The Taming of the Queen

HAMPTON COURT PALACE, CHRISTMAS 1543

The oars of the royal barge, muffled by the cold mist that lies in heavy ribbons on the river, dip in and out of the water with one splashy movement. The boat surges forward with each stroke and then seems to rest before going forward again as if it were breathing on a living river: leaping and then stilling. Coots and moorhens scurry away from us ahead of the barge, lifting out of the water with their long legs trailing. A broad-winged heron rises silently from the reeds at the river bank, flapping on huge slow wings; overhead the seagulls cry. To approach Hampton Court in the royal barge on the river, with the bright winter sunlight breaking through the swirls of cold mist, is to see a magical palace emerge, as if it, too, is floating on the cold water.

I snuggle deep into my thick furs. I have rich glossy black sables delivered from the wardrobe of my London house of Baynard’s Castle. I know these belonged to my predecessor, Katherine Howard. I don’t have to ask: I have become familiar with her perfume, a memorable musky smell – she must have drenched everything in it. The moment they bring me a new gown I can smell her, as if she is haunting me in scent as she haunts me in life. I cannot help but wonder if she was drowning out the stink of his rotting leg, as I do with rose oil. At least I refuse to wear her shoes. They brought me a pair with golden heels and velvet toes, fit for a tiny child. She must have been like a little girl beside my husband, more than thirty years younger than him. She must have looked like his granddaughter when she danced with the young people of the court and glanced around at his squires¸ seeking her boyish lover. I wear her gowns, which are so beautifully made and so richly embroidered, but I will not walk in her shoes. I order new ones, dozens and dozens of pairs, hundreds of them. I pray that I will not dream of her as I follow her footsteps into Hampton Court, wearing her furs, her – and all the others. I sail in Katherine of Aragon’s barge. I wrap Kitty Howard’s sables around me and think that the cold wind blowing down the river will blow away her presence, will blow all the ghosts away, and soon her furs, so soft and luxurious, will be my furs and, brushing constantly against my throat and shoulders, will pick up my perfume of orange blossom and rose.

‘Isn’t it beautiful? Nan asks me, looking ahead to where the palace shines in the morning sunlight. ‘Isn’t it the best of them all?’

All of Henry’s many houses are places of wonder. This palace he took from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who built it in deep rosy-red brick, with high ornamental chimneys, broad courtyards and exquisitely planned gardens. They have completed the changes that Henry promised me, and now there is a new queen’s side overlooking the gardens and away from the kitchens. These will be my rooms; no ghosts will walk the newly waxed floorboards. There is a broad stone quay that runs along the riverbank, and as our barge and all the accompanying ships come into sight, all the standards are unfurled at all the flagpoles, and there is a great roar of cannon fire to welcome the king home.

I jump at the noise and Nan laughs. ‘You should have heard it the day that we brought Anne of Cleves to London,’ she says. ‘They had barges on the river shooting off guns, and the sky was lit like a thunderstorm with the fireworks.’

The barge comes smoothly in to the stone pier and the rowers ship their oars. There is another bellow of ordnance and the gangplank is run ashore. The yeomen of the guard, in their green and white livery, hammer down the shallow stone stairs to line the quay. The trumpeters blast out a shout of sound, and all the royal servants come out before the doors of the palace and stand, stiffly, heads uncovered in the wintry air. The king, who was resting his leg on an embroidered footstool under an awning in the stern, hauls himself to his feet and goes first, as he needs a man on either side to support him on the gently rocking deck. I follow him, and when he is steady on the white marble paving stone of the quay he turns and takes my hand. The trumpeters are playing a processional anthem, the servants are bowing low, and the people held back from the quay are cheering Henry’s name – and my own. I realise that our marriage is popular not just in our court and the foreign courts, but here, in the countryside too. Who could believe that the king could marry again? Yet again? Who could believe that he would take a beautiful widow and restore her to wealth and happiness? Who could believe that he would take an English woman, a countrywoman, a woman from the despised and feared North of England, and put her in the very heart of the smart Southern court, and that she would outshine everyone? They cheer and shout my name, wave documents that they want me to see, requests that they want me to grant, and I smile and wave back. The steward of my household goes among them and gathers up their letters for me to read later.

‘It’s good that you are looking well,’ Henry remarks shortly as we go slowly through the wide open doors. He gives a little grimace as each step pains him. ‘It is not enough to be a queen, you have to look like one. When the people come out to see us they want to see a couple set far above them, larger than life, grander than anything they have ever dreamed. They want to be awed. Seeing us should be like seeing beings far above them, like angels, like gods.’

‘I understand.’

‘I am the greatest man in the kingdom,’ Henry says simply. ‘Perhaps the greatest in the world. People have to see that the minute that they see me.’

The whole court is waiting to greet us inside the great hall. I smile at my uncle, soon to be a peer of the realm, and my brother, who will be the Earl of Essex, thanks to me. All my friends and family, newly enriched by my patronage, are here for Christmas, and the greater lords of the realm, the Howards, the Seymours, the Dudleys; the rising men like Thomas Wriothesley, his friend and colleague Richard Rich, the other courtiers and the churchmen in their crimson and purple robes. Stephen Gardiner is here, smoothly untouched by Archbishop Cranmer’s inquiry. He bows to me and his smile is confident.

‘I am going to teach you to be Queen of England,’ Henry says quietly into my ear. ‘You shall look at these wealthy and powerful men and know that you command each and every one of them; I have set you above them. You are my wife and my helpmeet, Kateryn. I am going to make you into a great and powerful woman, a true wife to me, the greatest woman in England, as I am the greatest man.’

I don’t modestly disclaim, I meet the cold determination in his eyes. They may be loving words but his face is hard.

‘I will be your wife in every way,’ I promise. ‘This is what I have undertaken and I will keep my word. And I will be queen of this country and mother to your children.’

‘I’ll make you regent,’ he confirms. ‘You shall be their master. You shall command everyone that you see here. You will put your heel on their necks.’

‘I will rule,’ I promise him. ‘I will learn to rule as you do.’

The court welcomes me and acknowledges me as queen. I could almost think that there had never been another. In turn, I welcome the two youngest children, Prince Edward and Lady Elizabeth, and weld them into a royal family where they have never truly belonged before. I add royal nieces: Lady Margaret, the daughter of the king’s sister the Scots’ queen, and little Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of his sister the French queen. Prince Edward is an endearing mixture of formality and shyness. He has been schooled since the day of his birth in the knowledge that he is a Tudor son and heir, and everything is expected of him. In contrast, Elizabeth has never been sure of her position: her name and even her safety are completely uncertain. At the execution of her mother she fell, almost overnight, from the grandeur of being a tiny beloved princess addressed as ‘Your Grace’ in her own palace, to being a neglected bastard named ‘Lady Elizabeth’. If anyone could prove the rumours that still swirl around her paternity, she would be an orphan ‘Miss Smeaton’ in a moment.

The Howards ought to love and support her as their girl, the daughter of the Boleyn queen, their kin. But when the king is counting his injuries, and brooding over the wrongs done to him, the last thing the duke and his son want him to remember is that they have put several Howard girls in his bed and two on the throne, and that both queens ended in heartbreak, disgrace and death. Alternately, they support or neglect the little girl, as serves their purpose.

She cannot be betrothed to any foreign prince while nobody knows if she is a princess or a bastard. She cannot even be properly served while no-one knows if she is to be called Princess or Lady Elizabeth. Nobody but her governess and Lady Mary have loved this little girl and her only refuge from her fear and loneliness is in books.

My heart goes out to her. I too was once a girl too poor to attract a good marriage, a girl who turned to books for company and comfort. As soon as she comes to court I see that she is given a bedroom near to mine. I hold her hand as we go together to the chapel every morning, and we spend the day together. She responds with relief, as if she has been waiting all her life for a mother, and finally I have arrived. She reads with me, and when the preachers come from London she listens to them and even joins in the discussion of their sermons. She loves music, as we all do, she loves fine clothes and dancing. I am able to teach her and, after a few days, joke with her, pet her, reprimand her, and pray with her. In a very little while, I kiss her forehead in the morning and give her a mother’s blessing at night almost without thinking.

Lady Mary takes to this Christmas family as a young woman who has tiptoed through the world since the exile of her mother. It is as if she has been holding her breath in fear and she can breathe out at last. At last she knows where she should be: and she lives in a court where she has an honoured place. I would not dream of trying to mother her – it would be ridiculous: we are nearly the same age – but we can be like sisters together, making a home for the two younger ones, diverting and comforting the king, and keeping the country in alliance with Spain: Mary’s kinsmen. I support the religious reforms that her father has judged are right; naturally she would want the church to return to the rule of Rome; but I think that the more she hears of the philosophers who want to restore the church to its earliest purity, the more she will question the history of the papacy that has brought the church into corruption and disrepute. I believe that the Word of God must mean more to her than the empty symbols that decorated the churches and monasteries, the pointless ritual that was used to dazzle people who cannot read and think for themselves. When she thinks of this, as I am thinking about it, she will surely turn to reform as I am doing.

Though we may differ over points of doctrine she comes every day to my rooms and listens to the readings. This Christmas season I have chosen the favourite psalms of the late Bishop Fisher. It is an interesting example of the delicate path I tread: inside inquiry, outside challenge. The bishop, a sainted man, a wonderful writer, died for the Church of Rome in defiance of the king. He was confessor to Katherine of Aragon, Mary’s mother, so it is natural and daughterly that she should think well of him. Many who secretly thought as he did are now the king’s favoured advisors, so it is allowed to read the bishop’s writings once again.

My almoner, Bishop George Day, served as Fisher’s chaplain and loved his master. He reads from his collection of Latin psalms every day, and no-one can deny that these words of God have been beautifully rendered by the old bishop from the original Greek. It’s like a precious inheritance: from Greek to Latin and now, the ladies of my rooms, my churchmen, the Lady Mary and even little Elizabeth and I work on an English translation. The language is so fine that it seems wrong to me that only those who can understand Latin should be able to read what this holy man composed. Mary agrees with me, and her care for the work and the beauty of her vocabulary make every morning a time of great interest – not just to me but to all my ladies.

My stepson Edward is my sweetheart, the darling of the court. He speaks with ridiculous formality, he is stiff with etiquette, and yet he longs to be loved and petted, teased and tickled like a normal boy. Slowly, gradually, through sports, games and silly jokes, with shared study and shared amusement, he comes to be easy with me, and I treat him as I treated my two Latimer stepchildren when they were under my care – with affection and respect, never trying to replace the mother that they had lost, but loving them as she might have done. To this day, Margaret Latimer still calls me ‘Lady Mother’, and I write often to my stepson Latimer. I am confident that here too I can give these royal children a mother’s love. My best judgement, I think, is to treat Edward with familiarity – as if we are a loving, carefree family, as if he might trust me, and I might be easy with him.

Having struggled for my own place in the world – first in the house of a bad-tempered father-in-law, and then as a young wife to a cold and distant husband, before coming into a court as an insignificant widow – I have learned that the most precious thing is a place where you can be as you are, where someone can see you as your true self. Edward comes to my presence chamber where I am hearing petitions, and is greeted both as a prince and a little boy. I pull him up to my great throne to sit beside me, to listen and to talk quietly to me, to be the child that he is, and not a little manikin that everyone secretly eyes, wondering what he can do for their prospects.

‘Kate, you are everything that I hoped you would be,’ the king says, coming to my rooms late one night. I had thought that he was sleeping in his own bed and my maid-in-waiting, who had been settled for the night on the truckle bed, scuttles quickly away, bobbing a curtsey and closing the door behind her.

‘Thank you,’ I say, a little startled.

‘I shall trust you further,’ he tells me, easing his great bulk into my bed. ‘No, I can manage,’ he says, raising his hand and heaving himself up into a half-sitting position. ‘You shall have the care of the kingdom while I am away. Tom Seymour has done his job: we have an alliance with the Netherlands, we have a treaty with Spain, we are ready to go to war with France.’

His name, suddenly dropped into the conversation as I sit in my bed, naked but for my thin linen nightgown, gives me a shock that is almost physical, as if someone has violently shaken me, shouting his name aloud in the quiet room. I realise that the king is watching me closely.

‘You are alarmed?’ he asks. ‘What’s the matter? You’ve gone white!’

‘At the thought of war,’ I say unsteadily. ‘Only at the thought of danger.’

‘I will go myself,’ he announces. ‘I. Myself. Into the very heart of danger. I shall not send my armies without me. I shall lead them.’

I close my eyes briefly. Thomas will almost certainly be coming home. If he has agreed the treaty he will have to come to court to receive his orders. He will meet with his brother and together they will muster their tenants and soldiers. It is certain that I will see him. It is impossible for him to stay away or for me to avoid him. He will have to bow before me and congratulate me on my happiness. I will have to nod and look indifferent.

I shudder at the thought of it. Everything that I have achieved – with the children, with the court, with the king – has been in the certainty that I will never feel Thomas’s dark eyes on me, that I will never glance up and see him looking at me. I don’t know that I can even sleep if he is under the same roof. I can’t imagine lying quietly in my bed if he is somewhere in the palace, naked but for a sheet, waiting for my soft tap on his door. I won’t know how to dance if he is watching. What if we are in the same set and there is a moment when we go hand to hand? How shall I feel his touch and not turn to him? And when he puts his warm hand on my waist? How shall I land on my feet if he lifts me in the haute danse and I feel his breath on my cheek? When he helps me down from my horse I will have to put my hands on his shoulders; when he puts me on the ground will he take the chance to hold me close?

I have no idea how I can hide my utter need for him. I cannot imagine how it should be done. I am on show all the time; everyone watches me. I cannot trust myself; I cannot trust my hand not to shake when I hold it out for the polite brush of his warm lips. This is a court schooled in the bad habit of watching Henry’s queens. I succeed Katherine Howard: a byword for immorality. Everyone will always be watching me to see if I am a fool like her.

‘I shall lead them myself,’ Henry repeats.

‘Oh, no,’ I say weakly. ‘My lord . . .’

‘I shall,’ he says.

‘But your health?’

‘I am strong enough. I would not send an army to France without their king at the head. I would not ask them to face death without me.’

I know very well what I am to say, but I feel too slow and stupid to form the words. All I can think is that Thomas Seymour will be coming home to England and I will see him again. I wonder if he still thinks of me, if his desire is unchanged, if he still wants me as he did. I wonder if he has put me out of his mind, if – like a man – he has cut off love and severed desire, put it away and forgotten it. Or, does he, like me, still ache? I wonder if I will be able to ask him.

‘Surely, one of your lords can go?’ I say. ‘You don’t need to be at the forefront.’

‘Oh, they will all go!’ the king says. ‘Be very sure of that! The Seymours, the Howards, the Dudleys, every single one of them. Your brother will earn his new title and ride at my side. But I shall be at the head of the army. They shall see my standard go out and they will see it enter Paris. We will reclaim our lands in France. I shall be King of France in truth.’

I clasp my hands together to keep them from trembling at the thought of Thomas Seymour going to war. ‘I’m afraid for you.’

He takes my hands. ‘Why, you’re icy! Are you so fearful?’ He smiles. ‘Don’t be afraid, Kateryn. I shall come home safe. I shall ride to victory and come home triumphant. And you shall rule England in my absence. You will be regent, and should God require of me the greatest sacrifice’ – he pauses and his voice quavers a little at the thought of my loss, of England’s loss – ‘should I be taken from you and from my army and from my country, then you will rule England for me until Edward is a man.’

God forgive me, the first thing I think is that if England loses its king then I will be free to marry, and Thomas will be free, and there is no-one who could stop us. Then I think: I will be queen regent. Then I think: I will be the most powerful woman in the world.

‘Don’t even say it.’ I put my cold fingers to his little mouth. ‘I can’t think of it.’ It is true. I really must not. I cannot allow myself to think of another man, as my husband leans back on the heaped pillows, the bed ropes creaking, and beckons me to come to him, his big pink face gleaming with sweat and anticipation.

He kisses my fingertips. ‘You shall see me return in triumph,’ he promises me. ‘And I shall know that you are my faithful wife and helpmeet in every way.’