The Taming of the Queen Read online

  ‘So that I can talk with His Majesty,’ I say simply. ‘So that I can write in Latin to his son the prince. So that such a great scholar-king does not have a wife who is a fool.’

  Will Somers, sitting on the edge of the barge, dangling his long legs towards the water, turns at this. ‘Only one Fool here!’ he reminds us. ‘And I can’t admit an amateur foolish woman in my guild. How big would such a guild have to be? I should recruit thousands.’

  The king smiles. ‘You are no fool, Kateryn, and you may read what you wish, but I will have no deliveries or visitors from London until the city is free from illness.’

  I bow my head. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I trust that Your Majesty is not reading books of folly,’ Stephen Gardiner suggests spitefully.

  I can feel myself bristle at the patronising tone. ‘Oh, I hope not,’ I say with false sweetness. ‘For it is your sermons that I have been reading, my lord.’

  ‘I do this to protect you as well as the court,’ Henry points out.

  ‘I know that you do, and I am grateful for your care of us all,’ I say, and it is true. He guards against disease as if it were our worst enemy. He will keep me safe if he possibly can. Nobody has ever thought of my health before. Nobody has ever devised ways to keep me safe. Until I was married to Henry there was no-one who cared enough to guard me.

  We listen to the musicians who are following in their barge behind us. They are playing a pretty air. ‘Hear this?’ the king says, beating the time on the arm of his chair. ‘I wrote this.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I say. ‘How clever of you, my lord.’

  ‘Perhaps I shall write some more music,’ he says. ‘I think you have inspired me. I shall write a little song for you.’ He pauses, listening to his own tune with admiration. ‘Anyway, it is better that no-one comes from London,’ he continues. ‘It’s pleasant to have little business to do in the summer. They never stop with their demands and their requests, urging me to rule for one against another, to favour one against another, to cut a tax or pay a fee. I get tired of them. I am sick of them all.’

  I nod as if I think that the burden of showing a shifting favouritism is very heavy.

  ‘You shall help me,’ he says. ‘When we open the court again and all the requests come in. You shall read them and judge with me. I shall trust you to sit beside me and be my only advisor.’

  ‘So there are two fools here, after all,’ Will remarks. ‘Myself, a guaranteed and apprenticed Fool, and here is a new Fool, a fool for love.’

  Henry chuckles. ‘Just as you say, Will,’ he agrees. ‘I am a fool for love.’

  AMPTHILL CASTLE, BEDFORDSHIRE, AUTUMN 1543

  The argument on the barge between the bishops, Stephen Gardiner, who wants the restoration of the old church to the old ways, and Thomas Cranmer, who believes that the church should reform, comes to a head when we are staying at Ampthill Castle, Katherine of Aragon’s old home. We are kept indoors by a week of cold and foggy weather, the leaves on the trees drip water all day long, the ground is sodden and the lanes are deep with mud. The king takes a slight fever that makes his eyes and nose run, he aches in every bone and cannot go out. Trapped indoors with the courtiers using every moment to persuade him, he agrees that the reformers have gone too far, become heretical, and authorises a wave of arrests that reach from London into the court itself. The heresies, one by one, are traced back to Thomas Cranmer, and once again the Privy Council scents triumph and calls him in to face an inquiry.

  ‘They thought they had him this time,’ Nan whispers to me as we are kneeling on the chancel steps of the little chapel, the king seated at the back with a writing desk, surrounded by advisors, signing papers, as the priest mumbles the words of the Mass hidden behind the rood screen. ‘He went in like Thomas More, expecting martyrdom.’

  ‘Not him!’ Catherine Brandon hisses from the other side. ‘He knew he was safe. It was all a play, a game.’

  ‘The king himself said it was a masque,’ Anne Seymour leans forward on the other side of Nan to tell me. ‘He said it was a masque called The Taming of the Archbishop.’

  ‘What did he mean?’

  ‘The king let Stephen Gardiner arrest Thomas Cranmer. But he had already warned Cranmer that his enemies had evidence against him, months ago. He called him the greatest heretic in Kent and laughed as he said it. The Privy Council sent for Cranmer, thinking he would shake with fear. They called him in to accuse him and take him to the Tower. They had the guards ready, the barge was waiting for him. Stephen Gardiner and Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk were triumphant. They thought they would silence the archbishop and halt reform for ever.’

  ‘Gardiner didn’t even bring him in at once. He made him wait. He took his time over it,’ Catherine interpolates.

  ‘He was savouring his moment,’ Anne agrees. ‘But just as they were about to grab him and tear his hat from his head, Thomas Cranmer pulls out a ring, the king’s own ring, and says that he has His Majesty’s friendship and trust, and that there is to be a new inquiry into heresy: he is now going to inquire into them – and that charges will follow.’

  I am astounded. ‘He triumphed? Again? And everything is turned around in a moment?’

  ‘In a frightened heartbeat,’ Nan says. ‘That is how this king keeps his power for year after year.’

  ‘So what happens now?’ I ask.

  ‘Stephen Gardiner and Thomas Howard will have to humble their pride and beg pardon of the archbishop and of the king. They have fallen from favour.’

  I shake my head in wonderment. It is like a traveller’s tale, a fairy tale, filled with sudden reverses of fortune and magical triumphs.

  ‘And Thomas Cranmer will hold an inquiry into all the people who thought they were going to arrest and execute him, and if there are letters that reveal treason or heresy they will find themselves in the Tower waiting for the scaffold, in his place.’

  ‘And now we are on the rise,’ Nan crows. ‘And reform will go on. We’ll get the Bible back into the churches, we will be allowed to read books on reform, we’ll get the Word of God to the people and the dogs of Rome can go back to hell.’

  The king is planning a great Christmas feast. ‘Everyone will attend,’ he says exuberantly. The pain in his leg has eased, the wound is still open but it is not weeping so copiously. I think that it smells less. I mask the stink with pockets of perfumes and spices scattered around my rooms, even tucked into my bed, the scent of roses overlaying the haunting odour of decay. The summer of riding and travelling has rested him, he hunts every day, all day – even if he is only standing in a hide as they drive the beasts towards him. We have a lighter dinner than when he is in his great hall twice a day with twenty, thirty different dishes being brought in, and he is even drinking less wine.

  ‘Everyone,’ he says, ‘every ambassador in Christendom will come to Hampton Court. They all want to see my beautiful new wife.’

  I smile and shake my head. ‘I shall be shy,’ I say. ‘I don’t like to feel that all eyes are on me.’

  ‘You have to endure it,’ he says. ‘Better still, learn to enjoy it. You are the greatest woman in the kingdom: learn to revel in it. There are plenty who would take it from you if they could.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not so shy that I would rather stand aside,’ I confess.

  ‘Good,’ he says, catching up my hand and kissing it. ‘For I am not disposed to let you go. I want no pretty new girl pushed into your place.’ He laughs. ‘They dangle papist poppets before me, did you know? All this summer on progress they have been introducing pretty daughters with crucifixes at their necks and rosaries at their belts and missals in Latin in their pockets. Did you not notice?’

  I try to remember. Now that he points it out to me I do think there were a lot of noticeably devout young women among the many that we met on progress. I give a little giggle. ‘My lord husband, this is—’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ he finishes for me. ‘But they think I am old and restless. They think I am whimsical