The Countess of Rutland glanced at me quickly. “She is the King’s enemy, Your Majesty.”

“What has she done?” I wanted to know.

I noticed that the Countess looked a little nonplussed.

“She … er … she has conspired against the King. She was in league with her son. Your Majesty will remember Cardinal Pole. He is the King’s enemy… although the King once gave him his affection.”

“But what were they quarrelling about, and do they need to keep that poor old lady in the Tower? She must be nearly frozen at night. It is very cold there, and does she get enough to eat?”

I saw that look on her face which she tried to disguise. She thought I was a little idiot who did not know when it was safer to leave things alone.

I could see I was not going to get very much information from those around me except from Jane Rochford, and, as I could not stop thinking of the poor lady’s discomfort, I went to Jane for information.

“That would be Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury,” said Jane. “It must be over a year since she was sent to the Tower.”

“So she has been there all through the winter! Oh poor, poor lady!”

“Indeed yes, but then she is the daughter of the Duke of Clarence, and you know who he was.”

I waited expectantly.

She raised her eyebrows, as though to express her amazement at my ignorance, and to remind me that, although I was the King’s wife now, the same intimacy remained between us as always had. I would not have had it otherwise. I did not want her to shield me from the truth, as the others tried to.

“The Duke of Clarence, Majesty”—she used the title with a certain levity—“was the brother of Edward IV and Richard III, so you see his daughter might be a little watchful of the throne. What do you think of that?”

“Go on,” I said.

“The real trouble is, of course, her son, the Cardinal Pole. There was a time when the King was quite fond of him. He paid for his education and looked after him generally. The Cardinal is a very clever man. It was the matter of the divorce from Queen Catherine of Aragon that came between them. Like Wolsey before him, Cardinal Pole did not see the matter as the King wished him to. So the rift began, and when the Pope made Reginald Pole a cardinal, there was real trouble. It would have been the Cardinal’s head that went … if he had been here. Tempers ran hot. The King was determined to wed Anne Boleyn.”

“And the Countess?”

“They say she was conspiring with her son, who was on the Continent.”

“Was she?”

“That is not for me to say. But the Poles are very close to the throne … too close for comfort.”

“I feel so much for her that I cannot forget her. Not so long ago, she was in her comfortable home, and suddenly there she is … in that place, with only jailers to attend her. She will suffer greatly from the cold … and does she get enough to eat, think you?”

“I doubt it. It is the lot of prisoners.”

“Jane, I know what I shall do. I shall have them make something for her … by the seamstresses. A nightgown furred against the cold … some shoes she will need. Stockings. They will help to keep her warm.”

“The King’s enemy …” began Jane.

“Need the King know?”

“What, deceive His Majesty so soon after the marriage!”

“Oh, Jane, do not be silly! It is not really deceiving. It is just not telling.”

“Well, all you have to do is smile sweetly, tell him how wonderful he is and that you adore him, and he will be at your feet.”

I smiled complacently.

“Send for the seamstresses,” I said. “We will begin at once. That poor lady shall no longer freeze in that dreadful Tower.”

Jane obeyed, and in a very short time I was able to send the Countess two nightdresses—one furred—together with hose and boots.

Jane entered into the scheme and was a great help. She was most excited and I wondered whether it was because she really cared about the comforts of the Countess, or because she felt it to be a rather dangerous undertaking, assisting a prisoner who was in the Tower by order of the King.

I was not afraid. If he heard of it, he would only smile, I was sure. Perhaps he would ask me jovially why I was sending comforts to his enemy, to which I would answer that I was so happy in the love of the King I could not bear to think that an old lady was in such discomfort.

Nevertheless, although it was probable that many knew what I had done—for the Queen’s actions, however small, were certain not to go unnoticed—nothing was said.

There were other matters to claim the King’s attention. A certain John Neville had started a rebellion in the North of England. I was with the King when the news of this was brought to him. I had never seen him in such an angry mood, since news of the slander the priest of Windsor was uttering against me had come.

He banged his fist on the table in an excess of fury. I cried out in alarm, but on this occasion he had no thought even for me.

“This,” he cried, “is that fellow Pole’s doing!”

He was on his feet, shouting. He strode to the door. He gave orders. There was an immediate Council.

I did not see Henry all that day, and when I did, he was preoccupied. I managed to soothe him a little. I listened to him. I sympathized with him while he shouted that he would subdue those Yorkshire oafs. It was of no great moment, but he was a sad man.

He was in a mood of self-pity.

“Katherine, I have given my life to this country. Is it not an amazing thing that there should be those of my subjects who can be so ungrateful?”

“It is,” I soothed. “When you have given your life to them.”

He took my hand and held it.

“You understand, do you not? You see how I suffer through these ungrateful people?”

“Oh I do, I do.” He kissed me.

“It was the happiest moment of my life when I looked across that table and heard you singing my song,” he said.


* * *

Sir John Neville was soon suppressed

“They had not a chance,” Jane told me. “They were defeated before they started. They will soon be wishing they had never been born.”

The King said: “I have an unhappy people to govern. I could reduce them to such poverty that they would not be able to rebel.” His face hardened and took on that cruel look which always made me uneasy.

I must see the parade of the prisoners with him. As they passed, I watched that cruel smile on his face. They were taken to the Tower from whence they would be taken to Tyburn, where they would be hanged and taken down before they were dead, to suffer that which I could not bear to contemplate.

It came to my mind to ask the King to spare them, but even I knew that would be folly. I must remember that I dare not go too far. So I saved myself in time from begging for their lives.

The King was happier that night. He was quite sentimental about his care for his people and how misguided they were to attempt this rising. It was all a matter of the Church again. He was the Head of the Church now, but there would always be those who would question it … until they saw the folly of it, as these men now did.

“It is this fellow Pole who is behind it,” he railed. “I was fond of him. I cared for him. I paid for his education.” There were tears in his eyes. “It was my conscience. His mother is the daughter of the Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward IV; and my mother, Elizabeth of York, was the daughter of that Edward, that King. You see how closely we are linked. It was the marriage between my mother and my father that united the Houses of York and Lancaster. Alas, men are ambitious. Reginald Pole could not forget that he was descended from Edward IV and Richard III. I even suspect him of having had his eyes on the throne. A King’s lot is not always a happy one, Katherine. I know you have thought it is. You have seen the pageantry, the pomp and the feasting. But it is not always so. Then I need my Katherine to soothe me … not a woman who will argue of this and that, but one who will be there to comfort me, to take my mind away from the wearisome matter of governing. Do you understand that, wife?”

I nestled against him. “I understand that I always want to give you what you want.”

He was happy then. The rebels of Yorkshire were all in the Tower. Tomorrow there would be the spectacle of their execution.

Neville would be taken back to York. He should perish where he had started the trouble, that the people might see the fate of those who turned traitor to the King.


* * *

There was a sequel to the Yorkshire rising. The Countess of Salisbury was sentenced to death.

I was horrified. I had thought of her comfortable in her furred nightdress, and considered how delighted she must have been to receive it. And now she was to die.

I was not so foolish as to think I could plead for her. I knew the King would give me a great deal if I asked it, but I had glimpsed his rage at the very mention of Reginald Pole, and I knew I must not stretch his indulgence too far.

As was my habit, I tried to forget what I did not want to hear, but it was difficult to banish thoughts of the Countess from my mind. I felt an urge to know what she felt about the manner in which she was being treated. I talked to Jane Rochford.

“It is reported that she has declared she has committed no crime,” she told me.

“Is it true that she was not involved in the Neville rebellion?”

“It is what she says. But many will tell you that the revolt was supported by Reginald Pole, and she is his mother, so it is very likely that she helped her son. Ever since the King broke with Rome, there have been those who are for the King and others who cling to the Pope, and Cardinal Reginald Pole most naturally supports the Pope.”

“Then she is guilty,” I said

“She declares she is not. But she would, would she not?”

“But if she is innocent, she must not be executed.”

“She is certainly guilty of being in the royal line.”

“Oh, Jane, you make the most daring statements!”

“I only say them to you. It is because I speak to you as I would to myself. You must forget what I have said as soon as I say it. It is because I am so close to you.” She added, with a grin: “Your Majesty.”

“Jane, I wonder how right you are.”

“We can only wait and see.”

“Be careful, Jane.”

“Your Majesty must be so, too. Remember, what a Majesty says can mean more than the words of a simple lady-in-waiting. Forget not who sent clothes to her. That could be a rash act … more than making a remark as to whether she is guilty or not.”

But Jane did look a little subdued. I think she was wondering whether she had gone too far.

The following day the Countess walked out from the Tower to Smithfield Green, which was close by.

The Lord Mayor, with several other prominent Londoners, came to witness the end of the Countess. The block was a low one and no scaffold had been erected. The Countess prayed for the King, the Queen and the young Prince Edward. She also spoke movingly of the Princess Mary, whose governess she had been, and whom she had openly supported when the King was trying to divorce her mother in order to marry Anne Boleyn. The poor Countess had not had a happy life since that time, and this was largely due to her opposition to the King’s wishes. And now … she had come to her death. Having said her prayers, she held her head high and, standing by the hastily erected scaffold, she announced to the watchers that she was condemned to die as was the fate of traitors.

“But,” she said in louder tones, “I am no traitor, and if you will have my head, you must win it.”

I could not believe this when Jane reported to me. She was romancing, as she could do at times.

“It was a moment of horror,” Jane went on. “The headsman caught her and dragged her to the block. He could do no other. Was he not acting on the King’s orders? He forced her down. She was weak. Do not forget, she had spent a year in the Tower. He struck. The first blow missed her neck. So he hacked again … and again and again … until he had her head from her shoulders.”

I covered my face with my hands. “It was not so! It was not so,” I cried. “I do not want to hear.”

“I was not present,” said Jane. “But that is the tale as I heard it.”

And if that account of the Countess’s death was not exactly accurate, there was no doubt that something similarly horrific had occurred. People crossed themselves when they spoke of it. The King would not have it mentioned in his presence. The woman might have been royal. Her son might be a traitor. But, for the comfort of all concerned, she was best forgotten.