The Taming of the Queen

NONSUCH PALACE, SURREY, SUMMER 1545

George Day, my almoner, comes to my privy chamber as I am reading with my ladies, with a wrapped parcel under his arm. I know at once what he has for me and I step to the bay of the window, with Rig trotting at my heels, so that he can unwrap the book and show it to me.

‘Prayers Stirring the Mind to Heavenly Meditations,’ I read, tracing the title on its inner page. ‘It is done.’

‘It is, Your Majesty. It looks very fair.’

I open the first pages and there is my name as the editor, Princess Katherine, Queen of England. I draw a breath.

‘The king himself approved the wording,’ George Day says quietly. ‘Thomas Cranmer took it to him and told him that it was a fine translation of the old prayers, that would be read alongside the Litany. You have given the English an English prayer book, Your Majesty.’

‘He does not object to my name being on it?’

‘He does not.’

I trace my name with a fingertip. ‘It feels almost too much for me.’

‘It is God’s work,’ he assures me. ‘And also . . .’ I smile. ‘What?’

‘It’s good, Your Majesty. It is a good piece of work.’

The king returns to health as the summer comes, looking forward to his annual progress down the beautiful valley of the Thames, and he walks from his room in Nonsuch Palace, through the private gallery to my rooms with only two pages and Doctor Butts to accompany him. Nan warns me that he is on his way, and I seat myself at the fireside reading, beautifully dressed in my best nightgown and with my hair in a plait under a dark net.

The pages tap on the door, the guards throw it open, Doctor Butts bows low at the threshold, and the king enters. I rise from my seat at the fireside and curtsey.

‘I am so glad to see you, my lord husband.’

‘It’s about time,’ he says shortly. ‘I did not marry you to spend my nights alone.’

From the shuttered expression on Doctor Butts’ face I guess that he advised the king against struggling through the passages to my room, and staying here. Without speaking he goes to the table before the fireplace and prepares a draught for the king.

‘Is that a sleeping draught?’ Henry demands irritably. ‘I don’t want one. I haven’t come here to sleep, you fool.’

‘Your Majesty should not overexert—’

‘I’m not going to.’

‘This is just to keep your fever down,’ the doctor replies. ‘You are heated, Your Majesty. You will heat up the queen’s bed.’

He strikes just the right note. Henry chuckles. ‘Should you like me in your bed instead of a warming pan, Kateryn?’

‘You are a much warmer bedfellow than Joan Denny,’ I smile. ‘She has cold feet. I shall be glad to have you in my bed, my lord.’

‘You see,’ Henry says triumphantly to William Butts. ‘I shall tell Sir Anthony I am a better bedfellow than his wife.’ He laughs. ‘Get me into bed,’ he says to the pages.

Together they push him up onto the footstool before the bed, and then, as he sits back, they go either side of the bed; one of them has to stand on the covers to heave him up to sit upright so that he can breathe, propped by the pillows and the bolster. Gently, they lift his thick wounded leg into bed and then the other beside it. Tenderly, they drape the sheets and the blankets over him, and step back to see that he is comfortable. I have the disturbing thought that they are admiring him as if he were the enormous wax effigy of his corpse which must one day be placed on his coffin.

‘Good enough,’ he says shortly. ‘You can go.’

Doctor Butts brings the little medicine glass to the king and he swallows it in one.

‘Is there anything else you need to make you more comfortable?’ the doctor asks.

‘New legs,’ Henry says wryly.

‘I wish to God I could give you them, Your Majesty.’

‘I know, I know, you can leave us.’

They go out through my privy chamber, closing the door behind them. I hear the guard at the outer door of the presence chamber ground his pike on the stone floor in salute to the doctor, and then it is quiet, but for the crackle of the fire in the fireplace and the hoot of an owl, out in the dark trees of the garden. From somewhere, perhaps beyond the hawks’ mews, I can hear the distant pipe of a flute for dancing.

‘What are you listening for?’ the king asks me.

‘I heard an ullet.’

‘A what?’

I shake my head. ‘An owl. I meant an owl. We call them ullets in the North.’

‘D’you miss your home?’

‘No, I am so happy here.’

This is the right answer. He gestures that I am to come to bed beside him, and I kneel briefly before my prie-dieu, then take off my robe and slip between the sheets in my nightgown. Wordlessly, he tweaks at the fine lawn of my gown and gestures that I should straddle him. I make sure that I am smiling as I go astride him, and I lower myself gently onto him. There is nothing there. Feeling a little foolish I glance down to make sure that I am in the right place, but I can feel nothing. I make sure that my smile does not waver and, slowly, I undo the top ribbon of my nightgown. Always I have to balance my actions so that I do not seem wanton – like Kitty Howard – but I do enough to please him. He gets hold of my hips in an unkind grip and draws me downwards, grinding me against him, trying to thrust himself upwards. His legs are too weak to take his weight, he cannot arch his back, he can do nothing but flounder. I can see his colour and his temper rising, and I make sure I am still smiling. I widen my eyes and I take little shallow breaths as if I am aroused. I start to pant.

‘It’s no good,’ he says shortly.

I pause, uncertainly.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he insists. ‘It’s this fever. It has unmanned me.’

I dismount with as much ease as I can manage, but I feel painfully awkward as if I were getting gracelessly off a fat cob. ‘I am sure it’s nothing. . .’

‘Yes, yes,’ he says. ‘It’s the fault of that damned doctor. The physic he gives me would castrate a horse.’

I giggle at the phrase, then I see his face and realise he is not joking. He really does think himself as strong as a stallion, only rendered impotent by a draught against fever.

‘Get us something to eat,’ he says. ‘At least we can dine.’

I slip from the bed and go to the cupboard. There are pastries and some fruit.

‘For God’s sake! More than that.’

I ring the bell and Elizabeth Tyrwhit my cousin comes and curtseys low when she sees the king in my bed. ‘Your Majesty,’ she says.

‘The king is hungry,’ I tell her. ‘Bring us some pastries and some wine, some meats and some cheeses and some sweet things.’

She bows and goes, I hear her waking a page and sending him running to the kitchens. One of the cooks has to sleep there, in a truckle bed, waiting for a night-time demand from the king’s rooms. The king likes great meals in the middle of the night as well as the two big feasts of the day, and often stirs in his rest and wants a pudding to soothe him back to sleep again.

‘We’ll go to the coast next week,’ he tells me. ‘I have been waiting for months to be well enough to ride.’

I exclaim in pleasure.

‘I want to see what Tom Seymour has left of my navy,’ he says. ‘And they say the French are massing in their ports. They are likely to raid. I want to see my castles.’

I am sure he will see the rapid pulse in the hollow of my bare neck at the thought of seeing Thomas. ‘Is it not dangerous?’ I ask. ‘If the French are coming?’

‘Yes,’ he says with pleasure. ‘We might even see some action.’

‘There might be a battle?’ My voice is perfectly steady.

‘I hope so. I did not refit the Mary Rose for her to sit in harbour. She is my great weapon, my secret weapon. D’you know how many guns I have on her now?’

‘But you won’t go on board, will you, my lord?’

‘Twelve,’ he says, not answering me but pursuing his thoughts about his refitted ship. ‘She was always a mighty ship and now we’re going to use her like a weapon, as Thomas says. He’s quite right, she is like a floating castle. She has twelve port pieces, eight culverins and four cannon. She can stay far out at sea and bombard a land-based castle with guns as big as they have. She can shoot from one side and wheel around and shoot from the other while the first are reloading. Then she can grapple a ship and my soldiers can board them. I’ve put two fighting castles on her upper deck, fore and aft.’

‘But you won’t sail in her with Sir Thomas?’

‘I may.’ He is excited at the thought of a battle. ‘But I don’t forget that I have to keep myself safe, my dear. I am the father of the nation, I don’t forget it. And I would not leave you alone.’

I wonder if there is a way that I can ask which ship Thomas will command. The king looks at me kindly. ‘I know you will want to see that all your pretty things are packed. My steward shall tell yours when we will leave. We should have a good journey; the weather should be fine.’

‘I love going on progress in the summer,’ I say. ‘Shall we take Prince Edward with us?’

‘No, no, he can stay at Ashridge,’ he says. ‘But we can call on him as we come back to London. I know you will like that.’

‘I always like to see him.’

‘He is studying well? You hear from his tutors?’

‘He writes to me himself. We write to each other in Latin now for practice.’

‘Well enough,’ he says, but I know that he is at once jealous that his son loves me. ‘But you must not distract him from his studies, Kateryn. And he must not forget his true mother. She must live in his heart before anyone else. She is his guardian angel in heaven, as she was his guardian angel on earth.’

‘Whatever you think, my lord,’ I say, a little stiff at this snub.

‘He is born to be king,’ he says. ‘As I was. He has to be disciplined, and well taught and strictly raised. As I was. My mother was dead in my twelfth year. I had no-one writing loving letters to me.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘You must have missed her very much. To lose her, when you were so young.’

His face compresses with self-pity. ‘I was heartbroken,’ he says huskily. ‘The loss of her broke my heart. No woman has ever loved me as she did. And she left me so young!’

‘Tragic,’ I say softly.

There is a knock at the door and the grooms of the servery come in with a table groaning with food. They place it at the side of the bed and heap a plate for the king as he points to one dish after another.

‘Eat!’ he commands me, his mouth full. ‘I can’t dine alone.’

I take a small plate and let them serve me. I sit by the fireside on my chair and nibble on a few pieces of pastry. The king is served wine. I take a glass of small ale. I cannot believe that I will see Thomas Seymour within the week.

It is a long two hours before the king has finished with the food and he is sweating and breathing heavily by the time he has eaten several slices of pie, some meats, and half of a lemon pudding.

‘Take it away, I am weary,’ he announces.

Quickly and efficiently they load the table and carry it out of the room.

‘Come to bed,’ he says thickly. ‘I will sleep here with you.’

He tips his head back and belches loudly. I go to my side of the bed and climb in. Before I have the covers spread over us he has let out a loud snore and is fast asleep.

I think I will be wakeful but I lie in the darkness and feel such joy as I think of Thomas. Perhaps he is in Portsmouth, perhaps sleeping on board his ship in his low-ceilinged wooden admiral’s cabin, with the candles rocking gently on their gimbals on the walls. I will see him next week, I think. I may not speak to him, I must not look for him, but at least I will see him, and he will see me.

The dream is so like my waking life that I do not know I am dreaming. I am in my bed and the king is sleeping beside me, snoring, and there is a terrible smell, the smell of his rotting leg, in my bed, and in my room. I slip out of bed, careful not to wake him, and the smell is worse than ever. I think, I must get out of the room, I cannot breathe, I must find the apothecary and get some perfume, I must send the girls out to the garden to pick some herbs. I go as quietly as I can towards the door to the private galleries between his room and mine.

I open the little door and step out, but instead of the wooden floor and scattered rushes and the stone walls of the gallery I am at once on the narrow landing of a stone staircase, a circular staircase, perilously steep. I put one hand on the central column and start to climb upwards. I must get away from this terrible smell of death, but instead it is getting worse, as if there is a corpse or some rotting horror just around the curve of the stair above me.

I put a hand over my mouth and nose to shield me from the smell and then I give a little choke as I realise that it is my hand that smells. It is me that is rotting; and it is my own stink that I am trying to escape. I smell like a dead woman, left to rot. I pause on the stair as I think that all I can do is to fling myself downstairs, headfirst down the stairs, so that this decayed body can complete the task of dying and I am not locked in with death, twinned with death, mated with death, decay in my own body at my fingertips.

I am crying now, raging at the fate that has brought me to this, but as the tears run down my cheeks they are like dust. They are dry as sand when they run into my lips and they taste like dried blood. In my desperation and with all the courage I can find, I turn on the step and face down the steep stone stairs. Then I give one despairing scream as I dive downwards, down the stone staircase, headfirst.

‘Hush, hush, you’re safe!’

I think it is Thomas who has caught me up, and I cling to him, shuddering. I turn to his shoulder and press my face against his warm chest and throat. But it is the king holding me in his arms, and I recoil and cry out again for fear that I have said Thomas’s name in my nightmare and now I am in real danger indeed.

‘Hush, hush,’ he says. ‘Hush, my love. It was a dream. Nothing but a dream. You’re safe now.’ He holds me gently against his fleshy comforting side, soft as a pillow.

‘My God, what a dream! God help me, what a nightmare!’

‘Nothing, it was nothing.’

‘I was so afraid. I dreamed I was dead.’

‘You are safe with me. You are safe with me, beloved.’

‘Did I talk in my sleep?’ I whimper. I am so afraid that I said his name.

‘No, you said no words, you just wept, poor girl. I woke you at once.’

‘It was so terrible!’

‘Poor little love,’ Henry says tenderly, stroking my hair, my bare shoulder. ‘You are safe with me. Do you want something to eat?’

‘No, no,’ I give a shaky laugh. ‘Nothing to eat. Nothing more to eat.’

‘You should have something, for comfort.’

‘No, no, really. I couldn’t.’

‘You are awake now? You know yourself?’

‘Yes, yes, I do.’

‘Was it a dream of foretelling?’ he asks. ‘Did you dream of my ships?’

‘No,’ I say firmly. Two of this man’s wives were accused by him of witchcraft; I’m not going to claim any sort of second sight. ‘It was nothing, it meant nothing. Just a muddle of castle walls and feeling cold and afraid.’

He lies back on the pillows. ‘Can you sleep now?’

‘Yes, I can. Thank you for being so kind to me.’

‘I am your husband,’ he says with simple dignity. ‘Of course I guard your sleep and soothe your fears.’

In a moment he is breathing heavily, his mouth lolling open. I put my head against his bulky shoulder and close my eyes. I know that my dream was the dream of Tryphine, the maid who was married to a man who killed his wives. I know it was the smell of dead wife on my own fingers.