In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,113

humbler self, into her household!

How easy it must have been to build up evidence against her!

There was one other case which was even more damning. Her cousin, Thomas Culpepper, was in the King's household, and many had noticed the soft looks which had passed between him and the Queen. It was soon discovered that there had been interviews between them when they had been alone in a room together.

Lady Rochford's name was mentioned as one who had helped arrange the meetings with Culpepper and to make sure that the pair were not disturbed during them.

I had never liked Lady Rochford. The fact was that I had never liked anyone connected with the Boleyn family overmuch. I had seen Anne Boleyn as the one who had killed my mother. I was not sure that she had plotted to poison her, but I felt she had killed her all the same; but for Anne Boleyn, my father would have remained married to my mother, and I believe she would have been alive still.

Lady Rochford had been the wife of George Boleyn, and it was she who had given credence to the story that he and Anne were lovers. I had never believed that, much as I hated them, and I had always wondered how a wife could give such evidence against her own husband. And now she was accused of helping to further an intrigue between the Queen and Thomas Culpepper. I believed that such a mischievous and unprincipled woman could do just that.

I wished I could go to my father and comfort him. Of course, I could never have done so.

I wondered how deep his affection went and whether it would be strong enough to save her. She had pleased him so much. He had recently given thanks to God for providing him with a wife whom he could love. Surely he would not want to lose her, merely because she had had a lover—or two… or three—before her marriage to him? I sometimes felt an anger against men who, far from chaste themselves, expect absolute purity in their wives. If Catharine had not had some experience before her marriage, how could she have been the mistress of those arts which seemed to please him so much?

I wondered what he would do. I did not talk of this to Susan. I feared I would be too frank about him. He was my father and he was the King. I thought about him a great deal. I had seen him in his moods, when he was preoccupied with his conscience. I had judged him in my mind but I could not do that before others. So I said nothing of these intimate matters.

Susan said one day, “They have arrested Dereham.”

So, I thought, it has started. He will not save her. His pride will have been too hurt. He did not love her more than his own pride.

“On what charge?” I asked.

“Piracy,” she replied.

“He was involved in that in Ireland where he had gone to make his fortune, some say, that he might come back and marry Catharine Howard.”

I nodded. I knew what would happen. They would question him, and he would be persuaded to answer them. Persuaded? In what way? How strong was he? I had thought him a dashing fellow—but one can never tell who can stand up against the rack.

We heard later that he confessed that, when they were together in the Duchess's household, the Queen had promised to marry him. They had thought of themselves as husband and wife, and others had considered them as such; they had exchanged love-tokens. They had lived together in the Duchess's household as husband and wife.

They tried to force him to admit that when he returned and was taken into the Queen's household the relationship between them had been that which they had enjoyed in the Duchess's. This he stoutly denied. There had never been the slightest intimacy between him and Catharine since her marriage to the King.

We heard that the King shut himself in his apartments, that he had burst into tears, that he had raged against fate for ruining his marriage. There was great speculation. Would the King waive her early misdemeanors and take her back?

Even I, who knew him so well, was unsure of what he would do. I wished that I could have seen him, talked to him. I could imagine his tortured mind. He wanted to believe her innocent and on the other hand he wished to know