The Sixth Wife. Suzannah Dunn

      I was shocked, to be honest. Which in itself shocked me. Because I’m unshockable, aren’t I? Everyone knows that. Yet there I was, feeling flushed and – deeper – chilled. That’s shock, isn’t it? But why? What on earth had I been thinking? That they didn’t sleep together? Newlyweds? Happy newly-weds? In truth, I hadn’t been thinking about it at all. There was so much else about them that was a puzzle. Was it, then, Kate’s mention of it that shocked me? Her direct mention of it? No, because sex wasn’t a popular topic of conversation with her, but it certainly wasn’t unmentionable. And, anyway, it wasn’t direct, what she said. But nor was it coy. I didn’t quite know what it was. An aside, a quip; it had felt like a brush-off. I realise, now, what it was that shocked me. It wasn’t what she said, but how she said it. As an aside, while she stood up and turned away. Allowing me a glimpse, but only so much, as if it were nothing of significance.

      It was something I thought about as I lay in bed that night. Kate, like me, had probably had only one lover. Three marriages, but probably only one lover.Ted, her first husband, had been too old; I remembered now that she’d told me, ‘There was none of that.’ I hadn’t known her really in those days, the brief time of Ted; not properly. ‘It wasn’t a bad life for a girl,’ was what she later told me about it; and indeed she was a girl – fifteen, sixteen – in those days, younger than her own stepchildren. Her next husband was John and he, too, was a lot older than she was, but he wasn’t too old. Come to think of it, when they married he was probably younger than Thomas is now. John and Kate were married for fifteen years. John had been her lover. And then Henry, the king: nothing much doing there. I’d wanted to know, of course; everyone had wanted to know, but she actually did tell me. He’d tried, was what she whispered; he’d tried, a couple of times, and then given up. She gave me a look, and I pulled a face, said, ‘Thank God,’ to which her response was nothing more than a wan smile. Because the less said, the better. Not that it was news in Henry’s case. Anne Boleyn had famously decried his stamina – it was one of the misdemeanours for which she died – and, frankly, the record had been poor since then, with his fifth queen, little Catherine Howard, too stupid to realise that it didn’t mean she could take her pleasures elsewhere.

      Pleasures. Me, like Kate: just the one lover. My husband. I bet people assumed that Charles and I were lovers for all twelve years of our marriage. Because we were clearly in love; because Charles was what they call a full-blooded man, a ladies’ man, he was so evidently all man; and because – I know what they think – I’m what’s known as hot-headed, headstrong, which is taken to mean hot-blooded.Well, people know nothing, do they. I spent the first couple of years of our marriage having babies. And then there I was, sixteen, with two babies under two. Enough, as far as I was concerned: I’d done my duty and was anxious not to get pregnant again. Really anxious. And Charles was anxious not to hurt me. I hadn’t recovered from the second birth, no doubt because I hadn’t healed from the first. Charles – much married, good at women – understood. And what they don’t tell you – unless they’re Anne Boleyn – is that the all-jousting type of man doesn’t actually have much energy left for the bedroom. Not when he’s over thirty, certainly.

      Charles must have considered that he was doing me a kindness by mostly leaving me alone and of course in a way he was. But months became years and then it had been so long – practically all my adult life – that I wouldn’t have known how to start if I’d had to. That was something I pondered that night: how had Kate known how to start, when it came to it? I had to conclude that Thomas – resolutely non-jousting Thomas – had taken the trouble to show her.

      Nine

      

      The day I set off back home from that first visit, Kate was up late and then at prayers, then talking with the girls’ tutor. Having sent word that I’d like to be fetched when she was free, I remained in my room and helped Bella pack up. Or tried to, but Bella’s too capable to need or probably even welcome my help. I had none of my own ladies for company; I’d come unattended, this trip – Joanna being due her first child, and Nichola having returned to her family home. I used the time to tackle some correspondence. When I finally got to Kate’s room, she was treating herself to a bath. Her ladies Marcella and Agnes seemed to have exhausted themselves preparing it, and were reclined on cushions by the fire, reading. I ducked through the canopies, brushing aside bunches of lavender, and there was Kate amid more lavender in a tub of deep oats-creamy water.

      ‘Bath time,’ I said, pointlessly – a mere envious purr – and she smiled in response, closed her eyes and smiled even wider. On a table beside the tub was a big brass bowl: she’d be washing her hair, then, too. In the steaming water, among the usual cinnamon and liquorice sticks and cumin seeds, were slices of lemon.

      I queried: ‘Lemon?’

      ‘It’s good. Lightens your hair.’ Her eyes sprang open. ‘Not your hair,’ she retracted. ‘Lightens light hair.’

      Yes: no good for me. Cloves and rosemary for me.

      ‘Do you really have to go?’ she asked.

      I pulled up a stool, sat. ‘Houses don’t run themselves, do they.’ I’ve an excellent steward – a legacy of Charles, who appointed well and inspired loyalty – but there’s only so much he can do, or is willing to do. There’s only so much that it’s fair of me to expect him to take on. I do the household accounts. More than a hundred people look to me, ultimately, to keep them fed and clothed and educated. All those people needing to be encouraged, placated and sometimes, unfortunately, reprimanded: ladies and gentlemen, senior members of staff and the servants who work under them, and all their children. In kitchens and storehouses, chapel, gardens, laundry, the farm and stables. Permission to be given and funds found for orders: four or six hundred oranges this month, and four hundred or five hundred eggs? Each head of department will know his or her own requirements, but it’s me who has to bring them together. We need barrels of soap for the laundry, but we also need soap for the kitchens and for our bedrooms. Wax for candles, of course, for the chandlery; but also for the laundresses, so that they can seal the edges of some of our clothes. We need bolts of fabric for me and the boys, and for our ladies and their children, and ushers and pages and maidservants; but we also need kitchen aprons and chapel robes, tablecloths, saddlecloths, blankets, curtains. And boots, the children have to be kept in boots: that’s