The Taming of the Queen Read online

  So, because the king is self-pitying and filled with dread, we all have to stay in the heat of the city, where the narrow streets stink with filth from the central gutters and the pigs and cows nose through the rubbish that is heaped in the streets. I remark that the Lord Mayor should be more active, should get the streets cleaned and fine the offenders; but the king looks at me coldly, and says, ‘Would you be the Lord Mayor of London as well as queen?’

  Everyone is irritable at being detained in town. The courtiers usually go to their homes for the summer months and the Northern lords and the Western lords are missing their wives and their families and their castles set in the cool green hills of their homelands. The king’s bad temper sets the tone for the court: nobody wants to be here, nobody is allowed to leave, everyone is unhappy.

  I come across Will Somers as I walk alone in the green allée beneath the castle walls. I long, with a wordless ache in my heart, for Thomas, I worry for Anne Askew, still held without trial and without charge, and I wish that the king would listen to me once more as the friend and helpmeet that I swore to be. Will is sprawled, as long-limbed as a fawn, under a spreading oak tree, dappled with shade, in one of the little gardens set between the high hedges, and when he sees me he unwinds his long legs, rises to his feet, bows, and folds himself up again like a jointed puppet.

  ‘How d’you like the heat, Will?’ I ask.

  ‘Better than I would like hell,’ he replies. ‘Or do you doubt hell along with everything else, Your Majesty?’

  I glance around, but there is no-one but the two of us in the walled garden. ‘You want to discuss theology with me?’

  ‘Not I!’ he says. ‘You’re too clever for me. And I’m not the only one.’

  ‘You’re not the only one not to want to discuss theology?’

  He nods, lays his finger along his nose and beams at me.

  ‘Who else does not want to talk with me?’

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he says grandly. ‘I am just a Fool. So I don’t discuss the king’s church with him. But if I were a wise man (and I wake every day to thank the Lord that I am not) I would be dead by now. For if I had been a wise man with serious opinions, I would have succumbed to the temptation to discuss these grave matters. Grave because that is where they lead.’

  ‘His Majesty has always enjoyed scholarly talk,’ I say repressively.

  ‘Not any more,’ Will says. ‘In my opinion. Which is to say a Fool’s opinion and so not worth having.’

  As I open my mouth to argue, Will very slowly and carefully goes into a handstand so that he is balancing on his hands and his feet walk languidly up the trunk of the tree. ‘See what a Fool I am,’ he remarks, head down.

  ‘I think you are wiser than you appear, Will,’ I remark. ‘But there are good people whose safety depends on me speaking for them. I have promised to keep the king in one mind.’

  ‘It is easier to stand on your head than keep the king to one mind,’ Will observes, straight as a yeoman, but upside down. ‘If I were you, Majesty, I would stand on your head beside me.’

  The summer continues hot. We sit beside wide-open windows every afternoon, listening to one of my maids reading the Bible, with the drapes at the windows soaked in cold water, trying to cool down the rooms. In the afternoon, I go to my privy chamber where the shutters are closed against the glare and pray that the king’s health mends, and that he releases us from the wearying tedium of hot weather in the fetid city, so that we can go on progress. I long like a swallow to go south, to the sea, to the ocean winds that smell of salt, to Thomas.

  Then, one afternoon, as we sit on benches beside the river, trying to get some air, I see the Seymour barge come down the river and tie up at the pier. At once I fix an expression of idle boredom on my face. ‘Oh, is that the Seymour barge? And who is in it? Is that Thomas Seymour?’ I ask.

  Elizabeth’s head bobs up at once and she jumps to her feet, shading her eyes from the glare from the river. ‘It is!’ she squeaks. ‘It’s Sir Thomas! And Edward Seymour with him.’

  ‘My husband?’ Anne Seymour asks. ‘That’s unexpected. Your Majesty, may I go and greet him?’

  ‘We’ll all go,’ I say, and we get to our feet and leave our books and our sewing and walk towards the pier where the two Seymour men bow and kiss my hands and then Edward greets his wife.

  I hardly see him. I can hardly say the polite words of greeting. Thomas takes my hand and brushes it with his lips. He straightens up and bows to the other ladies. He offers me his arm. I hear him say something about our sitting out by the river and that surely there are pestilential airs. I hear him say something about the court going on progress. I cannot hear for the thudding in my ears.

  ‘Are you here for long?’ I ask.

  He leans towards me to reply, his voice low. If I were to lean towards him as he is leaning towards me, we would be close enough to kiss. I wonder if he is thinking that too; then I know that he is thinking that too. ‘I am here only for one night.’

  I can’t even hear him say the word ‘night’ without thinking of lovemaking. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I wanted to report on the coastal defences with Edward at my side. We are outnumbered at court. We cannot get a fair hearing. The Howards and their friends dominate everything.’

  ‘I heard that you are not to marry Mary Howard.’ He slides me a quick smile.

  ‘Probably just as well.’

  ‘I would have said nothing. She would have been welcome as one of my ladies.’

  ‘I know. I trust you completely. But there was something about the whole business . . .’ He breaks off.

  ‘Walk slowly,’ I say passionately. Already, we are approaching the first gateway into the palace and at any moment someone will come and take him away from me. ‘For God’s sake, let us have a moment . . .’

  ‘The Howards insisted that she came to court,’ he says. ‘They made me promise I would put her in your rooms. I couldn’t think why they would want that, unless to have her spy on you. I doubted their honesty, and she would hardly speak to me. She was furious about something. Clearly, she was coerced. She was very angry.’

  ‘So you’re still a free man,’ I say longingly.

  Gently he presses my hand that rests on his arm. ‘I will have to marry,’ he warns me. ‘We need an alliance at court. We are losing our influence with the king, we need a greater presence here. I need a wife who will speak for me to him.’

  ‘I can’t speak for you but I would . . .’

  ‘No. Never. I never want you to say one word for me. But I need a wife here who can take care of my interests.’

  I feel as sick as if I have indeed inhaled pestilential airs from the river. ‘You are still going to marry?’

  ‘I have to.’

  I nod. Of course, he has to. ‘Have you chosen a bride?’

  ‘Only if you give your permission.’

  ‘I would be very wrong to refuse it. I know that you need a wife; I understand about court. I’ll come to your wedding and smile.’

  ‘This is not my desire,’ he stipulates.

  ‘Nor mine, but I’ll dance at your wedding feast.’

  We are nearly at the doorway. The guards salute and open the doors. He will have to go to the king’s rooms and I will not see him until dinner. And then at dinner I will not be able to look at him. And then in a month, within weeks, he will be married.

  ‘Who is your choice? Tell me quickly.’

  ‘Princess Elizabeth.’

  I whirl around and look at my stepdaughter, where she follows us at the head of my ladies, as if I am seeing her for the first time, not as a child but as a young woman. She is twelve years old, old enough to be betrothed. In a few years she will be old enough to marry. In one quick glance I imagine her as Thomas Seymour’s bride, on her wedding day, as his young wife, as mother to his children. I imagine how she will take to lovemaking and how she will flaunt her happiness. ‘Elizabeth!’

  ‘Hush,’ he says. ‘The king would have to agree, but i