What would happen to her in the months to come? wondered Katharine, staring at the ornate tester, although there was not enough light to show her its magnificent workmanship. And what of Thomas Seymour, temporarily banished from his country because he had been known to cast covetous eyes on the woman the King had decided to make his wife! How was he bearing the banishment?
What are this King’s subjects, Katharine asked herself, but figures to be moved about at his pleasure? Some please him for a while, and he lifts them up and keeps them close beside him until he sees others who please him more; then those who delighted him a week before are discarded; and if that prim quality within him suggests that the favorite of yesterday be removed by death, the conscience demands that this should be done. For the King must always be able to answer his conscience, no matter how much blood must be spilled to bring about this state of concord between a self-willed sensualist and his conscience.
So Katharine prayed in the silences of the nights for the courage of which she knew she would have great need. Often she thought of a friend with whom she had been on terms of affection before she came to court. This was the Reformer, Anne Askew, herself the victim of an undesired marriage; she thought of Anne’s courage and determination and she longed to emulate her.
But I am a coward, thought Katharine. I cannot bear to think of the cell, and the sound of tolling bells, bringing to me a message of destruction. I cannot bear to think of leaving that cell for Tower Green and the executioner’s ax.
Her prayer for courage, it seemed, did not go unanswered, for as the days passed her fears diminished and she felt that a new sense was developing within her which would make her aware of encroaching danger and give her the calm she would need to face it.
Some might have loathed the task which was thrust upon them. Each day it was her duty now to bathe the leg, to listen to his cries of rage when he was in pain; but oddly enough, instead of nauseating her, this filled her with pity for him. To see this man—this all-powerful King—such a prey to his hideous infirmity, was a sorry sight. Once when he looked at her he had seen her eyes filled with tears. He had softened immediately.
“Tears, Kate? Tears?”
“You suffer so.”
Then those little eyes, which could be so cruel, also filled with tears, and the fat hand which was heavy with flashing jewels came down to pat her shoulders.
“You’re a good woman, Kate,” he said. “Methinks I made a good choice when I took you to wife.”
She had asked that her sister Anne, Lady Herbert, might be a lady of her bedchamber, and that Margaret Neville, the only daughter of Lord Latimer, be one of her maids of honor.
“Do as you will, Kate,” said the King when she had made the request. “You’re a good woman and a wise one, and you’ll surround yourself with others of your kind.”
Yes, the King was pleased. This marriage had not begun with one of those burning infatuations such as he had felt for Anne Boleyn and Catharine Howard. That was all to the good. This, he assured himself, was a wise choice, a choice made while the judgment was cool and sober.
Then there were the children. He had made it clear to her that he wished her to take a stepmotherly interest in them, and for thisshe was grateful. It had been one of her deepest regrets that she had no children of her own, and that her strong maternal nature had always to be placated with stepchildren. Well, it had been so before, and never had she found anything but joy in mothering the children of those other women.
The royal children were as responsive as had been those of her other marriages. How happy she was to be so obviously welcome in their apartments! Poor children, they had known so many different stepmothers and they were accustomed to such changes.
When, as their stepmother, she paid them her first visit, they were all ceremoniously assembled to greet her.
Little Edward looked so puny that she wanted to take him in her arms and weep over him. Yet while he moved her with pity, he filled her with dread. This was the only male heir, and the King wished for others.
He put his hand in hers and, on sudden impulse, dispensing with that ceremony due to the heir to the throne, she knelt and kissed him, and, following her lead, he put his arms about her neck.
“Welcome, dear Mother,” he said; and in his voice was all the yearning of a little boy who has never known a mother and always longed for one, and whose childish pleasures had been overlaid by the great duties demanded of an heir to the throne.
“We are going to love each other,” she said.
“I am glad you are to be our stepmother,” he answered.
The Lady Mary knelt before her. Poor Mary, who was almost as unhealthy as Edward. She never dispensed with what she considered the right formalities, and this was a solemn occasion for Mary—the greeting of the new Queen of England. Previously it had been Lady Latimer who must kneel to the Lady Mary; now the position was reversed, and although there had been warm friendship between them, Mary never forgot the demands of etiquette.
“Rise, dear Mary,” said Katharine; and she kissed the slightly younger woman.
“Welcome, dear Mother,” said Mary. “I am glad to welcome you.”
And then Elizabeth came forward, dropping a pretty curtsy and lifting her sparkling eyes to her stepmother’s face.
“I, too, am pleased,” she said; and when she had received her stepmother’s kiss, as though on sudden impulse, she followed her brother’s example and, putting her arms about Katharine’s neck, kissed her.
Little Jane Grey, who was waiting with her sister Katharine to welcome the Queen, thought that Elizabeth seemed more pleased than any of them. Little Jane noted a good deal more than people guessed, for she never spoke, even to her beloved Edward, of all that she saw. She did not believe that Elizabeth was really half as pleased as Edward or Mary, although she was not displeased. (Who could be to welcome such a gentle and charming lady as the new Queen?) It was merely that Elizabeth could show great pleasure or great sorrow as she wished, and the more easily than others because she did not feel these emotions deeply and could remain in control of herself.
Now Elizabeth stood back that the Queen might greet the little Greys, and while Jane knelt before the Queen and was kissed by her, she was thinking that Elizabeth was not really so pleased because the King had married a good lady, but because this lady would be easy to persuade; and Elizabeth would know how to persuade her to ask the King to give her what she most needed; and what Elizabeth needed was that position which she considered hers by right. She wished to be received at court, not as the Lady Elizabeth, the bastard, but as a Princess; and she wished to have an income that she might buy beautiful clothes; she wished to have jewels with which to adorn her person. Jane felt sure that that was what Elizabeth was thinking as she greeted Katharine Parr.
And yet, when they had dispensed with ceremony as far as Mary would allow them, and were all gay and happy together, Jane noticed that it was Elizabeth’s gay chatter which most charmed the Queen.
Edward kept close to Jane, and now and then held her hand and looked at her with fresh tenderness. He was thinking that his father must be very happy to have this new stepmother for a wife, and that a wife could be a great help to a King.