The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife by Carolly Erickson Read Free Book Online Page A

demanded that I tell him who I saw there and what I did. When I protested he grew angry, then begged for me to relieve his misery and assure him that he was the one I loved. He and no one else.
    Begging and demanding, wheedling and arguing and sulking: it wearied me, and before long I could not help noticing that there were more good-looking, younger, more pleasing men in my grandmother’s large household—and in Joan’s private chamber.
    Then one afternoon, when once again Henry and I were alone in the duchess’s chapel, I in my scanty shift and Henry untrousered and bare-buttocked, the chapel doors burst open and I heard a young woman’s voice.
    “They’re in here, grandmother. I saw him go in. He went first, and then she came a little while later.”
    “Charyn!” I cried.
    Henry made a sound I had never before heard him make, between a wail and a screech.
    “Where are you?” I heard my grandmother call out angrily. “Come out from there!”
    In a moment Charyn had come around behind the altar and was staring at us, one hand held in front of her mouth.
    “Here they are! He’s got nothing on!” And she began to giggle.
    Henry scrambled to cover himself, snatching up the altar cloth and holding it in front of his nakedness. I picked up my skirt and held it at my waist, so that it fell around my legs.
    “Come out at once, I say!”
    I was trembling. Would grandmother beat me? Would she send me away? I cared nothing for Henry’s fate.
    I came around from behind the altar, Henry following me. There stood Grandma Agnes, her face tight and frowning, her lips pressed together.
    “Please, I beg you, milady, do not tell my wife about this!”
    A scornful guffaw from the duchess, more giggling from Charyn.
    “Put your breeches back on and get out!”
    Henry hesitated.
    “If milady pleases, I am still owed payment for music lessons—”
    There was cold fury in grandmother’s eyes. Henry was silenced. He groped for the rest of his clothes and his boots, then struggled out.
    “So! Jocasta’s daughter has come to grief! She is a little whore, just as her mother was a great whore!”
    A protest rose to my lips but I managed to suppress it. I glared at Charyn, who looked very self-satisfied.
    “Traitor!” I hissed at her. “Tattle-tale! Goody-goody! Killjoy!”
    Grandmother was pondering, while staring at me coldly. Once again I began to tremble.
    “You could send her to the kitchens,” Charyn suggested. “To be a turnspit.”
    I’d like to turn you over the fire, I thought. Miserable traitor! False friend!
    “Are you with child by that fellow Manox? Tell me the truth!”
    “No, grandmother. I am still a virgin.”
    “Hah! And I’m the Mother Superior of this convent! I warn you, girl, don’t lie to me or I’ll have you beaten until your head is soft as a boiled apple!”
    She looked me up and down.
    “Drop that skirt!” she ordered. I obeyed. Then, “Take off that shift!”
    “But I have on nothing underneath.”
    “Take it off at once!”
    I had not felt embarrassed before, only afraid. Now my modesty rose to hinder me—though why it should, given what had just happened, I couldn’t imagine.
    “I cannot.”
    “What did you say?” I had never before seen my fierce, commanding grandmother look incredulous.
    “I cannot, for shame.”
    Her gaze narrowed.
    “Are you deformed then?”
    “No, grandmother.”
    “Because if you are deformed, you will be sent to Saint Frideswide’s at once.”
    A girl had come to Horsham only a short time before, a distant Howard relation, and she had suffered from a palsy. She shook and quivered. She was sent at once to the convent of Saint Frideswide’s.
    “I am not deformed. I am merely shamefaced.”
    “Except in front of Master Manox.”
    I thought quickly.
    “He forced me to meet him, to allow him liberties. He said that if I did not, he would kill my father.”
    It was a lie. Henry had never threatened to harm my father, and I had always met him