The Taming of the Queen Read online

  ‘Is your hand cramped from writing?’ Nan asks me. ‘One of us could write for you if you would like a clerk, Your Majesty.’

  ‘No, no,’ I say. ‘I am well, all is well.’

  Nan is at the head of my ladies as we are about to walk into court. As I enter my presence chamber from my private rooms in a new gown of dark red, she comes to my side as if to straighten the rubies at my neck, and whispers to me.

  ‘Lord Edward Seymour has written to his wife that there is a rumour in Europe that the king is planning to set you aside. Has the king said anything, anything at all to you? Has he even been critical of you?’

  ‘Just the usual,’ I say quietly. ‘That he wishes I were with child. Nan – don’t you think . . .?’

  ‘No,’ she says flatly. ‘A dead child would be your death warrant. Trust me. Let him long for it, get down on your knees and pray with him if you have to, but don’t conceive something that he would take as a sign from the devil.’

  ‘But if the child were to be well? Nan, I want a child. I am thirty-three! I want a child of my own.’

  ‘How could it be?’ she demands flatly. ‘There’s been no healthy child born of a living mother since Princess Elizabeth. And half the court say that she is Mark Smeaton’s bastard, from strong young stock. So – no legitimate child since Princess Mary, thirty years ago. He can’t get a healthy child on a healthy woman. Last time it killed the mother.’

  She bends down and straightens the train of my silk gown. ‘So what shall I do about these rumours?’ I ask as she comes up.

  ‘Face them down,’ she counsels. ‘Complain about them. And we’ll pray to ride them out. There’s nothing we can do, anyway.’

  I nod, my expression grim.

  ‘And even now, even with this gossip spreading we are safe, unless . . .’

  ‘Unless?’

  ‘Unless they come from the king himself,’ she says unhappily. ‘If he has said that he is thinking of a new wife, to someone who has repeated it elsewhere . . . if he is the source, then we are lost; but there is still nothing we can do.’

  I look down the line of my ladies to Anne of Cleves preparing to come in to dinner with her cheerful smile, the former wife he now loves so well that he keeps her at court. She was invited for Christmas and she is still here although it is nearly Easter. Catherine Brandon is behind her, the widow of Henry’s dearest friend, the beautiful girl that he has watched grow into womanhood, perhaps his lover, perhaps his love; and there are the new ones, the pretty ones, the ones young enough to be my daughter, the ones as young as Kitty Howard when he first saw her, young enough to be his grandchild.

  ‘At least Anne of Cleves can go home,’ I say in sudden irritation.

  ‘I’ll see she does,’ Nan promises.

  That afternoon, without warning, Thomas Seymour comes to court to report on the strength of the navy and the gathering danger of the French.

  ‘Come and listen to Tom Seymour.’ The king beckons me to the table in his presence chamber. He takes my hand and puts it on his, holding my fingers trapped between his, so that I must stand beside him, facing Thomas, as if I am yearning towards the king, my hand resting on my husband’s clenched unresponsive fist, listening to Thomas report on ships built and restored, docks dry and wet, outfitters and chandlers and rope merchants and sail lofts. He reports that another effort to raise the Mary Rose is being undertaken. She could be raised. She could sail again. Perhaps she might, like our king, defy time itself and go on and on forever, outliving the rest of the fleet, sailing on when all love and loyalty is gone, holding the future hostage, a live fleet yoked for ever to her rotting timbers.

  ‘There is an archery tournament in the garden for Your Majesty’s amusement,’ I say. ‘If you could walk to it?’

  ‘I can walk,’ he says. ‘Thomas, you will have seen I have an engine to get me up and downstairs. What d’you think? Should you bring me a crane from your shipyard? Will you fetch me a hoist from Portsmouth?’

  Thomas smiles at his king, his eyes warm with sympathy. ‘If greatness were weighed, Your Majesty, nothing would ever lift you.’

  Henry cracks a laugh. ‘You’re a pretty fellow!’ he exclaims. ‘Take the queen to the archery butts and tell them I am coming. They can get ready for me. I may take a bow myself and see what I can do.’

  ‘Your Majesty must come, and show them how to do it,’ Thomas recommends, and offers his arm to me and we go towards the door, my hand burning on his sleeve, both of us looking studiously forward, at the guards, at the parting courtiers, at the opening door, never anywhere towards each other.

  Behind us come the ladies of my chamber and their husbands, behind them the king’s companions wait for him, while he is helped up from his chair to his close-stool. Someone fetches Doctor Wendy to give the king warm ale and a draught to help with the pain, and guards to help him into his carriage and wheel him out into the garden like a dead boar in a cart.

  The double doors to the garden are thrown open by the yeomen of the guard as soon as Thomas and I approach them, and the warm spring air, smelling of the first cut of grass, floods into the palace. We glance at each other – it is impossible not to share our pleasure in the sudden sense of freedom, of release, in joy at the sunshine and the birdsong, and the court dressed in their best and preparing for another nonsensical game.

  I am smiling, simply for the joy of being with him; I could laugh out loud. The sun is warm on my face and the musicians start to play; Thomas Seymour, briefly and unnoticed, touches my hand as it rests on his arm, a swift and invisible caress.

  ‘Kateryn,’ he says quietly.

  I incline my head to left and right as people curtsey to me as we walk by. Thomas is tall, a head taller than me. He moderates his steps to mine but we stride out together, as if we would go all the way to Portsmouth and set sail on his ship. I think that we are so well matched, if we could have been together – what a couple we would have made, what children we would have conceived!

  ‘Thomas,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Love,’ he replies.

  We need say nothing more. It is like lovemaking, the give and take of few words, the touch of warm skin, even through a thick sleeve, a glance from him to my bright face, my own sense that I am alive now and I have been dead for months. I have been wearing dead women’s gowns and I have been dead myself. But now I feel alive again and longing. I feel desire as a sort of trembling wordless need that makes me think: if I could just lie with him once, I would never ask for more. If I could lie beneath him just once and have his long weight bear down on me, his mouth on mine, the scent of him, the sight of the dark hair on the nape of his neck, the smooth bronzed line from his ear to his collar bone . . .

  ‘I have to talk to you,’ he says. ‘Will you sit here?’

  There is a throne ready for the king when he comes and a chair beside it for me and then lower chairs for the princesses. Elizabeth comes bounding forwards and then smiles and blushes when she sees Thomas. He’s not even aware of her as she turns away and strolls back to the archery butts, picks up a bow and poses: fitting an arrow on the string, and drawing it back. I take my seat and he stands slightly behind the chair, leaning down so that he can whisper in my ear, but we are both facing the green and the competitors testing their strings, and taking aim, and throwing a few blades of grass in the air to see the wind. We are completely visible to everyone, we are on show. We are hidden in plain sight.

  ‘Don’t move, and keep your face still,’ he warns me.

  ‘I am listening.’

  ‘I have been offered a wife,’ he says quietly.

  I blink, nothing more. ‘Who?’ I say shortly.

  ‘Mary Howard, the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter.’

  This is a remarkable offer. Mary is the widow of the king’s beloved bastard son that he made the Duke of Richmond. If the boy had not died, he might have been named Prince of Wales and the king’s heir. Edward was not born then, and Henry needed a son; even a bastard would have don