The Taming of the Queen

The warmer weather brings an improvement to the king’s leg, which has been drained of the worst of the pus and is now only weeping gently, and this improves his temper. Working with me and his archbishop he seems to regain some of his old joy in study, and it even deepens his love of God. He likes us to come to him when he is alone before dinner, perhaps with only a page to serve him some pastries, or one of his clerks in attendance. He has to wear his spectacles for reading now, and he does not like the court to see him with the gold-rimmed glasses tied on his nose. He is shamed by the blurring of his sight and fearful that he will go blind, but he laughs when one day I take his fat face in my hands and kiss it and tell him he looks like a wise owl and that he is handsome in his spectacles and should wear them everywhere.

I go to my own rooms in the day and I am able to work on the liturgy with my ladies. In the afternoons Thomas Cranmer often comes in, and we work together. It is not a long piece, of course, but it is intense. It feels as if every word must be weighted with holiness. There is not a spare line or a false note from beginning to end.

In May, the archbishop brings me the first printed copy, bows and lays it in my lap.

‘This is it?’ I say almost wonderingly, my finger on the smooth leather cover.

‘This is it,’ he replies. ‘My work and yours, perhaps the greatest work that I will ever do. Perhaps the greatest gift that you will ever be able to give to the English people. Now they can pray in their own language. Now they can speak and trust that God hears them. They can be the people of God, indeed.’

I cannot lift my hand from the cover; it is as if I am touching the hand of God. ‘My lord, this is a work that will last for generations.’

‘And you have done your part in it,’ he says generously. ‘Here is a woman’s voice as well as a man’s, and men and women will say these prayers, perhaps they will even kneel side by side, equals in the sight of God.’

SAINT JAMES’S PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1544

We have days of sunshine and the king gets stronger. He is pleased with his campaign against Scotland, and in June we go to the rebuilt Saint James’s Palace for the wedding of his niece, my lady-in-waiting and friend Margaret Douglas, to a Scots nobleman, Matthew Stuart, the Earl of Lennox. Here the king can walk in the garden and he starts to move more easily and even takes up archery, though he’ll never play tennis again. He watches the young men of the court and I know that he eyes them as if they were still his rivals though he is far older than they are, older than their fathers, and he will never strip off his jacket and dance in his lawn shirt again. Especially, he watches the handsome young bridegroom Matthew Stuart.

‘He’ll win Scotland over for me,’ Henry says in my ear as the bride and groom walk handclasped down the aisle. Henry’s niece throws me a naughty wink as she goes by. She is a most unruly bride, openly relieved at finally being allowed to marry aged nearly thirty years old, after two scandals, both of them involving young men from the Howard house. ‘He’ll win Scotland for me and then Prince Edward shall marry the little Queen of Scots – Mary – and I shall see Scotland and England united.’

‘That would be wonderful if it can be done.’

‘Of course it can be done.’

The king heaves himself to his feet and leans on the arm of a page as we process down the aisle. I walk by his side and we go slowly, an ungainly trio, towards the open chapel doors. There is to be a great feast in honour of this wedding, which promises so much for the safety of England.

‘With the Scots on my side it leaves me safe to take France,’ Henry says.

‘My lord husband, are you really well enough to go yourself?’

The smile he shows me is as bright as any young captain in his army. ‘I can ride,’ he says. ‘However weak my leg is beneath me when I am walking, at least I can sit on a horse. And if I can ride at the head of my army I can lead them to Paris. You’ll see.’

I look up to protest – half the Privy Council have come to me and begged me to support their appeal to the king that he does not go to war himself; even the Spanish ambassador says that the emperor advises against it – when I see, among the hundreds crowding into the chapel, the turn of a dark head, a profile, a jewel in a hat, and, from under the brim of the hat, a quick glance at me, and at once, in a moment, I know my lover, Thomas Seymour.

I would know him anywhere. I recognised him by the back of his head. The king has stumbled and is cursing the page for failing to support him, and I step back and grab Nan’s arm and grip it tightly as the dimly-lit chapel swims around me and I think that I am going to faint.

‘What is it?’ she demands.

‘A gripe,’ I say at random. ‘In my belly. Just my monthly course.’