Читать книгу The Confession of Katherine Howard - Suzannah Dunn, Suzannah Dunn - Страница 7

The following morning, Francis was back in attendance, carrying on as if he’d never been away. I felt I was owed an explanation. Kate was keeping him busy, presumably with the usual mix of tasks. He was both her usher - gatekeeper to her rooms — and her secretary. The pair of them never worked together in a closet - that would’ve been too serious for her - but would merely retreat to a corner of whichever room we were all in. There, he’d read aloud the clutch of letters that arrived daily for her, and they’d discuss how he should respond on her behalf. They’d go through any appointments that needed to be made, and he’d set about making them. Then there were the thank-you letters for gifts - from silverware and sumptuous fabrics to baskets of fruit and jars of preserve - which came from people in every walk of life who, for their various reasons, were anxious to curry favour. Then perhaps they’d work on formal renditions of any pleas for clemency which the king had already heard from her in private and indicated that he’d permit. I’d never anticipated what a soft touch she would become in that respect, although, upon reflection, there was nothing soft about it. She was genuinely unnerved to think of the hard and fast nature of the law: its drastically impersonal, inflexible nature. What drew her to particular cases - what she had a feeling for - was the minutiae of personal circumstances, and I could well imagine that she made them compelling when relaying them to her husband.

All that morning, she and Francis made quite a spectacle with their industry. She was elaborately pinned and tucked, every inch the girl-queen, as good as gold, and he had an officious air. Habitually, he listened to her with only half his attention, polite but vague, but that particular morning he was frowning with concentration. He’d often make much, to me, of how he’d have been nothing without her, of how he owed his success to her - here he was, private secretary to the queen of England - but I wasn’t so sure. When we girls had first come across him, he was a gentleman pensioner of the Duke of Norfolk’s, an enviable position, and had he stayed in the duke’s household, he’d have done very well for himself. He was following Kate’s lead in that her own rise had been something of a fairytale, but she too, I sensed, had chosen to believe in the inevitability of it. For her, the obscurity of her earlier life had been the mistake and the recent elevation her due. A natural enough attitude to take, I supposed, but I’d expected something different from her — from her of all people, so impatient with others’ pretensions.

At last, late on during the afternoon - too late, in my opinion — Francis came to find me in the gallery, where I’d got drawn into music practice with Alice and Anne Basset. He came slinking over, all smiles, attempting to slide his way back into my favour. ‘Hello, you.’

I said nothing although I did tilt my face for his kiss, which then struck me as a gesture typical of Kate - that showy petulance that she affected with men.

‘Been busy?’ He was keen to make amends.

Was I ever? But he’d asked, he’d given me the opportunity to knock him back, so I launched laboriously into a list of the day’s decidedly unspectacular activities: I’d written to my cousin and my father; tackled a new piece on the virginals; been entrusted to choose a gown and some jewellery for Kate from The Wardrobe and The Jewel House, settling on an indigo satin gown and sapphire-and-pearl necklace; managed to catch Liz Fitzgerald’s favoured tailor when he was visiting her, to ask if he could make a cloak for my little cousin in time for New Year; and dropped in at the Duchess of Richmond’s rooms to check the progress of the puppies, one of which, when weaned, would be Kate’s. I related all this in a deliberately flat tone, staring him down as I did so. Understandably, when he’d listened politely, he backed off.

Later still, when the evening’s dancing began, I relented and took him aside, finally asking him outright, ‘So, where were you, yesterday?’

He turned his big eyes to mine. ‘My mother wasn’t well.’

‘What’s wrong?’ It must’ve been something serious, I thought, for him to have gone all the way to London, and my stomach clenched at the prospect of what he might be facing. Then again, he’d come all the way back, so whatever was wrong hadn’t been serious enough to detain him.

‘I don’t really know.’

That struck me as vague, but, then, Francis was so often vague.

‘Well, is she any better?’

‘A bit.’

I began to suspect he was lying, so I delved: ‘Were your brothers there?’

He nodded.

‘Both of them?’

‘Yes.’ A touch of impatience, now: I said so, didn’t I?

And thus I had him: ‘You told me your younger brother was in York.’ He’d told me that his brother had gone up there the previous week for a month of work.

He narrowed his eyes, he was cross. ‘Well, he came back,’ and he protested, ‘I don’t tell you everything.’

I sighed. ‘Clearly not, Francis.’ York and back inside a week? There’d barely have been time to turn around. He was definitely lying.

‘Look…’ but then he dropped whatever further protest he was about to make and settled instead for, ‘I’ve had a really, really long day,’ and I saw how that, at least, was the truth. He looked exhausted. Tenderness washed over me and I let it drop.