The Taming of the Queen

I note, drily, that the sainted Jane seems to have skipped purgatory, though there is a preacher imprisoned in the Tower of London right now facing a charge of heresy for suggesting that purgatory does not exist.

‘She was cruelly taken from me,’ he says, his little eyes blinking out easy tears. ‘And we had been married little more than a year.’

He’s not quite right. I could tell him exactly. They were married for a year and four months, a shorter marriage even than Kitty Howard, who lasted only a year and six months before he beheaded her; but far longer than his marriage to Anne of Cleves, now so well-regarded, who was pushed out inside half a year.

‘She loved you so much,’ Anne Seymour says mournfully. ‘But thank God that she left such a wonderful son as her living memorial.’

The mention of Prince Edward cheers Henry. ‘She did,’ he says. ‘At least I have one son, and he is handsome, isn’t he?’

‘The very image of his father,’ Anne smiles. ‘See how he stands in the portrait. He is the very image of you!’

I lead my ladies back to my rooms. I am smiling and they are all smiling. We are all trying to show that we are untroubled, that we have seen nothing that disturbs our position, our sense of entitlement. I am the queen and these are my ladies. Nothing is wrong.

When we get to my rooms I wait for them to settle to their sewing with a reader opening a book approved by the Bishop of London. Then I say that I have a little flux, something I ate, no doubt. I will go to my room alone. Nan comes with me because hell’s own horses would not keep Nan out of my hair right now, and she shuts the door behind us and looks at me.

‘Bitch,’ I say shortly.

‘Me?’

‘Her.’

‘Anne Seymour?’

‘No, Jane Seymour. The dead one.’

This is so unreasonable that not even Nan tries to correct me. ‘You’re upset.’

‘I am publicly humiliated, I am supplanted before everyone by a ghost. My rival is not some pretty girl like Catherine Brandon or Mary Howard but a cadaver who was not even very lively when she breathed. And yet now she is the wife that he will not forget.’

‘She is dead, poor lady. She cannot irritate him now. He can think of her at her best.’

‘Her death is her best! She was never as charming as she is now!’

Nan makes a little gesture with her hand, as if to say ‘stop’. ‘She did the best that she could, and my God, Kat, you would not be so hard on her if you had seen her die in such a fever, crying out for God and for her husband. She may have been a ninny; but she died a woman in lonely terror.’

‘What is that to me, who will now have to walk past her image every time I go to dinner? Who is not allowed to wear her pearls? But who has to raise her son? Bed her husband?’

‘You are angry,’ Nan says.

‘Indeed,’ I spit. ‘I see that your studies have not been wasted on you. I am angry. Excellent. Now what?’

‘You’re going to have to get over it,’ she says, as steady as our mother used to be when I raged against some nursery injustice. ‘Because you’re going to have to go to dinner with your head up, smiling, showing everyone that you are happy with the portrait, and happy with your marriage, and happy with your stepchildren and their three dead mothers, and happy with the king.’

‘Why do I have to do this?’ I pant. ‘Why do I have to pretend that I am not publicly insulted?’

Nan’s face is very pale and her voice is flat. ‘Because if you see a dead wife as your rival, you will be a dead wife,’ she predicts. ‘People are already saying that he will remarry. People are already saying that he does not like your religion, that you are too much for reform. You have to face them down. You have to please him. You have to walk in to dinner tonight like a woman whose position cannot be questioned.’

‘Who questions me?’ I yell at her. ‘Who dares to question me?’

‘I am afraid that you are widely questioned,’ she says quietly. ‘Already, the gossip has started. Almost everyone questions your fitness to be queen.’

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1545

In the quiet days before the start of the Christmas feast the king is troubled and openly irritated that neither his traditional advisors nor his new thinkers can get a truce with France. Charles of Spain is now urging that a truce be made so that he is free to turn on his own subjects. He is determined to stamp out the reformers in Flanders and the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. He says that he and Henry must forget their enmity against France to confront a greater danger. They must all three join together to make war against the Lutherans. He says that this must be the new crusade, that they must make war against people who are such sinners, they think that the Bible is the best guide to life.