The Taming of the Queen Read online

  At the stern of the barge, standing behind the steersman, I see Thomas Seymour. He, too, is going to war, and, I know, into far greater danger. As the drum starts to beat and they cast off the ropes, as the oars dip in the water and the barge yields to the pull and glides away from the quayside, the man that I adore exchanges one dark glance with me and then he turns away. I don’t even mouth ‘God bless you’ or ‘Keep safe’. I hold up my hand to wave to the king and then I turn away too.

  HAMPTON COURT PALACE, SUMMER 1544

  It is the most beautiful weather, sunny and bright and hot every day, and I wake alone in my own bed every morning in my rebuilt rooms on the south-east corner of the base court, overlooking the pond gardens facing south, far from ghosts, revelling in the satisfaction of my own company.

  I have the three royal children with me, and every morning I wake to such pleasure in knowing that they are all three under the same roof, that we will pray in the same chapel, that we will eat breakfast in the great hall and spend the day together in study and in play. Edward is living with his sisters for the first time in his lonely little life. I have gathered all three of them around me as no queen has been allowed to do before. I have everything that could make a woman happy, and I am Regent General of England. Everything shall be as I decide, nobody can even argue with me. The children are with me because I say that it shall be so. There is nobody who can take Edward away from this: his family; from me: his stepmother. We will stay here, in the most beautiful of all the English palaces, because it is my choice, and later – when I choose and not before – we will go on a progress of pleasure, hunting and sailing and riding up the Thames valley, myself and the children and those of the court that I want with me.

  I take my seat at the great table in the presence chamber every day and have the Privy Council report to me that the kingdom is at peace and that we are taking in taxes and fines, and we are making enough weapons and armour to keep the king’s army supplied in France. I make it a priority to supply our forces, to make sure that wages, weapons, ammunition, armour, food, even arrowheads, are shipped in the amounts that are needed. I have been compared, to my detriment, to the saintly Jane Seymour ever since I was married; I don’t want to suffer from a comparison to Thomas Wolsey too. I don’t want anyone to say that Katherine of Aragon was a better regent than Kateryn Parr.

  Every morning, after breakfast and before I take the children out hunting, I have a brief meeting of my council to read any dispatches that have come in overnight, either from the king in France or from the troubled Northern lands. If there is work to do, or something that I want to make sure of, I will call them to meet with me again before dinner.

  We gather in one of the grand rooms at Hampton Court, and I have had a table set in the middle, chairs around for the councillors, and a great map of France and the sea roads pinned on the wall. On the opposite wall there is as much of a map of the border lands of the North and of Scotland as can be drawn from the little knowledge that we have of the countryside. I sit at the head of the table and William Petre, the king’s Secretary, reads whatever dispatches have arrived from our armies, and whatever letters or appeals from other parts of the kingdom. As the king is at war with the French there is trouble in most of the towns where Frenchmen have settled, and I have to write to the local lords or even the justices of the peace and command them to be sure that their districts are quiet. A country at war is as nervous as one of my little birds. We have constant reports of spies and invasions, which I judge to be false, and I send the proclamations out to the whole kingdom.

  Next to me, on my right hand, sits Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, a steady and patient advisor and a calm voice, while Lord Thomas Wriothesley tends to be more dramatic and loud. He has good reason for worry. It was Wriothesley who was ordered by the king to declare what funds would be needed for an invasion of France and a march on Paris. After much calculation and many sheets of close-written estimates, he thought it would be about a quarter of a million pounds: a fortune. We have raised that through loans and taxes and by scraping every last gold coin from the royal treasuries, but now we are burning through these funds and it is clear that Wriothesley has underestimated.

  William Petre is a newly-made man, risen on his abilities, the sort that old families like the Howards hate, the son of Devon cattle-farmers. His quiet good sense keeps the meeting steady when some of the other councillors argue for their own causes, or for taxes to be lifted from their home towns. It is Petre who suggests that we make up the shortfall of funds by stripping the lead from all the roofs of the monasteries and selling it. This will make them leak when it rains, and it will complete the ruination of the Roman Catholic church in England. I see that this is good for reform as well as for raising money for the king, but a part of me mourns the loss of the beautiful buildings and the charity and the scholarship that they extended to their communities.

  Often Princess Mary attends a meeting with me, and sometimes I think that it is well that she does, for one day – who knows? – she might have a kingdom of her own to rule. Princess Elizabeth never misses one. She sits a little behind me, her sharp chin on her clenched fists, her dark eyes going from one man to another, observing everything, her cousin Jane Grey beside her.

  We have finished the business for the morning and the councillors have bowed to me and are gathering up their papers and leaving the room, each with a task to perform, when Elizabeth touches my sleeve and looks up at me.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask.

  ‘I want to know how you learned to do this,’ she says shyly.

  ‘How I learned to do what?’

  ‘How you learned what you should do. You were not born a princess and yet you know when you should listen, and when you should command, how to make sure that they understand you, how to make sure that they do as they are told. I didn’t know that a woman could do it. I didn’t know that a woman could rule.’

  I hesitate before I answer. This is the daughter of a woman who turned England upside down by letting a young king pet her breasts, parlaying lust into influence until she commanded the country. ‘A woman can rule,’ I say quietly. ‘But she has to do it with the guidance of God and using all her sense and wisdom. It’s not enough for a woman to want power, to seek power for its own sake. She has to take the responsibility that comes with it. She has to prepare herself for power and judge wisely. If your father marries you to a king then you may be a queen one day, and you may find that you have to rule. When you do, I hope that you will remember me telling you this – the victory is not to get a woman on the throne, the victory is to get a woman to think like a king, for her to aspire to more than her own greatness, for her to humble herself to serve. Getting a woman into power is not the point – it’s getting a good woman into power who thinks and cares about what she does.’

  Gravely, the little girl nods. ‘But you’ll be there,’ she says. ‘You will advise me.’

  I smile. ‘Oh, I hope so! I shall be an irritating old lady at your court, who always knows better than everyone else. I shall sit in a corner and complain about your extravagance!’

  She laughs at the thought of it and I send her to my ladies to tell them I will come in a moment and we can go hunting.

  I don’t tell Elizabeth how much I relish the work of ruling the kingdom. The king’s manner of command is one of sudden ideas, dramatic favours and reversals, sudden countermands. He likes to surprise and keep his Privy Council unsteady with fear of change. He likes to set one man against another, encourage reform and then hint at a return to papacy. He likes to divide the church and the council, to disrupt the parliament.

  Without his turbulence, the wheels of the trade of the country, the laws of the country, the laws of the church, go on steadily and well. Even the accusations of heresy among ordinary people – against both papists and Lutherans – are fewer. It is generally known that I am not interested in twisting justice to serve one side or the other. Without the sudden issuing of repressive laws or