A Dangerous Inheritance

She stared at him. She felt as if the whole world was crumbling about her. What John was saying made sense, but it was a rational response: his heart was not in it. And it sounded as if he thought more of disgrace and disinheritance than of her – while she, God help her, was ready to defy the world for him and risk all.

She did not think she could ever feel any worse than she did at this moment.

She looked at John bleakly. ‘Then there is no more to say. I am sorry if I asked too much of you.’

‘Kate …’ he began, but already she was walking away.

At the end of the month, Richard summoned his daughter and his future son-in-law to the White Hall, where the court had gathered for the betrothal festivities. Queen A

Kate wore no adornment save for her diamond-shaped sapphire pendant. Her hair hung loose down her back, as became a virgin. When the Queen escorted her into the crowded chamber, she was shaking so much that she thought her legs would give way. She saw the King seated on his throne beneath the rich gold canopy of estate; ranged around him were the chief lords of his kingdom, and among them she saw a white-faced Lincoln. She looked away, aware of him watching her. But here was her father, descending from the dais and taking her hand, smiling. She cast her eyes down modestly, but not before she glimpsed a man stepping forward, gorgeously clad in a low-belted gown of green velvet edged with fur. A pair of tan-booted feet presented themselves before her; a hand reached for hers. She looked up into the eyes of the man with the ferret face.

How she recovered from her initial shock and revulsion she never knew, but she allowed him to lead her after the King and Queen into an antechamber where the betrothal contract had been set out on a table. John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln, waited behind it. He bowed courteously and raised his hand in a blessing. Kate tried to catch his eye, for he had shown himself her friend before, but he gave no sign of recognition or sympathy. Instead, once the King and Queen were seated, he went over the terms of the contract.

‘My lord, his Grace here provides that he will give with his daughter lands and lordships from the confiscated estates of the late Duke of Buckingham worth a thousand marks a

The Bishop was droning on, listing all the financial benefits of the marriage: it registered that her jointure was to be lands worth two hundred pounds a year. The King had been more than generous. And there was more. ‘His Grace will bear the whole cost of the marriage,’ Russell a

Michaelmas. The twenty-ninth of September. She might have seven months of freedom left. Anything could happen in that time. She consoled herself with that thought as they processed to St Stephen’s Chapel for the betrothal ceremony. Much of it passed her by. She would not listen to the words that bound her to the man beside her. She could hardly bring herself to look up at his pointed nose and wide-set slanting eyes, or to stand too near to him, for there was about him a whiff of stale sweat, as if his fine gown had been worn too often and too long ago. His shock of black hair seemed like an insult; it looked as if someone had put a basin on his head and snipped around it. It was a style years out of date, yet his rich robes marked him as having some pretensions to fashion. He was looking at her slyly, a gleam of possessiveness in his eyes. She could not bear to think that she was bound to this man, with his ferret face and his malodorous body, for life.

Katherine

November–December 1559. Whitehall, Sheen and Westminster Abbey.

My mother is dead, God rest her. She breathed her last at Sheen, with me, Mary and the devoted Stokes at her side. Although she had been poorly for months, her final decline came suddenly, and there was barely time to summon us from court.

I weep for my mother, and I weep even more bitterly for my dashed hopes – for her letter, that crucial letter, was never sent.

Three days later, the Queen herself summons me. It is with some relief that I escape from the black-draped house and my mother lying in her coffin on a bier in the chapel, covered with rich palls of damask and cloth of gold.

I find Elizabeth dressed in deepest black, against which the whiteness of her u

‘I weep with you in your sad loss, Lady Katherine,’ she says. ‘Your mother was my beloved cousin and gossip.’

‘I thank your Majesty for your kindness, which I confess I do not deserve,’ I reply meekly, lowering my gaze.

‘We will not speak of that now,’ she says, her black eyes cold as ever. ‘I brought you here to tell you that I have arranged for your lady mother to be buried in Westminster Abbey, as befits a princess of the blood, and that I will defray the expenses of the funeral.’ I am sensible of this being a high privilege, and that the Queen is being uncharacteristically generous. Already she has a reputation for parsimony. She does not spend money unless she has to. So she must have thought very well of my mother to do this for her.

I fall to my knees. ‘I thank your Majesty for your magnanimity.’

‘You will have much to do, so you may depart the court now,’ Elizabeth says, dismissing me. ‘You have our leave to return to Sheen.’

I hasten away and look for Ned, only to learn from one of his friends that he has already left the court, bound for Sheen too, with the Queen’s blessing. Despite myself, I am touched, for Elizabeth knows that my lady regarded him almost as a son. Maybe there is in her some spark of kindness, that she has sent him to succour me and Mary in these dark days of bereavement.

Ned caught the tide; I did not, so he is waiting for me at Sheen when I finally arrive there. Stokes greets me mournfully, weeping at my news, and Ned takes me openly in his arms, not caring that the Duchess his mother and all the household officers and servants are standing by to see.

‘I came at once, sweetheart,’ he murmurs. ‘You will not endure this alone.’

My mother, being a staunch Protestant, would not have approved of prayers for the dead, so I fall wordlessly to my knees before her coffin. I ca

When I sit up, dabbing my eyes with my kerchief, Ned is sitting quietly beside me. He waits until I have composed myself, and gently escorts me from the chapel.

We speak of my mother, the coming obsequies, and the Queen’s generosity, and then his face looks pained.

‘I heard of your confrontation with the Queen,’ he says.