Free The Sixth Wife: The Story of Katherine Parr by Jean Plaidy Page B

stood beside her, towering above her. She felt his hot, sour breath on her cheek. “Do you like me, Kate?”
    How to escape him she did not know. She fell on her knees.
    “I am the most obedient of your subjects, Sire.”
    “Yes, yes, yes,” said Henry testily. “But enough of kneeling. Get up. Be done with maiden modesty. You have been twice a wife. It becomes you not to play the reluctant virgin.”
    “I am overwhelmed,” said Katharine, rising.
    “Then you need no longer be. I like you, Kate, and you shall be my Queen.”
    “No, no, Sire. I am too unworthy. I could not…”
    “It is for us to say who is or who is not worthy to share our throne.” He was losing patience. Now was the time for kissing and fondling, for that excitement which should chase away the ghosts he had conjured up.
    “I know it, my lord King, but…”
    “Know this also, Kate. I choose you for wife. I am tired of the celibate state. I was never meant to bear it. Come, Kate, give me that which I found but once and held so short a while before death intervened. Give me married happiness. Give me your love. Give me sons.”
    Katharine cried: “I am too unworthy, Your Majesty. I am no longer in my prime….”
    Henry stopped the words with a loud kiss on her mouth. “Speak up!” he cried. “Speak up. What’s all this you are saying?”
    Katharine cried in desperation: “If you love me then… then you must needs love me. But ’t would be better to be your mistress than your wife, an it please Your Grace.”
    He was overcome with horror. The little mouth was tight withoutraged modesty. “It pleases me not!” he shouted. “It pleases me not at all to hear such wanton talk. You are shameless.”
    “Yes, Sire, indeed yes, and unworthy to be your wife.”
    “You said you would be our mistress and not our wife. Explain yourself. Explain yourself.”
    Katharine covered her face with her hands. She thought of two women who had knelt on Tower Green, who had laid their heads on the block at the command of this man. They had been his wives. Already she seemed to sense the executioner beside her, his ax in his hand, the blade turned toward her.
    Henry had taken her by the shoulder and was shaking her.
    “Speak up, I said. Speak up.” His voice had softened. He was seeing himself now as he wished to see himself—the mighty, omnipotent King, whom no woman could resist, just as they had been unable to resist him in the days of his youth when he had had beauty, wealth, kingship and all that a woman could desire.
    “It is on account of mine own unworthiness,” faltered Katharine.
    He forced her hands from her face and put an arm about her. He kissed her with violence. Then, releasing her, he began to roar: “Here, page! Here, man! Call Gardiner. Call Wriothesley…Surrey…Seymour… call them all. I have news I wish to impart to their lordships.”
    He smiled at Katharine.
    “You must not be afraid of this great honor,” he said. “Know you this: I can take you up and lift you to the greatest eminence…and I will do it.”
    She was trembling, thinking: Yes, and you can cast me down. You can marry me; and marriage with the King, it is said with truth, may be the first step toward the Tower and the block.
    The courtiers came hurrying back to the chamber. The King stood smiling at them.
    He looked at them slyly, all those gentlemen who, a short time before, he had dismissed that he might be alone with Katharine.
    “Come forward!” he cried. “Come and pay your respects to the new Queen of England.”
    KATHARINE WAS IN her own apartments. With dry, tragic eyes she stared before her; she was trying to look into a future which she knew would be filled with danger.
    There was no escape; she knew that now.
    Nan, her faithful woman, had wept openly when she had heard the news. Katharine’s own sister, Anne Herbert, had come quickly to court. They did not speak of their compassion, but they showed it in their gestures, in the very intonations