The Taming of the Queen

I realise that I am staring at him completely aghast, my needle suspended. He has not looked at me since we parted as lovers, at dawn more than a year ago, and we swore then that we would never again speak to each other, nor seek each other out. My sense of being called by God has failed to dilute my passion for him though I prayed that it would. I never enter a room without searching for his face. I never see him dance with one of my ladies without hating her for his hand on her waist, for the attentive tilt of his head, for her sluttish flushed face. I never look for him at dinner but somehow he is always at the corner of my eye. Outwardly I am pale and grave; inside, I burn up for him. I wait to see him every day, at Mass, at breakfast, at the hunt. I make sure that no-one ever sees me notice him. No-one can ever tell that I am acutely, passionately aware when he is in the room, bowing to me, or walking across the chamber, or that he has thrown himself casually onto a bench at the window and is talking quietly with Mary Howard. Morning and evening, breakfast and dinner, I keep my face completely impassive as my eyes glide over his dark head and then I look away as if I have not seen him at all.

And now, suddenly, he is here, walking into my rooms as if he could ever be an invited guest, bowing to me, and to the princesses, his hand on his heart, his dark eyes veiled and secretive, as if I have summoned him with the passionate thudding of my pulses, as if he can feel the heat of my skin burning his own, as if I had shouted aloud that he must come to me, that I will die if he does not come to me.

‘I have come, Your Majesty, at the command of the king, who asked me to bring you to him, through the privy garden, on your own.’

I am already on my feet, the precious royal jacket fallen to the floor, the thread whipping out of the needle’s eye as I walk away from it, the needle still in my hand.

‘I’ll bring the princesses,’ I say. I can hardly speak. I cannot breathe.

‘His Majesty said you were to come alone,’ he replies. The tone is courteous, his mouth smiles, but his eyes are cold. ‘I think he has a surprise for you.’

‘I’ll come at once then,’ I say.

I can hardly see the smiling faces of my ladies as Nan silently takes the needle from my hand, Thomas Seymour presents his arm to me, and I put my hand on his and let him draw me from the room and down the broad stone stairs to where the doors to the sunlit gardens stand open.

‘It must be a trap,’ I say in a hushed monotone. ‘Is this a trap?’

He shakes his head at my question, then nods to the guards, who raise their pikes and let us out into the sunshine. ‘No. Just walk.’

‘He means to trap me by sending you to me. He will see . . . I shouldn’t go with you.’

‘The only thing to do is to behave as if nothing is out of the ordinary. You should come, and we should go without delay, taking exactly the time that it always takes to walk through the gardens. Your ladies are watching from your windows, the noblemen will be watching from the king’s windows. We are going to walk along together without pausing, and without looking at each other.’

‘But you never look at me!’ I burst out.

A sharp pinch of my fingers reminds me to keep steadily walking. I think this is like some sort of purgatory. I have to walk beside the man that I adore, match my steps to his, and take no pleasure in it, while my heart hammers against my ribs with all the things that I want to say.

‘Of course I don’t,’ he says.

‘Because you have stopped loving me.’ My voice is very low, strained with pain as I accuse him.

‘Oh, no,’ he says lightly, and turns to me with a smile. He glances up to the king’s rooms and nods to an acquaintance at the oriel window. ‘Because I love you desperately. Because I can’t sleep for thinking of you. Because I burn up with desire for you. Because I dare not look at you, because if I did, every man and woman at court would see all that in my eyes.’

I almost stumble as my knees go weak and I feel a pulse deep in my belly at his words.

‘Walk on!’ he raps out.

‘I thought—’

‘I know what you thought. You thought wrong,’ he says abruptly. ‘Keep walking. Here is His Majesty.’

The king is seated on a great chair they have brought out to the sunny garden, his foot propped on a stool.

‘I can’t tell you . . .’ I whisper.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘We can’t speak.’

‘Can we meet?’

He presents me to the king and bows low. ‘No,’ he says as he steps backwards.