He was beautiful, I thought, with dark hair falling about his face, almost to his shoulders, in graceful curls. He went on strumming and, glancing at me, gave me a very warm smile.
My grandmother said: “ ’Tis Katherine Howard. Come here, child.”
“Your Grace sent for me,” I said.
“Did I?”
As she had apparently forgotten, I wondered whether I had been wrong to come.
“Silence, Manox,” she said to the musician, who immediately bowed his head and let his hands fall from the lute.
She took a sweetmeat from the bowl and threw it toward him; he caught it with graceful dexterity and put it into his mouth.
He then stood up, and said: “Your Grace would dismiss me?”
She considered for a moment, then she said: “Nay, nay. I would hear you play a tune for me. One that my granddaughter, the Lady Anne, will be listening to at Court. So … Manox, stay.”
“I thank Your Grace,” he said with great respect, but he was looking at me.
“Now, Katherine Howard,” she went on. “Your new gown becomes you. You look more as Mistress Katherine Howard should than when you came here. And the women look after you well?”
“Isabel does, Your Grace.”
“And behaves to you as she should toward my granddaughter?”
“I … I think so, Your Grace.”
“You must always remember that you are a Howard. More so now that our star is rising high. You are the Lady Anne’s cousin and great things will come to her, and through her to us. Come closer, child, where I can see you better. Yes, there is a faint resemblance. Of course, she is a fine lady. She has been well tutored. All those years in France. There is no gainsaying that there is something about the French. They are our natural enemies, but that does not mean they have not a certain elegance. The Lady Anne likes well the French fashions. Those hanging sleeves. She only has to wear them and others follow. French fashions are everywhere at Court. I shall be leaving for Lambeth soon. I trust it is just a matter of settling this ‘secret matter.’ Secret no longer. We all know of it. You know of it, Manox, do you not?”
“Oh yes, Your Grace.”
“And is not our Katherine Howard a little like the Lady Anne? I thought I detected a resemblance when I saw her. Have you seen the Lady Anne, Manox?”
“I glimpsed the lady when she called upon Your Grace recently.”
“And did you see what I mean? Cousins of the blood, they are.”
“Yes, indeed, Your Grace. There is a shared excellence. They both are blessed with beauty of a distinctive kind.”
“Beauty. Bah! Many girls have beauty. There is that extra … the Howard look. Do you see what I mean?”
“I do, Your Grace. It is a rare … quality.”
My grandmother threw another sweetmeat to the musician and took one herself.
“You may offer the dish to Mistress Katherine Howard,” said my grandmother.
He rose from his stool, took the dish and proffered it to me with a deep bow.
I smiled and took one of them. He replaced the dish and sat down on the stool, smiling at me.
I felt elated. The sweetmeat was delicious.
“It will be well, Manox,” went on my grandmother, “that you do not fail to treat Mistress Howard with respect at all times. She is a Howard and my granddaughter. Please inform those around you of this.”
“I serve Your Grace with all my heart,” he said. “And in all ways I will give the utmost respect to Mistress Howard.”
“Manox is as good a courtier as he is a musician,” said the Duchess to me. “Do you like music?”
“Oh yes, Your Grace.”
“And were you taught to play an instrument in your father’s house?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Well, it is different here, is it not?”
I said it was, and I found myself thinking mainly of the nights in the Long Room. I was feeling a certain relief, because I had feared my grandmother would ask about those nights and I should not know what to say, since Isabel had warned me not to speak of them.
The Duchess was saying: “The King loves music, and the Lady Anne is very musical. But, of course, she is gifted in many ways. I think you should have some music lessons here, and Henry Manox is on the spot to give them to you. What say you, and you too, Manox? My servants are lazy. So, Manox, here is a new task for you. Instead of sitting strumming your lute to please yourself, you shall instruct Mistress Katherine Howard on the virginals.”
“Your Grace could offer me nothing I should like better.”
“’Tis agreed then. Henry Manox, you will begin without delay to teach Mistress Katherine Howard to play the virginals.”
He was smiling at me. “It will be my great pleasure,” he said.
The Duchess was regarding him intently. “And, Manox, you will remember that the young lady is my granddaughter, that she is a member of the illustrious Howard family, cousin to one who will soon …”
She stopped abruptly, smiling to herself, and Henry Manox said: “I understand, Your Grace.”
“And, Manox,” went on my grandmother, “make sure that the others understand this too.”
“I shall always remember Your Grace’s words,” replied Manox. “What I desire above all things is to serve well Your Grace and her noble family.”
The Duchess sat back in her chair, smiling with self-gratification.
I understood enough to realize that she was feeling a little conscience-stricken for forgetting me until now, but she had made up for that by arranging music lessons for me.
I had a new interest in life. I was enjoying my music lessons. I learned quite quickly and without a great deal of effort; and I looked forward to my daily sessions with my tutor.
He was always helpful and kind. He said I was the perfect pupil. I learned more quickly than anyone else, he told me, and he was sure my grandmother would be delighted with my progress.
Apparently she made no inquiries about it; nor did she summon me to her presence again. I had quickly come to the conclusion that she felt no great interest in me except when she fancied she saw a resemblance to my cousin Anne; but, as she rarely saw me, she was not often reminded even of that. There were so many young people in her establishment—those who had posts in the household and impecunious relatives and dependants of the Howards—that she could not remember who they all were. I believed that I came into that category, and it was only that faint resemblance which singled me out.
I began to understand that she had taken me into her household on the whim of a moment because of that resemblance, and once there I had become one of a crowd.
I must adjust myself and make my own friends. This I was enjoying doing. I had Isabel and some of the other women, and now my music teacher.
Henry Manox was a good musician. The instruments in his hand seemed to speak to me. I would sit listening entranced while he played, letting the music carry me along.
He had a very pleasant tenor voice too; he would play the lute for me—he was teaching me that instrument as well as the virginals—and suddenly he would break into song.
One morning, he was playing the lute and singing a sad song about a man who had died because his mistress no longer loved him. I sat listening, my eyes closed, when suddenly I felt his hand on my cheek stroking it.
I opened my eyes quickly and saw his face close to my own. I noticed his bright, dark eyes, with their long eyelashes.
“You would not have been so unkind, sweet Katherine,” he said.
I blushed. “Oh … you mean the song.”
“He died of love,” he said softly. “Fancy! He died because the lady he loved was cruel to him.”
“She was not cruel,” I replied. “She could not help that she did not love him in return.”