The Taming of the Queen

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1544

Bishop George Day comes to find me in my rooms, a roll of manuscript in his hand. ‘My clerk has completed the copying,’ he says with triumph in his voice. ‘It’s done. It’s fair.’

He gives me the pages. For a moment I simply hold them, as if they were my newborn baby and I wanted to feel his weight. I have never borne a child but I imagine I feel something of a mother’s pride. This is a new joy for me. This is the joy of scholarship. For long moments I don’t unfurl the pages; I know well enough what they are, I have waited for them.

‘The psalms,’ I whisper. ‘Bishop Fisher’s psalms.’

‘Just as you translated them,’ he confirms. ‘The Latin psalms set into English. They read very beautifully. They read as if the first psalmist spoke the finest English. As they should. They are an honour to God and an honour to you. They are an honour to John Fisher, God bless him. I congratulate you.’

Slowly, I spread the pages out and start to read them. It is like reading a chorus through time: the old, old voice of the original psalmist in Hebrew translated to Greek, the sonorous wise voice of the martyred bishop rendering the Greek into Latin, and then it is my voice which sounds through the English lines. I read one psalm:

Thou art our Defender, our refuge, and our God and in Thee we trust. Thou shalt deliver me from the snares of the hunters, and from the perils of my persecutors. Thou shalt make a shadow for me under Thy shoulders; and under Thy wings I shall be harmless. Thy truth shall be my shield and buckler; and no evil shall approach near unto me.

‘Should it be harmless?’ I ask myself.

George Day knows better than to answer. He waits.

‘Without harm is clumsy,’ I say. ‘Safe is too strong. But harmless has the merit of meaning without harm and without being able to do harm. It feels a little odd perhaps, but the oddness draws attention to the word.’ I hesitate.

‘My clerk can copy any changes you want into fair script for the printer,’ he offers.

‘Under Thy wings I shall be harmless,’ I whisper to myself. ‘It’s like poetry. It carries a sense that is greater than the words, greater than the simple meaning of the words. I think it’s right. I don’t think I should change it. And I love how it sounds – under Thy wings – you can almost feel the feathers of the great wings, can’t you?’

George smiles. He can’t. But it doesn’t matter.

‘I don’t want to change it,’ I say. ‘Not this, not anything.’

I glance up at George Day, nodding his head at the steady rhythm of the words. ‘Clear as plainsong,’ he says. ‘Clear as a bell. It is open and honest.’

Clarity means more to him than poetry, and so it should. He wants English men and women to understand the psalms that Bishop Fisher loved. I want to do something more. I want to make these verses sing as they once did in the Holy Land. I want boys in Yorkshire, girls in Cumberland to hear the music of Jerusalem.

‘I shall publish these.’ I shudder at my own daring. No other woman has ever published in English under her own name. I can hardly believe that I can find the courage: to stand up, to speak aloud, to publish to the world. ‘I really will. George – you do think that I should? You don’t advise against it?’

‘I took the liberty of showing them to Nicholas Ridley,’ he remarks, naming the great reformer and friend of Thomas Cranmer. ‘He was deeply moved. He said that this is as great a gift to the faithful Christians of England as the Bible that your husband the king gave them. He said that these will be spoken and sung in every church in England where the priest wants the people to understand the beauty of God as well as His wisdom. He said that if you will lead the court and the country to a true understanding you will be a new saint.’

‘But not a martyr!’ I say, cracking a weak joke. ‘So it can’t be known that I am the translator. My name, and the names of my ladies, especially Lady Mary and Lady Elizabeth, cannot be attached to it. The king’s daughters must never be mentioned. I will make many enemies at court if people know that I believe that psalms should be read in English.’

‘I agree,’ he says. ‘The papists would be quick to criticise and you cannot risk Stephen Gardiner turning against you. So these will be known only as the bishop’s psalms. Nobody need know that it is your study and scholarship that has brought them into English. I have a very discreet printer. He knows that the manuscript comes from me, and that I serve you at court, but I have not told him the name of the author. He thinks highly of me – I must say, he thinks far too highly of me – for he imagines that I could have done this translation. I have denied it, but not so strongly that he is searching for another candidate. I think we can publish and you not own it. Except . . .’

‘Except what?’

‘I think it’s a pity,’ he says frankly. ‘These are fine translations with the ear of a musician, the heart of a true believer and the language of a serious writer. Anyone – I mean any man – would be proud to publish them under his own name. He would boast of them. It seems unfair that you have to deny that you have such a gift. The king’s grandmother collected translations and published them.’

I have a wry smile on my face. ‘Ah, George,’ I say. ‘You would lure me with vanity, but neither the king nor any man in England wants to be taught by a woman, not even a queen. And the king’s grandmother was above criticism. I will publish these as you suggest, and I shall get great happiness from knowing that the bishop’s psalms translated by me and my ladies into English may guide men and women to the king’s church. But it must be for the glory of the bishop and the glory of the king. I think it better for all of us if they come without my name emblazoned on the cover, like a boast. We are all safer if we don’t advertise our beliefs.’

‘The king loves you. Surely he would be proud . . .’ George starts to argue when there is a tap on the door. At once he shuffles the pages out of the way as Catherine Brandon comes in, drops me a curtsey, smiles at George and says: ‘The king is asking for you, Your Majesty.’

I get to my feet. ‘He is coming here?’

She shakes her head but does not answer. George at once understands that she does not want to explain before him. He gathers up the papers. ‘I shall take these, as we agreed,’ he says, and I nod as he leaves.

‘His leg has gone bad,’ Catherine says quietly, as soon as the door is closed behind my almoner. ‘My lord husband warned me, and then sent a messenger to say that the king would see you this morning in his private rooms.’

‘Am I to go to him without being seen?’ I ask. There are interconnecting rooms between the king’s and the queen’s sides at Whitehall. I can either process through the great hall with everyone observing that I am visiting my husband, or I can go through to his wing by our shared gallery with only a lady in attendance.

‘Discreetly,’ she nods. ‘He doesn’t want anyone to know that he has taken to his bed.’

She leads the way. Catherine has been in and out of the royal palaces since childhood. She was the daughter of Katherine of Aragon’s most favoured lady-in-waiting, María de Salinas, and is the wife of Henry’s great friend Charles Brandon. She was brought up as an expert way-finder around palaces, avoiding wrong turnings and malicious courtiers alike. It is not the first time that I feel like a provincial nobody trailing behind one of the exclusive few, born and bred to this court.

‘Are his physicians with him?’

‘Doctor Butts and Doctor Owen, and his apothecary is making up a draught to ease the pain. But it is very bad this time. I don’t think I have seen him worse.’

‘Did he knock it? Has it broken open?’

She shakes her head. ‘It’s just the same as it always is,’ she says. ‘He has to keep the wound open or the poison will mount to his head and kill him, but often when they pull the wound apart with wires, or grind gold chips into it, it seems worse than before. Now it was healing up and so they have torn it open and the poison is oozing out as it should, but this time it has gone very red inside. It’s swollen up very hot and puffy, and the ulcer seems to be deepening into his leg. Charles told me it is eating its way to the bone. It’s causing him terrible pain, and nothing eases it.’

I can’t help but be apprehensive. The king in pain is as dangerous as a wounded boar. His temper is as inflamed as his pulsing wound.

She gives me a gentle touch on my back as she steps aside for me to go first through the adjoining double doors. ‘Go on,’ she says very quietly. ‘You can manage him when no-one else can.’

Henry is in his privy chamber. He looks up as the private door opens and I come into the room. ‘Ah, thank God, and here is the queen,’ he says. ‘The rest of you can hold your tongues and step back and let me speak privately with her.’

He is surrounded by men. I see Edward Seymour looking flushed and angry and Bishop Gardiner looking smug. I guess they have been bickering, jostling for a place before the king, even as the doctors put a drain into his leg to draw off poison from the wound, thrusting a sharp metal spoon deep into the raw flesh. No wonder my husband is red as a Lancaster rose, his eyes squeezed into tear-stained slits in the ferocious grimace of his face. Charles Brandon, Catherine’s husband, keeps a cautious distance.

‘I am sure that Her Majesty the queen herself will agree . . .’ Bishop Gardiner starts smoothly, and I see Wriothesley nod and come a little closer as if to reinforce a viewpoint.

‘The queen will say nothing,’ Henry spits out. ‘She will stand by me and hold my hand and hold her tongue as a good wife should. You will not suggest that she does other. And you will all leave.’

Promptly, Charles Brandon bows to the king, bows hand on heart to me, nods farewell to his wife and melts away from the king’s brooding presence.

‘Of course,’ Edward Seymour says quickly. He looks at me. ‘I am glad that Her Majesty is here to bring comfort and peace. His Majesty should not be troubled at such a time. Especially when matters are perfectly well as they are.’

‘Nothing will bring peace to the king but when matters are made perfectly well,’ Bishop Gardiner cannot resist saying. ‘How can His Majesty be at peace when he knows that his Privy Council is constantly disturbed by new men coming and bringing in even newer men with them? When there are constant inquiries into heresy because people keep redefining what heresy is? Because they are allowed to wrangle and dispute without check?’

‘I’ll take them out.’ Thomas Howard speaks over the other councillors, directly to the king as if he is his only friend. ‘God knows they will never fall silent – even when they are ordered to be quiet. They will plague you for ever.’ He gives him a wolfish grin. ‘You should behead them all.’

The king laughs shortly and nods his assent, so Thomas Howard wins the upper hand, ushering the others from the room. He even turns in the doorway and gives the king a friendly wink, as if to assure him that only a Howard can manage such troublesome upstarts. As the door shuts behind them there is a sudden silence. Catherine Brandon curtseys to the king and goes to sit in the window seat, her pretty head turned towards the gardens. Anthony Denny lounges over to stand beside her. There are still half a dozen people in the room but they are quiet and talking amongst themselves or playing a game of cards. By the standards of the overcrowded court, we are alone.

‘Dear husband, are you in great pain?’ I ask him.

He nods. ‘They can do nothing,’ he says furiously. ‘They know nothing.’

Doctor Butts looks up from a worried consultation with the apothecary as if he knows he will have to take the blame.

‘Is it the same trouble? The old wound?’ I ask cautiously.

The king nods. ‘They say they may have to cauterise it.’ He looks at me as if I can save him. ‘I pray to be spared that.’

If they cauterise the wound they will put a red-hot brand against it to burn out infection. It is an agony worse than branding a criminal with a ‘T’ for ‘thief ’. It is a merciless cruelty to an innocent man.

‘Surely that won’t be necessary?’ I demand of Doctor Butts.

He shakes his head; he does not know. ‘If we can drain the wound and make sure that it does not close up, then the king may be well again,’ he says. ‘We have always managed before to cleanse it without cauterising. I would not undertake it lightly. His heart . . .’ His voice trails away. I imagine he is terrified at the thought of giving such a shock to Henry’s massive poisoned bulk.

I take Henry’s hand, and feel his grip tighten. ‘I am afraid of nothing,’ he says defiantly.

‘I know,’ I say reassuringly. ‘You are naturally courageous.’

‘And this is not caused by age or infirmity. It’s not sickness.’

‘It was a wound from jousting, wasn’t it? Years ago?’

‘Yes, yes, it was. An injury from sport. A young man’s wound. Reckless, I was reckless. Fearless.’

‘And I don’t doubt that you’ll be riding again within a month – still reckless and fearless,’ I say with a smile.

He draws me closer. ‘You know I have to be able to ride. I have to lead my men to France. I have to get well. I have to get up.’

‘I am sure you will,’ I say, the easy lie quickly in my mouth. I am not at all sure that he will. I can see the drain from the wound dripping the vile pus into a bowl on the floor, the stink of it worse than carrion. I can see a great glass jar with black hungry leeches crawling up the sides. I can see the table spread with flagons and bottles and pestles and mortars, and the apothecary desperately stirring draughts, and the worried faces of the two greatest doctors in England. I have nursed a dying husband before, and his bedroom looked like this, but God knows I have never smelled a stink like this before. It is a fog of rotting flesh, like a charnel house.

‘Sit,’ the king commands me. ‘Sit beside me.’

I swallow down disgust as a page brings a chair to me. The king is on his great strengthened seat, his wounded leg supported on a footstool, draped in sheets to try to contain the smell, to try to hide that the King of England is slowly rotting away.

‘I am going to name my heirs,’ he says quietly. ‘Before I go to France.’

Now I understand what the councillors were arguing about. It is essential that I betray neither hope nor fear for Lady Mary and Lady Elizabeth. It is essential that I do not show my own interest. I don’t doubt that the courtiers who just left the room were advocating their own candidates – Edward Seymour reminding everyone of the primacy of his nephew the prince, Thomas Howard advocating for the inheritance of Lady Elizabeth, Bishop Gardiner and Thomas Wriothesley pushing for the elevation of Lady Mary to be heir after Edward.

They don’t know how moderate she is in her religion, how interested in open and thoughtful discussion. They don’t know that she is a scholar and that we are talking about a new translation of the gospels. They don’t know that Lady Elizabeth has now read every single one of Bishop Fisher’s psalms and even translated lines under my supervision. They don’t think of either young woman as anything but an empty figurehead for their supporters. They don’t realise that we are all women with minds of our own. Bishop Gardiner thinks that if Lady Mary ever comes to the throne she will take the country back to Rome at his bidding. Thomas Howard thinks that a Howard girl will deliver the ruling of the country to his family. None of them believes I am a serious power at court. They don’t consider me to be a thinking woman. Yet I may be regent, and then it will be I who will rule whether the country will hear Mass in English or Latin, and I shall determine what the priests say in their sermons.

‘My lord? What is your wish?’

‘What d’you think would be right?’ he asks me.

‘I think that there is no need for a king as strong and as young as you to trouble himself at all,’ I flatter him.

He gestures to his leg. ‘I am half a man,’ he says bitterly.

‘You will get better. You will be riding again. You have the health and strength of a man half your age. You always recover. You have this terrible wound and you live with it, you defeat it. I see you conquer it like an enemy, day after day.’

He is pleased. ‘They don’t think that.’ He nods irritably towards the door. ‘They are thinking of my death.’

‘They think only of themselves,’ I say, condemning them generally in order to maintain my own position. ‘What do they want?’

‘They want their own kin to have preference,’ he says shortly. ‘Or their candidate. And they all hope to rule the kingdom by ruling Edward.’

Slowly I nod, as if the naked ambition of the courtiers is a sad revelation to me. ‘And what do you think, my lord? Nothing matters more than what you think is right.’

He shifts his seat and winces with the pain. He leans a little closer. ‘I have been watching you,’ he says.

His words ring in my head like a warning bell. He has been watching me. What has he seen? The rolled manuscript of psalms going to the copyist? The mornings of study with the two princesses? My recurring nightmare of closed doors at the top of a damp stair? My erotic daydreams of Thomas? Can I have spoken in my sleep? Can I have said his name? Have I been such a fool as to lie beside the king and breathe the name of another man?

I swallow on a dry throat. ‘Have you, my lord?’

He nods. ‘I have been watching how you spend time with Lady Elizabeth, how you are always a good friend to Lady Mary. I see how they enjoy each other’s company, how you have brought them both into your rooms and how they are blooming under your care.’

I nod, but I don’t dare to speak. I don’t yet know what he is thinking.

‘I have seen you with my son, Edward. I am told that you send each other notes in Latin in which he says he is your schoolmaster.’

‘It is a jest,’ I say, still smiling. ‘Nothing more.’ I cannot tell from his grim expression whether he is pleased with this intimacy or whether he suspects me of deploying his children to further my own ends, like the courtiers. I don’t know what to say.

‘You have made a family out of three children with three very different mothers,’ he says. Still, I cannot be sure if this is a good or a bad thing to have done. ‘You have taken the son of an angel and the daughter of a whore and the daughter of a Spanish princess and brought them together.’

‘They are all the children of one great father,’ I remind him faintly.

His hand shoots out as if he is slapping a fly and grabs my wrist too quickly for me to flinch. ‘You are certain?’ he asks. ‘You are certain of Elizabeth?’

I can almost smell my fear over the stink of the wound. I think of her mother, Anne Boleyn, sweating at the May Day joust, knowing her danger but not knowing what form it would take. ‘Certain?’

‘You don’t think I was cuckolded?’ he demands. ‘You don’t think she is another man’s child? Do you deny her mother’s guilt? I had her mother beheaded for that guilt.’

She is the spit of him. Her brassy hair, her white skin, her stubborn little pout of a mouth. But if I deny her mother’s guilt I accuse him of being a wife-killer, a jealous fool who put an innocent woman to death on the gossip of old midwives. ‘Whatever Anne Boleyn did in later years, I believe that Elizabeth is yours,’ I say carefully. ‘She is a little copy of you. She is Tudor through and through.’

He nods, greedy for reassurance.

‘Whatever her dam, nobody could deny her sire,’ I continue.

‘You see me in her?’

‘Her scholarship alone,’ I say, denying Anne Boleyn’s powerful intelligence and commitment to reform, in order to secure the safety of her daughter. ‘Her love of books and languages – that’s all you.’

‘And you say that, who see my children altogether, as no-one else has ever done?’

‘Lord husband, I brought them together as I thought it would be your wish.’

‘It is,’ he says finally. His stomach churns – I can hear it gurgle – and then he belches noisily. ‘It is.’

I can smell the sourness of his breath. ‘I am glad to have done the right thing for love of you and for love of your children,’ I say cautiously. ‘I wanted the whole country to see the beautiful royal family that you have made.’

He nods. ‘I am going to restore the girls to their place,’ he announces. ‘I am going to name them both as princesses. Mary will follow Prince Edward to the throne if she should survive him and he has no heir – God forbid it. After her: Elizabeth, and after her: my niece, Lady Margaret Douglas, and my Scots sister’s line.’

It is against the will of God and against tradition that the king shall name who comes after him. It is God who chooses kings, just as he chose this one – a second son – by taking all other heirs to Himself. God calls a king to his throne, God creates the order of birth and the survival of his chosen. But since the king rules the church in England and he holds the throne in England, who is going to stop him naming his heirs? Certainly not those men that he bundled from the room for arguing with him. Certainly not I.

‘Prince Edward will be king,’ I confirm. ‘And his children as yet unborn, who come after him.’

‘God bless them,’ he says mistily. He pauses. ‘I have always feared for him,’ he continues very quietly. ‘The child of a sainted mother, you know.’

‘I know,’ I say. Jane again. ‘God bless her.’

‘I think of her all the time. I think of her sweet nature and her early death. She died to give me an heir, she died in my service.’

I nod as if I am overwhelmed at the thought of her sacrifice.

‘When I am ill, when I fear I may never get well, I think that at least I will be with her.’

‘Don’t say it,’ I murmur, and I really mean it.

‘And people say terrible things. They say there is a curse, they speak of a curse, they say such things – a curse on Tudor boys, on our line.’

‘I’ve never heard it,’ I say stoutly. Of course I have. The rebels in the North were certain that the Tudor line would die out for its sins against the church and against the Plantagenets. They called him the Mouldwarp – a beast who was undermining his own kingdom.

‘You haven’t?’ he says hopefully.

I shake my head. Everyone said that the Tudors were cursed for killing the York princes in the Tower. How should a prince-killer be blessed? But if the king thought this, how could he dare to plan a future, he who killed the Plantagenet heirs: Lady Margaret Pole, and her innocent son and grandson? He, who beheaded two wives on suspicion?

‘I have heard nothing like that.’

‘Good. Good. But it’s why I keep him so safe. I guard him against murderers, against disease, against ill fortune. I guard him as my only treasure.’

‘I will guard him too,’ I promise.

‘So we will trust to God for Edward, pray that he gets strong sons, and in the meantime I shall put an act through parliament to name the girls as coming after him.’

England has never had a reigning queen, but I am not going to point this out either. I don’t know how to raise the question of who will be Lord Protector during Edward’s minority. That is to suggest the king might die within the next eleven years, and he won’t want to hear that.

I smile. ‘This is generous of you, my lord. The girls will be glad to know that they have your favour. That will mean more to them than being listed to succeed. To know that their father loves and acknowledges them is all that your girls want. They are blessed with such a father.’

‘I know,’ he says. ‘You have shown me that. I have been surprised.’

‘Surprised?’ I repeat.

He looks awkward. It makes him, for a moment, endearingly vulnerable, a weak father: not a cursed tyrant. ‘I have had to think of them always as heirs or usurpers,’ he says, fumbling for the words. ‘D’you see? I’ve had always to consider whether I accept them as my daughters or put them aside. I have had to think of their mothers, and my terrible wars with their mothers, and not think of them. I have had to suspect them as if they were my enemies. I’ve never before had them at court, together, with their brother, and just seen them, all three, as my children. Just seen them as themselves.’

I am enormously, absurdly touched. ‘Each one of them is a child to be proud of,’ I tell him. ‘You can love each one as your own.’

‘You have shown me that,’ he says. ‘Because you deal with Edward like a little boy, and Elizabeth as a little girl, and Mary as a young woman. I see them through your eyes. I see the girls without thinking of their poisonous dams, almost for the first time.’

He takes my hand and kisses it. ‘I thank you for this,’ he says very quietly. ‘Truly, I do, Kateryn.’

‘My dear,’ comes easily from my lips.

‘I love you,’ he says.

And I reply easily, without thought, ‘I love you, too.’

We are hand-clasped for a moment, united in tenderness, and then I see his eyes narrow as a pulse of pain grips his whole body. He grits his teeth, determined not to cry out.

‘Should I leave you to rest now?’ I ask.

He nods. Anthony Denny is on his feet at once, to show me from the room and I see in the way that he glances at the king without curiosity that he knew all of this, before it was explained to me. Denny is the king’s confidant and friend, one of the closest of the circle. His quiet confidence reminds me that I should remember that just as I hint that the Howards and Wriothesley and Gardiner are self-serving fools, there are those, close to the king, who could do just the same to me. And that Denny is one of several men whose fortunes have been made in royal service, who have the king’s ear in his most private moments, and whisper to him alone, just as I do.

I allow myself the pleasure of telling the king’s daughters that they are to be princesses again. I speak to them separately. I am aware that this makes them rivals once more, and that they can only succeed to the throne on the death of their brother, that Elizabeth can only succeed through the unlikely combination of the death of her younger brother and her older sister.

I find her at her studies in my privy chamber with her cousin little Lady Jane Grey and Richard Cox, their tutor, and I call her aside to tell her that this is a symbol of her father’s favour. Of course, she jumps at once to the idea of her inheritance.

‘Do you think a woman can rule a kingdom?’ she asks me. ‘The word would suggest not. It’s not called a queendom, is it?’

The cleverness of the ten-year-old girl makes me smile. ‘If you are ever called to rule this kingdom or any other you will take on the courage and wit of a man. You will call yourself a prince,’ I assure her. ‘You will learn what every clever woman has to learn: how to adopt the power and courage of a man and yet to know that you are a woman. Your education can be that of a prince, your mind can be that of a king, you can have the body of a weak and feeble woman and the stomach of a king.’

‘When is it to happen? When do I get my title back?’

‘It has to go through the parliament,’ I warn her.

She nods. ‘Have you told Lady Mary?’

What a Tudor she is, this little girl; these are a statesman’s questions: when is it official? And which daughter was told first? ‘I’m going to tell her now,’ I say. ‘Wait here.’

Lady Mary is in my presence chamber, embroidering a part of an altar cloth that we are making. She has delegated the boring blue sky to one of the ladies and she herself is working on the more interesting flowers that will form the border. They all rise and curtsey as I come in from the privy chamber and I gesture that they may sit and continue with their work. Joan, Anthony Denny’s wife, is reading from the manuscript of our translation of Fisher’s psalms, and I beckon Lady Mary into the oriel window so we can speak privately. We sit on the window bench, our knees touching, her earnest gaze on my face.

‘I have some very good news for you,’ I say. ‘You will learn it from the Privy Council, but I wanted to tell you before the announcement. The king has decided to name the succession, and you are to be called Princess Mary and inherit the throne after Edward.’ She looks down, veiling her dark eyes with her eyelashes, and I see her lips move in a prayer of thanksgiving. Only her rising blush tells me that she is deeply moved. But it is not for a chance at the throne. She has not Elizabeth’s ambition. ‘So, finally, he accepts my mother’s purity,’ she says. ‘He withdraws his claim that they were not married in the sight of God. My mother was a widow to his brother and then a true wife to him.’

I put my hand on her knee to silence her. ‘He said no word of that, nor do I, nor should you. He names you as princess, and Elizabeth as princess also. Elizabeth comes after you in the succession, Lady Margaret Douglas and her line after her. He said nothing about the old matter of your mother’s marriage and him putting her aside.’

She opens her mouth to argue for only a moment, and then she nods. Anyone of any intelligence can see that if the king names his daughters as legitimate then he must, logically, accept his marriage to their mothers as valid. But – as this highly intelligent daughter realises – this is not a logical man. This is a king who can command reality. The king has ruled that they are princesses again, just as once he ruled that they were both bastards, on a whim, with no good reason.

‘Then he will arrange a marriage for me,’ she says. ‘And for Elizabeth. If we are princesses then we can be married to kings.’

‘You can,’ I say smiling. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. It will be the next step. But I don’t know that I can bear to spare either of you.’

She puts her hand on top of mine. ‘I don’t want to leave you,’ she says. ‘But it is time I was married. I need my own court and I want to have a child of my own to love.’

We sit hand-clasped for a moment. ‘Princess Mary,’ I say, trying out her new title, ‘I cannot tell you how glad I am that you are come to your own again, and that I can call you aloud what I have always called you in my heart. My mother never spoke of you as anything but a princess, and never thought of your mother as anything but a great queen.’

She blinks the tears from her dark eyes. ‘My mother would have been glad to see this day,’ she says wistfully.

‘She would,’ I say. ‘But her legacy to you is your descent and your education. Nobody can take either, and she gave you them both.’

A Spanish duke, Don Manriquez de Lara, is to come to court though the king is still unwell.

‘You’ll have to entertain him,’ Henry snaps. ‘I can’t.’

I am a little aghast. ‘What should I do?’

‘He’ll come in and see me, I’ll receive him in my privy chamber, but I can’t stand it for more than a moment. Understand?’

I nod. Henry is speaking in a tone of tight fury. I know that he is frustrated by his pain and bitter at his disability. In a mood like this he can lash out at anyone. I glance around the room: the pages are standing with their backs against the wall, the Fool sitting quietly at the king’s side. The two secretaries are bent over documents as if they dare not raise their eyes. ‘He can dine with your brother, and with Henry Howard. That’s the flower of the court, the handsome young men. Should be good enough for him. Agreed?’

‘Yes, sire,’ I say. Henry Howard is the eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk, born to a great position and never doing anything to earn it. He is proud, vain, a troublemaker, a self-proclaimed golden youth. But he will be invaluable here where we will need someone handsome and young and proud as a peewit.

‘Then the Spanish duke can go to your rooms and you can have music and dancing and supper and any entertainment you wish. You can do that?’

‘Yes, I can.’

Anthony Denny glances up from his place behind a table at the window where he is copying the king’s orders to be sent to the various councillors and heads of household. I look away so that I don’t see the sympathy in his face.

‘Princess Mary will be with you; she speaks Spanish and they love her for the sake of her mother. The Spanish ambassador, that old fox Chapuys, will bring the duke and make sure that everything goes smoothly. You needn’t worry about Spanish. You can speak in French and English to them.’

‘I can.’

‘He’s not to whisper with her. You’re to show him every courtesy but you’re not to put her forward.’

I nod.

‘And you’re to dress very fine and be very queenly. Wear your crown. Speak with authority. If you don’t know something, say nothing. There’s nothing wrong with a woman being silent. You have to impress them. Make sure you do.’

‘I am sure that we can show them that the English court is as elegant and learned as any in Europe,’ I say calmly.

At last the king looks at me and the pained furrow between his sandy eyebrows melts away and I see a glimmer of his old, charming smile. ‘With the most beautiful queen,’ he says, suddenly warm. ‘Whatever broken-down bad-tempered old warhorse you have for a husband.’

I go to his side and take his hand. ‘Nay, not so old,’ I say softly. ‘And not so broken-down either. Shall I come and show you my gown before I go in to the ambassador? Shall you want to see me in all the finery you have given me?’

‘Yes, come to me. And make sure that you are utterly drowned in diamonds.’

I laugh, and Denny, seeing that I have charmed the king back into good humour, looks up and smiles at us both.

‘I want you to frighten them with my wealth,’ Henry says. He is smiling now but completely serious. ‘Everything that you do, every chain that you wear will be noted and reported back to Spain. I want them to know that we are rich beyond anything they could imagine, quite rich enough to make war with France, rich enough to bend Scotland to our will.’

‘And are we?’ I ask so quietly that not even Denny at the table, bent over the scratching of his quill, can hear me.

‘No,’ Henry says. ‘But we have to be like masquers, like troubadours. We have to have dazzling rags. Kingship and warfare are mostly appearance.’

I put on a great show. ‘Magpie queen,’ Nan remarks as I let them load chain after chain on my waist and put diamonds and rubies on my fingers and at my neck.

‘Too rory?’ I ask, looking in the mirror and smiling at her horrified face.

‘Speak English!’ she commands me. ‘Not your rough country tongue! No, it’s not too much. Not if he told you to load on the jewels. He’ll want an alliance with Spain so that he can go to war with France. Your task is to make it look as if England can afford a war with France. You’ve got an army’s pay on your fingers alone.’

She steps back and scans me from head to foot. ‘Beautiful,’ she says. ‘The most beautiful of all the queens.’

My stepdaughter Margaret Latimer comes towards me with the little box in her hands. ‘The crown,’ she says, awed.

I nerve myself to be unmoved as Nan opens it up, takes out the Boleyn crown and turns to me. I straighten up to take the weight of it and look at myself in the mirror. The beaten silver looking-glass shows me a grey-eyed beauty with bronze hair and a long neck, with diamonds at her ears and rubies at her throat, and this ugly heavy sparkling little crown making her taller still. I think I look like a ghost queen, a queen in darkness, a queen at the top of a dark tower. I could be any one of my predecessors, favoured like one of them, doomed like them all.

‘You could wear your golden hood,’ Nan offers.

I stand, my head poised. ‘Of course I’ll wear the crown,’ I say flatly. ‘I’m queen. At any rate, I’m today’s queen.’

I wear it all evening. I take it off only when the dazzled duke begs us to dance and then Nan fetches my hood. It is a successful evening; everything goes just as the king commanded. The young men are charming and loud and cheerful, the ladies are reserved and beautiful. Lady Mary speaks Spanish to the duke and to her ambassador but is every inch an English princess, and I feel that I have taken another step closer to being the wife that the king needs – one that can deputise for him, one that can rule.

The king requires that I move my bed to be nearer to him while he is sleepless with pain at night, and my household transfers my beautiful bed with the four great posts and the embroidered canopy to a withdrawing room off the king’s own bedroom. With it go my table and chair, and my prie-dieu. With a silent gesture I command that my box of books and my writing box with my manuscripts, my studies, and my translation of the Fisher psalms stay in the queen’s apartments. Although I read nothing but what is approved by the king and his Privy Council, I don’t really want to draw attention to my growing library of theological books or have everyone know that my principal interest is the teachings of the early church, and the call for reform of the abuses of recent years. This seems to me the one thing that a scholar of our time should study; it is the central question of our days. All the great men are reviewing how the church has strayed from its early simplicity and piety, all the discussions and writings are about finding the true way, the authentic way to Christ, whether that is inside the Church of Rome or alongside it. They are translating the documents that tell us how the earliest church was organised, and they keep finding histories and gospels that suggest ways that a holy life can be lived in the world, that show how earthly powers should sit alongside the church. I believe that the king was completely right when he transferred the leadership of the church in England to himself. It must be right that a king rules his lands, church buildings and all. There cannot be one law for the people and one for the clergy. Surely, the church must command the spiritual realm, the holy things of God; the king must command the earthly things. Who could argue against that?

‘Many,’ Catherine Brandon, the greatest reformer of my ladies, explains. ‘And many of them have the ear of the king. They are growing in strength again. They were set back when the king sided with Archbishop Cranmer, but Stephen Gardiner has regained the king’s ear and his influence is growing all the time. Naming Princess Mary with her title will please Rome, and we are extending friendship to Spain, honouring their ambassador. Many of the king’s advisors have been bribed by Rome to try to persuade him to return the ownership of the English Church to Rome – back to where we were before – telling him that we will be in accord with all the other great countries. And then, in the towns and villages, there are thousands of people who understand nothing of this but just want to see the shrines restored at the roadsides and the icons and statues back in the churches. Poor fools, they understand nothing and don’t want to have to think for themselves. They want the monks and nuns to come back to look after them and tell them what to think.’

‘Well, I don’t want anyone to know what I think,’ I say bluntly. ‘So keep my books in my rooms and locked in the chest, Catherine, and you keep the key.’

She laughs and shows me the key on the chain at her belt.

‘We’re not all as carefree as you,’ I say, as she whistles for her little dog, named after the bishop.

‘Puppy Gardiner is a fool who comes for a whistle and sits at a command,’ she says.

‘Well, don’t call him or command him by name in my rooms,’ I say. ‘I don’t need enemies, certainly not Stephen Gardiner. The king already favours him. You will have to rename your dog if my lord bishop continues to rise.’

‘I’m afraid he’s unstoppable,’ she says frankly. ‘He and the traditionalists are overwhelming us. I hear that Thomas Wriothesley is not satisfied by being the king’s Secretary and Lord Privy Seal, but is to be Lord Chancellor too.’

‘Did your husband tell you?’

She nods. ‘He said that Wriothesley is the most ambitious man in the king’s rooms since Cromwell. He said he is a dangerous man – just like Cromwell.’

‘Does Charles not advise the king in favour of reform?’

She smiles at me. ‘Not he! You don’t stay a favourite for thirty years by telling the king what you think.’

‘So why does your husband not try to contain you,’ I ask curiously, ‘as you name your spaniel for a bishop in order to tease him?’

She laughs. ‘Because you don’t survive four wives by trying to contain them!’ she says merrily. ‘I am his fourth and he lets me think what I like, and do what I like, as long as it does not disturb him.’

‘He knows that you read and think? He allows it?’

‘Why not?’ She asks the most challenging questions that a woman can ask. ‘Why should I not read? Why should I not think? Why should I not speak?’

The king cannot sleep for pain in the long dark nights of spring. He feels very low when he wakes long before dawn. I have commissioned a pretty clock to help me get through the hours, and I watch the minute hand move quietly over the brass face in the flickering light of a little candle that I leave beside it on the table. When the king wakes, fretful and bad-tempered at about five in the morning, I get up and light all the candles, stir the fire and often send a page for some ale and pastries from the kitchen. Then the king likes me to sit beside him and read to him as the candles gutter and slowly, so very slowly, the light comes in at the window, first as a greyer darkness, then as a dark grey, then only finally, after what seems like hours, can I see daylight and say to the king: ‘Morning is coming.’

I feel tender towards him as he endures the long nights in pain. I don’t begrudge waking and sitting with him though I know I will be tired when dawn finally comes. Then he can sleep but I have to attend to the duties of the court for us both – leading everyone to Mass, breakfasting in public before a hundred watching eyes, reading with Princess Mary, watching the court ride to hounds, dining with them at midday, listening to the councillors in the afternoon and dining, watching the revels and dancing all evening, and often dancing myself. This is sometimes a pleasure but it is always a duty. A court has to have a focus and a head. If the king is not well it is my task to take his place – and to conceal how very ill he is. He can rest during the day if I am there, smiling on the throne and assuring everyone that he is a little tired but better every day.

Stephen Gardiner supplies all the books for the king’s nighttime reading, it is a most limited library; but I am not allowed to read anything else, and so I find myself having to recite pious arguments for the unity of the church under the pope, or fanciful histories of the earliest church that stress the importance of the patriarchs and the Holy Father. If I believed these orthodox writings I would think that there were no women in the world at all, certainly no women saints in the early church laying down their lives for their faith. Bishop Gardiner is now a great enthusiast for the Eastern Church, which is a full member of the Catholic communion but not subservient to the pope. The Greek Church is to be our model and I read long sermons that suggest the fine level of purity that can be achieved in a Catholic church in partnership with Rome. I have to declare that people should be kept in sanctified ignorance and that it is best that they say their prayers and have no idea what the words mean. Knowingly, I recite nonsense, and I despise Bishop Gardiner for dictating lies.

Henry listens; sometimes his eyes close and I see that I have read him to sleep, sometimes the pain keeps him alert. He never comments on my reading, except to ask me to repeat a sentence. He never asks me if I agree with the plodding arguments against reform, and I take care to make no comment. In the quietness of the night-time room I can hear the little gurgle as the pus drains from his leg and drips into the bowl. He is shamed by the stink, and struggles with the pain. I cannot help him with either, except to offer him the draught that the physicians leave to drug him into sleep, and to assure him that I hardly smell anything. The rooms are laden with dried rose petals and the sharp scent of lavender heads, and in every corner there are bowls filled with the oil of roses, but still the stench of death seeps like a fog into everything.

Some nights he hardly sleeps at all. Some days he does not get up, but hears Mass in his bed, and his advisors and councillors meet in the chamber that adjoins his bedroom, with the door open so that he can hear them speak.

I sit beside his bed and listen as they plan the future union of England with Scotland through the marriage of Lady Margaret Douglas, the king’s niece, and Matthew Stuart, a Scottish nobleman. When the Scots reject this, I listen to the advisors plan an expedition to be led by Edward Seymour and John Dudley to lay waste the border country and teach the Scots to respect their masters. I am horrified by this plan. Having lived in the North of England for so many years I know how hard life is in those hills. The balance between harvest and hunger is so carefully weighed that an invading army will cause starvation just by marching through. This cannot be the way to bring about unity with the Scots. Are we to destroy our new kingdom before we gain it?

But, silently listening from the king’s room, I begin to see how the Privy Council works, how the country reports to the lords, who report to the council, who debate before the king. Then the king decides – quite whimsically – what shall be done and the council considers how it shall be drafted into law, put before the parliament for their consent, and imposed on the country.

The king’s advisors, those who filter all the news that he hears and draft the laws that he demands, have enormous power in this system, which depends on the judgement of one man – and that is a man in too much pain to rise out of his bed, who is frequently dazed and stupid with drugs. It is easy for them to withhold information that he should have, or cast the law in a way that suits themselves. This should give us all concern for the wellbeing of the country, whose destiny sits in Henry’s sweating hands. But it also gives me confidence to be regent, as I see that with good advisors I could judge just as well as the king. Almost certainly I could judge better, for Henry will suddenly bellow from his bed, ‘Move on! Move on!’ when something bores him, or a disagreement irritates him, and he favours one policy or another depending on who presents it.

I also learn how he plays one party against another. Stephen Gardiner is his preferred advisor, always pointing out that there should be more and more restrictions on the English Bible, that it must be strictly limited to the nobility and the learned, locked-up in their private chapels, that the poor must be prosecuted if they try to read it. He never misses an opportunity to complain that men everywhere are debating the sacred Word of God as if they could understand it, as if they are equal to educated men. But just as Stephen Gardiner thinks he has won and that the Bible will never be restored to the churches, stolen for ever from the very people that need it most, the king tells Anthony Denny to send for Thomas Cranmer.

‘You’ll never guess what task I am going to give him,’ he says, slyly smiling at me as he lies back on his great heap of pillows and I sit beside his enormous bed, his fat damp hand in mine. ‘You’ll never guess!’

‘I am sure I never will,’ I say. I like Thomas Cranmer, a constant believer in the reform of the church, whose sermon was published at the front of the Great Bible in English, and who has always urged that the king should rule the English Church and that the sermons, psalms and prayers should be in English. The quiet courage that he showed when he faced the plot against him has confirmed my liking for him, and he often comes to my rooms as an honoured friend, to see what I am writing and to join our discussion.

‘This is the way to play them,’ Henry confides in me. ‘This is the way to rule a kingdom, Kateryn. Watch and learn. First you appoint one man, then you appoint another, his rival. You give one a task – you praise him to the skies, then you give an opposite task, a complete contradiction, to his greatest enemy. While they fight one against the other, they can’t conspire to plot against you. When they are divided to death they are yours to command. D’you see?’

What I see is a zigzag confusion of policy so that no-one knows what the king believes or truly wants, a muddle in which the loudest voice or the most pleasing person can triumph. ‘I am sure Your Majesty is wise,’ I say carefully. ‘And cunning. But Thomas Cranmer would serve you in anything; surely you don’t have to trap him into obedience?’

‘He is my balance,’the king says. ‘I balance him against Gardiner.’

‘Then he will have to drag us to Germany,’ Will Somers suddenly intervenes. I had not realised he was listening. He has been sitting so quietly on the floor, his back against the great pillars of the bed, throwing a little golden ball from one hand to the other.

‘Why so?’ Henry asks, always tolerant of his Fool. ‘Jump up, Will. I can’t see you down there.’

The Fool springs up, tosses the golden ball high in the air and catches it, half singing:

Thomas must pull us all the way

Over the mountains to Germany,

For Stephen is dragging us up and down

Over the Alps to Rome.

Henry laughs. ‘I have my counterpoise to Gardiner,’ he tells me. ‘I am going to get Cranmer to write an exhortation and litany in English.’

I am stunned. ‘An English prayer book? In English?’

‘Yes, so that when people come to church they can hear the prayers in their own language and understand them. How are they to make a true confession in a language they don’t understand? How are they to truly pray if the words mean nothing to them? They stand at the back and say “yammer yammer yammer – amen”.’

This is exactly what I thought when I translated Bishop Fisher’s psalms from Latin to English. ‘What a gift to the people of England it would be!’ I am almost stammering in excitement. ‘A prayer book in their own tongue! What a saving of souls! I should be so pleased if I were to be allowed to work on it, too!’

‘And I say good morning to the queen,’ Will Somers says suddenly. ‘Good morning to the morning queen.’

‘Good morning to you, Will,’ I reply. ‘Is this a joke?’

‘It is a morning joke. And the king’s idea is the plan for this morning. After dinner you will find it quite different. This morning we send for Cranmer, tonight – heigh ho – it will be my lord Gardiner who is the fount of all knowledge, and you will be the morning queen and quite out of your time.’

‘Hush, Fool,’ Henry says. ‘What do you think, Kateryn?’

Despite Will’s warning, I cannot resist speaking. ‘I think it is an opportunity to write something both true and beautiful,’ I say enthusiastically. ‘And something that is beautifully written must lead people to God.’

‘But it cannot be ornamental,’ Henry insists. ‘It cannot be a false god. It has to be a true translation from the Latin, not a poem grafted on it.’

‘It must be the Word,’ I say. ‘The Lord spoke in simple language to simple people. Our church must do the same. But I think there is great beauty in simple language.’

‘Why don’t you write some new prayers yourself?’ Henry asks suddenly. ‘Write in your own hand?’

For a moment I wonder if he knows of my book of translated psalms published without a name on the cover. I wonder if his spies have told him that I have already translated prayers and discussed them with the archbishop. I stammer. ‘No, no, I could not presume . . .’

But he is sincere in his interest. ‘I know that Cranmer thinks highly of you. Why not write some original prayers? And why don’t you translate some prayers from the Latin Mass and show your version to him? Bring one to me to read. And Princess Mary works with you, doesn’t she? And Elizabeth?’

‘With her tutor,’ I say cautiously. ‘As part of Elizabeth’s study, with her cousin Jane Grey.’

‘I believe that women should study,’ he says kindly. ‘It is not part of the duty of woman to remain ignorant. And you have a learned and scholarly husband; there is no chance of you outpacing me, after all!’ He laughs at the thought of it and I laugh with him.

I don’t even look at the Fool, though I know he is listening for my reply. ‘Whatever you think best, my lord,’ I say levelly. ‘I should enjoy to do the work and it would be an education for the princesses also. But you will judge how far it should go.’

‘It can go far,’ the king rules. ‘It can go as far as Cranmer can compose it. Because I will send my dog Gardiner after it to bring it back if it goes too far.’

‘Is it possible to find a middle way in this?’ I wonder aloud. ‘Cranmer either writes the prayers of the Mass in English and publishes in English or he does not.’

‘We’ll find my way,’ Henry replies. ‘My way is inspired by God Himself to me, His ruler on earth. He speaks to me. I hear Him.’

‘You see,’ Will suddenly bounds to the fireside and addresses the sleeping hound, lifting his big head and putting it on his knee, ‘if she said that, or I said that, they would beg us as a madwoman and a Fool. But if the king says that, everyone thinks it is nothing but true since he is descended from God, and has the holy oil on his chest so he can never be wrong.’

The king narrows his eyes at his favourite. ‘I can never be wrong for I am king,’ he says. ‘I can never be wrong because a king is above a mortal man, seated just below the angels. I can never be wrong because God speaks to me, in words that no-one else can hear. Just as you can never be wise for you are my Fool.’

He glances towards me. ‘And she can never have an opinion that is not mine, for she is my wife.’

I pray that night for discretion. All my life I have been an obedient wife, first to a young, fearful and foolish boy, then to a powerful, cold man. To both of them I showed complete obedience for that is the duty of a wife, laid down by God and taught to every woman. Now I am married to the King of England and owe him three sorts of duty: as a wife, as a subject, and as a member of the church over which he sits as Supreme Head. That I should read books that he would not like, and think of opinions that he does not hold is disloyalty, or worse. I should think as he does, morning and evening. But I cannot see that God would give me a brain and not want me to think for myself. The words ring in my head: I cannot see that God would give me a brain and not want me to think for myself. And with them comes the couplet: And God has given me a heart, He must want me to love. I know that the pairing of the two sentences is not the logic of a philosopher: but that of a poet. It comes from having a writer’s ear; it is the words that persuade me as well as the idea. God has given me a brain – He must want me to think. God has given me a heart – He must want me to love. I hear them in my mind. I don’t say them out loud, not even here, in the deserted chapel. But when I look up from my place at the chancel rail at the painting of the crucified Christ, all I see is Thomas Seymour’s dark smile.

Nan marches into my bird room where I am sitting in the window seat with a pair of yellow canaries on one hand pecking at a speck of manchet bread that I hold in the other. I am revelling in their bright little eyes, the cock of their heads, the brilliance of their colour, the intricate detail of feather upon feather and their warm, scratchy little feet. They are like a miracle of intense life, sitting in the palm of my hand. ‘Sshh,’ I say without raising my head.

‘You need to hear this,’ Nan says in a tone of muted fury. ‘Put the birds away.’

I glance up to refuse; but then I see her grim face. Behind her Catherine Brandon is pale. Beside her is Anne Seymour looking grave.

Gently, so as not to startle them, I put my hand into the pretty cage and the pair hop to their perches, and one of them begins to preen and tidy his feathers as if he was an important ambassador, returned from a visit, and must straighten his cloak.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s the new Act of Succession,’ Nan says. ‘The king is naming his heirs before he goes to war with France. Charles Brandon and Edward Seymour were with him when he was taking advice, and Wriothesley – Wriothesley! – was there with the lawyers drawing it up.’

‘I know all about this,’ I say calmly. ‘He discussed it with me.’

‘Did he tell you that he is naming the heirs of your body to follow Prince Edward?’ she demands.

I wheel round and the little birds in the cage flutter at my sudden movement.

‘My heirs?’ I demand.

‘We have to take care what is said.’ Anne Seymour glances anxiously around as if the parrot might report to Bishop Gardiner any words of treason.

‘Of course, of course,’ I nod. ‘I was just surprised.’

‘And any other heirs,’ Catherine Brandon says, her voice very quiet, her face carefully expressionless. ‘That’s the point, really.’

‘Other heirs?’

‘From any future queen.’

‘Any future queen?’ I repeat. I look at Nan, not at Catherine or Anne. ‘He is planning for a future queen?’

‘Not really,’ Anne Seymour reassures me. ‘He is just drawing up an Act of Succession that would still apply even if he were to outlive you. Say you died before him . . .’

Nan gives a little choke. ‘From what? She’s young enough to be his daughter!’

‘It has to be provided for!’ Anne Seymour insists. ‘Say you were to be so unlucky as to become unwell and die . . .’

Catherine and Nan exchange blank glances. Clearly Henry has a habit of outliving his queens and none of them has ever become unwell.

‘Then he would be obliged to marry again and to get a son if he could,’ Anne Seymour concludes. ‘It is not to say he is planning it. It is not to say it is his intention. It is not to say that he has anyone in mind.’

‘No,’ Nan snarls. ‘He did not have it in mind, someone has put it into his mind. They have put it into his mind now. And your husbands were there when they did so.’

‘It may just be the proper way to draw up the Act of Succession.’ Catherine suggests.

‘No it isn’t.’ Nan insists. ‘If she were to die and he remarried and had a son, then the boy would become heir after Edward by right of birth and sex. There’s no need for the king to provide for this. If she were to die then a new marriage and a new heir would mean a new Act of Succession. It does not need to be provided for here and now. This is just to put the idea of another marriage into our minds.’

‘Our minds?’ I ask. ‘He wants me to consider that he might put me aside and marry again?’

‘Or he wants the country to be prepared for it,’ Catherine Brandon says very quietly.

‘Or his advisors are thinking of a new queen. A new queen who favours the old ways,’ Nan replies. ‘You have disappointed them.’

We are all silent for a moment.

‘Did Charles say who added the clause?’ Anne Seymour asks Catherine.

She gives a little shrug. ‘I think it was Gardiner. I don’t know for sure. Who else would want to prepare for a new queen, a seventh queen?’

‘A seventh queen?’ I repeat.

‘The thing is,’ Nan concludes, ‘as King of England and head of the church, he can do what he likes.’

‘I know that,’ I say coldly. ‘I know that he can do exactly as he likes.’