Be respectful to your elders and betters, she insisted. Never waiver in that, never be tempted for a single moment to think that you’re quicker-witted or clearer-eyed than your elders and betters, because once you start that, you’ll never be able to stop, and no one’s interested in clever girls. Wittiness never got a baby to sleep, or a draper paid.
Make sure you’re always looking neat and tidy and clean, she’d say, but other than that, don’t worry about your appearance. You’re not bad-looking, as it happens, she’d tell me, but looks fade before you know it, and then what are you left with? Beauty draws the eye but for all the wrong reasons. Keep your eyes down, Catheryn. Don’t look at boys. Don’t even look. Don’t get distracted. Don’t let any silly girls fill your head with talk of romance. Girls can be very silly, Catheryn, when they haven’t had what you’ve been lucky enough to have: a proper upbringing. It’s a silly girl who gets her head turned. Get your head turned, she said, and you’re lost.
You’re no one’s fool, she’d say to me, and there was something in how she said it that suggested it was a secret between us and, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, not an entirely comfortable one. A burden, almost, perhaps.
There was such a lot to remember about how I should be; I worried I’d never remember it all, let alone one day actually manage to be it. None of this would ever have been said to Katherine: she had no mother to say it and, because she’d been born into England’s principal family, there was no need anyway for it to be said. And so she came unencumbered to the duchess’s; whereas for me, my mother had spoken so compellingly that, in my mind’s eye, I could see the woman I was to strive to become, the calm and capable, well-loved and much-valued lady, warm-hearted and cool-headed. She was a wonderful prospect, that lady, but always at a distance from me; such a distance that she seemed to have nothing to do with me, striding away into the future, and when I arrived at the duchess’s I didn’t know if I’d ever keep up or even ever dare take a step in her direction.
All that talk at home of the Howards’ wealth, but when, on my journey from home to the duchess’s, the leading rider called back that we’d arrived, I assumed we were stopping off somewhere for an overnight stay of which I hadn’t been informed. We were approaching a timber gatehouse, behind which was a moat and what appeared to be a jumble of barns. Hours earlier, we’d ridden away from the family home that my father had had built: a symmetrical, brick-built house gazing big-windowed over formal gardens. Clattering over that old drawbridge, I craned enquiringly towards my old nursemaid, Mrs Kent, but received only a smile in return. The drawbridge took us to a porters’ lodge, beyond which was a courtyard like a farmyard: a flock of ewes being shepherded across it, and a dozen or so labourers yelling and hammering, hauling and slamming down plough-shafts, scythes, cartwheels and crates.
A couple of labourers took our horses, and a liveried man arrived to greet us, requesting that we accompany him. Duly, we tottered across cobblestones, avoiding the smears and dollops of dung. The man’s grey jerkin had a subtle shimmer to it. My own servants were dressed in a flat, glaring blue. Someone wealthy, then, was staying here: a party from the duchess’s, perhaps, to meet us and then take us on with them in the morning to her splendid, elegant house. I asked Mrs Kent, ‘Where is this?’
‘It’s where the duchess lives.’ She sounded surprised that I’d asked.
I was weary from the ride, lacking patience. Servants will believe anything, I’d been told often enough. ‘No, it isn’t,’ and I laughed to muffle my irritation.
She laughed, too. ‘Yes, it is.’
Poor old Mrs Kent, I felt, who knew so little of the world.
We and our handful of attending men followed the well-dressed servant down a passageway into a courtyard which, to my relief, was serene. This, then, was where people lived, although I noticed that the windows, which were unshuttered, had linen in the frames instead of glass. Still, the place would do for an overnight stop, and, anyway, I was won over by the rich aroma of roasting meat. The servant ushered us through vast double-doors into a hall: a Great Hall, no less, the hammerbeam roof holding its decorative detail - coats of arms and sparring beasts - high above us, and the walls fortified by tapestries, their silken characters wan and fey among vines and waterfalls. The room could’ve come from stories that Mrs Kent used to tell me: stories of knights and damsels. No doubt this place had once been home to a noble family. Our own Hall was merely a room in which our staff put up a couple of tables at mealtimes for themselves and anyone visiting on household business, while my mother and I dined in the privacy of an adjacent parlour. This old Great Hall, although as yet deserted apart from a skulking wolfhound, was about to seat perhaps as many as a hundred people at several long tables: we’d stumbled upon a feast. At the far end, up on a platform, a linen-bright table bristled with silverware. ‘The duchess’s table,’ Mrs Kent whispered, delighted. She’d know, I realised: she was old enough to have grown up in just such a house. Was this the duchess’s house, then? It was impressive in here, but barely over the threshold was that farmyard with its mud and flies and indignant livestock. I would have to get word to my parents: they should know that the duchess had been misrepresented. We’d been tricked, hoodwinked. My mother’s plans for me didn’t include my growing up in a house no better than those of which she’d spoken as haunting her own childhood, the olden times before the coming of our bright new king and his subjects so keen to make better lives for themselves.
Distraction, though, came in the form of the household steward who blundered in, twinkly-eyed and bulbousnosed, to introduce himself - ‘Mr Scully’ - and, having apprehended the hound, congratulated us on arriving just in time for supper. I wondered whether I’d be sitting with any of the other girls. My mother had told me there were four other girls in the duchess’s care but she didn’t know exactly who they were. She’d explained to me that any who weren’t Howards - daughters, instead, of family friends - were in the household to be companions to those who were: that was how it worked, she’d said, as it had for hundreds of years in all the important households. Which, though, I now wondered, was I - family or friend? My parents considered me to be a blood relation of the duchess’s, but, standing there in that huge old room, stroking a hound whose collar was embroidered with the Howard coat-of-arms, the relationship seemed so tenuous as to be negligible.
Nothing in how the duchess addressed me was enlightening on the matter. She’d followed her steward; I hadn’t known whether to expect personal word from her but suddenly there she was, stepping from behind rotund Mr Scully to express polite concern for my welfare after the journey. I’d know now to describe her as a handsome woman: lean, with strong features, the most striking being her bird-black eyes. At the time, her silvered hair had me thinking of her as old; in fact, she probably wasn’t even fifty. Wiry and brisk, she wore a gown of serviceable fustian and her fingers were stained with berry-juice. Presumably she’d come from the kitchen or still-room.
The girls were a further surprise: I would never have guessed them to be my companions if they hadn’t been introduced as such, on their way into supper. I’d been anticipating composed, exquisitely dressed young ladies; but these were wide-eyed girls in barely passable worsted. Alice, Dottie and Mary were about my own age and Maggie looked to be a couple of years younger. To my relief, no distinction was made as to whom was related to the duchess, and all four were ushered to places on the high table, as was I.
Supper was plain fare - bird pie - which was welcome after the ride, and, as soon as we’d finished, the steward’s wife - dumpy and smiley like her husband, but much younger - asked the girls to show me to their bedroom, waving us off with her babe-in-arm snatching at her coif. On the way across the courtyard to the staircase, the girls buzzed around me, full of questions. Their concerns were my horse at home — her name, her temperament — and whether I had brothers and sisters, and what was the latest I’d ever stayed up. I’d been anticipating serious-minded young ladies with firm marriage plans in place, ladies about to step up into their future lives; and