The Tudor Throne by Brandy Purdy Read Free Book Online Page A

occasion when I was allowed to stay up as late as I wished for some court celebration—“Oh do let her!” my flighty young stepmother implored, and my father was so besotted he could not resist her. As the dawn broke, Katherine Howard suddenly tore off her shoes and stockings, flinging them aside with careless abandon, not caring where they fell or whether the servants pocketed the pearls and diamonds that trimmed the dainty white velvet slippers, and ran out onto the lawn, like a great length of green velvet spangled with diamonds spread out by an eager London mercer, to dance in the dew in her bare feet, reveling in the feel of the blades of grass tickling her naked soles and tiny pink toes. She threw back her head and laughed and laughed, a silly, giddy girl taking joy in life’s simple pleasures, twirling dizzily round and round, lifting her pearl-white skirts higher and higher, much more so than was proper, as she spun around, while my father slapped his thigh and roared with laughter at her antics.
    “Come on, join me!” she cried, and some of the more daring ladies shed their shoes and stockings and ran out to dance with her, uttering delighted, startled little shrieks and piglet-squeals at the chilly nip of the dew on their naked toes.
    Beside me, my sister Mary gasped, appalled, and looked fit to fall down dead of apoplexy when our stepmother’s swirling white skirts rose high enough to give a glimpse of plump dimpled pink-ivory buttocks, but my father clapped his hands and laughed all the harder.
    Dressed most often in virgin white dripping with diamonds and pearls so that she looked like an Ice Queen, my father’s “Rose Without a Thorn” would sit, stroking her silky-haired spaniel or a big fluffy white cat, or idly twirling her auburn curls around her fingers, and daintily nibbling sweetmeats or languorously trailing her finger through some cream-slathered dish and lingeringly sucking it off, always appearing distant and bored, yawning and indolent, unless there was a handsome gallant nearby whom she could bat her eyelashes at and exchange coy, flirtatious banter with. Children and female company often seemed to bore her, though she was always kind to me. The only time she seemed to ever really stir herself was to dance, and oh how she loved to do that, artfully swirling about, high-spirited, young, and carefree, as she lifted her skirts high to show off her legs and garters, pretending it was an act of exuberant mischance when in truth it was carefully choreographed and practiced for hours before a mirror in the privacy of her bedchamber. I knew this for a fact, for she had offered to teach Mary and me, but Mary had gasped in horror and dragged me out the door as fast as if we were fleeing the flames of Hell.
    I noticed that a certain courtier, a particularly handsome fellow called Thomas Culpepper, had a most curious effect on her. Whenever he was near, a flush would blossom rose-red in Katherine’s cheeks and her bosom would begin to heave beneath the tight-laced, low-cut bodice of her gown until I feared her laces would burst and her breasts spring out, and until he left her presence she would act more distracted and empty-headed than ever. Once when I sat embroidering beside her and Master Culpepper came in, she bade me go and play in the garden as it was such a lovely day when in truth it was pouring down rain.
    Then she too was gone, like a butterfly fated to live only a season—her head stricken off just like my mother’s, only by an English headsman’s weighty, cumbersome ax; there was no French executioner with his sleek and graceful sword for my father’s “Rose Without a Thorn.” And Master Culpepper’s head, I heard, and that of another man, one Francis Derham, adorned spikes on London Bridge, to be pecked and picked clean by the avaricious ravens. And people began to tell tales about Katherine’s white-gowned ghost running along the corridors of Hampton Court, uttering