The Boleyn Inheritance Part 21

"Yes. I am hoping that he will be pleased. "

She shakes her head. "Take care how you do it, " she warns me. "It may be that he is not pleased. "

"Why should he not be pleased? " I ask. "I think it is lovely. She is so pretty and a Tudor! It is such a high match for my brother! "

Lady Rochford looks at me. "The king may think it a high match for your brother, too, " she says. "He may think it too high. You may need to use all your charm and all your skills to persuade him to allow them to marry. If you want to save your brother and advance your family, you had better manage him as well as you have ever done. You had better choose your time and be very persuasive. You must do this; your uncle would like it. "

I make a little face at her. "I can do it, " I say confidently. "I shall tell the king that it is my wish that they be happy, and he will grant my wish.

Voil! "

Voil perhaps, " she says sourly, the old cat.

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But then it all g"s wrong. I think I shall tell the king when I see him that night, and Lady Margaret agrees to follow me in and beg for his forgiveness. Actually, we are both quite excited, certain that it will go well. I am going to plead, and she is going to cry. But before dinner Thomas Culpepper comes to my rooms with a message to say that the king will see me on the morrow. I agree and go to my dinner *why should I care? The king has missed dinner so many times I don't think that it matters. Certainly he's not going to fade away in a hurry. But poor me! It d"s matter, for while I am at dinner, and dancing actually, someone pours poison in the king's ear about his niece and even about me and the poor management of my rooms, and voil!

Jane Boleyn, Hampton Court, October 1540 The king marches into her private rooms and jerks his head at the three of us ladies-in-waiting, and says, "Outside, " as if we were dogs for his ordering. We scuttle from the rooms like whipped hounds and linger at the half-closed door and hear the terrifying rumble of royal rage. The king, out of bed for only half a day, knows everything and is most displeased.

Perhaps Lady Margaret thought that Katherine would intercede for them before they were caught and that she could be persuasive enough. Perhaps the lovers thought that the king, rising out of his sickbed, returning to wallow in his own uxorious joy, would be forgiving to other lovers, to other Howard lovers. They are sadly mistaken. The king speaks his mind briefly and to the point and then strides out of her room. Katherine comes running after, white as her collar, flooded with tears, and says that the king is scenting plots and conspiracies and lush unchast.i.ty at the court of his rose, and he is blaming her.

"What shall I do? " she demands. "He asks if I cannot keep control of my ladies. How should I know how to keep control of my ladies? How should I command his own niece? She is the daughter of the Queen of Scotland; she is royal and six years older than me. Why would she ever listen to me? What can I do? He says he is disappointed in me and that he will punish her; he says the two of them will face his extreme displeasure. What can I do? "

"Nothing, " I tell her. "You can do nothing to save her. " What can be easier to understand than this?

"I cannot let my own brother be sent to the Tower! "

She says this, unthinking, to the woman, me, who saw her own husband go to the Tower. "I've seen worse happen, " I say dryly.

"Oh, then, yes. " She flaps her hand dismissively, and twenty diamonds catch the light and dazzle away the ghosts of them, Anne and George, going to the Tower without a word to save them. "Never mind then! What about now? This is Lady Margaret, my friend, and Charles, my own brother. They will expect me to save them. "

"If you so much as admit that you knew they were meddling with each other, then it could be you in the Tower as well as them, " I warn her. "He is against it now; you had better pretend you knew nothing of it. Why can you not understand this? Why should Lady Margaret be such a fool? The king's ward cannot bestow her favors where she wishes. And the king's wife cannot put her own brother into bed with a royal. We all know this. It was a gamble, a great and reckless gamble, and it has failed. Lady Margaret must be mad to risk her life for this. You would be mad to condone it. "

"But if she is in love? "

"Is love worth dying for? "

That stops her romantic little ballad. She gives a little shudder. "No, never. Of course not. But the king cannot behead her for falling in love with a man of good family and marrying him? "

"No, " I say harshly. "He will behead her lover, so you had better say farewell to your brother and make sure that you never speak with him again unless you want the king to think you are in a plot to supplant him with Howards. "

She blanches white at that. "He would never send me to the Tower, " she whispers. "You always think of that. You always harp on about that. It happened only once, to one wife. It will never happen again. He adores me. "

"He loves his niece, and yet he will send her to Syon to imprisonment and heartbreak, and her lover to the Tower and death, " I predict. "The king may love you, but he hates to think of others doing their own will. The king may love you, but he wants you like a little queen of ice. If there is any unchast.i.ty in your rooms, he will blame you and punish you for it. The king may love you, but he would see you dead at his feet rather than set up a rival royal family. Think of the Pole family *in the Tower for life. Think of Margaret Pole spending year after year in there, innocent as a saint and as old as your grandmother, yet imprisoned for life. Would you see the Howards go that way, too? "

"This is a nightmare for me! " she bursts out; poor little girl, white-faced in her diamonds. "This is my own brother. I am queen. I must be able to save him. All he has done is fall in love. My uncle shall hear of this. He will save Charles. "

"Your uncle is away from court, " I say dryly. "Surprisingly, he has gone to Kenninghall. You can't reach him in time. "

"What d"s he know of this? "

"Nothing, " I say. "You will find that he knows nothing about it. You will find that if the king asks him, he will be shocked to his soul at the presumption. You will have to give up your brother. You cannot save him. If the king has turned his face away, then Charles is a dead man. I know this. Of all the people in the world: I know this. "

"You didn't let your own husband go to his death without a word. You didn't let the king order his death without praying for mercy for him! " she swears, knowing nothing, knowing nothing at all.

I do not say: "Oh, but I did. I was so afraid then. I was so afraid for myself. " I do not say: "Oh, but I did; and for darker reasons than you will ever be able to imagine. " Instead, I say: "Never mind what I did or didn't do. You will have to say good-bye to your brother and hope that something distracts the king from the sentence of death, and if not, you will have to remember him only in your prayers. "

"What good is that? " she demands heretically. "If G.o.d is always on the king's side? If the king's will is G.o.d's will? What good is praying to G.o.d when the king is G.o.d in England? "

"Hush, " I say instantly. "You will have to learn to live without your brother, as I had to learn to live without my sister-in-law, without my husband. The king turned his face away, and George went into the Tower and came out headless. And I had to learn to bear it. As you will have to do. "

"It isn't right, " she says mutinously.

I take her wrists and I hold her as I would a maid whom I was about to beat for stupidity. "Learn this, " I say harshly. "It is the will of the king. And there is no man strong enough to stand against him. Not even your uncle, not the archbishop, not the Pope himself. The king will do what he wants to do. Your job is to make sure that he never turns his face from you, from us. "

Anne, Richmond Palace, November 1540 So: I am to go to court for the Christmas feast. He holds true to his word that I shall be second only to little Kitty Howard (I must learn to say Queen Katherine before I get there). I have a letter from the Lord Chamberlain today, bidding my attendance and telling me I will be housed in the queen's rooms. No doubt I shall have one of the best bedrooms and the Princess Mary another, and I shall learn to see Kitty Howard (Queen Katherine) go to bed in my bed, and change her clothes in my rooms, and receive her visitors in my chair.

If I am to do this at all, it has to be done gracefully. And I have no choice but to do this.

I can be sure that Kitty Howard will play her part. She will be rehearsing now, if I know her. She likes to practice her moves and her smiles. I imagine she will have a new, gracious smile prepared for my reception, and I must be gracious, too.

I must buy gifts. The king loves gifts, and of course little Kitty Howard (Queen Katherine) is an utter magpie. If I take some very fine things, I will be able to attend with some confidence. I so need confidence. I have been a d.u.c.h.ess and the Queen of England, and now I am some sort of princess. I must learn courage to be myself, Anne of Cleves, and enter the court, and my new position in it, with grace. It will be Christmas. My first Christmas in England. I could laugh to think that I had thought that I would be merry, with a merry court, at the Christmas feast. I had thought I would be queen of that court; but, as it turns out, I shall be only a favored guest. So it g"s. So it g"s in a woman's life. I am quite without fault, and yet I am not in the position to which I was called. I am quite without fault, and yet I am thrown down. What I must see if I can do is to be a good Princess of England where once I planned to be a good queen.

Jane Boleyn, Hampton Court, Christmas 1540 The king has turned against his wife's family, against his own niece, and everyone stays quiet, keeps their heads low, and hopes that his disfavor will not turn on them. Charles Howard, warned in advance by someone braver than the rest of us, has skipped downriver in a little fishing boat, begged a place on a coaster, and sailed for France. He will join the growing number of exiles who cannot live in Henry's England: Papists, reformers, men and women caught in the new treason laws, and men and women whose crime is nothing more than to be kin to someone the king has named as a traitor. The greater their numbers grow, the more suspicious and fearful is this king. His own father took England with a handful of disaffected men, in exile from King Richard. He knows, none better, that tyranny is hated, and that enough exiles, enough pretenders, can overthrow the throne.

So Charles is safe away in France, waiting for the king to die. In some ways his life is better than ours. He is exiled from his home and his family, but he is free; we are here but scarcely dare to breathe. Lady Margaret is back in her old prison of Syon Abbey. She cried very bitterly when she knew the king was imprisoning her again. She says she has three rooms to walk in, and a corner view of the river. She says she is only twenty-one and the days are dreary for her. She says the days pa.s.s very slowly and the nights go on forever. She says all she wants is to be allowed to love a good man, to marry him, and to be happy.

We all know that the king will never allow this. Happiness has become the scarcest commodity of all in the kingdom this winter. No one shall be happy but him.

Katherine, Hampton Court, Christmas 1540 Now, let me see, what do I have now?

I have the Seymour inheritance, yes, all of it. All the castles, lordships, and manors that were given to Jane Seymour are now given to me. Imagine how furious the Seymours are? One moment they are the greatest landholders in England; next, up jump I, and all of Jane's lands are mine.

I have most of the lands that belonged to Thomas Cromwell, now executed for treason, which is good riddance to bad rubbish, my uncle tells me. My uncle tells me that although he was a commoner, Thomas Cromwell kept his lands in very good heart and I can expect a handsome revenue from them. Me! A handsome revenue! As though I ever knew what a plow was for! I even have tenants, think of that!

I am to have the lands from Lord Hungerford, who was condemned to death for witchcraft and b.u.g.g.e.ry, and the lands of Lord Hugh, the Abbot of Reading. As usual with the king, it is not very pleasant to have lands that were owned by people now dead, and some of them dead to oblige me. But as Lady Rochford pointed out, and I do remember (though some people say that nothing stays in my head for longer than a moment), everything comes from dead people and there is no point in being too squeamish.

This is no doubt true, and yet I cannot help but think that she, for one, seems to inherit the goods of dead men with good cheer. She relishes her Boleyn inheritance of a t.i.tle and wishes she had the house to go with it. I am sure if I were a widow I would be much more sad and reflective than she is, but she hardly mentions her husband at all. Not once. If ever I say to her, "Is it not odd being in my rooms that were your sister-in-law's? " she looks at me almost sternly and says, "Hush. " Now, is it likely that I would chatter all over the court that I am the second Howard girl to wear the crown? Of course not. But I would have thought that a widow would welcome a little thoughtful reflection on those she had lost. Especially if it is done sensitively, as I do it.

Not me, obviously, should I ever be widowed, for my case would be very different. No one could expect me to be very sad. Since my husband is so very much older than me, it is only natural for him to die soon, and then I shall be free to make my own life. Obviously, I should never be so impolite as to remark upon this, for one of the things I quickly learned as a courtier is that the king never needs a true portrait of himself, however he might demand true likenesses of others, like poor Queen Anne. He never wants to be reminded that he is old, and he never wants to be told that he looks tired or that his limp is worse or his wound is stinking. Part of my task as his wife is to pretend that he is the same age as me, and is not up and dancing with the rest of us only because he prefers to sit and watch me. I never ever do anything, not by word or deed, to suggest that I am aware that he is old enough to be my father, and an injured, fat, weak, costive old father at that.

And I cannot help it if his daughter is older than me, and stricter than me, and better educated than me. She has arrived at court for the Christmas feast like an old ghost reminding everyone of her mother. I don't even complain of her, because I don't have to. Her very presence beside me, so serious, so much more grown-up, more like a mother to me than I could ever be to her, is enough to irritate the king. And he takes his irritation out on her, I am glad to say. It's enough to make a cat laugh. I have to do nothing. She makes him feel old, and I make him feel young. So he dislikes her, and he adores me.

And though it is a certainty that he will die soon, I should be very sad for him if it were to be at once, say this year. But when it d"s happen, say next year, I would be Queen Regent and would care for my stepson, Prince Edward. It would be very merry, I think. To be Queen Regent would be the best thing in all the world. For I would have all the pleasures and wealth of a queen but no old king to worry about. Indeed, everyone would have to worry about me, and the greatest joke would be that in fifty years from now I could insist that they all behave as if I was not old and not tired but, on the contrary, as beautiful every morning as I am today.

The thought of his dying is something I never mention, not even in my prayers, for, amazingly, it is treason even to suggest that the king might die. Isn't he ridiculous? Fancy making it illegal to say something that is so obviously true! In any case, I take no chances with treason, and so never wish for his death and never even pray for it. But sometimes, when I am dancing with Thomas Culpepper and his hand is on my waist and I can feel his warm breath on my neck, I think that if the king were to die here and now, I might have a young husband, I might know the touch of a young man again, the scent of fresh sweat in bed, the feel of a hard young body, the thrill of a kiss from a clean mouth. Sometimes, when Thomas catches me in a move in the dance and I feel him grip my waist, I ache for the touch of him. Whenever I think like this, I whisper to him that I am tired, and I turn away from him and ignore the slight pressure of his fingers. I then go and sit down beside the king. Lady Margaret is a prisoner in Syon Abbey for loving a man against the king's will. There is no point in thinking like this. It is not very merry to think like this.

Jane Boleyn, Hampton Court, Christmas 1540 This is to be Katherine's Christmas, the happiest Christmas she has ever had. Her household is re-formed around her; she is served by the greatest ladies of the land and befriended by the worst girls who ever romped in a dormitory. She has her lands in her own right; she has retainers by the thousand; she has jewels that would be the envy of the Moors; now she has to have the happiest Christmas of her life, and we are ordered to make it so.

The king is rested and revived, excited at the thought of a dazzling celebration to show the world that he is the ardent husband of a young and pretty wife. The brief scandal of his niece's love affair is forgotten; she is locked up in Syon Abbey, and her lover is run away. Kitty Howard has blamed everybody but herself for the laxity of her rooms, and all is forgiven. Nothing shall spoil this first Christmas for the newlyweds.

But straightaway there is a little pout on the pretty face. Princess Mary comes to court as she is bidden and bends the knee to her new stepmother, but she d"s not come up smiling. Princess Mary is clearly not impressed by a girl nine years her junior, and she cannot seem to form her mouth to say the word Mother to a silly, vain child, when that beloved t.i.tle once belonged to the finest queen in Europe. Princess Mary, who has always been a girl of high scholarly ability and seriousness, a child of the church, a child of Spain, cannot stomach a girl younger than her, perched on her mother's throne like a tiny cuckoo chick and jumping down to dance the moment anyone asks her. Princess Mary first met Kitty Howard last spring when she was the vainest, silliest girl in service to the queen. How to believe that this little imp is now the queen herself? If it were the Feast of Misrule, Princess Mary would laugh. But this stunted version of royalty is not funny when it is played out every day. She d"s not laugh.

The court is grown merry, as some say, or wild, as others say. I say that if you put a young fool in command of her own household and bid her to please herself, you will see an explosion of flirtation, adultery, posturing, misbehavior, drunkenness, dishonesty, and downright lechery. And so we see. Princess Mary walks among us like a woman of judgment through a market of fools. She sees nothing that she can like.

The little pout tells the king that his child bride is discontented, and so he takes his daughter to one side and tells her to mind her manners if she wants a place at court at all. Princess Mary, who has endured worse than this, bites her tongue and bides her time. She says nothing against the girl queen; she merely watches her, as a thoughtful young woman would watch a dirty babbling stream. There is something about Mary's dark gaze that makes Katherine as insubstantial as a little laughing ghost.

Little Kitty Howard, alas, d"s not improve as a result of great position. But n.o.body, except her adoring husband, ever thought she would. Her uncle the duke keeps a strict eye on her public behavior, and relies on me to watch her in private. More than once he has summoned her to his rooms for a fierce lecture on propriety and the behavior expected of a queen. She breaks down into the penitent tears that are so easy for her. And he, relieved that *unlike Anne *she d"s not argue, or throw his own behavior back at him, or cite the polite manners of the French court, or laugh in his face, thinks the deed is done. But the very next week there is a romp in the queen's rooms when the young courtiers chase the girls all around the queen's chambers, her own bedroom as well, smacking them with pillows, and the queen is in the midst of it all, screaming and dancing on the bed and awarding points in the joust of the pillows. So what is to be done?

No power on earth can make a sensible woman out of Katherine Howard because there is nothing to work on. She is lacking in education and training and even common sense. G.o.d knows what the d.u.c.h.ess thought she was doing with the young people in her house. She sent Katherine to music lessons *where she was kissed by the music master *but she never taught her to read or write or to reckon accounts. The child has no languages, she cannot read a score *despite the attentions of Henry Manox *she can sing with a thin little voice, she can dance like a wh.o.r.e, she is learning to ride. What else? No, nothing else. That is all.

She has wit enough to please a man, and some of her late-night foolery in Norfolk House has taught her a handful of whorish tricks. Thank G.o.d, she sets herself to please the king, and she succeeds beyond belief. He has taken it into his head that she is a perfect girl. In his eyes she has replaced the daughter he never loved, the virgin bride that his brother had first, the wife he was never sure of. For a man who has two daughters of his own, and who has wedded and bedded five women, he certainly has a lot of dreams unfulfilled. Katherine is to be the one who finally makes him happy, and he d"s everything to convince himself that she is the girl who can do it.

The duke summons me to his rooms every week; he leaves nothing to chance with this Howard girl, having lost control of the previous two Boleyns.

"Is she behaving herself? " he asks curtly.

I nod. "She is wild with the girls of her chamber, but she says nothing and d"s nothing to which you could seriously object in public. "

He sniffs. "Never mind if I object. Is there anything to which the king could object? "

I pause. Who knows what the king could object to? "She has done nothing to dishonor herself or her high calling, " I say cautiously.

He glares at me under his fierce eyebrows. "Don't mince words with me, " he says coldly. "I don't keep you here for you to tell me riddles. Is she doing anything that would cause me concern? "

"She has a fancy for one of the king's chamber, " I say. "Nothing has happened beyond their making cow's eyes at each other. "

He scowls. "Has the king seen? "

"No. It's Thomas Culpepper, one of his favorites. He is blinded by his affection for them both. He orders them to dance together; he says they make a perfect pair. "

"I've seen them. " He nods. "It's bound to happen. Watch her, and make sure she is never alone with him. But a girl of fifteen is going to fall in love, and never with a husband of forty-nine. We will have to watch her for years. Anything else? "

I hesitate. "She is greedy, " I say frankly. "Every time the king comes to dinner she asks him for something. He hates that. Everyone knows he hates that. He d"sn't hate it in her, yet. But how long can she go on asking him for a place for this or that cousin, or this or that friend? Or asking for a gift? "

The duke makes a minute mark on the paper before him. "I agree, " he says. "She shall get the amba.s.sadorship to France for William, and then I shall tell her to ask for no more. Anything else? "

"The girls she has put in her chamber, " I say. "The girls from Norfolk House and Horsham. "

"Yes? "

"They misbehave with her, " I say bluntly. "And I cannot manage them. They are silly girls. There is always an affair going on with one young man or another; there is always one of them sneaking out or trying to sneak him in. "

"Sneak him in? " he demands, suddenly alert.

"Yes, " I say. "No harm can be done to the queen's reputation when the king sleeps in her bed. But say that he is weary or sick and he misses a night, and her enemies find that a young man is creeping up the back stairs. Who is to say that he is coming to see Agnes Restwold and not the queen herself? "

"She has her enemies, " he says thoughtfully. "There is not a reformist nor a Lutheran in the kingdom who would not be glad to see her disgraced. Already they are whispering against her. "

"You would know more than I. "

"And there are all our enemies. Every family in England would be glad to see her fall and us dragged down with her. It was ever thus. I would have given anything to see Jane Seymour shamed by a scandal. The king always fills his household with the friends of his wives. Now we are in the ascendancy again, and our enemies are gathering. "

"If we did not insist on having everything "

"I shall have the Lord Lieutenancy of the North, cost me what it will, " he growls irritably.

"Yes, but after that? "

"Do you not see? " He suddenly rounds on me. "The king is a man for favorites and for adversaries. When he has a Spanish wife, we go to war with France. When he is married to a Boleyn, he destroys the monasteries and the Pope with them. When he is married to a Seymour, we Howards have to creep about and s.n.a.t.c.h up the crumbs under the table. When he has the Cleves woman, we are all in thrall to Thomas Cromwell, who made the match. Now it is our time again. Our girl is on the throne of England; everything that can be lifted is ours to carry away. "

"But if everyone is our enemy? " I suggest. "If our greed makes us enemies of everyone else? "

He bares his yellow teeth in a smile at me. "Everyone is always our enemy, " he says. "But right now, we are winning. "

Anne, Hampton Court, Christmas 1540 "If it is to be done at all, it must be done with grace. " This has become my motto, and as the barge comes upriver from Richmond, with the men on the wherries and the fishermen in their little boats doffing their caps when they see my standard and shouting out, "G.o.d bless Queen Anne! " and sometimes other less polite encouragements, such as "I'd have kept yer, dearie! " and "Try a Thames-man, why don't yer? " and worse than that, I smile and wave, repeating to myself again: "If it is to be done at all, it must be done with grace. "

The king cannot behave with grace; his selfishness and folly in this matter are too plain for everyone to see. The amba.s.sadors of Spain and France must have laughed until they were sick over the excess of his wild vanity. Little Kitty Howard (Queen Katherine, I must, I will, remember to call her queen) cannot be expected to behave with grace. I might as well ask a puppy to be graceful. If he d"s not put her aside within the year, if she d"s not die in childbirth, then she may learn the grace of a queen perhaps. But she d"sn't have it now. In truth, she wasn't even a very good maid-in-waiting. Her manners were not fit for the queen's rooms then; how will she ever suit the throne?

It has to be me who shows a little grace, if the three of us are not to become a laughingstock of the entire country. I will have to enter my old rooms at this, my favorite palace, as an honored guest. I will have to bend the knee to the girl who now sits in my chair, I will have to address her as Queen Katherine without laughing, or crying, either. I will have to be, as the king has said I may be, his sister and his dearest friend.

That this gives me no protection from arrest and accusation at the whim of the king is as obvious to me as anyone else. He has arrested his own niece and imprisoned her in the old abbey of Syon. Clearly, kinship with the king gives no immunity from fear; friendship with the king gives no safety, as the man who built this very palace, Thomas Wolsey, could prove. But I, rowed steadily upriver, dressed in my best, looking a hundred times happier since the denial of my marriage, can perhaps survive these dangerous times, endure this dangerous proximity, and make a life for myself as a single woman in Henry's kingdom, which I plainly could not do as a wife.

It is strange, this journey in my own barge with the pennant of Cleves over my head. Traveling alone, without the court following behind in their barges, and without a great reception ahead of me, reminds me, as every day reminds me, that the king has indeed done what he wanted to do *and I can still hardly believe it is possible. I was his wife, and now I am his sister. Is there another king in Christendom who could perform such a trans.m.u.tation as that? I was Queen of England, and now there is another queen; and she was my maid-in-waiting, and now I am to be hers. This is the philosopher's stone, turning base metal to gold in the twinkling of an eye. The king has done what a thousand alchemists cannot do: turn base to gold. He has made that basest of maids, Katherine Howard, into a golden queen.

We are coming ash.o.r.e. The rowers ship their oars in one practiced motion and shoulder them, so the oars stand upright in rows like an avenue for me to walk through, down the barge from my warm seat, huddled in furs at the stern, to where the pages and servants are running out the gangplank and lining the sides.

And here's an honor! The Duke of Norfolk himself is on the bank to greet me, and two or three from the Privy Council, most of them, I see, kinsmen or allies of the Howards. I am favored by this reception, and I see by his ironic smile that he is as amused as me.

Just as I foretold, the Howards are everywhere; the kingdom will be out of balance by the summer. The duke is not a man to let an opportunity slip by him; he will take advantage, as any battle-hardened veteran would do. Now he has occupied the heights, soon he will win the war. Then we shall see how long it is before tempers fray in the Seymour camp, in the Percy camp, among the Parrs and Culpeppers and Nevilles, among the reformist churchmen around Cranmer who were accustomed to power and influence and wealth and will not tolerate being excluded for long.

I am handed ash.o.r.e, and the duke bows to me and says, "Welcome to Hampton Court, Your Grace, " just as if I were still queen.

"I thank you, " I say. "I am glad to be here. " Both of us will know that this is true, for, G.o.d knows, there was a day, several days, when I never expected to see Hampton Court again. The watergate of the Tower of London where they bring in traitors by night *yes. But Hampton Court for the Christmas feast? No.

"You must have had a cold journey, " he remarks.

I take his arm, and we walk together up the great path to the river frontage of the palace as if we were dear friends.

"I don't mind the cold, " I say.

"Queen Katherine is expecting you in her rooms. "

"Her Majesty is generous, " I say. There, the words are said. I have called the silliest of all my maids-in-waiting "Her Majesty " as if she were a G.o.ddess; and that to her uncle.