The Taming of the Queen

So now I practise my letter writing to my husband. I compose it as I would translate a psalm, by imagining the state of mind of the author that I want to be. When I am writing a translation of a prayer, I always imagine the first author – a man miserably conscious of his own sin. I think myself into his mind and then I write the most beautiful sonorous version of what I think might come from his mouth. Then I bring myself into the work, powerfully aware that I am a woman, not a man. The sins that grieve a man are often those of pride, or greed, or a lust for power for its own sake. But these are not the sins of a woman, I think. These are not my first sins. My worst sin is a failure of obedience: I find it so hard to bend my will. My other great fault is a passion: an adoration as if I were setting up an idol, a false God.

So writing a love letter to the king is the same as writing a prayer. I create a character to say the words. I pull the page towards me and I think how I would be if I were deeply in love with a man who is setting siege to the town of Boulogne in France. I think, what would his wife say? How would she tell him that she loves him and misses him and that she is glad that he is doing his duty? I think, how would I write to a man that I cannot see, who is so very far from me, who is so careful of my safety that he will not even breathe a kiss to me in farewell, so proud and independent and yet loves me, and wishes he had not left me, would never leave me?

In my mind, as bright as if it were real, I see Thomas Seymour before the walls of Boulogne and his dark smile as he faces danger and feels no fear. And so I take that sense of love and longing and I write to the king, tenderly and obediently, asking sincerely for his health, promising him truly that I am thinking of him. But running in my mind, at the same time, there is another letter – a shadow letter of words that are never written on paper. I never even scribble his name to clean the nib of ink; I never sketch his crest. I never say the words aloud. I only allow myself, last thing at night before I go to sleep in my empty bed, to think of the letter that I would write to him if I could.

I would tell him that I love him with a passion that leaves me sleepless. I would tell him that some nights I cannot bear the touch of the sheet on my shoulders, on my breasts, because the cool linen makes me yearn for his skilled warm hand. I would write that I put my palm against my mouth and imagine that I am kissing him. I would write that I lay the flat of my hand against my most private parts and press down, and that the leaping sensation of joy is all his. I would write that without him I am a shell, a hollow crown, that all my true life is stolen away. I would write that my life is like a beautifully carved tomb, an empty space, that I have everything a woman could desire – I am Queen of England – but a beggar woman with her legs and arms wrapped around her husband, and his mouth pressing down on hers, is richer than me.

I will never write this. I am an author and a queen. I can write only words that everyone can read, that the king’s clerks can read aloud to him before all his courtiers. I write words that can go to London and be published even if no-one knows who wrote them. I will never write, like poor little Queen Kitty: when I think that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart die. The king beheaded her for that silly little love letter. She wrote her own death warrant. I shall never write such a thing.