Chapter Text
Katherine is sitting at the desk in her bedroom, working on a project for school, when she hears a knock on her door. “Come in,” she says, and she smiles when she sees Jane standing in her doorway. “Hi Jane.”
“Hi Kitty,” Jane says, smiling back at her. “What are you working on, love?”
“It’s just for school,” Katherine says, turning her laptop around so Jane can see the screen. “We’re doing a group project for my English class about a book we read. We each got a different book and we have to do a presentation and lead the class in a discussion about it. I was a bit nervous, but Nia asked me to be in her group – the other girls in the group are really more Nia’s friends than my friends, I guess, but they’ve been nice to me too. And we have to do the presentation with a program on the computer – it’s called PowerPoint, and I didn’t really know how to use it, but Nia showed me, and she didn’t make me feel bad at all for not knowing how. And I’ve been exploring it, and you can do all kinds of cool things on it. You can put in pictures, and you can create special effects so when the slides change they do cool stuff like explode in fireworks, and you can even make the words on the slides be in 3-D or have rainbow colours. Look!” She clicks forward on one of her slides and shows Jane the fireworks effect. “Isn’t that neat?”
“It is, love,” Jane agrees. “And it sounds like Nia has been a really good friend to you.”
“She has been. I don’t really know why – I didn’t talk to her or anything. She just came up to me on the first day I was there and asked if I was new and I said I was and she said she’d show me around, and then she came and sat next to me the day after that too. She’s been really nice.” Katherine looks at the ground. “I’ve tried to be a good friend to her too…”
“I’m sure you have been, love,” Jane says gently. “Do you think you can take a break from your schoolwork for a bit? Cathy wanted me to come get you – she wants to talk to us all about something.”
“Did something bad happen?” Katherine asks, feeling her heartrate quicken at the thought.
“I don’t think so,” Jane says. “She didn’t seem upset. But she didn’t tell me what she wanted to talk to us about. She just asked me to come get you.”
“Okay,” Katherine says hesitantly. She closes her laptop, and she sticks close to Jane’s side as they head down to the living room where the other queens are gathered.
Anne and Catalina are sitting together on one of the couches. The other couch is empty, and Jane sits down on one side of it. Katherine hesitates, but then she sits down beside Jane – she’s still nervous about whatever Cathy might want to talk to them about, and being close to Jane makes her feel safer. Anna, who’s sitting on the armchair closest to the side of the couch Katherine is on, gives her a smile, and Katherine tries to smile back.
Cathy is standing authoritatively in the centre of the room, and once Jane and Katherine are settled in, she says, “I wanted to talk to you all today because I have an idea!” She pauses, apparently waiting for someone to ask her what her idea is, but the other queens just stare at her, and after a moment of awkward silence, she continues, “I think we should write a musical.”
More silence. The seated queens exchange glances with one another. Katherine starts to feel tense as she looks between the uncertain queens around her and Cathy, whose excitement is starting to deflate at the lukewarm response from the others. “I like musicals,” she finally says, in an effort to cut through the tension. Katherine has, of course, never actually seen a musical – they’ve only been back in this new life for about two months now – and Katherine isn’t quite sure what a musical is. But she wants Cathy to know that she supports her.
Cathy smiles gratefully at her. “Musicals are very popular,” she says. “I think it would be a really good way to – correct the record. Show people what our lives were really like.”
“You mean, a musical about our lives? Our past lives?” Anna asks.
“Yes! A musical that tells our stories, not Henry’s story. But us telling our own stories in our own words. And lots of people come to see musicals, because musicals are fun – so people could start to understand our side of the story, not just Henry’s.” Cathy looks around expectantly.
“What would we say about our lives, if we’re not talking about Henry?” Catalina asks.
Cathy shrugs. “That would be up to us – like, how we want history to remember us. What I want is for history to remember that I was so much more than just the sixth wife – I was a writer, I fought for women’s education, I promoted religious reforms, I brought Henry’s children back to court because I wanted to improve their lives. And I want people to understand that I didn’t have a choice of whether to marry him – none of us did, really. I want people to understand what it was really like to be a woman back then. What do you think you’d want people to know about you, Lina?”
Catalina thinks for a moment. “I would want them to know how committed I was to my faith…and how I stood strong even when Henry humiliated me, even when he wanted to get rid of me. I stood up for myself.”
Cathy smiles at her. “So you could write a song about that! What about you, Jane?”
Jane startles a bit at being put on the spot. “Well, I’m not sure.” She looks at her hands. “I know you said it shouldn’t be about Henry…but what if I wanted to write mine about how I felt about him? He was the first man who ever showed any interest in me…I did love him, I really did. I don’t know what else I could say…”
“You can write about that if you want to, Jane,” Cathy says gently. “If that’s what you want people to know about you. This would be about us taking back control and telling the stories we want to tell, from our own point of view – so if you want to sing about how you felt about Henry, you are certainly welcome to do that.”
Jane nods, still staring at her hands. Katherine leans closer to her and puts a hand on her shoulder. “I think whatever you write will be great,” she says loyally, and Jane gives her a small smile.
“I’m not very good at writing though,” Jane says.
“We can help you, if you’d like, Jane,” Anne offers. “We can all help each other.”
“We can,” Cathy agrees. “What about you, Anna?”
Anna shrugs. “I’d just write about my life at Richmond Palace, honestly. What I want people to know is that Henry tried to hurt me, but he didn’t succeed. My life was just fine without him in it.”
Cathy grins. “That sounds perfect, Anna! What about you, Katherine?”
Katherine wilts a little as everyone turns to look at her. “I…I don’t know.” She slides even closer to Jane on the couch, needing both the strength and the calm that Jane’s presence always transmits to her.
She doesn’t know what she can say about her past life, not to the other queens or to anyone else. She hasn’t spoken to any of them about what happened in her life Before, and she’s been grateful that none of them have asked, not even Jane. She’s even started to let herself hope that she might really, truly be able to leave the past behind and have a brand-new life without the shadows and the shame from Before chasing her down. Her new life has been good. She likes her school, and she’s even made a friend there. She likes the other queens – strong, regal Catalina; brilliant, charming Anne; kind, confident Anna; thoughtful, wise Cathy; and of course Jane, who has taken Katherine under her wing and become like a mother to her even in the eight short weeks they’ve been here.
Katherine has been so grateful for this fresh start – an opportunity to get to know the cousin she never met in her previous life, to get the education she was denied, to live her eighteenth year without the terror of a looming execution date, and, more than anything, to have a mother figure once again. Her own mother died before her fifth birthday, and her step-grandmother who she went to live with next was too busy with duties at court and managing a large household to really look after her the way she yearned for. And then Lady Rochford, who had become her closest confidante and mother figure at court, had been killed because of her.
Katherine has known from the beginning, much as she hoped to the contrary, that her days of happiness in this new life were numbered, that as soon as she spoke of Before to the other queens, she would lose them – including, and perhaps especially, Jane. She knows she’s only had these wonderful eight weeks under Jane’s wing because she’s lied to Jane, or at least omitted information she should have shared, information about Before that would have changed Jane’s opinion of her. She knows that everything that happened to her and to those she loved most Before was her own fault, and she knows that her past sinfulness has followed her into this life too.
She knows that as soon as she tells the others the truth about her sin, they won’t want her anymore. They will see how dirty she is, how evil she is and always has been. She wishes she could keep this a secret forever, bury her past for good. But she can’t. She has to tell them the truth. If the queens are really making a musical about their lives, they’re going to find about Katherine’s sin eventually. Better to tell them now, herself, rather than living in fear of them finding out and the inevitable explosion when they do. So she takes a deep breath and meets Cathy’s eyes, mustering the courage to speak the truth she’s tried to hide.
“I don’t know what I can say about my past life. I seduced four different men – the first was my music teacher, when I was living with my step-grandmother. He made me feel special…grown up…I let him touch me. And after him there was my step-grandmother’s secretary, Francis, and then the king, of course, and then…” This is the most shameful part. She can hardly bear to recount it, but she forces herself to press on. “And then Thomas Culpeper, who was one of the king’s courtiers. I seduced him, and I dragged my favourite lady, Lady Rochford, into it too. I made her arrange meetings for us. And then of course Henry found out, and he had me killed for it, and Thomas and Francis and Lady Rochford all too.” She looks around at the others. “I know it was wrong. I know I was very, very sinful. I know I deserved what I got –”
“How could you do that, Katherine?” Catalina breaks in, her voice and her gaze full of disgust.
Katherine shrinks back in her seat, but she doesn’t say anything. This is what she expected, and she knows she deserves it. She doesn’t dare shift closer to Jane, much as she needs the comfort right now.
“You were a whore. How could you do that to the king? Or to your family? Or to your own soul and risk eternal damnation? A girl’s body belongs to her husband and her husband alone; she is not to take any lovers outside of holy matrimony. And three different lovers –”
“She was young, Lina,” Anna says, but her voice sounds unsure. “But…there were three of them, Kätzchen? I thought only two…” Her voice trails off as Katherine nods miserably.
“She wasn’t young,” Catalina says, waving her hand dismissively. “Not too young to know better. I was married at fifteen, and I never took any lovers, even when Arthur couldn’t consummate our marriage…I knew my body belonged to him and no other man. And Cathy, you were married at seventeen. Henry’s grandmother was married at twelve. Katherine was not a child. She was responsible for her actions and was duly punished according to the law. Henry needed to set an example…a queen must be chaste above all others. An impure queen soils the crown and dishonours both her family and her nation.”
“Lina!” Cathy exclaims. “I think you might be missing the point of the musical – that’s what I want to show, what it was like to be a woman back then, what few choices we had. I don’t think Katherine deserved to die, no matter what she did. That’s what I want to show, how we were treated, how the laws of the king affected us, how our choices were limited –”
“We certainly had choices, Cathy,” Anne says scathingly, glaring at Katherine. “I didn’t sleep with four different men, contrary to what Henry claimed. I said no to the men who wanted me, and you better believe lots of men did. But I said no. I guarded my chastity and my honour, and I waited for the right time, until I had the promise of a ring on my finger. I saved myself for my king. As we all should have done.”
Katherine curls even further into herself at Anne’s words. She knows Anne is right, that she should have said no to Manox, to Dereham, to Thomas…it was all so confusing when it was happening, but if only she’d been as strong as her older cousin, clever enough to see where their attentions were leading and brave enough to stop them, to guard her maidenhead as she should have. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, Katherine,” Anne says. “You were a harlot and you got yourself and three others killed for it. What’s done is done.” She turns to Cathy. “I suppose the musical is off the table then. We certainly can’t do a show about that. It would feed all the stereotypes everyone already has about us – about me especially.”
“We’d all be tainted by her sin,” Catalina agrees. “I couldn’t stand on a stage with her in good conscience.”
Katherine finally works up the courage to glance at Jane, who has been silent throughout. Jane has slid away from her on the couch so that she’s curled against the other end, but…Katherine can’t bear to relinquish the last bit of hope inside her. Jane hasn’t said anything yet, so maybe, just maybe, she doesn’t think Katherine’s past crimes are unforgivable. Katherine’s eyes are wide with fear, shame, but also the tiny seeds of trust Jane has been planting for nearly two months now. She waits silently for Jane’s judgment.
Finally, Jane looks towards her, but even then, she doesn’t meet Katherine’s eyes – she’s looking more at the top of her head than anything else. “This is a lot to take in,” she says flatly. “I need to think more about it, Katherine.”
Katherine cringes as if Jane has slapped her. Because Jane is calling her “Katherine” and not “Kitty,” the affectionate nickname she alone uses to express her love, Katherine knows she has her answer. It’s exactly as she feared. Jane sees how dirty and sinful Katherine is, how her unnatural lust and her foolishness led to her death and the deaths of three others. Jane doesn’t want Katherine as a daughter anymore, and Katherine certainly can’t blame her.
“I’m sorry,” Katherine says again, directing her words to Jane this time. Jane won’t look at her.
Katherine glances around the room at the queens she thought were her friends – no, her family. They are each staring at her with expressions ranging from aghast to contemptuous. She ruined her family in her past life, and it seems that she’s ruined her family in this life too. She wishes she could melt into the ground with the weight of her shame. Her chest aches with it.
“I think…I think I should stay somewhere else tonight,” Jane says after a moment. “I think I need some space with my thoughts.”
“I’ll help you pack, Jane,” Catalina offers, and Jane nods with gratitude, making Katherine’s chest tighten even further.
As Catalina and Jane walk away, Katherine knows that she has driven away yet another mother figure with her sin.