The Confession of Katherine Howard. Suzannah Dunn

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СКАЧАТЬ didn’t like that, either: the bluntness of it. But, anyway, the fact was that it - their romance, or however else Francis liked to think of it - had stopped when she’d lost interest and moved on.

      ‘And why she gave me the job here.’

      ‘But she gave us all jobs here.’ Her family - sister and stepmother, aunt and cousin - and her old friends: me, Maggie and Alice.

      He splayed his hands - exactly - but there was defeat in the gesture.

      ‘What?’ - it dawned on me - ‘he thinks it was…’ but I didn’t know how to put it, ‘… more than that?’

      Francis said nothing.

      ‘But that’s ridiculous,’ I protested. ‘And in fact she gave you your job because of me, so I could have you here with me —’

      He frowned and I saw that he’d never thought of it that way.

      ‘— and I’m going to go and tell him.’

      He snapped, ‘Don’t go anywhere near him.’

      ‘But if I -’

      ‘Remember what he said: no one else should know, or it’ll get nasty. It’s not just me who’s in trouble, here, it’s Kate, too, and I won’t do anything to endanger her, do you understand that?’

      Oh, perfectly. He’d made himself quite clear. I doubted his loyalty would be reciprocated if the situation were reversed, but he’d never been able to see that. Anyway, would I go to Wriothesley? He should be coming to me. But he wouldn’t even know of my existence. I was no one.

      Francis asked, ‘Who’s Manox?’

      The name shot through me. ‘Henry Manox?’

      He shrugged. ‘Manox’ was evidently all he knew.

      Wriothesley knows about Henry Manox. But of course he did, because Mary knew about Henry Manox.

      Francis said, ‘He’s brought him in for questioning, that’s what he said. Manox. Who is he?’

      Why would Wriothesley be interested in Manox? Did he think Kate might’ve been pre-contracted to him, as well? ‘He was our music teacher. At the duchess’s. Before you came.’ To my shame, I couldn’t quite resist making it clearer: ‘He was before you.’ Did you really think you were the first?

      Poor Manox - it hadn’t ended all that well for him at the time, and now this, years later. But what was Wriothesley looking for? Why on earth would it matter, a long-ago dalliance with Henry Manox? I dreaded to think that Wriothesley’s enquiries might not be solely about precontract but Kate’s conduct in general.

      Then Francis was asking me to stay, his rancour gone all of a sudden as if it had never been, replaced by a heartbreaking hopefulness. Rob wouldn’t mind, he said: he’d go over to one of his friends when he found us here together. My instinct, though, was to rush to warn Kate. Questions were being asked of more than one man, now, and there had to be a way - if only I could think of it - to warn her while protecting Francis from any more trouble. I needed time to think, though. What else could happen before morning? All that would occur, if I told her now, was that she’d suffer a bad night’s sleep. There’d be nothing she could do, at this hour. And, anyway, Francis did need me. Besides, I was exhausted: I doubted I could even make it over to her rooms or, if I did, make much sense when I reached there.

      So, I ended up crawling into bed with Francis, stepping out of my clothes and leaving them where they fell. We didn’t talk; I’d thought we might, but we didn’t, not a word. I’d assumed that sleep would elude him but within a few breaths he was dead to the world. Perhaps an hour or so later, the door opened, then closed: Rob, presumably, gone on his way to someone else’s room to cadge some space in a bed or, unfortunately more likely, on a floor. I stayed awake for hours longer, listening to Francis’s breaths, guardian of them, all the time conscious of lying very still as if under observation and afraid of giving myself away. Conscious of it, but unable to remedy it. Nor did I seem able to use the time to think through what I could say, in the morning, to Kate. Instead, I pondered what she might do when she knew that questions were being asked about her past. What could she do? Go to the king? She’d been told he was in London. Was Wriothesley taking the opportunity of the king’s back being turned? Or had the king absented himself to allow this to happen, in the hope that it’d be cleared up before his return? His departure, I recalled, had been unexpected and Kate had been offered no explanation for it.

      I lay there thinking how the king was Kate’s only supporter. She’d come from nowhere. The king had chosen her, to everyone’s complete surprise. No one could’ve predicted it; she’d been no one’s project. The king alone had chosen her - liking what he saw and not looking any closer - and he’d championed her: she was only here on his whim. She had no friends with influence. Family, yes: her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, was the country’s most powerful nobleman and the king’s right-hand man; but that was all the more reason for him to drop her fast if she were in trouble, and he was wily and heartless enough to do so. Five years previously, he’d done exactly that to his other queen-niece, Anne Boleyn: turning prosecutor, even, in that case; conducting the trial and then, at its conclusion, declaring the death sentence.

       First at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox…

       First at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox…I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body…

      Never had I thought that Kate would one day become queen - she was a Howard but from the bottom of the Howard pile, the motherless tenth child of the disappointing second son, and empty of ambition. At the duchess’s, though, she was queen of a kind from the day she arrived.

      When I first ever saw her, I’d been momentarily blinded from a dash indoors and only as my eyes adjusted did I see that I’d run in on our Mrs Scully and that she was standing beside a girl. The girl wasn’t quite standing but reclining against a hefty wooden chest. One hip on, one off. I recognised her as about my own age - twelve - but otherwise she was unlike any girl I’d ever encountered. The sling of that hip, perhaps. None of we girls at the duchess’s would’ve dared sit like that, or indeed sit at all in the presence of an adult who was standing, even if that adult was only our own dear Mrs Scully.

      Mrs Scully said to me, ‘This is Katherine,’ and she sounded very correct, as if addressing me in the presence of another adult.

      She hadn’t said, Catheryn, this is Katherine.

      ‘The new girl,’ she said. I was the new girl, though. Or had been, until now.

      Any other girl, having dimpled, would’ve bitten her lip and glanced away, but this Katherine held me in her gaze, the glitter of which, I understood, was to be taken as a smile. Faintly amused, was how she looked. It struck me, even at the time, as an adult look, knowing and appraising. Unnerved, I’d murmured the requisite greeting and scarpered back to my friends.

      I’d been at the duchess’s for six months, by that time. It would be the making of me, my parents had said, to grow up in the household of Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, the widowed matriarch of England’s foremost family. We were so lucky that she’d agreed to take СКАЧАТЬ