Of course, our cousin the queen gives Katherine a magnificent funeral. How she does love a funeral, especially family! Katherine is buried in the village church at Yoxford, far from her home, far from the resting place of her mother, far from her husband’s family chapel; but Elizabeth orders the court into mourning and manages to paint into an expression of grief on her false face. Seventy-seven official mourners attend from court, along with a herald and court servants; Katherine’s arms are displayed in the chapel on banners, pennons, and banderoles. Everything that can exalt a Tudor princess is done for her. Katherine in death is recognized and honored, as in life she was persecuted and ignored.
Elizabeth does not allow me to attend. Of course not. She only loves her heirs when they predecease her. The last thing she wants is someone pointing out that if Katherine was a Tudor princess then her little sister is one too—and the last of the line. The last thing she wants is a live cousin, especially when she is ostentatiously mourning a conveniently dead one. My stepgrandmother is allowed to say the farewell to Katherine in death that she was forbidden in life, and she goes and comes back very somber and says that it is a tragedy of her life that she has to bury children.
I stay in my room in a fury of grief. I can hardly breathe from grief at the loss of my sister and my hatred for the queen. I hardly eat: the household has to persuade me to take something once a day at least. I think it would matter not at all if I were to die for I could not say good-bye to my sister nor can I care for her children. I cannot be with my husband nor care for his children. Elizabeth has made me as lonely as she is, an only child as she is, an orphan as she is. I think her heart must be as small as mine, her imagination stunted to the age when her mother died and nobody knew who she was. I may be small but I am not—as she is—deathly petty.
I think I will not even get out of bed until my lady stepgrandmother taps on my door and says: “We have a visitor. Will you not come out to my presence chamber, and see who has come to see you?”
“Who?” I ask sulkily, not stirring from the pillow.
She puts her head around the door with a little smile, the first I have seen for a month. “Sir Owen Hopton, Katherine’s keeper, has come to see you. He took Katherine’s boy Thomas Seymour to join his brother and grandmother at Hanworth. He took her wedding rings and messages to Ned Seymour. And now he has come to see you.”
I throw back the covers and jump down from the bed. My maid comes in behind my grandmother with my little gown and sleeves and hood. “Ask him to wait, I am coming,” I say.
My lady grandmother leaves me to hurry into my clothes and follow her into her presence chamber. A tall weary man is standing before her, his cap in one hand and a wineglass in another. On the floor near the door is a box and a tall muffled cage. He puts down the wine and the cap and bows as I come in, his hand on his heart.
“Lady Mary,” he says. “It is an honor.”
I recoil as he kneels to me as if I were a queen. “Please get up,” I say.
“I am so sorry for the news I bring,” he says, getting to his feet but stooping so that he can see my face. “I learned to love and revere your sister in the short time that my house was blessed with her presence. Both my wife and I were very grieved at her death. We would have done anything for her. Anything.”
I see that I have to put my own grief aside to answer him. The death of a princess is not the same as a private loss. “I understand,” I say. “I know you could have done nothing to save her.”
“We did everything we could,” he says. “We made sure that she could eat. She had no appetite but we served her from our own kitchens, though there was no money provided for her delicacies.”
The thought of Elizabeth’s vindictive penny-pinching sets my teeth on edge but I smile up at him. “I am very sure that she found a kind final home with you,” I say. “And if I should ever come to happier times myself, I will not forget that you were kind to my sister.”
He shakes his head. “No, I seek no reward,” he says. “I didn’t come for thanks. To know her was to know a great lady. It was a privilege.”
It is a bitter joke to think what Katherine would make of her ascent to greatness. There is no one but her who would share the sour wit with me. I can only nod.
“I have brought you some of her things,” he says. “Her husband, the Earl of Hertford, said that I should bring you some of her books, a Bible and some grammars. The earl said you should have the Italian grammar that was dedicated by the author himself to your oldest sister, Lady Jane Grey.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“And I brought you this,” he says a little more shyly. I see my lady stepgrandmother’s gaze go to the cage at the back of the room.
“Not the monkey!” she says.
For the first time in weeks I feel that I could laugh, however inappropriate the occasion. While everyone will remember the tragedy of my sister, I will also remember her silliness and her charm. That her executor should make his sorrowful way around England with a box of books and a caged pet is so typical of the young woman, who was such a mixture of grand passion and funny whims.
“What do you have for me?”
“It is the monkey,” he says, with one eye on my lady stepgrandmother, who audibly says: “Absolutely not!”
“We really can’t keep it ourselves, and the Duchess of Somerset said that she would not have it at Hanworth.”
“And I won’t have it here!” my grandmother insists.
He pulls the cover off the cage and there is Mr. Nozzle, sad-faced as always, seated in a corner, like a little pagan god, shivering at the cold welcome. I swear that when he sees me he recognizes me and comes hopefully to the door, making a little gesture with his black-tipped fingers as if to turn a key.
“There now, he knows you. He hasn’t wanted to come out since his mistress died,” Sir Owen says encouragingly. “He’s been pining for her like a Christian.”
“Nonsense,” comes from my stepgrandmother’s great chair, but she does not forbid me opening the cage and Mr. Nozzle—an older and I think sadder Mr. Nozzle—comes out with a bound and jumps into my arms.
“I will keep him if I may?” I turn to her.
“You girls!” she says, as if Jane and Katherine and I are still children together, begging for unsuitable pets.
“Please!” I say, and I hear Katherine’s voice in mine. “Please, he will be no trouble, I promise.” I remember a sunny day in Jane’s bedroom and Katherine refusing to put him out of the door, and lying about his lice.
“Well, keep him,” she says indulgently. “But he is not to tear things, or make a mess in my rooms.”
“I will keep him clean and tidy,” I promise her. I can feel him take tight hold of my thumb in his little hand, as if we are shaking on an agreement. “She did love him so very much.”
“She had a loving heart,” Sir Owen remarks. “She had a very loving heart.”
Someone has trimmed his little jacket with black ribbon so he is in mourning for the young woman who loved him. His sorrowful eyes look at me, and I tuck him into the crook of my arm.
“What of her cat and dog?”
His downcast face droops farther. “The cat is old now, and lives in our stable yard. They’re not loyal, you know. I didn’t think to catch him and bring him.”
“No,” my stepgrandmother says hastily. “Indeed no. We don’t need another cat.”
“And the little pug, Jo . . .” he hesitates.
“You’ve never brought her, too?”
“Alas, I couldn’t,” he says.
“Why?” I ask, but I think I know.
“She was at the bed all through Lady Katherine’s last days. She never left her side, she never ate. It was a little miracle. Her ladyship said that she should have her meat put down on the floor of her bedchamber. She noticed her little dog; she did not forget her, even while she was preparing herself for God.”