Traitors of the Tower Read Online Free Page B

But he was given a new lease of life by his young bride. He loaded her with gifts, petted her in public and showed all the signs of being in love with her. He could not do enough for her. In tribute to his love, she took the motto: ‘No other will than his.’
    Katherine enjoyed her new riches, the great palaces, the dancing, the fine gowns, the bright jewels and the sweet little lapdogs. Whether she was as pleased with her fat and ailing husband is not known. Rumours that Henry was impotent had been going round since Anne Boleyn’s downfall, but they may not have been true. Katherine also had to put up with the stink of his leg ulcers.
    Henry was happy in his marriage. He thought himself blessed. He believed he had found the wife of his dreams. He struck a gold medal on which Katherine was called his ‘rose without a thorn’. He thanked God for sending him such a ‘perfect jewel’. The whole realm was made to ‘do her honour’.
    Henry still hoped for an heir, and in April 1541, Katherine thought she was pregnant, but it seems she was not. It was as well, in view of what was to come.
    Silly Katherine had taken some of the Duchess’s servants into her household, those same servants who had seen her romping with Dereham. At least one seems to have got in by the threat of blackmail. Katherine even took Dereham on to work for her. Her love for him had cooled, though, and by the spring of 1541, she had begun a secret affair with Thomas Culpeper, her cousin. He was a member of the King’s Privy Chamber, and much liked by Henry.
    Taking risks with Culpeper was a stupid thing to do, given the fate of Anne Boleyn. But Katherine seems to have been heedless of the danger. Nor did she show much wisdom in falling for this young man, who had raped the wife of a park-keeper while his friends held her down. Then he had killed a man who had seen it all and vowed to report him. Culpeper had got away with it just because the King was so fond of him.
    Lady Rochford was one of these who had served the Queen. She was the widow of Anne Boleyn’s brother; it was she who had accused her husband and his sister of incest. Now she aided Katherine’s affair with Culpeper, keeping watch when they met in secret.
    When Henry took Katherine on a long journey to the north of England in the autumn of 1541, the lovers met as often as they could, even in a privy. Katherine would always ‘seek for the back doors and the back stairs herself’. Once, when the King came to sleep with his wife, he was kept waiting outside her door while Lady Rochford got rid of Culpeper. Katherine was putting herself in grave danger.
    Katherine’s past was revealed when Mary Hall, one of the Duchess’s servants, told Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, about it. Cranmer was only too willing to bring down the Catholic Queen Katherine. He wrote a letter to the King, setting down what he had heard, and left it in the royal pew, so that Henry would find it when he went to Mass. Henry read it, but did not believe it could be true. He asked Cranmer to find out more.
    When sound proof of Katherine’s shameless deeds was shown to Henry, he broke down in public and called for a sword to kill her. Then he ordered her arrest, and that of Lady Rochford. Katherine was shut in her rooms at Hampton Court and told that it was ‘no more the time to dance’. Legend has it that she broke free of her guards and ran to plead with Henry at the door of the Chapel Royal. It was said she knew that, if she could once more use her charms on him, he would forgive her. But she was dragged away, screaming, before she could reach him.
    Henry left Hampton Court a broken and aged man. Katherine would never see him again. It was said that he looked ‘old and grey after the mishap of the Queen’. He tried to soothe his grief by going hunting and eating rich food. He was now so fat that three men could fit into his clothes. A new law was passed making it treason for a woman to marry the