The Taming of the Queen

I pray to God to keep me in the state of peaceful loving tenderness that I have established with the king, to keep me a wife in my dreams as well as in my daily life. But as the presence of Thomas churns my thoughts, I start to dream again, not of a happy marriage and the duties of an obedient wife, but of climbing up damp stairs, a candle in my hand, and the stink of rotting flesh all around me. In the dream I go towards a door that is locked, and try the handle as the smell of death grows stronger. I have to know what is behind it. I have to know. I am terrified of what I might find but, dreamlike, I cannot stop myself going forward. Now the key is in my hand and I listen at the keyhole for any sound of life from the room that smells of death. I insert the key, I turn it, silently the lock yields, and I put my hand on the door and it swings horribly open.

I am frightened into wakefulness. I sit bolt upright in my bed, gasping, the king fast asleep in his bedroom next door, the open door between our bedchambers admitting the roaring snore and snuffle and the terrible stench of his leg. It is so dark, it must be long hours from dawn. Wearily, I get out of my bed and go to the table to look at my new clock. The golden pendulum swings backwards and forwards, beautifully balanced, emitting a tiny click like a constant heartbeat. I feel my pounding heart steady to its rhythm. It is half past one, hours yet before I can look for light. I wrap myself in a robe and I sit beside the dying fire. I wonder how I am to get through the night, how I am to get through the next day. Wearily, I get down on my knees and pray again that God will take this passion from me. I did not seek love with Thomas, but I did not resist it. And now I am trapped in desire like a butterfly with its feet in honey, and the more I struggle, the deeper I sink. I think I cannot bear to live my life trying to do my duty to a good man, a gentle and generous husband who cries out for attentive care and a loving heart, while all I do is long for a man who does not need me at all but sets my skin on fire.

And then, though I am trapped in the sin of fear, and a slave to a passion, something very strange happens. Though it is nowhere near dawn, though it is the darkest time of the night, I feel the room lighten, the ashes of the fire grow a little brighter. I raise my head, and my forehead no longer throbs and my fearful sweat has cooled. I feel well, as if I had slept well and I am waking to a bright morning. The smell from the king’s room is diminished and I know once again my deep pity for him in his pain and illness. His rumbling snore has grown quieter and I am glad that he is sleeping well. Hardly believing my own sense of being uplifted, I feel as if I can hear the voice of God, as if He is with me, as if He has come to me in this night of my trial, as if His mercy can look on me, a sinner, a woman who has sinned and has longed for sin, who still longs for sin, and that, even seeing all this, He can forgive me.

I stay, kneeling on the hearthstone, till the clock on the table strikes four with its silvery little chime and I realise that I have been in a trance of prayer for hours. I have prayed and I believe that I have been heard. I have spoken and I believe I have been answered. No priest took my confession or gave me absolution, no church took my fee, no pilgrim badges or miracle cures or little pieces of trumpery helped me to come into the presence of God. I simply asked for His great mercy and I received it, as He promised in the Bible that it should be granted.

I rise up from the floor and I get into my bed, shivering a little. I think, with a sense of great wonderment, that I have been blessed, as God promised I would be blessed. I think He has come to me, a sinner, and that I have, by His grace, been granted forgiveness and the remission of my sins.

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1544

The army is setting sail for France; Thomas Howard has already gone with the vanguard but still the king delays.

‘I have summoned my astronomer,’ he says to me as we leave Mass one morning. ‘Come with me and see what he advises.’

The king’s astronomer is as skilled as any of the European scientists in understanding the movement of the stars and the planets, and he can also identify a favourable date for any venture depending on which planet is in the ascendancy. He treads a difficult course between describing the known and observable movement of the heavens, which is philosophy, and the art of fortune-telling, which is illegal. To suggest that the king might be ill or injured is treason, so anything he sees or foresees has to be described with extreme caution. But Nicholas Kratzer has drawn charts for the king many times before, and knows how to phrase his warnings and advice to stay inside the law.