“Such maternal instincts!” I mocked.
“Maternal instincts are for such as you,” retorted Kate, “who doubtless has not a soul above feeding and cleaning infants.”
I loved the baby. I would nurse him whenever possible and young as he was I was sure he knew me. When he was crying I would rock him in his cradle and never fail to quieten him. Lord Remus used to smile at me.
“You should be a mother, Damask,” he said.
I knew he was right. Being with little Carey made me long for a child of my own. I thought I would like to take the boy home with me, for I said to Kate it was time I went home.
She raised a storm of protests. Why did I constantly talk of going home? Wasn’t I content to be with her? What did I want? I only had to ask and she would see that it was brought to me.
I said I wanted to be with my father. He was missing me. Kate must remember that I only came to be with her until she had her child.
“The baby will miss you,” said Kate slyly. “How shall we keep him quiet when you are not there to rock the cradle?”
“He’d rather have his mother.”
“No, he would not. He prefers you, which shows how clever he is. You’re of much more use to him than I am.”
“You are a strange woman, Kate,” I said.
“Would you have me ordinary?”
“No. But I should like you to be more natural with the child.”
“He is well cared for.”
“He needs caresses and to be made aware of love.”
“This boy will own all these lands. He’s a very lucky baby. He’ll soon grow out of the need for caresses and baby talk when he sees this grand estate.”
“Then he will be like his mother.”
“Which,” said Kate, “is not such a bad thing to be.”
So we bantered and enjoyed each other’s company. I knew that she sought every pretext to keep me there and I was delighted that this should be so. As for myself I thought often of my father and were it not for him I should have been contented enough to stay. I guessed that he must have missed me sorely and now that Kate had her boy, I thought he would write urging me to come back; but his letters to me were accounts of home affairs and there was no urgent request for me to return.
I was a little piqued by this, which was foolish of me; I might have known there was a reason.
Little Carey was a month old. My mother wrote that she had heard that a fruit called the cherry had been brought into the country and had been planted in Kent. Could I please try to find out if this was so? And she had also heard that the King’s gardener had introduced apricots into his gardens and they were prospering well. She would so like to hear if this was the case. Perhaps some of the people who visited Remus Castle and who came from the Court would be able to tell something about these exciting projects.
The people who came from the Court did not talk of apricots. There was about them all a furtive air; they lowered their voices when they talked but they could not deny themselves the pleasure of discussing the King’s affairs.
The King was determined to rid himself of Anne of Cleves. Cromwell, who had made the marriage, was going to unmake it.
I thought of him often in his prison in the Tower—his fate was not unlike that of the great Cardinal, only his lacked the dignity. The Cardinal had had the King’s affection and had died before the ignominy of the Tower and death there could overtake him. I was filled with pity for these men—even Cromwell—and no matter how much I remembered that terrible time when the Abbey had been defiled and violence and misery had prevailed, still I felt pity for the man who had climbed so high only to fall.
I heard now that Cromwell had been forced to reveal conversations which he had had with the King on the morning after the wedding night. During these conversations the King had made it perfectly clear that the marriage had not been consummated.
“Cromwell has admitted,” so said one of our visitors, “that the King told him he found the lady so far from his taste that nothing could induce him to consummate the marriage. If she were a maid when she came, so Cromwell assures us the King said to him, then His Majesty had left her as she was when she came, though as for her virginity, His Majesty was inclined to doubt that she was in possession of such a virtue when she arrived. Now Parliament will bring in a bill to declare that the marriage is null and void and that if a marriage has not been consummated this is a ground for divorce.”
“How unfortunate are the King’s wives,” I said.
“I do not think the lady who will soon become the fifth would agree with this.”
“Poor girl. She is very young, I hear.”
“Aye, and the King is eager for her.”
“Perhaps when he is married to her he will soften toward her and pardon Cromwell.”
“That man has too many enemies. His doom is certain. The King never had any affection for him.”
I shivered.
I shall never forget that July. The scent of roses filled the pond garden and the leaves were thick in the pleached alley. I used to carry the baby out to the seat in his wicker basket and sit him down at my feet while I stitched at some garment for him. Kate would join me. She was planning her next visit to Court.
“They say Katharine Howard is already the King’s wife. I wonder how long she will last.”
“Poor girl,” I murmured.
“At least she will be a Queen, if only for a short time. I have heard it said that in the Duchess of Norfolk’s household she was a very merry little lady at one time.”
“The King would hardly wish for a somber one.”
“Rather free with her smiles and other favors.”
“ ’Tis always better to smile than frown—something which you might remember.”
She laughed. “My mentor!” she murmured. “You always seem to know what is best for me. Why should you think that you are so much wiser than I?”
“Because I should be hard put to it to be less so.”
“Oh, so now we are clever! Go on, clever Damask. I will sit with my hands folded and listen to your sermons.”
We were silent for a while. There was no sound in the garden but the buzzing of the bees in the lavender.
Then she said: “How does it feel to die…to leave all this, I wonder.”
I looked at her in a startled fashion and she went on: “How did Queen Anne feel in her prison in the Tower, knowing that her end was near. It is four years since she died, Damask, and in the month of May, the beauteous month when all nature is reborn…and she died. And now that man, who was no friend of hers, is also to die. She was brave. They say she walked most calmly to her death, that she was elegantly attired as always. She was scornful of her fate. That is how I would be. And think of the King, Damask. He heard the death gun booming from the Tower. ‘The deed is done,’ so they tell me he said. ‘Uncouple the hounds and away.’ And to Wolf Hall he went where Jane Seymour was waiting. But she did not long enjoy her crown.”
“Poor soul,” I said.
“Yet she died in her bed and not on a bloody scaffold.”
“Perhaps it was better that she died thus than live to face a worse death.”
“Death is death,” said Kate. “Wherever it is met. But not all die as Anne died. I can picture her lifting her head high as she walked and as calmly laving it down to receive the blow from the executioner’s sword. How different is Cromwell. He begs for his life, they say. He has sworn all that the King asks him to swear. He declares the King confided to him on the wedding night…because that is what the King wishes. He begged for mercy.”
“And will it be granted?”
“Is the King ever merciful?”
“I wonder,” I said.
We were interrupted in the garden by the arrival of a visitor. He came from Court and Kate went out to greet him. That day we dined in the great hall and Kate was animated and I thought that having a child had by no means impaired her beauty. Lord Remus could not take his eyes from her and I marveled at her power to win such devotion without making much effort to do so.