A Dangerous Inheritance

‘I have promised your sister I will attend her to the scaffold,’ Abbot Feckenham says. ‘It is the least I can do for her, and she wants me there, even though she fears we will never meet in Heaven.’

This is all too much for me. Forgetting that I am in the presence of my sovereign, I collapse into the Abbot’s arms, howling my heart out.

‘I will be there, child, never fear,’ he soothes. ‘I will be with her to the very end.’

Kate

September 1483. York.

York had been a triumph, but it had worn the little Prince out. Everyone agreed that the healthy air of Middleham, to which he was used, was the best thing for him.

Kate had a lump in her throat as she stood with her stepmother, waving him off. She knew how keenly A

She was sadly aware too that, since A

She fretted constantly about the prospect of being parted indefinitely from John. If only they could be married! That would be the ideal solution. She must make it happen! Driven by the need for action, she confided in Mattie. Not that Mattie could be of much help, but at least she was willing to listen, and when it came to affairs of love, she showed herself to be Kate’s champion.

‘My life would be empty without John,’ Kate declared. ‘I ca

In the end, they agreed that Mattie would take a sealed message to John to tell him that Kate needed to meet with him urgently.

‘What did he say?’ Kate asked eagerly when Mattie returned later that day.

‘Nothing. He wasn’t there. I left the note with his valet.’

Kate hoped that the valet was discreet.

‘Don’t look so worried, my lady,’ Mattie reassured her. ‘He thinks ’tis me in whom my lord Earl has an interest – I gave him to believe that.’

Kate watched the hourglass marking the passage of time. She prayed that John would send word to her, or even contrive to seek her out himself. The waiting was pure torture.

He came at ten o’clock, cloaked and hooded, so that none would have recognised him. As Mattie closed the door on them, he held Kate strong and tight, and kissed her passionately. With that, the world receded and she was lost.

It seemed the most natural thing to lie down together on her bed, with the curtains drawn, and to kiss and caress each other with increasing ardour. It seemed so right for John to stroke her breasts through the thick velvet of her bodice, and to press his searching lips to the inviting cleft that disappeared into the neckline of her gown. When he ran his fingers over her hips and thighs, she made no protest. Nothing else mattered except the dizzying sensations that were consuming her and banishing all reason. And indeed, she would have let him do more, save for that fact that John himself, breathless and tousled, drew back, forcing himself away from her and grimacing as if he were actually in pain.

‘No, my darling, we must not! I honour you too greatly,’ he breathed in her ear. For answer, she clung to him more tightly until he groaned and prised her eager fingers away.

‘Let be, sweetheart,’ he cried, ‘or I will not be able to trust myself. Oh, my Kate, my sweet lady, I do worship you! It has seemed an eternity being apart from you.’

She was so rapt in wonder that she could not speak. He smiled down at her.

‘We must be married!’ he declared. ‘I will speak to my father and make my position plain, and then I shall go to the King – if you will have me, of course.’ He looked at her pleadingly.

‘Did you need to ask?’ she teased him. ‘Of course I will have you. And please speak to my father soon, or I might be banished to Middleham.’

‘That I will not allow.’ John stood up, straightening his clothes. ‘I will see my father in the morning.’ Then, with a radiant smile, he executed a courteous bow and left her sitting on the bed, unable to believe how easy it had been.

Katherine

1554–5. The Court.

In this bitter spring that has followed hard upon the tragedies, the world seems dead to me, and the budding blooms and glorious flowering of Dame Nature are no more than cruel mockery. My soul is consumed by loss: husband, sister, father, all taken brutally from me. There can be nothing good for me in this life now, and I sometimes wish that the grave would swallow me too.

My dreams are of blood-spattered axes and the mutilated corpses of the beloved dead, or of Harry and me in those brief, bitter-sweet weeks we had together; Harry, my love, who is gone from me as surely as if Death had done his work upon him too. How dare the flowers open out their beauty to the heavens; how dare the lambs gambol in the fields; how dare the gentle warmth of the breeze caress my face like a lover, when all is lost to me?

The Queen has been uncommonly kind to me, my mother and my poor sister Mary. She has done everything she can to support my lady in her grief, and has even restored to her some of the lands and manors confiscated by the Act of Attainder that condemned my father. Of course, there is between the Queen’s Grace and my lady a wary courtesy, for how could it be otherwise, when the one has sent the other’s husband and child to their deaths?

Her Majesty’s bounty has extended to me too, for she has bestowed on me the most generous pension of eighty pounds a year, which has made me financially independent. And, because my mother is much preoccupied with settling her own affairs, and consumed with sorrow as well, the Queen has charged her loyal friend, the Duchess of Somerset, to keep a watchful eye over Mary and me. Her Majesty, seeing the poor, downcast case in which we languish, has judged it neither fair nor fitting to keep us with her at court. For my part, I can no longer abide the poisonous atmosphere of that hateful place, where all has turned to tragedy and others rejoice in the fall of my House. And so I and my sister Mary go to lodge with the Duchess of Somerset’s family at Shelford Priory, near Nottingham. I go willingly, thankfully.

The Duchess, who was born A

Summer comes with heartening news: my mother is appointed Lady of the Privy Chamber to the Queen, and soon afterwards Mary and I are commanded to put off our mourning and join her there, to serve her Majesty once more. I go reluctantly. I am still grieving for Jane, still yearning for Harry, still mourning my lost hopes of a crown. The way I am feeling, it matters not where I am or what I do. I struggle to perform my duties, but my mother tells me it will do me good to concentrate on something other than my grief, so I do my best to give satisfaction to the Queen, hard though it is for me.