Will bent his head in sympathy. Then he began to strum his lute.

  “Let me distract you, Hal,” he murmured.

  “No! Begone!” Harry’s misery was so great that he could not bear to listen to music, being consumed with grief, guilt, and rage against those who had brought Cromwell down by their lies.

  He remained shut away in his lodgings and ordered that many of his servants be sent home until he had recovered, as he didn’t need them.

  “People are complaining that the court resembles more a private family than a king’s train,” Will reported.

  “That’s what I intended,” Harry snapped. “I don’t want people around me when I’m in this state.”

  “Not even that pretty Queen of yours? Come, Hal, you’ll be better soon.”

  “Oh, cease your prattling!” Harry hissed.

  Katheryn had asked repeatedly if she might visit him, but he had no intention of letting her see him brought so low and looking so old. For ten days, he kept saying no, until Will told him that there was gossip about a rift between them. At that, he relented. He was feeling better anyway. The wound had opened again and the pain had ebbed. With the leg bandaged, he could hobble around. He had himself dressed in a suit of crimson velvet and was sitting by the fire when Katheryn was ushered in. The sight of her, so fine and comely, raised his spirits instantly.

  “Oh, Harry!” she cried, sinking to the floor by his chair, clutching his arm. “I have been so worried about you, and when you would not see me, I feared that you did not love me anymore!”

  “Of course I love you, sweetheart,” he soothed, kissing her hand. “I was very ill and did not want to worry you. But it seems you have been worrying anyway, and I never intended that. I trust you have been kept happily occupied.”

  “Oh, yes. Master Culpeper said you asked him to keep me company from time to time, and he has been very kind. He has walked with me in the gardens and played his lute for me and my ladies.”

  “He’s a good fellow,” Harry smiled. “I knew I could count on him to look after you. I am sorry I kept you from me. Just seeing your sweet face today has made me feel so much better. I think I will be able to go on progress to Kent after Easter, as we planned. Would you like to see how work is progressing on my palace at Rochester? And we could visit my houses at Otford, Knole, and Penshurst.”

  “I would love that!” Katheryn cried, clapping her hands, making him realize that life must have been very dull for her this past week or so.

  He was inclined to indulge her when she begged to give some succor to Lady Salisbury, who still languished in the Tower. “I have heard that she lies in harsh conditions, with inadequate clothes and heat in this bitter weather,” she said, looking at him pleadingly.

  “She is a traitor,” Harry reminded her. “She is lucky that I let her live.”

  “Forgive me,” Katheryn begged. “I don’t know what she has done wrong, although I do know you will have dealt her just punishment. But our Lord teaches us to be charitable to prisoners and I was but moved by her plight, as she is an old lady.”

  Harry sighed. “You have a kind heart, darling, but your sympathy is misplaced in this case. Lady Salisbury is my cousin and has a claim to the throne. Some years ago, her son, Cardinal Pole, wrote a treasonable treatise against me, for which reason he is now in exile in Italy. Not long afterward, his brothers and their friends plotted to kill me. I had them executed and the rest of the family imprisoned in the Tower.”

  “Was Lady Salisbury involved in the plot?”

  “I am convinced of it. That is why she was condemned by Act of Attainder to lose her life and possessions. But, on account of her great age, I spared her the axe.”

  “Your Grace is always most merciful,” Katheryn said, “but, traitor though she is, it upsets me to think of her suffering such privations, for she is but human. Might I send her some warm clothing?”

  Harry could not resist her. “Very well,” he said at length. “You may pay for it out of your privy purse.” It was the money he gave her for her pleasures.

  “Oh, thank you, Henry! You are so kind!” she cried, rising and kissing him.

  * * *

  —

  The court moved to Whitehall for Easter, and Harry was much his old self again, happily making plans for Katheryn’s delayed state entry into London. She was to be presented to the citizens in a river pageant. Wearing white damask and cloth of gold, she carried herself as a queen should when she boarded Harry’s barge at Whitehall Stairs and seated herself beside him in the cabin.

  “You look beautiful!” he told her, taking her hand and holding it on his knee. The oarsmen pulled away and they were carried along the Thames toward Greenwich, past riverbanks crammed with cheering, waving crowds. He was in his element, smiling broadly from left to right, acknowledging the acclaim. At three o’clock, they passed under London Bridge and found waiting for them in barges hung with tapestry and banners, the Lord Mayor and all the aldermen and crafts of the City. They escorted the royal barge past the Tower, where there were great salvoes of artillery, and when they arrived at Greenwich, all the ships docked there let off their guns in salute. The noise was deafening.

  “A great triumph, darling,” Harry commented. “My people love you.”

  They enjoyed the progress that followed immensely, and Harry felt his old self again. And on their return, to crown his happiness, Katheryn told him she thought she was again with child. It was hard to express how overjoyed he was to be granted such a blessing so late in life. Bursting with gratitude, he resolved to have Katheryn crowned at Whitsuntide. The young lords and gentlemen of his court began practicing daily for the celebratory jousts and tournaments.

  His joy was dampened, however, when he received tidings of a new rebellion in Yorkshire, fomented by men who seemed bent on inciting another Pilgrimage of Grace. Harry feared that they were also plotting to restore the House of York to the throne. He acted speedily, and heads rolled.

  With the crisis dealt with, he decided it was timely to plan a great progress to the north, to receive the submission of those who had rebelled against him in the Pilgrimage of Grace and the recent rising. Never having visited the northern parts of his realm, where he was just a name to the people, he wished to make a display of majesty and authority that would overawe and impress any disaffected subjects. To that end, he would take with him his richest clothing and the most sumptuous tapestries and plate from Whitehall. In case that were not enough to subdue his northern subjects, he was to be accompanied by a strong military presence.

  Unnerved by the recent rising, and ever suspicious of any treason brewing, he remembered that the Countess of Salisbury still languished in the Tower under sentence of death. Despite her great age—she was sixty-eight—royal Plantagenet blood ran in her veins and she could still be a focus for malcontents who might try to overthrow Tudor rule while their sovereign was far away.

  Hardening his heart, he ordered Lady Salisbury’s immediate execution, ignoring Katheryn’s desperate protests. After the sentence had been carried out, he learned that the headsman had been inept, and had hacked the Countess about the head and shoulders, butchering her in the most slovenly fashion. People were shocked, especially the Lady Mary, who had loved her former governess, although she did not complain to Harry. He was himself upset, for he would not have had the old lady suffer that way.

  But he could now sleep more peacefully at night, for none of the old royal race remained, apart from the young sons of Montagu and Exeter, whom he was keeping in the Tower. Even so, he had been shaken by recent events, and was already in a foul mood when Katheryn confessed that she had suffered another miscarriage. He could not hide his displeasure, and avoided her company for a time lest he unleash his temper on her.

  * * *

  —

  Not since the Field of Cloth of Gold, twenty-one years earlier, had Harry amassed such a retinue. When he departed for the north at the end of June, his train comprised five thousand horses, one thousand soldiers, the entire court, and two hundred tents and pavilions in which to accommodate those for whom there was no room in the houses where he was to stay. Katheryn—whom he had now forgiven—and Mary traveled with him, but Prince Edward was left behind, as was Elizabeth, and Cranmer, Hertford, and Lord Chancellor Audley, staunch reformers all, remained in London to attend to matters of state.

  Harry proceeded northward via Hatfield, Dunstable, Ampthill, and Grafton, hunting and hawking on the way. At every town and city he visited, the streets were gaily bedecked and people flocked to see him, and there were speeches, lavish receptions, and banquets. He won hearts by exerting his charm and making himself accessible to all who sought justice. Progress was slow and hampered by storms. The roads became impassable, baggage carts got stuck in the mud, and Katheryn became sick with the jolting of her litter. It took almost three weeks to reach Grafton, but then the weather cleared, and the vast train was able to press on to Northampton at a faster pace.

  In August, Harry arrived at Lincoln wearing a suit of Lincoln green, preceded by his archers marching with drawn bows, the Yeomen of the Guard with their pikes and axes, his trumpeters and his drummers. After withdrawing into a pavilion to change into dazzling outfits of cloth of gold and silver, he and Katheryn rode in procession up the hill to the cathedral, where Harry formally pardoned the kneeling citizens for their disobedience during the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Te Deum was sung in celebration.

  Then it was on to York. In the middle of September, they were welcomed there by the archbishop and three hundred clergy. Two hundred rebels who had received pardons knelt in the street before Harry, offering him purses stuffed with gold.

  He waited in York for the arrival of his nephew, James V of Scots, who had arranged to visit him there. And he went on waiting, growing increasingly angry and impatient. By the end of the month, James had still not appeared, much to Harry’s chagrin. In the end, he gave up and moved east to Hull to plan fortifications, then returned south in slow stages to Hampton Court, arriving at the end of October. There he was informed that Prince Edward had been ill with a fever, but was now, to his immense relief, completely recovered. But the news had given him a bad turn and, to minimize the risk of further infection, he sent his son to Ashridge, one of the nursery palaces just outside London.

  He was suffused with gratitude to God, who had spared his heir and given him such a beautiful, faithful wife, whose company, throughout the progress, had been a continual delight. He ordered that, on All Saints’ Day, special services be held up and down the land to give thanks for the good life he led and trusted to lead with his jewel of womanhood, his rose without a thorn, as he called her.

  * * *

  —

  On the day following, he arrived in the royal pew in the Chapel Royal for Mass to find a sealed letter awaiting him. The seal was Cranmer’s.

  He picked it up, puzzled as to why Cranmer had written to him and left the letter in such an odd place. As the Mass began at the altar below, he slipped it into his sleeve to read later when he was alone.

  It shook him to his core. A courtier called John Lascelles had asked to see Cranmer in private, and informed him that his sister, who had served Katheryn before her marriage, had told him that, when they shared a dorter in the household of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, the Queen had been loose in her behavior with one Francis Dereham, who was now her secretary. Harry remembered her appointing Dereham, a distant kinsman, to the post while the court was on progress in the north.

  His frown deepened. He could not believe what he was reading. It sounded like malice on the part of a vindictive woman who had not been given a place in Katheryn’s household. Moreover, he knew Lascelles for an ardent reformist; the man had served Cromwell and could have no love for an orthodox Catholic queen. And it was no secret that Cranmer wished to see the conservative faction toppled from power. No, Harry decided. He would not credit this, and he’d thank Cranmer not to bother him with spiteful gossip or hearsay.

  He took his seat in Council the next morning, ready to castigate the archbishop and make plain his displeasure. But when he saw Cranmer and all the other lords regarding him warily, almost pityingly, his heart lurched, remembering how he had initially dismissed the allegations that Anne Boleyn had been unfaithful.

  “Your Grace should read these,” Cranmer said quietly, almost sorrowfully, and pushed across the table a pile of papers. Reluctantly, Harry picked them up and read, his throat tight. They were depositions from members of Katheryn’s household.

  It now seemed that she and Dereham had known each other well—too well. According to this testimony, which chimed with that of Lascelles’s sister, they had once been lovers. And he had thought Katheryn an innocent!

  Dereham, the arrogant bastard, had been heard to boast that, if the King died, he was certain that Katheryn would marry him. He had openly hinted at the favors she had granted him. He had floored a gentleman usher who objected to his remaining seated at table after the Queen’s Council had risen.

  How had none of this come to his attention before? Predicting the King’s death was treason, and fighting within the verge of the court carried heavy penalties. Dereham had been lucky that no one had reported him.

  But it was his casual boasts about having bedded Katheryn that pierced Harry to the heart.

  “Is there any evidence that they have resumed their liaison?” he croaked, his head swimming.

  “Not as such,” said Hertford, looking primmer than ever. “But he has made clear his intention of doing so, and that is treason under the law. And there is some suggestion that the Queen was arranging secret trysts during the progress, with the help of Lady Rochford.”

  “You need to find out more about that!” Harry barked, remembering how Jane Rochford had been well rewarded for laying evidence against her husband, George Boleyn, and his sister. Was this how she repaid him?

  His eyes fixed on Norfolk, who looked as if he would rather be anywhere else. “You told me she was virtuous!”

  “That’s what I believed, Sir, I swear it,” Norfolk protested.

  “Then your stepmother could not have been very vigilant!” Harry snapped. “And what’s this about one Manox?”

  “He was her music teacher.” Norfolk swallowed.

  Harry barely heard him. He was reading the deposition that asserted that Manox had known of a mark in a secret place on the Queen’s body. He himself knew that mark: it was in the crease between her thigh and her woman’s parts, a place only a husband or midwife should see. He had kissed it, reverencing her as his wife, during one of their nights of joy. And she—he could not bear to think of it—had shown it to that scoundrel Manox, and to Dereham, too, if other testimony was to be believed. She was not the pure young girl she had pretended to be. He had been grossly deceived!

  Rage consumed him. “By God, she shall suffer for this!” he roared. “Bring me a sword and I will slay her myself!”

  His councillors goggled at him, clearly unsure how to deal with this outburst, but he was too far gone in misery to care. Grief surged through him; he saw that he must lose the woman he had prized above all others, the darling of his old age. She had led him on, just like she had led the others, and she had duped him—and he, like an old fool, had been hooked like a fish. He could not believe it. Not Katheryn, sweet Katheryn, his darling…Hot tears coursed down his cheeks as rage gave way to devastation.

  “By God, why should I have the misfortune to be cursed with such ill-conditioned wives?” he cried. “And you’re all complicit—you, Norfolk, and you, Gardiner, and you, Wriothesley. You all solicited me to marry her. You assured me she was pure! You should have known better! And now, what am I to do with her?” His voice shook.

  “Sir,” Cranmer soothed, “you should comfort yourself in the knowledge that the Queen’s misdemeanors took place before you proposed marriage to her. She committed no crime. But we do have reason to believe that she once entered into a precontract with Dereham. If true, it would render your union with her invalid. You would be a free man.” His tone did not quite succeed in betraying his eagerness. Yes, Harry thought bitterly, free to marry another woman pushed into his path, this time by the reformers.

  “Have the Queen confined to her rooms,” he ordered, mastering himself, “and Lady Rochford with her. I want them both questioned closely, especially about Dereham and this question of a precontract. And arrest Dereham; find out what he can tell us. Then we will convene again.” He rose, noting the ill-concealed smugness of the reformers and the consternation of the conservatives, then he escaped to the privacy of his bedchamber and lay there weeping as he had not wept in years.

  * * *

  —

  After suffering a dreadful, lonely night, tormented by thoughts of Katheryn in the arms of Dereham or being pawed by Manox, Harry felt the need for some spiritual comfort and went to Mass in the Chapel Royal. As he left afterward, with his gentlemen in attendance, he heard Katheryn screaming.

  “Your Grace! Sir! Harry!”

  What was she doing in the gallery? She should be locked up!

  Unable to stop himself, he twisted his head in her direction, then made to walk away, unable to bear the sight of her, whom he had loved so greatly.

  “Harry! Listen to me! I beg of you!” she cried, and he hesitated. If he turned to her now, he could forgive her, take her back to his bosom and put a stop to this whole terrible business. But his anger, his grief, and his sense of betrayal went too deep. Besides, she might not even be his wife. She might truly be Dereham’s.

  Sickened, he walked away, ignoring her cries for help. It sounded as if her guards had caught up with her and were manhandling her back to her apartments. She was wailing and howling, as if she knew that all was lost.