The Taming of the Queen Read online

  ‘No.’ I shake my head with a smile. ‘Who’d have dreamed it?’

  ‘Your rise to greatness,’ Nan raises her glass in a toast. ‘But it comes with dangers.’

  Nobody knows more about the dangers for a queen than Nan. She has served every one. She has given evidence on oath against three. Sometimes she has even told the truth.

  ‘Not for me,’ I say confidently. ‘I’m not like the others. I don’t have an enemy in the world. I’m famously room-handed, I’ve helped anyone who asked me. I have done nothing but good for the royal children. The king loves me, he made me Regent General and an editor for the English liturgy. He puts me at the heart of the court, of everything he cares about: his children, his country and his church.’

  ‘Stephen Gardiner is no friend of yours,’ she warns. ‘And neither are any of his affinity. They would throw you down from the throne and out of the royal rooms at the first moment they could.’

  ‘They wouldn’t. They might disagree with me; but this is a matter of debate, not enmity.’

  ‘Kateryn, every queen has enemies. You have to face it.’

  ‘The king himself supports the cause of reform!’ I exclaim irritably. ‘He listens to Thomas Cranmer more than to Stephen Gardiner.’

  ‘And they blame you for that! They planned for him to have a papist wife and they thought he had married one. They thought you were for the old church; they thought that you shared Latimer’s convictions. That’s why they welcomed you so warmly. They were never your friends! And now that they think you have turned against them, they won’t be your friends any longer.’

  ‘Nan, this is madness. They may disagree with me but they wouldn’t try to drag me down in the eyes of the king. They won’t falsely accuse me of God-knows-what because we don’t agree about the serving of the Mass. We differ; but they are not my enemies. Stephen Gardiner is an ordained bishop, called by God, a holy man. He is not going to seek my destruction because I differ from him on a point of theology.’

  ‘They went against Anne Boleyn because she was for the cause of reform.’

  ‘Wasn’t that Cromwell?’ I ask stubbornly.

  ‘It doesn’t matter which advisor it is, what matters is if the king is listening to him.’

  ‘The king loves me,’ I say finally. ‘He loves only me. He would not listen to a word against me.’

  ‘So you say.’ Nan puts out her foot and pushes a log further into the fire. A plume of sparks flies up, she looks awkward.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I have to tell you that they’re proposing another wife.’

  I almost laugh. ‘This is ridiculous. Is this what you came to tell me? It’s nothing but gossip.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. They are proposing another wife more amenable to returning the church to Rome.’

  ‘Who?’ I scoff.

  ‘Catherine Brandon.’

  ‘Now I know that you are mistaken,’ I say. ‘She is more of a reformer than I am. She named her dog after Bishop Gardiner. She’s openly rude to him.’

  ‘They think she will join them if they offer her the throne. And they believe that the king likes her.’

  I look at my sister. Her face is turned away from me, fixed on the embers of the fire. She fidgets, putting on dry wood.

  ‘Is this what you came in to tell me? Did you come so late tonight to warn me that the king is thinking of another wife? That I must defend myself?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, still not meeting my eyes. ‘I am afraid so, yes.’

  The fire crackles in the silence. ‘Catherine would never betray me. You’re wrong to say such a thing. She’s my friend. We study together, we think alike. It’s really vile, Nan, it’s black-babbling to say such a thing.’

  ‘It’s the crown of England. Most people would do anything for it.’

  ‘The king loves me. He doesn’t want another wife.’

  ‘All I am saying is that the king is sentimental over her, he’s always liked her, and now she is free to marry, and they will be pushing her forward.’

  ‘She would never take my place!’

  ‘She would have no choice,’ Nan says quietly. ‘Just as you had no choice. And anyway, some people say that he has been her lover for years. They say that Charles and he shared her. Charles never refused the king anything. Perhaps when he got a beautiful young wife, young enough to be his daughter, the king had her too.’

  I get to my feet and go the window. I want to throw open the shutters and let the night air into the room as if the place stinks like the king’s bedroom of corruption and disappointment.

  ‘This is the vilest gossip,’ I say quietly. ‘I should not have to hear it.’

  ‘It is vile. But it is widely repeated. And so you do have to hear it.’

  ‘So what now?’ I say bitterly. ‘Nan, do you always have to be so ill-tongued? Must you always breathe sorrows in my ear? Are you telling me that he would put me aside for Catherine Brandon? Shall he have a seventh wife? What about another after her? Yes, he likes her, he likes Mary Howard, he likes Anne Seymour! But he loves me, he favours me above all others, more than any previous wife. And he has married me! That means everything. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘I am saying that we have to keep you safe. There must be nothing that anyone can say against you. No hint against your reputation, no suggestion of disagreement between you and the king, nothing that could make him turn against you. Not even for a moment.’

  ‘Because it only takes a moment?’

  ‘It only takes a moment for him to sign a warrant,’ she says. ‘And then it is all over for all of us.’

  Catherine Brandon comes back to court as commanded, and she does not wear mourning. She comes first to my rooms and curtseys before me, and before all my ladies I give her my condolences for her loss and welcome her back to my service. She takes her seat among them and looks at the translation that we are working on. We are studying the gospel of Luke in the Latin and trying to find the purest, clearest words in English to express the beauty of the original. Catherine joins in as if she is here by choice, as if she does not want to be at her own home, with her sons.

  At the end of the morning when we put away our books to go out riding I beckon her to come with me as I change into my riding dress.

  ‘I am surprised that you came back to court so soon,’ I say.

  ‘I was commanded,’ she says shortly.

  ‘Weren’t you secluded, and in mourning?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I rise from my seat before the silvered looking-glass and I take her hands. ‘Catherine, I have been your friend since I first came to court. If you don’t want to be here, if you want to go home, I will do my best for you.’

  She gives me a little sad smile. ‘I have to be here,’ she says. ‘I have no choice. But I thank Your Majesty for your kindness.’

  ‘Do you miss your husband?’ I ask curiously.

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘He was like a father to me.’

  ‘I think the king misses him.’

  ‘He must do. They were always together. But I don’t expect him to show it.’

  ‘Why not? Why should the king not show his grief for the loss of his friend?’

  She looks at me as if I am asking her a question to which everyone must know the answer. ‘Because the king cannot bear grief,’ she says simply. ‘He cannot tolerate it. It makes him angry. He will never forgive Charles for leaving him. If I want to stay in favour, if I want my sons to have their inheritance, I will have to conceal the fact that Charles has deserted him. I cannot show him my grief as it reminds him of his own.’

  ‘But he died!’ I say impatiently to the man’s widow. ‘He didn’t leave the king on purpose, he just died!’

  She gives me a slow sad smile. ‘I suppose if you are King of England, you think that everyone’s life is dedicated to you. And those that die have let you down.’

  I don’t want to hear Nan’s bleak warnings, I prefer to see the gloze of Catherine’s false s