The Taming of the Queen Read online

  ‘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 b