The Taming of the Queen

‘I know I can,’ I say. ‘For so many of your councillors love you and have promised their duty to your son. There would be no war. There would be a loving care of him. The Seymour brothers would protect him, their nephew. John Dudley would support them. Thomas Cranmer would serve him as he does you. But it will never happen, for you will be well as the weather turns brighter.’

‘I see you only name reformers?’ he demands, his eyes sharp and suspicious. ‘You are of the reform party, as people say. You are not on my side, you are on theirs.’

‘No indeed, I acknowledge the good men of all points of view. No-one can doubt that Stephen Gardiner loves you and your son. The Howards are true to you and to Prince Edward. We would all protect him and bring him to the throne.’

‘So you do think I will die!’ He crows at having trapped me. ‘You think you will outlive another old husband and enjoy a widow’s estate.’ His face flushes red as his anger rises. ‘You sit there, at my sickbed, and imagine the day you will be free of me and free to take some worthless lad as your next husband, the fourth! You, who have wedded and bedded three men, are thinking of the next!’

I hide my shock at his sudden fury and I stay very calm. ‘My lord husband, I am sure you will recover from this fever, as you have from the injuries of your youth. I was trying to reassure you so that you would not worry on your sickbed. I pray for nothing but your health and I know that it will be restored to you.’

He glares at me, as if he would see past my steady gaze and into my heart. I meet his eyes without flinching, for so much that I say is true. I honour him, I love him as a loyal subject and an honourable wife who has promised before God to love him. I never think of his death. It has been a long time since I dreamed of being free. I truly believe that he will recover from this illness and go on and on. This marriage will be my last. I may go to my grave loving Thomas Seymour, but I never think now that we will be together some day. There are no imaginable circumstances in which we could be together. He never looks at me, and I keep my passionate thoughts to myself and see his smile only in rare erotic dreams.

‘You cannot doubt my love for you,’ I whisper.

‘You pray for my health,’ the king says, soothed at the thought of me on my knees.

‘I do. Daily.’

‘And when the preachers come to your room and you read the Bible do you speak of a wife’s obedience to her husband?’

‘We do. We all know that a wife worships God in her husband. That is unquestioned.’

‘And do you doubt purgatory?’ he asks.

‘I think a good Christian goes to heaven because of the saving grace of Jesus,’ I say carefully.

‘At his death? At the exact hour and minute of his death?’

‘I don’t know when, exactly.’

‘So will you pay for Masses for me? Will you establish a chantry for me?’

How to answer this? ‘Whatever you wish,’ I promise him. ‘Whatever Your Majesty would prefer. But I don’t expect to see it.’

His little mouth trembles. ‘Death,’ he repeats. ‘Thank God I am afraid of nothing. It’s just that I cannot imagine the country without me. I cannot imagine a world without me here, without the king that I have become, the husband that I am.’

I smile tenderly. ‘I can’t imagine such a thing either.’

‘And your loss.’ He gives a little choke. ‘Yours, especially.’

His grief is catching; tears come to my own eyes. I press his hand to my lips. ‘Not for years yet,’ I assure him. ‘If ever. I might die before you.’

‘You might,’ he says, cheered at once. ‘I suppose you might. You might die in childbirth like so many women. Because you are quite old to have a first child, aren’t you?’

‘I am,’ I say. ‘But I pray that God will grant us a child. Perhaps in the summer when you are well again?’

‘Well enough to come to your bed and make another Tudor heir?’ he asks.

I turn down my eyes and nod modestly.

‘You long for me,’ he says, his mouth moist now and smiling.

‘I do,’ I whisper.

‘I should think so!’ the king says more cheerfully. ‘I should think so.’

Despite this promise he continues to be feverish and his leg gives him terrible pain for a long dark month. He is no better in spring – which comes slowly to the gardens of Greenwich Palace and makes the trees bud with life and shiver into leaf on the riverside walks, and the birds sing so loudly that they wake me at dawn every morning, which comes earlier and earlier and is warmer every day.