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referred to Hastings, and she was angry enough at the potential embarrassment to break into the dowager’s rooms again, steal the letter, and take it straight to Francis, who agreed that Henry Manox must have written it, perhaps with the help of one of his friends. Apparently, Manox had wanted to ruin Dereham without ruining his own chances with Catherine. True to form, Francis was almost as angry as the dowager, if for very different reasons. He found Manox and proceeded to hurl insults at him.28 The two men may have been friends before, since one of Francis’s complaints was that the letter proved Manox had never loved him or Catherine.

      Arguments about who had incited the wrath of the dowager eventually reached the ears of Lord William, who was irritated by the atmosphere in the house and went to Manox’s accommodation to add a second dose of criticism, rather awkwardly bringing the news up in front of Manox’s wife. William was unimpressed by Manox’s churlish troublemaking, as he saw it, and perhaps by the abuse of his position in flirting with Catherine. He was equally bored by the gossiping about it in the maidens’ chamber and the he-said-she-said resulting from the dowager’s discovery: ‘What mad wenches!’ he said. ‘Can you not be merry amongst yourselves but you must thus fall out?’29 Lord William’s anger understandably frightened Manox more than Francis Dereham’s. Not long after the contretemps, Manox left the dowager’s service to work for another family in Lambeth.30 In regards to the temporarily strained environment in the house, Catherine’s glamorous aunt, the countess, was more sanguine when the scandal broke: the only advice she gave her niece was that staying up too late would ‘hurt her beauty’.31

      While Catherine’s guile and Francis’s bravado saved them and their friends from the worst of her relatives’ suspicions, they were so obviously obsessed with each other that the dowager eventually noticed.32 She may actually have been the last person in the house to know – even John Walsheman, the dowager’s elderly porter, realised before she did.33 Years of being told to look at Catherine, to watch her and defer to her, meant that almost everyone in the household knew what their mistress’s granddaughter was doing. The grooms who worked in the dowager’s chambers knew what was going on, which was unsurprising given that their female colleagues, the dowager’s maids (known as chamberers), including Dorothy Dawby, who was carrying messages and gifts between the lovers, and the disapproving Mary Lascelles, who had recently been promoted from the nursery, were also aware of the situation.34 The dowager’s other maids, Lucy and Margery, were talking about the affair, as was the maid Mistress Philip, who brought the news to her mistress, the Countess of Bridgewater.35 Catherine’s uncle William and his wife, Lady Margaret Howard, also knew, with Margaret apparently spotting the obvious signs of infatuation and discussing it with her husband, whose fondness for Dereham prevented him from reacting aggressively or from inquiring too closely into what was happening.36 Andrew Maunsay, another servant, remembered later that ‘a laundry woman called Bess’ knew about the liaison too – an oddly specific memory which raises the possibility that Catherine needed a laundress who could clean her sheets more often than usual, without telling the dowager.37

      Since aristocratic households kept secrets with the same discretion as a modern workplace or high school, perhaps what was most remarkable about Catherine’s summer romance in 1538 was that nobody else tried to inform the dowager about it after Manox’s botched attempt to exact revenge. Catherine benefited from the affection she inspired in many of those around her, while those who did not care for her, such as Mary Lascelles, were too afraid to spill her secrets to the dowager. The duchess’s suspicions were only confirmed one afternoon when she walked in on Catherine and Francis wrapped in each other’s arms, chatting with Joan Acworth, who was acting as Catherine’s woefully inept chaperone. The last time she had caught Catherine in an embrace, the dowager had slapped her. This time, her blows fell with a more democratic energy – she punched Catherine, Francis, and Joan, then launched herself headlong into a tirade.38 Back in her rooms, she raged to her sister-in-law and companion, Malyn Tilney. Malyn seemed to know or suspect what was going on with Catherine, but chose tact over honesty in dealing with Agnes’s anger and apparently encouraged her belief that what she had just witnessed was the worst of it. Eventually, the dowager calmed down and contented herself with comments that evolved from acid to arch to accepting and finally to amusement. When anyone asked where Francis was, she replied with comments in the vein of ‘I warrant if you seek him in Catherine Howard’s chamber ye shall find him there.’39

      The fact that Dereham, like Manox before him, was able to keep his job was a poor reflection on the dowager’s acquittal of her position as a guardian. Properly, either he would have been dismissed or Catherine would have been sent to stay with another relative until the infatuation had passed. Agnes may have failed to act out of a desire to avoid embarrassment for herself – after all, how could she explain the problem without admitting her own dereliction of duty? She was anxious that none of the other girls should breathe a word about it to Catherine’s uncle William and confided these worries to her chaplain, Father Borough.40 At what point she figured out that one of William’s own servants, and his wife, had passed on the household gossip about Francis and Catherine is unclear. For quite some time she seemed to believe, or chose to, that it was only a mutual crush that would soon blow over. Katherine Tilney, who slept in the maidens’ chamber, stated later, and stood by her testimony, that the dowager duchess never knew the relationship had been consummated or that there was talk in the house of the couple making it to the altar.

      Francis encouraged the idea of a wedding. When a friend asked him if he would ‘have’ her, meaning marry her, Francis replied, ‘By St. John you may guess twice and guess worse.’41 The gifts passing between the couple took on a domestic character. Catherine gave him bands and sleeves for a shirt; at New Year’s he gave her a gift of a heartsease, a wild pansy with yellow and purple markings, crafted from silk for her to wear. Dereham was with her almost constantly; they nicknamed each other ‘husband’ and ‘wife’, and he lounged ‘on one bed or another’ to talk to her in the maidens’ chamber and constantly brought up ‘the question of marriage’.42 When his friends teased Francis about how he could not kiss Catherine often enough, he bantered back by asking why he should not kiss his wife. According to her own recollections a few years later, Catherine did not correct him but instead winked and whispered, ‘What if this should come to my lady’s ear?’

      She was still careful to keep the details from her grandmother. She would not wear the lovely silken flower until she persuaded a family friend and visitor, Lady Eleanor Brereton, to tell the dowager that she had given the bauble to Catherine as a gift.43 The silk flower was a token Catherine appreciated, and she wanted more. Catherine’s love of clothes and fashion developed, although like most young unmarried girls from the same background, she had almost no money of her own. She had enough pocket money to go to Mrs Clifton, a housewife in Lambeth who embroidered for her one of Francis’s shirts that he had received as a present from the dowager at New Year’s. When Francis told her about a hunchbacked lady in London who was said to be a skilled needlewoman, particularly with silk, Catherine was so keen to commission some pieces that Francis offered to lend her the money to buy another silk flower. At a later date, he bought her the fabric she wanted to make a new headdress. He considered it a gift; Catherine intended to pay him back. She took the cloth to the diminutive Mr Rose, her grandmother’s embroiderer. Trusting in his good taste and perhaps not too interested in the precise details beyond securing the desired colour and fabric, Catherine did not give Rose specific instructions beyond what kind of hat she wanted. When it was ready, she regretted

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