The Taming of the Queen

The whole court is waiting to greet us inside the great hall. I smile at my uncle, soon to be a peer of the realm, and my brother, who will be the Earl of Essex, thanks to me. All my friends and family, newly enriched by my patronage, are here for Christmas, and the greater lords of the realm, the Howards, the Seymours, the Dudleys; the rising men like Thomas Wriothesley, his friend and colleague Richard Rich, the other courtiers and the churchmen in their crimson and purple robes. Stephen Gardiner is here, smoothly untouched by Archbishop Cranmer’s inquiry. He bows to me and his smile is confident.

‘I am going to teach you to be Queen of England,’ Henry says quietly into my ear. ‘You shall look at these wealthy and powerful men and know that you command each and every one of them; I have set you above them. You are my wife and my helpmeet, Kateryn. I am going to make you into a great and powerful woman, a true wife to me, the greatest woman in England, as I am the greatest man.’

I don’t modestly disclaim, I meet the cold determination in his eyes. They may be loving words but his face is hard.

‘I will be your wife in every way,’ I promise. ‘This is what I have undertaken and I will keep my word. And I will be queen of this country and mother to your children.’

‘I’ll make you regent,’ he confirms. ‘You shall be their master. You shall command everyone that you see here. You will put your heel on their necks.’

‘I will rule,’ I promise him. ‘I will learn to rule as you do.’

The court welcomes me and acknowledges me as queen. I could almost think that there had never been another. In turn, I welcome the two youngest children, Prince Edward and Lady Elizabeth, and weld them into a royal family where they have never truly belonged before. I add royal nieces: Lady Margaret, the daughter of the king’s sister the Scots’ queen, and little Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of his sister the French queen. Prince Edward is an endearing mixture of formality and shyness. He has been schooled since the day of his birth in the knowledge that he is a Tudor son and heir, and everything is expected of him. In contrast, Elizabeth has never been sure of her position: her name and even her safety are completely uncertain. At the execution of her mother she fell, almost overnight, from the grandeur of being a tiny beloved princess addressed as ‘Your Grace’ in her own palace, to being a neglected bastard named ‘Lady Elizabeth’. If anyone could prove the rumours that still swirl around her paternity, she would be an orphan ‘Miss Smeaton’ in a moment.

The Howards ought to love and support her as their girl, the daughter of the Boleyn queen, their kin. But when the king is counting his injuries, and brooding over the wrongs done to him, the last thing the duke and his son want him to remember is that they have put several Howard girls in his bed and two on the throne, and that both queens ended in heartbreak, disgrace and death. Alternately, they support or neglect the little girl, as serves their purpose.

She cannot be betrothed to any foreign prince while nobody knows if she is a princess or a bastard. She cannot even be properly served while no-one knows if she is to be called Princess or Lady Elizabeth. Nobody but her governess and Lady Mary have loved this little girl and her only refuge from her fear and loneliness is in books.

My heart goes out to her. I too was once a girl too poor to attract a good marriage, a girl who turned to books for company and comfort. As soon as she comes to court I see that she is given a bedroom near to mine. I hold her hand as we go together to the chapel every morning, and we spend the day together. She responds with relief, as if she has been waiting all her life for a mother, and finally I have arrived. She reads with me, and when the preachers come from London she listens to them and even joins in the discussion of their sermons. She loves music, as we all do, she loves fine clothes and dancing. I am able to teach her and, after a few days, joke with her, pet her, reprimand her, and pray with her. In a very little while, I kiss her forehead in the morning and give her a mother’s blessing at night almost without thinking.