The Taming of the Queen

He nods his grey head. ‘These are the last words I will ever say to you, Your Majesty. They are a warning from an old man with nothing to lose. Death is the king’s preference now. He is not driven to it. I have known kings forced to execute their friends or loved ones; but he is not one of them.’ He pauses. ‘He likes finality. He likes to turn against someone and know they are dead the next day. He likes to know that he has that power. If you lose his favour, Your Majesty, please make sure you get away.’

I cannot reply.

He shakes his head. ‘My greatest regret, my greatest failure, was that we did not get my queen away,’ he says softly.

My ladies are watching me. I move my hand in a little gesture to invite Princess Mary to join us and I step aside to allow them time to speak together in private. By her suddenly guarded expression I think he is warning her, as he just warned me. This is a man who has observed the king for sixteen years, who has studied him and seen him grow in his power, observed the advisors who disagreed with him dragged to the Tower and executed, watched the wives who displeased him exiled from court or executed, known the innocent men of small rebellions hanged in their thousands in chains. I feel a shudder down my spine, as if my tingling skin knows of a danger that I cannot name, and I shake my head, and walk away.

NONSUCH PALACE, SURREY, SUMMER 1545

George Day, my almoner, comes to my privy chamber as I am reading with my ladies, with a wrapped parcel under his arm. I know at once what he has for me and I step to the bay of the window, with Rig trotting at my heels, so that he can unwrap the book and show it to me.

‘Prayers Stirring the Mind to Heavenly Meditations,’ I read, tracing the title on its inner page. ‘It is done.’

‘It is, Your Majesty. It looks very fair.’

I open the first pages and there is my name as the editor, Princess Katherine, Queen of England. I draw a breath.

‘The king himself approved the wording,’ George Day says quietly. ‘Thomas Cranmer took it to him and told him that it was a fine translation of the old prayers, that would be read alongside the Litany. You have given the English an English prayer book, Your Majesty.’

‘He does not object to my name being on it?’

‘He does not.’

I trace my name with a fingertip. ‘It feels almost too much for me.’

‘It is God’s work,’ he assures me. ‘And also . . .’ I smile. ‘What?’

‘It’s good, Your Majesty. It is a good piece of work.’

The king returns to health as the summer comes, looking forward to his annual progress down the beautiful valley of the Thames, and he walks from his room in Nonsuch Palace, through the private gallery to my rooms with only two pages and Doctor Butts to accompany him. Nan warns me that he is on his way, and I seat myself at the fireside reading, beautifully dressed in my best nightgown and with my hair in a plait under a dark net.

The pages tap on the door, the guards throw it open, Doctor Butts bows low at the threshold, and the king enters. I rise from my seat at the fireside and curtsey.

‘I am so glad to see you, my lord husband.’

‘It’s about time,’ he says shortly. ‘I did not marry you to spend my nights alone.’

From the shuttered expression on Doctor Butts’ face I guess that he advised the king against struggling through the passages to my room, and staying here. Without speaking he goes to the table before the fireplace and prepares a draught for the king.

‘Is that a sleeping draught?’ Henry demands irritably. ‘I don’t want one. I haven’t come here to sleep, you fool.’

‘Your Majesty should not overexert—’

‘I’m not going to.’

‘This is just to keep your fever down,’ the doctor replies. ‘You are heated, Your Majesty. You will heat up the queen’s bed.’

He strikes just the right note. Henry chuckles. ‘Should you like me in your bed instead of a warming pan, Kateryn?’

‘You are a much warmer bedfellow than Joan Denny,’ I smile. ‘She has cold feet. I shall be glad to have you in my bed, my lord.’

‘You see,’ Henry says triumphantly to William Butts. ‘I shall tell Sir Anthony I am a better bedfellow than his wife.’ He laughs. ‘Get me into bed,’ he says to the pages.

Together they push him up onto the footstool before the bed, and then, as he sits back, they go either side of the bed; one of them has to stand on the covers to heave him up to sit upright so that he can breathe, propped by the pillows and the bolster. Gently, they lift his thick wounded leg into bed and then the other beside it. Tenderly, they drape the sheets and the blankets over him, and step back to see that he is comfortable. I have the disturbing thought that they are admiring him as if he were the enormous wax effigy of his corpse which must one day be placed on his coffin.

‘Good enough,’ he says shortly. ‘You can go.’

Doctor Butts brings the little medicine glass to the king and he swallows it in one.