The Secret Keeper: A Novel of Kateryn Parr

TWELVE

Winter: Year of Our Lord 1547

Greenwich Palace

Whitehall

Baynard’s Castle

Seymour House, Syon House

Chelsea

The king and queen passed the autumn at hunt, comfortable in one another’s affections, though ’twas clear by the king’s panting breath, restless nights, and quick temper that he struggled with unwellness. Though I knew Kate reserved her heart for Thomas, she most clearly enjoyed the king’s companionship and he hers. She spoke softly and blushed at his jests while holding his arm tenderly. I thought back upon His Majesty’s physician’s comment that the king had not offered his other wives the chance of a visit once a warrant of arrest was signed. Her softness was perhaps the reason why.

So it came as a surprise when we were to take our leave from the king’s lovely, though incomplete, palace at Nonsuch, so named because there was no such place like it in the world, to return to London.

Kate was clearly upset that we were packing.

“What is wrong, Kate?” her sister asked.

“We are to go to Greenwich, where the Lady Mary will join me. The Lady Elizabeth and Prince Edward will return to their household. But the king goes to Whitehall!”

“Whitehall?” Lady Herbert inquired. “Afore Christmas? His Majesty always celebrates Christmas at Greenwich. Whitehall is for governance.”

“Edward Seymour has advised the king that they must spend a considerable amount of time, now that all the nobility are in London, reworking His Majesty’s will. To ensure that the prince is well provided for. ’Tis my belief that the prince is already well provided for in the current will, but Seymour has apparently persuaded the king differently.”

Ah. So then I knew why Lady Seymour was not in attendance at the moment. Kate suspected that Seymour was turning the king away from Kate’s influence in the prince’s regency and toward snatching power for himself.

I did not know what to think. Time, though, is a babbler.

Once at Greenwich the queen and the Lady Mary set about planning festivities for the other women and most of the court through the Christmas season and the New Year. The queen gave Edward Seymour a most conspicuous gift, a double portrait of Henry and herself as king and queen.

The king did not allow the Lady Mary nor the queen to visit him, which caused not a little talk. It was the first time that the king had left the queen on a solemn occasion.

As he grew more ill, the king struck harder, clearing the forest of all obstacles so his son might have a straight ride into manhood and kingship. He had Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey, imprisoned for treason. The first thing Norfolk did was cry self-pityingly to the king, telling him that whilst his son was surely a traitor, he, Norfolk, was not.

Norfolk’s son, Surrey, was executed in a matter of days whilst his father moldered in the Tower.

The queen kept busy at sewing and reading, though with material not controversial, as she waited for a summons from the king.

“Your Grace.” Lady Seymour strode triumphantly into the chambers one day and spoke afore being asked to by the queen. “I thought it would bring you some comfort to know that the king has completed the changes to his will, and has entrusted the entire document into the safekeeping of my husband.”

“Thank you, Lady Seymour,” the queen responded coolly. “And now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to sup. I would ask you to stay, but I know you have comfortable quarters of your own and therefore have no need of mine.”

’Twas the first volley in a gowned skirmish.

The king was confined to his bed, and still not having been recalled to his side nor having had her pleading letters returned or acknowledged, the queen retired to Baynard’s Castle to wait. All of us lived as though on the edge of a cliff. The great king was to die, he who had completely dominated and subjugated our realm for as long as most could remember. Would young Prince Edward likewise dominate? I somehow doubted it and feared, as I knew the others did, what lay ahead. The young boy had not the strength yet to hold the reins.

On January 27 an especially dear friend of the queen came to visit her late at night with a small retinue. “My lord husband has spoken with His Majesty,” she said, once inside the warm great hall. “He has brought him ill tidings from the doctors. They have told the king that in their opinion, he is not like to live.”

The next morning came a messenger from Whitehall to Kate. The king, at the end, could not speak. He had Cranmer, and not Gardiner, by his side as he died, at the age of fifty-six. He had been omnipotent in the realm for thirty-eight years. Sir Anthony Browne, Lady Fitzgerald Browne’s husband and a religious conservative, and Edward Seymour, Lady Seymour’s husband, a reformer, went to deliver the news to Prince Edward and the Lady Elizabeth, who still lived together. Power was beginning to settle like stones cast into the Thames. The heaviest got there first.

Kate slumped and began to weep, for His Majesty, for herself, too, I was sure. The fact that the king had kept her from his side at the end likely meant that he had made changes which she would not find pleasing; the king oft distanced himself from those he was about to do some disservice or harm.

I tried to bring her comfort and cheer but, in truth, had little to offer. Kate had lost her greatest danger. But she’d also lost her only protector. ’Twas not for no reason that a group of courtiers is referred to not as a flock, nor as a pride, but as a threat.

On the last day of January Prince Edward was proclaimed king. There was a great procession to the Tower, and once there all persons of high or noble birth and all knights present greeted him and pledged loyalty, fealty, and deference. Kate could not have been a prouder mother, and she carried on about him when any could listen.

Shortly after the new king’s reception, the old king’s will was formally opened, though there had been whispers that Edward Seymour had opened it first, afore the old king even died, so that if he did not agree with the final contents he could vex the king further till he did.

As expected, the king had nominated sixteen council members to guide his son and the realm during his son’s minority; these sixteen were nearly equally divided among the religious factions. No one man was to be lord protector; each was to be an equal and thus preserve Edward’s supremacy.

The queen had ridden to Whitehall and had waited outside of the council room so as to be present when the will was read, but Edward Seymour would not let her in. Instead, he met her in the hall.

“I presented myself to him.” She recounted the situation to us later that evening, at her manor in Chelsea. “I wore my finest gown and jewelry, as is befitting a queen. ‘Why have you come?’ Edward Seymour asked me. ‘I come to hear my lord’s will be read, to hear my rights, and to know what shall happen to my son, Edward,’ I answered.”

She becalmed herself afore continuing. “‘He is not your son,’ my Lord Hertford responded. And I replied that, indeed, Edward had addressed every letter to me as ‘beloved mother’ and signed them as ‘your son.’ ‘He may give you the honorary title,’ Hertford replied, ‘but he is my sister’s son. Not yours. As such, I am in the best position to look after his interests, not you.’ And then he proceeded to tell me that the king had left me as queen dowager, with his deeply held affection, as his entirely beloved wife. He has left me no small amount of plate and I am to retain all of my jewelry, anything else I desire to take, my jointure, and further monies each year that shall allow me to live in a manner befitting a queen. My status, before all, is to remain as queen dowager.”

She stood up and then sat down again, defeated. “But I shall have no input over Edward, nor the realm. Indeed, unless there is a public function, I have to apply to the council to visit my son at all.”

“It was not what you expected,” Robert Tyrwhitt, her master of horse, said. “I know.”

“Then, when I asked to speak to the council members, I was denied. They put the door closed in my face after quickly bidding me good day.”

I felt her pain, and her shame, both of which were undeserved.

Thomas Seymour made his way within a day’s time to pay his respects … and to complain.

We dined at her long table in Chelsea. There were only twenty or so of us present, those closest to my lady, as her royal household had been dissolved. Whether Sir Thomas had decided that all were safe to unburden himself in front of or whether such consideration had never occurred to him I knew not, but he spoke overfreely.

“The very first thing the council did, in direct disobedience to His Majesty, was appoint my brother, my brother,” Sir Thomas said, “as lord protector of the realm and governor of the king’s person. And who do you suppose suggested this course of action? None other than Edward Seymour himself.” He gulped his wine and rapped it hard on the table to call for more.

“It was necessary ‘so ambassadors and the like have direction and know with whom to speak,’ he said, though he promised he would not act afore getting consensus from the others. If I had been nominated to the council”—his voice rose—“as was meet and right, I could have spoken freely from a lifetime of experience and shown them that my brother did not, does not, and will not gather consensus unless pressed. What he wants, he takes. What he has, he holds.”

“He has named you as Baron Sudeley; taken the lord high admiralty of England, Ireland, Wales, Boulogne, and Calais away from Lord Lisle and given it to you; and added greatly to your incomes,” the queen commented quietly.

“Yes, but he has made himself Duke of Somerset, a duke—the highest rank of nobility. And he has kept all power for himself. We are both the king’s uncles; we should divide that power between us.”

The conversation died down then, and to more somber matters as was expected so few days after the king’s death. Indeed, he still lay in his leaden coffin, surrounded by long burning tapers, in his privy chamber at court.

Later, as I talked quietly with the queen’s guests, I could hear Thomas raving about how the council had power over not only King Edward, but the king’s sisters too.

“Should Elizabeth marry without the council’s, meaning Edward’s, consent,” he said, “she will lose her place in the succession.”

“But not Mary?” Kate spoke up with surprise.

Thomas stopped, silent, for a moment. “Yes, yes, Mary too, I suppose.”

That night I helped ready the queen for bed, as her greater ladies who had served her whilst she was at court had mainly now retired to their own homes. The queen’s household still numbered nigh on one hundred, but her personal ladies and womanly attendants had been trimmed to but few.

We sat first together in her chamber whilst her lady servant fetched and warmed the washing water.

“Will your brother and mother repose here at Chelsea for the coronation festivities?” she asked me.

“I sent a swift messenger to Marlborough as soon as you extended the invitation. My mother sends her grateful regrets. My brother, Hugh, would like to stay a night or two here so he and I may spend some time in one another’s company.” I felt badly that my mother had refused the queen’s kind invitation and hoped she would soon turn the topic. Graciously, she did.

“Should you like to return home to Marlborough after the coronation? I have grown fond of you, as you know, and should miss your companionship. But you are a woman ready to be wed and bearing children.”

She put her feet upon the stool and passed a tray of sweetmeats to me.

“I do not wish to marry … yet,” I replied tentatively.

“Ah … I did not know that Sir Tristram was of a mind to marry Mistress Dorothy,” she said. “Or I would not have sent you to him in the gardens.”

“It was a surprise to me, too, Your Grace. But I wish them happiness.”

“They will be in London for the coronation,” she continued. “They will be staying with his aunt and uncle, of course.” She softened her voice. “Lady Dorothy is with child. They have asked me to stand as godmother when the babe is born.”

I was overcome with dark misery, like a sudden eclipse of the sun. Kate reached out and took my hand in hers, believing my longing was for Dorothy’s husband when it was, in fact, Jamie and our own child I wished for. When I looked in my lady’s face, I saw it was writ with sorrow too. She had been godmother to many babes but had borne none of her own.

“You may remain in my household as long as you desire, Juliana, as an especially beloved. But I wish more for you. When the time comes, I shall be glad to stand godmother for you as well.”

I squeezed her hand. “Thank you, Your Grace. I shall never be able to repay your kindness.” But I would endeavor to, if I could.

We held hands for another minute till her maid came back with the wash water. I left to her dressing chamber to fetch her bed gown. When I came back, the maid had finished her duties and we were alone again. “Kate, forgive me,” I said. “But it seems to me that, whilst ’tis a sorrowful thing for you to lose the ability to guide King Edward, you do now have the ability to marry whom you choose, make a family of your own, and live in merriment without the burdens of the court.”

She looked up at me abruptly. “That is what I had concluded, too, Juliana. At first. But Thomas has shown me that I have been badly handled and mistreated in this matter. I am a queen, and he convinces me that I must agitate for equitable treatment. He is certain that his brother will further move against me. On the morrow, I will request my jewelry be removed from the Tower, where it has been held for safekeeping, and returned to myself.”

She looked at my face, which must have conveyed my doubt, and continued. “Lord Thomas has, and has always had, my highest interests at heart.” Ah yes, Sir Thomas had now become Lord Thomas, because of his brother’s advancing him.

Lord Thomas had goaded her, then, to move along the direction he wanted to travel. It was not my place to say more, so for once, I did not.

Shortly thereafter, there came news that the queen’s brother, William Parr, had sided with Edward Seymour on the matter of the protectorship and had been rewarded by a strengthening of their friendship and “common concerns.” The lord protector ensured that Sir William was raised to Marquess of Northampton, a high status indeed.

Then the queen’s sister, Lady Herbert, shared news that her husband, Sir Herbert, had renewed his friendship with and support of Edward Seymour as well. In return was the tacit understanding that they would support him against all comers, including her sister, Kate, and his brother, Thomas.

On February 16, His Majesty was solemnly installed next to his most beloved wife, Jane Seymour, in St. George’s at Windsor Castle. Sixteen yeomen used sturdy linen sheets to lower the massive coffin containing the bloated sovereign into Jane’s grave.

The queen dowager, dressed in dark velvet and wearing the jet beads I had given her as well as a widow’s ring with a death’s head on it, watched as her third husband was buried. Few mourners likely knew that there was one man determined to see her marry a fourth as quickly as night overtakes eventide.

Whilst at Windsor Castle with Kate, for the funeral, I slipped away to seek the midwife who had tended to my wounds in this very place after the violence of John Temple. The ladies and mistresses all knew where to find her, as someone oft was either with child, was miscarrying a babe, or had a troublesome monthly flux.

I knocked on her door, and, thankfully, as all court was present, she was too.

“Yes?” She peered out of the crack of her door.

“May I please come in?”

She looked me up and down and then opened the door unto me. I suspected she had been sought after by other young women before, as she did not seem too surprised.

“How may I help ye?” she asked.

“You may not recall, but some years back after I was … assaulted … you tended to me and took away my bloody linens,” I said.

She nodded. “I do indeed remember ye, mistress. Do ye need to affect a maidenhead, then? I can help ye with tha’.”

I shook my head. “Nay. I was wondering, well … you’d said that I might not be able to bear a child, and that you’d be better able to tell after some time had passed. Might you examine me again and see if that be true or not?”

She nodded and stood there. I finally realized what she wanted and handed a coin to her—much more than was necessary, actually, because she’d charged me naught the last time she’d assisted.

I undressed and lay down on a narrow bed in her chamber. She examined me carefully and afterward, I sat up.

“I’m sorry to tell ye, mistress, ’tis still unlikely you will bear a child. There be too much scarring, there be. I have been wrong before. But I have seen many a maid, a lady, a strumpet, and a mother, and I do na think I am mistaken.”

She quickly moved the coin I’d given her out of reach, fearful, I supposed, that I might demand the fee back after hearing ill tidings.

“Thank you,” I said quietly. I left her chambers and mixed in with the mourners; my mourning was multiplied many times over. I found a quiet corner and squeezed shut my eyes for a moment, letting my hopes fall through the grate of the horrible truth. I would never marry. I could never marry. I could not tell a man what happened to me, as Sir John and Tristram had indicated good men did not desire soiled goods, which is what they both considered, and perhaps others might consider, me to be after learning the truth. I would not marry a man in good faith knowing I would likely never bear him a child. My mourning gown for His Majesty had become a shroud, concealing a person who was once full of life and now had no spirit left.

Later that night, back at Chelsea, I cheered a little when I considered that I might marry a widow who had already had children of his own and therefore would be someone I could honestly marry, he having already acquired the heirs he might want and need. I could be a loving wife, and a mother for his offspring, as Lady Fitzgerald Browne had done. There weren’t likely to be many widowers in Marlborough; I would come across more by remaining in my lady’s household.

But marrying a widower was not what I wanted, and my false cheer faded. I wanted to wed an Irish knight who loved me, I knew, for who he thought me to be, but who wanted lads of his own. I prayed that night for the strength to follow through with what I knew I must do during the coronation festivities, for his sake much more than for my own.

Hugh had arrived to stay with me at Chelsea with the news that whilst our mother would still not be coming to London for the coronation, Matthias and his family had already arrived and were staying at a nearby inn.

“Matthias rode with his mother and the other ladies in a litter,” Hugh told me with a smirk. “Instead of riding a horse.”

I grinned with him. Mayhap it was not a terrible fate to let Matthias pass me by.

“How fare you?” I asked.

“Well,” Hugh said. “I have made many good friends and met lads more high-flown than peregrines. But I tire of the womanish intrigue, honestly, of court, and yearn for the manlier world of our father. I suspect that I, like St. George and our father, will someday soon set off for the East and leave the financial matters to Matthias and his father.”

“Afore finding a lady of your own?”

He blushed. “I may have found one already.” He told me of his young lady, of a knight’s family, and connected with Cecil’s household. “You would find her most congenial.”

“Indeed,” I said, smiling. Hugh had shared that our mother grew frailer and that Matthias had all but taken over the finances of the business from his father whilst Hugh would now return home and run the portion that had been our father’s.

“Shall you marry Matthias?” he asked me.

“Not unless you compel me to, which shall be your right now, as a man full grown and head of our household. And then I shall.”

“I should not make you do anything you do not want to do, Juliana,” he said softly. It was an odd moment, our role reversal. “I shall tell Matthias that there will be no negotiations … if you be certain.”

“I am certain,” I said. “I do not think I shall marry for some time.” I paused. “When Lady Neville’s father died he left her either a dowry or a stipend for life in case she should not marry.”

We let the fire die out in companionable silence. “You are always welcome at Brighton,” Hugh said. “And if you prefer a stipend over a dowry I shall ensure that you receive it.”

I tightly embraced him. Nothing more needed to be said.

On February 19, Edward rode from the Tower to Westminster Abbey, where he was crowned king. The week following was full of celebrations, beginning with jousts, at which Lord Thomas excelled. Kate wore her mourning gown but she had cheer about her, and, unwillingly, I did too when I saw Sir James Hart as a challenger.

He found me after his first joust and I decided, on the spot, that armor was most becoming on a man even if he smelt as if he were roasting within.

“I hoped I’d see you here,” he said. “I am a man of few prayers, but if they be answered as quickly and as positively as this one has, I shall become devout.”

I grinned. “I am glad to be of some use in the deepening of your faith, then, Jamie.”

He took his helmet off and walked with me to the side of the tiltyard where tables with small beer and food had been set up.

“Juliana.” He took my hand in his own. “How fare you?”

“I am well,” I said.

“You look well,” he said. “You look beautiful. Come, let’s have a seat and I shall tell you all about my dangerous mishaps at sea. You shall be so relieved that I survived them that you will never want me to leave your sight.”

I smiled. ’Twas the truth, but also a dream, and one I dreamt on my own and not by the Spirit, which left no reassurance that it would come to pass.

We sat among the others and after an hour’s conversation a tall man with a finely dressed woman approached us, two boys accompanying them.

Jamie stood, so I did too. “Mistress Juliana St. John, may I present my brother, Sir Oliver Hart; his wife, Lady Rosemary Hart; and my two nephews, Master Scamp and Master Rascal.”

“I be no rascal!” the youngest called out.

“Then you must be Master Scamp,” I teased. I then held out my hand to Sir Oliver, who took it in his hand. His eyes were kindly. I dipped a small curtsey to his wife.

“Oh, come now,” she said with a lovely, light Irish lilt. She took my hand in her own for a squeeze. “I’m pleased to meet the fair mistress who has anchored young Jamie.”

Jamie blushed at that.

“Are you here alone?” his brother asked with concern.

“Oh, assuredly not. I am with the queen dowager’s household,” I said. “And my brother is nearby.”

“I just stole her away,” Jamie said. “Now, I have heard that each man may tilt twice if he does it for a lady’s favor. May I?”

I unthreaded a ribbon from my gown and handed it to him. There is no harm in that, I convinced myself. ’Tis a ride and not a promise.

He took off and I stayed for a while and made polite conversation with his brother and his wife. Scamp and Rascal, rather Oliver and Stephen, grew restless waiting for their uncle to tilt and so I made a suggestion.

“When my brother, Hugh, was a boy, and even older than you two be, I would oft tell him the story of St. George. Should you care to hear that?”

“Oh, yes, please!” they cried out, and Lady Rosemary looked at me with pleasure and nodded her head in approval.

“Now, the good knight had fought well, and when he was finished, he sought to return to his noble home. But the path home was thorny, and a difficult climb up hill after hill. So he decided to draw his horse aside for water and when he did—”

“He spied the townsfolk in distress!” Stephen called out. His mother shushed him with a look.

“You are correct,” I said. “And they bewailed the terrible fate that had befallen the maidens in their town, a fate that no one could halt.”

“Except for Saint George,” Oliver added wisely. It was not difficult to see which was the older son. I wondered if he and Stephen wrestled, or did Oliver and Jamie, as the Seymour brothers did.

Just as I finished the story, the joust began. They were meant only for display, so there were no true winners. But I held my arms close about me in a tight embrace and fervently thanked God that I had, at least once in my life, had a man ride for my favor.

Late that next night, the Countess of Sussex, who was staying with my lady for the festivities, knocked on my chamber door. My hair was already undone and I was in a dressing gown. I had dismissed the serving girl and therefore was alone.

“Countess,” I said with a short curtsey. “I am sorry to greet you whilst I am disheveled.”

“It matters not,” she said. “May I come in?”

I opened the door wide and indicated that she should take the better of the few chairs by the waning fire.

“I shall make my visit brief, mistress. But in the days ahead I do not know where your lady’s household shall be, nor if I shall be oft in her company. But you will be. And I must tell you of a dream I have had given me.”

I sat down next to her. “Go on.” It was strange that I, an unknown mistress of little account, would press a countess to speak.

“I began first to dream, like Joseph in holy writ, of fat cattle, and then thin. You shall recall that he was given a prophetic dream of seven fat cattle, which meant seven years of prosperity, followed by seven lean, which meant seven years of difficulty.”

“Yes,” I said. “I do recall.”

“The cattle in my dream numbered five. Five fat cattle. And then they were slaughtered, one by one. At the last, Potipher died.”

I shook my head, not comprehending. “Forgive me, my lady; I do not understand your meaning.”

“There shall be but five years before the king dies,” the countess said directly.

I stood up, shocked at her pronouncement, and then sat down again before whispering, “Be you sure? And then the Lady Mary shall be queen?”

“Seems likely, though that were not given to me,” she said. “But if it is true, we can expect a return to the burnings like Anne Askew’s for all who believe as she did. The Lady Mary was quietly, but clearly, supportive of those measures.”

I sat silently afore speaking. “Prophesying or predicting the king’s death is treason punishable by death.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I do not want to know this,” I replied firmly.

“I do not either,” she answered bluntly. “But ’tis not our prerogative to choose, is it, mistress? I have been compelled to whisper it into a few ears. Keep the information to yourself and pray about how you are to use it.”

She stood up and nodded her head in my direction, though her tone was kindly. “I bid you a good eve.” She took her leave and closed the door fast behind her.

It may be forestalled. After all, nothing has yet come of the dreadful vision of Lord Thomas harrying the Lady Elizabeth to her extreme discomfort and compromise.