‘Tell Thomas Seymour to come to me when he leaves the king’s rooms,’ I say quietly.
The dinner is served far more quickly than when the king is calling for extra portions and sending the dishes all around the room. When everyone has eaten they clear the tables.
Thomas Seymour comes in through a side door, speaks to one man and then another and then appears at my side. ‘Will you dance, Your Majesty?’ he asks me.
‘No, I shall go to the king shortly,’ I say. ‘Was he in good spirits?’
‘I thought he was well.’
‘He is certain to ask me if you are still here, if you are staying for many days?’
‘You can tell him that I am leaving for Portsmouth tomorrow.’
Nan moves out of earshot and Catherine Brandon and some of the others take their places in a dance.
‘What do you think?’ Thomas says abruptly. ‘About my marriage?’
‘I have to say this without anyone knowing what I am feeling,’ I say. ‘I have to be stony-faced.’
‘You must,’ he says. ‘We have no choice.’
‘We have no choice in the matter of your marriage either.’ I turn and smile at him as if I have made an interesting small point of conversation.
He nods courteously and then from the breast of his jacket he draws a little notebook, filled with sketches of rigging and sails. He opens it and shows it to me as if I may want to study it. ‘You are saying that I have to marry her?’
Blindly, I turn a page. ‘Yes. What possible excuse could you give for refusing? She is young and beautiful, probably fertile. She is wealthy and she comes from a great family. An alliance with them would be good for your house. Your brother would ask it of you. How can you refuse?’
‘I can’t,’ he says. ‘But what if you were to become free? And I was then married?’
‘I would be your mistress,’ I promise without a moment’s hesitation. I keep my face calm as if I am deeply interested in the book he holds out to me. ‘If I am free and you are married I will become your sinful adulteress lover. If it costs me my soul I will do it.’
He breathes out. ‘My God, Kat. I so long for you.’
Silently, we turn the pages for a few moments, then he says, ‘And when I am married and happy and she is with child, and she gives me a son and heir, and her boy takes my name, and I love him and am grateful to her, will you be able to forgive me? Will you be my lover then?’
He does not even hurt me with this picture, the worst that he could draw. I am prepared for it. I close the book and give it back to him. ‘We’re beyond that,’ I tell him. ‘We’re beyond jealousy and wanting to own each other. It’s as if we went down with the Mary Rose: we’re beyond hating each other or forgiving each other or even hope. All we can do now is try to swim.’
‘They were trapped,’ he remarks. ‘The sailors were trapped by the nets that were stretched over the decks to prevent boarders. They should have dived from the boat as she went down and swum for shore but they were caught in their own grave and drowned.’
I turn my head and blink away the tears. ‘So are we,’ I say. ‘Swim if you can.’
Of course the Howards, always quick to gobble up any advantage, had Mary Howard in their rooms ready for sale, and they visited the king before dinner was even served to ask for his permission for Thomas Seymour and Mary Howard to be married. The king saw them in his privy chamber where he was dining with a few lords and he agreed to the renewed proposal. While I was dining before the court in the great hall, doing my duty as queen, they were agreeing – Seymours and Howards – with the king that the marriage should go ahead. When I told Thomas that we were trapped like his drowning sailors the king was drinking the health of the young couple.
Anne Seymour brings the gossip to the ladies’ rooms. Her husband has told her that the king is pleased that the two great families of England will unite in marriage and content that his daughter-in-law shall remarry.
‘Did you know, Your Majesty?’ Anne Seymour asks me curiously. ‘Has His Majesty spoken with you?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘This is the first I have heard of it.’
Anne cannot hide her pleasure that she has this news before me, and I have to allow her the little triumph.
‘Just as well,’ Nan says to me as we go into my bedroom before the night-time prayers.
‘Just as well – what?’ I say disagreeably as I sit down before the glass and look at my pale face.
‘Just as well to get Mary Howard out of the way. The king has always liked her and they are a family with no feeling but ambition, and no scruples at all.’
‘She is the widow of the king’s dead bastard son,’ I say with assumed patience. ‘She is hardly likely to be a temptation to the king.’
‘She is a beautiful girl and the Howards would propose their own grandmother to him if it suited their purpose,’ Nan says, paying no attention to my ill humour. ‘If you had seen them with Anne Boleyn, if you had seen them with all the other Howard beauties – for Kitty Howard was only one of many – you would be glad to see Mary Howard safely settled.’
‘Oh, I am,’ I say coldly.
Nan waits as the maid lays my sleeves of gold brocade in the scented chest under the window. ‘You don’t mind for him?’ she asks very quietly.
‘Not at all,’ I say clearly. ‘Not at all.’
Thomas leaves court without speaking to me again and I don’t know if he goes directly to Portsmouth or travels to Suffolk to make arrangements for the wedding at Framlingham. I wait for someone to tell me that Thomas Seymour has caught himself an heiress and obliged the cause of reform by making an alliance between the Seymours and the Howards, which will make us all safer at court; to take the Howards from their alliance with Stephen Gardiner is to weaken his power. I wait for Anne Seymour to boast that the match is done and Tom Seymour wedded and bedded. But she says nothing, and I cannot ask. I so dread hearing that he is married that I don’t ask.
Catherine Brandon taps on the door to my room when I am changing my gown to go to dinner, and dismisses the maids with a swift wave of her hand. Nan raises her eyebrows to me in the mirror. She is always alert for Catherine to show any sign that she is taking advantage of her growing favour with the king.
‘This is important,’ Catherine says tersely. ‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘Tom Howard, the duke’s second son, has been summoned before the Privy Council. They’re questioning him. About religion.’
I rise up a little from my seat and then I sit down again. ‘Religion,’ I say flatly.
‘It’s a full inquiry,’ she says. ‘I was leaving the king’s rooms and the door to the Privy Council chamber stood open. I heard them say that Tom was being brought to answer charges, and that Bishop Bonner would report from the Howard lands in Essex and Suffolk. He’s been down there gathering evidence against Tom.’
‘You’re sure it is Tom Howard?’ I ask, suddenly fearful for the man I love.
‘Yes, and they know he has listened to sermons and studied with us. Bishop Bonner has gone through all his books and papers at his home.’
‘Edmund Bonner Bishop of London?’ I name the man who interrogated Anne Askew, a powerful supporter of the old church, hand in glove with Bishop Gardiner, a dangerous man, a vindictive man, a driven man. My influence and power forced him to let Anne Askew go, but there are few who leave the bishop’s palace without pleading guilty to whatever crime he names. There are few who leave without bruises.
‘Yes, him.’
‘Did you hear what he had to report?’
‘No,’ she says. She claps her hands together in her frustration. ‘The king was watching me. I had to walk past the door; I couldn’t stop and listen. I only heard what I have told you. That’s all I know.’