The Taming of the Queen

Thomas Cranmer goes home in triumph to codify the agreed reforms into a new law to put before parliament; but the king sends a message after to him to tell him to stop his work and do nothing.

‘I had to halt Thomas in his tracks the moment that I heard from Stephen Gardiner,’ he says to me as we watch a game of tennis at the royal court. The conversation is punctuated by the loud thwack of the racquet on the ball and then the delay as the ball rolls down the roof to fall into the court below, and the players run into position to hit it again. I think that the king’s religious policy is like this – a great advance in one direction and then an immediate return.

‘Gardiner says he is very near to a treaty with the emperor at Bruges, but the emperor insists there are to be no new changes to the church in England. I don’t dance to his piping – don’t think that. But it’s worth my while to delay reform to please the emperor. I don’t want to upset him now. I have to measure what I do, measure like a philosopher, all the time, every little change. The emperor wants a treaty with me so that he is safe to attack the Lutherans in his empire, especially Germany.’

‘If only—’ I begin.

‘He’ll wipe them out, burn them all as heretics if he can.’ He smiles. He is always attracted by ruthless means. ‘He says he will stop at nothing to stamp them out. And where will you get your heretical books from then, my dear?’

I stammer a denial, but the king is not listening to me.

‘The emperor needs my help. He wants us to be at peace with France so that he can get on with knocking the Germans into orthodoxy. Of course he doesn’t want me stepping any further from the papists as he defends the pope’s church.’

‘But surely, my lord, you would never return England to the power of the pope in Rome,’ I observe. ‘You would never fail God in order to please the Spanish emperor? You would not serve the world and risk your honour?’

Henry applauds a shot well played on court. ‘I shall do as God guides me,’ he says flatly. ‘And His ways and my ways are mysterious indeed.’

I turn and applaud as he does. ‘That was hard!’ I exclaim. ‘I never thought he would get it.’

‘I would have got it easily when I was young,’ Henry remarks. ‘I was a champion tennis player. You ask Anne of Cleves. She will remember the sportsman I was!’

I smile past him to where she sits, on his other side, watching the game. I know she is listening; I know that she is thinking what she would have said if she had been in my place. I know that she would speak up for the people of her country who only want to read the Bible in their own language and worship God with simplicity. ‘Is it the case, Princess Anne?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she says agreeably. ‘His Majesty was the finest.’

‘She is a good companion for you.’ Henry turns to me and speaks in an undertone. ‘It is pleasant to have a beautiful woman like her at court, isn’t it?’

‘Why, yes.’

‘And she is so fond of Elizabeth.’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘Everyone tells me I should never have let her go,’ Henry says with a little self-conscious laugh. ‘If she had borne me a son he would be five years old now, think of that!’

I know that my smile has died. I don’t know what to think of that, or of this entire conversation. Has Henry forgotten that he never consummated his marriage with the now-desirable Anne of Cleves, telling everyone that she was too fat, and no virgin, and that she smelled so badly that he could not bring himself to do the act?

‘Some people say that she had a child by me,’ Henry whispers. He waves encouragement to the losing player, who bows his thanks.

‘They do?’

‘Nonsense, of course,’ he says. ‘You must pay no attention to what people say. You don’t listen to such gossip, do you, Kateryn?’

‘No,’ I reply.

‘Because d’you know what they are saying in France?’

I smile, ready to be amused. ‘What are they saying in France?’

‘That you are ill and are going to die. That I shall be a widower and free to marry again.’

I force a thin laugh. ‘How very ridiculous! But you can assure the French ambassador that I am very well indeed.’

‘I will tell him,’ Henry smiles. ‘Imagine them thinking that I would take another wife. Is it not ridiculous?’

‘Ridiculous indeed. Ridiculous. What are they thinking? Who is advising them? Where do they get these rumours from?’

‘So, no reform,’ Archbishop Cranmer says to me when I come to church to pray and find him kneeling before the cross. His old face looks tired in the light of the candles from the altar. He had thought and studied and prayed on the reforms that the church needed, and then found that one letter from Bishop Gardiner turned the king around again.

‘No reform yet,’ I correct him. ‘But who can doubt that God will shine the light of learning on England and its king? I have hope. I have faith, even when progress is so very slow.’