Catherine’s hand shot out to receive them.
“If you please,” Drywood hesitated. “There are two that I was given instructions to put into the hands of the king.”
“I am his wife,” Catherine shot back at once. “Man and woman is one flesh; therefore, you may give them to me. I am also your queen.”
Silenced, Drywood handed over the parcel and bowed.
Enfolding the letters in her sleeves, Catherine did not look at them, but held them close to her chest. Her face was a pale mask. Without another word, she turned and headed back to the gardens, but this time she made for the walled space, where an arbour had been created in a sheltered spot. The first roses were beginning to bud through the white and green railings, and the trees were florid and sweet. Intuitively, Thomasin shut the door behind her, then joined Catherine.
Catherine was sifting through the papers. “There are many to me,” she observed, “from friends, ambassadors, enemies. One for Maria, one for Ellen, two for Gertrude and two for Thomasin.”
She distributed them in turn. Excitedly, Thomasin received the folded pages, yellowed from their journey, recognising the Marwood seal with its crescent moon and single star. These letters had come all the way from Suffolk. She was itching to tear them open and read their news, but as she had learned, she could not do so without direct permission.
But Catherine was staring at her hands.
“What is it?” asked Maria, at her shoulder. For a long time, Catherine did not move.
“Letters for my husband,” she replied at length, holding them between finger and thumb.
Thomasin strained to see the seal and the handwriting, wondering who might have sent them. Were they official business or personal? She flushed at the thought and the awareness that followed. Letters from Anne. They must be.
Ellen had also realised who might have written them. She caught Thomasin’s eye with a warning look.
With a deft gesture, Catherine tucked the letters inside her bodice. “And here,” she smiled, lifting another folded sheet to the light, “is the one I have been awaiting. From Ludlow.” She looked up, seemingly refreshed. “You may read your letters now.”
It was well-timed. Forgetting Catherine’s dilemma, Thomasin hurried away towards the sheltered corner of the walled garden. Here, the plants were coming back to life, with new green shoots opening their leaves, buds bursting on branches and the bushes were red-tipped in the sun. Yet Thomasin saw none of this. The outside world entirely faded away. Her eyes were only for the letter, as she cracked open the seal and carefully unfolded the sheet. It was written in a close, neat hand that she recognised as belonging to her elder sister, Cecilia.
The last time Thomasin had seen her sister was when she’d waved her goodbye in November. Two years older than Thomasin and beautiful with her ice-blonde looks, Cecilia’s intended marriage to Henry Kytson had fallen through after her dalliance with William Hatton, which had been encouraged by Anne Boleyn. She had passed the winter quietly at Eastwell, amid the Suffolk fogs and snow, mending her broken heart, and Thomasin wondered how it had changed her.
Cecilia wrote that she was well and so were their parents. She had spent much time with the younger children, reading with twelve-year-old Lettice and teaching Alice her letters, who had just turned six. Digby now had a tutor, an older man, a Mister Glasford from Cambridge, who had moved into the village. He was teaching Digby to become “a real little gentleman scholar” wrote Cecilia, describing how they would translate passages of Greek in the morning and ride through the fields in the afternoons, sketching the plants and creatures they observed there. Baby Susanna was weaned and had spoken her first words.
The park was awakening, Cecilia added, and the walkways were pink with blossom. Thomasin felt a pang as she read this, for spring had always been her favourite season. This time last year, she had been walking in those very avenues as the petals fell into her hair, dreaming of court, never imagining she would find herself at Hampton or Windsor.
Thomasin turned the page. Cecilia had written of her sewing, her walks to the village, of fresh milk from the dairy, a trip to the market at Bury St Edmunds and a new dress from a bolt of sky-blue cloth. She had said little else about her family.
Thomasin turned to the second letter. She recognised her father’s wide, generous hand and broke open the seal expectantly. Richard assured her all was well; her mother’s health was improving daily and she was able to ride out in the carriage. He was negotiating with a neighbour to purchase a field adjoining their land to the north, to fill with sheep. The king, he added, had sent them the gift of a stag he had killed whilst hunting, which would feed them for many days.
Thomasin frowned. A gift from the king? Yet her father mentioned nothing about being at Westminster recently. Was there a chance that Thomas More had been mistaken? Or did her father not want her to know what business he was about?
She looked up. Catherine was still reading. Maria Willoughby was sitting beside her, listening patiently as Catherine read out sections from her daughter Mary’s letter.
Thomasin searched for Ellen. Her cousin had walked away to the far end, beyond the stone sundial, and stood on the distant path with her back to the others. Something in her bearing suggested deep emotion. Refolding her own letters, Thomasin walked swiftly through the lines of green, yellow and white, to the shady spot.
“Ellen?”
When her cousin turned, Thomasin saw that she was struggling to fight off tears.
“What is it?”
Ellen sighed and drew in her breath, unable to speak at first.
“Bad news?”
“From Barnaby,” she managed.
Ellen had left her husband Barnaby last autumn, when it had been revealed that he had made her sister pregnant. Thomasin had never liked her self-important, pompous male cousin, whose talents fell far short of his conceit. He had not appreciated the vivacious Ellen, who had improved so much since being at court, shaking off her country ways.
“He is still in the north?”
