Suzannah Dunn - The Confession of Katherine Howard

Distraction, though, came in the form of the household steward who blundered in, twinkly-eyed and bulbousnosed, to introduce himself - ‘Mr Scully’ - and, having apprehended the hound, congratulated us on arriving just in time for supper. I wondered whether I’d be sitting with any of the other girls. My mother had told me there were four other girls in the duchess’s care but she didn’t know exactly who they were. She’d explained to me that any who weren’t Howards - daughters, instead, of family friends - were in the household to be companions to those who were: that was how it worked, she’d said, as it had for hundreds of years in all the important households. Which, though, I now wondered, was I - family or friend? My parents considered me to be a blood relation of the duchess’s, but, standing there in that huge old room, stroking a hound whose collar was embroidered with the Howard coat-of-arms, the relationship seemed so tenuous as to be negligible.

Nothing in how the duchess addressed me was enlightening on the matter. She’d followed her steward; I hadn’t known whether to expect personal word from her but suddenly there she was, stepping from behind rotund Mr Scully to express polite concern for my welfare after the journey. I’d know now to describe her as a handsome woman: lean, with strong features, the most striking being her bird-black eyes. At the time, her silvered hair had me thinking of her as old; in fact, she probably wasn’t even fifty. Wiry and brisk, she wore a gown of serviceable fustian and her fingers were stained with berry-juice. Presumably she’d come from the kitchen or still-room.

The girls were a further surprise: I would never have guessed them to be my companions if they hadn’t been introduced as such, on their way into supper. I’d been anticipating composed, exquisitely dressed young ladies; but these were wide-eyed girls in barely passable worsted. Alice, Dottie and Mary were about my own age and Maggie looked to be a couple of years younger. To my relief, no distinction was made as to whom was related to the duchess, and all four were ushered to places on the high table, as was I.

Supper was plain fare - bird pie - which was welcome after the ride, and, as soon as we’d finished, the steward’s wife - dumpy and smiley like her husband, but much younger - asked the girls to show me to their bedroom, waving us off with her babe-in-arm snatching at her coif. On the way across the courtyard to the staircase, the girls buzzed around me, full of questions. Their concerns were my horse at home — her name, her temperament — and whether I had brothers and sisters, and what was the latest I’d ever stayed up. I’d been anticipating serious-minded young ladies with firm marriage plans in place, ladies about to step up into their future lives; and me joining the ranks, the back of the queue, falling into line and following in their footsteps. Instead, there was Dottie telling me that Alice had been unwell and had an invalid’s licence allowing her to eat meat on fish days and fast days, and Alice raising her eyebrows in acknowledgement of her good fortune. That, it seemed, counted as the big news around here.

And that I didn’t mind, but when I saw the bedroom, it was all too much - or, rather, too little. My bed at home was cosy inside hangings, deep with covers and cushions, but here were five straw mattresses on the floor, each bearing a single blanket. Moreover, the suspiciously clean fireplace was clearly seldom - if ever - lit, and skimpy bolts of ox-blood-coloured fabric failed to hide bare-plastered walls. Detecting my disappointment, Dottie asked, ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ Ashamed of myself, I couldn’t quite say, and merely gestured at the room. Dutifully, her big brown eyes followed my hand, but - I saw - she just couldn’t see it, the drabness. Confounded, she tried to reassure me with, ‘But we’re all in here together,’ and, giving me my first glimpse of that lovely, guileless smile of hers, ‘It’s great, you wait and see.’

My first full day at the duchess’s began no differently from how my days began at home: prayers at six. No Mrs Kent, now, though, to get me dressed. Harried by the tolling bell, we girls fumbled with one another’s pins and ribbons, Mary complaining vociferously that no one was helping her enough or not fast enough, then scrunching her hair up under her hood with the furious admission that she’d just have to plait it later. By the time we arrived at the duchess’s closet, the lady herself was already kneeling at the little altar. I’d soon learn that she was always well into her day before the opening of the house gates at five. After prayers came the basic household tasks - the emptying of chamberpots, and the sweeping of our own room and the Scullys’, the duchess’s bedchamber and her day room, the long gallery and Hall. Everywhere in the house bloomed the heady fragrance of baking bread. It was a bake day but not a Mass day, so, after a breakfast of rolls and cheese fetched to our room by Alice, we were to go to the duchess’s day room for some tutoring by Mrs Scully. She despatched her stepdaughter, Trudie - a scrappy, nine-year-old redhead - to take care of her various babies (I’d counted four, so far) before giving us a passage from Aesop’s Fables to copy. My companions began on it laboriously, each individual letter a challenge, but I plucked up courage to whisper to Mrs Scully that I already knew how to write and to ask if I could perhaps write a letter home, a request which was gladly granted. I settled to it for an hour - but then that was it, apparently, for schoolwork, for the day. No reading, no translation, no maths, no music.

What there was, instead, was dancing tuition from a well-dressed girl who sauntered into the room on the stroke of nine and introduced herself to me as Polly. She’d not been at supper the previous afternoon, she said, because she’d been locked in her room for being naughty. When everyone else laughed, I realised she was joking. ‘Kidding,’ she confirmed: ‘Headache.’ Clearing a little dance floor by kicking aside the rushes, she informed me that in the duke’s Norfolk home the rushes were scented with saffron - ‘Nice touch’ - and explained that that was where she’d lived until the previous year: she’d been a Howard ward since the age of seven, and she was now sixteen. I wondered why she’d been moved at this late stage to the duchess’s. Possibly for exactly this, though: to teach the duchess’s girls to dance. It would have to be done, but the duchess wouldn’t have danced for decades and Mrs Scully - a housekeeper, not a noblewoman - would never have learned the finer points. Polly, though, seemed very much in the know. I wondered why she was still unmarried. She’d have been a considerable catch for her quick wits and prettiness - wide-spaced eyes, snub nose and full lips - let alone for the prized Howard connection. Most likely the duke was holding out for the best price; perhaps he was in the very process of driving a hard bargain and that was why she’d been sent to the duchess, safely out of the way while her future was decided, tantalisingly beyond the reach of whoever was bidding for her. During the hour before dinner, she put us through our paces, clapping rhythms and bellowing instructions, unstinting in her enthusiasm, laughing good-naturedly at our ineptitude, until we were flushed and exhilarated and Mary had slipped over and had had to be sat to the side on cushions and wrapped in a blanket.

Afternoons at the duchess’s were mainly given over to sewing, again under Mrs Scully’s supervision but with the added good company of cheerful, know-all Polly. The duchess’s was a big household so there was a mound of patching and darning to be tackled, lots of buttons and hooks-and-eyes to be re-attached, all to be rushed through, which was a relief because I’ve never been anything but poor with a needle. During these sessions, we gossiped. Dottie’s sister was due to be married, that autumn, so, for those first afternoons of mine, the talk was of the match and the eagerly anticipated celebrations. Occasionally we’d be interrupted by Trudie and the trio of household pages with the more mobile of the Scully toddlers in tow, but they’d be sent back soon enough to the gallery or gardens.