The Taming of the Queen

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1544

A new painter, Nicholas de Vent, has been commanded to come from Flanders to paint a picture, a massive near-life-size portrait of the royal family in the style of the late Hans Holbein. I am so proud that there is to be a family portrait of us all. I have triumphed in bringing this family together, in persuading the king to acknowledge his daughters publicly as princesses and heirs, in bringing father and son under the same roof. I may not be able to help them to understand and love each other, but at least they have met. The father is not an entirely imaginary being to this lonely little boy. The child is not the phantom son of a sainted mother but a real boy, deserving attention in his own right.

The king and I spend a happy afternoon discussing how the portrait shall look, and how it must fit on the wall at Whitehall Palace, where it is to be placed for ever. People hundreds of years from now will see it as if they were standing before us, as if they were being presented to us. We decide that it is to be almost like an altarpiece, with the king centre stage and I beside him, Edward leaning against the throne, his heir. On either side, almost in side panels defined with some frame we can’t yet decide, will be the two girls, Elizabeth and Mary. I want to see a lot of colour in the picture, on the walls and on the ceiling. The girls and I are keen embroiderers and love strong colours and patterns, and I want the portrait to reflect this. I want it to be as beautiful as the things that we make. The king suggests a ruined Boulogne glimpsed behind the throne on the skyline with his standard flying from the crumbling turret, and the painter says that he will sketch it and show it to us.

The work will start with preliminary sketches done of each of us, individually. The princesses are to go first. I help Elizabeth and Mary pick out their gowns and their jewels for their sittings with the artist. He is to draw them in chalk and charcoal and then copy their images onto the rich background, which the apprentices will paint in his studio.

Henry comes to watch Master de Vent make his first sketches of Mary. She is wearing a skirt of deep scarlet and an overgown with sleeves of brocade. She has a golden French hood on her auburn hair and she looks beautiful. She is standing a little stiffly and she bobs a curtsey, afraid to move, as the king comes in. Henry blows her a kiss, as if he were a courtier.

‘We have to show ourselves to the people,’ he tells me. ‘They have to see us, even when we are not here, even when we are away on progress or travelling or hunting. People have to be able to see the king and all the royal family. They have to recognise us, as they would their own brothers and sisters. D’you see? We have to be as distant as gods and as familiar as their own painted saints in the parish church.’

Mary stands looking proud and fragile. I think she looks both like a woman ready to fight for her rights, and a girl who fears that no-one will love her. She is such a contradiction of fierceness and vulnerability that I don’t know if the painter can capture all the aspects of her, if he can understand that here is a daughter accustomed to being denied, and a young woman longing to be loved. Posed with her hands clasped before her in her gown of deep crimson, I see her pale stern face and think how dear she is to me, this staunch, intractable young woman.

Elizabeth will come next and she will raise her dark eyes and smile at the artist. She is pleasing while Mary is defiant, but under the veneer of Elizabeth’s coquetry is the same passionate need for love and the same anxiety to be acknowledged.

The painter has showed me the first drafts, and now there is to be an outside rim of the portrait showing two beautiful archways into the gardens beyond, and in the doorways he is going to paint the two Fools: Will Somers with his little monkey, and Mary’s female Fool. This is an improvement on the ruins of Boulogne, but I am not sure that I want a pair of Fools in a portrait of the royal family. The painter explains their purpose: they are there to signify that we have not grown overly great. We still have people who challenge us, who speak to our human failings, who laugh at us as sinners.

‘And the king knows this?’ I ask.

The painter nods.

‘He agreed?’

‘His Majesty liked the idea.’

I am glad. It shows that the king does not think of himself beyond challenge, as Thomas wrongly claimed. The king does indeed feel doubts, and he listens to the Fool Will, whose God-given gift is to voice these doubts.

The wall between the two glowing doorways is to be ornate, like a jewel box, with a ceiling of red roses and four golden pillars, a fitting background to this family that own everything. On the right will be Elizabeth, on the left will be Mary, and centre stage, also in deep Lancaster red, will be the prince, darling Edward, standing beside his father the king, seated square on his throne, and me beside him. The picture will be copied and engraved and will spread through the kingdom, through Christendom. It will proclaim the triumph of Tudor ambition. Here is Henry, broad and handsome, strong and virile, with his son, a healthy boy, growing into manhood beside him, me his wife still in her fertile years seated at his side, his two beautiful daughters adjacent to us, and the people of England – a pair of Fools – looking in at our glory.

‘She looks well,’ Henry says quietly behind me, glancing approvingly at Princess Mary.

‘She suffers very badly from pain in her belly, but I think she is improving,’ I say. ‘I think she is better all the time. I make sure that her diet is regular and that she takes exercise and rest by turns.’

He nods. ‘Perhaps she should be married,’ he says as if the idea has just occurred to him.

I shoot him a small, sideways smile. ‘My lord husband,’ I say teasingly, ‘who do you have in mind? For I know, as well as I know you, that you will have someone in mind for her. And probably an ambassador is already speaking of it in some great court.’

He takes my hand and draws me away from the artist and from Princess Mary, whose dark eyes follow us as if she would know what her father is planning for her.

‘I fear she won’t like it at first, but with France against us, and Spain such an unreliable ally, with the enmity of the pope, I was thinking of a new alliance – perhaps Germany, perhaps Denmark or Sweden.’

‘She would have to be free to practise her faith. Aren’t they Lutheran?’

‘She would have to obey her husband,’ he corrects me.

I hesitate. Mary is intelligent and thoughtful. Perhaps if she were to have the chance of discussing religion with a husband of intelligence, she might become converted to my view that God speaks to us individually, each and every one of us, that we need neither pope nor priest, nor bleeding statue, to find our way to faith. God is calling and we only have to listen. There are no clever tricks to forgiveness. There is only one way and there is only one Bible, and a woman can study it as well as a man. Mary has listened to Cranmer, she has talked to the visiting preachers. She has worked on the Erasmus New Testament with me and is making a beautiful translation of the gospel of Saint John, working almost entirely on her own. When she has to bend her will to a husband she might find that the taming of her spirit leads her to God. I think that I heard the voice of God when I knew I had to stop listening to my own will. Perhaps it will be the same for my stepdaughter.

‘I think it would be a great opportunity for her,’ I say truly. ‘It would be very good for her to marry. But she could not go against her faith.’

‘Aha? You think she should be married?’

‘I think a good man might give her an opportunity to think and study and serve him and her country,’ I say. ‘And to love him, and their children.’

‘You could prepare her for this change in her circumstances? You could recommend it to her?’

I bow my head. ‘I would be honoured to talk with her and tell her that it is your intention,’ I say.

‘Leave it for now,’ he says cautiously. ‘Say nothing for now. But it is my intention. If I am to hold Boulogne and force France into peace I shall need some help. Mary will make an alliance with the Germans unbreakable. She is a princess; she knows that is her life’s work.’

This autumn, with the king back in my bed and my room filled once more with the sickly odour of rotting flesh, I start to dream again. It is always the same dream. I walk up a damp circular stair, one hand on the clammy stone wall, one hand holding the flickering candle. A cold draught swirling up from the floor below warns me that I am not alone, there is someone coming up the stairs after me. The fear of whoever is silently following me drives me upwards, stepping quickly on the stairs so my candle flame bobs in the breeze and threatens to go out. At the top I am faced by six doors arranged in a circle around the landing, as small as the entrances to cells. I think that they will be locked but when I go to the first door and take hold of the ring, it turns easily, silently in my hand. I think then that I will not enter. I don’t know who is inside, and I can smell a miasma of putrefaction as if there is something bad behind the door, as if there is something rotting in the room. But then I hear a step on the stair behind me and I know I have to go onward and get away from whoever is following me. The door yields, and I go inwards, the door is snatched and locked behind me, I am captive, my candle flame blows out, and I am in darkness.

In the complete blackness of the enclosed silence of the room, I hear someone stealthily move.

The king’s need for allies becomes acute as French attacks on our shipping increase. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the French will raid our coastal towns and ports, perhaps even invade. The king has reports from his spy network, and from our merchants, that his lifelong rival and enemy King Francis of France is arming his fishermen and merchantmen, and building his own warships. It is a race to see who can muster the greatest fleet and we are lagging behind the French, who boast that they rule the Narrow and even the Northern Seas.

At this time of danger, Thomas is never at court. He is at Portsmouth, Plymouth or Dartmouth, Ipswich, Shoreham or Bristol, supervising the building of new ships, the refitting of old ones, and the muster and training of crews. Now he has his own ship of the line, he lives on board reviewing those ships that he has pressed into service, trying to find men to enlist as fighting soldiers on the unstable wooden castles that are built onto the decks of the merchantmen and little fishing ships.

As the sun sets earlier and earlier every day I imagine him, wrapped in a thick cloak, standing behind the steersman, scanning the darkening horizon for enemy sails, and I whisper a prayer to keep him safe. In their terror at the threat of the French invasion the court speak constantly of him, and I learn to be stony-faced when someone mentions the admiral and the fleet that he is mustering. I train myself to listen as if I am concerned for the ships and not for their commander.

It is in some of the worst weather of the autumn that Thomas plans an attack on the coast of Brittany, gathering his fleet off the Isle of Wight, hoping to catch the French navy sheltering in port and destroy them at their moorings. I hear of his plan from his sister-in-law, Anne Seymour, who has it from her husband, Edward. Thomas has sent his battle plan to the Privy Council for their approval. He says that the French must be destroyed in port before spring. He says that they have oared galleys that can fight in any weather, unlike our sailing ships, which depend on a favourable wind. He says that the only way to prevent an invasion is to destroy the French fleet before they even set sail. All the king’s castles on the south coast cannot do as much damage to the enemy as one well-timed sea-borne raid, if he can catch them unawares, at anchor.

He writes about new ways of using our ships. They have always been used as transport – delivering the soldiers and weapons to the battle where they will fight – but Thomas writes to the king that if we can make the ships more manoeuvrable, if we can arm them with heavy cannon, then we can use them as weapons themselves. A ship could meet another at sea and bombard from a distance, conquer at sea with cannon, and not depend on getting close enough to board. He writes that the French galleys carry a terrifyingly heavy cannon that launches stone cannonballs at the target and that they can hole an enemy vessel, ram it with the blade at their prow and only then get alongside to allow the soldiers to board for hand-to-hand fighting on a vessel that is already wounded.

His brother, Edward, argues in council that Thomas has a great sense of the sea, has travelled far and seen the shipyards of Venice, has watched their galleys manoeuvre and fight; but even as he tells the king this, the brothers’ rivals for the king’s attention: Thomas Howard and his son Henry, laugh scornfully and say that ships will only ever serve the king by delivering his armies to France, or by blocking the English harbours from invading French ships. The idea of a naval campaign fought by sailors at sea is ludicrous. They say Thomas Seymour has been drinking sea water and courting mermaids. He is a dreamer, a fool.

Those in favour of naval war are almost all reformers. Those who say that the ships must be used in the old way are those who want the old religion. The argument deteriorates into the usual division of the court. It is as if nothing can be decided without religion; and religion can never be decided, but lurches from one side to the other.

‘And now it turns out that the Howards are right and Tom Seymour is a fool,’ Henry spits furiously at me as I come to his rooms before dinner. He is not dining in court tonight. His leg is giving him too much pain and now he is running a fever. I look at his red sweating face and I feel as sick with fear as a little child facing an angry parent. I feel as if there is nothing I can do to pacify him; I will be in the wrong whatever I say.

‘Shall I dine with you, my dear?’ I ask softly. ‘I can have a table set for us here. I don’t need to go into the hall.’

‘Dine in the great hall!’ he snaps. ‘They need to see the throne filled and, God knows, my daughters cannot take my place and my son is a motherless child. I am all but alone in the world, and my commanders are fools and Tom Seymour the worst of them all.’

‘I shall come to you when dinner is over,’ I say soothingly. ‘But can I send my musicians to play for you in the meantime? They have a new choral piece based on your own—’

‘Tom has played ducks and drakes with my ships and now stands to lose them all! D’you think I can be cosseted by some fools twanging lutes? D’you think I am not in despair? Despair and nobody can help me!’

Anthony Denny looks up and exchanges a glance with Doctor William Butts. They all wait to see if I can calm the king. I am their only hope. I go very close to him and put my hand against his hot damp face.

‘My love,’ I say. ‘You’re not alone. I love you, the country adores you. This is terrible, I am so sorry.’

‘I have heard this very night from Portsmouth, from Portsmouth, madam. Tom Seymour set sail into the worst storm they have seen for years and is likely to be lost. And all my ships lost with him.’

I don’t flinch, I don’t even close my eyes though I feel a great pulse in the core of my body, as if I am wounded, actually bleeding inside; but I remain steadily smiling down at his furious face, my hand against his burning cheek. ‘God save them for England,’ I say. ‘God save all of them in peril on the sea.’

‘God save my ships!’ he bellows. ‘D’you have any idea how much it costs me to build and equip a ship? And then Tom gets one of his brilliant ideas and throws away the fleet on a hopeless venture! Drowns himself in the process.’

‘He is drowned? The fleet is lost?’ My voice is steady but I can feel my temples pulse with pain.

‘No, no, Your Majesty, it’s not that bad yet. We have no news for certain.’ Denny steps forward and addresses the king. ‘We know there is a storm and that some ships are missing, the admiral’s ship among them, but we have no more news than that. It might all be well.’

‘How can it be well when they are sinking like stones?’ Henry shouts.

We are all silent. Nobody can do anything with the king when he is in such a rage, and nobody dares to try. My hands are trembling but so too is Denny. I think: surely I would know if he were dead? Surely I would simply know it – if he were rolling with the tide, his dark hair floating from his white face, his boots slowly filling with water and taking him down to the seabed? Surely God would have more mercy than to let a sinner like me, a sinner like him, be parted without one word of love?

‘The admiral’s ship is lost?’ I ask Denny quietly as Doctor Butts steps forward with a draught in a small glass. Wordlessly he presses it into the king’s hand, which is clenched on the arm of his chair, and wordlessly we watch as Henry downs it in one great gulp. After silent moments we see his grip ease on the chair, the terrible scowl ironed from his forehead. He heaves a great sigh.

‘I suppose you are not at fault,’ he says begrudgingly to me.

I manage a smile. ‘I think not,’ I say.

He rubs his damp face against my hand like a sick dog seeking a caress. I bend and kiss his cheek. He puts his hand on my tightly laced back and, out of sight of the court, slides it down to clench my buttock. ‘You are distressed,’ he states.

‘For you,’ I say firmly. ‘Of course.’

‘Very good. So go to dinner and come back to me when you are in a quieter frame of mind. Come back when you have dined.’

I curtsey and go to the doorway. Anthony Denny, now Sir Anthony Denny since his knighthood at Boulogne, steps out with me.

‘Are many men lost?’ I ask him quietly.

‘They set out and got scattered, and then they had to run before a storm, but more than that we don’t know,’ he says. ‘It’s in God’s hands.’

‘The admiral’s ship?’

‘We don’t know. Pray God that we get news soon and that the king is not further distressed.’

Of course, that is the most important thing to Sir Anthony. The lives of the sailors, the bright courage of Thomas, matter little – to him, to all of us – compared to the king’s temper. I bow my head. ‘Amen.’

I pray for him; it is all I can do. I pray for his safety and I listen to the king complain of his failure, of his stupidity, of his recklessness, while I pray that he is alive, that he has survived the storm, that somewhere out on the Narrow Seas he is scanning the horizon for a break in the dark clouds and watching the reefed-in sails for the slackening of the gale.

Then we get news from Portsmouth that the fleet has limped into port, one at a time, sails ripped and masts torn down, and that some vessels are still missing. The admiral’s ship comes in with its mainmast broken but Thomas is standing, wrapped in his sea cape, in the stern. Thomas has returned, Thomas is safe. There is joy at court that he is alive – his brother, Edward, runs to the chapel to fall on his knees to thank God for sparing his most brilliant kinsman – but the king does not share it, and nobody dares to voice it before him. On the contrary, he repeats his complaints that Thomas is a fool, a fearless fool, and that he has destroyed the king’s trust and been false to his appointment. The king mutters that it is probably treason, that it is a matter for a trial, a man so reckless with the king’s fortune and forces is as bad as a traitor, worse than a traitor. That since God did not drown him it falls to the king to behead him.

I pray in silence. There can be no thanksgiving Mass from me for the survival of the admiral. I don’t say one word in his defence. Only once do I think, madly, of asking his sister-in-law Anne to write in her own name, never mentioning me, and warn him to come to court at once, before the king argues himself into a greater rage, and arrests Thomas for the crime of bad weather. But I dare not. She may share my interest in the new religion, she may be sworn to my service, but she is no great friend of mine; her devotion to the Seymour family comes before everything else. She has never been a friend to Thomas for his own sake. Foolishly, her passionate devotion to her husband makes her jealous of everyone else in his life. She eyes Thomas with suspicion for his charm and his ease at court. She is afraid that people prefer him to her husband – and she is right. Her only praise for any single member of her husband’s family is reserved for his dead sister Jane, Queen Jane, the mother of Prince Edward, and she mentions her before the king whenever she can: ‘my sister Jane’, ‘sainted Jane’, conveniently dead Jane.

So I dare say and do nothing, not even when the king limps painfully into my rooms to sit with me to watch my ladies dancing, or to listen to me read. Not even when he comes in with a chart of the south coast and the endangered ports under his arm as I am pouring water into a shallow dish for my favourite pair of canaries to take a bath, warmed by the sunshine that streams in the window.

‘Take care! Will they fly away?’

‘They come to my hand.’

‘Won’t they drown themselves?’ he asks irritably.

They duck their bright heads in the water and flutter their wings, I step back laughing as they splash. ‘No, they like to take a bath.’

‘They’re not ducks,’ he observes.

‘No, lord husband. But they seem to enjoy water.’

He watches for a moment. ‘I suppose they are pretty things.’

‘I love them dearly, they are so bright and quick, you would almost think that they understand.’

‘Just like courtiers,’ he says grimly.

I laugh. ‘Do you have a map there, my lord?’

He gestures with it. ‘I am on my way to meet with the Privy Council,’ he says. ‘We have to repair every castle at every Southern port. We will have to build new ones. The French are coming, and Thomas Seymour has failed to stop them.’

He snaps his fingers for his page who is waiting in the doorway. The youth comes forward and takes the king’s weight on his shoulder. ‘I will leave you to your amusements. You did not have sunny mornings and little birds when you were married to old Latimer.’

‘Indeed, I did not.’ I am thinking desperately how to ask him about Thomas. ‘Are we in danger, lord husband?’

‘Of course we are, and it’s all his fault. I shall command the Privy Council to try Tom Seymour for treason for the reckless loss of my fleet.’

The cock bird flutters to the top of one of the cages, alarmed by the king’s rough tone, so I am able to turn my face away and say lightly: ‘Surely he cannot be guilty of treason? He has been such a good and loyal servant to you, and you have always loved him.’

‘I’ll have that handsome head on a spike,’ he says with sudden cold violence. ‘Would you take a wager on it?’ and he goes out of the door.

Silently, like a ghost, I make my way to the king’s side of the old palace. Nobody is with me. I told my ladies that I had a headache and would lie down and sleep, then I slipped from my bedroom to make my way to the king’s rooms, through the small winding galleries to the secret door into his bedroom, then through his deserted privy chambers to his inner presence chamber where the Privy Council meet. It is like my dream, creeping about on my own, seen by no-one. I could be climbing a dark stair, in a silent tower. It is like my dream in the quiet rooms with no-one here. There is no guard on the door between the inner presence chamber and the empty rooms. I can stand outside the door and listen to what they say. I swear to myself that if I hear them say that they will arrest Thomas I will send a message to warn him, whatever the risk. I cannot stand by, struck dumb with fear, when the king takes bets about putting his head on a spike on London Bridge.

His brother, Edward, speaks up for him. I can hear him reading aloud from a letter Thomas has sent defending himself. Edward’s voice is clear and I can make out every word through the thick door.

‘And look here,’ Edward says. ‘Let me read you this, Your Majesty. Thomas writes:

Call all the masters and captains that were in this journey and if any of them are able to say that we might lay longer in Dover Road, the Downes, or Bollen Rode as the wind did change, without putting ourselves and the king’s ships in greater danger then let me bear the blame, and if we have done but as the weather would serve I should desire your lordships to blame the weather and let me, with the rest in my company be excused to encourage us to serve on the sea another time . . .’

‘Oh, he writes a good letter,’ Henry grumbles. ‘Nobody ever said he was lacking in charm. But how many ships are missing?’

‘It is the mischance of war,’ Edward replies. I hear the crackle of the paper as he slides the letter across the table for the king to read. ‘Nobody knows better than Your Majesty the dangers a man may run when he goes to war. You, who have sailed to France in the most hazardous weather! Thomas is lucky to report to a king who knows better than any other in Christendom what dangers a brave man has to face. You have been in terrible danger, Your Majesty. You know how a man of courage has to throw the dice and hope that it falls his way. It is the very essence of chivalry – the chivalry that you love so well – that a man takes his life in his hands to serve you.’

‘He was reckless,’ the king says flatly.

‘In a season of storms,’ I hear the old Duke of Norfolk Thomas Howard’s rumbling complaint. ‘Madness to go out! Why could he not wait for spring, as we always do? Typical of a Seymour that he thought he could outrun an autumn wind.’

‘The coast has to be defended against the French,’ John Dudley intervenes. ‘And the French are not waiting for fair weather. He couldn’t risk leaving our fleet in port. What if they had attacked? He writes that their barges can bombard from a distance, they can go among moored ships with or without wind. They carry weapons, they are rowed by their crew and they can make war in any season in any water. He had to destroy them before they invaded us.’

I hear the king’s thick hacking cough and his juicy hawk and spit. ‘You all seem satisfied with his conduct,’ he says grudgingly.

I hear a protesting bark from Henry Howard.

‘All except the Howards and their party,’ the king says grimly. ‘As usual.’

‘Certainly there was no deliberate attempt to risk the fleet,’ someone points out.

‘Well, I am not satisfied,’ says Stephen Gardiner. ‘Clearly he has been reckless. Clearly, he should be punished.’

‘Easy to say from a warm fireside,’ Edward mutters.

I hold my breath. Thomas’ popularity with the court is playing in his favour, and besides, everybody knows that he is risking his life at sea while they are dry-shod.

‘He can keep his commission,’ Henry decides. ‘Make sure you tell him I am most displeased. He must come and report to me himself.’

I hear the scrape of his chair and the rustle of the strewing herbs as he struggles to rise and the Privy Council jump to their feet and two of them go to help him. At once I tiptoe, silently in my leather slippers, away from the door, through the inner privy chamber, and I am about to run through the king’s bedroom when I freeze in sudden terror.

There is someone in the room. I see a silent figure, seated in the window seat, knees folded up to his chin, in sunshine now where he was hidden in shadow before. A spy, a silent spy, who has been frozen like a statue, watching me. It is Will Somers, the king’s Fool. He must have seen me creep in, he must have watched me listening at the door, and now he sees me hurrying back to my own rooms, a guilty wife tiptoeing through her husband’s bedroom.

He raises his dark eyes to me and sees the naked guilt on my face.

‘Will . . .’

He makes an exaggerated comical start as if he has seen me for the first time, a great Fool’s leap of surprise that sends him bounding from his seat to tumble to the floor. If I were not so afraid, I would have laughed out loud.

‘Will . . .’ I whisper urgently. ‘Don’t fool now.’

‘Is that you? I thought you were a ghost,’ he exclaims quietly. ‘A ghost of a queen.’

‘I was listening for plans. I am afraid for the Princess Mary,’ I say quickly. ‘I fear that she will be married against her will . . .’

He shakes his head, choosing to ignore the lie. ‘I have seen too many queens,’ he says. ‘And too many of them are ghosts now. I don’t want to see a queen in danger; I don’t want to see another ghost. Indeed, I swear that I won’t see one. Not even one.’

‘You did not see me?’ I ask, catching his meaning.

‘I did not see you, nor Kitty Howard creeping down the stairs in her nightgown, nor Anne of Cleves, pretty as her portrait, crying at her bedroom door. I am a Fool, not a guard. I don’t have to see things, and I am forbidden to understand them. There’s no point in me reporting them. Who would listen to a Fool? And so God bless.’

‘God bless you, Will,’ I say fervently, and melt through the doorway into the king’s bedroom and through the private corridor to the safety of my own rooms.