The favourites, Anthony Denny and Edward Seymour, look from me to the king to see if I have forgotten my place and embarrassed him – his commoner wife. But the king is beaming. It seems that this time he wants a wife who is as loving to his children as she is loving to him.
‘You speak to her in English,’ is all he remarks, ‘but she is fluent in French and Latin. My daughter is a scholar like her father.’
‘I speak from my heart,’ I say, and I am rewarded by the warmth of his smile.
HAMPTON COURT PALACE, SUMMER 1543
They tell me I must put aside mourning for my wedding day and wear a gown from the royal wardrobe. The groom of the wardrobe brings one sandalwood chest after another from the great store in London and Nan and I spend a happy afternoon pulling out gowns, looking them over, and taking our pick as Lady Mary and a few other ladies advise. The robes are powdered and stored in linen bags and the sleeves are stuffed with lavender heads to keep away the moth. They smell like wealth: the cool soft velvets and the sleek satin panels have an odour of luxury that I have never known in my life before. I take my choice from the queens’ gowns, in cloth of silver and cloth of gold, and I look at all the many sleeves and hoods, and the underskirts. By the time I have made my choice, of a richly embroidered gown in dark colours, it is nearly time for dinner. The ladies pack the spare gowns away, Nan closes the door on everyone and we are alone.
‘I have to talk to you about your wedding night,’ she says.
I look at her grave face, and at once I fear that she somehow knows my secret. She knows I love Thomas and we are lost. I can do nothing but brazen it out. ‘Oh, what is it, Nan? You look very serious? I’m not a virgin bride, you need not warn me of what’s to come. I don’t expect to see anything new,’ I laugh.
‘It is serious. I have to ask you a question. Kat – do you think you are barren?’
‘What a thing to ask me! I’m only thirty-one!’
‘But you never got a child from Lord Latimer?’
‘God didn’t bless us, and he was away from home, and in his later years he wasn’t . . .’ I make a dismissive gesture. ‘Anyway. Why do you ask?’
‘Just this,’ she says grimly. ‘The king cannot bear to lose another baby. So you can’t conceive one. It’s not worth the risk.’
I am touched. ‘He would be so grieved?’
She tuts with impatience. Sometimes I irritate my London-bred sister with my ignorance. I am a country lady – worse even than that – a lady from the North of England, far from all the gossip, innocent as the Northern skies, blunt as a farmer.
‘No, of course not. It’s not grief, for him. He never feels grief.’ She glances at the bolted door and draws me further into the room so that no-one, not even someone with their ear pressed to the wooden panels, could hear us.
‘I don’t believe that he can give you a baby that can stay in the womb. I don’t think he can make a healthy child.’
I step closer so that we are mouth to ear. ‘This is treason, Nan. Even I know it. You’re mad to say such a thing to me, just before my wedding day.’
‘I’d be mad if I didn’t. Kateryn, I swear to you that he can’t make anything but miscarriages and stillbirths.’
I lean back to see her grave face. ‘This is bad,’ I say.
‘I know.’
‘You think I will miscarry?’
‘Or worse.’
‘What on earth could be worse?’
‘If you were to birth a child, it might be a monster.’
‘A what?’
She is as close as if we were confessing, her eyes on my face. ‘It’s the truth. We were told never to speak of it. It’s a deep secret. No-one who was there has ever spoken of it.’
‘You’d better speak now,’ I say grimly.
‘Queen Anne Boleyn – her death sentence was not the gossip and slander and lies they collected against her: all that nonsense about dozens of lovers. Anne Boleyn gave birth to her own fate. Her death sentence was the little monster.’
‘She had a little monster?’
‘She miscarried something malformed, and the midwives were hired spies.’
‘Spies?’
‘They went at once to the king with what they had seen, what had been birthed into their waiting hands. It was not a child born before its time, not a normal child. It was half fish, half beast. It was a monster with a face cleaved in two and a spine flayed open like something they might show pickled in a jar at a village fair.’
I tear my hands from hers and cover my ears. ‘My God, Nan . . . I don’t want to know. I don’t want to hear this.’
She pulls my hands away and shakes me. ‘As soon as they told the king, he took it as proof that she had used witchcraft to conceive, that she had lain with her brother to get a hell-born child.’
I look at her blankly.
‘And Cromwell got him the evidence to prove it,’ she said. ‘Cromwell could have proved that Our Lady was a drunk; that man had a sworn witness for anything. But he was commanded by the king. The king would not let anyone think that he could give a woman a monster.’ She looks at my horrified face and presses on: ‘So you think on this: if you miscarry, or if you give him a damaged babe, he will say the same about you, and send you to your death.’
‘He can’t say such a thing,’ I say flatly. ‘I’m not another Queen Anne. I’m not going to lie with my brother and dozens of others. We heard of her even in Richmondshire. We knew what she did. Nobody could say such a thing of me.’
‘He would rather believe that he was cuckolded ten times over than admit that there is anything wrong with him. What you heard in Richmondshire – the king’s cuckolding – was announced by the king himself. You knew it, because he made sure that everyone knew it. He made sure the country knew that she was at fault. You don’t understand, Kateryn. He has to be perfect, in every way. He cannot bear that anyone should think, even for a moment, that he is in the wrong. He cannot be seen as less than perfect. His wife has to be perfect too.’
I look as blank as I feel. ‘This is hogswill.’
‘It is true,’ Nan exclaims. ‘When Queen Katherine miscarried he blamed it on God and said it was a false marriage. When Queen Anne gave birth to the monster he blamed it on witchcraft. If Jane had lost her baby he would have blamed it on her, she knew it, we all knew it. And if you miscarry it will be your fault, not his. And you will be punished.’
‘But what can I do?’ I ask fiercely. ‘I don’t know what I can do? How can I possibly prevent it?’
In answer she brings a little purse from the pocket of her gown and shows it to me.
‘What’s that?’
‘This is fresh rue,’ she says. ‘You drink a tea made from it after he has had you. Every time. It prevents a child before it is even formed.’
I don’t take the little purse she holds out to me. I put out one finger and poke it.
‘This is a sin,’ I say uncertainly. ‘It must be a sin. This is the sort of rubbish that the old women peddle behind the hiring fair. It probably doesn’t even work.’
‘It’s a sin to walk knowingly towards your own destruction,’ she corrects me. ‘And you will do that if you don’t prevent a conception. If you give birth to a monster, as Queen Anne did, he will name you as a witch and kill you for it. His pride won’t allow him another dead baby. Everyone would know it was a fault in him if another wife, his sixth healthy wife, birthed a monster or lost a baby. Think! It would be his ninth loss.’
‘Eight dead babies?’ I can see a family of ghosts, a nursery of corpses.