The Sixth Wife. Suzannah Dunn

bring you some,’ he was saying. ‘How’s that: your own plateful, picked for you by Charlie’s fair hands and my own; served to you.’

      The notion was too much for them: hands fluttered to mouths, renewed giggling.

      Thomas was going to pick strawberries? Dressed like that? I doubted I’d ever seen a deeper green – how could so much colour have been worked into that silk? – and gold thread ran like fire across it. Those leaves around his ankles could have been made from paper, by comparison. Why was Thomas going to pick strawberries? Pick better, could he, than those bob-kneed, flutter-handed, well-practised girls?

      ‘So, go.’ He swooped, snatched their baskets. ‘Go!’

      And they did, delighted, their honey-coloured dresses twirling around their legs.

      Now, me: my turn. ‘Cathy.’ He was at a disadvantage, though, turned in my direction, his eyes screwed up against the sun.

      ‘Thomas.’

      He put the baskets down. ‘Men’s work, you know, strawberry-picking. No, don’t laugh.’ He did, openly, unafraid of showing those good teeth of his. ‘Back-breaking work. But the boys and I’ – mock-conspiratorial glance at the two boys – ‘are here to do our best.’ My son, on cue, grinned. At least he was still in the clothes he’d worn for travelling, not his best.

      ‘Good for the soul,’Thomas declared,‘strawberry-picking. Don’t you think? Couple of weeks a year: you need to act quick. I like that. Blink and you’d miss it, strawberry season. As if it’s a secret.’A lazier smile this time. ‘Reminds me, too, of being a boy: stealing them. I like that, too.’

      I nodded at the plants at his feet. ‘Except they’re yours.’ I addressed Charlie: ‘I came to see where you were.’ Charlie gave me a self-conscious shrug, And here I am. ‘And there you are.’ I turned to go, leaving him be. Clearly, he didn’t want saving. Then again, I doubted he’d last long; I’d be seeing him indoors before half an hour was up.

      Thomas said, ‘Not for much longer he isn’t,’ and told Charlie and his friend, ‘Cabbage leaves.’

      The boys – unsurprisingly – looked blank.

      I interceded: ‘Cabbage leaves?’

      ‘As many as you can get hold of – fistfuls; no mercy – before one of our gardener-girls chases you off.’ Thomas indicated a far corner of the kitchen garden, then knelt to begin examining the plants. ‘You’ve never tasted strawberries,’ he said to neither of us in particular, ‘if you haven’t tasted strawberries that have been wrapped in cabbage leaves.’

      Charlie dithered, unsure if this was a joke at his expense.

      ‘Wrap them in cabbage leaves as soon as they’re picked.’ Thomas glanced up at me. ‘Ever heard that?’

      ‘Never.’

      ‘French. It’s what the French do. Or so I was told. By a Frenchwoman of my acquaintance.’

      I did nothing or perhaps I did something – folded my arms, raised an eyebrow – but said nothing, because he, again, was the one who spoke: ‘I’ve always wanted to try it.’

      ‘Well, then,’ I said to Charlie, who immediately loped off, friend following, delighted to be in on something.

      Standing there, I realised how hot it was. There was no shade anywhere near. Sunlight slammed down. ‘You have cabbages here,’ I remarked. Not having the room in our kitchen garden, we have to have ours imported.

      ‘We have pretty much everything here.’ He didn’t look up, and he’d spoken faintly, his tone, it seemed to me, flat. So, I left him to it.

      Incidentally, he was right about the strawberries. Or his Frenchwoman was.

      Eleven

      

      After those two or three strawberry-season days at Kate’s, I didn’t see Thomas again for the best part of a year. I saw as much of Kate as before, though, or perhaps even more. Thomas was often away at Sudeley, supervising the renovations, and Kate would write: come and stay; or, could she come to me? I was at my London house most of the time: near to my Harry. Whenever Kate and I met up that summer or autumn, she appeared unchanged, or certainly less changed than she’d been in those first months of her marriage. It seemed to me, if I considered it at all – and I don’t think I did, I suspect I took it for granted – that I had my old Kate back.

      She had a project that autumn which kept us busy. Her brother – divorced – liked Lizzie Brookes: that was how Kate put it when she first told me. And Kate liked Lizzie. Well, we both did.

      No, she clarified, I mean he really likes her. This was new: this intrigued, knowing-eyed, matchmaking Kate. It would be so nice, she decided, if he could be happy.

      There was nothing new in her wanting to make someone happy, but until now it had always been about books. To make someone happy had been to find them the best tutor. But now, matchmaking.

      She had a point. Her brother had had romantic unhappiness in a spectacular fashion. The marriage that his mother had so carefully set up for him had gone bad; or, more accurately, had probably never been any good. Years into it, he discovered that his wife, Annie, had been having an affair. Wait: does that word – affair – do it justice? Put it this way: there was someone Annie loved, and that someone wasn’t Will. Someone who’d got there first, or at least before the marriage ever really got started. Will had been busy, in those years of his marriage, being a Parr, being the Parr, the heir; as Useful In All He Did as his sister was. In his view, he was doing the right thing. The problem was that he was in all the right places, and home wasn’t one of them. Two small children later, Annie upped and left.

      Suddenly nothing was as Will had believed. His loving wife wasn’t loving and wasn’t his. His children weren’t his: that was what he chose to believe. There’d be no Parr heir for whom all his hard work would pay off. And then there was the shame: never in short supply at court. Kate told me that Will shook, he babbled, his hands were freezing and his forehead burned. That was what she knew. What she didn’t know to start with was that he requested an audience with Henry to remind him of the official penalty for an adulterous aristocratic wife. To plead for it. When Henry broke the news to Kate, he said, ‘It is the penalty. Officially. That’s what it is.’ That was Henry all over: official when it suited him.

      ‘But…’ said Kate. Where should she start? But we’re civilised, we’ve moved on. But there was Henry raising those hands of his as if to say, My hands are tied.

      Kate knew what to do, of course. She knew not to argue with Henry. I’d never have been able to do that, but that’s why it was she who was his wife. She could do one better, too: she could praise him and sound as if she meant it. You’re the most forward-thinking ruler that has ever been, and perhaps above all you’re a man of conscience. Oh, and there’s the small matter of you being a man who understands women – how many of those are there? – so you know how we can be, funny creatures that we are. Something like that. It would have stuck in my throat but she was good, was Kate, she kept focused. In this case, on saving a woman’s life.

      Send her to me, was what she requested of Henry. For safekeeping. For now. Will’s sick, she told him, but he’ll get better…but not if he’s responsible for his wife’s death.

      That’s how she turned it around.

      Don’t – please – condemn him to that, she said. Send Annie to me.

      Ah, yes, Kate and her strays: Henry would have liked that. He liked to have a compassionate wife. In his opinion, women should be compassionate. And he should, of course, have the best, the most compassionate woman.

      So, it was Kate’s doing, and she seemed to have