The Taming of the Queen

HAMPTON COURT PALACE, SUMMER 1546

The king gets worse and it makes him miserable. He agrees that the court shall move to Hampton Court, away from the unbearable heat of the city and the danger of illness, but he does not come out to the garden, or to boat on the river, or even to Mass in the beautiful palace chapel. They tell me that he wants to rest quietly in his rooms, to talk with his advisors. He will not come for dinner, he does not want to visit me in my rooms, I need not come to his. He has shut himself away, excluding me just as he excluded Kitty Howard, when they assured her that he was ill; but in fact he was locked inside his rooms, here, in this very palace, at Hampton Court, brooding on her failings, on the trial he would rig, and the execution that he would order.

But, just like Anne Boleyn, who attended jousts and dinners and May Day celebrations while knowing that something was wrong, I have to appear before the court. I cannot withdraw like him. I am in my aviary rooms, feeding my birds, watching their thoughtless chatter and their little busyness as they tidy their feathers, when my clerk, William Harper, taps on the door.

‘You can come in,’ I say. ‘Come in and shut the door. I have two of them flying free and I don’t want them to get out.’

He ducks as a canary swoops over his head and comes to my outstretched hand.

‘What is it, William?’ I ask absently, breaking off seed cake and giving it to the pretty little bird. ‘Speak up. I have to leave this little beauty and go and dress for dinner.’

He glances towards Nan and Anne Seymour, who are sitting in the window seat, side by side, both of them unmoved by my lovely little birds. ‘May I speak to you alone?’

‘What for?’ Nan says flatly. ‘Her Majesty has to go to dinner. You can tell me what it is.’

He shakes his head; he looks imploringly at me.

‘Oh, go on, and pick out my jewels and a hood,’ I say impatiently. ‘I’ll come in a moment.’

My clerk and I wait for the door to close behind them, and I turn to him. He is a thoughtful man, monastery trained and with a great love for the old ways. He must have regarded half of the books in my closet with pious horror; he has no admiration for the new learning. I employ him because he is a great scholar, he can translate beautifully and he has a fine hand in writing. When I want to send out a letter in Latin he can translate and transcribe in one draft with a beautiful flowing copperplate script. He has never disagreed with anything the preachers have said in my rooms but I have once or twice seen him bend his head and whisper a silent prayer, like a shocked monk in a worldly school.

‘There! No-one to hear but me and the birds, and they say nothing – except the parrot, who is a terrible blasphemer, but only in Spanish. What is it, William?’

‘I have to warn you, Your Majesty,’ he says gravely. ‘I fear that your enemies are speaking against you.’

‘I know that,’ I say shortly. ‘Thank you for your concern, William, but this, I know already.’

‘Bishop Gardiner’s man came to me and asked me to search your closet for papers,’ he says in a whispered rush. ‘He said I would be rewarded if I would secretly copy anything and bring it to him. Your Majesty, I think he is assembling a case against you.’ The little bird tickles my palm as it shifts its feet and pecks at the crumbs. I did not expect this warning from William. I did not think that they would dare to go this far. I see my shocked expression is mirrored in his troubled face.

‘Are you sure it was the bishop’s man?’

‘Yes. He told me it was to take to the bishop. I could not be mistaken.’

I turn away from him and go to the window, the yellow-winged canary clinging to my outstretched finger. It is a beautiful summer day, the sun just dipping below the high red-brick chimneys, the swifts and swallows swirling around. If Bishop Gardiner is prepared to take such a risk in approaching one of my servants to steal my papers then he must be very confident that he can make a case against me to the king. He must be very sure that a complaint from me to the king will not bring down a storm on his head. He must be certain that he will find something to prove my guilt. Or, even worse, perhaps he has already made a case against me and this is the last stage of a secret enquiry, finding the paperwork to back up the lies.

‘It was to take to the bishop? You are sure of that? Not to the king?’

His face is pale with fear. ‘That he didn’t tell me, Your Majesty. But he was bold as brass: that I was to go through all your papers and bring him whatever I could find. He said to copy down the titles of books also, and to search for a New Testament. He said that he knew you had several.’

‘There’s nothing here,’ I say shortly.

‘I know. I know that you have sent everything away, your beautiful library and all your papers. I told him there was nothing, but he said to look anyway. He knew that you had a library for your studies. He said that they guessed you wouldn’t have been able to part with your books and that they would be hidden in your rooms somewhere.’

‘You have been very fair and honourable to tell me this,’ I say. ‘I shall see that you are rewarded, William.’

He bows his head. ‘I don’t seek any reward.’

‘Will you go back to this man and say that you have looked and that I have nothing?’

‘I will.’

I put out my hand to him, and as he bows and kisses it I see that my fingers are trembling and the little bird on my other hand is shaking as he clings to my thumb. ‘You don’t even think as I do, William. You are kind to protect me when we don’t even agree.’

‘We may not agree, Your Majesty, but I think you should be free to think and write and study,’ he says. ‘Even though you are a woman. Even if you listen to a woman preacher.’

‘God bless you, William, in whatever language He chooses, whether through a priest or through your own good heart.’

He bows. ‘And the woman preacher . . .’ he says very quietly.

I turn in the doorway. ‘Mistress Askew?’

‘They have moved her from Newgate.’

The relief is tremendous. I cry out. ‘Oh! God be praised! She is released?’

‘No. No, God help her. They have taken her to the Tower.’

There is a moment of blank silence as he sees that I understand what he is saying. They have not released her into the custody of her husband; they have not bound her over to keep the peace. Instead, they have moved her from the prison where they keep the common criminals, to the prison where they keep those accused of treason and heresy, near to Tower Hill where they hang the guilty, not far from Smithfield meat market where they burn the heretics.

I turn to the window behind me, and I unlatch it and swing it open.

‘Your Majesty?’ William gestures to the open cages, to the parrot on his perch. ‘Your Majesty? Take care . . .’

I hold the little canary up to the open window so that he can see the blue sky. ‘They can go, William. They can all go. Indeed, they had better go. I don’t know how long I will be here to care for them.’

I am dressed in complete silence, my ladies handing me my things without a word, in well-practised choreography. I don’t know how to reach Anne Askew behind the thick stone walls of the Tower. It is the prison for enemies who will not be freed for years, for the gravest traitors, for evil people who have to be held without any chance of escape. For a prisoner to enter through the watergate, concealed from the City and from all the people who might rise up to defend him, is to set sail on the river Lethe – towards oblivion.

At the heart of my fear for Anne is that I don’t know why they would move her from Newgate to the Tower. She has been arraigned for heresy, she has been questioned by the Privy Council, why do they not leave her at Newgate until they send her for trial, or grant her pardon and send her home? Why would they move her to the Tower? What is the point of it? And who has ordered it?

Nan comes forward and curtseys as Catherine stands behind me and fastens my necklace. The priceless sapphires are heavy and cold on my neck. They make me shiver.

‘What is it, Nan?’

‘It’s Bette,’ she says, naming one of my younger maids-in-waiting.

‘What about her?’ I ask shortly.

‘Her mother has written to me and asked for her to be sent home,’ she says. ‘I have taken the liberty of saying that she can go.’

‘Is she ill?’ I ask.

Nan shakes her head with a pursed mouth, as if she would say more but she is angry.

‘So what’s the matter with her?’

There is an embarrassed silence.

‘Her father is a tenant of Bishop Gardiner,’ Catherine Brandon remarks.

I take a moment to understand her. ‘You think the bishop has advised Bette’s parents to remove her from my keeping?’

Nan nods. Catherine curtseys and leaves the room to wait for me outside.

‘He’d never admit to it,’ Nan says. ‘So there’s no point in challenging him.’

‘But why would Bette leave me? Even if he advised it?’

‘I’ve seen it before,’ Nan says. ‘When Kitty Howard was charged. The younger maids, those who didn’t have to stay to give evidence, all found excuses to go home. The court shrank like linen on a washday. Same as when the king turned against Queen Anne. All the Boleyns disappeared overnight.’

‘I’m not like Kitty Howard!’ I exclaim in a rush of sudden temper. ‘I am the sixth wife, the sixth disregarded wife, not the fifth guilty wife. All I have done is to study and listen to preachers. She was an adulteress, or perhaps a bigamist, and a whore! Any mother would take her daughter away from service to a young woman like that! Any mother would fear the morals in a court like that! But everyone says that my court is the most virtuous of any in Christendom! Why would anyone take their daughter away from me?’

‘Kitty’s maids left in the days before she was arrested,’ Nan says levelly, not responding to my anger. ‘Not because she was light, but because she was doomed. Nobody wants to be in the court of a falling queen.’

‘A falling queen?’ I repeat. I hear the words: it sounds like a comet, like something in the night sky. ‘A falling queen.’

‘William told me that you opened the window and let your birds fly away,’ she remarks.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll go and close it again, and call them back if I can. There’s no point in showing that we are afraid.’

‘I’m not afraid!’ I lie.

‘You should be.’

As I lead my ladies in to dinner I look around as if I fear that the court too will be slipping away. But I cannot see any absences. Everyone is there, in their accustomed places. Those who believe in reform do not feel they are newly endangered, it is only those of my household, those who are close to me. Everyone bows respectfully and deeply as I go by. It seems as if nothing is changed from every other night. The king’s place is laid, the cloth of state hangs over his great reinforced chair, the servers bow as they come into the room and present the finest dishes to his empty throne as ritual demands. He will dine in his own rooms with his new circle of favourites: Bishop Stephen Gardiner, the Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley, Sir Richard Rich, Sir Anthony Denny, William Paget. When dinner is over I may leave the great hall to sit with the king in his rooms, but until then there must be someone at the head table. The court needs a monarch, the princesses need a parent to dine with them.

My gaze goes across the room and I note that the Seymour household has an empty place laid at the head of the table. I glance at Anne. ‘Is Edward coming home?’ I ask.

‘I wish to God he was here,’ she says bluntly. ‘But I don’t expect him. He doesn’t dare leave Boulogne: the place would fall in a moment.’ She follows my gaze. ‘That place will be for Thomas.’

‘Oh?’

‘He has come to see the king. They can’t raise the Mary Rose. They’re trying some new way, pumping her out as she lies on the ocean bed.’

‘Really?’

Thomas comes into the great hall, bows to the empty throne and then bows to me and to the princesses. He winks at Elizabeth and takes his place at the head of the Seymour table. I send out dishes to him, to the Duke of Norfolk, and to Lord Lisle, without favouritism. Without looking directly towards Thomas, I can see that he is tanned like a peasant, the skin at his temples lined from smiling into the sun. He looks well. He has a new jacket in velvet – deep red, my favourite colour. Dozens of dishes come from the kitchen, the trumpeters announce each fresh course with a scream of sound. I take a small portion from everything that is presented to me, and I wonder what the time is now, and if he will come to me after dinner.

It takes forever for the feast to be over, and then the court rises from the tables and the men stroll about and talk to one another, and approach the ladies. Some people settle to cards or games, the musicians play and a few people start to dance. There is no formal entertainment this evening, and I step down from the dais to make my way slowly towards the king’s rooms, pausing to talk to people as I go.

Thomas appears at my side and bows. ‘Good evening, Your Majesty.’

‘Good evening, Sir Thomas. Your sister-in-law tells me that you have spoken with the king about the Mary Rose.’

He nods. ‘I had to tell His Majesty that we made an attempt to raise her but that she was stuck fast on the seabed. We’re going to try again with more ships and more ropes. I will send swimmers down to try to make her watertight below decks and pump her out. I think it can be done.’

‘I hope so. It was a terrible loss.’

‘Are you going to see the king?’ he asks, his voice very low.

‘I go every evening.’

‘He seems very displeased.’

‘I know.’

‘I told him that since my marriage to Mary Howard is not to go ahead, I am still looking for a wife.’

Carefully, I don’t look up at him. He extends his arm. I rest my fingers on it. I sense but I do not grip the strength of his forearm. I walk beside him, our paces matching. If I stepped a little closer my cheek would touch his shoulder. I don’t step any closer.

‘Did you say that you hope for Princess Elizabeth?’

‘I did not. He was not in the mood for conversation.’

I nod.

‘You know, there was something in Mary Howard’s refusal that I still don’t understand,’ he says quietly. ‘The Norfolks all agreed, Henry Howard the oldest son, and the old duke himself. It was Lady Mary herself who refused.’

‘I can’t imagine her father allowing a daughter to have her own way.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘That’s true. She would have had to fight like a wild cat to oppose her father and her brother, acting together. She would have had to defy them openly. It makes no sense. I know that she doesn’t dislike me, and it was a good match. There must have been something about the terms of the marriage that were completely unacceptable to her.’

‘How unacceptable?’

‘Unbearable. Unimaginable. Anathema.’

‘But what could such a thing be? She could know nothing against you?’

His wicked smile gleams. ‘Nothing of that gravity, Your Majesty.’

‘And yet you are sure it was her refusal? Her determined refusal?’

‘I hoped you might know.’

I shake my head. ‘I am surrounded by mysteries and worries,’ I say to him. ‘The preachers who spoke in my rooms are arrested, the books that the king gave me to read are banned, it is even illegal to own the king’s Bible, and my friend Anne Askew has been moved from Newgate Prison to the Tower. My ladies are slipping away from my rooms.’ I smile. ‘This afternoon I let my birds go.’

He glances around the room and smiles at an acquaintance as if he is merry. ‘This is very bad.’

‘I know it.’

‘Can’t you speak to the king? A word from him would restore you.’

‘I’ll talk to him this evening if he is in a good mood.’

‘Your only safety is in his love for you. He does still love you?’

I make the tiniest gesture, of denial. ‘Thomas, I don’t know that he has ever loved anyone. I don’t know that he can.’

Thomas and I cross the king’s presence room filled with petitioners, lawyers, doctors and hangers-on watching our footsteps, estimating our confidence at every stride. He pauses at the door of the king’s privy chamber.

‘I can’t bear to leave you here,’ he says unhappily.

Hundreds of people watch us as I give him a cool smile. I extend my hand to him.

He bows, touching my fingers with his warm lips. ‘You are a brilliant woman,’ he says quietly. ‘You have read and thought more than most of the men in there. You are a loving woman and you believe in God and speak to Him far more intensely and sincerely than they ever will. You can surely explain yourself to the king. You are the most beautiful woman at court, by far the most desirable. You can rekindle his love for you.’

He bows formally, and I turn and go into the king’s rooms.

They are in the middle of a discussion about chantries and monasteries. To my speechless amazement I realise that they are agreeing how many religious houses – closed at such cost and with such heartbreak – might be reopened and restored. Bishop Gardiner believes that we need monasteries and convents in every town to keep the country peaceful and the people supplied with religious solace and comforts. The corrupt marketplaces that traded in fear and superstition, which the king rightly closed, are now to reopen, as if there had never been a reformation in England. And they are to return to the business of selling lies at a profit. As I come in, Stephen Gardiner is suggesting the restoration of some shrines and some pilgrim routes. Slyly, he suggests that they might pay their fees directly to the crown, not to the church – as if that makes them holy. He says that it is possible to do God’s work at a profit. I sit quietly beside Henry, fold my hands in my lap, and listen to this wicked man suggest the restoration of superstition and paganism to the country in order that poor people might be robbed by the rich.

But I make sure that I say nothing. Only when the conversation turns to Cranmer’s liturgy do I speak to defend the reform version. Thomas Cranmer was commissioned by the king to translate the Latin into English. The king himself worked on it, and I sat at his side and read and reread the English version, compared it to the old Latin original, checked it for copying errors when it came back from the printers, wrote my own translations. In a low voice I suggest that Cranmer’s work is adequate and should be used in every church in the land; but then I get stirred and argue that it is more than adequate, it is beautiful, it is even holy. The king smiles and nods as if he agrees with me, and I am emboldened. I say that people should be free to speak directly to God in church, their contact with God should not be mediated through a priest, should not be undertaken in a language that they cannot understand. As the king is father to his people, so God is father to him. The line between king and people is just like the communion between people and God; it should be clear and open and direct. How else shall there be an honourable king? How else shall there be a loving God?

I know in my heart that this is true; I know that the king believes it too. He has gone so far to drive popery and paganism out of this country, to bring his people to true understanding. I forget to sweeten every sentence with praise of him as I speak earnestly and passionately, and then I realise that his face has grown dark with ill-temper and Stephen Gardiner is looking down, hiding a smile, not meeting my bright eyes. I have spoken too passionately, too cleverly. Nobody likes a clever passionate woman.

I try to retreat. ‘Perhaps you are tired. I will say goodnight.’

‘I am tired,’ he agrees. ‘I am tired, and I am old, and it is a fine thing in my old days that I should be taught by my wife.’

I curtsey very low, leaning forward so that he can see down the top of my gown. I feel his eyes on my breasts and I say: ‘I could never teach you, Your Majesty. You are so much wiser than I.’

‘All of this I have heard before,’ he says irritably. ‘I have had wives before, who thought they knew better than me.’

I flush. ‘I am sure not one that ever loved you as much as I do,’ I whisper, and I bend and kiss his cheek.

I hesitate at the smell of him: the stink of his rotting leg, like decaying meat, the sweet sickly smell of old sweat on old skin, the bad breath from his mouth, his constipated flatulence. I hold my breath and I lay my cool cheek against his hot damp face. ‘God bless Your Majesty, my lord husband,’ I say gently. ‘And give you good night.’

‘Goodnight, Kateryn Parr,’ he says, biting off his words. ‘Don’t you think it odd that every one of your predecessors called herself by her name: Queen Katherine or Queen Anne or – God bless her – Queen Jane? But you call yourself Kateryn Parr. You sign yourself Kateryn the Queen KP. P for Parr.’

I am so surprised at this ridiculous challenge that I reply before I can think. ‘I am myself!’ I say. ‘I am Kateryn Parr. I am my father’s daughter, educated by my mother. What else should I call myself but by my name?’

He looks across at Stephen Gardiner – who uses his name and his title without question – and they nod at each other as if I have revealed something that they long suspected.

‘What can be wrong with this?’ I demand.

He does not even answer me, he waves me away.

When I wake in the morning the privy chamber outside my bedroom is oddly quiet. Usually there is the low reassuring buzz of my ladies arriving for the day and then the tap on the door by the maid-in-waiting for that day bringing in the hot water. As I get up and wash my face and hands in a golden bowl of warm water, the ladies bring my gowns drawn from the queen’s wardrobe for me to choose what I will wear, and the sleeves and the bodice and the hood and the jewels. They will offer something to eat; but I will not taste anything or drink until we have been to Mass, for I am uncertain, as everyone is now uncertain, as to whether we are to fast before Mass or not. It may be well known as a meaningless ritual, or Gardiner may have restored it to the court as a holy tradition. I am not sure. It is a sign of how ridiculous the times have become that I – a queen in my own rooms – do not know if I may eat a bread roll or not. It is ludicrous.

Ludicrous, and yet this morning I cannot hear the noise of the baker’s boy bringing bread from the kitchen. It is so eerily quiet outside my private chamber that I don’t wait for the arrival of my maids-in-waiting; I get up, pull my robe over my nakedness and open the door to look out. There are half a dozen women outside, three of them holding gowns from the royal wardrobe. They are oddly silent, and when I open my door and stand wordlessly, looking at them, they don’t exclaim good morning and smile. They drop into silent curtseys and when they rise up they keep their eyes on the floor. They will not look at me.

‘What’s the matter?’ I demand. I scan the half-dozen of them, and then I ask, more impatiently, ‘Where is Nan? Where is my sister?’

Nobody answers, but Anne Seymour steps reluctantly forward. ‘Please allow me to speak with you alone, Your Majesty,’ she says.

‘What is it?’ I say, stepping back into my bedroom and beckoning her in. ‘What’s the matter?’

She closes the door behind her. In the silence I can hear the ticking of my new clock.

‘Where is Nan?’

‘I have some bad news.’

‘Is it Anne Askew?’

At once I think that they are going to execute her. That they have done the thing that we were sure they would not do. That they have taken her to trial, and rushed through a guilty verdict, and they are going to burn her. ‘Tell me it’s not Anne? Has Nan gone to the Tower to pray with her?’

Anne shakes her head. ‘No, it’s your ladies,’ she says quietly. ‘It’s your own sister. In the night, after you had left the king, the Privy Council sat in judgement, and they have arrested your sister Nan Herbert, your kinswoman Lady Elizabeth Tyrwhit, and your cousin Lady Maud Lane.’

I cannot even hear her. ‘What did you say? Who is arrested?’

‘The ladies-in-waiting who are your kinswomen. Your sister, and your cousins.’

‘For what?’ I ask stupidly. ‘On what charge?’

‘They have not been charged yet. They were questioned all through the night; they are still being interrogated now. And the yeomen of the guard have entered their rooms, their private family rooms that they share with their husbands, and into their chambers here, in your quarters, and taken their papers away: all their boxes, all their books.’

‘They are looking at papers?’

‘They are looking for papers and books,’ Anne confirms. ‘It is an inquiry about heresy.’

‘The Privy Council is accusing my ladies, my cousins, my own sister, Nan, of heresy?’

Anne nods, her face impassive.

There is a long silence. I feel my knees are weak beneath me and I sink down to a stool by the grate where a little fire flickers.

‘What can I do?’

She is as frightened as I am. ‘Your Majesty, I don’t know. All your papers are gone from your rooms?’ She glances at the desk where I used to write notes with such pleasure, where I used to study with such excitement.

‘All gone. Yours?’

‘Edward took them to Wulf Hall when he left for France. He warned me – but I did not think it would be this bad. He never thought it would get this bad. If he were here . . . I have written to him to come home. I have told him that Bishop Gardiner is dominating the Privy Council and that nobody is safe. I have told him that I fear for you, that I fear for myself.’

‘Nobody is safe,’ I repeat.

‘Your Majesty, if they can arrest your own sister then they can arrest any one of us.’

I suddenly rouse myself, my temper flares. ‘The bishop dares to advise the Privy Council to arrest my sister, Nan? My chief lady-in-waiting? Sir William Herbert’s wife? Get my gown. I shall dress and see the king.’

She puts out a hand to detain me. ‘Your Majesty . . . think . . . It’s not the bishop who has done this alone. It is the king. He must have signed the warrant for your sister’s arrest. This must all be with his knowledge. It may even be at his request.’

I lead my ladies to chapel. We put a brave face on it but two maids-in-waiting are missing and three ladies are absent and the court knows, like a pack of anxious hounds, that something is wrong.

Devoutly, we bow our heads to pray. Fervently we take the bread. Quietly we whisper: ‘Amen! Amen!’ as if to declare there is not a thought in our silly heads as to what this really is: wafer or meat, bread or God. We finger our rosaries; I am wearing a crucifix at my neck. Princess Mary kneels beside me but her gown does not touch the hem of mine. Princess Elizabeth kneels on the other side and her cold hand creeps into my shaking grasp. She does not know what is happening but she knows that something is very badly wrong.

After chapel we take our breakfast in the great hall, and the court is subdued, men talking quietly among themselves and everyone glancing towards me to see how I am taking the absence of my sister, of my two other missing ladies. I smile as if I am completely untroubled. I bow my head for the grace as the king’s chaplain reads it in Latin. I eat a little meat, bread, I sip ale; I mime appetite, as if I am not sick with fear. I smile at my ladies and I glance at the Seymour table. I long to see Thomas as if he were a ship with reefed sails waiting at a quayside, ready to sail away to safety. I long to see him as if the sight of him would make me safe. But he is not here, I don’t expect him, and I can’t send for him.

I turn to Catherine Brandon, the most senior of my ladies at breakfast. ‘Your Grace, would you inquire if His Majesty the king is well enough to see me this morning?’

She rises from the table without a word. We all watch her walk down the length of the great hall, everyone praying that she will return with an invitation to visit the king’s rooms and that we will find ourselves suddenly high in his volatile favour. But she is not gone long.

‘His Majesty is in pain with the injury from his leg.’ She speaks calmly but her face is white. ‘His doctor is with him, he is resting. He says that he will send for you later and that he wishes you a very good day.’

Everyone hears it. It is like a blast from the horns of the hunt. It is open season on heretics at court and everyone knows that the greatest prey, the one who carries the greatest bounty on her head, is me.

I smile. ‘Then we’ll go to my rooms for an hour or two and ride out later.’ I turn to my master of horse. ‘We’ll all ride,’ I say.

He bows and gives me his hand as I step down from the dais and walk through the silently bowing court. I smile and nod from left to right. Nobody shall say that I looked afraid.

When we get to my rooms Nan, Maud Lane and Elizabeth Tyrwhit are there, waiting for us to come back from breakfast. Nan is seated in her favourite spot in the window seat, her hands folded in her lap, the picture of womanly patience. Something about her powerful rigidity warns me that she has not returned to safety. I walk into the room and I stop myself running to her. I don’t fling myself into her arms. I stand in the centre of the room and I say very clearly, so that everyone can hear me, and everyone who is appointed to report to the spies of the Privy Council can make their statement: ‘Lady Herbert, my sister, I am glad to see you are returned to us. I was surprised and concerned to hear that you were explaining yourself to the Privy Council. I will have no heresy and no disloyalty in my rooms.’

‘None at all,’ Nan says without a quaver in her voice, without the flicker of an expression on her blank face. ‘There is no heresy here and there never has been. The councillors questioned myself and two of your ladies and were satisfied that nothing had been said or written by us, either in your presence or in your absence, that could ever be construed as heresy.’

I hesitate. I can’t think what more can be said for the listening court. ‘Have they cleared your names and discharged you?’

‘Yes,’ she says, and the other two nod. ‘Completely.’

‘Very well,’ I say. ‘I will change my gown and we will go out riding. You can help me.’

We go into my room together, Catherine Brandon comes in too, and the moment that the door is shut behind us we clutch each other.

‘Nan! Nan!’

She holds me with a fierce strength, as if we were little girls in Kendal once more and she had to keep me from jumping out of a tree in the orchard. ‘Oh, Kat! Oh, Kat!’

‘What did they ask you? Did they keep you awake all night?’

‘Hush,’ she says. ‘Hush.’

I find I am choking with frightened sobs and I put my hand to my throat and pull back from her grasp. ‘I am all right,’ I say. ‘I won’t cry. I won’t go out there with red eyes. I don’t want anyone to see . . .’

‘You’re all right,’ she confirms. Gently she takes a handkerchief from her sleeve and touches my wet eyes and then dabs at her own. ‘Nobody must think that you’re distressed.’

‘What did they say to you?’

‘They’ve been questioning Anne Askew,’ she says bluntly. ‘They have tortured her.’

I am so appalled I cannot speak. ‘Tortured her? The daughter of a gentleman of the realm? Nan, they can’t have done so!’

‘They’ve lost their minds. They were authorised by the king to question her. He told them that they could take her out of Newgate Prison and frighten her into confession, but they took her to the Tower and they put her on the rack.’

The terrible pictures of my dream come back to me. The woman with the feet turned outwards, with a hollow where her shoulders should be. ‘Don’t say it.’

‘I’m afraid it’s true. I think they must have shown her the rack and then her courage enraged them and they couldn’t resist it. When she wouldn’t say anything they went on and on; they couldn’t stop themselves. The constable of the Tower was so appalled that he left them to it and reported it to the king. He said that they had thrown off their jackets in the torture room and racked her themselves. They pushed aside the hangman to do it. One at her head, one at her feet, they turned the wheels. They didn’t want the hangman to do it, it wasn’t enough for them to watch, they wanted to hurt her. When the king heard that from the constable he commanded that they stop.’

‘He has pardoned her? He had her released?’

‘Not him,’ she says bitterly. ‘He only said that they might not rack her. But, Kat, by the time the constable had got back to the Tower, they had been working on her all night. They carried on while the constable rode to see the king. They did not stop till he came back and told them.’

I am silent. ‘Hours?’

‘It must have been hours. She’ll never walk again. All the bones in her feet and hands will be broken, her shoulders, her knees her hips will be dislocated. They will have broken her spine or pulled it apart.’

Again I see the image from my dream of the woman with her wrists pulled from her arms, her arms detached at the elbow, the strange hollow where her shoulders should have been, her strange poise trying to hold her dislocated neck. I can hardly speak.

‘But they have released her now?’

‘No. They pulled her off the rack and dropped her on the floor.’

‘She’s still there? In the Tower? With her arms and legs torn from their sockets?’

Nan nods, looking blankly at me.

‘Who was it?’ I spit. ‘Name them.’

‘I don’t know for sure. Richard Rich was one. And Wriothesley.’

‘The Lord Chancellor of England racked a lady, in the Tower? With his own hands?’

At my appalled face she only nods.

‘Has he gone mad? Have they all run mad?’

‘I think they must be.’

‘No woman has ever been racked! No gentlewoman!’

‘They were determined to know.’

‘About her faith?’

‘No, she speaks of that quite willingly. They had everything they needed about her beliefs. Enough to find her guilty ten times over. God forgive them, God help us, they wanted to know about you. They racked her to make her name you.’

We are both silent and, though I am ashamed, I have to ask my next question. ‘Do you know what she said? Did she name us as heretics? Did she name me? Did she speak of my books? She must have done. Nobody could stand that. She must have done.’

Nan’s smile contrasts with her red eyes. It is the old smile of gritty courage that all women show who have gone through hard nights and come out without betrayal. ‘No. She can’t have done. For see? They released us. We were there when the constable came from London and said what they were doing. They took him in to the king but the door between the council chamber and the privy chamber was open a crack and we could hear His Majesty bellow at them. Then they came out and questioned us some more. They must have hoped that she would betray us or we would betray her – that at least one of us would name you. But she stayed silent, and we said nothing and then they released us. They have dismembered her, God be with her. They have torn her apart like a boned chicken, but she has not said your name.’

I give one sob, like a cough, and then I am quiet. ‘We have to send her a doctor,’ I say. ‘And food and drink and some comfort.

We have to get her released.’

‘We can’t,’ Nan says with a long shuddering sigh. ‘I thought of this. But she has gone through all this to deny her sisterhood with us. We can’t incriminate ourselves. We have to leave her alone.’

‘She will be in agony!’

‘Let it be worthwhile.’

‘For God’s sake, Nan! Is the Privy Council going to release her?’

‘I don’t know. I think—’

There is a gentle tap on the bedroom door. Catherine Brandon exclaims in irritation and opens it a crack. We hear her say, ‘Yes, what is it?’ and then reluctantly hold it wider. ‘It’s Doctor Wendy,’ she says. ‘He insists.’

The plump form of the doctor appears in the doorway. ‘What now?’ I demand. ‘Is the king ill?’

He waits till Catherine closes the door, then he bows over my hand. ‘I have to speak to you in confidence,’ he says.

‘Doctor Wendy, this is not the time. I am distressed . . .’

‘It’s urgent.’

I nod to Catherine and Nan to step back to the doorway. ‘You can speak.’

He draws a paper from the inside of his jacket. ‘There is worse than you know,’ he says. ‘Worse than these ladies know. The king told me himself, just now. I am so sorry. So sorry to have to tell you. He has issued a warrant for your arrest. This is a copy.’

Now that it has happened, now that the worse thing possible has happened, I do not scream and cry. I am completely still. ‘The king has ordered my arrest?’

‘I regret to say so,’ he says formally.

I hold out my hand and he gives me the paper. We move slowly, as if we are in a dream. I think of Anne Askew, stretched on the rack. I think of Anne Boleyn taking off her pearl necklace for the French swordsman. I think of Kitty Howard asking them to bring the block to her room so that she could practise laying her head down. I think that I too will have to find the courage to die with dignity. I don’t know that I am going to be able to do it. I think I am too passionate for life, I think I am too young, I think I want too much to live. I think I want Thomas Seymour. I want a life with him. I want tomorrow.

Blindly, I unfold the paper. I can see Henry’s scrawled signature as I have seen it a dozen times. Without doubt it is my husband’s hand. Above it in a clerk’s script is the warrant for my arrest. It is so. It is here. It is here at last. My own husband has ordered my arrest on a charge of heresy. My own husband has signed it.

The enormity of this almost overcomes me. He does not want to send me back to widowed obscurity – though he could do that, he has the power to do that. Or he could exile me from court and I could do nothing but obey. He could treat me as he did Anne of Cleves and order me to live elsewhere and I would have to go. He could do that, he is head of the church, he can rule which marriages are valid and which should be dissolved. He did that to Katherine of Aragon though she was a princess of Spain and the pope himself said it could not be done; but Henry did it.

But he does not want me out of his sight or out of his palaces, he does not want me to hand back the jewels and return the gowns of the other queens, he does not want me to leave his children and be forgotten by them. It is not enough for me to surrender the regency and lose my power. That is not enough for him. He wants me dead. The only reason to charge me with a crime that carries a sentence of death is to kill me. Henry, who has executed two wives and waited for news of the deaths of two others, now wants me dead like them.

I can’t understand it, I can’t think why. I can’t see why he should not send me into exile if he has come to hate me, after loving me so much. But it is not so. He wants me dead.

I turn to Nan, standing white-faced with Catherine at the door. ‘See this,’ I say wonderingly. ‘Nan, see what he has done now. See what he wants to do to me.’ I hand it to her.

Silently she reads it, she tries to speak but her mouth opens and closes and she says nothing. Catherine takes it out of her powerless hands and reads it in silence, and then raises her eyes and looks at me.

‘This is Gardiner’s work,’ Catherine says after a long while.

Doctor Wendy nods. ‘He named you as a treasonous heretic,’ he says. ‘He said you were a serpent in the king’s bosom.’

‘It’s not enough that I am Eve, the mother of all sin; now I have to be the serpent as well?’ I demand fiercely.

Doctor Wendy nods.

‘He has no evidence!’ I say.

‘They don’t need evidence.’ Doctor Wendy states the obvious. ‘Bishop Gardiner says that the religion you speak for denies lords, denies kings, says that all men are equal. Your faith is the same as sedition, he says.’

‘I have done nothing to deserve death,’ I say. I can hear my voice shake and I press my lips together.

‘Neither did any of the others,’ says Catherine.

‘The bishop said that anyone who spoke as you do, with justice, by law, would deserve death. Those were his very words.’

‘When are they coming?’ Nan interrupts.

‘Coming?’ I don’t understand her.

‘To arrest her?’ she asks the doctor. ‘What’s the plan? When are they coming? And where will they take her?’

Practical as always, she goes to the cupboard and takes out my purse, and looks for a box to pack my things. Her hands are shaking so much that she cannot turn the key in the lock. I put both hands on her shoulders, as if to stop Nan preparing for my arrest will prevent the yeomen coming for me.

‘The Lord Chancellor is ordered to come for her. He’ll take her to the Tower. I don’t know when. I don’t know when she’ll be tried.’

At the words ‘the Tower’ I find that my knees give way beneath me, and Nan guides me into a chair. I bend over till my head stops swimming and Catherine gives me a glass of small ale. It tastes old and stale. I think of Thomas Wriothesley spending all night racking Anne Askew in the Tower, and then coming to my rooms to take me there.

‘I have to go,’ Catherine says shortly. ‘I have two fatherless boys. I have to leave you.’

‘Don’t go!’

‘I have to,’ she says.

Silently, Nan tips her head towards the door to tell her to leave. Catherine curtseys very low. ‘God bless you,’ she says. ‘God keep you. Goodbye.’

The door closes behind her and I realise that she has said farewell to a dying woman.

‘How did you come by this?’ Nan asks Doctor Wendy.

‘I was there when they were deciding, making his sleeping draught in the back of the room, and then when I dressed his leg, the king himself told me that it was no life for a man in his old age to be lectured by a young wife.’

I raise my head. ‘He said that?’

He nods.

‘Nothing more than that? He has nothing more against me than that?’

‘Nothing more. What more could he have? And then I found the warrant dropped on the floor in the corridor between his bedroom and his privy chamber. Just on the floor by the door. As soon as I saw it I brought it to you.’

‘You found the warrant?’ Nan asks suspiciously.

‘I did . . .’ His voice trails off. ‘Ah, I suppose someone must have left it for me to find.’

‘Nobody drops a warrant for the arrest of a queen by accident,’ Nan says. ‘Someone wanted us to know.’ She strides across the room, thinking furiously. ‘You had better go to the king,’ she advises me. ‘Go to Henry now, and go down on your knees, creep along the floor like a penitent, beg pardon for your mistakes. Ask his forgiveness for speaking out.’

‘It won’t work,’ Doctor Wendy disagrees. ‘He has ordered his doors locked. He won’t see her.’

‘It’s her only chance. If she can get in to see him and be humble . . . more humble than any woman in the world has ever been. Kat, you’ll have to crawl. You’ll have to put your hands beneath his boot.’

‘I’ll crawl,’ I swear.

‘He has said he will not receive her,’ the doctor says awkwardly. ‘The guards are ordered not to let her in.’

‘He shut himself away from Kitty Howard,’ Nan remembers. ‘And Queen Anne.’

They are silent. I look from one to the other and I cannot think what to do. I can only think that the yeomen are coming and that they will take me to the Tower and Anne Askew and I will be prisoners in the same cold keep. I may walk to the window in the night and hear her crying in pain. We may wait in adjoining cells for the sentence of death. I may hear them carry her out to be burned. She will hear them building my scaffold on the green.

‘What if he could be persuaded to come to you?’ Doctor Wendy suddenly suggests. ‘If he thought you were ill?’

Nan gasps. ‘If you were to tell him that she had fallen into terrible grief, that she might die of her grief – if you were to tell him that she is asking for him, all but on her deathbed . . .’

‘Like Jane in childbirth,’ I say.

‘Like Queen Katherine, when her last words were that she wanted to see him,’ Nan prompts.

‘A helpless woman in despair, near to death for grief . . .’

‘He might,’ the doctor agrees.

‘Can you do it?’ I ask him intently. ‘Can you convince him that I am desperate to see him, and that my heart is broken?’

‘And that he would look wonderful if he came, merciful.’

‘I’ll try,’ he promises me. ‘I’ll try now.’

I remember Thomas telling me never to cry in front of the king because he likes women’s tears. ‘Tell him I am beside myself with grief,’ I say. ‘Tell him I cannot stop crying.’

‘Hurry,’ Nan says. ‘When is Wriothesley coming to arrest her?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Go now then.’

He goes to the door and I get to my feet and put a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t endanger yourself,’ I say, though I long to order him to do anything, say anything that will save me. ‘Don’t put yourself in danger. Don’t say that you warned me.’

‘I will say that I heard you were sick with grief,’ he says. He looks at my strained face and my stunned eyes. ‘I will tell him he has broken your heart.’

He bows and goes out of my bedchamber into my privy rooms where already the ladies of the court are silently gathering, and wondering if they will be called to give evidence against another of Henry’s queens in another death trial.

‘Hair down,’ Nan says briskly. She leaves a maid to unplait my hair and brush it over my shoulders and she opens the door to order another to fetch my best silk night robe with the black slashed sleeves.

She comes back into the room as two maids arrive and straighten the sheets on the bed, and heap up the pillows. ‘Perfume,’ she says shortly, and they get a jar of oil of roses and a feather to flick the scent all over the sheets.

Nan turns back to me. ‘Rouge on your lips,’ she says. ‘Just a little. Belladonna in your eyes.’

‘I have some,’ one of the ladies says. She sends her own maid flying to her rooms as my maid comes in with my nightgown.

I take off my ordinary gown and put on the silk one. It is cold against my naked skin. Nan ties the black ribbons at the throat and all the way down, but she leaves the top one loose, so there is a glimpse of my pale skin against the dark silk, and he will be able to see the round shape of my breasts. She smooths my hair over my shoulders and the auburn ringlets glint against the darkness of the gown. She closes the shutters just a little so the room is shadowy and intimate.

‘Princess Elizabeth is to sit outside in the privy chamber reading the king’s writings,’ she throws over her shoulder, and someone runs to invite the princess to her place.

‘We’ll leave you alone,’ she says quietly to me. ‘I’ll be here when he comes in and then I’ll go out. I’ll try and take his pages out with me. You know what you have to do?’

I nod. I am cold inside the silk nightgown and I am afraid that I will have goose bumps and shiver.

‘Start in the bed,’ Nan advises. ‘I doubt you can stand, anyway.’

She helps me into the great bed. The scent of roses is almost overwhelming. She pulls the gown down to my feet and parts it at the front, so that the king will be able to see my slender ankles, the enticing curve of my calf.

‘Don’t be too tempting,’ she says. ‘It has to be all his own idea.’

I lean back against the pillows, and she pulls a lock of hair over my shoulder to fall against the whiteness of my skin.

‘This is disgusting,’ I remark. ‘I am a scholar, and a queen. I am not a whore.’

She nods, as matter-of-fact as a swineherd bringing the sow to the boar. ‘Yes.’

We can hear the rumble of the king’s chair across the wooden floor of the presence chamber, and then the doors open to my privy chamber. We hear the ladies rise to greet him and his embarrassed ‘good morning’ to them all and his greeting to Princess Elizabeth, who knows well enough to keep her head down and look devout.

The guards open my bedroom door to him and the king is wheeled in, his bandaged leg sticking stiffly out before him. A waft of stinking flesh breezes in with him.

I flutter a little, as if I am trying to rise but I fall back, too weak and overcome at the sight of him. I turn a tear-stained face to him as Nan gets hold of the pages and draws them backwards through the doors then nods to the guard to close the doors on the two of us. In a moment the king finds himself alone with me.

‘The doctor said you were very ill?’ he asks sulkily.

‘They should not have troubled you . . .’ My voice dies away into a little sob. ‘I am so honoured that you should come . . .’

‘Of course I would come to see my wife,’ the king says, cheered at the thought of his own uxoriousness, his eyes on my legs.

‘You’re so good to me,’ I whisper. ‘That’s why I was so . . .’

‘So what, Kate? What’s the matter?’

I stammer. I genuinely can’t think of what to say most likely to stimulate his pity. I plunge in: ‘If I displease you, I want to die,’ I say.

The sudden flush in his face is like the expression he has in sexual pleasure. By luck I have stumbled upon the one thing that delights him above all other, and I did not know it till now. I have fallen, in my desperation, on the very heart of his desire for a woman.

‘Die, Kate? Don’t talk about dying. You needn’t talk about dying. You are young and healthy.’ His gaze lingers on my arched instep, my ankle, the smooth curve of my leg. ‘Now, why would a pretty young woman like you talk about dying?’

Because you are Bluebeard, the Bluebeard of my nightmares, I want to say. You are Barbe-Bleue and your wife Tryphine opened the locked doors of your castle and found dead wives laid out in their beds. Because I know you now for a wife-killer, I know you are merciless. Because your fat glory in yourself is so great that you cannot imagine anyone thinking for themselves, or being themselves, or caring for anything but you. You are the sole sun in your own heavens. You are a natural enemy of anyone who is not you, not your very self. You are a murderer in your soul, and all you want of a wife is her submission to you or submission to the death you prescribe for her. There is no choice of anything else. You will be master, complete master. You can hardly bear anyone to be other than you. Your men friends have to be your mimics, the only survivor at your court is your Fool, who declares himself witless. You cannot bear anything that is not in your image. You are a natural killer of wives.

‘If you don’t love me, I want to die,’ I say, my voice a trembling thread of sound. ‘There is nothing left for me. If you don’t love me there is nothing left for me but the grave.’

He is aroused. He shifts his huge bulk around in the creaking chair so that he can see me. I writhe a little in my grief and my robe parts. I push back the mass of my tumbled hair and the robe slips from my shoulder; but apparently I don’t notice that he can see my white skin, the curve of my breast, in my panting distress.

‘My wife,’ he says. ‘My beloved wife.’

‘Say that I am your beloved,’ I insist. ‘I will die if I am not your beloved.’

‘You are,’ he says, his voice congested. ‘You are.’

He cannot get out of his chair to reach me. I scramble over to the edge of the bed, where his chair is jammed, and he stretches his arms out to me. I go towards him, expecting him to embrace me, to wrap his arms around me, but instead he grasps me like a clumsy boy, his hands fumble at the ties of my gown, tear one ribbon, and then I feel his fat hands grasp my cold breasts, as if he were a market trader weighing apples. He does not want to embrace me, he wants to handle me. Awkwardly, I kneel before him as he grasps at me, kneading me, as if he would milk me like a cow. He smiles.

‘You may come to my room tonight,’ he says thickly. ‘I forgive you.’

I lead my ladies in and out of dinner in near silence. Even the most junior, even the most ill-informed, knows that something terrible happened and that I took to my bed in a state of collapse and the king himself deigned to visit me. Whether this indicates that all is well or whether disaster has fallen upon us, nobody knows for sure. Not even me.

I leave them in my rooms, whispering and spreading gossip, and I change out of my gown and into my embroidered silk night-robe to go to the king’s rooms with only my sister Nan and my cousin Maud Lane in attendance.

We walk through the great presence chamber, through the privy chamber and then to the inner room. His bedroom is beyond. The king is with his friends, but neither Lord Wriothesley nor Bishop Gardiner is there. Will Somers sits before the king’s footstool in an odd position, like a dog sitting on its haunches, in complete silence. When he sees me, he stretches out his hands on the floor and lowers himself down, like a dog at rest. His head on his paws is almost under the footrest that supports the king’s bad leg. Down there, the stench must be unbearable. I look at Will, all but prone on the floor, and he turns his head and raises his eyebrows to look up, unsmiling at me.

‘You’re lying very low, Will,’ I remark.

‘I am,’ he says. ‘I think it best.’

His gaze turns towards the king and I see that Henry, seated above him, is glaring at us both. His gentlemen are seated on either side and Anthony Denny stands up to give me a chair at the fireside so that they can all see the candlelight shining on my face. Obviously, I have to make a public apology. Nan and Maud sink silently onto a bench at the wall as if they are kneeling.

‘We were discussing the reform of the church,’ Henry says suddenly. ‘And whether the women gospellers who speak so loudly at Saint Paul’s cross are making sermons as holy as the clerks who have spent years at the universities.’

I shake my head. ‘I wouldn’t know. I have never heard them.’

‘Never, Kate?’ he asks. ‘Has none of them come to your rooms to sermonise and sing for you?’

I shake my head. ‘Perhaps one or two came to preach. I don’t remember.’

‘But what do you think of the things they say?’

‘Oh, my lord, how could I judge? I would have to ask you for guidance.’

‘You don’t judge for yourself?’

‘Ah, my lord husband, how can I judge when I have nothing but the simple education of a lady and the mind of a weak woman? Men are in the shape and likeness of God. I am only a woman, so much inferior in all respects. I consult you in everything, who are my only anchor, Supreme Head and governor next unto God. ’

‘Not so, by Saint Mary, you have become a doctor, Kate, to instruct us,’ he says irritably. ‘You dispute with me!’

‘No, no,’ I say hastily. ‘I wanted only to distract you from your pain. I spoke only ever to divert you. I think it is very unseemly, I think it is preposterous, for a woman to take the office of teacher to he who must be her lord and husband.’

Anthony Denny nods judicially: this is true. Will raises himself slowly on his forepaws as if to confirm that he too has seen this. The king is ready to be placated. He looks around to see that everyone is attending.

‘Is it so, sweetheart?’ he demands.

‘Oh, yes, yes,’ I say.

‘And you had no worse end?’

‘Never.’

‘Then come and kiss me, Kate, for we are perfect friends as ever before.’

I step towards him and he drags me onto his good leg so I am practically sitting in his lap and he nuzzles my neck. My smile never wavers, as Will bounds to his feet.

‘You can all leave us,’ Henry says quietly, and his lords bow and take their leave as the pages come in to prepare the room for the night. The candles are new in the candlesticks, spaced around his bedroom so they show a soft and flickering light, the fire is banked up for the night, there is a pleasing smell of cinnamon and ginger.

Nan comes close as if to tidy my hair. ‘Do what you have to,’ she remarks. ‘I’ll wait.’ She curtseys and leaves me.

Behind me the pages have prepared the king’s bed with the usual ritual of plunging a sword into the mattress and rolling on it to detect any hidden murderer, sliding a warming pan over the fresh sheets, and then finally positioning themselves either side of the king to heave him in. They leave a tray of pastries within his reach and a decanter of wine for me to pour.

I straighten my beautifully embroidered night robe of dark silk, and take a seat at the fireside until he invites me to approach his enormous bed. I think, nervously, that it is like my wedding night when I was so dreading his touch. Now I have become accustomed, he can do nothing that would shock me. I will have to accept his damp caresses; I know I will have to kiss him and not flinch from his fetid saliva. I think that he is in too much pain from his leg and too drugged to expect me to mount him so I will have to do nothing worse than smile and seem ardent. I can do that. I can do that for my own safety and for the safety of all who depend on this tyrant for their freedom. I can rack my pride. I can dislocate my shame.

‘So we are friends,’ he says, putting his head on one side to admire my dark blue silk robe and the glimmer of white linen beneath it. ‘But I think you have been a naughty girl. I think that you have been reading books that were banned and listening to sermons that were not allowed.’

Being addressed as a child for my work as a scholar – this too I can endure. I bow my head. ‘I am sorry if I have done anything wrong.’

‘Do you know what I do with naughty girls?’ he asks, roguishly.

I can feel my thoughts whirling. I have never heard him speak like this before, diminishing me, and being a fool himself. But I must not challenge him. ‘I don’t think I have been naughty, my lord.’

‘Very naughty indeed! And do you know what I do to naughty girls?’ he asks again.

I shake my head. I think he has slipped into his dotage. I have to endure this too.

He beckons me to the side of the bed. ‘Come a little closer.’

I rise from my chair and go to the bed. I move gracefully, like a woman. I take the few steps with my head held high, like the queen that I am. I think, surely he cannot maintain this game that I am a child for scolding, but then it seems that he can. He takes my hand and pulls me a little closer to the bed. ‘I think that you have read books that Stephen Gardiner would say are heretical, you bad child.’

I open my eyes wide as if to assure him of my innocence. ‘I would never go against Your Majesty’s wishes. Stephen Gardiner has never accused me, and he has no evidence.’

‘Oh, he has accused you,’ he says, chuckling as if this is funny. ‘Be sure of that! And he accused your friends, and the girl preacher, and indeed he had all the evidence that he needed to prove to me – or even to a jury, a jury, Kate! – that you are, alas, a very naughty little girl.’

I try to smile. ‘But I have explained . . .’

I see the gleam of his irritation. ‘Never mind all that. I say you are a naughty girl and I think you have to be punished.’

At once I think of the Tower and the scaffold that they can build on the green. I think of my ladies and the preachers who have spoken before me. I think of Anne, waiting in the Tower for release from her agony. ‘Punished?’

He reaches across his huge barrel of a body and extends his left hand to me. I take it and he tugs me roughly, as if he would pull me across the bed.

I yield. ‘Your Majesty?’

‘Kneel on the bed,’ he says. ‘This is your punishment.’ He sees my aghast face and he laughs so much that he coughs, and tears come into his piggy little eyes. ‘Oh! Were you thinking that I would behead you? Oh Lord! Oh Lord! What fools women are! But kneel to me.’

I gather the skirts of my gown in my free hand and kneel up on the bed beside him. He lets go of my hand now I am positioned where he wants me, kneeling beside him, the stench from his wounded leg wafting up into my face. I put my hands together as if to swear fealty.

‘No, not that,’ he says impatiently. ‘I don’t want you to beg for pardon. Go on your hands and knees. Like a dog.’

I shoot one disbelieving look into his face and I see that he is flushed and intent. He means it. As I hesitate I see his eyes harden. ‘I’ve told you once,’ he says quietly. ‘There are guards outside and my barge will take you to the Tower tonight if I say just one word.’

‘I know . . .’ I say quickly. ‘It’s just that I don’t know what you want me to do, my lord husband. I would do anything for you, you know that. I have promised to love. . .’

‘I’ve told you what to do,’ he points out, reasonably enough. ‘Go on your hands and knees like a dog.’

My face is burning with the heat of my shame. I go on my hands and knees on the bed and I drop my head down so that I don’t have to see the bright triumph in his face.

‘Lift your gown.’

This is too much. ‘I can’t,’ I say; but he is smiling.

‘Up over your buttocks,’ he says. ‘Lift your gown right up, your linen too, so your arse is as bare as a Smithfield whore.’

‘Your Majesty . . .’

He raises his right hand as if to warn me to be completely silent. I look back at him, I wonder if I dare to defy him.

‘My barge. . .’ he whispers. ‘It is waiting for you.’

Slowly, I pull my gown up to my waist, the silk cool in my fingers. It folds around my waist, leaving me naked from the waist down, on my hands and knees on the king’s bed.

He fumbles in the bedclothes and for a horrible moment I think that he is fondling himself, aroused by my nakedness, and that there will be worse for me to do. But he brings out a whip, a short horse’s whip, and shows it to me, bringing it to my burning face.

‘D’you see?’ he asks quietly. ‘It is no thicker than my little finger. The laws of the land, my laws, say that a husband may beat his wife if the stick is no thicker than his finger. D’you see that this is a thin little whip that I may legally use on you? Are we agreed?’

‘Your Majesty would not—’

‘It is the law, Kateryn. Like the law of heresy, like the law of treason. Do you understand that I am the lawgiver and the law enforcer and that nothing happens in England without my will?’

My legs and buttocks are cold. I bend my head to the stinking covers of the bed. ‘I understand,’ I say, though I can hardly speak.

He brings the whip closer, then thrusts it in my face. ‘Look!’ he says.

I raise my head and look at it.

‘Kiss it,’ he says.

I can’t stop myself from flinching. ‘What?’

‘Kiss the rod. As a sign that you accept your punishment. Like a good child. Kiss the rod.’

I look at him blankly for a moment as if I wonder if I can disobey him. He returns my gaze, completely calm. Only his scarlet colour and his rapid breathing reveal that he is aroused. He holds the whip a little closer to my lips. ‘Go on,’ he says.

I purse my lips. He puts the leather plaited thong to my mouth. I kiss it. He puts the thicker leather stem to my face. I kiss it. He puts his clenched hand holding the handle before my mouth, and I kiss his fat fingers too. Then without changing his expression he raises the whip behind me, and brings it down hard on my buttocks.

I cry out and flinch away, but he has tight hold of my upper arm and he strikes me again. Three times I hear the whistle and then feel the blow as it comes down and the pain is quite terrible. There are burning tears in my eyes as he brings the whip to my face again and whispers: ‘Kiss it, Kateryn, and say that you have learned wifely obedience.’

There is blood in my mouth from where I have bitten my lip. It tastes like poison. I can feel the hot tears pouring down my cheeks and I cannot choke down a little sob. He waggles the stick in front of me and I kiss it, as he orders. ‘Say it,’ he reminds me.

‘I have learned wifely obedience,’ I repeat.

‘Say thank you, my lord husband.’

‘Thank you, my lord husband.’

He is quiet. I take a choking breath. I can feel my chest heave with my sobs. I assume my punishment is finished and I pull down my gown. My buttocks are stinging raw and I am afraid they are bleeding, and my white linen shift will be stained.

‘One other thing,’ he says silkily, still holding me on my hands and knees. I wait.

He pushes back the covers of his bed and I see, like a monstrous erection, he is wearing the ivory silk codpiece from the portrait strapped on his fat naked belly. It is a grotesque sight, huge on his rolling belly, pointing upwards out of the sheets, embroidered with silver thread and stitched with pearls.

‘Kiss this too,’ he says.

My will is broken indeed. I rub the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand and I feel the snot from my nose spread over my face. This, too, I will do for my own safety.

He puts his hand on it and he caresses it as if it can give him pleasure. He giggles. ‘You have to,’ he says simply.

I nod. I know that I have to. I put my head down and I put my lips against the encrusted tip. With a single cruel gesture he takes a handful of my hair and thumps the back of my head, so my face is smacked by it and it bangs against my teeth and the pearls scrape my lips. I don’t pull back from the pain. I hold my face still as he works it in a parody of abuse against my mouth over and over again till my mouth is bruised by the jewels and the embroidery and my lips are bleeding.

He is exhausted, his face flushed and sweating. The ivory codpiece is smeared with my blood as if he had deflowered a virgin with it. He drops back on his pillows and sighs as if he is deeply satisfied. ‘You can go.’

It is very late when I come out of the king’s bedroom and close the door quietly behind me. I walk stiffly across the privy chamber and into the presence chamber where his pages are waiting.

‘Go in,’ I say to them, my hand hiding my bruised mouth. ‘He wants a drink and some food.’

Nan and Maud Lane stand up from their seats at the fireside. The double doors between the privy chamber and the bedroom muffled my cry; but Nan can tell at once that there is something wrong.

‘What’s he done to you?’ she asks, scanning my white face, taking in the bruising, the smear of blood at my mouth.

‘It’s all right,’ I say.

We walk to the queen’s side of the palace in silence, I know that my gait is awkward, I can feel my linen gown sticking to the weals from the whip. I go through the private galleries and into my bedroom. Maud curtseys and closes the bedroom door. Nan unlaces my gown. ‘Don’t call anyone,’ I say. ‘I’ll sleep in my linen, I’ll wash tomorrow.’

‘The stink of his wound is on your linen,’ Nan warns me.

‘It’s all over me,’ I say tightly. ‘But I have to sleep. I can’t bear . . .’

She shucks off her own gown, and gets into the bed. For once in my life I go to bed without kneeling at the bedside to pray. I have no words tonight, I feel far from God. I slide between the cool sheets. Nan blows out the candle with a quick puff and the darkness forms around us from the shadows in the room and then I can just see the outline of the wooden shutters limned with the dawn light. We lie in sleepless silence for a long time. My little silver clock chimes four. Then she speaks: ‘Did he hurt you?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘On purpose?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you are forgiven?’

‘He wanted to break my spirit and I think he has done so. Don’t ask me more, Nan.’

We sleep fitfully, I have no dreams of the dark castle and the woman with the wrenched limbs, or the dead wives behind the bolted doors. One of the worst things that can happen to a proud woman has happened to me, I need not fear my dreams any more. When the maids come in the morning with the ewer of hot water they find me throwing off my soiled linen and ordering the bath. I want to get the smell of his suppurating leg out of my skin, out of my hair. I want to get a fetid taste out of my mouth. I feel as if I am soiled, I feel as if I am foul and I can never be washed clean. I know that I am broken.

Shaming me has cheered the king back to health. Suddenly he is well enough to dine with the court and this afternoon he is wheeled into the garden with me at his side. Nan, Lady Tyrwhit and little Lady Jane Grey walk with me, the rest of my ladies stroll behind us, and the king holds my hand as I walk beside the chair. There is a spreading beech tree in the centre of the king’s privy garden and he stops the chair in the shade and someone fetches a stool for me to sit beside him. Gingerly I lower myself to the seat. He smiles as he sees I cannot sit without pain.

‘You are amused, my lord husband?’

‘Now we’re going to see a play.’

‘A play? Here?’

‘Indeed yes. And when it is over you can tell me the title.’

‘Are you speaking in riddles my lord?’ I ask. I can feel my fear rising.

The little iron gate to the privy garden creaks slightly, opens wide, and guards come running in, a huge number of them, crowding into the small garden. There are at least forty of them in the bright livery of the king’s yeomen of the guard. I rise to my feet. For a moment I think that there is a mutiny against the king and he is in danger. I look round for the pages who wheeled him here, for the gentlemen of the court. Nobody is within calling distance. I stand before him; I will have to shield him from whatever comes. I will have to save him if I can.

‘Wait,’ he cautions me. ‘Remember, it is a play.’

These are not traitors. They are followed by Lord Wriothesley with a rolled letter in his hand. His dark face is alight with triumph. He comes towards me smiling and he unfurls the letter, showing me the seal, the royal seal. It is a warrant for my arrest. ‘Queen Kateryn, known as Parr, you are under arrest for treasonous heresy,’ he says. ‘Here is the warrant. You must come with me to the Tower.’

I have no breath. I throw one anguished look at my husband. He is beaming. I think this is the greatest joke, the greatest masque, that he has ever performed. He has broken my spirit and now he will break my neck and I cannot complain, I cannot protest my innocence. I cannot even beg him for a pardon because I cannot breathe.

Even my sight is dim, though I see Nan running towards us across the grass, her face screwed up in fear. Behind her little Jane Grey hesitates, steps forward, shrinks back, as Lord Wriothesley brandishes his warrant and says again: ‘You must come with me to the Tower, Your Majesty. No delay, please.’ His face is bright. ‘Please don’t make me order them to take you by force.’

He turns to the king and he kneels to him. ‘I have come. I will do as you commanded,’ Wriothesley says, his voice oozing contentment. He rises up again, and he is about to nod to the guards to surround me.

‘Fool!’ Henry bellows at him, full-voiced. ‘Fool! Knave! Arrant knave! Beast! Fool!’

Wriothesley falls back before the king’s red-faced sudden rage.

‘What?’

‘How dare you?’ Henry demands. ‘How dare you come into my own garden and insult the queen? My beloved wife! Are you mad?’

Wriothesley opens and closes his mouth like one of the fat fish in the carp ponds.

‘How dare you come in here and distress my wife?’

‘The warrant? Your Majesty! Your royal warrant?’

‘How dare you show her such a thing? A woman sworn to my interests who has no mind but my mind, who has no thought but mine, whose body is at my command, whose immortal soul is in my keeping? My wife? My beloved wife?’

‘But you said that she should be—’

‘Are you saying that I would order the arrest of my own wife?’

‘No!’ Wriothesley says hastily. ‘No, of course not, Your Majesty, no.’

‘Get out of my sight,’ Henry shouts at him as if he is driven to madness by such disloyalty. ‘I can’t bear you! I never want to see you again.’

‘But, Your Majesty?’

‘Go!’

Wriothesley bows to the ground and stumbles backwards through the garden gate. The guards fumble their exit and rush after him, pushing their way out of the sunlit garden, desperate to get away from the furious king. Henry waits till they are all gone and the gate has clanged shut, the guard standing outside it with his back to us. Only when it is all still and quiet again does the king turn to me.

He is laughing so much that he cannot speak. For a moment I fear that he is having a fit. The tears squeeze out of his puckered eyelids and run down his sweating cheeks. He is dangerously flushed, and as he holds his shaking belly he chokes for air. Long minutes pass as he hoarsely cackles before he can steady himself. He opens his little eyes and wipes his wet cheeks.

‘Lord,’ he says. ‘Lord.’

He sees me standing before him, still frozen with shock, and my ladies blank-faced, waiting.

‘What’s the title of the play, Kate?’ he pants, still laughing.

I shake my head.

‘You who are so clever? So widely read? What is the title of my play?’

‘Your Majesty, I cannot guess.’

‘The Taming of the Queen!’ he shouts. ‘The Taming of the Queen.’ I hold my slight smile. I look at his sweating scarlet face and I let the sound of his renewed laughter break over me like the hoarse cawing of the ravens at the Tower.

‘I am the dog-master,’ he says, abruptly abandoning his joke. ‘I watch you all. I set you all at each other’s throats. Poor curs. Poor little bitch.’

The king sits in the garden till the shadows lengthen along the smooth green grass and the birds start to sing in the tops of the trees. The swallows weave along the curves of the river, swirling above their own silvery reflections and dipping into the water to drink. The courtiers come in from playing games and they walk languidly, like happy children with flushed faces. Princess Elizabeth smiles up at me and I see a scatter of freckles over her nose like dust on marble, and I think I must remind her maid to make sure that she wears a sun bonnet whenever she goes out.

‘It’s been a beautiful day,’ the king says contentedly. ‘God Himself knows what a wonderful country this is.’

‘We are blessed,’ I agree quietly, and he smiles as if the credit for the summer and for the weather and for the sun sinking over the glassy river is somehow all due to him.

‘I shall come to dinner,’ he says, ‘and after dinner you may come to my room and you must talk to me about your thoughts, Kate. I like to hear what you have been reading and what you think.’

He laughs as he sees me suddenly go pale. ‘Ah, Kate. You need fear nothing. I have taught you everything you need to know, have I not? It is my translations that you read? You are my dear wife, are you not? And we are friends?’

‘Of course, of course,’ I say. I bow as if I am delighted at the invitation.

‘And you may ask anything of me. Any little gift, any little favour. Anything you like, sweetheart.’

I hesitate, wondering if I dare speak of the broken woman in the Tower, Anne Askew, waiting to hear if she is to live or to die. He has said I can ask anything of him, he has just said I am to fear nothing. ‘Your Majesty, there is one small thing,’ I start. ‘A little thing to you, I am sure. But it would be the greatest wish of my heart.’

He raises his hand to stop me. ‘My dear, we have learned today, have we not, that there are no things, not even the smallest things, that come between a husband and wife like us? The greatest wish of your heart could only be the greatest wish of mine. We have nothing to discuss. You need never ask anything of me. We are as one.’

‘It is my friend. . .’

‘You have no better friend than me.’

I understand him. ‘We are as one,’ I repeat dully.

‘Holy unity,’ he says.

I bow my head.

‘And loving silence.’

‘She’s dead,’ Nan tells me brutally, as they are brushing my hair before dinner. The movement of the heavy brush through my thick hair, the occasional painful pull, seems to be part of her news. I don’t put up my hand to stop Susan, the maid, from grooming me as if I were a mare going to the stallion. My head rocks to one side and then the other with the harsh pulling motion. I see my face in the mirror, my white skin, my hurt eyes, my bruised mouth. My head going one way and then another like a nodding doll.

‘Who is dead?’ But I know.

‘Anne Askew. I just had word from London. Catherine Brandon is at her London house. She sent me a note. They killed her this morning.’

I choke. ‘God forgive them. God forgive me. God send her soul to heaven.’

‘Amen.’

I gesture that Susan is to go away but Nan says: ‘You have to have your hair brushed and your hood pinned. You have to go to dinner. Whatever has happened.’

‘How can I?’ I ask simply.

‘Because she died never mentioning your name. She took the rack for you and death for you, so that you could go to dinner and, when your chance comes again, you can defend the reform of the church. She knew you must be free to speak to the king even if all the rest of us are killed. Even if you lose us all, one by one. If you are the last one left, you must save reform in England. Or she will have died for nothing.’

I see Susan’s aghast face in the mirror behind my own.

‘It’s all right,’ I say to her. ‘You need not bear witness.’

‘But you must,’ Nan says to me. ‘Anne died without admitting that she knew any one of us, so that we would be free to go on thinking, talking and writing. So that you would carry the torch.’

‘She suffered.’ It’s not a question. She was in the torture room of the Tower, alone with three men. No woman has ever been there before.

‘God bless her. They broke her body so badly that she could not walk to the stake. John Lascelles, Nicholas Belenian and John Adams were burned at the same time, but the men walked to their pyres. She was the only one tortured. The guards had to carry her tied to a chair. They said her feet were turned in as if she was wearing them backwards, and her shoulders and her elbows were all pulled out. Her spine was disjointed, her neck was pulled from her shoulders.’

I dip my head and I put my hands over my eyes. ‘God keep her.’

‘Amen,’ Nan says. ‘A king’s messenger came to offer her pardon as they tied the chair to the stake.’

‘Oh, Nan! Could she have recanted?’

‘All they wanted was your name. They would have taken her down if she had said your name.’

‘Oh, God forgive me.’

‘She listened to the priest preaching the sermon before they brought the torches to set the fire, and she said “Amen” only when she agreed with him.’

‘Nan, I should have done more!’

‘You couldn’t have done more. Truly, there was nothing more that any of us could do. If she had wanted to escape death she could have told them what they wanted to hear. They were clear enough with her what it should be.’

‘Just my name?’

‘All this has been done only so they could name you as a heretic to the king and kill you.’

‘They burned her?’ It must be a terrible death, tied to a stake with the faggots heaped around your feet, the smell of the smoke as the flames take hold, the sight of family and praying friends dimming as the smoke rises and then the terrible crackle as your hair catches and then your skirt smoulders, and then the pain – I break off to rub my eyes – I cannot imagine the pain as a gown catches fire, as sleeves take the flames to the arms, to the shoulders, to her delicate white neck.

‘Catherine Brandon sent her a purse of gunpowder and she wore it in her gown. When the flames grew hot it blew off her head. She didn’t have to suffer long.’

‘That was all we could do for her? That was the best that we could do?’

‘Yes.’

‘But she had to let them strap her broken arms and legs to the chair, she had to wear a gunpowder purse around her twisted neck?’

‘Yes. I don’t mean to say that she didn’t suffer. Just that she did not . . . cook.’

At Nan’s simple words I choke on vomit. I put my head on the table among the silver hairbrush and the silver comb and I heave, spilling bile on the table, over the silver brushes and glass bottles.

I get up and turn from the table. Wordlessly, Susan clears up, brings me a cloth to wipe my face, small ale for me to rinse and spit. Two maids scurry in behind her and wipe my vomit from the floor. Then I sit again before my looking-glass and see the whey face of the woman that Anne Askew died to save.

Nan waits for me to catch my breath.

‘I am telling you now, because the king will know that it has been done according to his orders. When he comes to your rooms this evening he will know that the greatest woman in England has been burned today, and they are sweeping up her ashes from the cobbles of Smithfield as we walk in to dinner.’

I raise my head. ‘This is unbearable.’

‘Unbearable,’ she agrees.

Catherine Brandon returns to court so pale that nobody doubts her story that she was sick. She comes to my room. ‘She didn’t mention your name,’ she said. ‘Not when they gave her a chance to get off the fire. Not even then. Nicholas Throckmorton attended and she met his eye and she smiled at him and nodded as if to say that we had nothing to fear.’

‘She smiled?’

‘She said “Amen” to the prayers and smiled. He said the crowd was horrified at her death. There were no cheers, just a long low groan. He said that this will be the last woman preacher burned in England. The people won’t stand for it.’

We are waiting in my presence chamber and half the court is here already. The king is wheeled in beaming. We all curtsey, and I take my place beside the chair. He extends his hand, and I take it. The grip is so warm and wet that for a moment I imagine that he has blood on his hands, but then I see it is a flicker of red light from the stained-glass windows.

‘All well?’ he asks brightly, though he must know that I have learned of Anne’s death.

‘All well,’ I say quietly, and we go in to dinner.