“I declare, Manox,” said the Duchess on one occasion, “you are too stern with the child. You do nothing but scold!”

They would laugh at that when she lay in his arms in her bed with the curtains drawn. Catherine, though a child in years, was highly sexed, precocious, a budding woman; over-excitable, generous, reckless, this affair with Manox seemed the high spot of her life. He said he had loved her ever since he had first set eyes on her; Catherine was sure she had loved him ever since her very first lesson. Love was the excuse for everything they did. He brought her sweetmeats and ribands for her hair; they laughed and joked and giggled with the rest.

It was the Duchess who told Catherine that she was engaging another woman in place of Isabel.

“She is from the village, and her name is Dorothy Barwicke. She will take Isabel’s place among the ladies. She is a serious young lady, as Isabel was, and I feel I can trust her to keep you young people in some sort of order. I’ll whisper something else to you, Catherine . . . We really are going to Lambeth ere the month is out! I declare I grow weary of the country, and now that my granddaughter is in truth the Queen . . .”

She never tired of talking of Anne, but Catherine who had loved to hear such talk was hardly interested now.

“Imagine poor old Katharine’s face when he took Anne to France! If ever a king proclaimed his queen, he did then! And I hear she was a great success. How I should have loved to see her dancing with the French King! Marchioness of Pembroke, if you please! I’ll warrant Thomas—I beg his pardon, the Earl of Wiltshire—is counting what this means in gold. Oh, Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, who would not have beautiful daughters!”

“Grandmother, will you really go to Lambeth?”

“Don’t look so startled, child. Assuredly I shall go. Someone must assist at the dear Queen’s coronation. I feel sure I shall be invited, in view of my rank and my relationship to Her Majesty the Queen.”

“And . . . will you take the whole household?” asked Catherine, her voice trembling. But the Duchess was too absorbed by her thoughts and plans for the coronation to notice that.

“What foolish questions you ask, child! What matter . . .”

“You would take your musicians, would you not, Grandmother? You would take me?”

“Ah! So that is what you are thinking, is it? You fear to be left out of the excitement. Never fear, Catherine Howard, I doubt not the Queen your cousin will find a place at court for you when you are ready.”

There was no satisfaction to be gained from the Duchess; in any case she changed her plans every day.

“Isabel! Isabel!” said Catherine. “Do you think the whole household will remove to Lambeth?”

“Ah!” cried Isabel, who in view of her coming marriage was not interested in the Duchess’s household. “You are thinking of your lover!” She turned to Dorothy Barwicke, a dark woman with quick, curious eyes and a thin mouth. “You would think Catherine Howard but a child, would you not? But that is not so; she has a lover; he visits her in our bedroom of nights. He is a very bold young man, and they enjoy life; do you not, Catherine?”

Catherine flushed and, looking straight at Dorothy Barwicke, said: “I love Henry and he loves me.”

“Of course you do!” said Isabel. “And a very loving little girl she is, are you not, Catherine? She is very virtuous, and would not allow Manox in her bed an she did not love him!”

“And, loving him,” said Dorothy Barwicke, “I’ll warrant she finds it difficult to refuse his admittance.”

The two young women exchanged glances, and laughed.

“You will look after Catherine when I leave, will you not?” said Isabel.

“I do not need looking after.”

“Indeed you do not!” said Dorothy. “Any young lady not yet in her teens, who entertains gentlemen in her bed at night, is quite able to look after herself, I’d swear!”

“Not gentlemen,” said Isabel ambiguously. “It is only Manox.”

Catherine felt they were mocking her, but she always felt too unsure of all the ladies to accuse them of so doing.

“I shall expect you to look after Catherine when I have gone,” said Isabel.

“You may safely leave that to me.”

Catherine lived in agony of fear while the Duchess set the household bustling with preparations for her journey to Lambeth. She talked perpetually of “my granddaughter, the Queen,” and having already heard that she was to attend the coronation—fixed for May—was anxious to get to Lambeth in good time, for there would be her state robes to be put in order, and many other things to be seen to; and she hoped to have a few informal meetings with the Queen before the great event.

Catherine was wont to lie in bed on those nights when there were no visitors to the dormitory and ask herself what she would do were the Duchess to decide not to take Manox. Catherine loved Manox because she needed to love someone; there were two passions in Catherine’s life; one was music, and the other was loving. She had loved her mother and lost her; she had loved Thomas Culpepper, and lost him; now she loved Manox. And on all these people had she lavished unstintingly her capacity for loving, and that was great. Catherine must love; life for her was completely devoid of interest without love. She enjoyed the sensational excitement of physical love in spite of her youth; but her love for Manox was not entirely a physical emotion. She loved to give pleasure as well as to take it, and there was nothing she would not do for those she loved. All that she asked of life was to let her love; and she was afraid of life, for it seemed to her that her love was ill-fated; first her mother, then Thomas Culpepper, now Manox. She was terrified that she would have to go to Lambeth without Manox.

There came a day when she could no longer bear the suspense. She asked her grandmother outright.

“Grandmother, what of my lessons at Lambeth?”

“What of them, child?”

“Shall Henry Manox accompany us, that he may continue to instruct me?”

The Duchess’s reply sent a shiver down her spine.

“Dost think I would not find thee a teacher at Lambeth?”

“I doubt not that you would, but when one feels that one can do well with one teacher. . . .”

“Bah! I know best who will make a good teacher. And why do you bother me with lessons and teachers? Dost not realize that this is to be the coronation of your own cousin Anne!”

Catherine could have wept with mortification, and her agony of mind continued.

Manox came often to the dormitory.

“Do you think I could ever leave you?” he asked. “Why, should you go to Lambeth without me I would follow.”

“And what would happen to you if you so disobeyed?”

“Whatever the punishment it would be worth it to be near you, if but for an hour!”

But no! Catherine would not hear of that. She remembered the tales Doll Tappit had gleaned of Walter the warder. She remembered then that, though she ran wild through the house and her clothes were so shabby as to be almost those of a beggar, she was Catherine Howard, daughter of a great and noble house, while he was plain Henry Manox, instructor at the virginals. Though he seemed so handsome and clever to her, there would be some—and her grandmother and her dreaded uncle the Duke among them—who would consider they had done great wrong in loving. What if they, both, should be committed to the Tower! It was for Manox she trembled, for Catherine’s love was complete. She could endure separation, but not to think of Manox’s body cramped in the Little Ease, or rotting, and the food of rats in the Pit. She cried and begged that he would do nothing rash; and he laughed and said did she not think he did something rash every night that he came to her thus, for what did she think would happen to him if her grandmother were to hear of their love?

Then was Catherine seized with fresh fears. Why must the world, which was full of so many delights, hold so much that was cruel! Why did there have to be stem grandmothers and terrifying uncles! Why could not everybody understand what a good thing it was to love and be loved in this most exciting and sensational way which she had recently discovered!

Then Catherine found the world was indeed a happy place, for when she left for Lambeth in her grandmother’s retinue, Manox was in it too.

Lambeth was beautiful in the spring, and Catherine felt she had never been so completely happy in her life. The fruit trees in the orchards which ran down to the river’s brink were in blossom; she spent whole days wandering through the beautiful gardens, watching the barges go down the river.

With Manox at Lambeth, they were often able to meet out of doors; the Duchess was even more lax than she had been at Horsham, so busy was she with preparations for the coronation. Anne visited her grandmother, and they sat together in the garden, the Duchess’s eyes sparkling to contemplate her lovely granddaughter. She could not resist telling Anne how gratified she was, how lucky was the King, and how, deep in her heart, she had ever known this must happen.

Catherine was brought to greet her cousin.

“Your Majesty remembers this one?” asked the Duchess “She was doubtless but a baby when you last saw her.”

“I remember her well,” said Anne. “Come hither, Catherine, that I may see you more closely.”

Catherine came, and received a light kiss on her cheek. Catherine still thought her cousin the most beautiful person she had ever seen, but she was less likely to idealize, because all her devotion was for Manox.

“Curtsey, girl!” thundered the Duchess. “Do you not know that you stand before your Queen?”

Anne laughed. “Oh, come! No ceremony in the family . . . No, Catherine, please . . .”