The Taming of the Queen

‘Who?’ I ask, completely baffled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I am so sorry,’ I whisper.

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

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

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

‘What do you want?’

‘Save me.’

I am shocked into silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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