Jean Plaidy - The Sixth Wife: The Story of Katherine Parr

Katharine began to pray again silently and fervently. Oh God, save me. Save me from this man. Save me from the King.

She knew more of him than he realized. In her country house she had heard how he had received the news of Jane Seymour’s death. Bluntly he had told his ministers that the death of his wife meant little to him beside the great joy he had in his newborn son.

“Had Jane but lived!” he was saying. “Ah, had Jane but lived!” He turned to Katharine and she felt the hot hand on her knee, caressing her thigh. She longed to beg him to desist, but she dared not.

“You are cold, Kate,” he said. “You tremble. ’tis all this talk of my miseries. Sometimes I wonder if I have paid for my most glorious reign with my most miserable domestic life. If that be so, Kate, I must be content. A king ofttimes must forget he is a man. A king is the slave of his country as is never the humblest citizen. You know the rest of my sad story?”

“I do, my lord.”

“I am young enough to enjoy a wife, Kate.”

“Your Grace has many happy years before him, I trust and pray.”

“Well spoken. Come nearer, Kate.”

She hesitated, but he had had enough of reluctance.

“Hurry! Now! Here, help me up. This accursed leg gives me much pain.” He stood beside her, towering above her. She felt his hot, sour breath on her cheek. “Do you like me, Kate?”

How to escape him she did not know. She fell on her knees.

“I am the most obedient of your subjects, Sire.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Henry testily. “But enough of kneeling. Get up. Be done with maiden modesty. You have been twice a wife. It becomes you not to play the reluctant virgin.”

“I am overwhelmed,” said Katharine, rising.

“Then you need no longer be. I like you, Kate, and you shall be my Queen.”

“No, no, Sire. I am too unworthy. I could not…”

“It is for us to say who is or who is not worthy to share our throne.” He was losing patience. Now was the time for kissing and fondling, for that excitement which should chase away the ghosts he had conjured up.

“I know it, my lord King, but…”

“Know this also, Kate. I choose you for wife. I am tired of the celibate state. I was never meant to bear it. Come, Kate, give me that which I found but once and held so short a while before death intervened. Give me married happiness. Give me your love. Give me sons.”

Katharine cried: “I am too unworthy, Your Majesty. I am no longer in my prime….”

Henry stopped the words with a loud kiss on her mouth. “Speak up!” he cried. “Speak up. What’s all this you are saying?”

Katharine cried in desperation: “If you love me then… then you must needs love me. But ’t would be better to be your mistress than your wife, an it please Your Grace.”

He was overcome with horror. The little mouth was tight with outraged modesty. “It pleases me not!” he shouted. “It pleases me not at all to hear such wanton talk. You are shameless.”

“Yes, Sire, indeed yes, and unworthy to be your wife.”

“You said you would be our mistress and not our wife. Explain yourself. Explain yourself.”

Katharine covered her face with her hands. She thought of two women who had knelt on Tower Green, who had laid their heads on the block at the command of this man. They had been his wives. Already she seemed to sense the executioner beside her, his ax in his hand, the blade turned toward her.

Henry had taken her by the shoulder and was shaking her.

“Speak up, I said. Speak up.” His voice had softened. He was seeing himself now as he wished to see himself—the mighty, omnipotent King, whom no woman could resist, just as they had been unable to resist him in the days of his youth when he had had beauty, wealth, kingship and all that a woman could desire.

“It is on account of mine own unworthiness,” faltered Katharine.

He forced her hands from her face and put an arm about her. He kissed her with violence. Then, releasing her, he began to roar: “Here, page! Here, man! Call Gardiner. Call Wriothesley…Surrey…Seymour… call them all. I have news I wish to impart to their lordships.”

He smiled at Katharine.

“You must not be afraid of this great honor,” he said. “Know you this: I can take you up and lift you to the greatest eminence…and I will do it.”

She was trembling, thinking: Yes, and you can cast me down. You can marry me; and marriage with the King, it is said with truth, may be the first step toward the Tower and the block.

The courtiers came hurrying back to the chamber. The King stood smiling at them.

He looked at them slyly, all those gentlemen who, a short time before, he had dismissed that he might be alone with Katharine.

“Come forward!” he cried. “Come and pay your respects to the new Queen of England.”

KATHARINE WAS IN her own apartments. With dry, tragic eyes she stared before her; she was trying to look into a future which she knew would be filled with danger.

There was no escape; she knew that now.

Nan, her faithful woman, had wept openly when she had heard the news. Katharine’s own sister, Anne Herbert, had come quickly to court. They did not speak of their compassion, but they showed it in their gestures, in the very intonations of their voices. They loved her, those two; they prayed for her and they wept for her; but they did not let her hear their prayers, nor see their tears.

It was the day after the King had announced his intention to marry her that Seymour came secretly to her apartments.

Nan let him in. Nan was terrified. She had been so happy serving Lady Latimer. Life, she realized now, had been so simple in the country mansions of Yorkshire and Worcester. Why had they not returned to the country immediately after the death of Lord Latimer? Why had they stayed that the King’s amorous and fickle eyes might alight on her lady?

There was danger all around, and Sir Thomas made that danger more acute by coming to her apartment. Nan remembered the stories she had heard of another Thomas—Culpepper—who had visited the apartments of another Catharine; and remembering that bitter and tragic story she wondered if the story of Katharine Parr would be marred by similar events. Was she destined for the same bitter end?

“I must see Lady Latimer,” said Sir Thomas. “It is imperative.”

And so he was conducted to her chamber.

He took her hands in his and kissed them fervently.

“Kate… Kate… how could this happen to us?”

“Thomas,” she answered, “I wish that I were dead.”

“Nay, sweetheart. Do not wish that. There is always hope.”

“There is no hope for me.”

He put his arms about her and held her close to him. He whispered: “He cannot live for ever.”

“I cannot endure it, Thomas.”

“You must endure it. We must both endure it. He is the King. Forget not that.”

“I tried,” she said. “I tried…. And, Thomas, if he knew that you were here…”

He nodded, and his eyes sparkled with the knowledge of his danger.

“Thus do I love you,” he told her. “Enough to risk my life for you.”

“I would not have you do that. Oh, Thomas, that will be the most difficult thing that faces me. I shall see you…you whom I love. I must compare you. You…you who are all that I admire… all that I love. He…he is so different.”

“He is the King, my love. I am the subject. And you will not be burdened with my presence. I have my orders.”

“Thomas! No …not… the Tower?”

“Nay! He does not consider me such a serious rival as that. I depart at sunrise for Flanders.”

“So…I am to lose you, then?”

“’ Twere safer for us, sweetheart, not to meet for a while. So thinks the King. That is why he is sending me with Dr. Wotton on an embassy to Flanders.”

“How long will you be away?”

“Methinks the King will find good reason to keep me there… or out of England… for a little while.”

“I cannot bear it. I know I cannot.”

He took her face in his hands. “My heart, like yours, is broken, sweetheart. But we must bear this pain. It will pass. I swear it will pass. And our hearts will mend, for one day we shall be together.”

“Thomas, can you believe that?”

“I believe in my destiny, Kate. You and I shall be together. I know it.”

“Thomas, if the King were to discover that you had been here…”

“Ah, perhaps he would give me this hour, since he is to have you for the rest of his life.”

“For the rest of my life, you mean!” she said bitterly.

“Nay. He is an old man. His fancy will not stray to others as once it did. One year… two years… who knows? Cheer up, my Kate. Today we are broken-hearted, but tomorrow the future is ours.”

“You must not stay here. I feel there are spies, watching my every movement.”

He kissed her and caressed her afresh; and after a time he took his leave, and on the next tide sailed for Flanders.

IN THE QUEEN’S closet at Hampton Court, Gardiner performed the ceremony. This was not hurried and secret as in the case of Anne Boleyn; this was a royal wedding.

The Princesses Mary and Elizabeth stood behind the King and his bride, and with them the King’s niece, the Lady Margaret Douglas. Lady Herbert, the Queen’s sister, and other great ladies and gentlemen were present.

The King was in excellent humor on this his marriage morning. The jewels flashed on his dalmatica; the shrewd eyes sparkled and the royal tongue licked the tight lips, for she was a comely creature, this bride of his, and he was a man who needed a wife. He felt, as he had said that morning to his brother-in-law, Lord Hertford, that this marriage would be the best he had ever made.

The July sun was hot and the bride felt as though she would faint with the oppressive atmosphere in the room and the fear within her.

A nightmare had sprung into life. She was here in Hampton Court being married to the King, here in a palace surrounded by gardens which Henry had planned with Anne Boleyn, on whose walls were the entwined initials, the H. and A. which had had to be changed hastily to H. and J. Along the gallery which led to the chapel, the youthful Catharine Howard had run one day, screaming for mercy. It was said that both Anne and Catharine haunted this place. And here, in the palace of hideous memories, she, Katharine Parr, was now being married to Henry the Eighth.

There was no longer hope of escape. The King was close. His breath scorched her. The nuptial ring was being put on her finger.

No. No longer hope. The King in that tragic moment had made Katharine Parr his sixth wife.

CHAPTER

II

THE KING WAS NOT DISPLEASED WITH HIS NEW WIFE. She had the gentlest hands that had ever wrapped a bandage about his poor suffering leg, and in the first few weeks of his marriage he discovered that he had not only got himself a comely wife, but the best of nurses. Nervous and timid she was during those first weeks, as though feeling herself unworthy to receive the great honors which were being showered upon her.

“Why, bless your modest heart, Kate,” he told her, “you have no need to fear us. We like you. We like your shapely person and your gentle hands. We know that you have been raised to a great position in this land, but let that not disturb you, for you are worthy, Kate. We find you worthy.”

She wore the jewels—those priceless gems—which had been worn by her predecessors.

“Look at these rubies, Kate.” He would lean heavily on her and bite her ear in a moment of playfulness. Why had she thought that elderly men were less interested in fleshly pleasures than the younger ones? She realized that the experience afforded her by Lords Borough and Latimer had taught her little. “You’ll look a Queen in these! And don’t forget you wear them through the King’s grace. Don’t forget that, my Kate.”

And she herself, because she was by nature kindly and gentle and looked for that good in others which was such an integral part of her own character, was more quickly resigned to this marriage than others might have been.

Yet there were nights when she lay awake in the royal bed, that mountain of diseased flesh beside her, thinking of her new life as Queen of England. Of the King she knew a good deal, for the affairs of kings are watched closely by those about them, and this man was a supreme ruler whose slightest action could send reverberations through the kingdom.

What sort of man was he whom she had married? First, because she had been the victim of this quality, she must think of him as the sensualist. Indeed, his sensuality was so great that it colored every characteristic he possessed. But he was far more than a man who delighted in pandering to his senses with fair women, good food and the best of wine; he was a King, and for all his selfindulgence, he was a King determined to rule. When he had been a young man, his delight in his healthy body had proved so great that he had preferred to leave the government of state affairs to his able Wolsey. But he had changed. He was the ruler now. And through that selfishness, that love of indulgence, that terrifying cruelty, there could be seen the strong man, the man who knew how to govern in a turbulent age, a man to whom the greatness of his country was of the utmost importance because he, Henry the Eighth, was synonymous with England. But for his monster conscience and a surprising primness in the sensualist, he would have resembled any lusty man of the times. But he was apart. He must be right in all things; he must placate his conscience; and it was those acts, demanded of him by the conscience, which made him the most cruel tyrant of his age.

What would happen to her in the months to come? wondered Katharine, staring at the ornate tester, although there was not enough light to show her its magnificent workmanship. And what of Thomas Seymour, temporarily banished from his country because he had been known to cast covetous eyes on the woman the King had decided to make his wife! How was he bearing the banishment?

What are this King’s subjects, Katharine asked herself, but figures to be moved about at his pleasure? Some please him for a while, and he lifts them up and keeps them close beside him until he sees others who please him more; then those who delighted him a week before are discarded; and if that prim quality within him suggests that the favorite of yesterday be removed by death, the conscience demands that this should be done. For the King must always be able to answer his conscience, no matter how much blood must be spilled to bring about this state of concord between a self-willed sensualist and his conscience.

So Katharine prayed in the silences of the nights for the courage of which she knew she would have great need. Often she thought of a friend with whom she had been on terms of affection before she came to court. This was the Reformer, Anne Askew, herself the victim of an undesired marriage; she thought of Anne’s courage and determination and she longed to emulate her.

But I am a coward, thought Katharine. I cannot bear to think of the cell, and the sound of tolling bells, bringing to me a message of destruction. I cannot bear to think of leaving that cell for Tower Green and the executioner’s ax.