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The Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life
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Katherine Howard: A very short history (506 words), of a very short queen (four feet, eight inches) who had a very short reign (18 months)
by Julie Keitges


In the early summer of 1541 Great Harry rode north with a company that at first appeared to the Yorkshire people as an invading army. But he was only come to celebrate and spread largesse. He had beheaded, hanged, or burnt all the rebels seven years before. Now he dined on game of every type that ran or flew before him. And he forgave his hosts and guests for their past or imagined transgressions at each feast on his progress.
     An old man of fifty, as round as the fattest pig, as great a trunk on him as the grandest bull that wandered their commons, he had come to awe both York and the Scot King, whom he had invited to meet him there. The world was his apple, and he ripped great juicy bites from it on his progress north. Such a head of such a table easily forgot the short, plump, and pretty new queen he'd taken.  She had skin like the cream he drowned his berries in, and a manner as alluring as wine. She said she didn't really notice the great gaping ulcer on his thigh, while she perched on him, although its color was as vivid as raspberries. And he had no need to notice a gentleman of his bedchamber, one Culpepper, a pleasant young man, supple as a trout, wit as pungent as scallions, always there near the queen. Nor did he notice the subtle widow of Rocheford, trusty as familiar ale, guarding the queens' privy chambers. That silent dumpling of a woman didn't seem to miss her late, beheaded husband, who had been sentenced for adultery with his sister, the late Queen Anne, that witch whom Harry had long believed he never should have married.
     So Harry bestowed and consumed, hunted and danced, like a great, trembling headcheese. And as he savored his late years he looked fondly upon his choice morsel of a nineteen-year-old wife, Catherine, his second tasting of honey from the Howard hive. He mused on the possibility of another son to adorn his table before he died. But he had much business to attend to. There were his great affairs of theology. He must keep the two factions of bishops at peace. And there were matters of the borders and the marriages of children to discuss with the Scot King, or perhaps threaten another war. It did not befall him to observe, as one lady of the company did, that his pink and white confection of a queen looked on Mister Culpepper much too longingly from her window. Did she moisten those ripe pouting lips as if about to suck the juice from a bitten pear? For, as the frightened and tortured later said, she was not in her bedchamber on many nights, but up the stairs until the small hours in this castle and that along their way. Yes, much too late did his Grace discover that the mice had made a wreck of his larder of love. And the Scot King never did arrive.


 

 

 

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diaries and memoirs translation and her retinue
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the making and unmaking of person the corpse reads classics letters

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