She laughed delightedly. “That is what everyone says to me now! Do you remember the stick you gave me with which to tap on the wall?”
They were laughing over their memories.
“And the adventures you used to have...and how we used to ride in the paddock...and how you...”
“Said I would marry you!”
“You did, you know, Thomas, and then you never did anything about it!”
“I never forgot!” he lied. “But now...” He looked across the garden and over the hedge to the windows of the palace. Even now, he thought, little hot jealous eyes might have caught sight of him. Living close to the King he knew something of his rages. Dangerously sweet was this contact with Catherine.
“It is too late now,” she said soberly, and she looked very sad. She saw Thomas as the lover to whom she had been betrothed for many years; she forgot Manox and Derham and believed that she had loved Thomas always.
“Suppose that we had married when it was suggested a year or so ago,” said Thomas.
“How different our lives would have been then!”
“And now,” he said, “I risk my life to speak to you.”
Her eyes widened with terror. “Then we must not stay here.” She laughed suddenly. They did not know the King, these people who were afraid of him. His Majesty was all kindness, all eagerness to make people happy really. As if he would hurt her cousin if she asked him not to!
“Catherine,” said Thomas, “I shall risk my life again and again. It will be worth it.”
He took her hand and kissed it, and left her in the pond garden.
They could not resist meeting secretly. They met in dark corridors; they feared that if it reached the ears of the King that they were meeting thus, there would be no more such meetings. Sometimes he touched her fingers with his, but nothing more; and after the first few meetings they were in love with each other.
There was a similarity in their natures; both were passionate, reckless people; they were first cousins and they knew now that they wished to enjoy a closer relationship; and because, when they had been children, they had plighted their troth in the paddock of Hollingbourne, they felt life had been cruel to them to keep them apart and bring them together only when it was too late for them to be lovers.
Catherine had little fear for herself, but she feared for him. He, a reckless adventurer who had been involved in more than one dangerous escape, was afraid not for himself but for her.
They would touch hands and cry out to each other: “Oh, why, oh, why did it have to happen thus!”
She would say to him, “I shall be passing along the corridor that leads to the music room at three of the clock this afternoon.”
He would answer: “I will be there as if by accident.”
All their meetings were like that. They would long for them all day, and then when they reached the appointed spot, it might be that someone was there, and it was impossible for them to exchange more than a glance. But to them both this danger was very stimulating.
There was one occasion when he, grown more reckless by the passing of several days which did not bring even a glimpse of her, drew her from the corridor into an antechamber and shut the door on them.
“Catherine,” he said, “I can endure this no longer. Dost not realize that thou and I were meant one for the other from the first night I climbed into thy chamber? We were but children then, and the years have been cruel to us, but I have a plan. Thou and I will leave the palace together. We will hide ourselves and we will marry.”
She was pale with longing, ever ready to abandon herself to the passion of the moment, but it seemed to her that she heard her cousin’s voice warning her. Catherine would never know the true story of Anne Boleyn, but she had loved her and she knew her end had been terrible. Anne had been loved by the same huge man; those eyes had burned hotly for Anne; those warm, moist hands had caressed her. Anne had had no sad story of a cousin to warn her.
Culpepper was kissing her hands and her lips, Catherine’s healthy young body was suggesting surrender. Perhaps with Manox or Derham she would have surrendered; but not with Culpepper. She was no longer a lighthearted girl. Dark shadows came pursuing her out of the past. Doll Tappit’s high voice. “The cries of the torture chambers are terrible....”
Catherine knew how the monks of the Charterhouse had died; she could not bear to think of others suffering pain, but to contemplate one she loved being vilely hurt was sufficient to stem her desire. She remembered how Derham had run for his life; but then she had been plain Catherine Howard. What of him who dared to love her whom the King had chosen for his Queen!
“Nay, nay!” she cried, tears falling from her eyes. “It cannot be! Oh, that it could! I would give all my life for one year of happiness with you. But I dare not. I fear the King. I must stay here because I love you.”
She tore herself away; there must be no more such meetings.
“Tomorrow...” she agreed weakly. “Tomorrow.”
She ran to her apartment, where, since Anne had left for Richmond, she enjoyed the state of a queen. She was greeted by one of her attendants, Jane Rochford, widow of her late cousin George Boleyn. Lady Rochford looked excited. There was a letter for Catherine, she said.
“A letter?” cried Catherine. “From whom?”
Catherine did not receive many letters; she took this one and opened it; she frowned for she had never been able to read very easily.
Jane Rochford was at her side.
“Mayhap I could assist?”
