The Taming of the Queen Read online

  ‘Did someone write it down so that others can read it?’ I ask.

  He nods. His eyes are closing like a sleepy child after a busy day. ‘I hope so,’ he says. ‘I shall see that you get a copy. You will want to study it, I know.’

  ‘I will,’ I say.

  ‘I have pronounced,’ he says. ‘That is the end of all argument.’

  ‘Yes. Shall I leave you to sleep, husband?’

  ‘Stay,’ he says. ‘Stay. I have hardly seen you all day. Did you sit beside old Latimer’s bed?’

  ‘Hardly ever,’ I lie. ‘He was not a husband to me as you are, my lord.’

  ‘I thought not,’ he says. ‘You must have had a moment, when he was dying, when you thought you would be free of all husbands. Did you? When you thought you would be a widow, with your own little estate and your own fortune? Perhaps you even picked out a handsome young man?’ The little eyes open, twinkle with sly amusement.

  It is illegal for a woman to marry the king if she has any hidden love affairs in her past. These are dangerous words for a bedtime story.

  ‘I thought I would be a widow living only for my family, just like your grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort,’ I smile. ‘But a great destiny called me.’

  ‘The greatest destiny a woman can have,’ he agrees. ‘But why do you think you have not conceived, Kateryn?’

  The question is so unexpected that I give a little start. His eyes are closed; perhaps he does not see it. I think at once, guiltily, of the purse of herbs and Nan’s terror that if I do not prevent it, he will give me some monstrous miscarriage. It is not possible that someone in my rooms has told him of the herbs. I am certain that no-one would betray me. No-one knows but Nan and me. Even the maid who brings the hot water knows nothing more than that she brings a jug of hot water for a morning tisane, now and then.

  ‘I don’t know, husband,’ I say humbly. ‘Sometimes it takes time, I suppose.’

  He opens his eyes. Now he is completely wide awake, as if he was never drowsy. ‘It never took time for me before,’ he says. ‘I have three children, as you see, from three different mothers. And there were others, of course. They all conceived at once, within the first months. I am potent, royally potent.’

  ‘Indeed.’ I can feel my anxiety rising. This sounds like a trap, but I cannot see how to avoid it. ‘I see it.’

  ‘So it must be some fault in you,’ he says pleasantly enough. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Lord Latimer was not capable, so I never expected a child from him, and when I married my first husband I was too young, and we were hardly ever together.’ Pointless to say that you, my third husband, the king, are an old man, sick as a fat dog, rarely potent, probably sterile, and that the wives that you now remember as so readily fertile were the wives of your youth, the first three, and now they are all dead: one was beheaded by you, two died of your neglect. They miscarried time after time, except the third, the one who died in her first childbed.

  ‘Do you think that God does not smile on our marriage? Since he gives you no child, you must think that.’

  The king’s God sent him one dead baby after another in his first marriage until the king realised that God was not smiling A tiny squirm of protest turns in my mind. It is such blasphemy to call in God when the truth is something that we simply don’t understand. I cannot have God in this conversation as a witness against me. God should not bear witness against yet another of Henry’s wives. I think God Himself would be unwilling to argue that Kateryn Parr should be put aside. I feel my temper silently rise.

  ‘Who can doubt His blessing?’ I assert boldly, gripping my hands on the arms of the chair, nerving myself to go on. ‘Since you are so well and so strong and so potent, and we have had so many happy months together? Two and a half years of success? Your capture of Boulogne and the defeat of the Scots? Our happiness with your children? Who can doubt that God smiles on you, a king like you? He must smile on your marriage too? A marriage of your own choice when you honoured me with your favour. Who can doubt that God smiled on me when you chose me, and when you persuaded me, against my own humility, that I might become your wife? We cannot doubt that God loves you and inspires you. We cannot doubt that you have His favour.’

  I have saved myself. I see the pleased smile spread across his face as he relaxes into sleep. ‘You are right,’ he says. ‘Of course. And a child born to you must follow. God’s blessing is on me. He knows that I have only ever done the right thing.’

  The doctor, Sir William Butts, does not come back to court as he promised. He died of his fever, far away from the court, and we don’t even hear of it until after Christmas. The king says that no-one else understands his constitution, no-one else can keep him well as Doctor Butts could do. He feels that it was wrong and selfish of the doctor to leave court so abruptly and die in such inconsiderate haste. He takes the draughts that Doctor Wendy prepares for him, he keeps him at his bedside night and day, but he complains that he will never be well now that Doctor Butts is not there to soothe his temper and diminish his fever.

  ‘And we have lost a good friend and an advisor,’ Anne Seymour remarks to me and to Catherine Brandon. ‘Doctor Butts would often ask the king to ignore a piece of gossip against a Lutheran, or to release a preacher. He never declared his own opinions, but he often asked the king to be merciful. He was a good man to have at the king’s side.’

  ‘Especially when the king was in pain and angry,’ Catherine agrees. ‘My husband used to say that Doctor Butts could soothe the king when no-one else could do it. And he was a most honest believer in reform.’ She smooths out her skirt and admires the shine on the satin. ‘But still we make progress, Anne. The king has asked Thomas Cranmer to make a list of old superstitions in the church that should be banned.’

  ‘How do you know? What has he told you?’ Anne asks. I hear the hostility in her voice and remember that she is always anxious about someone who might rise in prestige and diminish her, or her husband.

  Catherine is trying to manage a difficult relationship with the king: constantly at his side, his favourite flirt, ignored as a councillor but relished as a partner at cards. This is a path that many have trod before her: four ladies-in-waiting have become queen – I am only the most recent. Now Catherine is the most favoured lady at court, and Anne Seymour, who never ceases to measure her husband’s prestige as the uncle of the prince, is painfully jealous. Surely, the danger is to me, but Anne thinks only of herself.

  ‘He is going to establish two colleges, just as he promised Her Majesty,’ Catherine says, smiling at me. ‘One at Oxford and one at Cambridge. This is learned work, just as Her Majesty asked him to do. They will teach the new learning and they will preach in English.’

  ‘He’s planning to send my husband, Edward, to Boulogne to replace that fool young Henry Howard,’ Anne says anxiously. ‘The Howards are in disgrace for Henry’s rashness and incompetence – which is all to our good – but with my husband away from court, who is going to keep us Seymours in the king’s remembrance? How shall we stay in favour? How can we be influential?’

  ‘Ah, the Seymours,’ Catherine says sweetly. ‘The Seymours! The Seymours! Just when we thought we were talking of the friends that we could trust to bring the king and the church closer to God, I find that we are actually talking about the rise of the Seymours, once more. Again.’

  ‘We don’t need to rise,’ Anne replies irritably. ‘We are high in favour. We Seymours are kin to the only Tudor heir, and Prince Edward loves his uncles.’

  ‘But it is the queen who is named as regent,’ Catherine reminds her silkily. ‘And the king prefers her company, and even mine, to yours. And if Edward is sent to Boulogne, and Thomas is always at sea, who will keep the king in mind of the Seymours indeed? Do you have any friends at all?’

  ‘Peace,’ I say quietly. But it is not their wrangling that disturbs me. It is that I cannot bear to hear his name. I cannot bear to think that while I am trapped in a cou