Free The Queen's Mistake by Diane Haeger Page B

her from breathing. She stood before the mirror as Jane bound her hair tightly, drawing tears. A moment later, Jane placed the hood onto Catherine’s head as Catherine watched her own reflection in the mirror before her.
    “Perfect,” Jane proclaimed. “Now a bit of alum. Your cheeks are pale as flour.”
    “I’ve not yet worn color,” Catherine said hesitantly.
    “There are a great many things at court you have not yet done, my pretty little cousin,” Jane replied with a cryptic little half smile that faded quickly. “But Howards do them all sooner or later.”
    Jane went to the dressing table and selected a small silver pot from among the vials and bottles. Swiftly, she spun Catherine toward her, tapped a small bit of the contents onto each of her cheekbones, and rubbed it in roughly with each of her thumbs. “There now. You are presentable. We must go. We’re late as it is.”
    Catherine followed close at Jane’s heels, like a little dog, through the maze of rooms comprising the queen’s apartments. They passed meticulously dressed ladies lounging, laughing and chatting in low tones, all of them glancing up at her appraisingly without missing a beat. Clearly she was nothing to any of them.

    Finally they arrived before two liveried guards who still wore the black lion of Cleves as they stood ready. Jane nodded to them and, magically, the tall, carved oak doors were parted.
    Catherine noticed the aroma of the queen’s bedchamber before anything else. It was pungent, foreign. The grand room had few furnishings, save the massive oak bed, with the royal arms embroidered in silver onto its tester, and a row of chairs along the walls beneath huge, dark tapestries on heavy rods. As they crossed the carpeted floor and neared the bed, they passed by a large coterie of women and two men speaking in a clipped, guttural, foreign tongue. She felt her heart begin to race, and she wondered if she would understand them if they spoke to her, and if the new queen would be displeased that Catherine could not address her in her native tongue.
    There was a duo of ladies at the foot of the queen’s bed as she neared. The headboard bore the initials H and A above the year 1540 and was adorned with carvings of cherubs, one of them clearly pregnant. Catherine glanced over at the two women. She recognized them as her own half sister Isabel, Lady Baynton, with whom she was not close, and the fair-skinned, doe-eyed Anne, Countess of Hertford. As Catherine and Jane neared, the others instantly fell silent, glancing up guiltily, as if they had been speaking of her. Catherine felt her knees weaken further still.
    She was quite terrified.
    At the foot of the queen’s heavily carved bed, where the embroidered drapes parted, Catherine and Jane each made a deep curtsy.
    “This is her then?”
    The queen’s English was clotted, as if she had stones caught in her throat. Catherine realized that the aroma she had noticed upon entering the room was coming directly from the bed. A musky, odd perfume swirled around Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Although she was propped up against a row of overstuffed pillows, Anne of
Cleves appeared to be drowning beneath embroidered bedcovers and a heavy fustian nightdress and cap. Her corn-colored hair beneath the cap was straight and matted, like a cobweb, but after the memorable beauty of Anne Boleyn and the quiet elegance of Jane Seymour, it was her face, more than anything, that surprised Catherine. Although she did not want to have an unkind thought about the queen, she could not deny that the woman was ugly.
    She sat with a little pet marmoset on her lap, both of them eating apples and nuts from the same silver dish.
    When nothing but silence followed the queen’s question, Catherine dared to answer herself. “Your Grace, I am Mistress Howard,” she said in her sweetest and most dutiful tone.
    The queen looked up at her appraisingly in the awkward silence, as did the other women. A door clicked to a