The Taming of the Queen Read online

  They lower him into his great chair, which creaks a little under his weight, they put a footstool under his leg, then drape it with a cloth. He gestures that I may sit near him, and waves them all away. Denny goes to the back of the room and pretends to be talking to his wife, my lady-in-waiting Joan. I am sure that they are both ears-pricked, to hear every word.

  ‘So you are merry this morning?’ Henry confirms. ‘Though I was watching you in chapel and you seemed grave. I can see you through the lattice of my box, you know. I can keep you under watch and ward all the time. Be very sure that I am always mindful of you.’

  ‘I was praying, my lord.’

  ‘That’s good,’ he approves. ‘I like it that you are truly devout; but I want you to be happy. The Queen of England should be the happiest woman in Christendom as well as the most blessed. You must show the world that you are merry on your wedding morning.’

  ‘I am,’ I assure him. ‘I truly am.’

  ‘Visibly happy,’ he prompts me.

  I show him my most dazzling smile.

  He nods his approval. ‘And now you have work to do. And you must do everything that I say. I am your husband now, and you have promised obedience.’ His indulgent tone tells me that this is a joke.

  I peep up at him. ‘I shall try to be a very good wife.’

  He chuckles. ‘These are my commands: you have to order the tailors and the seamstresses to bring beautiful clothes and fabrics, and you have to order a great many gowns,’ he says. ‘I want to see you dressed like a queen, not like the poor widow Latimer.’

  I give a little affected gasp and I press my hands together.

  ‘They tell me you like birds?’ he asks. ‘Colourful birds and singing birds.’

  ‘I do,’ I say. ‘But I could never afford to buy them.’

  ‘Well, now you can,’ he says. ‘I shall tell the captains of the ships that go far afield that they are to bring home little birds for you.’ He smiles. ‘It can be a new tax on shipping – little birds for the queen. And I have something for you now.’ He turns and snaps his fingers and Anthony Denny steps forward and puts a fat purse on the table and a small box. Henry passes me the box first. ‘Open it.’

  It is a magnificent ruby, table-cut like a block, on a simple gold band. It is too big for my fingers, but the king slides it on my thumb and admires the red glow. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘I love it.’

  ‘And there are more, of course. I have had them sent to your rooms.’

  ‘More?’

  He warms to my naïvety. ‘More jewels, my dear. You are the queen. You have a treasury of jewels. You can pick out new ones to wear for every day of the year.’

  I don’t have to feign my delight. ‘I do love pretty things.’

  ‘They’re a tribute to your own beauty,’ he says gently. ‘I have wanted you draped in the royal treasures ever since I first saw you.’

  ‘Thank you, husband. Thank you so much.’

  He chuckles. ‘I am going to love giving you things. You blush like a little rose. This purse of gold is for you, too. Spend it on whatever you like and then come to me for another. You will have lands and rents and income of your own soon. Your steward will show you a list of all that you will own. You will be a wealthy woman in your own right. You will have all the queen consort lands and Baynard’s Castle in London. You will command a fortune in your own name. This is just to tide you over.’

  ‘I should like to be tided over,’ Will Somers observes. ‘For some reason it is low tide with me, all the time.’

  The men laugh as, unobserved, I weigh the purse in my hand. It is heavy. If they are gold nobles, and I imagine that they are, this is a small fortune.

  The king looks at his page. ‘Give me the list,’ he says.

  The young man bows and hands him a rolled piece of paper. ‘These are men and women who want to serve in your household,’ the king says. ‘I have marked the ones that I wish you to take. But you can please yourself for most of the posts. I want you to be happy in your rooms and choose your own playmates.’

  It is the right of the queen to choose her own ladies. They are with her night and day. It is only fair that they should be her friends, family and favourites. The king should not be making out the list.

  ‘I dare say I will approve your choices,’ he says. ‘I am sure there will be none that I do not approve. You have such beautiful taste, you are certain to choose ladies who will be an ornament to your court and to mine.’

  I bow my head.

  ‘But they must be pretty,’ he specifies. ‘Make sure of that. I don’t want an eyesore.’

  I say nothing to his plan that I should choose as my companions the women who will please him, and at once, he squeezes my hand. ‘Ah, Kate, we shall deal well together. We’ll go hunting this afternoon and you shall sit with me.’

  ‘I would love that,’ I say. I long to be on my horse and ride with the hunt. I want the sense of freedom of riding behind the hounds, following where the scent takes them, going fast and riding far from the great palace, but I know it will not be like this. I shall have to sit in the royal shelter beside the king and watch the deer driven towards us so that Henry can shoot his loaded bow from his seat. Before him the huntsmen will herd and chivy the deer forward. Behind him, a page will take the sharpened bolt and load it into the crossbow. The king will do nothing but point and shoot. He makes a hunt, with all the chance and hazard of field and woodland, into a farmyard killing, a butcher’s yard. The king’s hunt, which was once a pageant of excitement, has become a shambles where animals are driven and slaughtered. But this is all he can do now. The man that I remember as a centaur, as a huntsman, who rode three horses one after another in a single day till they foundered, is diminished to a murderer, slumped in a chair, defeated by old age and ill health, with a younger man loading his bow.

  ‘I shall be so happy to sit beside you,’ I lie.

  ‘And you shall learn to shoot,’ he promises me. ‘I will give you a little crossbow of your own. You must share in the sport. You must have the pleasure of the kill.’

  He intends to be kind to me. ‘Thank you,’ I say again.

  He nods that I am to leave. I rise to my feet and hesitate as he beckons me towards him and lifts up his big moon face. He is like a little child, trustingly offering a kiss. I put one hand on his massive shoulder and I bend down. His breath is terribly rank – it is like letting a hound pant in my face – but I don’t flinch. I kiss him on the mouth and I meet his eyes and smile.

  ‘Dearest,’ he says quietly. ‘You are my dearest. You will be my last and dearest wife.’

  I am so touched that I bend down again and put my cheek to his.

  ‘Go and buy some pretty things,’ he commands me. ‘I want you to look like a beloved wife and the finest queen that England has ever known.’

  I leave the room a little dazed. If I look like a beloved wife it will be for the first time. To my second husband, Lord Latimer, I was a partner and a helpmeet, someone to guard his lands and educate his children. He taught me the things that he needed me to know and he was glad to have me alongside him. But he never petted me, or gave things to me, or imagined how I would appear to others. He rode away and left me in terrible danger, expecting me to serve him as the captain of Snape Castle, confident I would command his men in his absence. I was his deputy, not his love. Now I am married to a man who calls me his beloved and plans treats for me.

  Nan is waiting with Joan at the door, which opens before us. ‘Come on,’ I say to her. ‘I think there are some things you’ll want to see in my chambers.’

  My own presence chamber is already filled with people come to congratulate me on my wedding and hoping to ask me for a place or a favour or an audience or a fee. I walk through them with a smile to one side and the other, without pausing. I will start my work as queen today. But right now, I want to see my husband’s gifts.

  ‘Oh, my,’ Nan says as the guards throw open the double doors to my private r
ooms and my ladies rise to their feet and gesture, rather helplessly, to the half-dozen boxes that the king’s men have put all around the room, the great keys ready in the locks.

  It is a sin to feel this leap of cupidity. I laugh at myself. ‘Stand back!’ I say jokingly. ‘Stand back, for I am about to dive into treasure.’

  Nan turns the key to the first chest and together we lift the heavy lid. It is a travelling chest and it holds the gold plates and goblets for the queen’s private tables. I nod to two of the maids-in-waiting to come forward. They unpack one glorious plate after another and tip the reflections so the golden lights dance around the room like mad angels. ‘More!’ I say and now everyone holds a plate and shines it into each other’s eyes and flashes discs of light into every corner of the room until the room is dappled with shifting reflections. I laugh with delight and we shine the gold plates on one another, rise up, dance, and the whole room is dancing with us, filled with dazzling light.

  ‘What’s next?’ I demand breathlessly, and Nan opens the next chest. This is filled with necklaces and belts. She draws out ropes of pearls and belts embroidered and encrusted with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, diamonds and stones that I cannot even name, sparkling dark beauties set in thick blocks of silver or gold. She spreads chains of gold on the arms of chairs, necklaces of silver and diamonds in the laps of the maids so that they dazzle against rich fabric. There are opals with their soft milky light gleaming in green and peach, there is amber in great chunks of dark orange, and there are handfuls of uncut stones in purses looking like pebbles, hiding the flash of precious light within their rocky depths.

  Nan opens another chest that has been carefully packed with rolls of the softest leather. Out come rings heavy with precious stones, and single stones on long chains. Without comment, she lays before me Katherine of Aragon’s famous necklace of plaited gold. Another purse is undone and there are Anne Boleyn’s rubies. The royal jewels of Spain come from one great box, the dowry of Anne of Cleves is spread on the floor at my feet. The treasure that the king showered on Katherine Howard comes in a chest all to itself, untouched since she was stripped of everything and went out to take the axe on her bare neck.

  ‘Look at these earrings!’ someone exclaims, but instead I turn away and go to the window to look down on the formal gardens and the glimpse of the silvery river through the trees. I am suddenly sickened. ‘Those are dead women’s goods,’ I say unsteadily as Nan comes to my side. ‘They are the favourite treasures of dead queens. Those necklaces have been around the necks of the wife before me, some of them have been worn by every one of them who has gone before me. The pearls were warmed by their dead skins, the silver is tarnished by their old sweat.’

  Nan is as pale as me. She wrapped Katherine Howard’s emeralds in their leather folders and put them in that very jewel box on the day of her arrest. She fastened Jane Seymour’s sapphires around her neck on her wedding day. She handed Katherine of Aragon her earrings and here they are now, on the table in my privy chamber for my use.

  ‘You are the queen, you get the queen’s treasures,’ she rules, but her voice trembles. ‘Of course. It’s how it has to be.’

  There is a rap on the door and the guard swings it open. William Herbert, Nan’s husband, comes into the room and smiles to see us all surrounded by jewels like children amazed in the pastry kitchen, spoiled for choice. ‘His Majesty sent this,’ he says. ‘It was overlooked. He says I am to put it on your beloved head.’

  As I rise to my feet and come towards my brother-in-law, I see he cannot meet my eyes. He looks at the window behind me, at the sky scudding with clouds; he does not look at the treasures at my feet as I step carefully around Katherine of Aragon’s hoods, Katherine Howard’s glossy black sables. In his hand is a small heavy box.

  ‘What’s this?’ I ask him. I think at once – I don’t want it.

  In reply he bows, and unlocks the metal hasp. He lifts the lid and it falls back on its bronze hinges. There is a small ugly crown inside. The ladies behind me gasp. I see Nan make a little movement as if she would prevent what must come next.

  William puts down the box and lifts out the elaborately worked crown, encrusted with pearls and sapphires. Mounted at the pinnacle, as if it were a domed church, is a plain gold cross.

  ‘The king wants you to try it on.’

  Obediently, I bend my head for Nan to remove my hood, and her husband gives her the crown. It is the right size, it settles on my forehead like a headache.

  ‘Is it new?’ I ask faintly. I long for it to be newly made for me.

  He shakes his head. ‘Whose was it?’

  Nan makes a little gesture with her hand as if to warn him to be silent.

  ‘It was Anne Boleyn’s crown,’ he tells me. I feel it pressing down on my head as if I might sink beneath the weight of it.

  ‘Surely he doesn’t want me to wear it today,’ I say awkwardly. ‘He’ll tell you when,’ he says. ‘Important feast days or when you are meeting foreign ambassadors.’

  I nod, my neck stiff, and Nan takes it off for me and puts it back in the box. She closes the lid as if she does not want to see it. Anne Boleyn’s crown? How can it be anything but cursed?

  ‘But I’m to take back the pearls,’ William says, embarrassed. ‘They were brought in error.’

  ‘Which pearls?’ Nan asks her husband.

  He looks at her, still carefully not looking at me. ‘The Seymour pearls,’ he says quietly. ‘They’re to be kept in the treasure room.’

  Nan bends down and picks up the ropes and ropes of pearls, milky and glowing in her hands, and piles them back in their long box, the strands running up and down the length of it like a quiescent snake. She hands them to William and smiles at me. ‘It’s not as if we didn’t have a fortune in pearls already,’ she says, trying to cover the awkward moment.

  I walk with William to the doorway. ‘Why is he taking them back?’ I ask him in an undertone.

  ‘For remembrance of her,’ William tells me. ‘She gave him his son. He wants to keep them for the prince’s future wife. He doesn’t want anyone else wearing them.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ I say quickly. ‘Tell him how pleased I am with everything else. I know that her pearls were special.’

  ‘He is at prayer,’ my brother-in-law says. ‘He is hearing a Mass for her now.’

  Carefully, I maintain my expression of sympathy and interest. The belief that God will shorten the days that a soul waits to enter heaven if He is offered a hundred Masses, a thousand prayers, bonfires of incense, was dismissed by this king, and the chantries closed. Even the chapel that he dedicated to pray for Jane’s soul was abolished; I didn’t know that he still clung to a belief that he has forbidden to the rest of us – the hope of praying someone out of purgatory.

  ‘Stephen Gardiner is holding a special Mass for Queen Jane,’ William tells me. ‘In Latin.’

  Surely it’s a little odd to be praying for the dead queen on the first day of the king’s honeymoon? ‘God bless her,’ I say awkwardly, knowing that William will report this to his royal master. ‘Take her pearls and keep them safe. I will pray for her soul myself.’

  Just as the king promised, the word goes out that the new queen has a liking for pretty birds. One of the rooms off my presence chamber is emptied of furniture and filled with perches and cages. At the windows are little aviaries for the singing birds from the Canary Islands. When the sun pours in through the thick glass they chirp and preen and flutter their little wings. I keep them according to colour, the golds and yellows together, the greens next door to them, while the blues flit their little wings against a sky that mirrors their colour. I hope that they will breed true. Every morning, after chapel, I visit my bird room and feed them all by hand, loving the feeling of their scratchy light little feet as they perch and peck for seed.

  To my delight one day, a dark-skinned lascar sailor with a silver ring in his ear and his face tattooed, more like a painted devil than a man, comes to my presen
ce chamber with a huge bird, as blue as indigo and as big as a buzzard, sitting on his clenched fist. He sells it to me for a ridiculously high price and now I am the very proud owner of a parrot with black knowing eyes. I name him Don Pepe, since he speaks nothing but the most obscene Spanish. I will have to put a cover over his cage when the Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, comes to pay his respects, but Nan assures me that he’s a hard man to shock: after years at the court he has heard far worse.

  The king gives me a new horse for riding, a beautiful bay mare, and a puppy, an adorable spaniel with a shining tan coat. I take him with me everywhere and he sits at my feet even when I go to chapel in the morning. I’ve never owned a dog that was not a working dog before, only the hounds for hunting in the stables at Snape, or the sheepdogs with their quick dashes here and there.

  ‘You are the most idle thing,’ I tell him. ‘How can you live with yourself when all you have to be is ornamental?’

  ‘He’s very sweet,’ Nan agrees.

  ‘Purkoy was a darling,’ Catherine Brandon remarks.

  ‘Oh, what was Purkoy?’ I ask.

  ‘Anne Boleyn’s dog,’ Nan frowns at Catherine. ‘Nothing like little Rig, here.’

  ‘Is there anything new?’ I ask irritably. ‘Is there anything that I do that one of them hasn’t already done?’

  Catherine looks embarrassed.

  ‘Your clocks,’ Nan says with a small smile at me. ‘You’re the first queen to love clocks. All the goldsmiths and clockmakers in London are in heaven.’

  The court is to go on progress, as it does every summer. I cannot imagine how we are to pack up everything and move, every week, sometimes after only a few days, from one house to another, where all our servants will be expected to unload furniture, tapestries and silverware and make a court in a new house. How am I to know what clothes to pack? How am I to know what jewels I should take? I don’t even know how they take enough linen for the beds.