The Taming of the Queen Read online

  I allow myself the pleasure of telling the king’s daughters that they are to be princesses again. I speak to them separately. I am aware that this makes them rivals once more, and that they can only succeed to the throne on the death of their brother, that Elizabeth can only succeed through the unlikely combination of the death of her younger brother and her older sister.

  I find her at her studies in my privy chamber with her cousin little Lady Jane Grey and Richard Cox, their tutor, and I call her aside to tell her that this is a symbol of her father’s favour. Of course, she jumps at once to the idea of her inheritance.

  ‘Do you think a woman can rule a kingdom?’ she asks me. ‘The word would suggest not. It’s not called a queendom, is it?’

  The cleverness of the ten-year-old girl makes me smile. ‘If you are ever called to rule this kingdom or any other you will take on the courage and wit of a man. You will call yourself a prince,’ I assure her. ‘You will learn what every clever woman has to learn: how to adopt the power and courage of a man and yet to know that you are a woman. Your education can be that of a prince, your mind can be that of a king, you can have the body of a weak and feeble woman and the stomach of a king.’

  ‘When is it to happen? When do I get my title back?’

  ‘It has to go through the parliament,’ I warn her.

  She nods. ‘Have you told Lady Mary?’

  What a Tudor she is, this little girl; these are a statesman’s questions: when is it official? And which daughter was told first? ‘I’m going to tell her now,’ I say. ‘Wait here.’

  Lady Mary is in my presence chamber, embroidering a part of an altar cloth that we are making. She has delegated the boring blue sky to one of the ladies and she herself is working on the more interesting flowers that will form the border. They all rise and curtsey as I come in from the privy chamber and I gesture that they may sit and continue with their work. Joan, Anthony Denny’s wife, is reading from the manuscript of our translation of Fisher’s psalms, and I beckon Lady Mary into the oriel window so we can speak privately. We sit on the window bench, our knees touching, her earnest gaze on my face.

  ‘I have some very good news for you,’ I say. ‘You will learn it from the Privy Council, but I wanted to tell you before the announcement. The king has decided to name the succession, and you are to be called Princess Mary and inherit the throne after Edward.’ She looks down, veiling her dark eyes with her eyelashes, and I see her lips move in a prayer of thanksgiving. Only her rising blush tells me that she is deeply moved. But it is not for a chance at the throne. She has not Elizabeth’s ambition. ‘So, finally, he accepts my mother’s purity,’ she says. ‘He withdraws his claim that they were not married in the sight of God. My mother was a widow to his brother and then a true wife to him.’

  I put my hand on her knee to silence her. ‘He said no word of that, nor do I, nor should you. He names you as princess, and Elizabeth as princess also. Elizabeth comes after you in the succession, Lady Margaret Douglas and her line after her. He said nothing about the old matter of your mother’s marriage and him putting her aside.’

  She opens her mouth to argue for only a moment, and then she nods. Anyone of any intelligence can see that if the king names his daughters as legitimate then he must, logically, accept his marriage to their mothers as valid. But – as this highly intelligent daughter realises – this is not a logical man. This is a king who can command reality. The king has ruled that they are princesses again, just as once he ruled that they were both bastards, on a whim, with no good reason.

  ‘Then he will arrange a marriage for me,’ she says. ‘And for Elizabeth. If we are princesses then we can be married to kings.’

  ‘You can,’ I say smiling. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. It will be the next step. But I don’t know that I can bear to spare either of you.’

  She puts her hand on top of mine. ‘I don’t want to leave you,’ she says. ‘But it is time I was married. I need my own court and I want to have a child of my own to love.’

  We sit hand-clasped for a moment. ‘Princess Mary,’ I say, trying out her new title, ‘I cannot tell you how glad I am that you are come to your own again, and that I can call you aloud what I have always called you in my heart. My mother never spoke of you as anything but a princess, and never thought of your mother as anything but a great queen.’

  She blinks the tears from her dark eyes. ‘My mother would have been glad to see this day,’ she says wistfully.

  ‘She would,’ I say. ‘But her legacy to you is your descent and your education. Nobody can take either, and she gave you them both.’

  A Spanish duke, Don Manriquez de Lara, is to come to court though the king is still unwell.

  ‘You’ll have to entertain him,’ Henry snaps. ‘I can’t.’

  I am a little aghast. ‘What should I do?’

  ‘He’ll come in and see me, I’ll receive him in my privy chamber, but I can’t stand it for more than a moment. Understand?’

  I nod. Henry is speaking in a tone of tight fury. I know that he is frustrated by his pain and bitter at his disability. In a mood like this he can lash out at anyone. I glance around the room: the pages are standing with their backs against the wall, the Fool sitting quietly at the king’s side. The two secretaries are bent over documents as if they dare not raise their eyes. ‘He can dine with your brother, and with Henry Howard. That’s the flower of the court, the handsome young men. Should be good enough for him. Agreed?’

  ‘Yes, sire,’ I say. Henry Howard is the eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk, born to a great position and never doing anything to earn it. He is proud, vain, a troublemaker, a self-proclaimed golden youth. But he will be invaluable here where we will need someone handsome and young and proud as a peewit.

  ‘Then the Spanish duke can go to your rooms and you can have music and dancing and supper and any entertainment you wish. You can do that?’

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  Anthony Denny glances up from his place behind a table at the window where he is copying the king’s orders to be sent to the various councillors and heads of household. I look away so that I don’t see the sympathy in his face.

  ‘Princess Mary will be with you; she speaks Spanish and they love her for the sake of her mother. The Spanish ambassador, that old fox Chapuys, will bring the duke and make sure that everything goes smoothly. You needn’t worry about Spanish. You can speak in French and English to them.’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘He’s not to whisper with her. You’re to show him every courtesy but you’re not to put her forward.’

  I nod.

  ‘And you’re to dress very fine and be very queenly. Wear your crown. Speak with authority. If you don’t know something, say nothing. There’s nothing wrong with a woman being silent. You have to impress them. Make sure you do.’

  ‘I am sure that we can show them that the English court is as elegant and learned as any in Europe,’ I say calmly.

  At last the king looks at me and the pained furrow between his sandy eyebrows melts away and I see a glimmer of his old, charming smile. ‘With the most beautiful queen,’ he says, suddenly warm. ‘Whatever broken-down bad-tempered old warhorse you have for a husband.’

  I go to his side and take his hand. ‘Nay, not so old,’ I say softly. ‘And not so broken-down either. Shall I come and show you my gown before I go in to the ambassador? Shall you want to see me in all the finery you have given me?’

  ‘Yes, come to me. And make sure that you are utterly drowned in diamonds.’

  I laugh, and Denny, seeing that I have charmed the king back into good humour, looks up and smiles at us both.

  ‘I want you to frighten them with my wealth,’ Henry says. He is smiling now but completely serious. ‘Everything that you do, every chain that you wear will be noted and reported back to Spain. I want them to know that we are rich beyond anything they could imagine, quite rich enough to make war with France, rich enough to bend Scotland to our will.’
r />   ‘And are we?’ I ask so quietly that not even Denny at the table, bent over the scratching of his quill, can hear me.

  ‘No,’ Henry says. ‘But we have to be like masquers, like troubadours. We have to have dazzling rags. Kingship and warfare are mostly appearance.’

  I put on a great show. ‘Magpie queen,’ Nan remarks as I let them load chain after chain on my waist and put diamonds and rubies on my fingers and at my neck.

  ‘Too rory?’ I ask, looking in the mirror and smiling at her horrified face.

  ‘Speak English!’ she commands me. ‘Not your rough country tongue! No, it’s not too much. Not if he told you to load on the jewels. He’ll want an alliance with Spain so that he can go to war with France. Your task is to make it look as if England can afford a war with France. You’ve got an army’s pay on your fingers alone.’

  She steps back and scans me from head to foot. ‘Beautiful,’ she says. ‘The most beautiful of all the queens.’

  My stepdaughter Margaret Latimer comes towards me with the little box in her hands. ‘The crown,’ she says, awed.

  I nerve myself to be unmoved as Nan opens it up, takes out the Boleyn crown and turns to me. I straighten up to take the weight of it and look at myself in the mirror. The beaten silver looking-glass shows me a grey-eyed beauty with bronze hair and a long neck, with diamonds at her ears and rubies at her throat, and this ugly heavy sparkling little crown making her taller still. I think I look like a ghost queen, a queen in darkness, a queen at the top of a dark tower. I could be any one of my predecessors, favoured like one of them, doomed like them all.

  ‘You could wear your golden hood,’ Nan offers.

  I stand, my head poised. ‘Of course I’ll wear the crown,’ I say flatly. ‘I’m queen. At any rate, I’m today’s queen.’

  I wear it all evening. I take it off only when the dazzled duke begs us to dance and then Nan fetches my hood. It is a successful evening; everything goes just as the king commanded. The young men are charming and loud and cheerful, the ladies are reserved and beautiful. Lady Mary speaks Spanish to the duke and to her ambassador but is every inch an English princess, and I feel that I have taken another step closer to being the wife that the king needs – one that can deputise for him, one that can rule.

  The king requires that I move my bed to be nearer to him while he is sleepless with pain at night, and my household transfers my beautiful bed with the four great posts and the embroidered canopy to a withdrawing room off the king’s own bedroom. With it go my table and chair, and my prie-dieu. With a silent gesture I command that my box of books and my writing box with my manuscripts, my studies, and my translation of the Fisher psalms stay in the queen’s apartments. Although I read nothing but what is approved by the king and his Privy Council, I don’t really want to draw attention to my growing library of theological books or have everyone know that my principal interest is the teachings of the early church, and the call for reform of the abuses of recent years. This seems to me the one thing that a scholar of our time should study; it is the central question of our days. All the great men are reviewing how the church has strayed from its early simplicity and piety, all the discussions and writings are about finding the true way, the authentic way to Christ, whether that is inside the Church of Rome or alongside it. They are translating the documents that tell us how the earliest church was organised, and they keep finding histories and gospels that suggest ways that a holy life can be lived in the world, that show how earthly powers should sit alongside the church. I believe that the king was completely right when he transferred the leadership of the church in England to himself. It must be right that a king rules his lands, church buildings and all. There cannot be one law for the people and one for the clergy. Surely, the church must command the spiritual realm, the holy things of God; the king must command the earthly things. Who could argue against that?

  ‘Many,’ Catherine Brandon, the greatest reformer of my ladies, explains. ‘And many of them have the ear of the king. They are growing in strength again. They were set back when the king sided with Archbishop Cranmer, but Stephen Gardiner has regained the king’s ear and his influence is growing all the time. Naming Princess Mary with her title will please Rome, and we are extending friendship to Spain, honouring their ambassador. Many of the king’s advisors have been bribed by Rome to try to persuade him to return the ownership of the English Church to Rome – back to where we were before – telling him that we will be in accord with all the other great countries. And then, in the towns and villages, there are thousands of people who understand nothing of this but just want to see the shrines restored at the roadsides and the icons and statues back in the churches. Poor fools, they understand nothing and don’t want to have to think for themselves. They want the monks and nuns to come back to look after them and tell them what to think.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want anyone to know what I think,’ I say bluntly. ‘So keep my books in my rooms and locked in the chest, Catherine, and you keep the key.’

  She laughs and shows me the key on the chain at her belt.

  ‘We’re not all as carefree as you,’ I say, as she whistles for her little dog, named after the bishop.

  ‘Puppy Gardiner is a fool who comes for a whistle and sits at a command,’ she says.

  ‘Well, don’t call him or command him by name in my rooms,’ I say. ‘I don’t need enemies, certainly not Stephen Gardiner. The king already favours him. You will have to rename your dog if my lord bishop continues to rise.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s unstoppable,’ she says frankly. ‘He and the traditionalists are overwhelming us. I hear that Thomas Wriothesley is not satisfied by being the king’s Secretary and Lord Privy Seal, but is to be Lord Chancellor too.’

  ‘Did your husband tell you?’

  She nods. ‘He said that Wriothesley is the most ambitious man in the king’s rooms since Cromwell. He said he is a dangerous man – just like Cromwell.’

  ‘Does Charles not advise the king in favour of reform?’

  She smiles at me. ‘Not he! You don’t stay a favourite for thirty years by telling the king what you think.’

  ‘So why does your husband not try to contain you,’ I ask curiously, ‘as you name your spaniel for a bishop in order to tease him?’

  She laughs. ‘Because you don’t survive four wives by trying to contain them!’ she says merrily. ‘I am his fourth and he lets me think what I like, and do what I like, as long as it does not disturb him.’

  ‘He knows that you read and think? He allows it?’

  ‘Why not?’ She asks the most challenging questions that a woman can ask. ‘Why should I not read? Why should I not think? Why should I not speak?’

  The king cannot sleep for pain in the long dark nights of spring. He feels very low when he wakes long before dawn. I have commissioned a pretty clock to help me get through the hours, and I watch the minute hand move quietly over the brass face in the flickering light of a little candle that I leave beside it on the table. When the king wakes, fretful and bad-tempered at about five in the morning, I get up and light all the candles, stir the fire and often send a page for some ale and pastries from the kitchen. Then the king likes me to sit beside him and read to him as the candles gutter and slowly, so very slowly, the light comes in at the window, first as a greyer darkness, then as a dark grey, then only finally, after what seems like hours, can I see daylight and say to the king: ‘Morning is coming.’

  I feel tender towards him as he endures the long nights in pain. I don’t begrudge waking and sitting with him though I know I will be tired when dawn finally comes. Then he can sleep but I have to attend to the duties of the court for us both – leading everyone to Mass, breakfasting in public before a hundred watching eyes, reading with Princess Mary, watching the court ride to hounds, dining with them at midday, listening to the councillors in the afternoon and dining, watching the revels and dancing all evening, and often dancing myself. This is sometimes a pleasure but it is alwa
ys a duty. A court has to have a focus and a head. If the king is not well it is my task to take his place – and to conceal how very ill he is. He can rest during the day if I am there, smiling on the throne and assuring everyone that he is a little tired but better every day.

  Stephen Gardiner supplies all the books for the king’s nighttime reading, it is a most limited library; but I am not allowed to read anything else, and so I find myself having to recite pious arguments for the unity of the church under the pope, or fanciful histories of the earliest church that stress the importance of the patriarchs and the Holy Father. If I believed these orthodox writings I would think that there were no women in the world at all, certainly no women saints in the early church laying down their lives for their faith. Bishop Gardiner is now a great enthusiast for the Eastern Church, which is a full member of the Catholic communion but not subservient to the pope. The Greek Church is to be our model and I read long sermons that suggest the fine level of purity that can be achieved in a Catholic church in partnership with Rome. I have to declare that people should be kept in sanctified ignorance and that it is best that they say their prayers and have no idea what the words mean. Knowingly, I recite nonsense, and I despise Bishop Gardiner for dictating lies.

  Henry listens; sometimes his eyes close and I see that I have read him to sleep, sometimes the pain keeps him alert. He never comments on my reading, except to ask me to repeat a sentence. He never asks me if I agree with the plodding arguments against reform, and I take care to make no comment. In the quietness of the night-time room I can hear the little gurgle as the pus drains from his leg and drips into the bowl. He is shamed by the stink, and struggles with the pain. I cannot help him with either, except to offer him the draught that the physicians leave to drug him into sleep, and to assure him that I hardly smell anything. The rooms are laden with dried rose petals and the sharp scent of lavender heads, and in every corner there are bowls filled with the oil of roses, but still the stench of death seeps like a fog into everything.