Free Catherine Howard by Lacey Baldwin Smith

his words she made it cruelly evident that she no longer had any use for him, and she did not hesitate to tell him so to his face. Manox was abashed and murmured as an excuse that he ‘was so far in love with her that he wist not what he said’. Mistress Catherine was as quick to pardon as to anger, and she was seen the following Saturday walking with him in the Duchess’s orchard, ‘they two alone’. 60 Though she was incapable of holding a grudge, the affair from Catherine’s point of view was over, for a far more exciting suitor than a mere country-bred music teacher now made his appearance.
    Francis Dereham, a young gentleman of birth and substance, was one of the Duke’s gentlemen-pensioners, one of those feudal vestiges of the days of liveried retainers whom a few of the great magnates still retained. He was young, he was handsome, and he was well bred, and Catherine Howard fell before his manifest charms. Exactly when Dereham began to haunt the Dowager’s Lambeth residence is not recorded. He was merely one of the many young gallants who were attracted to the ‘maidens’ chamber’, and at first his attentions were directed not towards Catherine but to Joan Bulmer, another of the young ladies of the household. 61 In theory, the door to the girls’ dormitory was locked every night, but this evidently constituted only a trifling barrier. The lock could be picked, athletic lovers could climb the lattice, or the maidens themselves could steal the key from the Duchess’s bedchamber, once she was safely asleep.
    It was not Catherine’s decision alone to turn the dormitory into a rendezvous for young lovers; there were other ladies equally interested in having a secret and uninterrupted hour with the gentleman of their choice, and years later Catherine stubbornly insisted that the door was unlocked ‘as well at the request of me, as of others’. 62 Alice Restwold, her bedmate, seems to have been particularly adept at arranging entry into the women’s quarters, while more than one lady-in-waiting was charmed to co-operate in making her bedchamber available to the eligible gallants of the neighbourhood. The only element in the least remarkable about the whole arrangement was the fact that word of what was going on did not percolate down to the Duchess sooner. The girls evidently took the view that what their elders did not know would not hurt them, and there seems to have been a singularly successful conspiracy of silence maintained for a considerable period of time. How many of the young men in service with the Duke or with the other noble households of the area availed themselves of the pleasure of an evening with the Dowager’s maidens it is impossible to say, but the two names that have been preserved are those of Francis Dereham, esquire, and Henry Manox’s cousin, Edward Waldgrave, esquire. 63
    It is not difficult to reconstruct what occurred during those months between 1537 and 1539 when Catherine became so fatally involved with her lover. The maidens generally retired early, while their admirers, loaded with delicacies left over from banqueting in the great hall below stairs, would insinuate themselves into the communal bedchamber. ‘Wine, strawberries, apples, and other things to make good cheer’ were served at these midnight sessions, and careful arrangements were worked out lest a suspicious Duchess make an unexpected visit, for there was always the ‘little gallery’ into which the young men could hide if taken unawares. 64 From clandestine feasting to secret love-making was only a short step, and Dereham and Waldgrave would lie upon their mistresses’ beds, making the most of the quiet hours before dawn. That Catherine became Dereham’s paramour is indisputable, but it is far from clear how long the alliance lasted. Later, Catherine insisted that they had been ‘carnal lovers’ for only a quarter of a year – presumably during the autumn and winter of 1538, but a rather exaggerated rumour