The Taming of the Queen

‘I have to understand this,’ I say. ‘We lived so far from London, we heard almost nothing, and I couldn’t get hold of books. And anyway, my husband Lord Latimer believed in the old ways.’

‘There are many that still do,’ Nan warns me. ‘A frightening number still do, and they are rising in favour. But we have to fight them and win this argument. We have to get the Bible back into the churches for the people. We cannot let the bishops take the Word of God from the people. It is to condemn people to ignorance. Even you will have to study discreetly, with an eye on the law of heresy. We don’t want Stephen Gardiner sticking his ugly nose into your rooms, like he does everywhere else.’

The king comes to me almost every night, but often wants nothing more from me than conversation, or to share a glass of wine before he goes to his own bed. We sit together like an old loving couple, he in a glorious embroidered nightgown strained across his massive chest and belly, with his sore leg propped on a footstool, me in my black satin with my hair in a plait.

His physician comes with him to give him his evening doses: drugs to ease the pain of his leg, for his headaches as his eyes are failing, to make his bowels move, to clear his urine, which is dangerously dark and sticky. Henry winks when he tells me that his physician has given him something to help with vigour. ‘Perhaps we will make a son,’ he suggests. ‘What about a little Duke of York to follow my prince?’

‘In that case I’ll have some of that physic?’ Will Somers takes the liberties allowed to an official Fool. ‘I could do with a bit of vigour at night-time. I would be a bull, but I am a little lamb; truly, I am a little lamb.’

‘Do you skip and prance?’ the king smiles as the physician hands him another draught.

‘I gambol. I gamble away my fortune!’ Will clinches the joke with a pun, making the king laugh as he drinks, so that Will thumps him familiarly on the back. ‘Choke up, Nuncle. Don’t cough up your own vigour!’

I smile and say nothing while the physician is measuring out the series of little draughts, but when everyone has gone from the room, I say: ‘My lord husband, you have not forgotten that I had no child from two previous marriages?’

‘But you had precious little joy in them, didn’t you?’ he asks bluntly.

I give a little embarrassed laugh. ‘Well, yes, I wasn’t married for my own joy.’

‘Your first husband was little more than a boy, afraid to say boo to a goose, probably unmanned, and your second was a dotard, probably impotent,’ the king declares inaccurately. ‘How should you have got a child from either of them? I have studied these things, and I know. A woman needs pleasure in order to take a child. She has to have a crisis of pleasure, just as her husband does. This is ordained by God. So at last, dearest wife, you have a chance of becoming a mother. Because I know how to please a woman till she weeps for joy, till she cries out for more.’

I am silent, remembering the involuntary cry that I used to make when Thomas was moving inside me, his breath coming fast and my pleasure mounting. Afterwards I would find that my throat was sore and I would know that I had screamed with my face against his naked chest.

‘I give you my word,’ the king says.

I push away my thoughts and smile at him. I know that there can be no pleasure for me in a dead woman’s bed. It can’t be possible that his damp fumblings can give me a child, and the rue should prevent a monster-birth. But since two earlier wives were divorced for lack of a son I would be a fool to say that I don’t think we’ll get one – whatever sensual pleasures he promises.

Besides, oddly, I find that I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I’m not going to tell Henry that I cannot feel desire for him, not when he is smiling at me and promising me ecstasy. At the very least I owe him kindness, I can give him affection, I can show him respect.

He beckons me towards him as he sits on his great chair at the fireside. ‘Come and sit on my lap, dearest.’

I go readily enough and perch on the breadth of his good thigh. He puts his arms around me, he kisses my hair, he puts his hand under my chin and turns my face towards him so that he can kiss me on the mouth.

‘And are you glad to be a very rich woman?’ he asks me. ‘Am I kissing a great personage? Did you like the jewels? Did you bring them all with you?’

‘I love them,’ I assure him. ‘And I take such a pleasure in the wardrobe and the furs. You are very good to me.’

‘I want to be good to you,’ he says. He pushes a strand of hair away from my face and tucks it behind my ear. His touch is gentle, assured. ‘I want you to be happy, Kate. I married you to make you happy, not just for myself. I am not thinking just of myself, I am thinking of my children, I am thinking of my country, I am thinking of you.’

‘Thank you,’ I say quietly.