The Taming of the Queen

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1546

It is midsummer, too hot for being in London. We should be on progress, going down the long green valley of the Thames, staying in the beautiful riverside palaces, or heading to the south coast, perhaps going to Portsmouth, where I might see Thomas. But this year the king does not fear the plague, does not fear the heat in the city. This year he fears that death is stalking him by another route, coming closer and closer like a constant companion.

He is too tired to go far, even in flight from disease. Poor old man, he can no longer ride, he can no longer walk. He is ashamed to be seen by the people who used to line the roadsides and doff their caps and cheer as he went by. He used to be the most handsome prince in Christendom. Now he knows that nobody can look at him without feeling pity for the wreck that he has made of his bloated body, and for the moon-like face.

So, because the king is self-pitying and filled with dread, we all have to stay in the heat of the city, where the narrow streets stink with filth from the central gutters and the pigs and cows nose through the rubbish that is heaped in the streets. I remark that the Lord Mayor should be more active, should get the streets cleaned and fine the offenders; but the king looks at me coldly, and says, ‘Would you be the Lord Mayor of London as well as queen?’

Everyone is irritable at being detained in town. The courtiers usually go to their homes for the summer months and the Northern lords and the Western lords are missing their wives and their families and their castles set in the cool green hills of their homelands. The king’s bad temper sets the tone for the court: nobody wants to be here, nobody is allowed to leave, everyone is unhappy.

I come across Will Somers as I walk alone in the green allée beneath the castle walls. I long, with a wordless ache in my heart, for Thomas, I worry for Anne Askew, still held without trial and without charge, and I wish that the king would listen to me once more as the friend and helpmeet that I swore to be. Will is sprawled, as long-limbed as a fawn, under a spreading oak tree, dappled with shade, in one of the little gardens set between the high hedges, and when he sees me he unwinds his long legs, rises to his feet, bows, and folds himself up again like a jointed puppet.

‘How d’you like the heat, Will?’ I ask.

‘Better than I would like hell,’ he replies. ‘Or do you doubt hell along with everything else, Your Majesty?’

I glance around, but there is no-one but the two of us in the walled garden. ‘You want to discuss theology with me?’

‘Not I!’ he says. ‘You’re too clever for me. And I’m not the only one.’

‘You’re not the only one not to want to discuss theology?’

He nods, lays his finger along his nose and beams at me.

‘Who else does not want to talk with me?’

‘Your Majesty,’ he says grandly. ‘I am just a Fool. So I don’t discuss the king’s church with him. But if I were a wise man (and I wake every day to thank the Lord that I am not) I would be dead by now. For if I had been a wise man with serious opinions, I would have succumbed to the temptation to discuss these grave matters. Grave because that is where they lead.’

‘His Majesty has always enjoyed scholarly talk,’ I say repressively.

‘Not any more,’ Will says. ‘In my opinion. Which is to say a Fool’s opinion and so not worth having.’

As I open my mouth to argue, Will very slowly and carefully goes into a handstand so that he is balancing on his hands and his feet walk languidly up the trunk of the tree. ‘See what a Fool I am,’ he remarks, head down.

‘I think you are wiser than you appear, Will,’ I remark. ‘But there are good people whose safety depends on me speaking for them. I have promised to keep the king in one mind.’

‘It is easier to stand on your head than keep the king to one mind,’ Will observes, straight as a yeoman, but upside down. ‘If I were you, Majesty, I would stand on your head beside me.’

The summer continues hot. We sit beside wide-open windows every afternoon, listening to one of my maids reading the Bible, with the drapes at the windows soaked in cold water, trying to cool down the rooms. In the afternoon, I go to my privy chamber where the shutters are closed against the glare and pray that the king’s health mends, and that he releases us from the wearying tedium of hot weather in the fetid city, so that we can go on progress. I long like a swallow to go south, to the sea, to the ocean winds that smell of salt, to Thomas.

Then, one afternoon, as we sit on benches beside the river, trying to get some air, I see the Seymour barge come down the river and tie up at the pier. At once I fix an expression of idle boredom on my face. ‘Oh, is that the Seymour barge? And who is in it? Is that Thomas Seymour?’ I ask.

Elizabeth’s head bobs up at once and she jumps to her feet, shading her eyes from the glare from the river. ‘It is!’ she squeaks. ‘It’s Sir Thomas! And Edward Seymour with him.’

‘My husband?’ Anne Seymour asks. ‘That’s unexpected. Your Majesty, may I go and greet him?’

‘We’ll all go,’ I say, and we get to our feet and leave our books and our sewing and walk towards the pier where the two Seymour men bow and kiss my hands and then Edward greets his wife.

I hardly see him. I can hardly say the polite words of greeting. Thomas takes my hand and brushes it with his lips. He straightens up and bows to the other ladies. He offers me his arm. I hear him say something about our sitting out by the river and that surely there are pestilential airs. I hear him say something about the court going on progress. I cannot hear for the thudding in my ears.

‘Are you here for long?’ I ask.

He leans towards me to reply, his voice low. If I were to lean towards him as he is leaning towards me, we would be close enough to kiss. I wonder if he is thinking that too; then I know that he is thinking that too. ‘I am here only for one night.’

I can’t even hear him say the word ‘night’ without thinking of lovemaking. ‘Oh.’

‘I wanted to report on the coastal defences with Edward at my side. We are outnumbered at court. We cannot get a fair hearing. The Howards and their friends dominate everything.’

‘I heard that you are not to marry Mary Howard.’ He slides me a quick smile.

‘Probably just as well.’

‘I would have said nothing. She would have been welcome as one of my ladies.’

‘I know. I trust you completely. But there was something about the whole business . . .’ He breaks off.

‘Walk slowly,’ I say passionately. Already, we are approaching the first gateway into the palace and at any moment someone will come and take him away from me. ‘For God’s sake, let us have a moment . . .’

‘The Howards insisted that she came to court,’ he says. ‘They made me promise I would put her in your rooms. I couldn’t think why they would want that, unless to have her spy on you. I doubted their honesty, and she would hardly speak to me. She was furious about something. Clearly, she was coerced. She was very angry.’

‘So you’re still a free man,’ I say longingly.

Gently he presses my hand that rests on his arm. ‘I will have to marry,’ he warns me. ‘We need an alliance at court. We are losing our influence with the king, we need a greater presence here. I need a wife who will speak for me to him.’

‘I can’t speak for you but I would . . .’

‘No. Never. I never want you to say one word for me. But I need a wife here who can take care of my interests.’

I feel as sick as if I have indeed inhaled pestilential airs from the river. ‘You are still going to marry?’

‘I have to.’

I nod. Of course, he has to. ‘Have you chosen a bride?’

‘Only if you give your permission.’

‘I would be very wrong to refuse it. I know that you need a wife; I understand about court. I’ll come to your wedding and smile.’

‘This is not my desire,’ he stipulates.

‘Nor mine, but I’ll dance at your wedding feast.’

We are nearly at the doorway. The guards salute and open the doors. He will have to go to the king’s rooms and I will not see him until dinner. And then at dinner I will not be able to look at him. And then in a month, within weeks, he will be married.

‘Who is your choice? Tell me quickly.’

‘Princess Elizabeth.’

I whirl around and look at my stepdaughter, where she follows us at the head of my ladies, as if I am seeing her for the first time, not as a child but as a young woman. She is twelve years old, old enough to be betrothed. In a few years she will be old enough to marry. In one quick glance I imagine her as Thomas Seymour’s bride, on her wedding day, as his young wife, as mother to his children. I imagine how she will take to lovemaking and how she will flaunt her happiness. ‘Elizabeth!’

‘Hush,’ he says. ‘The king would have to agree, but if he does, then I become his son-in-law. It’s a brilliant match for us.’

It is. With painful clarity I can see the logic of it for the Seymours. It is a brilliant match for them, and Princess Elizabeth, when she is told of it, will pretend to obedience but will be delighted. She has a childish adoration for Thomas for his dark good looks and his air of adventure, now she will think herself in love with him and she will talk about him and coo over him and give herself airs and I will lose my love for her in jealousy.

‘You don’t like it,’ he observes.

I shake my head, swallowing down bile. ‘I can’t like it, but I don’t speak against it. I see that you must, Thomas. It would be a great advancement for you. It would secure the Seymours their place with the royal family.’

‘I shan’t do it if you say “no”.’

Again I shake my head. We go through the doorway into the shade of the entrance hall. The Seymour servants come to greet their masters. They bow and we turn towards the king’s presence chamber. It is not possible to speak, and everyone is looking at Thomas and commenting on the admiral’s return to court.

‘I am yours,’ Thomas says in a passionate undertone. ‘Forever. You know that.’

I release his hand and he bows and steps back.

‘Very well,’ I say. I know that he has to make his way. I know that Elizabeth is a great match for him. I know that she will adore him and he will be kind to her. ‘Very well.’

Thomas leaves the next morning before chapel and I don’t see him again.

‘Are you ill?’ Nan asks me. ‘You look . . .’

‘Look what?’

She scrutinises my pale face. ‘Queechy,’ she says, using a childhood word with a little smile.

‘I’m unhappy,’ I reply in a moment of honesty. I won’t say more but I feel a little eased just by speaking one word of truth. I miss Thomas as a physical pain. I don’t know how I am going to bear his marriage to someone else. The thought of him with Elizabeth makes my stomach churn as if I am poisoned with jealousy.

Nan does not even ask me why I am unhappy. I am not the first royal wife she has seen blanched by the strain of being queen.

I am invited to the king’s rooms most evenings before dinner to listen to debates. Often I say what I think, and always I remind the king that the cause of reform is his cause, a process that he started in his wisdom, that his people revere him for bringing reform to England. But I can tell from the frosty silence that greets my words that the king is far from agreeing with me. He is planning something; but he does not discuss it with me. I know nothing until the first week of July, when the Privy Council announce a law that makes it a criminal offence to own a Bible in English translated either by William Tyndale or by Miles Coverdale.

This is madness. There is no understanding it. Miles Coverdale translated and improved the Tyndale Bible under the instruction of the king and it was published as the Great Bible, the king’s Bible, his gift to believers. This is the Bible that the king gave to his people only seven years ago. Everyone who can afford one has a copy. It would have been disloyal not to have a family copy. Every parish church was given one and ordered to display it. It is the best version in English; every bookcase in England has it. Now, overnight, ownership is a crime. It is a reversal so great that everything is turned around, and upside down. I think of Will Somers standing on his head as I hurry back to my private rooms and find Nan wrapping my precious, beautifully bound and illustrated volumes in rough cloth and cording up a trunk.

‘We can’t just throw them out!’

‘They have to be sent away.’

‘Where are you going to send them?’ I ask.

‘To Kendal,’ she says, naming our family home. ‘As far away as possible.’

‘It’s barely standing!’

‘Then they won’t look there.’

‘You’ve got my copy?’

‘And your notes, and Catherine Brandon’s copy, and Anne Seymour’s and Joan Denny’s and Lady Dudley’s. This new law has caught us all out without warning. The king has made us all criminals overnight.’

‘But why?’ I demand. I am near to crying with anger. ‘Why make his own Bible illegal? The king’s Bible! How can it be illegal to own a Bible? God gave the Word to his people, how can the king take it back?’

‘Exactly,’ she says. ‘You think. Why would the king make a criminal of his wife?’

I take her hands, pulling her away from tying the knots on the trunk, and I kneel beside her. ‘Nan, you have been at court all your life; I am a Parr of Kendal raised in Lincoln. I’m a straightforward Northern woman. Don’t speak in riddles to me.’

‘That’s no riddle,’ she says with bitter humour. ‘Your husband has passed a law which makes you a criminal fit for burning. Why would he do that?’

I am slow to say it. ‘He wants to get rid of me?’

She is silent.

‘Are you saying that this new law is directed against me, since they cannot catch me with anything else? Are you suggesting that they have outlawed the Bible just to make me and my ladies into criminals? So that they can come against us and charge us with heresy? Because this is ridiculous.’

I cannot read the expression on her face – she does not look like herself – and then I realise that she is afraid. Her mouth is working as if she cannot speak, her forehead is damp with sweat. ‘He’s coming for you,’ is all she says. ‘This is how he always does it. He’s coming for you, Kat, and I don’t know how to save you. I’m packing Bibles and I’m burning papers but they know you have been reading and writing, and they are changing the law ahead of me. I can’t make sure you obey the law because they are changing it faster than we can obey. I don’t know how to save you. I swore to you that you would outlive him, and now his health is failing, but he is coming for you just like . . .’

I release her hands and sit back on my heels.

‘Just like what?’

‘Just like he came for the other two.’

She knots the cords around the box and goes to the door and shouts for her manservant, a man who has been with us all our lives. She gestures to the boxes and commands him to take them at once, show them to no-one, and ride for home, for Kendal in Westmorland. As I watch him lift the first box, I realise I am longing to go with him into those wild hills.

‘They’ll pick him up at Islington village if they want to,’ I say, as the man shoulders the trunk and goes. ‘He won’t get more than a day’s ride out of the City.’

‘I know that,’ she says flatly. ‘But I don’t know what else to do.’

I look at my sister, who has served six of Henry’s queens and buried four. ‘You really think he is doing this to entrap me? That he has completely turned against me?’

She doesn’t answer. She turns the same closed face to me that I imagine she showed to little Kitty Howard when she cried that she had done nothing wrong; to Anne Boleyn when she swore that she could talk her way out of danger. ‘I don’t know. God help us all, Kateryn, because I don’t know.’