The Taming of the Queen Read online

  ‘But why is your friend Thomas Cranmer not here?’ I ask nervously. It is one thing to promise to save a man, but quite another to set about doing it. I don’t know how I am supposed to prompt the king to mercy.

  Henry’s little eyes twinkle. ‘I expect he is fearfully awaiting to hear if he is to be charged with heresy and treason.’ He chuckles. ‘I expect he is listening for the tramp of soldiers coming to take him to the Tower.’

  ‘But if he is your friend?’

  ‘Then his terror will be tempered by hope of mercy.’

  ‘But Your Majesty is so gracious – you will forgive him?’ I prompt.

  Gardiner steps forward and lifts a gentle hand as if he would silence me.

  ‘It is for God to forgive,’ the king rules. ‘It is for me to impose justice.’

  Henry does not give me a week to come to terms with my great joy. He speaks to me again only two days later, on Sunday evening, after chapel. I am surprised that he combines piety with business, but since his will is God’s will, the Sabbath can be holy and satisfactory, both at once. The court is processing from chapel to the great hall for dinner, the bright sunshine pouring in the great windows, when the king halts everyone and nods to summon me from the middle of the ladies to the head of them all. His velvet cap is pulled low over his thinning hair and the bobbing pearls encrusting the brim wink at me. He smiles as if he is joyful but his eyes are as blank as his jewels.

  He takes my hand in greeting and folds it under the great heft of his arm. ‘Do you have an answer ready for me, Lady Latimer?’

  ‘I have,’ I say. Now that there is no escape for me I find that my voice is clear and my hand, crushed between the bulge of his great belly and the thick padding of his sleeve, is steady. I’m not a girl, afraid of the unknown, I am a woman; I can face fear, I can walk towards it. ‘I have prayed for guidance, and I have my answer.’ I glance around. ‘Shall I speak it here and now?’

  He nods; he has no sense of privacy. This is a man who is attended every moment of the day. Even when he strains in constipated agony on the close-stool there are men standing beside him ready to hand him linen to wipe, water to wash, a hand to grip when the pain is too great for him. He sleeps with a page at the foot of his bed; he urinates beside his favourites, when he vomits from over-eating someone holds the bowl. Of course he has no hesitation in speaking of his marriage while everyone tries to hear – there is no risk of humiliation for him: he knows that he cannot be refused.

  ‘I know I am blessed above all other women.’ I curtsey very low. ‘I shall be deeply honoured to be your wife.’

  He takes my hand and brings it to his lips. He never had any doubts, but he is pleased to hear me describe myself as blessed. ‘You shall sit beside me at dinner,’ he promises. ‘And the herald shall announce it.’

  He walks with my hand squeezed under his arm, and so we lead everyone through the double doors to the great hall. Lady Mary walks on the other side of him. I cannot see her beyond the spread of his great chest and she does not try to peep round at me. I imagine her face frozen and expressionless, and know that I must look the same. We must look like two pale sisters marched in to dinner by an enormous father.

  I see the high table with the throne and a chair on either side, the head of the servery must have ordered the chairs to be set in place. Even he knew that the king would demand my answer as we walked in to dinner, and that I would have to say ‘yes’.

  The three of us mount the dais and take our places. The great canopy of state covers the king’s throne but stops short of my chair. Only when I am queen will I dine under cloth of gold. I look down the hall at the hundreds of people staring up at me. They nudge and point as they realise that I am to be their new queen, the trumpets scream and the herald steps forward.

  I see Edward Seymour’s carefully composed expression as he notes the arrival of a new wife who will bring her own advisors, a new royal family, new royal friends, new royal servants. He will be measuring the threat that I pose to his position as the king’s brother-in-law, brother to the queen who tragically died in childbirth. I don’t see his brother, Thomas, and I don’t look to see if he is here, watching me. I gaze blindly down the long hall and hope that he is dining somewhere else tonight. I don’t look for him. I must never look for him again as long as I live.

  I pray for guidance, for God’s will, not my own, for the bending of my own obstinate desires to His purpose and not mine. I don’t know where God is to be found – in the old church of rituals and saints’ images, miracles and pilgrimages, or in the new ways of prayers in English and Bible readings – but I have to find Him. I have to find Him to crush my passion, to rein in my own ambitions. If I am to stand before His altar and swear myself to yet another loveless marriage He has to bear me up. I cannot – I know I cannot – marry the king without the help of God. I cannot give up Thomas unless I believe it is for a great cause. I cannot give up my first love, my only love, my tender yearning passionate love for him – this unique, irresistible man – unless I have God’s love overwhelming me in its place.

  I pray like a novice, ardently. I pray kneeling beside Archbishop Cranmer, who has returned to court without a word said against him, almost as if a charge of heresy was a step in a dance, forwards and backwards and turn around. It is incomprehensible to me but it seems that the king tricked his own council into charging the archbishop, and then turned on them and commanded the archbishop to inquire into those who brought the charges. So Stephen Gardiner’s affinity are now the ones filled with fear and Thomas Cranmer returns confidently to court, secure in the king’s favour, and kneels beside me, his old lined face turned upwards as I silently pray, trying to hammer my desire for Thomas into a love of God. But even now – fool that I am – even in the most fervent prayer, when I think of the crucifixion, it is Thomas’s dark face that I see: eyes closed, exalted in his climax. Then I have to squeeze my eyes shut and pray some more.

  I pray kneeling beside Lady Mary, who says not one word about my elevation other than a quiet commendation to me and formal congratulations to her father. There have been too many stepmothers between the martyrdom of her mother and my arrival for her to resent me aspiring to Katherine of Aragon’s place, too many for her to greet me with any hope. The last stepmother lasted less than two years, the one before that, six months. I could swear that Lady Mary kneels beside me in silent prayer and secretly thinks that I will need God’s help to rise to her mother’s position, and God’s help to stay there. The way she bows her head and crosses herself at the end of her prayers and glances at me with brief pity tells me that she does not think God’s help will be enough. She looks at me as if I were a woman walking into darkness with only the light of one small candle against the damp shadows – and then she gives a little shrug and turns away.

  I pray like a nun, constantly, on the hour, every hour, anguished on my knees in my bedchamber, silently in chapel, or even desperately whenever I am alone for a moment. In the dark hours before the early summer dawn, when I am feverish and sleepless, I think that I have conquered my desire for Thomas, but when I wake in the morning I am aching for his touch. I never pray that he will come for me. I know that he cannot. I know that he must not. But still, every time the door of the chapel opens behind me, my heart leaps because I think it is him. I can almost see him, standing in the bright doorway, I can almost hear him saying: ‘Come, Kateryn, come away!’ That’s when I twist the beads of the rosary in my hands and pray that God will send me some accident, some terrible catastrophe, to stop my wedding day.

  ‘But what could that be but the death of the king?’ Nan demands.

  I look blankly at her.

  ‘It’s treason to think of it,’ she reminds me, her voice low under the hum of the liturgy from the choir stalls. ‘And treason to say it. You cannot pray for his death, Kateryn. He has asked you to be his wife and you have consented. It’s disloyal as a subject and as a wife.’

  I bow my head against her reproach; but