The Sixth Wife. Suzannah Dunn

when Charles was alive; I don’t understand why it’s been so much more tiring since he died. I said to Kate, ‘You should come and see me, stay with me.’

      She settled back in the bath, seeming to consider it. But she wouldn’t. I knew it, somehow. Something had changed – everything had changed – and willowy, light-footed Kate was somehow more solid; she was unbudgeable. It was me who was going to have to do the running from now on. She surprised me by saying, ‘If only you could just stay here for ever, you and the boys. I wish we all lived here, don’t you?’

      I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. It’s usual, isn’t it: that desire to share a new-found happiness. To feel blessed and thereby magnanimous, keen to spread your blessings around. I’d been like that when I’d just had the boys: I’d wanted everyone to have children; I’d wanted so badly for Kate to have children. It took me years to calm down on that score.

      Then she confided, ‘It wasn’t sudden, Thomas and I. It’s not been sudden.’

      I smiled at her: if you wish; whatever you say. No flash in the pan, was what she was understandably keen to imply. But even if it was sudden, I wondered, why assume that I wouldn’t understand? Me, of all people. Me, who knows all there is to know about sudden. Me, the girl who married Charles a mere three months after the death of his previous wife. Less sudden, yes, but still sudden, especially considering that the dead wife was the woman for whom he’d defied the king and risked the death penalty. Charles’s elopement with the king’s sister had been the love story of the century. And it really was; they did genuinely love each other. Then I came along, tripping along in the footsteps of everyone’s favourite, fairytale princess. That was difficult, that’s what difficult means. That was a scandal.

      No, it’s not the suddenness of it, I wanted to say as I smiled down at her: it’s Thomas; why Thomas? But I couldn’t say that, could I. Not then. Too late. It was done and dusted: she’d married him. And if she got wind of my distrust of him, she’d decide I should spend more time with him. So that I’d grow to like him, to love him. That was Kate all over: a plan of re-education for me. Well, I couldn’t be bothered with that; that was to be avoided.

      ‘I mean,’ Kate said, ‘he asked me to marry him before,’ and clarified, ‘before I married Henry.’

      Well. This was new. ‘But you were married to John.’ Before Henry had come John, and there’d been very little time in between them.

      ‘When John died.’

      ‘What, he just’ – I laughed – ‘came up to you and asked you?’ In passing? Because there couldn’t have been time for much else.

      She laughed with me – ‘No!’ – before turning contemplative. ‘No, no. We talked about it a lot, at the time.’ She smiled.‘He’s a surprisingly devoted sort. I mean, you wouldn’t think it of him, would you, but he waited for me.’

      Well, either that, or she was one of his options, the one to which he returned when he couldn’t get Elizabeth.

      ‘We talked and talked…And I couldn’t tell you, Cathy; it wouldn’t have been fair on you. Henry was around by then, making his intentions clear. You remember that. I couldn’t draw you into this mess. It was…frightening.’ She winced: ‘It was miserable. We could talk all we liked, Thomas and I, but there was no choice, really, was there. We all knew what Henry wanted, so in the end there was no choice.’

      True: if Henry asked you to marry him, there was no saying no. However much he made it sound like a question – and he’d have been careful to do that; he had his pride – there was no saying no to a king, particularly when that king was Henry. All that we’d stood for, Kate and I, was nothing in the face of Henry because he wasn’t a man but a king. And I suppose I’d assumed it hadn’t mattered all that much because, yes, it’d be unpleasant and quite possibly dangerous for Kate, but if anyone – any woman – was up to it, she was. And, crucially, it wasn’t going to be for long. She’d only have to be patient for a few years at most, taking what she could from the situation. Obviously it wasn’t without its compensations, being queen. But I hadn’t known that there was more to it, for her; that there was an actual loss involved. Not only had she had to take something on, but she’d had to leave something – someone – behind. Now, belatedly in on the secret, my heart throbbed for her. ‘You should have told me,’ I protested. ‘Since when have I cared about “frightening”?’Thomas, forgotten; it didn’t matter that it was Thomas. This was about Kate. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. You should never have had to go through that alone.’

      ‘Oh -’ She waved a hand, dismissive, weary. ‘I wasn’t totally alone. Anne knew, of course. And because Anne knew, Will knew.’

      Of course, of course: Anne, Will, her sister and brother. Family. A family which had then done very nicely from the royal marriage. As families always do. Don’t misunderstand me, I like Anne, Kate’s sister, very much;Will, too, but particularly Anne: we’re good friends. There’s no denying, though, that she and Will stood to do very well from Kate’s marriage to Henry. They were hardly impartial advisors.

      ‘I had to do it,’ Kate was saying, ‘and so I did do it, and I think I did it very well.’

      No question of that. ‘You did.’ Her motto, I remembered: To be useful in all I do. Useful to her family in this case certainly.

      I cut in: ‘Does she – Anne – know now?’ Of this marriage to Thomas.

      Kate nodded, a by-the-by nod.

      ‘And Will.’ It wasn’t a question, I already knew the answer, and indeed she didn’t bother to confirm or deny it.

      ‘I wish you’d told me.’

      ‘I did,’ she tried.

      That was disingenuous of her; I gave her a look.

      She relented a little. ‘You’re busy, Kate; you’ve the boys.’

      I didn’t relinquish that look.

      ‘I couldn’t have burdened you.’

      ‘Oh -’ Exasperation: words failed me.

      ‘And you…you tend to talk me round.’ She tried a smile.

      ‘Yes, and perhaps that’s why you should tell me what you’re up to.’

      I wasn’t sure what had just been said; I wasn’t sure, all of a sudden, where we were with this. Except that we were on uncertain ground.

      ‘You scare people, you know, Cathy.’ She was careful to make it sound good-humoured.

      I rolled my eyes: That’s nonsense, that’s ridiculous. ‘Everyone knows that’s just me.’ I speak my mind and I don’t give an inch. ‘The only people I frighten are the ones who deserve it,’ I said. ‘I don’t frighten you’

      She smiled; her knowing smile, the mysterious, infuriating one that she favoured when declining to go on, when putting a stop to something. I found her towel, handed it to her. Listen: the truth is that no one ever scared Kate, even if it suited her on this occasion to think otherwise.

      As best friends, Kate and I went back further than we could ever even know, to before we were born. Our mothers were very close friends. They came of age under the influence of the formidable queen Margaret Beaufort and the sparkling new Spanish one, and I’d often imagine their optimism as they came together over their books and in their debates and discussions, just as we, their daughters, were later doing. In our case, they were different books and ideas – our good catholic mothers would have turned in their graves if they knew – but they were books and ideas nonetheless. Excitement at the prospect that something of the world was understandable, if not open to change: that’s what we shared with our mothers. The discovery that there was a better life to be lived. For women. I have a feeling that our mothers would have