Suzannah Dunn - The Sixth Wife

If she’d never married Thomas, Kate would still be alive. She should have stayed a widow, that last time. The king’s death had been her third widowing, and had made her dowager queen. I’d been around while Henry was dying, in case she needed me, but it just so happened that I wasn’t with her when they finally came with the news. I’d gone into the gardens to take a few minutes to myself. When I returned to her room, unaware, she asked everyone to leave us. In her hands was one of the pairs of spectacles – silver rims,Venetian lenses – that she’d encouraged Henry to buy and which he’d tended to mislay all over his palaces. She watched everyone leave the room as if their leaving was of some interest to her. Always so polite, Kate. Not until the last of them had gone and only her dogs remained stretched in front of the fireplace did she look at me, and that was when she sighed and closed her eyes. The mildly interested expression went from her face – indeed, all expression went from her face – and she covered it with her hands and began to cry.

I’d never seen her cry. All our years of best-friendship and I’d never seen her cry. She’d never seen me cry, either, for that matter. Should she ever, though, I realised, she’d know exactly what to do. I couldn’t even guess, myself, what that would be, but she’d know. She’d rise to it. She’d comfort me, I imagined, without making me self-conscious. For now, though, folded forward there on that huge chair, she looked awkward. It was usually well hidden, that gawkiness of hers; she tended to turn it to her advantage, turn it into something else, walk tall with it. I crouched beside her – awkward, too – and rubbed her bony shoulder. She cried harder and I didn’t know if that was because I was doing something right or something wrong. Exasperation dizzied me. Tell me what to do, I wanted to say, and I’ll do it.

Just two years before I knelt there with my arm around Kate, my own husband had died. My husband of twelve years. I was widowed at twenty-six. Charles had been a little older than Henry – sixty – but in good shape and could have passed for forty. His death – a sudden illness one weekend – was a shock, whereas no one could claim that Henry’s death had come as a shock. It wasn’t shock that was causing Kate’s tears.

Four years, they’d been married. Kate had known him fairly well when he was gorgeous and big-hearted, but those days were long gone by the time she’d been persuaded to stand at the altar and think of England. During their marriage, he’d been a cantankerous, backwards-looking monstrosity. No sense in pretending otherwise. It couldn’t have been the loss of Henry that was causing Kate’s tears.

Queenship, though: the loss of her queenship. She’d loved the role. Not just the work that was required of her – the easy but tedious meeting and greeting – but the bringing of changes. As queen, she’d been able to champion certain people, albeit quietly, Kate-like. How suited she was to all that: the talk, the confidences. She’d always had people’s trust, but as queen she had the ear of anyone who mattered. Careful work, for which I’d never have had the patience. My view is: what a time this is to live – it’s the time to live – because the world is opening up to new ideas and the truth is here, now, for the taking, if you just look. And if people don’t take it, if they don’t look, don’t make the effort to learn, it’s because they’re lazy, self-interested, they’re cowards. But Kate’s view was that people are slow to change because they’re scared, or misguided, misinformed. And people trusted her. No one trusts me. That’s not what I’m for. Kate used to say to me, We all have different strengths, Cathy . I don’t know if she omitted to say what mine were, or if I just can’t now remember.

Queenship had been Kate’s big chance and now, suddenly, one January day, through no fault of her own, it was being taken away. Over, for her, before time. Just four years she’d had, and there was so much more to do. No wonder she was miserable. I’d never before seen her miserable. Frightened, yes. Impossible – foolish – to live through our times and not be frightened. Even I’d been frightened. And I’d seen her angry, too, beneath her considerable composure. But never miserable. Because that’s something that you feel for yourself, which wasn’t Kate, she didn’t do that. Or hadn’t done, before now.

A month later, something happened that made me see her dejection on the day of the king’s death as perhaps having had rather less than I’d imagined to do with her no longer being queen. At least some of those tears had been because she was in her mid-thirties, still childless, and once again unmarried. And who’d marry her now?

A month or so into Kate’s widowhood I went to stay with her in the Chelsea countryside, at the old manor that Henry had left to her. I set off from home later than I’d envisaged because my friends the Cavendishes, en route to their Hertfordshire manor, stopped by for longer than they’d intended; and when they did eventually depart, we saw that one of their horses needed a shoe.

‘Go,’ Bess Cavendish dismissed me, ‘or you’ll be on the river in the dark.’

‘It’s February,’ I countered with a laugh. ‘Half the day’s dark; dark’s unavoidable.’

Then, back indoors at last, I had to see a local shoemaker whose home and workshop had burned down, because my steward wanted to discuss with me how much assistance we should give the family.

We didn’t launch the barge until the evening and, despite hard rowing by my men, arrived at Chelsea too late for dinner. I can’t say I minded. I sat cosily at the fireside in Kate’s room with my two accompanying ladies to eat excellent pigeon pie, and peaches that had been bottled in lavender-infused syrup. I’d brought Joanna and Nichola, my youngest ladies, knowing they’d fit in best at Kate’s. We all have girls in our household, of course, come to us to learn the ropes, but trust Kate to have only girls, every last one of her attendants a fledgling under her wing. There had been some changes, though, now that she was no longer at court. A couple of new faces. One was Marcella, who, Kate told me, was married to one of Thomas Seymour’s men; the other was the Lassells girl – Frances, ‘Frankie’ – an eager twelve-year-old.

It was an easy, gossipy evening, Marcella playing the virginals beautifully in the background. I wasn’t late going to bed, to the room that was mine whenever I was there. I hadn’t been there for long, though, when Kate turned up, nightdress-attired, barefoot, hair down, unattended by any of her girls. There was never any bustle to Kate, just this walk, loose, light, and tall. She sat on the edge of my bed and switched those big clear eyes of hers to my maidservant, Bella.

‘Bella,’ I said,‘that’s fine for now, thanks.’ She was unpacking for me. ‘Why don’t you take a little time to yourself Bella wrapped herself in her cloak and made herself scarce.

Kate scooped her hair behind one ear and said,‘I’ve something to tell you.’ She held my gaze steady with her own and told me: ‘I’ve married Thomas Seymour.’ With a brief laugh, she turned her eyes to the ceiling, or just upwards, somehow both nervous and bold, as if taking pleasure in admonishing herself.

Thomas Seymour? They were friends, he and Kate; had been for years. Odd little friendship, theirs: a friendship that I’d never understood. Well, never even considered really. I couldn’t remember ever having seen them in each other’s company. She’d mentioned him sometimes, over the years, in a manner that might in retrospect be said to be friendly, but Kate was friendly with everybody. Her close friends, though, were reformers and scholars, people who believed in and worked for a better life for everyone. From what I knew of Thomas Seymour, the only life he was keen to better – and he was very keen indeed, from what I’d heard – was his own. But there I was, thinking about her friendship, and hadn’t she just said ‘married’?