Jean Plaidy - Murder Most Royal - The Story of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard

Even on that first day she loved Hollingbourne, but at that time it was chiefly because her mother had talked to her of it so affectionately.

But on the first night, when she lay in the little room all by herself, with the moon shining through the window and throwing ghostly shadows, she began to sense the solitude all about her and her quick love for Hollingbourne was replaced by fear. There was no sound from barges going down the river to Greenwich or up it to Richmond and Hampton Court; there was only silence broken now and then by the weird hooting of an owl. The strange room seemed menacing in this half-light, and suddenly she longed for the room at Lambeth with the noisy brothers and sisters; she thought of her mother, for Catherine Howard had had that sweet companionship which so many in her station might never know, since there was no court life to take Jocosa from her family, and her preoccupations were not with the cut of a pair of sleeves but with her children; that, poverty had given Catherine, but cruel life had let it be appreciated only to snatch it away. So in her quiet room at Hollingbourne, Catherine shed bitter tears into her pillow, longing for her mother’s soft caress and the sound of her gentle voice.

“You have no mother now,” they had said, “so you must be a brave girl.”

But I’m not brave, thought Catherine, and immediately remembered how her eldest brother had jeered at her because she, who was so afraid of ghosts, would listen to and even encourage Doll Tappit to tell tales of them.

Doll Tappit’s lover, Walter the warder, had once seen a ghost. Doll Tappit told the story to Nurse as she sat feeding the baby; Catherine had sat, round-eyed, listening.

“Now you know well how ’tis Walter’s task to walk the Tower twice a night. Now Walter, as you know, is nigh on six foot tall, near as tall as His Majesty the King, and not a man to be easily affrighted. It was a moonlit night. Walter said the clouds kept hurrying across the moon as though there was terrible sights they wanted to hide from her. There is terrible sights, Nurse, in the Tower of London! Walter, he’s heard some terrible groaning there, he’s heard chains clanking, he’s heard scream and shrieking. But afore this night he never see anything...And there he was on the green, right there by the scaffold, when...clear as I see you now, Nurse...the Duke stood before him; his head was lying in a pool of blood on the ground beside him, and the blood ran down all over his Grace’s fine clothes!”

“What then?” asked Nurse, inclined to be skeptical. “What would my lord Duke of Buckingham have to say to Walter the warder?”

“He said nothing. He was just there...just for a minute he was there. Then he was gone.”

“They say,” said Nurse, “that the pantler there is very hospitable with a glass of metheglin...”

“Walter never takes it!”

“I’ll warrant he did that night.”

“And when the ghost had gone, Walter stooped down where it was...”

“Where what was?”

“The head...all dripping blood. And though the head was gone, the blood was still there. Walter touched it; he showed me the stain on his coat.”

Nurse might snort her contempt, but Catherine shivered; and there were occasions when she would dream of the headless duke, coming towards her, and his head making stains on the nursery floor.

And here at Hollingbourne there were no brothers and sisters to help her disbelief in ghosts. Ghosts came when people were alone, for all the stories Catherine had ever heard of ghosts were of people who were alone when they saw them. Ghosts had an aversion to crowds of human beings, so that, all through her life, being surrounded by brothers and sisters, Catherine had felt safe; but not since she had come to Hollingbourne.

As these thoughts set Catherine shivering, outside her window she heard a faint noise, a gentle rustling of the creeper; it was as though hands pulled at it. She listened fearfully, and then it came again.

She was sitting up in bed, staring at the window. Again there came that rustle; and with it she could hear the deep gasps of one who struggles for breath.

She shut her eyes; she covered her head with the clothes; then, peeping out and seeing a face at her window, she screamed. A voice said: “Hush!” very sternly, and Catherine thought she would die from relief, for the voice was the voice of her handsome young cousin, Thomas Culpepper.

He scrambled through the window.

“Why, ’tis Catherine Howard! I trust I did not startle you, Cousin?”

“I...thought you...to be a...ghost!”

That made him rock with merriment.

“I had forgotten this was your room, Cousin,” he lied, for well he had known it and had climbed in this way in order to impress her with his daring. “I have been out on wild adventures.” He grimaced at a jagged tear in his breeches.

“Wild adventures. . . !”

“I do bold things by night, Cousin.”

Her big eyes were round with wonder, admiring him, and Thomas Culpepper, basking in such admiration that he could find nowhere but in this simple girl cousin, felt mightily pleased that Catherine Howard had come to Hollingbourne.

“Tell me of them,” she said.

He put his fingers to his lips.

“It is better not to speak so loudly, Cousin. In this house they believe me to be but a boy. When I am out, I am a man.”

“Is it witchcraft?” asked Catherine eagerly, for often had she heard Doll Tappit speak of witchcraft.

He was silent on that point, silent and mysterious; but before he would talk to her, he would have her get off her bed to see the height of the wall which he had climbed with naught to help him but the creeper.

She got out, and naked tiptoed to the window. She was greatly impressed.

“It was a wonderful thing to do, Cousin Thomas,” she said.

He smiled, well pleased, thinking her prettier in her very white skin than in the ugly clothes she had worn on her arrival.

“I do many wonderful things,” he told her. “You will be cold, naked thus,” he said. “Get back into your bed.”

“Yes,” she said, shivering, half with cold and half with excitement. “I am cold.”

She leapt gracefully into bed, and pulled the clothes up to her chin. He sat on the bed, admiring the mud on his shoes and the unkempt appearance of his clothes.

“Do tell me,” she said, her knees at her chin, her eyes sparkling.

“I fear it is not for little girls’ ears.”

“I am not such a little girl. It is only because you are big that it seems so.”

“Ah!” he mused, well pleased to consider it in that way. “That may well be so; perhaps you are not so small. I have been having adventures, Cousin; I have been out trapping hares and shooting game!”

Her mouth was a round O of wonder.

“Did you catch many?”

“Hundreds, Cousin! More than a little girl like you could count.”

“I could count hundreds!” she protested.

“It would have taken you days to count these. Do you know that, had I been caught, I could have been hanged at Tyburn?”

“Yes,” said Catherine, who could have told him more gruesome stories of Tyburn than he could tell her, for he had never known Doll Tappit.

“But,” said Thomas, “I expect Sir John, my father, would not have allowed that to happen. And then again ’twas scarcely poaching, as it happened on my father’s land which will be one day mine, so now, Cousin Catherine, you see what adventures I have!”

“You are very brave,” said Catherine.

“Perhaps a little. I have been helping a man whose acquaintance I made. He is a very interesting man, Cousin; a poacher. So I for fun, and he for profit, poach on my father’s land.”

“Were he caught, he would hang by the neck.”