The Taming of the Queen

by Philippa Gregory

  ‘But why is your friend Thomas Cranmer not here?’ I ask nervously. It is one thing to promise to save a man, but quite another to set about doing it. I don’t know how I am supposed to prompt the king to mercy.

  Henry’s little eyes twinkle. ‘I expect he is fearfully awaiting to hear if he is to be charged with heresy and treason.’ He chuckles. ‘I expect he is listening for the tramp of soldiers coming to take him to the Tower.’

  ‘But if he is your friend?’

  ‘Then his terror will be tempered by hope of mercy.’

  ‘But Your Majesty is so gracious – you will forgive him?’ I prompt.

  Gardiner steps forward and lifts a gentle hand as if he would silence me.

  ‘It is for God to forgive,’ the king rules. ‘It is for me to impose justice.’

  Henry does not give me a week to come to terms with my great joy. He speaks to me again only two days later, on Sunday evening, after chapel. I am surprised that he combines piety with business, but since his will is God’s will, the Sabbath can be holy and satisfactory, both at once. The court is processing from chapel to the great hall for dinner, the bright sunshine pouring in the great windows, when the king halts everyone and nods to summon me from the middle of the ladies to the head of them all. His velvet cap is pulled low over his thinning hair and the bobbing pearls encrusting the brim wink at me. He smiles as if he is joyful but his eyes are as blank as his jewels.

  He takes my hand in greeting and folds it under the great heft of his arm. ‘Do you have an answer ready for me, Lady Latimer?’

  ‘I have,’ I say. Now that there is no escape for me I find that my voice is clear and my hand, crushed between the bulge of his great belly and the thick padding of his sleeve, is steady. I’m not a girl, afraid of the unknown, I am a woman; I can face fear, I can walk towards it. ‘I have prayed for guidance, and I have my answer.’ I glance around. ‘Shall I speak it here and now?’

  He nods; he has no sense of privacy. This is a man who is attended every moment of the day. Even when he strains in constipated agony on the close-stool there are men standing beside him ready to hand him linen to wipe, water to wash, a hand to grip when the pain is too great for him. He sleeps with a page at the foot of his bed; he urinates beside his favourites, when he vomits from over-eating someone holds the bowl. Of course he has no hesitation in speaking of his marriage while everyone tries to hear – there is no risk of humiliation for him: he knows that he cannot be refused.

  ‘I know I am blessed above all other women.’ I curtsey very low. ‘I shall be deeply honoured to be your wife.’

  He takes my hand and brings it to his lips. He never had any doubts, but he is pleased to hear me describe myself as blessed. ‘You shall sit beside me at dinner,’ he promises. ‘And the herald shall announce it.’

  He walks with my hand squeezed under his arm, and so we lead everyone through the double doors to the great hall. Lady Mary walks on the other side of him. I cannot see her beyond the spread of his great chest and she does not try to peep round at me. I imagine her face frozen and expressionless, and know that I must look the same. We must look like two pale sisters marched in to dinner by an enormous father.

  I see the high table with the throne and a chair on either side, the head of the servery must have ordered the chairs to be set in place. Even he knew that the king would demand my answer as we walked in to dinner, and that I would have to say ‘yes’.

  The three of us mount the dais and take our places. The great canopy of state covers the king’s throne but stops short of my chair. Only when I am queen will I dine under cloth of gold. I look down the hall at the hundreds of people staring up at me. They nudge and point as they realise that I am to be their new queen, the trumpets scream and the herald steps forward.

  I see Edward Seymour’s carefully composed expression as he notes the arrival of a new wife who will bring her own advisors, a new royal family, new royal friends, new royal servants. He will be measuring the threat that I pose to his position as the king’s brother-in-law, brother to the queen who tragically died in childbirth. I don’t see his brother, Thomas, and I don’t look to see if he is here, watching me. I gaze blindly down the long hall and hope that he is dining somewhere else tonight. I don’t look for him. I must never look for him again as long as I live.

  I pray for guidance, for God’s will, not my own, for the bending of my own obstinate desires to His purpose and not mine. I don’t know where God is to be found – in the old church of rituals and saints’ images, miracles and pilgrimages, or in the new ways of prayers in English and Bible readings – but I have to find Him. I have to find Him to crush my passion, to rein in my own ambitions. If I am to stand before His altar and swear myself to yet another loveless marriage He has to bear me up. I cannot – I know I cannot – marry the king without the help of God. I cannot give up Thomas unless I believe it is for a great cause. I cannot give up my first love, my only love, my tender yearning passionate love for him – this unique, irresistible man – unless I have God’s love overwhelming me in its place.

  I pray like a novice, ardently. I pray kneeling beside Archbishop Cranmer, who has returned to court without a word said against him, almost as if a charge of heresy was a step in a dance, forwards and backwards and turn around. It is incomprehensible to me but it seems that the king tricked his own council into charging the archbishop, and then turned on them and commanded the archbishop to inquire into those who brought the charges. So Stephen Gardiner’s affinity are now the ones filled with fear and Thomas Cranmer returns confidently to court, secure in the king’s favour, and kneels beside me, his old lined face turned upwards as I silently pray, trying to hammer my desire for Thomas into a love of God. But even now – fool that I am – even in the most fervent prayer, when I think of the crucifixion, it is Thomas’s dark face that I see: eyes closed, exalted in his climax. Then I have to squeeze my eyes shut and pray some more.

  I pray kneeling beside Lady Mary, who says not one word about my elevation other than a quiet commendation to me and formal congratulations to her father. There have been too many stepmothers between the martyrdom of her mother and my arrival for her to resent me aspiring to Katherine of Aragon’s place, too many for her to greet me with any hope. The last stepmother lasted less than two years, the one before that, six months. I could swear that Lady Mary kneels beside me in silent prayer and secretly thinks that I will need God’s help to rise to her mother’s position, and God’s help to stay there. The way she bows her head and crosses herself at the end of her prayers and glances at me with brief pity tells me that she does not think God’s help will be enough. She looks at me as if I were a woman walking into darkness with only the light of one small candle against the damp shadows – and then she gives a little shrug and turns away.

  I pray like a nun, constantly, on the hour, every hour, anguished on my knees in my bedchamber, silently in chapel, or even desperately whenever I am alone for a moment. In the dark hours before the early summer dawn, when I am feverish and sleepless, I think that I have conquered my desire for Thomas, but when I wake in the morning I am aching for his touch. I never pray that he will come for me. I know that he cannot. I know that he must not. But still, every time the door of the chapel opens behind me, my heart leaps because I think it is him. I can almost see him, standing in the bright doorway, I can almost hear him saying: ‘Come, Kateryn, come away!’ That’s when I twist the beads of the rosary in my hands and pray that God will send me some accident, some terrible catastrophe, to stop my wedding day.

  ‘But what could that be but the death of the king?’ Nan demands.

  I look blankly at her.

  ‘It’s treason to think of it,’ she reminds me, her voice low under the hum of the liturgy from the choir stalls. ‘And treason to say it. You cannot pray for his death, Kateryn. He has asked you to be his wife and you have consented. It’s disloyal as a subject and as a wife.’

  I bow my head against her reproach; but
she is right. It must be a sin to pray for the death of another, even of your worst enemy. An army going into battle should pray for as few deaths as possible even while they prepare themselves to do their duty. Like them, I must prepare myself to do my duty, risking myself. And besides, he is not my worst enemy. He is constantly kind and indulgent, he tells me that he is in love with me, that I will be everything to him. He is my king, the greatest king that England has ever had. I used to dream about him when I was a girl and my mother would tell me of the handsome young king and his horses and his suits of cloth of gold, and his daring. I cannot wish him ill. I should be praying for his health, for his happiness, for a long life for him. I should be praying for many years of married life with him, I should be praying that I can make him happy.

  ‘You look terrible,’ Nan says bluntly. ‘Can’t you sleep?’

  ‘No.’ I have been getting up all through the night to pray that I shall be spared.

  ‘You have to sleep,’ she rules. ‘And eat. You’re the most beautiful woman at court, there’s nobody even comes near you. Mary Howard and Catherine Brandon are nothing beside you. God gave you the gift of great beauty: don’t throw it away. And don’t think that if you lose your looks he’ll desert you. Once he decides on something he never changes his mind, even when half of England is against him . . .’ She breaks off and corrects herself with a little laugh, ‘Unless of course – suddenly – he does, and everything is upside down and he is determined on the opposite course and no-one can persuade him otherwise.’

  ‘But when does he change his mind?’ I ask her. ‘Why?’

  ‘In a moment,’ she says. ‘In a heartbeat. But never that you could predict.’

  I shake my head. ‘But how does anyone manage? With a changeable king? With a slippery king?’

  ‘Some don’t,’ she says shortly.

  ‘If I can’t pray to be spared, what can I pray for?’ I ask. ‘Resignation?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I was talking to my husband, Herbert. He said to me that he thinks that you have been sent by God.’

  At once I giggle. Nan’s husband, William, has never troubled much about me before. I measure my growing importance in the world if now he realises that I am a heavenly messenger.

  But Nan is not laughing. ‘Truly he does. You have come at the very moment that we need a devout queen. You will save the king from sliding back to Rome. The old churchmen have the king’s ear. They warn him that the country is not just demanding reform but becoming Lutheran, completely heretical. They are frightening him back to Rome, and turning him against his own people. They are taking the Bible from the churches of England so that people cannot read the Word of God for themselves. Now they have arrested half a dozen men at Windsor, the choirmaster among them, and they will burn them in the marshland below the castle. For nothing more than wanting to read a Bible in English!’

  ‘Nan, I can’t save them! I was not sent by God to save them.’

  ‘You have to save the reformed church, and save the king, and save us all. This is godly work that we think you can do. The reformers want you to advise the king in his private moments. Only you can do it. You have to rise to it, Kat. God will guide you.’

  ‘It’s easy for you to say. Doesn’t your husband understand that I don’t know what people are talking about? I don’t know who’s on which side? I am not the person for this. I know nothing about it, and I have little interest.’

  ‘God has chosen you. And it’s easy enough to understand. The court is divided into two parties, each of them convinced that they are in the right, guided by God. On the one hand are those who would have the king make an agreement with Rome and restore the monasteries, the abbeys and all the ritual of the papist church. Bishop Stephen Gardiner and the men who work with him: Bishop Bonner, Sir Richard Rich, Sir Thomas Wriothesley, men like that. The Howards are papists and would have the church restored if they could, but they’ll always do the king’s bidding, whatever it is. Then there’s us, who would see the church go onwards with reform, leave the superstition of the Roman practices, read the Bible in English, pray in English, worship in English, and never take another penny from a poor man for promising him remission of his sin, never cheat another poor man with a statue that bleeds on command, never order another poor man on a costly pilgrimage. We’re for the truth in the Word of God – nothing else.’

  ‘Of course you think you’re in the right,’ I remark. ‘You always did. And who speaks for you?’

  ‘Nobody. That’s the problem. There are more and more people in the country, more and more people at court who think as we do. Almost all of London. But we have no-one of importance on our side but Thomas Cranmer. None of us has the king’s ear. That’s why it has to be you.’

  ‘To hold the king to reform?’

  ‘Only that. Nothing more. Just to hold him to the reforms that he himself started. Our brother, William, is sure of it too. This is the greatest work that could be done, not just in England but in the world. This is a great opportunity for you, Kat. It is your chance to be a great woman, a leader.’

  ‘I don’t want it. I want to be rich and comfortable and safe. Like any woman of any sense. All the rest is too much for me. It’s beyond me.’

  ‘It’s too much for you unless God holds you up,’ she says. ‘Then you will be triumphant. I will pray for that. We’re all praying for that.’

  The king comes to Lady Mary’s rooms and greets her first, as he will do until our wedding day, when I shall become the first lady of the kingdom and have my own rooms. Then he will greet me first, and she and every woman in the kingdom will follow in my train. When I review the ladies who looked down their noses at mere Kateryn Parr but will have to bow to the floor to Queen Kateryn, I have to hide my smug delight. He takes a seat between the two of us, which creaks under his weight as two squires lower him down. They bring him a footstool, and a page bends over, and gently lifts the heavy leg on to it. The king wipes the grimace of pain from his face and turns to me with a smile.

  ‘Sir Thomas Seymour has left us. He would not stay even a day, not even for the wedding. Why d’you think that is?’

  I raise my eyebrows in calm surprise. ‘I don’t know, Your Majesty. Where has he gone?’

  ‘Don’t you know? Have you not heard?’

  ‘No, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Why, he’s gone to do my bidding,’ he says. ‘He is my brother-in-law and my servant. He does just what I command him, whatever I command him. He is my dog and my slave.’ He bursts out in a sudden wheezy laugh and Edward Seymour, the other royal brother-in-law, laughs loudly too, as if he would have no objection to being described as a dog and a slave.

  ‘His Majesty has trusted my brother with a great mission,’ Edward tells me. He appears to be pleased, but all courtiers are liars. ‘My brother, Thomas, has gone as ambassador to Queen Mary, Regent of Flanders.’

  ‘We’ll make an alliance,’ the king says. ‘Against France. And this time it will be unbreakable, and this time we will destroy France and win back our English lands, and more, eh, Seymour?’

  ‘My brother will get an alliance for you and for England that will last for ever,’ Edward promises rashly. ‘That’s why he left in haste, to start the work at once.’

  I turn my head from one man to the other, like one of the little automata that the clockmakers forge. Tick-tock: one man speaks and then the other. Tock-tick: it goes the other way. So I am startled when the king turns to me sharply, out of order, and says: ‘Shall you miss Sir Thomas? Shall you miss him, Lady Latimer? He’s a great favourite with you ladies, is he not?’

  Hotly, I am about to deny it, but then I see the trap. ‘I am sure we shall all miss him,’ I say indifferently. ‘He’s merry company for the younger ones. I am glad that his wit can do good service to Your Majesty, even though it was wasted on me.’

  ‘You don’t like a courtly suitor?’ He is watching me narrowly.

  ‘I am a straightforward Northern woman,’ I say. ‘I don’t l
ike a lot of lipwash.’

  ‘Enchanting!’ Edward Seymour loudly proclaims as the king laughs at my country speech and snaps his fingers for the page, who lifts his leg off the stool, and then two of them haul him to his feet and steady him when he staggers. ‘We’ll go in to dinner,’ he rules. ‘I am so hungry I could eat an ox! And you must get your strength up, Lady Latimer. You will have service to do also! I want a bonny bride!’

  I curtsey as he hobbles past, his great weight bearing down on his frail legs, one calf bulked large with the thick bandage that is wrapped around the oozing wound. I rise up and walk beside Lady Mary. She gives me a cool little smile and says nothing.

  I am to choose a motto. Nan and I are in my bedroom with the door barred to everyone, sprawled on my bed, the candles burning low.

  ‘D’you remember them all?’ I ask her curiously.

  ‘’Course I do. I saw each one’s initials carved on every wooden beam and every stone boss in every palace. And then I saw them chipped off stone and adzed off wood and new initials put on again. I sewed every motto into flags for their weddings. I saw every emblem freshly painted. I saw their shields carved on and then burned off the royal barge. Of course I remember each one. Why wouldn’t I? I was there when each one was announced, I was there when she was taken away. Mother put me into service to the Queen of England, Katherine of Aragon, and made me promise to always be loyal to the queen. She never dreamed there would be six of them. She never dreamed one of them would be you. Ask me any one’s motto. I know them all!’

  ‘Anne Boleyn,’ I say at random.

  ‘The Most Happy,’ Nan says with a harsh laugh.