The Tudor Triangle

Chapter 19 To Sunningwell

Friday 13th, September 1560

Katherine kicked her horse into a frantic gallop, leaving Tom behind.  The reins were gripped in clenched fists and the horse's back gleamed with sweat. Tom would catch up. He had shown no signs of acknowledging the fury she was in and his calmness just accentuated her anger.  So she rode in front.

After a hurried meal at the Angel she had insisted that they should ride back towards Sunningwell. What was the point of staying in Buntingford any longer?  She had not found a single scrap of evidence to implicate Dudley in Amy's untimely death.  Even worse, she had not been aware Amy had overheard the gossiping servants talking about Elizabeth and Robert in Throcking. She wished Sarah had never told her. Amy had known that all of England, from the scullery maid to the court ladies, were whispering that her husband and the Princess were lovers. It must have caused her so much anguish. This revelation heaped more hurt upon Katherine's tender grief.

She barely spoke to Tom on the road back to Dunstable.  He had cut her to the core, to suggest she could be angry with dear Amy.  It was Robert she was angry with, him she blamed. It was Robert Dudley she hated. Tom was wrong. But she was unsure what she could now do. It seemed the inquest would be found in Dudleys favour, as he was using all his considerable power and influence to determine this was so. No-one in his service would speak out against him as their livelihoods depended on keeping quiet, her visit to Throcking had proved that. How could they betray their own families by condemning their generous benefactor? She was starting to feel defeated by the Dudley warhorse. He seemed unstoppable. Goliath was winning and may be crowned King of England yet.

There was a dull, leaden feeling starting to sweep over her. It was as if she couldn't feel anymore. She had started to forget Amy's face, was it as round as she remembered? Or was it more an oval shape?  Katherine tried to recollect the exact shade of her eyes and couldn't. It terrified her. If she didn't have her memories, then all those happy days would be lost forever. Amy was her sole refuge in an unfriendly world, to forget how it felt to be held by her was torture. The rack would be no less painful. She had no picture of Amy. The only one she knew of was in Robert's keep, she had seen it just once. A miniature of her on her wedding day, filled with youth and optimism. She had been one year older than Katherine was now. She had let that naive girl down. The girl who had gone to be married so happily.  The woman who had saved her life.

She felt so alone in Elizabethan England.  She knew she had to go back to Sunningwell. Tom needed to return and she to gather the things she had left there. Her belongings included; clothing, Amy's last sheet of writing and her jewels that should give her some kind of subsistence.  She needed to say goodbye to Mary and thank her for all she had done for her too. Then, she must leave Sunningwell, she had caused enough trouble as it was. But she still did not know where to go.  

She could not go back to Norfolk to her birth family. She often thought fleetingly of the many brothers and sisters she had left behind. But the family had already been broken at the beginning, fractured by the anger of their father.  She knew her brothers and sisters were glad when the anger had been directed against her, as it was a respite from his striking fist. She could not blame them for this. But it meant they were not close siblings, for in a way they each wished the other harm. Her father seemed to hate her more than the others, maybe he blamed her for her mothers death?  But that would mean he was capable of love, of loving her mother. Then why didn't he love Katherine, what did she lack? It was an uncomfortable thought, much easier to see him as a drunken monster. 

It was nightfall when they neared Dunstable again, the rolling Downs loomed. She slowed to a walking pace. Around the town there were illegal settlements of vagabonds so that they often had to ignore pleas for charity or to buy wares.  She was even glad to have Tom with her as the beggars clawed at her feet, with desperation in their sunken eyes.  The plundered Priory church dominated this landscape. Tom had told her when they stopped there one night ago, that Bishop Cranmer had declared the marriage of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII over at this very place.  Master France was still obviously sorrowful of the direction England had taken since.  He still saw Catherine of Aragon as the only true wife that Henry VIII had ever taken, the other five he remarked wryly were 'unfortunate.' He did not wear his Faith lightly, Tom France. Priory church had been dismantled just twenty years past and, like Abingdon Abbey, had now been stripped of most of its riches.  Katherine could tell that it obviously pained Tom to see these once mighty Catholic buildings now lying wasted and ruined. But she was too resentful of him to soothe him in any way.