The Taming of the Queen

He looks awkward. It makes him, for a moment, endearingly vulnerable, a weak father: not a cursed tyrant. ‘I have had to think of them always as heirs or usurpers,’ he says, fumbling for the words. ‘D’you see? I’ve had always to consider whether I accept them as my daughters or put them aside. I have had to think of their mothers, and my terrible wars with their mothers, and not think of them. I have had to suspect them as if they were my enemies. I’ve never before had them at court, together, with their brother, and just seen them, all three, as my children. Just seen them as themselves.’

I am enormously, absurdly touched. ‘Each one of them is a child to be proud of,’ I tell him. ‘You can love each one as your own.’

‘You have shown me that,’ he says. ‘Because you deal with Edward like a little boy, and Elizabeth as a little girl, and Mary as a young woman. I see them through your eyes. I see the girls without thinking of their poisonous dams, almost for the first time.’

He takes my hand and kisses it. ‘I thank you for this,’ he says very quietly. ‘Truly, I do, Kateryn.’

‘My dear,’ comes easily from my lips.

‘I love you,’ he says.

And I reply easily, without thought, ‘I love you, too.’

We are hand-clasped for a moment, united in tenderness, and then I see his eyes narrow as a pulse of pain grips his whole body. He grits his teeth, determined not to cry out.

‘Should I leave you to rest now?’ I ask.

He nods. Anthony Denny is on his feet at once, to show me from the room and I see in the way that he glances at the king without curiosity that he knew all of this, before it was explained to me. Denny is the king’s confidant and friend, one of the closest of the circle. His quiet confidence reminds me that I should remember that just as I hint that the Howards and Wriothesley and Gardiner are self-serving fools, there are those, close to the king, who could do just the same to me. And that Denny is one of several men whose fortunes have been made in royal service, who have the king’s ear in his most private moments, and whisper to him alone, just as I do.

I allow myself the pleasure of telling the king’s daughters that they are to be princesses again. I speak to them separately. I am aware that this makes them rivals once more, and that they can only succeed to the throne on the death of their brother, that Elizabeth can only succeed through the unlikely combination of the death of her younger brother and her older sister.

I find her at her studies in my privy chamber with her cousin little Lady Jane Grey and Richard Cox, their tutor, and I call her aside to tell her that this is a symbol of her father’s favour. Of course, she jumps at once to the idea of her inheritance.

‘Do you think a woman can rule a kingdom?’ she asks me. ‘The word would suggest not. It’s not called a queendom, is it?’

The cleverness of the ten-year-old girl makes me smile. ‘If you are ever called to rule this kingdom or any other you will take on the courage and wit of a man. You will call yourself a prince,’ I assure her. ‘You will learn what every clever woman has to learn: how to adopt the power and courage of a man and yet to know that you are a woman. Your education can be that of a prince, your mind can be that of a king, you can have the body of a weak and feeble woman and the stomach of a king.’

‘When is it to happen? When do I get my title back?’

‘It has to go through the parliament,’ I warn her.

She nods. ‘Have you told Lady Mary?’

What a Tudor she is, this little girl; these are a statesman’s questions: when is it official? And which daughter was told first? ‘I’m going to tell her now,’ I say. ‘Wait here.’

Lady Mary is in my presence chamber, embroidering a part of an altar cloth that we are making. She has delegated the boring blue sky to one of the ladies and she herself is working on the more interesting flowers that will form the border. They all rise and curtsey as I come in from the privy chamber and I gesture that they may sit and continue with their work. Joan, Anthony Denny’s wife, is reading from the manuscript of our translation of Fisher’s psalms, and I beckon Lady Mary into the oriel window so we can speak privately. We sit on the window bench, our knees touching, her earnest gaze on my face.

‘I have some very good news for you,’ I say. ‘You will learn it from the Privy Council, but I wanted to tell you before the announcement. The king has decided to name the succession, and you are to be called Princess Mary and inherit the throne after Edward.’ She looks down, veiling her dark eyes with her eyelashes, and I see her lips move in a prayer of thanksgiving. Only her rising blush tells me that she is deeply moved. But it is not for a chance at the throne. She has not Elizabeth’s ambition. ‘So, finally, he accepts my mother’s purity,’ she says. ‘He withdraws his claim that they were not married in the sight of God. My mother was a widow to his brother and then a true wife to him.’