The Taming of the Queen Read online

  I give a little nervous laugh but he is completely convinced. He is quite certain that he is irresistible, and in the face of his smiling determination I think he may be right. Perhaps I will learn from him and love him. He is very persuasive. I want to believe him. It is God’s will that I married him, there can be no doubt of that. Perhaps it is His will that I will come to love my husband fully, as a wife should do. And who could not love a man who trusts a wife with his kingdom? With his children? Who pours treasure at her feet? Who offers his love so sweetly?

  ‘You need never say one word of a lie to me,’ he promises me. ‘There shall never be anything but honesty between us. I don’t need you to say that you love me now. I don’t want any early promises, easy words. I need only to know that you care for me now, that you are glad to be my wife, and that you accept that you might love me in the future. I know that you will.’

  ‘I will,’ I say. I did not know that he would be like this as a husband. I never dreamed it. I have never had a husband who cared for me. It is an extraordinary sensation to have the devotion of a powerful man. It is extraordinary to feel this tremendous will, this burning concentration turned on me. ‘And love will grow, as you say, my lord.’

  ‘Love will grow, Henry,’ he prompts.

  I kiss him, unasked. ‘Love will grow, Henry,’ I repeat.

  I know that I have to understand more about the changes that my husband has brought to the church in England. I ask both Thomas Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner to recommend preachers who can come to my rooms and expound their views to me and to my ladies. By listening to both sides of the debate – the reformers and the traditionalists – I hope that I will understand the cause that divides the court and the country, and the careful route that Henry has so brilliantly traced between the two.

  Every afternoon, as we sew, one of the priests attached to the king’s chapel, or a preacher from London, comes to my rooms and reads the Bible to us in English, and delivers a sermon explaining the passage. To my surprise, the task that I have undertaken as a duty becomes my favourite part of the day. I realise that I am a natural scholar. I have always loved to read and for the first time in my life I have time to do so and I am able to study with the greatest thinkers in the kingdom. I take an almost sensual delight in their work. They take a text from the Bible – the Great Bible that the king commanded should be translated into English so that everyone could study it – and they examine it word by word. It is like reading poetry, like studying the philosophers. The shades of meaning that arise and dissolve with translation, with the juxtaposition of one word against another, fascinate me, and then the way that the truth of God shines through, layer after layer like a sun through strips of cloud, as one wrestles with the words.

  My ladies, all drawn to the reform of the church, are in the habit of going directly to the Bible rather than to a priest for their learning, and we form a little group of scholars, interrogating the visiting preachers and offering our own suggestions. Archbishop Cranmer says that we should keep a note of our discussions so that we can share them with the colleges and with other theologians. I feel absurdly flattered that he thinks our studies are worthy to be read by others, but he persuades me that we are part of a body of thinkers, sharing what we study. Since I find the sermons so illuminating, will others?

  Everything must be scrutinised, everything must be considered. Even the translation of the Bible is a powerful controversy. The king gave the Bible in English to his people, putting a translated Bible into every parish church in the country. But – as the traditionalists point out – people did not read it reverently, they started to discuss passages and dispute meanings. What should have been a gift from the king to his grateful people became the centre of argument and so the king took the Bibles away, and now only noblemen may read them.

  I cannot help but think this is wrong. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God – surely it is the work of the church to bring the Word to the people? Surely it is the work of the church not to bring pictures and stained glass and candles and robes to the people but first, before everything, to bring the Word?

  Lady Mary often comes from her own set of rooms to listen to the daily sermon in mine. Sometimes, I know, she fears that the priests stray too far from the teachings of the church; but her love of languages and her devotion to the Bible mean that she always comes back, and sometimes she will offer her own translation of a phrase, or challenge the preacher’s version. I admire her scholarship. She has had the best of teachers and her understanding of Latin and her subtlety of translation are quite beautiful. If she had not been frightened into silence, I think she might have been a poet. She laughs when I tell her this one day and says that we are so alike, we should be sisters rather than a stepmother and daughter – we are both women who love fine clothes and beautiful language.

  ‘Almost as if they are the same thing!’ she confesses. ‘I get so much pleasure from embroidery and from poetry. I think there should be beauty in the words of the church and in the church paintings, so the little prie-dieu in my room should be beautiful too, with a golden crucifix and a crystal monstrance. But then I think I am sliding towards vanity. Really, I cannot deny it. I have my books bound with fine leather and jewels, and I collect illuminated manuscripts and prayer books. Why not, if it is for the glory of God and the delight of our eyes?’

  I laugh. ‘I know! I know! And I’m afraid that my love of study is the sin of pride. I find it quite thrilling to understand things, as if reading were a journey of discovery. I long to know more and more, and now I want to make translations and even compose prayers.’

  ‘Why should you not?’ she demands. ‘If you take pride in reading the Word of God, that is surely a little sin? It’s more a virtue of study than a pride of scholarship.’

  ‘It’s a joy I never thought I would have.’

  ‘If you are a reader, you are already halfway to being a writer,’ she says. ‘For you have a love of words and pleasure from seeing them on a page. And if you are a writer, then you will find that you are driven to write. It is a gift that demands to be shared. You cannot be a silent singer. You are not an anchorite, a solitary saint, you are a preacher.’

  ‘Even though I am a woman and a wife?’

  ‘Even though.’

  I am to meet my stepson, the Prince of Wales, Queen Jane’s son. He comes in state from his own palace at Ashridge, where he lives at a safe distance from the plagues and illnesses of the city. I watch from the windows that overlook the river and the gardens, and see the royal barge approaching, the banks of oars cutting into the water and then lifting out, and pulling onwards again. I see the barge feather the oars to slow its stately progress and then steer smoothly to the pier. The oarsmen throw the ropes and moor up as the guns roar out to salute him. The richly carved gangplank is run ashore, and the men make a guard of honour with their green and white oars erect. Half of the court is already on the riverbank to greet the prince. I see Edward Seymour’s dark head and Anthony Denny beside him, Thomas Howard trying to get in front. They look almost as if they are jostling to be first to greet him. These are the men who will want him to favour them, whose power will come only from him, whose futures depend on him. If my husband dies and this boy becomes a child-king, then one of them will be his governor, his protector. It may fall to me to defend him from them all, to raise him as his father would have it done, and keep him in the ways of the true religion.

  I turn to my ladies and let them adjust my hood, settle my jewels at my neck, and pull out the hem of my gown. I am wearing a new gown in deep red, the king’s huge ruby ring cut down to fit my finger, Queen Anne’s rubies sitting heavily and coldly on my neck. With my ladies behind me and with Rig, my spaniel, trotting beside me in his red leather collar with silver rings, we walk to the king’s presence chamber, through a whispering crowd of people who have come to witness this meeting.

  His Majesty is there already, seated beneath the golden clot
h of estate, his leg supported on a footstool. His face is dark with bad temper. I guess that he is in pain and I curtsey before him and take my place at his side without speaking. I have learned that it is better to be silent when he is ill; the least word angers him. He cannot hear a reference to his weakness, but he cannot bear that his suffering should be ignored. It is impossible to say the right thing, impossible to say anything at all. I feel nothing but pity for him, fighting the decay and collapse of his body with such dauntless courage. Anyone else in pain like this would be wild with temper.

  ‘Good,’ is all he says as I sit beside him, and I see that however sour his mood, he is not displeased with me.

  I turn my head to smile at him in silence and we exchange a little gleam of mutual understanding.

  ‘Did you watch from the window?’ he asks. ‘Were the jackals gathering around the young lion?’

  I nod. ‘They were. So I came to the great lion,’ I say. ‘I cleave to the greatest lion there is.’

  Henry gives a little grunt of amusement. ‘The old lion still has his teeth and claws. You will see I can draw blood. You will see I can rip a throat.’

  The double doors are flung open, the herald bellows, ‘Edward Prince of Wales!’ and the little boy of just five years old walks in, with half the court trailing sycophantically behind him. I could almost laugh aloud. All their shoulders are hunched, all their heads are stooped, everyone is trying to bend down to smile at the little boy, to lean towards him so that they can hear anything he might say. When they walk behind the king they match his swagger, heads up and shoulders back, chests thrust out, pacing themselves to his limping stride. But to follow his son they have invented a new way of sidling along. What fools they are, I think to myself, and I glance at my husband and see his sardonic grin.

  Prince Edward stops before the thrones and bows. His pale face is turned to his father with the dazzled expression of a child who hero-worships a distant parent, his lower lip trembles. He gives a small speech in Latin in a piping little voice that I assume expresses his honour and pleasure at coming to court. The king replies briefly in the same language. I can pick out a few words but I have no idea what he is saying. I guess that he had this speech prepared for him; he has little patience with study these days. Then Edward turns to me and speaks in French, a courtly language more appropriate for a woman without much learning.

  As I did with Elizabeth, I rise to my feet and go towards him but he looks anxious as I approach and this makes me cautious. He bows, I curtsey, I extend my hand and he kisses it. I dare not embrace him as I did Elizabeth; I cannot fold him into my arms. He is only a little boy, but he is a unique being, as rare as a unicorn, sighted only in tapestries. This is the only Tudor prince in the whole world. After a lifetime of marriages and couplings, this is the only surviving boy that Henry could get.

  ‘I am so pleased to meet you, Your Highness,’ I say to him. ‘And I look forward to knowing and loving you, as I should.’

  ‘I too am honoured,’ he says carefully. I imagine he has been coached in every possible response. This is a boy whose speech was scripted from the first words he ever learned. His first word was not ‘Mama’; they will have taught him to say something else. ‘It will be a comfort and joy to me to have a mother in you.’

  ‘And I’ll learn Latin,’ I say.

  No-one could have prepared him for this surprising promise and I see the leap of amusement of a normal boy. ‘You’ll find it awfully hard,’ he warns me in English, and for a moment I see the child that he is, under the carapace of the prince that he has to be. ‘I’ll get a tutor,’ I say. ‘I love to learn and study. I have wanted all my life to have a good education. Now I can start, and then I can write to you in Latin and you can correct me.’

  He gives a funny little formal bow. ‘I shall be honoured,’ he says, and looks up fearfully to see if his father approves.

  But Henry, the king, sombre in his own thoughts and besieged with pain, does not smile at his little son. ‘Very well,’ is all he grudgingly says.

  MANOR OF THE MORE, HERTFORDSHIRE, SUMMER 1543

  The plague is worsening in London, it is going to be one of the deadly years. Left behind us, hundreds are dying in the filthy streets as we ride further and further away from the city, making our way north, hunting and feasting. Guards are posted along the road from London to prevent anyone following the court, and the gates to every palace are bolted shut as soon as we are inside.

  In a plague year at my home at Snape Castle I used to order the nursing of sick people in the village, send out tisanes and herbs to prevent the spread of the disease, and pay the burial parties for the pauper graves. I would have the newly-orphaned children to eat in the castle kitchens, and ban travellers from visiting. It’s odd to me that now I am Queen of England and all the people are my people, I act as if I don’t care for any of them, and they can’t even beg for food at the kitchen doors.

  The king decides to order a Rogation, a day of processions with prayers. Everyone must call on the help of God to save England, at this time of her need. There are to be nationwide pilgrimages of faith, and a service in every church in the land. The day is made known from every pulpit, and every congregation is commanded to process around their parish, praying and singing psalms. Only if every parish in England prays for all the people of England will the plague leave us. But instead of an outpouring of faith and hope, the occasion is a complete failure. Hardly anyone attends and nobody gives alms. It’s not like it used to be. There are no monks and no choirs to lead the processions, no-one has any sacred relics to parade, the gold and silver holy vessels have been taken away and melted down, the abbeys and monasteries are all closed, their hospitals closed too. As a demonstration of national faith all it shows is that nobody cares any more.

  ‘The people won’t pray for their own country?’ Henry demands of Stephen Gardiner Bishop of Winchester, as if it is all his fault. We are on the royal barge, taking the air on the river, when Bishop Gardiner remarks that he would have to walk on water to convince the people of Watford to say their prayers. ‘Have they run mad? Do they think they can get eternal life by arguing for it?’

  He shrugs. ‘They have lost their faith,’ he says. ‘All they want to do now is dispute the Bible. I would have them sing the old psalms, observe the old ways, and leave understanding to their betters. After we took the English Bible from the churches I thought that they would pray in the words we allowed them.’

  ‘It is those very words that fail to speak to them,’ Thomas Cranmer disagrees. ‘They don’t understand what they mean. They can’t read Latin. Sometimes they can’t even hear the priest. People don’t want empty ritual any more. They don’t want to process singing a hymn that they can’t understand. If they could pray in English they would do so. You gave them an English Bible, Your Majesty, and then took it away again. Restore it to them, let them have a reason for their faith. Let us do more! Let us give them an English liturgy too.’

  The king is silent and glances towards me to show that I can speak. ‘You think that people don’t like the Latin prayers any more?’ I ask Archbishop Cranmer. ‘Do you really think they would be devout if they were allowed to pray in their own language?’

  ‘The language of the sewers,’ Bishop Gardiner remarks quietly to Henry. ‘Shall every potboy write his own Ave Maria? Shall the street sweepers compose their own blessings?’

  ‘Row faster,’ Henry remarks to the rowers, hardly attending to this. ‘Steer us into the middle of the river where we can catch the current.’

  The barge-master alters the rhythm of the drum that keeps the rowers to time, and the steersman directs us into the centre of the river where there is a cool breeze over the deeper current. ‘No-one may enter into our palace from the city,’ Henry tells me. ‘People may wave from the bank, they can pay their respects, but they may not come on board. I don’t want them anywhere near me. No-one from the city can come even into the gardens. They bring disease. I cannot risk it.’<
br />
  ‘No, no, certainly not,’ I say soothingly. ‘My household knows this as well as yours, my lord. I have told them. Nobody will even take a delivery from London.’

  ‘Not even books,’ he says suspiciously. ‘And no visiting preachers or scholars, Kate. No-one coming from the city churches. I won’t have it.’

  ‘They are all carrying diseases,’ Gardiner asserts. ‘All of these heretic Lutheran preachers are blasted with illness and half of them crazed with misunderstanding. They come from Germany and Switzerland, sick and mad.’

  The face I turn up to Henry, as he sits on the raised throne above me, is completely serene. ‘Of course, my lord,’ I say, though I am lying. As I promised Prince Edward, I am now studying Latin with a scholar from Cambridge, and I take deliveries of books from the London printers. Some come to me from the Protestant printers of Germany, too, the so-called heretic printers, publishing books of scholarship and theology in Flanders. Christendom is alive as it has never been before, with study and thought about the Bible, about the form that services should take, even about the nature of the Mass. The king himself, when he was younger, joined these discussions and wrote his own documents. Now, under the influence of the Howards and Stephen Gardiner, disappointed in the country’s response to the changes he has made, fearful of the excited movements spreading across Europe, he does not want discussion, he does not want to press on with reform.

  When the North rose against him, demanding that the abbeys be reopened and the chantries sing for the dead again, that the old lords take their power and the Plantagenets be honoured, the king decided that he wanted no arguments at all: not of his rule, not of his church, not of his heirs. The king hates thinking as much as he hates illness, and now he says that books carry both.

  ‘Surely Her Majesty can have no interest in books from London, or hedgerow preachers,’ Stephen Gardiner prompts sweetly. ‘Why would a lady so perfect in so many ways want to study like a dirty old clerk?’