The Taming of the Queen

I get to my feet and go the window. I want to throw open the shutters and let the night air into the room as if the place stinks like the king’s bedroom of corruption and disappointment.

‘This is the vilest gossip,’ I say quietly. ‘I should not have to hear it.’

‘It is vile. But it is widely repeated. And so you do have to hear it.’

‘So what now?’ I say bitterly. ‘Nan, do you always have to be so ill-tongued? Must you always breathe sorrows in my ear? Are you telling me that he would put me aside for Catherine Brandon? Shall he have a seventh wife? What about another after her? Yes, he likes her, he likes Mary Howard, he likes Anne Seymour! But he loves me, he favours me above all others, more than any previous wife. And he has married me! That means everything. Can’t you see that?’

‘I am saying that we have to keep you safe. There must be nothing that anyone can say against you. No hint against your reputation, no suggestion of disagreement between you and the king, nothing that could make him turn against you. Not even for a moment.’

‘Because it only takes a moment?’

‘It only takes a moment for him to sign a warrant,’ she says. ‘And then it is all over for all of us.’

Catherine Brandon comes back to court as commanded, and she does not wear mourning. She comes first to my rooms and curtseys before me, and before all my ladies I give her my condolences for her loss and welcome her back to my service. She takes her seat among them and looks at the translation that we are working on. We are studying the gospel of Luke in the Latin and trying to find the purest, clearest words in English to express the beauty of the original. Catherine joins in as if she is here by choice, as if she does not want to be at her own home, with her sons.

At the end of the morning when we put away our books to go out riding I beckon her to come with me as I change into my riding dress.

‘I am surprised that you came back to court so soon,’ I say.

‘I was commanded,’ she says shortly.

‘Weren’t you secluded, and in mourning?’

‘Of course.’

I rise from my seat before the silvered looking-glass and I take her hands. ‘Catherine, I have been your friend since I first came to court. If you don’t want to be here, if you want to go home, I will do my best for you.’

She gives me a little sad smile. ‘I have to be here,’ she says. ‘I have no choice. But I thank Your Majesty for your kindness.’

‘Do you miss your husband?’ I ask curiously.

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘He was like a father to me.’

‘I think the king misses him.’

‘He must do. They were always together. But I don’t expect him to show it.’

‘Why not? Why should the king not show his grief for the loss of his friend?’

She looks at me as if I am asking her a question to which everyone must know the answer. ‘Because the king cannot bear grief,’ she says simply. ‘He cannot tolerate it. It makes him angry. He will never forgive Charles for leaving him. If I want to stay in favour, if I want my sons to have their inheritance, I will have to conceal the fact that Charles has deserted him. I cannot show him my grief as it reminds him of his own.’

‘But he died!’ I say impatiently to the man’s widow. ‘He didn’t leave the king on purpose, he just died!’

She gives me a slow sad smile. ‘I suppose if you are King of England, you think that everyone’s life is dedicated to you. And those that die have let you down.’

I don’t want to hear Nan’s bleak warnings, I prefer to see the gloze of Catherine’s false smile as the court is at peace among itself with no quarrels or dogfights, and God’s goodness to England shines out in the sunshine and the golden leaves of the trees in the meadows that run beside the river. The country is at peace, the news from France is that they plan nothing against us, the battle season is coming to a close and Thomas has survived another year. It is a blissful end of summer. Every day starts bright and every evening ends in a warm glow. The walls of the palace are golden in the sunset reflected in the river. Henry enjoys a return to good health. His servers haul him onto his horse every morning and we hunt every day, easy runs, through the water meadows alongside the river, and it is like being married to a man of my own age when his huge hunter outpaces mine and he goes past, yelling like a boy.

The wound on his leg is bound tight, and he can manage a limping walk without support, needing help only up and down the stairs that lead from the great hall to his rooms, where I visit him every other night.

‘We are happy,’ he tells me, as if it were an official announcement, as I take my seat on the other side of the fireside from his strengthened throne and his new footstool. Surprised by his formality, I giggle.

‘When you have been as troubled as I by unhappiness, you too will take note of a good day, a good season,’ he says. ‘I swear to you, my sweetheart, that I have never loved a wife more than I love you, and never known contentment as I do now.’