The Taming of the Queen

HAMPTON COURT PALACE, SUMMER 1543

They tell me I must put aside mourning for my wedding day and wear a gown from the royal wardrobe. The groom of the wardrobe brings one sandalwood chest after another from the great store in London and Nan and I spend a happy afternoon pulling out gowns, looking them over, and taking our pick as Lady Mary and a few other ladies advise. The robes are powdered and stored in linen bags and the sleeves are stuffed with lavender heads to keep away the moth. They smell like wealth: the cool soft velvets and the sleek satin panels have an odour of luxury that I have never known in my life before. I take my choice from the queens’ gowns, in cloth of silver and cloth of gold, and I look at all the many sleeves and hoods, and the underskirts. By the time I have made my choice, of a richly embroidered gown in dark colours, it is nearly time for dinner. The ladies pack the spare gowns away, Nan closes the door on everyone and we are alone.

‘I have to talk to you about your wedding night,’ she says.

I look at her grave face, and at once I fear that she somehow knows my secret. She knows I love Thomas and we are lost. I can do nothing but brazen it out. ‘Oh, what is it, Nan? You look very serious? I’m not a virgin bride, you need not warn me of what’s to come. I don’t expect to see anything new,’ I laugh.

‘It is serious. I have to ask you a question. Kat – do you think you are barren?’

‘What a thing to ask me! I’m only thirty-one!’

‘But you never got a child from Lord Latimer?’

‘God didn’t bless us, and he was away from home, and in his later years he wasn’t . . .’ I make a dismissive gesture. ‘Anyway. Why do you ask?’

‘Just this,’ she says grimly. ‘The king cannot bear to lose another baby. So you can’t conceive one. It’s not worth the risk.’

I am touched. ‘He would be so grieved?’

She tuts with impatience. Sometimes I irritate my London-bred sister with my ignorance. I am a country lady – worse even than that – a lady from the North of England, far from all the gossip, innocent as the Northern skies, blunt as a farmer.

‘No, of course not. It’s not grief, for him. He never feels grief.’ She glances at the bolted door and draws me further into the room so that no-one, not even someone with their ear pressed to the wooden panels, could hear us.

‘I don’t believe that he can give you a baby that can stay in the womb. I don’t think he can make a healthy child.’

I step closer so that we are mouth to ear. ‘This is treason, Nan. Even I know it. You’re mad to say such a thing to me, just before my wedding day.’

‘I’d be mad if I didn’t. Kateryn, I swear to you that he can’t make anything but miscarriages and stillbirths.’

I lean back to see her grave face. ‘This is bad,’ I say.

‘I know.’

‘You think I will miscarry?’

‘Or worse.’

‘What on earth could be worse?’

‘If you were to birth a child, it might be a monster.’

‘A what?’

She is as close as if we were confessing, her eyes on my face. ‘It’s the truth. We were told never to speak of it. It’s a deep secret. No-one who was there has ever spoken of it.’

‘You’d better speak now,’ I say grimly.

‘Queen Anne Boleyn – her death sentence was not the gossip and slander and lies they collected against her: all that nonsense about dozens of lovers. Anne Boleyn gave birth to her own fate. Her death sentence was the little monster.’

‘She had a little monster?’

‘She miscarried something malformed, and the midwives were hired spies.’

‘Spies?’

‘They went at once to the king with what they had seen, what had been birthed into their waiting hands. It was not a child born before its time, not a normal child. It was half fish, half beast. It was a monster with a face cleaved in two and a spine flayed open like something they might show pickled in a jar at a village fair.’

I tear my hands from hers and cover my ears. ‘My God, Nan . . . I don’t want to know. I don’t want to hear this.’

She pulls my hands away and shakes me. ‘As soon as they told the king, he took it as proof that she had used witchcraft to conceive, that she had lain with her brother to get a hell-born child.’

I look at her blankly.

‘And Cromwell got him the evidence to prove it,’ she said. ‘Cromwell could have proved that Our Lady was a drunk; that man had a sworn witness for anything. But he was commanded by the king. The king would not let anyone think that he could give a woman a monster.’ She looks at my horrified face and presses on: ‘So you think on this: if you miscarry, or if you give him a damaged babe, he will say the same about you, and send you to your death.’

‘He can’t say such a thing,’ I say flatly. ‘I’m not another Queen Anne. I’m not going to lie with my brother and dozens of others. We heard of her even in Richmondshire. We knew what she did. Nobody could say such a thing of me.’

‘He would rather believe that he was cuckolded ten times over than admit that there is anything wrong with him. What you heard in Richmondshire – the king’s cuckolding – was announced by the king himself. You knew it, because he made sure that everyone knew it. He made sure the country knew that she was at fault. You don’t understand, Kateryn. He has to be perfect, in every way. He cannot bear that anyone should think, even for a moment, that he is in the wrong. He cannot be seen as less than perfect. His wife has to be perfect too.’

I look as blank as I feel. ‘This is hogswill.’

‘It is true,’ Nan exclaims. ‘When Queen Katherine miscarried he blamed it on God and said it was a false marriage. When Queen Anne gave birth to the monster he blamed it on witchcraft. If Jane had lost her baby he would have blamed it on her, she knew it, we all knew it. And if you miscarry it will be your fault, not his. And you will be punished.’

‘But what can I do?’ I ask fiercely. ‘I don’t know what I can do? How can I possibly prevent it?’

In answer she brings a little purse from the pocket of her gown and shows it to me.

‘What’s that?’

‘This is fresh rue,’ she says. ‘You drink a tea made from it after he has had you. Every time. It prevents a child before it is even formed.’

I don’t take the little purse she holds out to me. I put out one finger and poke it.

‘This is a sin,’ I say uncertainly. ‘It must be a sin. This is the sort of rubbish that the old women peddle behind the hiring fair. It probably doesn’t even work.’

‘It’s a sin to walk knowingly towards your own destruction,’ she corrects me. ‘And you will do that if you don’t prevent a conception. If you give birth to a monster, as Queen Anne did, he will name you as a witch and kill you for it. His pride won’t allow him another dead baby. Everyone would know it was a fault in him if another wife, his sixth healthy wife, birthed a monster or lost a baby. Think! It would be his ninth loss.’

‘Eight dead babies?’ I can see a family of ghosts, a nursery of corpses.

She nods in silence and holds out the purse of rue. In silence, I take it.

‘They say it smells awful. We’ll get the maid to bring you a jug of hot water in the morning, and brew it ourselves, alone.’

‘This is terrible,’ I say quietly. ‘I’ve given up my own desires –’ I have a pulse like a stab of lust in the belly when I think of my own desires – ‘and now you – my own sister – give me poison to drink.’

She lays her warm cheek to mine. ‘You have to live,’ she says with quiet passion. ‘Sometimes, at court, a woman has to do anything to survive. Anything. You have to survive.’

There is plague in the City of London and the king rules that our wedding shall be small and private with no crowds of common people that might bring infections. It will not take place in a great ceremony in the abbey, the fountains are not going to flow with wine, the people are not to roast oxen and dance in the streets. They are to take physic and stay in their homes, and nobody is allowed to come from the pestilential city to the clean river and the green meadows of the countryside around Hampton Court.

This, my third wedding, is to take place in the queen’s oratory, a small, beautifully decorated room off the queen’s chambers. I remind myself that this will be my private chapel, just off my closet, where I will be able to meditate and pray alone when this is all over. Once I have said my vows this very room – and all the others on the queen’s side – will be mine, for my exclusive use.

The room is crowded, and the courtiers shuffle back as I enter in my new gown, and walk slowly towards the king. He stands, a man-mountain, as broad as he is tall, before the altar, which is a blaze of light: hot white wax candles in branching golden candelabra on a jewel-encrusted altar cloth, gold and silver jugs, bowls, pyxes, plates, and, towering over it all, a great golden crucifix studded with diamonds. All the treasures looted from the greatest religious houses of the kingdom have silently found their way into the king’s keeping and now blaze, like pagan sacrifices, on the altar, overwhelming the open pages of the English Bible, choking the simplicity of the chapel till the little room is more like a treasure hoard than a place of worship.

My hand is lost in the king’s big sweating palm. Before us, Bishop Stephen Gardiner holds out the book of service and reads the marriage vows in the steady voice of a man who has seen queens come and go and quietly improved his own position. The bishop was a friend of my second husband, Lord Latimer, and shared his belief that the monasteries should serve their communities, that the church should be unchanged but for the head, that the wealth of the chantries and the abbeys should never have been stolen by greedy new men, and that the country now is poorer for throwing priests and nuns into the marketplaces and breaking the sacred shrines.

The service is in simple English, but the oration is in Latin, as if the king and his bishop want to remind everyone that God speaks Latin, and the poor and the uneducated, and almost all women, will never understand Him.

Behind the king, in a smiling crowd, are his most personal friends and courtiers. Edward Seymour, Thomas’s older brother – who will never know that I sometimes search his dark eyes for a family resemblance to the man that I love – Nan’s husband, William Herbert, standing with Anthony Browne, and Thomas Heneage. Behind me are the ladies of the court. First among them are the king’s daughters, Lady Mary and Lady Elizabeth, and his niece Lady Margaret Douglas. Behind the three of them come my sister, Nan, Catherine Brandon and Jane Dudley. Other faces swim together; it is hot and the room is overcrowded. The king bellows his oath as if he were the herald announcing a triumph. I speak my words clearly, my voice steady, and then it is done and he turns to me, and his sweating face is beaming. He bends down to me, and now, amid a ripple of applause, he kisses the bride.

His mouth is like a little limpet, wet and inquisitive, his saliva tainted from his decaying teeth. He smells of rotting food. He releases me, and his sharp little eyes interrogate my face to see how I respond. I look downwards as if I am overcome by desire and I find a smile and peep up at him coyly, like a girl. It is no worse than I thought it would be, and anyway I will have to get used to it.

Bishop Gardiner kisses my hands, bows low to the king, offers congratulations, and everyone surges forward, filled with joy that it is done. Catherine Brandon, whose roguish prettiness keeps her dangerously high in the king’s favour, is especially warm in her praise of the wedding and the happiness we are certain to enjoy. Her husband, Charles Brandon, stands behind his exquisite young wife and winks at the king – one old dog to another. The king waves them all aside and offers me his arm, so that we can lead the way out of the room and to dinner.

There is to be a feast. The smell of roasting meats has been seeping up through the floorboards from the kitchen immediately beneath these rooms for hours. Everyone falls into line behind us in the strict order of precedence, depending on title and status. I see Edward Seymour’s wife, the sharp-featured, sharp-tongued aristocrat, roll her eyes and step back as she has to give way for me. I hide a smile at my triumph. Anne Seymour can learn to curtsey to me. I was born a Parr, a respectable family in the North of England, then I was the young wife of a Neville – a good family, but far from court and fame, and now Anne Seymour has to step back to me as the new Queen of England, the greatest woman in England.

As we enter the great hall, the courtiers rise to their feet and applaud, while the king beams to right and left. He hands me to my seat. Now my chair is a little lower than his, but higher than that of Lady Mary, who sits in turn higher than little Lady Elizabeth. I am the most important and wealthiest woman in England until death or disgrace – whichever comes first. I look across the room of cheering people, smiling faces, until I see my sister, Nan, walking composedly to the head of the table for the queen’s ladies. She gives me a reassuring nod as if to say that she is here, she is watching over me, her friends will report on what the king says in private, her husband will praise me to him. I am under the protection of my family, ranged against all the other families. They expect me to persuade the king to the reform of the church, and to gain them wealth and position, to find places and fees for their children. In return, they protect my reputation, praise me above all others, and defend me against enemies.

I don’t look for anyone else; I don’t look for Thomas. I know he is already far away. Nobody will ever be able to say that I looked for his dark head, the quick glance of his brown eyes, a hidden smile. Nobody will ever be able to say that I sought him out, for I never will. In my long nights of prayer I have taught myself to know that he will never be here again: a perfect silhouette in a doorway, or bending over a gambling table and laughing, always the first on his feet to dance, the last to go to bed, his laughter ringing out, his quick attentive glance to me. I have surrendered my plan to marry him as I have surrendered my desire for him. I have hammered my soul into resignation. I may never see him again, and I shall never look for him.

Women before me have done this, and women who come after me will know this gutting of a heart’s desire. It is the first task of a woman who loves one man but marries another, and I know I am not the first woman in the world who has had to cut out love, and then pretend that she is not wounded. A wife guided by God often has to surrender the love of her life, and I have done no more and no less. I have given him up. I think my heart has broken, but I have offered the fragments to God.

This is not my first wedding day, not even my second, but even so, I am dreading the night as if I were a virgin creeping up the dark stairs of a castle with a bobbing candle in my hand. The feast goes on for ever, as the king calls for more dishes and the servants come running from the kitchen with great golden trays laden with food held high at shoulder level. They bring in a pride of peacocks, roasted and returned to their skins so the gorgeous feathers shimmer in the candlelight on the table before us. The server peels back the bloodstained inner skin, the blue iridescent neck flops over to one side as if it were a beheaded beauty, and the dead eyes, replaced with black raisins, gleam as if they are still looking for mercy. The carcass is revealed, the king impatiently crooks his finger and receives a great chunk of dark breast meat on his golden plate. They bring a tray of larks, the tiny bodies piled like a heap of victims from the Pilgrimage of Grace, numberless, nameless, stewed in their own juice. They bring plates with long slices of the breasts of snared herons, jugged hare drowned in deep bowls, rabbits trapped in pies under golden crusts. They serve the king one dish after another and he takes a great portion and waves the rest around the hall to his favoured friends.

He laughs at me, that I eat so sparely. I smile as I hear his teeth crunch on the bones of little birds. They bring him more wine, more and more wine, and then there is a blast of a trumpet and in comes the great head of a boar, his tusks gilded, golden cloves of garlic bulging in his eye sockets, rosemary twigs piercing his face for bristles. The king applauds and they carve him a cheek glistening with fat, and the beast is paraded around the room by the servers, who dispense slices from his face, from his ears, from his stumpy neck.

I glance towards Lady Mary, who is pale with nausea, and I pinch my cheeks so that I look rosy beside her. I take a portion of everything that the king offers me and I make myself eat. Mouthful after mouthful of thick meat in rich sauce is piled on my plate and I chew and smile and force it down my throat with a swallow of wine. I feel myself become faint and I start to sweat. I can feel my gown dampen at my armpits and down my spine. The king, beside me, is sprawled almost supine in his chair, felled by food, groaning as he beckons for another serving and another.

Finally, as if it is an ordeal that we cannot escape, they blow a blast of trumpets to announce that we have achieved the halfway point, and the meats go out, and the puddings and sweetmeats come in. There is a cheer for a marchpane model of Hampton Court with two little figures made from spun sugar standing before it. The sugar cooks are artists: their Henry looks like a boy of twenty, standing tall and holding the reins of a charger. They have me in widow’s white and they have captured the interrogative tilt of my head as the little sugar Kateryn looks up inquiringly at the sparkling boy-prince Henry. Everyone exclaims at the artistry of the figures. It could be Holbein in the kitchen, they say. I have to keep the delighted smile on my face and swallow a sudden rush of tears. This is a little tragedy, crystallised in sugar. If Henry were still a boy-prince like this we might have had a chance of happiness. But the Katherine who married the boy was Katherine of Aragon, my mother’s friend, not Kateryn Parr – twenty-one years his junior.

The figures have little crowns of real gold and Henry gestures that I am to have both. He laughs when I put them on my fingers like rings, and then he takes the little sugar Kateryn and puts her whole in his mouth, breaking her legs to cram her in, as he eats her in one sucking gulp.

I am glad when he calls for more wine and more music, and slumps back in his throne. The choir from his chapel sings a pretty anthem and the dancers enter with a rattle of tambourines and perform a wedding masque. One of them, dressed as an Italian prince, bows low to me to invite me to join them. I glance to the king and he waves me to go out. I know that I dance well, the wide skirts of the rich gown billow as I turn and lead out the Lady Mary, and even little Lady Elizabeth hops behind me. I can tell that Mary is in pain; her hand rests lightly on her hip, her fingers are digging into her side. She holds up her head and smiles with gritted teeth. I cannot excuse her from dancing just because she is sick. We all have to dance at my wedding, whatever we feel.

I dance with my ladies, one dance after another. I would dance all night for him if it would keep him from nodding to the gentlemen of the bedchamber that the evening is over and the court is closing for the night. But midnight comes as I am seated on my throne, applauding the musicians, and the king turns his great bulk towards me, heaving himself sideways so that he can lean over and say to me with a smile: ‘Shall we go to bed, wife?’

I remember what I thought when I first heard his proposal. I thought, this is how it will be, from now till death parts us: he will wait for my assent, or he will continue without it. It really doesn’t matter what I say, I will never be able to refuse him anything. I smile and rise to my feet, and wait for them to haul him up, and then he struggles down the steps of the dais and waddles through the court. I go slowly beside him, fitting my stride to his rolling gait. The court cheers us as we go through them all, and I make sure that I keep my eyes forwards and meet no-one’s gaze. I can bear anything but a look of pity as I lead my ladies to my new bedchamber: the queen’s bedchamber, to undress and wait for my master, the king.

It is late, but I don’t allow myself to hope that he is too tired to come to my rooms. My ladies dress me in black satin, and I don’t hold the sleeve to my cheek and remember another night when I wore a night robe of black and threw a blue cloak on top and went in the colours of the night sky to a man who loved me. That night was only a little while ago, but I am obliged to forget it. The doors open, and in comes His Majesty, borne up on either side by the grooms of the bedchamber. They help him into the high bed: as if they are wrestling a bull into a press. He swears loudly when someone knocks his bad leg. ‘Fool!’ he snaps.

‘Only one Fool here,’ the king’s Fool, Will Somers, says briskly. ‘And I’ll thank you to remember that I am keeping my place!’

Clever as always, he breaks the tension, the king laughs and everyone joins in. Somers winks at me as he goes by, his kind brown eyes twinkling. No-one else even looks at me. As they bow and leave they keep their eyes on the ground. I think that they fear for me, left alone with him at last, as the fumes of the wine seep from his head and the food curdles in his belly and his mood sours. My ladies dash to get out of the room. Nan is the last to leave and she gives me a little nod as if to remind me that I am doing God’s work as much as if I were a saint about to lie down on the rack.

The door closes behind them and I am kneeling at the foot of the bed in silence.

‘You can come closer,’ he says gruffly. ‘I won’t bite. Get into bed.’

‘I was saying my prayers,’ I say. ‘Shall I pray aloud for you, Your Majesty?’

‘You can call me Henry now,’ he says. ‘When we’re alone.’

I take that as a refusal of the prayers, and I lift up the covers and slip into bed beside him. I don’t know what he is going to do. Since he cannot even roll on his side unaided, he certainly cannot mount me. I lie beside him perfectly still and wait for him to tell me what he wants.

‘You’ll have to sit on my lap,’ he says eventually, as if he has been puzzling at this too. ‘You’re not a foolish girl, you’re a woman. You’ve been wedded and bedded more than once. You know what to do, eh?’

This is worse than I had imagined. I lift the hem of my nightgown out of the way, and creep towards him on my hands and knees. Unbidden, the vision of Thomas Seymour, outstretched and naked, his back arched, his dark eyelashes sweeping his brown cheeks, comes into my mind. I can see the muscles of his hard belly ripple with pleasure at my touch as he thrusts upwards.

‘Latimer was no great lover, I take it?’ the king enquires.

‘He was not a man of great strength like you, Your . . . Henry,’ I say. ‘And of course, he was unwell.’

‘So how did he do?’

‘His health?’

‘How did he do the act? How did he bed you?’

‘Very rarely.’

He grunts in approval at that, and I see that he is aroused. The thought that he is more potent than my former husband excites him.

‘That must have made him angry,’ he says with pleasure. ‘Taking a woman like you to wife and not being able to do the act.’ He laughs. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You’re very lovely. I can’t wait.’

He takes hold of my right wrist and tugs me towards him. Obediently I kneel up and try to straddle his body. But his fleshy hips are so wide that I cannot get across, and he pulls me down so that I squat on him as if I were astride a fat horse. I have to hold my face rigid so that I don’t grimace. I must not tremble, I must not cry.

‘There,’ he says, excited at his own potency. ‘Feel that? Not bad for a man just over fifty, is it? You won’t have got that from old Latimer.’

I murmur a wordless response. He pulls me towards him and struggles to push upwards against me. He is soft, a half-formed thing, and now I am disgusted as well as embarrassed.

‘There!’ he says again more loudly. His face is becoming redder, the sweat is pouring off him with the effort of pulling me down with his hands and squirming his huge haunches upwards.

I put my hands over my face to block the sight of him labouring beneath me.

‘You’re not shy!’ he exclaims, his voice loud in the room.

‘No, no,’ I say. I must remember that I am doing this for God and for my family. I will be a good queen. This is part of my duty, my God-given duty. I put my hands to the neck of my nightgown and I untie the ribbons at the front. When he sees my naked breasts he puts both fat hands over them and grasps at them, pinching the nipples. At last he penetrates me and I feel him try to thrust, then he gives a strangled shout, and falls back and lies still, completely still.

I wait, but nothing else happens. He says nothing. The brick red colour drains from his face leaving his cheeks grey in the candlelight. His eyes are closed. His mouth sags open and he gives a long loud snore.

That seems to be it. Gently, I lift myself off his damp lap and carefully I slide off the bed. I gather my robe around me and I wrap it tightly, tying the sash around my waist and pulling it close. I sit at the fireside on the big chair that has been specially widened and strengthened for his weight, and I pull my knees to my chest and hug myself. I find I am shivering and I pour a glass of the mulled wedding ale that stands at my side on the table. It was supposed to give me courage and him potency. It warms me a little and I wrap my hands around the silver cup.

After a bleak time of staring blankly at the fire I creep into bed beside him. The mattress is deeply bowed under his weight, the blankets and the expensive coverlet heaped high over his great bulk. I am like a little child lying beside him. I close my eyes. I am thinking of nothing. I am absolutely determined to think of nothing at all. I close my eyes and I fall asleep.

Almost at once, I am dreaming that I am Tryphine, married against my will to a dangerous man, trapped in his castle and going up and up the spiral staircase, one hand on the damp wall, one holding the bobbing light of the candle. There is a terrible smell coming from the door at the top of the stairs. I go to the heavy brass ring of the door latch and slowly turn it. The door creaks open, but I cannot bear to go into the room, into that miasma of stink. I am so afraid that I struggle in the dream and struggle in my sleep, turning in the bed, and waking myself up. Even though I am awake, fighting sleep and feeling the fear of the dream, the smell still floods over me as if it were pouring out of my dream into the waking world, and I choke and struggle for breath as I wake. The smell of the nightmare is in my bed, it is stifling me, it has come from the dark night into my own bedroom, it is real and I am gagging on it. The nightmare is here, now.

I cry out for help and then I am awake and I realise it is not a dream: it is real. The suppurating wound on his leg is leaking, and yellow and orange pus is oozing through the bandages, staining my gown as if he had pissed the fine linen sheets, making the best bedroom in England smell like a charnel house.

The room is dark but I know that he is awake. The rumbling bubbling snores have stopped. I can hear his stertorous breathing, but it does not fool me: I know that he is awake, listening and looking for me. I imagine his eyes, wide open in the dark, staring blindly towards me. I lie completely still, my breathing steady and slight, but I am afraid that he knows, like a wild beast always knows, that I am afraid of him. He knows by some animal cunning that I am awake, and afraid of him.

‘Are you awake, Kateryn?’ he says very softly.

I stretch and give a little false yawn. ‘Ah . . . yes, my lord. I am awake.’

‘And did you sleep well?’ The words are pleasant but there is an edge to his voice.

I sit up, tucking my hair under my nightcap, and turn towards him at once. ‘I did, my lord, thanks be to God. I hope that you slept well?’

‘I felt sick; I tasted vomit in my throat. I was not propped up high enough on the pillows. It’s terrible to feel like that in sleep. I could have choked. They have to prop me so that I am sitting up, or I choke on bile. They know that. You must make sure that they do that when I am in your bed as well as my own. There must have been something tainted in the dinner that made me sick. They have all but poisoned me. I shall send for the cooks in the morning and punish them. They must have used some bad meat. I need to vomit.’

At once I am out of the bed, my soiled gown slick against my legs, fetching a bowl from the cupboard, a flask of ale. ‘Will you take a drink of small ale now? Shall I send for the doctors?’

‘I shall see the doctor later. I was quite dizzy in the night.’

‘Ah, my dear,’ I say tenderly, as if I am a mother speaking to a sickly boy. ‘Perhaps you can take a drink of ale and sleep again?’

‘No, I can’t sleep,’ he complains peevishly. ‘I never sleep. The whole court sleeps, the whole country sleeps, but I am wakeful. I keep watch all night while lazy pages and slothful women sleep. I keep watch and ward over my country, over my church. D’you know how many men I will burn in Windsor next week?’

‘No,’ I say, shrinking.

‘Three,’ he says, pleased. ‘They’ll burn them in the marshes and their ashes will float away. For questioning my holy church. Good riddance.’

I think of Nan asking me to speak for them. ‘My lord husband . . .’

He has drained his cup of ale in three great gulps, and he gestures for more. I serve him again.

‘More,’ he says.

‘They left some pastries for us in the cupboard too, if you might want one,’ I offer doubtfully.

‘I think one might steady my stomach.’

I pass him the plate and watch as, absent-mindedly, he folds one after another over and over and posts them into his little mouth and they disappear. He licks his finger and dabs at the crumbs on the plate and passes it back to me. He smiles. He is soothed by the food and the attention. It is as if sugar can sweeten him.

‘That’s better,’ he says. ‘I was hungry after our pleasures.’

His mood is almost miraculously improved by ale and pastries. I think that he must carry a monstrous hunger with him all the time. He suffers with a hunger so great that he eats beyond nausea, a hunger so great that he mistakes it for nausea. I manage a smile.

‘Can’t you pardon those poor men?’ I ask very quietly.

‘No,’ he says. ‘What o’clock is it?’

I look around. I don’t know: there is no clock in the room. I cross to the window and pull back the hangings, open the windowpane inwards, crack open the shutter and swing it outward to see the sky.

‘Don’t let the night air in,’ he says crossly. ‘God knows what pestilence might be on it. Close the window! Close it tight!’

I slam the window closed on the fresh cool air, and peer through the thick glass. There is not a glimmer of light in the east though I blink my eyes to rid them of candlelight and wish it into being. ‘It must be early still,’ I say, longing for the sunrise. ‘I can’t see any dawn.’

He looks at me like an expectant child wanting to be entertained. ‘I can’t sleep,’ he says. ‘And that ale is resting on my belly. It was too cold. It will give me colic. You should have mulled it.’ He moves a little and belches. At the same time a sour smell comes from the bed where he has farted.

‘Shall I send to the kitchens for something else? A warm drink?’

He shakes his head. ‘No. But stir up the fire and tell me that you are glad to be queen.’

‘Oh! I am so very glad!’ I smile as I bend and put on some kindling and then some great logs from the basket by the fireplace. The embers glow. I stir them with a poker, raising the logs so they rest one against another and flicker into life. ‘I am glad to be queen, and I am glad to be a wife,’ I say. ‘Your wife.’

‘You are a housewife,’ the king exclaims, pleased with my success at fire-making. ‘Could you cook my breakfast?’

‘I have never cooked,’ I say, a little on my dignity. ‘I have always had a cook, and kitchen maids too. But I know how to command a kitchen and a brewhouse and a dairy. I used to make my own physic from herbs, and perfumes and soaps.’

‘You know how to run a household?’

‘I commanded Snape Castle and all our lands in the North when my husband was away from home,’ I tell him.

‘Held it in a siege, didn’t you?’ he asks. ‘Against those traitors. That must have been hard. You must have been brave.’

I nod modestly. ‘Yes, my lord. I did my duty.’

‘Faced down the rebels, didn’t you? Didn’t they threaten to burn down your castle and you inside it?’

I remember the days and the nights very well when the desperately poor men in rags came against the castle and begged for a return to the good days, the old days when the churches were free with charity and the king was guided by the lords. They wanted the church restored and the monasteries back in their former glory. They demanded that my husband Lord Latimer speak for them to the king, they knew that he agreed with them. ‘I knew they would not prevail against you,’ I say, faithless to them and their cause. ‘I knew that I had to hold on and that you would send my lord home to relieve us.’

I am making the best of a bad story, hoping that he doesn’t remember the truth of it. The king and his council rightly suspected my husband of siding with the rebels, and when the rebellion was brutally crushed my husband had to side with reform: he betrayed his faith and his tenants for his own safety. How glad he would be now to see that it is all changed again. The churchmen have the upper hand and are busy restoring the abbeys. My husband would have delighted in his friend Stephen Gardiner’s new authority. He would have been all for the burning of reformers in the marshes of Windsor. He would have agreed that the ashes of heretics should blow away into the mud and that they should never rise from the dead.

‘And how old were you when you first went from your mother?’

The king settles back against the pillow like a child wanting a story.

‘You want to know about my girlhood?’ He nods.

‘Tell me all about it.’

‘Well, I was a good age when I left home, more than sixteen. My mother had been trying to marry me off from the age of eleven. But it didn’t take.’

He nods. ‘Why ever not? Surely you were the prettiest little girl? With that hair and those eyes, you could have had your pick.’

I laugh. ‘I was pretty enough, but I had no more dowry than a tinker. My father left almost nothing – he died when I was only five. We all knew that Nan, my sister, and I would have to marry to oblige the family.’

‘How many of you?’

‘Three, just three. I’m the oldest and then William, my brother, and then Nan. You will remember my mother? She was a lady-in-waiting, and then she got Nan a place with—’ I break off. Nan served Katherine of Aragon and every queen since. The king has seen her walk in to dinner behind every single one of his six wives. ‘My mother got Nan a place at court,’ I amend. ‘And then she got my brother, William, married to Anne Bourchier. It was the very pinnacle of her ambition; but you know how badly that went. It’s been a costly mistake for us all. Both Nan and I were put aside so that William could marry well. There was only money for William, and once my mother had got Anne Bourchier there was no money left for a dowry for me.’

‘Poor little girl,’ he says sleepily. ‘If only I had seen you then.’

He did see me then. I came to court once with my mother and Nan. I remember the young king of those days: golden-haired, strong in the legs, chest broad but lean. I remember him on horseback; he was always on horseback like a young centaur. He rode past me once and I looked up at him, high on his horse, and he was dazzling. He looked directly at me, a little girl of six jumping up and down, waving at the twenty-seven-year-old king. He smiled at me and raised his hand. I stood stock-still and stared up at him in wonderment. He was as beautiful as an angel. They called him the handsomest king in the world, and there was not a woman in England who did not dream of him. I used to imagine him riding into our little home and asking for my hand in marriage. I thought that if he came for me everything would be all right, for the rest of my life, for always. If the king fell in love with me, what more could I want? What more could anyone want?

‘And so I was married to my first husband, Edward Brough, the eldest son of Baron Brough of Gainsborough.’

‘Mad, wasn’t he?’ comes sleepily from the richly embroidered pillows. His eyes are closed. His hands, clasped over the mound of his chest, rise and fall with each wheezy breath.

‘That was his grandfather,’ I say very quietly. ‘But it was still a fearsome house. His lordship had a terrible temper and my husband shook like a child when he raged.’

‘He was no match for you,’ he says with sleepy satisfaction. ‘They were fools to match you to a boy. Even then, you must have been a girl who needed a man you could admire, someone older, someone who could command.’

‘He was no husband for me,’ I confirm. I understand now how he wants this bedtime story to go. There are only half a dozen tales in the world, after all, and this one is to be about the girl who never found happiness until she met her prince. ‘He was no match for me at all, and he died, God bless him, when I was just twenty.’

As if the denigration of poor, long-dead Edward has lulled him, a long rumbling snore is my reply. I wait for a moment as he suddenly stops breathing. For one frightening moment there is no sound in the quiet room at all, then he catches his breath and loudly exhales. He does this over and over again until I learn not to flinch. I sit back in my chair by the fireside and watch the flames lick around the logs and flicker, making the shadows jump forward and then recede around me as the thick snorting goes on and on, like a boar in a sty.

I wonder, what is the time? Surely it must be dawn soon. I wonder when the servants will come. Surely they must make up the fires at dawn? I wish I knew the time. I would give a fortune for a clock to tell me how much longer I have to wait for this endless night to be over. It’s so odd that the nights with Thomas passed in a moment, as if the moon flung itself to set and the sun hurried into the sky. Not now. Perhaps never again. Now I have to wait for a lifetime till dawn, and hours and hours go by as I wait for the first light.

‘How was it?’ Nan whispers. Behind her, the servants take the golden washing bowl and ewer from my room, as the maids-in-waiting sprinkle my linen with rosewater and hold it to the fire to make sure that it is completely dry.

Nan has the purse of dried rue. With her back to the room she takes up the mulling poker from the red embers of the fire, seethes a mug of small ale and stirs in the herb. Nobody notices as I drink it down. I turn my face away so no-one can see my grimace.

I go with her to my prie-dieu and the two of us face the crucifix and kneel side by side so closely that no-one can hear a word but will think that we are muttering our prayers in Latin.

‘Is he potent?’

The question alone is a capital offence. Anne Boleyn’s brother was beheaded for asking this very thing.

‘Just about,’ I tell her tersely.

She puts a hand over mine. ‘He didn’t hurt you?’

I shake my head. ‘He can hardly move. I’m in no danger from him.’

‘Was it . . .?’ She breaks off. A well-loved wife herself, she cannot imagine my revulsion.

‘It was no worse than I thought it would be,’ I say, my head bowed over my beads. ‘And now I have some pity for him.’ I glance up at the crucifix. ‘I’m not the only one suffering. These are hard years for him. Think of what he was, and what he is now.’

She closes her eyes in a silent prayer. ‘My husband, Herbert, says that God’s hand is over you,’ she says.

‘You must perfume my room,’ I decide. ‘Send to the apothecary for some dried herbs and perfume. Rose oil, lavender, strong perfumes. I can’t stand the smell. The one thing I cannot stand is the smell. I really can’t sleep with it. You’ve got to get this done. It’s the only thing I really can’t bear.’

She nods. ‘Is it his leg?’

‘His leg and his wind,’ I say. ‘My bed smells of death and shit.’ She looks at me, as if I have surprised her. ‘Of death?’

‘Of the corruption of the body. Of a corrupting body. Of the plague. I dream of death,’ I say shortly.

‘Of course, the queen died here.’

I cry out in horror, and as my ladies turn to look, I try to turn it into a cough. At once someone brings me a glass of small ale to sip. When they have stepped back I turn on Nan. ‘Which queen?’ I demand, thinking wildly of the child Katherine Howard. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Queen Jane, of course,’ she says.

I knew that she died after giving birth to the prince, but I had not thought it was in these rooms, in my rooms. ‘Not here?’

‘Of course,’ she says simply. ‘In this bedroom.’ When she sees my aghast face she adds: ‘In this bed.’

I shrink back, clutching my rosary. ‘In my bed? That bed? Where we slept last night?’

‘But, Kateryn, there’s no need to take on. It was over five years ago.’

I shiver and find that I cannot stop. ‘Nan, I can’t do this. I can’t sleep in his dead wife’s bed.’

‘Dead wives,’ she corrects me. ‘Katherine Howard slept here. It was her bed too.’

I don’t cry out this time. ‘I can’t bear it.’

She takes hold of my shaking hands. ‘Be steady. It is God’s will,’ she says. ‘God’s calling. You have to do this, you can do this. I will help you and God will bear you up.’

‘I can’t sleep in the dead queen’s bed and mount her husband.’

‘You have to. God will help you. I pray to Him, I pray every day God help and guide my sister.’

I nod convulsively: ‘Amen, amen. God keep me, amen.’

It is time for me to be dressed. I turn to let them take the night robe from my shoulders and wash me with the scented oils and pat me dry, and then I step into my beautifully embroidered linen shift. I stand like a doll while they tie the ribbons at my throat and at my shoulders. The ladies-in-waiting bring gowns and a choice of sleeves and hoods, and hold them before me in attentive silence. I choose a gown in dark green, sleeves of black and a hood of black.

‘Very modest,’ my sister remarks critically. ‘You’re out of black now. You’re a bride, not a widow. You should wear gowns of brighter colours. We’ll order some for you to choose.’

I love fine clothes, she knows that.

‘And shoes,’ she says temptingly. ‘We’ll have the cobblers come to you. You can have all the shoes you want now.’ She sees my face and she laughs. ‘Now, you have much to do. You’ll have to arrange your household. I have half of England wanting to send their daughters to serve you. I’ve got a list of names. We can go through them after Mass.’

One of my ladies steps forward. ‘If you will forgive me, I have a favour to ask. If I may.’

‘We’ll look at all the requests together, after chapel,’ my sister rules.

I step into the gown and stand still while they tie the skirt, the bodice, and then hold the sleeves in place and thread the laces through the holes.

‘I’ll send for our brother, William,’ I say quietly to Nan. ‘I’ll want him here. And our uncle Parr.’

‘Apparently we have family we never knew before. From all over England. Everyone wants to claim kinship to the new Queen of England.’

‘I don’t have to give them all places, do I?’ I ask.

‘You’ll need people who depend on you around you,’ she says. ‘Of course you would reward your own family. And I assume you’ll send for the Latimer girl, your stepdaughter?’

‘Margaret is very dear to me,’ I say, suddenly hopeful. ‘Can I have her with me? And Elizabeth my stepdaughter? And Lucy Somerset, my stepson’s betrothed? And my Brough cousin, Elizabeth Tyrwhit?’

‘Of course, and I thought you’d appoint Uncle Parr to something in your household, and his wife, Aunt Mary, will come too, and our cousin Lane.’

‘Oh, yes!’ I exclaim. ‘I would want Maud with me.’

Nan smiles. ‘You can have whoever you want. Whatever you want. You should ask for everything you want now, in the early days, when everything will be granted you. You need people who are yours, heart and soul, around you to guard you.’

‘Against what?’ I challenge her as they put my hood on my head, as heavy as a crown.

‘Against all the other families,’ she whispers as she smooths my auburn hair in the golden net. ‘Against all the previous families who enjoyed their kinswoman’s patronage, and don’t want to be excluded now by a new queen: families like the Howards and Seymours. And you will need protection against the king’s new advisors, men like William Paget and Richard Rich and Thomas Wriothesley, men who have risen from nowhere and don’t want a new queen advising the king instead of them.’

Nan nods towards Catherine Brandon, who comes into the room carrying my small chest of jewels for me to make my choice. She lowers her voice. ‘And against women like her, wives of his friends, and any pretty lady-in-waiting who might be the next favourite.’

‘Not now!’ I exclaim. ‘We were married only yesterday!’

She nods. ‘He’s greedy,’ she says simply, as if it were a question of numbers of dishes at dinner. ‘He always wants more. He always needs more. He cannot get enough admiration.’

‘But he married me!’ I exclaim. ‘He insisted on marrying me.’

She shrugs. He married all my predecessors; it didn’t stop him wanting the next one.

At chapel, on the second storey, in the queen’s box, looking down at the priest going about God’s work, creating the miracle of the Mass and turning his back on the congregation as if they are not fit even to see it, I pray for God’s help in this marriage. I think of the other queens who have knelt here, on this footstool embroidered with the royal coat of arms and the pied rose, and prayed here, too. Some of them will have prayed with increasing anguish for live Tudor sons, some of them will have mourned the loss of their previous lives, some will have been homesick for their childhood home and the family who loved them for themselves, not for what they could provide. One, at least, had a heartache like mine, had to wake each day and put away the thought of the man she loved. I can almost feel them around me as I rest my face in my hands. I can almost smell their fear in the wood of the book rest. I imagine that if I licked the polished grain I would taste the salt of their tears.

‘Not merry?’ The king meets me in the gallery outside the chapel. He with his friends behind him – Queen Jane’s brother, Queen Anne’s uncle, Queen Katherine’s cousin – I with my ladies behind me. ‘Not merry on your wedding morning?’

At once I beam. ‘Very merry,’ I say determinedly. ‘And you, Your Majesty?’

‘You can call me “my lord husband”,’ he says, and takes my hand and crushes it between the curve of his thickly padded waistcoat and the embroidered sleeve. ‘Come with me to my privy chamber,’ he says informally. ‘I need to talk with you on our own.’

He releases me so that he can lean on a page and slowly limp forward. I follow him through his great waiting chamber, where there are hundreds of men and women gathered to see us pass, through the presence chamber, where scores more are waiting with petitions and requests, and into his privy chamber where only the court is admitted. At each doorway more people fall away, excluded from the room within, until it is just the king and Anthony Denny, a couple of clerks, his two pages, his Fool, Will Somers, two of my ladies and me. This is what he means by being alone with his wife.

They lower him into his great chair, which creaks a little under his weight, they put a footstool under his leg, then drape it with a cloth. He gestures that I may sit near him, and waves them all away. Denny goes to the back of the room and pretends to be talking to his wife, my lady-in-waiting Joan. I am sure that they are both ears-pricked, to hear every word.

‘So you are merry this morning?’ Henry confirms. ‘Though I was watching you in chapel and you seemed grave. I can see you through the lattice of my box, you know. I can keep you under watch and ward all the time. Be very sure that I am always mindful of you.’

‘I was praying, my lord.’

‘That’s good,’ he approves. ‘I like it that you are truly devout; but I want you to be happy. The Queen of England should be the happiest woman in Christendom as well as the most blessed. You must show the world that you are merry on your wedding morning.’

‘I am,’ I assure him. ‘I truly am.’

‘Visibly happy,’ he prompts me.

I show him my most dazzling smile.

He nods his approval. ‘And now you have work to do. And you must do everything that I say. I am your husband now, and you have promised obedience.’ His indulgent tone tells me that this is a joke.

I peep up at him. ‘I shall try to be a very good wife.’

He chuckles. ‘These are my commands: you have to order the tailors and the seamstresses to bring beautiful clothes and fabrics, and you have to order a great many gowns,’ he says. ‘I want to see you dressed like a queen, not like the poor widow Latimer.’

I give a little affected gasp and I press my hands together.

‘They tell me you like birds?’ he asks. ‘Colourful birds and singing birds.’

‘I do,’ I say. ‘But I could never afford to buy them.’

‘Well, now you can,’ he says. ‘I shall tell the captains of the ships that go far afield that they are to bring home little birds for you.’ He smiles. ‘It can be a new tax on shipping – little birds for the queen. And I have something for you now.’ He turns and snaps his fingers and Anthony Denny steps forward and puts a fat purse on the table and a small box. Henry passes me the box first. ‘Open it.’

It is a magnificent ruby, table-cut like a block, on a simple gold band. It is too big for my fingers, but the king slides it on my thumb and admires the red glow. ‘Do you like it?’

‘I love it.’

‘And there are more, of course. I have had them sent to your rooms.’

‘More?’

He warms to my naïvety. ‘More jewels, my dear. You are the queen. You have a treasury of jewels. You can pick out new ones to wear for every day of the year.’

I don’t have to feign my delight. ‘I do love pretty things.’

‘They’re a tribute to your own beauty,’ he says gently. ‘I have wanted you draped in the royal treasures ever since I first saw you.’

‘Thank you, husband. Thank you so much.’

He chuckles. ‘I am going to love giving you things. You blush like a little rose. This purse of gold is for you, too. Spend it on whatever you like and then come to me for another. You will have lands and rents and income of your own soon. Your steward will show you a list of all that you will own. You will be a wealthy woman in your own right. You will have all the queen consort lands and Baynard’s Castle in London. You will command a fortune in your own name. This is just to tide you over.’

‘I should like to be tided over,’ Will Somers observes. ‘For some reason it is low tide with me, all the time.’

The men laugh as, unobserved, I weigh the purse in my hand. It is heavy. If they are gold nobles, and I imagine that they are, this is a small fortune.

The king looks at his page. ‘Give me the list,’ he says.

The young man bows and hands him a rolled piece of paper. ‘These are men and women who want to serve in your household,’ the king says. ‘I have marked the ones that I wish you to take. But you can please yourself for most of the posts. I want you to be happy in your rooms and choose your own playmates.’

It is the right of the queen to choose her own ladies. They are with her night and day. It is only fair that they should be her friends, family and favourites. The king should not be making out the list.

‘I dare say I will approve your choices,’ he says. ‘I am sure there will be none that I do not approve. You have such beautiful taste, you are certain to choose ladies who will be an ornament to your court and to mine.’

I bow my head.

‘But they must be pretty,’ he specifies. ‘Make sure of that. I don’t want an eyesore.’

I say nothing to his plan that I should choose as my companions the women who will please him, and at once, he squeezes my hand. ‘Ah, Kate, we shall deal well together. We’ll go hunting this afternoon and you shall sit with me.’

‘I would love that,’ I say. I long to be on my horse and ride with the hunt. I want the sense of freedom of riding behind the hounds, following where the scent takes them, going fast and riding far from the great palace, but I know it will not be like this. I shall have to sit in the royal shelter beside the king and watch the deer driven towards us so that Henry can shoot his loaded bow from his seat. Before him the huntsmen will herd and chivy the deer forward. Behind him, a page will take the sharpened bolt and load it into the crossbow. The king will do nothing but point and shoot. He makes a hunt, with all the chance and hazard of field and woodland, into a farmyard killing, a butcher’s yard. The king’s hunt, which was once a pageant of excitement, has become a shambles where animals are driven and slaughtered. But this is all he can do now. The man that I remember as a centaur, as a huntsman, who rode three horses one after another in a single day till they foundered, is diminished to a murderer, slumped in a chair, defeated by old age and ill health, with a younger man loading his bow.

‘I shall be so happy to sit beside you,’ I lie.

‘And you shall learn to shoot,’ he promises me. ‘I will give you a little crossbow of your own. You must share in the sport. You must have the pleasure of the kill.’

He intends to be kind to me. ‘Thank you,’ I say again.

He nods that I am to leave. I rise to my feet and hesitate as he beckons me towards him and lifts up his big moon face. He is like a little child, trustingly offering a kiss. I put one hand on his massive shoulder and I bend down. His breath is terribly rank – it is like letting a hound pant in my face – but I don’t flinch. I kiss him on the mouth and I meet his eyes and smile.

‘Dearest,’ he says quietly. ‘You are my dearest. You will be my last and dearest wife.’

I am so touched that I bend down again and put my cheek to his.

‘Go and buy some pretty things,’ he commands me. ‘I want you to look like a beloved wife and the finest queen that England has ever known.’

I leave the room a little dazed. If I look like a beloved wife it will be for the first time. To my second husband, Lord Latimer, I was a partner and a helpmeet, someone to guard his lands and educate his children. He taught me the things that he needed me to know and he was glad to have me alongside him. But he never petted me, or gave things to me, or imagined how I would appear to others. He rode away and left me in terrible danger, expecting me to serve him as the captain of Snape Castle, confident I would command his men in his absence. I was his deputy, not his love. Now I am married to a man who calls me his beloved and plans treats for me.

Nan is waiting with Joan at the door, which opens before us. ‘Come on,’ I say to her. ‘I think there are some things you’ll want to see in my chambers.’

My own presence chamber is already filled with people come to congratulate me on my wedding and hoping to ask me for a place or a favour or an audience or a fee. I walk through them with a smile to one side and the other, without pausing. I will start my work as queen today. But right now, I want to see my husband’s gifts.

‘Oh, my,’ Nan says as the guards throw open the double doors to my private rooms and my ladies rise to their feet and gesture, rather helplessly, to the half-dozen boxes that the king’s men have put all around the room, the great keys ready in the locks.

It is a sin to feel this leap of cupidity. I laugh at myself. ‘Stand back!’ I say jokingly. ‘Stand back, for I am about to dive into treasure.’

Nan turns the key to the first chest and together we lift the heavy lid. It is a travelling chest and it holds the gold plates and goblets for the queen’s private tables. I nod to two of the maids-in-waiting to come forward. They unpack one glorious plate after another and tip the reflections so the golden lights dance around the room like mad angels. ‘More!’ I say and now everyone holds a plate and shines it into each other’s eyes and flashes discs of light into every corner of the room until the room is dappled with shifting reflections. I laugh with delight and we shine the gold plates on one another, rise up, dance, and the whole room is dancing with us, filled with dazzling light.

‘What’s next?’ I demand breathlessly, and Nan opens the next chest. This is filled with necklaces and belts. She draws out ropes of pearls and belts embroidered and encrusted with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, diamonds and stones that I cannot even name, sparkling dark beauties set in thick blocks of silver or gold. She spreads chains of gold on the arms of chairs, necklaces of silver and diamonds in the laps of the maids so that they dazzle against rich fabric. There are opals with their soft milky light gleaming in green and peach, there is amber in great chunks of dark orange, and there are handfuls of uncut stones in purses looking like pebbles, hiding the flash of precious light within their rocky depths.

Nan opens another chest that has been carefully packed with rolls of the softest leather. Out come rings heavy with precious stones, and single stones on long chains. Without comment, she lays before me Katherine of Aragon’s famous necklace of plaited gold. Another purse is undone and there are Anne Boleyn’s rubies. The royal jewels of Spain come from one great box, the dowry of Anne of Cleves is spread on the floor at my feet. The treasure that the king showered on Katherine Howard comes in a chest all to itself, untouched since she was stripped of everything and went out to take the axe on her bare neck.

‘Look at these earrings!’ someone exclaims, but instead I turn away and go to the window to look down on the formal gardens and the glimpse of the silvery river through the trees. I am suddenly sickened. ‘Those are dead women’s goods,’ I say unsteadily as Nan comes to my side. ‘They are the favourite treasures of dead queens. Those necklaces have been around the necks of the wife before me, some of them have been worn by every one of them who has gone before me. The pearls were warmed by their dead skins, the silver is tarnished by their old sweat.’

Nan is as pale as me. She wrapped Katherine Howard’s emeralds in their leather folders and put them in that very jewel box on the day of her arrest. She fastened Jane Seymour’s sapphires around her neck on her wedding day. She handed Katherine of Aragon her earrings and here they are now, on the table in my privy chamber for my use.

‘You are the queen, you get the queen’s treasures,’ she rules, but her voice trembles. ‘Of course. It’s how it has to be.’

There is a rap on the door and the guard swings it open. William Herbert, Nan’s husband, comes into the room and smiles to see us all surrounded by jewels like children amazed in the pastry kitchen, spoiled for choice. ‘His Majesty sent this,’ he says. ‘It was overlooked. He says I am to put it on your beloved head.’

As I rise to my feet and come towards my brother-in-law, I see he cannot meet my eyes. He looks at the window behind me, at the sky scudding with clouds; he does not look at the treasures at my feet as I step carefully around Katherine of Aragon’s hoods, Katherine Howard’s glossy black sables. In his hand is a small heavy box.

‘What’s this?’ I ask him. I think at once – I don’t want it.

In reply he bows, and unlocks the metal hasp. He lifts the lid and it falls back on its bronze hinges. There is a small ugly crown inside. The ladies behind me gasp. I see Nan make a little movement as if she would prevent what must come next.

William puts down the box and lifts out the elaborately worked crown, encrusted with pearls and sapphires. Mounted at the pinnacle, as if it were a domed church, is a plain gold cross.

‘The king wants you to try it on.’

Obediently, I bend my head for Nan to remove my hood, and her husband gives her the crown. It is the right size, it settles on my forehead like a headache.

‘Is it new?’ I ask faintly. I long for it to be newly made for me.

He shakes his head. ‘Whose was it?’

Nan makes a little gesture with her hand as if to warn him to be silent.

‘It was Anne Boleyn’s crown,’ he tells me. I feel it pressing down on my head as if I might sink beneath the weight of it.

‘Surely he doesn’t want me to wear it today,’ I say awkwardly. ‘He’ll tell you when,’ he says. ‘Important feast days or when you are meeting foreign ambassadors.’

I nod, my neck stiff, and Nan takes it off for me and puts it back in the box. She closes the lid as if she does not want to see it. Anne Boleyn’s crown? How can it be anything but cursed?

‘But I’m to take back the pearls,’ William says, embarrassed. ‘They were brought in error.’

‘Which pearls?’ Nan asks her husband.

He looks at her, still carefully not looking at me. ‘The Seymour pearls,’ he says quietly. ‘They’re to be kept in the treasure room.’

Nan bends down and picks up the ropes and ropes of pearls, milky and glowing in her hands, and piles them back in their long box, the strands running up and down the length of it like a quiescent snake. She hands them to William and smiles at me. ‘It’s not as if we didn’t have a fortune in pearls already,’ she says, trying to cover the awkward moment.

I walk with William to the doorway. ‘Why is he taking them back?’ I ask him in an undertone.

‘For remembrance of her,’ William tells me. ‘She gave him his son. He wants to keep them for the prince’s future wife. He doesn’t want anyone else wearing them.’

‘Of course, of course,’ I say quickly. ‘Tell him how pleased I am with everything else. I know that her pearls were special.’

‘He is at prayer,’ my brother-in-law says. ‘He is hearing a Mass for her now.’

Carefully, I maintain my expression of sympathy and interest. The belief that God will shorten the days that a soul waits to enter heaven if He is offered a hundred Masses, a thousand prayers, bonfires of incense, was dismissed by this king, and the chantries closed. Even the chapel that he dedicated to pray for Jane’s soul was abolished; I didn’t know that he still clung to a belief that he has forbidden to the rest of us – the hope of praying someone out of purgatory.

‘Stephen Gardiner is holding a special Mass for Queen Jane,’ William tells me. ‘In Latin.’

Surely it’s a little odd to be praying for the dead queen on the first day of the king’s honeymoon? ‘God bless her,’ I say awkwardly, knowing that William will report this to his royal master. ‘Take her pearls and keep them safe. I will pray for her soul myself.’

Just as the king promised, the word goes out that the new queen has a liking for pretty birds. One of the rooms off my presence chamber is emptied of furniture and filled with perches and cages. At the windows are little aviaries for the singing birds from the Canary Islands. When the sun pours in through the thick glass they chirp and preen and flutter their little wings. I keep them according to colour, the golds and yellows together, the greens next door to them, while the blues flit their little wings against a sky that mirrors their colour. I hope that they will breed true. Every morning, after chapel, I visit my bird room and feed them all by hand, loving the feeling of their scratchy light little feet as they perch and peck for seed.

To my delight one day, a dark-skinned lascar sailor with a silver ring in his ear and his face tattooed, more like a painted devil than a man, comes to my presence chamber with a huge bird, as blue as indigo and as big as a buzzard, sitting on his clenched fist. He sells it to me for a ridiculously high price and now I am the very proud owner of a parrot with black knowing eyes. I name him Don Pepe, since he speaks nothing but the most obscene Spanish. I will have to put a cover over his cage when the Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, comes to pay his respects, but Nan assures me that he’s a hard man to shock: after years at the court he has heard far worse.

The king gives me a new horse for riding, a beautiful bay mare, and a puppy, an adorable spaniel with a shining tan coat. I take him with me everywhere and he sits at my feet even when I go to chapel in the morning. I’ve never owned a dog that was not a working dog before, only the hounds for hunting in the stables at Snape, or the sheepdogs with their quick dashes here and there.

‘You are the most idle thing,’ I tell him. ‘How can you live with yourself when all you have to be is ornamental?’

‘He’s very sweet,’ Nan agrees.

‘Purkoy was a darling,’ Catherine Brandon remarks.

‘Oh, what was Purkoy?’ I ask.

‘Anne Boleyn’s dog,’ Nan frowns at Catherine. ‘Nothing like little Rig, here.’

‘Is there anything new?’ I ask irritably. ‘Is there anything that I do that one of them hasn’t already done?’

Catherine looks embarrassed.

‘Your clocks,’ Nan says with a small smile at me. ‘You’re the first queen to love clocks. All the goldsmiths and clockmakers in London are in heaven.’

The court is to go on progress, as it does every summer. I cannot imagine how we are to pack up everything and move, every week, sometimes after only a few days, from one house to another, where all our servants will be expected to unload furniture, tapestries and silverware and make a court in a new house. How am I to know what clothes to pack? How am I to know what jewels I should take? I don’t even know how they take enough linen for the beds.

‘It’s nothing for you to trouble yourself about,’ Nan says. ‘Really, nothing. All the servants have moved the queen’s household a score of times, a hundred times. All you have to do is to ride beside the king and look happy.’

‘But all the bedding! And all the clothes!’ I exclaim.

‘Everyone knows their part,’ she repeats. ‘You need do nothing but go where you are sent.’

‘My birds?’

‘The falconers will take care of them. They’ll go in their own cart behind the falcons and hawks.’

‘My jewels?’ I ask.

‘I take care of them,’ she says. ‘I’ve done this for years, Kat, honestly. All you have to do is to ride beside the king if he wants you there, and look beautiful.’

‘And if he doesn’t want me?’

‘Then you ride with your companions and your master of horse.’

‘I don’t even have a master of horse yet, I haven’t filled all my household posts.’

‘We’ll appoint them as we travel. It’s not for lack of applicants! All the clerks will travel with us, and most of the court. The Privy Council meets wherever the king happens to be, it’s not like we are leaving court, we take everything with us.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Oatlands first,’ she says with satisfaction. ‘I think it is one of the best palaces, on the river, newly built, as beautiful as any of them. You’ll love it there, and the bedrooms aren’t haunted!’