The hunt moves off; the hounds and the whippers-in first, the king’s master of horse next, John Dudley beside him, and then the king and queen, side by side, like a doting old man and his favourite granddaughter. The rest of us follow behind them, chattering and looking forward to the day, as if we have not ridden out like this, hundreds of times before, following four previous queens.

  On Progress, Summer

  1540

  IN AUGUST, WE move from hunting lodge to hunting lodge, which pleases the king as a prolonged honeymoon, but disappoints Katheryn, who wants to be queen of a palace. The heat of the summer goes on; some days, it is too hot to ride out at all, and Katheryn stands beside the king and watches him fish in the moat or practise archery at the butts. Every catch, every bullseye, he turns to her, as proud as a spoiled boy, and she smiles with delight and sometimes prettily claps her hands. Of course, she is getting more and more bored by this old man in the first flush of his happiness.

  I make her rest alone in her bedroom in the afternoon, so that she can have time away from blushing and smiling. I bribe her to good behaviour with sweetmeats and sugarplums. The king has bought himself a little pet like Anne’s lapdog Purkoy, and it is my task to train her to do pretty tricks to please him. She dances like an angel; she walks as if she was dancing. Purkoy used to beg, sitting up on his hind legs, most prettily. I teach her to beg.

  She is rescued from boredom by the appointment of her ladies-in-waiting. Many transfer so fast from Queen Anne of Cleves to Queen Katheryn that they just come back to their old places. Katheryn has to employ ladies of her own family: her sister Isabel Baynton, whose husband Sir Edward Baynton is vice chamberlain; Catherine Tilney, her kinswoman and childhood friend from Norfolk House. Even the queen’s step-grandmother, the dowager duchess, has a place as chief lady if she comes to court. Katherine Edgcumbe and Eleanor Manners the Countess of Rutland are rewarded for their outstanding skills as the writers of an impossible conversation with Anne of Cleves about virginity. Mistress Stonor, who spied on my sister-in-law Anne in her final days in the Tower of London, gets a place. Anne Parr – now Mistress Herbert – takes charge of the royal jewels, having served every one of the four previous queens with me. Back in harness like the white mules of the queen’s litter, we are accustomed to the pace of royal service. The burden is a different woman, but it makes no difference to us.

  Katheryn has scores of men servants – her master of horse is John Dudley. Thomas Manners the Earl of Rutland will manage her lands – she is given everything that Jane Seymour had – though she had to earn it with a fatal pregnancy. An entire council of treasury and land agents and managers meets weekly to manage her vast estates. She does not attend; she says it is too boring, and I must go in her place. She has a stable full of grooms and two muleteers to drive the French litter.

  The entire household was barely appointed to their roles, hardly started work, when we go on progress with a small riding court for the summer. It is rushed – almost a flight – as if the king is avoiding a state entry to London with yet another queen, as if he doesn’t want the people to see that he is getting older and the wives are getting younger and younger. The progress feels like a rout, without a plan.

  For the last ten years, everything was meticulously organised by my spymaster. All the departments of government that he created grind on: reporting, inspecting, and taxing; but they are the turning sails of a windmill catching a passing wind. There is no miller watching the clouds, steering the sails; the cogs and gears are not engaged. The old lords have no skill in business, church reform, taxation, running the counties or controlling the towns. They cannot manage the Houses of Parliament. They have influence only in their own areas; they have no nationwide view. They have no idea of foreign alliances and overseas trade. They have no unified policy; they rule for themselves, only themselves.

  No one can plan a route as Cromwell did: threatening restless towns with our armed retinue, rewarding supporters with a smiling visit, weaving a path between threat and bribery. The old lords don’t even know the country outside of their own borders; they have no maps of any lands but their own.

  SEVERAL LADIES COME on progress only long enough to secure their places, before they announce that they are pregnant and retire to their homes for the summer, perhaps for the rest of this reign. Anne Parr now Mistress Herbert gives the keys to the jewel house to Elizabeth Tyrwhitt and tells me that she is going to leave when we reach Ampthill. It’s a bad evening on another disorganised day: the queen’s own brother-in-law and fifteen men of her household got drunk and fought with the porters the night before.

  ‘You can’t leave us!’ I exclaim. ‘Not until I’ve got some proper order in the queen’s rooms!’

  ‘I can’t stay,’ she says. She gestures to her belly, which is flat as a board. ‘You can see that I have to leave.’

  ‘I see nothing, Anne Herbert!’ I say crossly. ‘And I can’t be everywhere. The queen likes the place in chaos; she likes everyone running around screaming. And if her own vice chamberlain is going to brawl …’

  Anne Herbert leans towards me to whisper. ‘You’ll have seen her brother, Charles Howard, is courting Lady Margaret Douglas?’

  ‘Jesu save us!’

  ‘Another coup for the Howards,’ she observes neutrally.

  ‘It didn’t work out so well the last time.’

  ‘No – but this time, with a Howard queen on the throne …’

  ‘I doubt that even Kitty Howard can persuade the king that his royal niece should marry her brother Charles. Remember what he said last time about entrapment! Lady Margaret’s only just got out of Syon Abbey, you’d have thought she’d have learned her lesson.’

  ‘It’s not as bad as last time. Not a betrothal – only poetry-promises. But I wouldn’t leave court without warning you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t leave court at all,’ I say crossly. ‘All the queen’s friends are young and foolish, and the king is not a young and foolish husband.’

  ‘She can enchant him, and you can manage her,’ she reassures me.

  ‘Oh, he dotes on her; but a young court reminds him that he is old enough to be their grandfather. Her youth is a memento mori for him.’

  ‘A courtier’s work is to build up the king,’ Anne Herbert warns. ‘Not diminish him.’

  ‘She’s just seventeen!’ I say despairingly. ‘How can she not make him feel old and tired by comparison?’

  Windsor Castle, Autumn

  1540

  WE ARE BARELY returned to Windsor Castle when Lady Agnes the old Dowager Duchess of Norfolk announces that she is coming to visit her beloved step-granddaughter.

  At once, the vain young queen becomes a frightened schoolgirl again. ‘Don’t leave us alone,’ she begs me. ‘You don’t know what she’s like when she’s angry. And I always make her angry, whatever I do!’

  ‘She can’t be angry with the Queen of England,’ I point out. ‘Threaten her with a writ of attainder for treason and throw her in the Tower.’

  ‘Oh!’ She gasps on a little laugh. ‘Oh! If only I could! But you can’t put old ladies in the Tower.’

  I don’t disagree, though Lady Margaret Pole is still waiting for her pardon in the Tower. ‘Well, at any rate, she can’t scold you,’ I assure her. ‘You only owe obedience to your husband the king, and to the head of your house. And the duke isn’t coming with her, is he?’

  ‘Oh God no!’ she says, more afraid than ever. ‘Is he? I can’t face the two of them together. I’ll say I’m ill.’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ I tell her. ‘But I’ll stay with you. She can’t scold you in front of me. It’s part of my duties to make sure that you are happy.’

  ‘Really?’ She is diverted at once. ‘Is it your duty to make me happy?’

  ‘Lawful joys,’ I say dampeningly. ‘Only lawful joys.’

  THE DOWAGER DUCHESS is not overawed by the greatness of the motherless girl that she raised – nourishing her with neglect – in her country house at Horsham and in the shabby grandeur of Norfolk House, Lambeth. The old lady, lean as a well-bred old hound, is accompanied by her daughter the Countess of Bridgewater, a woman so honed by disaster that nothing can hurt or frighten her. Together, they walk into Windsor Castle, like a pair of raiders, scanning for loot in the echoing great state rooms, as if they see nothing to admire: not rich tapestries on the walls, nor gilding on the dark-blue beams, nor the view of the Thames winding through the woodlands of the valley below.

  They both curtsey as low as they should to a queen.

  ‘Lady Grandmother. Dear Cousin,’ the queen says feebly. ‘So welcome.’

  Behind them comes the queen’s uncle Lord William Howard and his wife Lady Margaret, behind them, her brothers Charles and George. That is when I know that they have come in force, to make Katheryn do something for them.

  ‘I’ll trouble you for a chair, Your Grace. I’m not any younger than when I took you in, a nobody without a penny to your name, no mother and a worthless father,’ the dowager duchess begins.

  ‘Very grateful,’ Katheryn whispers, sinking into her throne and waving that everyone can sit. I stand behind her.

  ‘We’ll speak with you alone,’ the old lady announces, glaring at me.

  I swore to the little queen that I would not abandon her to this family visit even before I knew the old dowager duchess was so terrifying, and her daughter, flinty-faced.

  ‘Stay,’ Katheryn squeaks.

  ‘The queen requests my presence,’ I say grandly.

  ‘Then you’ll keep this between ourselves,’ the dowager duchess commands, turning sharp blue eyes on me. ‘You’re a Howard by marriage, if not by birth.’

  I curtsey. ‘Like yourself. For you were a Tilney before you were a second wife.’

  Grandly, she ignores the impertinence. ‘It’s that fool Francis Dereham,’ she says abruptly. ‘My purveyor. Went to Ireland to make his fortune and came home without it. Now he wants a place at court. In your service.’

  ‘He can’t,’ Katheryn says instantly.

  ‘Better that you give him a place and a small fee to make him happy than he chatters away in the London alehouses,’ Lord William Howard points out. ‘All you young people were as wild as each other, though I know you were warned more than once …’

  ‘We did nothing.’

  ‘Nothing that matters,’ the dowager duchess corrects her. ‘I’ve taken a handful of letters and poems and nonsense from half a dozen girls off him. I’ve not looked at them, but I take it you were as bad as the rest?’

  Kitty gives a little moan. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well, anyway, I’ve got them locked up safe, so he has no evidence. But he’s running around saying that you two were beloved and betrothed and God knows what else. He says he gave you a hundred pounds before he went away, and that now you’re queen, there must be some good to come to him.’

  ‘I’ll give him his money back; I haven’t even spent it,’ Katheryn says crossly. She looks at me. ‘It’s that purse you have, Jane.’

  The dowager duchess turns a sharp gaze on me. ‘You have it, do you? You’re in her confidence?’

  ‘I know nothing about it,’ I say quickly. ‘I just held the purse. I will return it to you today to give to him. I thought it better that Her Grace did not hold money that belonged to a young man, even before she was queen.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Lord William Howard clasps his fat hands together, and his wife Margaret repeats his gesture, as if she is following him in a dance, copying the steps, one beat behind. ‘Then all that’s needed is to find a place for him in your household.’

  ‘We don’t need a purveyor,’ I remark quietly.

  ‘He can be her secretary!’ the old lady tells me. ‘He can write.’

  ‘It’s not enough to write,’ I point out quietly. ‘The queen’s secretary is a post for a man with money to pay the entry fee, a family to ask for it, an education to match it. And faultlessly discreet.’

  ‘Dereham is distantly related to us Howards,’ the dowager duchess says, as if that is a connection good enough for any post. ‘And who cares about his education?’

  ‘The queen’s vice chamberlain would care.’

  ‘My step-grandson-in-law! He’ll do what I say!’

  ‘No!’ Katheryn interrupts. ‘Not secretary. Couldn’t he do something else?’

  ‘I’m sure we can find some kind of post,’ I offer glacially. ‘If you insist, Your Grace?’

  ‘Why can’t you keep him at yours?’ Katheryn asks plaintively. ‘He was always your favourite?’

  There’s a brief, awkward silence. Only the Countess of Bridgewater, who has seen worse and survived far worse, breaks it. ‘He’s a little shit,’ she says crudely. ‘Better for you, Your Grace, if he is shitting in your stool house than shitting over us all with the enemies of our family and a bunch of reformer preachers. If he says anything at court that you don’t like, then you’ll be first to hear it, and you can have him beaten at the first word and arrested at the second.’

  ‘It’s treason to speak against me,’ Katheryn whispers, so pale that I can see blue veins at her temples that match the looped chains of sapphires on her neck.

  ‘Then hang him,’ the countess says simply. ‘But don’t leave him gabbling and scrabbling around St Paul’s and telling dirty Lutherans that the queen – a Howard queen – is a whore as bad as her cousin Anne.’

  Katheryn gives a little scream and jumps up. ‘How dare you!’

  Everyone has to rise as she is standing; but her grandmother takes her time getting to her feet.

  ‘My Lady Bridgewater …’ I say furiously to the countess. ‘You forget the respect that you owe …’

  She shoots a hard look at me. ‘Oh, aye – I forgot you were her sister-in-law. But am I right? Or not?’

  ‘You’re right,’ I say unwillingly. ‘We don’t want gossip in London.’

  ‘Lord William’ll bring him to court and introduce him. He can be a groom of your chamber,’ the dowager duchess rules.

  ‘Not I!’ Lord William says hastily. ‘Can’t stand the man. My wife can do it. She’s your lady-in-waiting; it’d come natural to her.’

  Lady Margaret turns a horrified gaze on him.

  ‘Very well,’ the countess says agreeably. ‘Lady Margaret can do it.’

  ‘There you are!’ Agnes, the dowager duchess, says. ‘I knew it’d come out all right.’ She turns for the door. ‘I won’t stay to dine. I’ll tell Dereham to start at the autumn quarter. Hallow’s Eve. Lady Margaret will present him.’

  Lady Margaret murmurs something which might be a refusal; but all the Howards ignore her.

  ‘Does my lord uncle the duke know of this?’ I ask the flint-faced countess as she follows her mother.

  ‘No,’ she says shortly. ‘Best not trouble him?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Best not.’

  THOMAS HOWARD THE Duke of Norfolk, with a hunter’s instinct for hidden prey, comes to his niece’s rooms before the rest of the lords and the king before dinner. He bows low to the queen and steps aside to me. ‘I hear that my lady stepmother visited you today?’

  ‘She wanted a favour – to put her old purveyor into the queen’s household.’

  ‘Very well. Anything else?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say.

  He turns to the queen. ‘Your Grace, you are to be congratulated. You are to receive some more lands. Gifts from the king, your generous husband.’

  Kitty Howard, who has no more idea of landowning than of coal mining, beams at her uncle. ‘He’s so kind to me!’

  The double doors open, and she dances off her throne towards the king as he comes in, leaning slightly on Edward Seymour’s arm.

  ‘Thank you, my lord husband! My uncle just told me you’re giving me more lands!’

  ‘Thomas Cromwell’s fortune,’ he tells her, taking her hand and kissing it. She does not flinch, though his kiss shines on her knuckles like slime. ‘You’re sharing it with young Thomas Culpeper here.’

  She turns and smiles radiantly, as though she has quite forgotten that he preferred Bess Harvey to her. ‘Oh, congratulations to you, Master Culpeper!’

  ‘Great work to take them from a rogue and give them to two people that I can trust,’ the king says. ‘But land is wasted on you, pretty one. I know you only like jewels.’

  ‘Oh no, Your Majesty. I like jewels as well!’ she says, so earnestly that everyone laughs at her childish greed.

  ‘If you dance very prettily for me after dinner, I shall give you a ruby ring,’ he promises her. ‘Who shall you have as your partner?’

  She turns to consider her ladies: Mary Howard is the best dancer, but Kitty prefers a dark-haired partner as a contrast.

  ‘Take Thomas,’ the king says. ‘You’re well-matched.’

  Their eyes meet; Culpeper’s smile is warm, amused. He knows full well that she is still offended with him. But she cannot refuse a partner proposed by the king. And Culpeper knows – as a handsome man always knows – that she still likes him.

  ‘Would you honour me, Your Grace?’ He bows.

  ‘As His Majesty wishes,’ she says coolly, and she takes her husband’s arm, and they lead us into dinner.

  THE COURT IS to celebrate the feast of All Hallows’ with all the Papist rituals unchanged, despite the disappearance of shrines and the end of chantries. The king will spend the day in prayer, and despite Kitty’s protest, she has to attend two-hour-long masses three times in the day, wearing sombre clothes, and ostentatiously pray for the soul of Queen Jane. She endures this very well, though I know she is almost crying with boredom and she aches from forcing herself not to fidget.