The Taming of the Queen

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1546

I am seated at my table, books all around me, ink drying on the nib of my quill as I try to find the right thing to say, how to express the concept of obedience to God, which is such a central part of the God-given duty of a woman, when Princess Mary comes into the room and curtseys to me. The ladies of my court look up. Each of us has a book or some writing – we could be posing for a drawing of a godly company – but all of us are alerted by Princess Mary’s grave face and the way she comes to my table and says quietly: ‘May I speak with Your Majesty?’

‘Of course, Princess Mary,’ I say formally. ‘Will you sit?’

She draws up a stool to the table and sits at the head of it so that she can lean towards me and speak very quietly. My sister, Nan, always ready to protect me from trouble, says, ‘Why don’t you read to us, Princess Elizabeth?’ and Elizabeth stands at the lectern, puts her book on it and offers to translate extempore from Latin to English.

I see Mary’s doting smile at her clever little sister and then she turns back to me and her face is grave. ‘Did you know that my father has proposed a match for me?’ she asks.

‘Not that he was ready to go ahead,’ I say. ‘He spoke to me some time ago only of a marriage that might come. Who is it?’

‘I thought you might know. I am to marry the heir of the Elector.’

‘Who?’ I ask, completely baffled.

‘Otto Henry,’ she says. ‘His Majesty my father wants to create an alliance with the German princes against France. I was very surprised but it seems that he has decided to side with the German Lutherans against Spain after all. I would be married to a Lutheran and sent to Neuburg. England will become Lutheran, or wholly reformed, at the very least.’

She looks at my aghast expression. ‘I thought that Your Majesty had such sympathies,’ she says carefully. ‘I thought you would be pleased.’

‘I might be pleased by England becoming fully reformed in religion and by an alliance with the German princes, but I am shocked at the thought of you going to Bavaria. To a country where they might have a religious rebellion, with your father allied to their emperor? What is he thinking? This is to send you into certain danger, to face an invasion from your own Spanish kinsman!’

‘And I believe that I would be expected to take up my husband’s religion,’ she says quietly. ‘There is no intention to protect my faith.’ She hesitates. ‘My mother’s faith,’ she adds. ‘You know that I cannot betray it. I don’t know what to do.’

This is against tradition as well as respect for the princess and her faith and her church. Wives must raise the children in the faith of their husband, but are always allowed to retain their own faith.

‘The king expects you to become a Lutheran?’ I ask. ‘A Protestant?’

Her hand drops into the pocket of her gown where I know she keeps her mother’s rosary. I imagine the cool beads and the tenderly carved coral crucifix between her fingers.

‘Your Majesty, Lady Mother, did you not know of this?’

‘No, my dearest. He spoke of it as one of his plans; no more. I did not know it had gone this far.’

‘He is going to call it the League Christian,’ she says. ‘He will be the head.’

‘I am so sorry,’ I whisper.

‘You know that they threatened me with death if I did not swear that my father was Supreme Head of the church,’ she whispers. ‘Thomas Howard, the old duke, threatened to smash my head against the wall until it was as soft as a baked apple. They tamed me as surely as they took a whip to me. The pope himself sent me a message to say that I might take the oath and he would forgive me. I failed my mother then, I betrayed her faith. I can’t do it again.’

Wordlessly, I feel for her hands and hold her tightly.

‘Is there anything you can do, Kateryn?’ she whispers to me as a friend. ‘Is there anything you can do?’

‘What do you want?’

‘Save me.’

I am shocked into silence.

‘I’ll speak to him,’ I say. ‘I’ll do everything I can. But you know . . .’

She nods, she knows. ‘I know. But tell him. Speak for me.’

That afternoon we have a sermon on the vanity of war, a powerful piece of reasoning from one of the London preachers. He argues that all Christians should live in peace, for whatever their way of worshipping God they are all praying to the one God. Jews also should not be persecuted since their God is our God – though we have a greater insight into Him. He reminds us that Our Saviour was born of a Jewish mother. He Himself was born a Jew. Even Muslims, in their benighted darkness, should not be attacked, because they too acknowledge the God of the Bible.

This is so strange and so radical that I check that the doors are locked and the sentries standing out of earshot, keeping all strangers at a distance, before we enter into a discussion. The preacher, Peter Lascombe, defends his thesis and appeals to the brotherhood of man. ‘And the sisterhood,’ he says, smiling, though this too is a great claim. I think it must be heretical. He says that, as in Spain in the old days, when the country was ruled by Muslim kings, everyone who believes in God should respect the others’ faiths. The enemy should be those who don’t believe in God at all and refuse to accept His Word: pagans and fools.

He takes my hand when it is time for him to go and bows over it. I feel between my fingers a little scrap of paper, double-folded. I let him go without a word and tell my ladies that I shall work at my studies for the next hour in silence, and I sit at my table and open my books. Unseen, hidden behind the great folios, I unwrap the note. It is from Anne Askew:

I write to tell you that a man came to me saying he was a servant of the Privy Council and asked me when I have preached before you and if you deny the Mass. I will say nothing. I will mention no names, I will never say yours. A.

I rise from my seat and stand before the small fire that brightens the room as the afternoon grows dark. I hold out my hands as if to warm them and flick the little scrap of paper into the heart of the embers where it flames and curls into ash. I notice how cold I feel and that my hands are shaking.

I don’t understand what is happening. On the one hand the king’s own daughter Princess Mary is to be betrothed to a Lutheran, on the other hand the forces of popery are gaining power. The Seymours are away from court, Thomas Cranmer keeps to his home, there is no-one to speak to the king for the new religion but me. I feel very alone, and I cannot read these contradictory signs. I cannot understand the king.

‘Is your hand cramped from writing?’ Nan asks me. ‘One of us could write for you if you would like a clerk, Your Majesty.’

‘No, no,’ I say. ‘I am well, all is well.’

Nan is at the head of my ladies as we are about to walk into court. As I enter my presence chamber from my private rooms in a new gown of dark red, she comes to my side as if to straighten the rubies at my neck, and whispers to me.

‘Lord Edward Seymour has written to his wife that there is a rumour in Europe that the king is planning to set you aside. Has the king said anything, anything at all to you? Has he even been critical of you?’

‘Just the usual,’ I say quietly. ‘That he wishes I were with child. Nan – don’t you think . . .?’

‘No,’ she says flatly. ‘A dead child would be your death warrant. Trust me. Let him long for it, get down on your knees and pray with him if you have to, but don’t conceive something that he would take as a sign from the devil.’

‘But if the child were to be well? Nan, I want a child. I am thirty-three! I want a child of my own.’

‘How could it be?’ she demands flatly. ‘There’s been no healthy child born of a living mother since Princess Elizabeth. And half the court say that she is Mark Smeaton’s bastard, from strong young stock. So – no legitimate child since Princess Mary, thirty years ago. He can’t get a healthy child on a healthy woman. Last time it killed the mother.’

She bends down and straightens the train of my silk gown. ‘So what shall I do about these rumours?’ I ask as she comes up.

‘Face them down,’ she counsels. ‘Complain about them. And we’ll pray to ride them out. There’s nothing we can do, anyway.’

I nod, my expression grim.

‘And even now, even with this gossip spreading we are safe, unless . . .’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless they come from the king himself,’ she says unhappily. ‘If he has said that he is thinking of a new wife, to someone who has repeated it elsewhere . . . if he is the source, then we are lost; but there is still nothing we can do.’

I look down the line of my ladies to Anne of Cleves preparing to come in to dinner with her cheerful smile, the former wife he now loves so well that he keeps her at court. She was invited for Christmas and she is still here although it is nearly Easter. Catherine Brandon is behind her, the widow of Henry’s dearest friend, the beautiful girl that he has watched grow into womanhood, perhaps his lover, perhaps his love; and there are the new ones, the pretty ones, the ones young enough to be my daughter, the ones as young as Kitty Howard when he first saw her, young enough to be his grandchild.

‘At least Anne of Cleves can go home,’ I say in sudden irritation.

‘I’ll see she does,’ Nan promises.

That afternoon, without warning, Thomas Seymour comes to court to report on the strength of the navy and the gathering danger of the French.

‘Come and listen to Tom Seymour.’ The king beckons me to the table in his presence chamber. He takes my hand and puts it on his, holding my fingers trapped between his, so that I must stand beside him, facing Thomas, as if I am yearning towards the king, my hand resting on my husband’s clenched unresponsive fist, listening to Thomas report on ships built and restored, docks dry and wet, outfitters and chandlers and rope merchants and sail lofts. He reports that another effort to raise the Mary Rose is being undertaken. She could be raised. She could sail again. Perhaps she might, like our king, defy time itself and go on and on forever, outliving the rest of the fleet, sailing on when all love and loyalty is gone, holding the future hostage, a live fleet yoked for ever to her rotting timbers.

‘There is an archery tournament in the garden for Your Majesty’s amusement,’ I say. ‘If you could walk to it?’

‘I can walk,’ he says. ‘Thomas, you will have seen I have an engine to get me up and downstairs. What d’you think? Should you bring me a crane from your shipyard? Will you fetch me a hoist from Portsmouth?’

Thomas smiles at his king, his eyes warm with sympathy. ‘If greatness were weighed, Your Majesty, nothing would ever lift you.’

Henry cracks a laugh. ‘You’re a pretty fellow!’ he exclaims. ‘Take the queen to the archery butts and tell them I am coming. They can get ready for me. I may take a bow myself and see what I can do.’

‘Your Majesty must come, and show them how to do it,’ Thomas recommends, and offers his arm to me and we go towards the door, my hand burning on his sleeve, both of us looking studiously forward, at the guards, at the parting courtiers, at the opening door, never anywhere towards each other.

Behind us come the ladies of my chamber and their husbands, behind them the king’s companions wait for him, while he is helped up from his chair to his close-stool. Someone fetches Doctor Wendy to give the king warm ale and a draught to help with the pain, and guards to help him into his carriage and wheel him out into the garden like a dead boar in a cart.

The double doors to the garden are thrown open by the yeomen of the guard as soon as Thomas and I approach them, and the warm spring air, smelling of the first cut of grass, floods into the palace. We glance at each other – it is impossible not to share our pleasure in the sudden sense of freedom, of release, in joy at the sunshine and the birdsong, and the court dressed in their best and preparing for another nonsensical game.

I am smiling, simply for the joy of being with him; I could laugh out loud. The sun is warm on my face and the musicians start to play; Thomas Seymour, briefly and unnoticed, touches my hand as it rests on his arm, a swift and invisible caress.

‘Kateryn,’ he says quietly.

I incline my head to left and right as people curtsey to me as we walk by. Thomas is tall, a head taller than me. He moderates his steps to mine but we stride out together, as if we would go all the way to Portsmouth and set sail on his ship. I think that we are so well matched, if we could have been together – what a couple we would have made, what children we would have conceived!

‘Thomas,’ I say quietly.

‘Love,’ he replies.

We need say nothing more. It is like lovemaking, the give and take of few words, the touch of warm skin, even through a thick sleeve, a glance from him to my bright face, my own sense that I am alive now and I have been dead for months. I have been wearing dead women’s gowns and I have been dead myself. But now I feel alive again and longing. I feel desire as a sort of trembling wordless need that makes me think: if I could just lie with him once, I would never ask for more. If I could lie beneath him just once and have his long weight bear down on me, his mouth on mine, the scent of him, the sight of the dark hair on the nape of his neck, the smooth bronzed line from his ear to his collar bone . . .

‘I have to talk to you,’ he says. ‘Will you sit here?’

There is a throne ready for the king when he comes and a chair beside it for me and then lower chairs for the princesses. Elizabeth comes bounding forwards and then smiles and blushes when she sees Thomas. He’s not even aware of her as she turns away and strolls back to the archery butts, picks up a bow and poses: fitting an arrow on the string, and drawing it back. I take my seat and he stands slightly behind the chair, leaning down so that he can whisper in my ear, but we are both facing the green and the competitors testing their strings, and taking aim, and throwing a few blades of grass in the air to see the wind. We are completely visible to everyone, we are on show. We are hidden in plain sight.

‘Don’t move, and keep your face still,’ he warns me.

‘I am listening.’

‘I have been offered a wife,’ he says quietly.

I blink, nothing more. ‘Who?’ I say shortly.

‘Mary Howard, the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter.’

This is a remarkable offer. Mary is the widow of the king’s beloved bastard son that he made the Duke of Richmond. If the boy had not died, he might have been named Prince of Wales and the king’s heir. Edward was not born then, and Henry needed a son; even a bastard would have done. At Richmond’s death the king refused to mention his name and Mary Howard, the little widowed duchess, went back to live at her father’s great castle at Framlingham. When she visits court the king always greets her warmly, she is pretty enough to attract his heavy gallantry; but I didn’t know that there had been any proposals for her second marriage.

‘Why Mary Howard?’ I ask incredulously. Someone bows to me and I smile and nod my head to acknowledge their greeting. A few archers start to line up for practice shots. Princess Mary walks towards us.

‘So that the Howards and us Seymours should forget our differences,’ he says. ‘It’s not a new proposal. They made it before, when she was first widowed. So that the Howards can become kinsmen to Prince Edward. Princess Elizabeth is not royal enough for them.’

‘You didn’t seek it then?’ I can feel a taste in my mouth as bitter as the morning drink of rue. I realise that this is the flavour of jealousy.

‘I don’t seek it now,’ he points out.

I want to pinch my face as it feels numb. I want to shake my hands and stamp my feet. I feel as if I am frozen, as still as ice on my throne, as Princess Mary comes slowly towards me across the grass.

‘Why would you?’ I ask.

‘It is advantageous,’ he says. ‘A set of alliances to link the families. We gain their alliances: they’re friends with Gardiner and all who think like him. We would cease the endless struggle over the king. We could agree together how far reform is to go instead of fighting it out step by step. And they’d give me a fortune with her.’

I can see it is a good match. She is a daughter of a duke, and sister to Henry Howard, one of the king’s young commanders, reckless in Boulogne but still a favourite. If Thomas marries her, she will come to court, she will ask to be one of my ladies. I will have to watch him walk with her, dance with her, whisper to her. She will ask permission to leave my rooms early to go to his bed, she will go away from court to join him at Portsmouth. She will be his wife; I will attend her wedding and hear him swear to love and honour her. She will promise him to be bonny and blithe at bed and board. I think: I will never be able to bear it. I know that I must.

‘What does the king say?’ I ask the all-important, the only, question.

Thomas shows me his twisted smile. ‘He says that if Norfolk wants to give his daughter a husband he might as well choose a man so young and lusty as he will please her at all points. ’

‘Points?’

‘That’s what he said. Don’t torture yourself. It was years ago.’

‘But the marriage is proposed again now!’ I exclaim.

He bows, as if I have made a good remark in an argument that anyone may join. ‘It is.’

‘What will you do?’ I whisper.

‘What d’you wish?’ he returns, his eyes on Princess Elizabeth. ‘I am yours heart and soul.’

‘Is the king my father coming to watch?’ Princess Mary joins us and nods her head to Thomas’s bow.

‘Yes, he’s coming at once,’ I reply.

As I walk to dinner at the head of my ladies that night I pass Will Somers. He is throwing a ball in the air and catching it in a cup, a foolish little game. We hesitate as we go by.

‘Would you like to try?’ he asks Princess Elizabeth. ‘It’s harder than it looks.’

‘It can’t be,’ she says. ‘I can see, it’s nothing but catch.’

Will turns and gives her a fresh cup, a new ball. ‘You try,’ he says.

She throws the ball high, and confidently she stretches out the cup as it falls. She catches it perfectly and a splash of water from the cup drenches her. ‘Will Somers!’ she shouts and she runs at him. ‘I am soaked! I am drowned! You are a wretch and a varlet and a rogue!’

Instead of running, Will drops to his hands and knees and bounds down the gallery giving tongue as if he were a naughty dog. Elizabeth hurls the cup after him and catches him on his rump. Will howls and leaps up a stair and we all laugh.

‘At least you caught him,’ I say to her. Nan hands me a napkin and I pat Elizabeth’s laughing face and the lace at the neck of her gown. ‘You gave as good as you got.’

‘He’s a wretch,’ she says. ‘And I will tip a chamber pot on his head when he next walks beneath my window.’

The gentlemen of the court are waiting for us outside the hall. The king, tired by the archery, is dining in his rooms this evening.

‘What’s this?’ Thomas Seymour asks Elizabeth, seeing her damp hair. ‘Have you gone swimming?’

‘Will Somers and his stupid games,’ she says. ‘But I flung a cup at him.’

‘Shall I fight him for your good name?’ he smiles down at her. ‘Shall you have me as your knight errant? Just say the word and I am yours.’

I see her colour rise. She looks up at him and she is speechless, like a flustered child.

‘We will call on you,’ I say, to spare her.

He bows. ‘I am dining with the king. I will come to the hall after dinner.’

Without any word the ladies align themselves in order of precedence. I go before everyone and behind me comes Princess Mary, and then Elizabeth, then my ladies, in order, Anne Seymour in her place. We walk through the crowded hall and the men stand and salute me and the women curtsey. I go to the dais and my steward helps me into my great chair.

‘Tell Thomas Seymour to come to me when he leaves the king’s rooms,’ I say quietly.

The dinner is served far more quickly than when the king is calling for extra portions and sending the dishes all around the room. When everyone has eaten they clear the tables.

Thomas Seymour comes in through a side door, speaks to one man and then another and then appears at my side. ‘Will you dance, Your Majesty?’ he asks me.

‘No, I shall go to the king shortly,’ I say. ‘Was he in good spirits?’

‘I thought he was well.’

‘He is certain to ask me if you are still here, if you are staying for many days?’

‘You can tell him that I am leaving for Portsmouth tomorrow.’

Nan moves out of earshot and Catherine Brandon and some of the others take their places in a dance.

‘What do you think?’ Thomas says abruptly. ‘About my marriage?’

‘I have to say this without anyone knowing what I am feeling,’ I say. ‘I have to be stony-faced.’

‘You must,’ he says. ‘We have no choice.’

‘We have no choice in the matter of your marriage either.’ I turn and smile at him as if I have made an interesting small point of conversation.

He nods courteously and then from the breast of his jacket he draws a little notebook, filled with sketches of rigging and sails. He opens it and shows it to me as if I may want to study it. ‘You are saying that I have to marry her?’

Blindly, I turn a page. ‘Yes. What possible excuse could you give for refusing? She is young and beautiful, probably fertile. She is wealthy and she comes from a great family. An alliance with them would be good for your house. Your brother would ask it of you. How can you refuse?’

‘I can’t,’ he says. ‘But what if you were to become free? And I was then married?’

‘I would be your mistress,’ I promise without a moment’s hesitation. I keep my face calm as if I am deeply interested in the book he holds out to me. ‘If I am free and you are married I will become your sinful adulteress lover. If it costs me my soul I will do it.’

He breathes out. ‘My God, Kat. I so long for you.’

Silently, we turn the pages for a few moments, then he says, ‘And when I am married and happy and she is with child, and she gives me a son and heir, and her boy takes my name, and I love him and am grateful to her, will you be able to forgive me? Will you be my lover then?’

He does not even hurt me with this picture, the worst that he could draw. I am prepared for it. I close the book and give it back to him. ‘We’re beyond that,’ I tell him. ‘We’re beyond jealousy and wanting to own each other. It’s as if we went down with the Mary Rose: we’re beyond hating each other or forgiving each other or even hope. All we can do now is try to swim.’

‘They were trapped,’ he remarks. ‘The sailors were trapped by the nets that were stretched over the decks to prevent boarders. They should have dived from the boat as she went down and swum for shore but they were caught in their own grave and drowned.’

I turn my head and blink away the tears. ‘So are we,’ I say. ‘Swim if you can.’

Of course the Howards, always quick to gobble up any advantage, had Mary Howard in their rooms ready for sale, and they visited the king before dinner was even served to ask for his permission for Thomas Seymour and Mary Howard to be married. The king saw them in his privy chamber where he was dining with a few lords and he agreed to the renewed proposal. While I was dining before the court in the great hall, doing my duty as queen, they were agreeing – Seymours and Howards – with the king that the marriage should go ahead. When I told Thomas that we were trapped like his drowning sailors the king was drinking the health of the young couple.

Anne Seymour brings the gossip to the ladies’ rooms. Her husband has told her that the king is pleased that the two great families of England will unite in marriage and content that his daughter-in-law shall remarry.

‘Did you know, Your Majesty?’ Anne Seymour asks me curiously. ‘Has His Majesty spoken with you?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘This is the first I have heard of it.’

Anne cannot hide her pleasure that she has this news before me, and I have to allow her the little triumph.

‘Just as well,’ Nan says to me as we go into my bedroom before the night-time prayers.

‘Just as well – what?’ I say disagreeably as I sit down before the glass and look at my pale face.

‘Just as well to get Mary Howard out of the way. The king has always liked her and they are a family with no feeling but ambition, and no scruples at all.’

‘She is the widow of the king’s dead bastard son,’ I say with assumed patience. ‘She is hardly likely to be a temptation to the king.’

‘She is a beautiful girl and the Howards would propose their own grandmother to him if it suited their purpose,’ Nan says, paying no attention to my ill humour. ‘If you had seen them with Anne Boleyn, if you had seen them with all the other Howard beauties – for Kitty Howard was only one of many – you would be glad to see Mary Howard safely settled.’

‘Oh, I am,’ I say coldly.

Nan waits as the maid lays my sleeves of gold brocade in the scented chest under the window. ‘You don’t mind for him?’ she asks very quietly.

‘Not at all,’ I say clearly. ‘Not at all.’

Thomas leaves court without speaking to me again and I don’t know if he goes directly to Portsmouth or travels to Suffolk to make arrangements for the wedding at Framlingham. I wait for someone to tell me that Thomas Seymour has caught himself an heiress and obliged the cause of reform by making an alliance between the Seymours and the Howards, which will make us all safer at court; to take the Howards from their alliance with Stephen Gardiner is to weaken his power. I wait for Anne Seymour to boast that the match is done and Tom Seymour wedded and bedded. But she says nothing, and I cannot ask. I so dread hearing that he is married that I don’t ask.

Catherine Brandon taps on the door to my room when I am changing my gown to go to dinner, and dismisses the maids with a swift wave of her hand. Nan raises her eyebrows to me in the mirror. She is always alert for Catherine to show any sign that she is taking advantage of her growing favour with the king.

‘This is important,’ Catherine says tersely. ‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘Tom Howard, the duke’s second son, has been summoned before the Privy Council. They’re questioning him. About religion.’

I rise up a little from my seat and then I sit down again. ‘Religion,’ I say flatly.

‘It’s a full inquiry,’ she says. ‘I was leaving the king’s rooms and the door to the Privy Council chamber stood open. I heard them say that Tom was being brought to answer charges, and that Bishop Bonner would report from the Howard lands in Essex and Suffolk. He’s been down there gathering evidence against Tom.’

‘You’re sure it is Tom Howard?’ I ask, suddenly fearful for the man I love.

‘Yes, and they know he has listened to sermons and studied with us. Bishop Bonner has gone through all his books and papers at his home.’

‘Edmund Bonner Bishop of London?’ I name the man who interrogated Anne Askew, a powerful supporter of the old church, hand in glove with Bishop Gardiner, a dangerous man, a vindictive man, a driven man. My influence and power forced him to let Anne Askew go, but there are few who leave the bishop’s palace without pleading guilty to whatever crime he names. There are few who leave without bruises.

‘Yes, him.’

‘Did you hear what he had to report?’

‘No,’ she says. She claps her hands together in her frustration. ‘The king was watching me. I had to walk past the door; I couldn’t stop and listen. I only heard what I have told you. That’s all I know.’

‘Someone will know,’ I say. ‘Someone will tell us. Get Anne Seymour.’

Catherine flits from the room and outside we hear the music of the lute suddenly break off as Anne Seymour puts the instrument aside and comes in, closing the door behind her.

‘Has your husband said anything about questioning young Tom Howard?’ Nan asks her bluntly.

‘Tom Howard?’ She shakes her head.

‘Well, get to your rooms and find out what the council think they are doing,’ Nan says furiously. ‘For Edmund Bonner is looking around Howard lands for heretics and the Privy Council is questioning Tom Howard for heresy, and everyone knows that he has been here listening to the sermons. And many people know that Edmund Bonner released Anne Askew because Her Majesty requested it. How does he now have the courage to question another of our friends? How is he so bold as to go to Howard lands and ask questions about the Howards themselves? Have we lost power without knowing it? Or has Gardiner turned against the Howards? What’s happening now?’

Anne looks from my pale face to Nan’s furious one. ‘I’ll go and find out,’ she says. ‘I’ll come back as soon as I know. I may not be able to speak with him till dinner.’

‘Just go!’ Nan spits, and Anne, usually so careful of her own importance, so slow to obey, scurries out of the room.

Nan rounds on me. ‘Your books,’ she says. ‘Your papers, the new book that you’re writing.’

‘What of them?’

‘We’ll have to pack them up and get them out of the palace.’

‘Nan, nobody is going to search my rooms for my papers. The king himself gave me these books. I am studying his own writings, his own commentaries. We just completed our work on the liturgy together. This is the king’s chosen area of study, not just mine. He is planning an alliance with the Lutheran princes against the Catholic kings. He is leading England away from the Roman Catholic church towards full reform—’

‘The liturgy, yes,’ she says, interrupting me, forgetting, in the grip of her fear, the respect that she should show. ‘You’re safe working on that, I suppose, as long as you agree completely with him. But what about Lamentation? What about that? Would the king think it conformed to The King’s Book? Is your secret work not heretical against his laws? Gardiner’s laws?’

‘But the law keeps changing!’ I exclaim. ‘Changing, and changing again!’

‘Doesn’t matter. It is the law. And your writing is outside it.’

I am silent. ‘Where can I send my papers?’ I ask. ‘Where is safe? Shall I send them to someone in the City? To Thomas Cranmer?’

‘To our uncle,’ she rules. I see that she has already thought of this, that she has been fearful for some time. ‘He’ll keep them safe. He’ll hide them and have the courage to deny them. I’ll pack up while you’re at dinner.’

‘Not my notes on the sermons! Not the translation of the gospels! I need them. I am in the middle of—’

‘Everything,’ she says fiercely. ‘Everything. Every single thing but the king’s Bible and the king’s own writings.’

‘You won’t come to dinner?’

‘I’ve no appetite,’ she says. ‘I won’t come.’

‘You’re never going to miss dinner!’ I say, trying to be cheerful. ‘You’re always hungry.’

‘I never ate a single meal in Syon Abbey when I lived there with Kitty Howard under arrest. My belly was stuffed with fear. And I feel like that now.’

The king dines in the great hall before his people, sending out the best dishes to his favourites, raising his cup to toast his best friends. The court is crowded, for the members of the Privy Council are all here, having worked up an appetite for their dinner with the questioning of Tom Howard. There are many who would be glad to see the younger son from such a great family take a tumble into the quietness of prison for a while and come out with the Howard pride humbled. Those who have been offended by the persistent rise of his father take a pleasure in humiliating the son. Those of the reformed faith are glad to see a Howard squirm. Those who are traditionalists direct their malice at the ardent young scholar. One swift glance tells me that young Tom is not at dinner: not on the table for the young friends and companions, not at the foot of the Howard table. Where can he be?

His father, the Duke of Norfolk, is completely impassive at the head of his family table, rising to his feet to toast the king when he sends down a massive haunch of beef, bowing respectfully to me. There is no way of knowing what is going through the old man’s head. He is a great friend of the old church, devoted to the Mass; but he denied his own beliefs and rode against the Pilgrimage of Grace. Though his heart was with the pilgrims who had enlisted to defend the old church, and fought under the banner of the five wounds of Christ, the duke declared martial law, ignored their royal pardons and killed them one by one in their little villages. He hanged hundreds of innocent men, perhaps thousands, and refused to allow them to be buried in sanctified ground. Whatever his loyalties, whatever his loves, he cares for nothing as much as keeping his place at the side of the king, second in wealth and honour only to Henry. He is determined that his house shall succeed and become the greatest in England.

I cannot understand why such a man, the head of such a noble house, would sell his own daughter into marriage with the Seymours. Her first marriage was to the king’s bastard heir and there is no comparison. As always, Thomas Howard will be thinking one thing and doing another. So what is he thinking when he proposes this match? What will Thomas Seymour have to do when he is the duke’s son-in-law?

And how can the duke, knowing that his second son has been questioned by the Privy Council, dine on the king’s dishes like a man without fear? How can Thomas Howard, frantically thinking where his son might be, raise a glass with a steady hand to the king? I cannot make him out. I cannot calculate what long careful game he is playing in this court of old gamblers.

There is to be a masque after dinner with dancers. The king’s chair with the footstool is placed on the dais and I stand beside him. Courtiers come and go as the dancers make their grand entrance, and Will Somers skips out of the way as the musicians play and the dancing begins.

Anne Seymour comes quietly to stand behind me, her voice masked by the music. She leans forward to whisper in my ear. ‘They offered to release Tom Howard without a charge if he would admit that heresy is preached in your rooms. They threatened him with a trial for heresy if he did not assist them. They said that all they need to know from him are the names of those who preach in your rooms and what they say.’

It is like falling from a horse: everything suddenly goes very slowly and I can see how this started and how it will end between one beat of the music and another. It is as if the court freezes, the little golden clock in my room freezes, as Anne Seymour tells me that the Privy Council are pursuing me for heresy, hunting me down from word to word. Tom Howard is just bait to lead them to me. He is their first step. I am the goal.

‘They asked him to name me?’ I glance sideways at my husband, who is smiling at the dancers and clapping in time to the music, quite blind to my descent into terror. ‘Was the king there? At the Privy Council meeting? Was this in his hearing? Did the king ask them to name me as a heretic himself? Has he told them to find me guilty?’

‘No, thank God. Not the king.’

‘Who then?’

‘It was Wriothesley.’

‘The Lord Chancellor?’

She nods, completely aghast. ‘The highest law lord in the land has ordered the duke’s son to name you as a heretic.’

I cancel the preachers who come to my rooms and instead I summon the king’s chaplains to give us readings from the Bible. I don’t invite them to comment or lead a discussion, and my ladies say nothing, but listen in respectful silence as if none of us is capable of thought. Even when the reading is of great interest to us, something that we would normally study, perhaps even go back to the original Greek to make a new translation, we nod like a convent of orthodox nuns hearing the laws of God and the opinions of man, as if we had no minds of our own.

We go to chapel before dinner and Catherine Brandon, the king’s new favourite, walks beside me.

‘Your Majesty, I am afraid that I have some bad news,’ she starts.

‘Go on,’ I say.

‘A London bookseller, who has supplied me for years with texts, has been arrested for heresy.’

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ I say steadily. ‘I am very sorry for the trouble for your friend.’ I make sure that I don’t even check in my stride as we go side by side down the gallery to the chapel. I incline my head to a group of bowing courtiers.

‘I’m not asking for your protection for him. I am warning you.’ She has to hurry to keep up with my rapid pace. ‘This man, a good man, was arrested on the orders of the Privy Council. The arrest was made out specifically to him by name. He is John Bale. He brings in books from Flanders.’

I raise my hand. ‘Better that you tell me nothing,’ I say.

‘He sold us the Testament in French that you have,’ she says. ‘And the Tyndale translation of the New Testament. They’re banned now.’

‘I don’t have them,’ I reply. ‘I have given away all my books, and you had better get rid of yours, Catherine.’

She looks as frightened as I feel. ‘If my husband were alive then Bishop Stephen Gardiner would never have dared to arrest my bookseller,’ she says.

‘I know,’ I agree. ‘The king would never have allowed Charles Brandon to be questioned by such as Wriothesley.’

‘The king loved my husband,’ she says. ‘So I was safe.’

I know that we are both wondering if he loves me.