”
“I did no such thing!” Lassells objected, but his argument was cut short by one of the guards striking him across the face.
Kat winced, and a moment later, a bloody-nosed Lassells was dragged from the room, the door clanging shut behind him.
Her ladies flocked to her side, cooing over her and stroking her hair.
Kat knew they only half meant it—undoubtedly the rumor mill would be running full tilt after that display—but she allowed them to guide her to a sofa and give her a brandy to settle her nerves.
As she sipped, Kat concocted a cover story.
“He accused me of trying to block his latest reform motion,” Kat told the women, hoping they hadn’t been able to hear the real conversation.
“I didn’t even know what he was talking about.
Everyone knows I’m not involved in matters of state.
But he said I was trying to push my own beliefs on the king and that I didn’t support my husband’s religion. ”
She sniffled—it wasn’t hard to fake tears at that moment. “I have known the Lassells family since my youth, and his sister, Mary, was dear to me.” A lie, but not one anyone could prove. “To be treated thus by a friend…” Kat covered her mouth and refused to say more.
The ladies gasped and simpered. Whether or not they believed Kat’s story, they knew that Katherine Howard cared little for politics or religion and would never be involved in any such scheme.
The gullible women would spread the false story, while the clever ones would wonder what else could have caused a row between the queen of England and the radical courtier.
Meanwhile, Kat worked to calm her racing heart.
Nothing had changed—she was still due to make her entrance in a few minutes’ time, there were weeks ahead of faking affection for Henry, and she would only be able to see Thomas from afar, especially if anyone else suspected they had started an affair.
Suddenly, this was shaping up to be the most miserable Christmas of her life.
And yet she blotted away her tears with her sleeve and forced a smile. “Let us put this unpleasantness in the past,” she said. “The king is expecting us.”
The Great Hall always took Kat’s breath away.
From the hammer beam trusses to the tapestry-covered walls to the gleaming wooden floors, Kat never felt more royal than when she made a procession down the center of the hall.
Long tables were packed with courtiers, food, and wine; music played in every corner; and candle and torchlight gave the whole room a romantic, flickering glow.
The smell of fresh pine nearly covered the odors of sweat and spilled ale, and if Kat held her breath, everything seemed just about perfect.
Except, of course, the man she was walking toward.
Henry sat on a raised dais at the end of the hall, his dining table filled with his most trusted friends.
There was only one word Kat had ever found to describe King Henry: grotesque.
She heard he’d been handsome once—the royal portraits certainly seemed to show him as such—but whatever was rotting inside his soul now afflicted his body too.
Henry’s physician had explained it to Kat shortly after the wedding so she wouldn’t be alarmed at the sight of his body.
The man had ticked items off on his fingers as he’d recounted Henry’s myriad ailments: An old jousting wound on his leg, sustained back when he was married to her cousin Anne, had never healed properly, and even years later was ulcerated and a source of great pain; there was gout in his toes; his weight had become such a burden he sometimes needed help getting out of bed; and boils covered his skin from time to time, especially during periods of great stress.
Worst of all, Henry refused to accept the accelerating decline of his physique. When a new portrait had been made last year, the painter had not lied with his brushstrokes. Henry was so furious with the result, he’d torn the canvas in half and later had the artist killed.
Despite everything she’d known about the king, despite even what he had done to Anne, she’d felt a surprising surge of empathy for him.
He must have been miserable, trapped in a body that was betraying him day by day.
But any pity she’d found dried up after their first few months of marriage, as Kat learned that the king’s cruelty was far more hideous than anything flesh-deep.
His temper was so short, he snapped at everyone—Kat, his councilors, the palace staff, even visiting nobility from the Continent whom he hoped to woo into alliances or trades.
He could not withstand the slightest whiff of dissent or disagreement and would threaten or slander anyone who placed a toe out of line.
Cromwell wasn’t the only friend of the king who had met his end with an axe or sword since Kat arrived, and she often wondered who Henry’s next victim would be.
Of one thing Kat was certain: She would never be the one with her head on the block. Now that she had returned to court for Christmas, she and Thomas would be perfectly careful, and she would give no one—save accursed John Lassells—the chance to doubt her.
Thomas was there as she ascended onto the dais, looking resplendent in a pale blue tunic and hose. He reached out to help her up the final step, and Kat felt panic stab at her chest. Would someone notice them? Would they jump to conclusions?
Shooing Thomas off would only cause a bigger scene, so Kat accepted his hand.
He took her arm to guide her to her seat, a gentlemanly move that no one could find fault with, though Kat was sure the lightning of his touch would scorch her.
Even here, in front of all these people and despite all the resolutions she had just made in the name of care and safety, she wanted to grab his hand, run from the room, and never look back.
Instead, she allowed herself to lean into his strong arms and relish the feeling of his body so near to hers.
All too soon, he deposited her in the chair next to Henry’s, brushing a kiss against her knuckles as he bowed.
Kat forced herself to keep the same dreamy, lovey look on her face that she wished to share with Thomas when she looked at Henry.
It was a good thing she was such an accomplished actress, for Henry had none of Thomas’s beauty or charm.
He was chewing a leg of lamb with vigor, his lips already wine-stained.
Kat felt like a sparrow sitting next to a boar as she dropped onto the edge of her seat, as far away from Henry as she could manage.
Clueless and self-absorbed as always, Henry reached out and took her hand, smearing grease and God knew what else on Kat’s beautiful new gown.
Her smile faltered when his hand squeezed her fingers hard enough to hurt.
“Welcome home, my queen,” Henry said once he had swallowed his bite of food. The words sounded kind, but his gaze was razor sharp. “You are late, and it’s very rude to keep me waiting.”
He still held her hand too tightly, and Kat pretended to cough before slipping her hand from his grasp in search of her wine goblet.
“I apologize,” Kat replied, keeping her tone light. “The gown took longer than expected to get into.”
Henry gave her dress a cursory glance and grunted, whether in approval or dismissal, Kat wasn’t sure. “Don’t be late again,” he warned.
“I won’t,” Kat promised, raising her glass to her lips. She drank deep, wishing she could erase the last hour from her memory, from her life.
Those were the only words Henry said to her all night, and for that, Kat was grateful.