The Taming of the Queen

My own presence chamber is already filled with people come to congratulate me on my wedding and hoping to ask me for a place or a favour or an audience or a fee. I walk through them with a smile to one side and the other, without pausing. I will start my work as queen today. But right now, I want to see my husband’s gifts.

‘Oh, my,’ Nan says as the guards throw open the double doors to my private rooms and my ladies rise to their feet and gesture, rather helplessly, to the half-dozen boxes that the king’s men have put all around the room, the great keys ready in the locks.

It is a sin to feel this leap of cupidity. I laugh at myself. ‘Stand back!’ I say jokingly. ‘Stand back, for I am about to dive into treasure.’

Nan turns the key to the first chest and together we lift the heavy lid. It is a travelling chest and it holds the gold plates and goblets for the queen’s private tables. I nod to two of the maids-in-waiting to come forward. They unpack one glorious plate after another and tip the reflections so the golden lights dance around the room like mad angels. ‘More!’ I say and now everyone holds a plate and shines it into each other’s eyes and flashes discs of light into every corner of the room until the room is dappled with shifting reflections. I laugh with delight and we shine the gold plates on one another, rise up, dance, and the whole room is dancing with us, filled with dazzling light.

‘What’s next?’ I demand breathlessly, and Nan opens the next chest. This is filled with necklaces and belts. She draws out ropes of pearls and belts embroidered and encrusted with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, diamonds and stones that I cannot even name, sparkling dark beauties set in thick blocks of silver or gold. She spreads chains of gold on the arms of chairs, necklaces of silver and diamonds in the laps of the maids so that they dazzle against rich fabric. There are opals with their soft milky light gleaming in green and peach, there is amber in great chunks of dark orange, and there are handfuls of uncut stones in purses looking like pebbles, hiding the flash of precious light within their rocky depths.

Nan opens another chest that has been carefully packed with rolls of the softest leather. Out come rings heavy with precious stones, and single stones on long chains. Without comment, she lays before me Katherine of Aragon’s famous necklace of plaited gold. Another purse is undone and there are Anne Boleyn’s rubies. The royal jewels of Spain come from one great box, the dowry of Anne of Cleves is spread on the floor at my feet. The treasure that the king showered on Katherine Howard comes in a chest all to itself, untouched since she was stripped of everything and went out to take the axe on her bare neck.

‘Look at these earrings!’ someone exclaims, but instead I turn away and go to the window to look down on the formal gardens and the glimpse of the silvery river through the trees. I am suddenly sickened. ‘Those are dead women’s goods,’ I say unsteadily as Nan comes to my side. ‘They are the favourite treasures of dead queens. Those necklaces have been around the necks of the wife before me, some of them have been worn by every one of them who has gone before me. The pearls were warmed by their dead skins, the silver is tarnished by their old sweat.’

Nan is as pale as me. She wrapped Katherine Howard’s emeralds in their leather folders and put them in that very jewel box on the day of her arrest. She fastened Jane Seymour’s sapphires around her neck on her wedding day. She handed Katherine of Aragon her earrings and here they are now, on the table in my privy chamber for my use.

‘You are the queen, you get the queen’s treasures,’ she rules, but her voice trembles. ‘Of course. It’s how it has to be.’

There is a rap on the door and the guard swings it open. William Herbert, Nan’s husband, comes into the room and smiles to see us all surrounded by jewels like children amazed in the pastry kitchen, spoiled for choice. ‘His Majesty sent this,’ he says. ‘It was overlooked. He says I am to put it on your beloved head.’

As I rise to my feet and come towards my brother-in-law, I see he cannot meet my eyes. He looks at the window behind me, at the sky scudding with clouds; he does not look at the treasures at my feet as I step carefully around Katherine of Aragon’s hoods, Katherine Howard’s glossy black sables. In his hand is a small heavy box.

‘What’s this?’ I ask him. I think at once – I don’t want it.

In reply he bows, and unlocks the metal hasp. He lifts the lid and it falls back on its bronze hinges. There is a small ugly crown inside. The ladies behind me gasp. I see Nan make a little movement as if she would prevent what must come next.

William puts down the box and lifts out the elaborately worked crown, encrusted with pearls and sapphires. Mounted at the pinnacle, as if it were a domed church, is a plain gold cross.

‘The king wants you to try it on.’