The Taming of the Queen Read online

  His mouth is like a little limpet, wet and inquisitive, his saliva tainted from his decaying teeth. He smells of rotting food. He releases me, and his sharp little eyes interrogate my face to see how I respond. I look downwards as if I am overcome by desire and I find a smile and peep up at him coyly, like a girl. It is no worse than I thought it would be, and anyway I will have to get used to it.

  Bishop Gardiner kisses my hands, bows low to the king, offers congratulations, and everyone surges forward, filled with joy that it is done. Catherine Brandon, whose roguish prettiness keeps her dangerously high in the king’s favour, is especially warm in her praise of the wedding and the happiness we are certain to enjoy. Her husband, Charles Brandon, stands behind his exquisite young wife and winks at the king – one old dog to another. The king waves them all aside and offers me his arm, so that we can lead the way out of the room and to dinner.

  There is to be a feast. The smell of roasting meats has been seeping up through the floorboards from the kitchen immediately beneath these rooms for hours. Everyone falls into line behind us in the strict order of precedence, depending on title and status. I see Edward Seymour’s wife, the sharp-featured, sharp-tongued aristocrat, roll her eyes and step back as she has to give way for me. I hide a smile at my triumph. Anne Seymour can learn to curtsey to me. I was born a Parr, a respectable family in the North of England, then I was the young wife of a Neville – a good family, but far from court and fame, and now Anne Seymour has to step back to me as the new Queen of England, the greatest woman in England.

  As we enter the great hall, the courtiers rise to their feet and applaud, while the king beams to right and left. He hands me to my seat. Now my chair is a little lower than his, but higher than that of Lady Mary, who sits in turn higher than little Lady Elizabeth. I am the most important and wealthiest woman in England until death or disgrace – whichever comes first. I look across the room of cheering people, smiling faces, until I see my sister, Nan, walking composedly to the head of the table for the queen’s ladies. She gives me a reassuring nod as if to say that she is here, she is watching over me, her friends will report on what the king says in private, her husband will praise me to him. I am under the protection of my family, ranged against all the other families. They expect me to persuade the king to the reform of the church, and to gain them wealth and position, to find places and fees for their children. In return, they protect my reputation, praise me above all others, and defend me against enemies.

  I don’t look for anyone else; I don’t look for Thomas. I know he is already far away. Nobody will ever be able to say that I looked for his dark head, the quick glance of his brown eyes, a hidden smile. Nobody will ever be able to say that I sought him out, for I never will. In my long nights of prayer I have taught myself to know that he will never be here again: a perfect silhouette in a doorway, or bending over a gambling table and laughing, always the first on his feet to dance, the last to go to bed, his laughter ringing out, his quick attentive glance to me. I have surrendered my plan to marry him as I have surrendered my desire for him. I have hammered my soul into resignation. I may never see him again, and I shall never look for him.

  Women before me have done this, and women who come after me will know this gutting of a heart’s desire. It is the first task of a woman who loves one man but marries another, and I know I am not the first woman in the world who has had to cut out love, and then pretend that she is not wounded. A wife guided by God often has to surrender the love of her life, and I have done no more and no less. I have given him up. I think my heart has broken, but I have offered the fragments to God.

  This is not my first wedding day, not even my second, but even so, I am dreading the night as if I were a virgin creeping up the dark stairs of a castle with a bobbing candle in my hand. The feast goes on for ever, as the king calls for more dishes and the servants come running from the kitchen with great golden trays laden with food held high at shoulder level. They bring in a pride of peacocks, roasted and returned to their skins so the gorgeous feathers shimmer in the candlelight on the table before us. The server peels back the bloodstained inner skin, the blue iridescent neck flops over to one side as if it were a beheaded beauty, and the dead eyes, replaced with black raisins, gleam as if they are still looking for mercy. The carcass is revealed, the king impatiently crooks his finger and receives a great chunk of dark breast meat on his golden plate. They bring a tray of larks, the tiny bodies piled like a heap of victims from the Pilgrimage of Grace, numberless, nameless, stewed in their own juice. They bring plates with long slices of the breasts of snared herons, jugged hare drowned in deep bowls, rabbits trapped in pies under golden crusts. They serve the king one dish after another and he takes a great portion and waves the rest around the hall to his favoured friends.

  He laughs at me, that I eat so sparely. I smile as I hear his teeth crunch on the bones of little birds. They bring him more wine, more and more wine, and then there is a blast of a trumpet and in comes the great head of a boar, his tusks gilded, golden cloves of garlic bulging in his eye sockets, rosemary twigs piercing his face for bristles. The king applauds and they carve him a cheek glistening with fat, and the beast is paraded around the room by the servers, who dispense slices from his face, from his ears, from his stumpy neck.

  I glance towards Lady Mary, who is pale with nausea, and I pinch my cheeks so that I look rosy beside her. I take a portion of everything that the king offers me and I make myself eat. Mouthful after mouthful of thick meat in rich sauce is piled on my plate and I chew and smile and force it down my throat with a swallow of wine. I feel myself become faint and I start to sweat. I can feel my gown dampen at my armpits and down my spine. The king, beside me, is sprawled almost supine in his chair, felled by food, groaning as he beckons for another serving and another.

  Finally, as if it is an ordeal that we cannot escape, they blow a blast of trumpets to announce that we have achieved the halfway point, and the meats go out, and the puddings and sweetmeats come in. There is a cheer for a marchpane model of Hampton Court with two little figures made from spun sugar standing before it. The sugar cooks are artists: their Henry looks like a boy of twenty, standing tall and holding the reins of a charger. They have me in widow’s white and they have captured the interrogative tilt of my head as the little sugar Kateryn looks up inquiringly at the sparkling boy-prince Henry. Everyone exclaims at the artistry of the figures. It could be Holbein in the kitchen, they say. I have to keep the delighted smile on my face and swallow a sudden rush of tears. This is a little tragedy, crystallised in sugar. If Henry were still a boy-prince like this we might have had a chance of happiness. But the Katherine who married the boy was Katherine of Aragon, my mother’s friend, not Kateryn Parr – twenty-one years his junior.

  The figures have little crowns of real gold and Henry gestures that I am to have both. He laughs when I put them on my fingers like rings, and then he takes the little sugar Kateryn and puts her whole in his mouth, breaking her legs to cram her in, as he eats her in one sucking gulp.

  I am glad when he calls for more wine and more music, and slumps back in his throne. The choir from his chapel sings a pretty anthem and the dancers enter with a rattle of tambourines and perform a wedding masque. One of them, dressed as an Italian prince, bows low to me to invite me to join them. I glance to the king and he waves me to go out. I know that I dance well, the wide skirts of the rich gown billow as I turn and lead out the Lady Mary, and even little Lady Elizabeth hops behind me. I can tell that Mary is in pain; her hand rests lightly on her hip, her fingers are digging into her side. She holds up her head and smiles with gritted teeth. I cannot excuse her from dancing just because she is sick. We all have to dance at my wedding, whatever we feel.

  I dance with my ladies, one dance after another. I would dance all night for him if it would keep him from nodding to the gentlemen of the bedchamber that the evening is over and the court is closing for the night. But midnight comes as I am seated on my throne,
applauding the musicians, and the king turns his great bulk towards me, heaving himself sideways so that he can lean over and say to me with a smile: ‘Shall we go to bed, wife?’

  I remember what I thought when I first heard his proposal. I thought, this is how it will be, from now till death parts us: he will wait for my assent, or he will continue without it. It really doesn’t matter what I say, I will never be able to refuse him anything. I smile and rise to my feet, and wait for them to haul him up, and then he struggles down the steps of the dais and waddles through the court. I go slowly beside him, fitting my stride to his rolling gait. The court cheers us as we go through them all, and I make sure that I keep my eyes forwards and meet no-one’s gaze. I can bear anything but a look of pity as I lead my ladies to my new bedchamber: the queen’s bedchamber, to undress and wait for my master, the king.

  It is late, but I don’t allow myself to hope that he is too tired to come to my rooms. My ladies dress me in black satin, and I don’t hold the sleeve to my cheek and remember another night when I wore a night robe of black and threw a blue cloak on top and went in the colours of the night sky to a man who loved me. That night was only a little while ago, but I am obliged to forget it. The doors open, and in comes His Majesty, borne up on either side by the grooms of the bedchamber. They help him into the high bed: as if they are wrestling a bull into a press. He swears loudly when someone knocks his bad leg. ‘Fool!’ he snaps.

  ‘Only one Fool here,’ the king’s Fool, Will Somers, says briskly. ‘And I’ll thank you to remember that I am keeping my place!’

  Clever as always, he breaks the tension, the king laughs and everyone joins in. Somers winks at me as he goes by, his kind brown eyes twinkling. No-one else even looks at me. As they bow and leave they keep their eyes on the ground. I think that they fear for me, left alone with him at last, as the fumes of the wine seep from his head and the food curdles in his belly and his mood sours. My ladies dash to get out of the room. Nan is the last to leave and she gives me a little nod as if to remind me that I am doing God’s work as much as if I were a saint about to lie down on the rack.

  The door closes behind them and I am kneeling at the foot of the bed in silence.

  ‘You can come closer,’ he says gruffly. ‘I won’t bite. Get into bed.’

  ‘I was saying my prayers,’ I say. ‘Shall I pray aloud for you, Your Majesty?’

  ‘You can call me Henry now,’ he says. ‘When we’re alone.’

  I take that as a refusal of the prayers, and I lift up the covers and slip into bed beside him. I don’t know what he is going to do. Since he cannot even roll on his side unaided, he certainly cannot mount me. I lie beside him perfectly still and wait for him to tell me what he wants.

  ‘You’ll have to sit on my lap,’ he says eventually, as if he has been puzzling at this too. ‘You’re not a foolish girl, you’re a woman. You’ve been wedded and bedded more than once. You know what to do, eh?’

  This is worse than I had imagined. I lift the hem of my nightgown out of the way, and creep towards him on my hands and knees. Unbidden, the vision of Thomas Seymour, outstretched and naked, his back arched, his dark eyelashes sweeping his brown cheeks, comes into my mind. I can see the muscles of his hard belly ripple with pleasure at my touch as he thrusts upwards.

  ‘Latimer was no great lover, I take it?’ the king enquires.

  ‘He was not a man of great strength like you, Your . . . Henry,’ I say. ‘And of course, he was unwell.’

  ‘So how did he do?’

  ‘His health?’

  ‘How did he do the act? How did he bed you?’

  ‘Very rarely.’

  He grunts in approval at that, and I see that he is aroused. The thought that he is more potent than my former husband excites him.

  ‘That must have made him angry,’ he says with pleasure. ‘Taking a woman like you to wife and not being able to do the act.’ He laughs. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You’re very lovely. I can’t wait.’

  He takes hold of my right wrist and tugs me towards him. Obediently I kneel up and try to straddle his body. But his fleshy hips are so wide that I cannot get across, and he pulls me down so that I squat on him as if I were astride a fat horse. I have to hold my face rigid so that I don’t grimace. I must not tremble, I must not cry.

  ‘There,’ he says, excited at his own potency. ‘Feel that? Not bad for a man just over fifty, is it? You won’t have got that from old Latimer.’

  I murmur a wordless response. He pulls me towards him and struggles to push upwards against me. He is soft, a half-formed thing, and now I am disgusted as well as embarrassed.

  ‘There!’ he says again more loudly. His face is becoming redder, the sweat is pouring off him with the effort of pulling me down with his hands and squirming his huge haunches upwards.

  I put my hands over my face to block the sight of him labouring beneath me.

  ‘You’re not shy!’ he exclaims, his voice loud in the room.

  ‘No, no,’ I say. I must remember that I am doing this for God and for my family. I will be a good queen. This is part of my duty, my God-given duty. I put my hands to the neck of my nightgown and I untie the ribbons at the front. When he sees my naked breasts he puts both fat hands over them and grasps at them, pinching the nipples. At last he penetrates me and I feel him try to thrust, then he gives a strangled shout, and falls back and lies still, completely still.

  I wait, but nothing else happens. He says nothing. The brick red colour drains from his face leaving his cheeks grey in the candlelight. His eyes are closed. His mouth sags open and he gives a long loud snore.

  That seems to be it. Gently, I lift myself off his damp lap and carefully I slide off the bed. I gather my robe around me and I wrap it tightly, tying the sash around my waist and pulling it close. I sit at the fireside on the big chair that has been specially widened and strengthened for his weight, and I pull my knees to my chest and hug myself. I find I am shivering and I pour a glass of the mulled wedding ale that stands at my side on the table. It was supposed to give me courage and him potency. It warms me a little and I wrap my hands around the silver cup.

  After a bleak time of staring blankly at the fire I creep into bed beside him. The mattress is deeply bowed under his weight, the blankets and the expensive coverlet heaped high over his great bulk. I am like a little child lying beside him. I close my eyes. I am thinking of nothing. I am absolutely determined to think of nothing at all. I close my eyes and I fall asleep.

  Almost at once, I am dreaming that I am Tryphine, married against my will to a dangerous man, trapped in his castle and going up and up the spiral staircase, one hand on the damp wall, one holding the bobbing light of the candle. There is a terrible smell coming from the door at the top of the stairs. I go to the heavy brass ring of the door latch and slowly turn it. The door creaks open, but I cannot bear to go into the room, into that miasma of stink. I am so afraid that I struggle in the dream and struggle in my sleep, turning in the bed, and waking myself up. Even though I am awake, fighting sleep and feeling the fear of the dream, the smell still floods over me as if it were pouring out of my dream into the waking world, and I choke and struggle for breath as I wake. The smell of the nightmare is in my bed, it is stifling me, it has come from the dark night into my own bedroom, it is real and I am gagging on it. The nightmare is here, now.

  I cry out for help and then I am awake and I realise it is not a dream: it is real. The suppurating wound on his leg is leaking, and yellow and orange pus is oozing through the bandages, staining my gown as if he had pissed the fine linen sheets, making the best bedroom in England smell like a charnel house.

  The room is dark but I know that he is awake. The rumbling bubbling snores have stopped. I can hear his stertorous breathing, but it does not fool me: I know that he is awake, listening and looking for me. I imagine his eyes, wide open in the dark, staring blindly towards me. I lie completely still, my breathing steady and slight, but I am afraid that he knows, like a
wild beast always knows, that I am afraid of him. He knows by some animal cunning that I am awake, and afraid of him.

  ‘Are you awake, Kateryn?’ he says very softly.

  I stretch and give a little false yawn. ‘Ah . . . yes, my lord. I am awake.’

  ‘And did you sleep well?’ The words are pleasant but there is an edge to his voice.

  I sit up, tucking my hair under my nightcap, and turn towards him at once. ‘I did, my lord, thanks be to God. I hope that you slept well?’

  ‘I felt sick; I tasted vomit in my throat. I was not propped up high enough on the pillows. It’s terrible to feel like that in sleep. I could have choked. They have to prop me so that I am sitting up, or I choke on bile. They know that. You must make sure that they do that when I am in your bed as well as my own. There must have been something tainted in the dinner that made me sick. They have all but poisoned me. I shall send for the cooks in the morning and punish them. They must have used some bad meat. I need to vomit.’

  At once I am out of the bed, my soiled gown slick against my legs, fetching a bowl from the cupboard, a flask of ale. ‘Will you take a drink of small ale now? Shall I send for the doctors?’

  ‘I shall see the doctor later. I was quite dizzy in the night.’

  ‘Ah, my dear,’ I say tenderly, as if I am a mother speaking to a sickly boy. ‘Perhaps you can take a drink of ale and sleep again?’

  ‘No, I can’t sleep,’ he complains peevishly. ‘I never sleep. The whole court sleeps, the whole country sleeps, but I am wakeful. I keep watch all night while lazy pages and slothful women sleep. I keep watch and ward over my country, over my church. D’you know how many men I will burn in Windsor next week?’

  ‘No,’ I say, shrinking.

  ‘Three,’ he says, pleased. ‘They’ll burn them in the marshes and their ashes will float away. For questioning my holy church. Good riddance.’