The Taming of the Queen (15 page)

‘Everyone,’ he says, ‘every ambassador in Christendom will come to Hampton Court. They all want to see my beautiful new wife.’

I smile and shake my head. ‘I shall be shy,’ I say. ‘I don’t like to feel that all eyes are on me.’

‘You have to endure it,’ he says. ‘Better still, learn to enjoy it. You are the greatest woman in the kingdom: learn to revel in it. There are plenty who would take it from you if they could.’

‘Oh, I’m not so shy that I would rather stand aside,’ I confess.

‘Good,’ he says, catching up my hand and kissing it. ‘For I am not disposed to let you go. I want no pretty new girl pushed into your place.’ He laughs. ‘They dangle papist poppets before me, did you know? All this summer on progress they have been introducing pretty daughters with crucifixes at their necks and rosaries at their belts and missals in Latin in their pockets. Did you not notice?’

I try to remember. Now that he points it out to me I do think there were a lot of noticeably devout young women among the many that we met on progress. I give a little giggle. ‘My lord husband, this is—’

‘Ridiculous,’ he finishes for me. ‘But they think I am old and restless. They think I am whimsical, and that I would change my wife and change my church in the morning and change it back again in the evening. But you know,’ he kisses my hand again, ‘you know better than anyone that I am faithful, to you and to the church that I am making.’

‘You will hold to your reforms,’ I confirm.

‘I will do what I think right,’ he says. ‘We shall have your family at court for Christmas. You must be pleased that I am going to honour them? I will give your uncle a title – he shall be Lord Parr – and I will make your brother an earl.’

‘I am so grateful, my lord. And I know they will serve you loyally in their new positions. I shall be so pleased to see them at court. And – dear husband – may the children come for Christmas, too?’

He is surprised at the suggestion. ‘My children?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘They usually stay at their own houses,’ he says uncertainly. ‘They always celebrate Christmas with their people.’

Will Somers, who is at the king’s side, cracks two walnuts together in his hands, picks out the shells and offers the nut to his royal master. ‘Who are their people – if not us?’ he demands. ‘Lord, Lord, King! See what a good woman will do to you? You’ve only been married for five months and already she is giving you three children! This is the most fertile wife of all! It’s like keeping a cony!’

I laugh. ‘Only if Your Majesty would wish it?’

Henry’s jowls are trembling with his emotion, his face flushes, his little eyes fill with tears. ‘Of course I wish it, and Will is right. You are a good woman and you are bringing my children home to me. You will make us into a family of England, a true family. Everyone shall see us together: the father – and the son that will come after him. And I shall have Christmas with my children around me. I’ve never done such a thing before.’

The oars of the royal barge, muffled by the cold mist that lies in heavy ribbons on the river, dip in and out of the water with one splashy movement. The boat surges forward with each stroke and then seems to rest before going forward again as if it were breathing on a living river: leaping and then stilling. Coots and moorhens scurry away from us ahead of the barge, lifting out of the water with their long legs trailing. A broad-winged heron rises silently from the reeds at the river bank, flapping on huge slow wings; overhead the seagulls cry. To approach Hampton Court in the royal barge on the river, with the bright winter sunlight breaking through the swirls of cold mist, is to see a magical palace emerge, as if it, too, is floating on the cold water.

I snuggle deep into my thick furs. I have rich glossy black sables delivered from the wardrobe of my London house of Baynard’s Castle. I know these belonged to my predecessor, Katherine Howard. I don’t have to ask: I have become familiar with her perfume, a memorable musky smell – she must have drenched everything in it. The moment they bring me a new gown I can smell her, as if she is haunting me in scent as she haunts me in life. I cannot help but wonder if she was drowning out the stink of his rotting leg, as I do with rose oil. At least I refuse to wear her shoes. They brought me a pair with golden heels and velvet toes, fit for a tiny child. She must have been like a little girl beside my husband, more than thirty years younger than him. She must have looked like his granddaughter when she danced with the young people of the court and glanced around at his squires¸ seeking her boyish lover. I wear her gowns, which are so beautifully made and so richly embroidered, but I will not walk in her shoes. I order new ones, dozens and dozens of pairs, hundreds of them. I pray that I will not dream of her as I follow her footsteps into Hampton Court, wearing her furs, her – and all the others. I sail in Katherine of Aragon’s barge. I wrap Kitty Howard’s sables around me and think that the cold wind blowing down the river will blow away her presence, will blow all the ghosts away, and soon her furs, so soft and luxurious, will be my furs and, brushing constantly against my throat and shoulders, will pick up my perfume of orange blossom and rose.

‘Isn’t it beautiful? Nan asks me, looking ahead to where the palace shines in the morning sunlight. ‘Isn’t it the best of them all?’

All of Henry’s many houses are places of wonder. This palace he took from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who built it in deep rosy-red brick, with high ornamental chimneys, broad courtyards and exquisitely planned gardens. They have completed the changes that Henry promised me, and now there is a new queen’s side overlooking the gardens and away from the kitchens. These will be my rooms; no ghosts will walk the newly waxed floorboards. There is a broad stone quay that runs along the riverbank, and as our barge and all the accompanying ships come into sight, all the standards are unfurled at all the flagpoles, and there is a great roar of cannon fire to welcome the king home.

I jump at the noise and Nan laughs. ‘You should have heard it the day that we brought Anne of Cleves to London,’ she says. ‘They had barges on the river shooting off guns, and the sky was lit like a thunderstorm with the fireworks.’

The barge comes smoothly in to the stone pier and the rowers ship their oars. There is another bellow of ordnance and the gangplank is run ashore. The yeomen of the guard, in their green and white livery, hammer down the shallow stone stairs to line the quay. The trumpeters blast out a shout of sound, and all the royal servants come out before the doors of the palace and stand, stiffly, heads uncovered in the wintry air. The king, who was resting his leg on an embroidered footstool under an awning in the stern, hauls himself to his feet and goes first, as he needs a man on either side to support him on the gently rocking deck. I follow him, and when he is steady on the white marble paving stone of the quay he turns and takes my hand. The trumpeters are playing a processional anthem, the servants are bowing low, and the people held back from the quay are cheering Henry’s name – and my own. I realise that our marriage is popular not just in our court and the foreign courts, but here, in the countryside too. Who could believe that the king could marry again? Yet again? Who could believe that he would take a beautiful widow and restore her to wealth and happiness? Who could believe that he would take an English woman, a countrywoman, a woman from the despised and feared North of England, and put her in the very heart of the smart Southern court, and that she would outshine everyone? They cheer and shout my name, wave documents that they want me to see, requests that they want me to grant, and I smile and wave back. The steward of my household goes among them and gathers up their letters for me to read later.

‘It’s good that you are looking well,’ Henry remarks shortly as we go slowly through the wide open doors. He gives a little grimace as each step pains him. ‘It is not enough to be a queen, you have to look like one. When the people come out to see us they want to see a couple set far above them, larger than life, grander than anything they have ever dreamed. They want to be awed. Seeing us should be like seeing beings far above them, like angels, like gods.’

‘I understand.’

‘I am the greatest man in the kingdom,’ Henry says simply. ‘Perhaps the greatest in the world. People have to see that the minute that they see me.’

The whole court is waiting to greet us inside the great hall. I smile at my uncle, soon to be a peer of the realm, and my brother, who will be the Earl of Essex, thanks to me. All my friends and family, newly enriched by my patronage, are here for Christmas, and the greater lords of the realm, the Howards, the Seymours, the Dudleys; the rising men like Thomas Wriothesley, his friend and colleague Richard Rich, the other courtiers and the churchmen in their crimson and purple robes. Stephen Gardiner is here, smoothly untouched by Archbishop Cranmer’s inquiry. He bows to me and his smile is confident.

‘I am going to teach you to be Queen of England,’ Henry says quietly into my ear. ‘You shall look at these wealthy and powerful men and know that you command each and every one of them; I have set you above them. You are my wife and my helpmeet, Kateryn. I am going to make you into a great and powerful woman, a true wife to me, the greatest woman in England, as I am the greatest man.’

I don’t modestly disclaim, I meet the cold determination in his eyes. They may be loving words but his face is hard.

‘I will be your wife in every way,’ I promise. ‘This is what I have undertaken and I will keep my word. And I will be queen of this country and mother to your children.’

‘I’ll make you regent,’ he confirms. ‘You shall be their master. You shall command everyone that you see here. You will put your heel on their necks.’

‘I will rule,’ I promise him. ‘I will learn to rule as you do.’

The court welcomes me and acknowledges me as queen. I could almost think that there had never been another. In turn, I welcome the two youngest children, Prince Edward and Lady Elizabeth, and weld them into a royal family where they have never truly belonged before. I add royal nieces: Lady Margaret, the daughter of the king’s sister the Scots’ queen, and little Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of his sister the French queen. Prince Edward is an endearing mixture of formality and shyness. He has been schooled since the day of his birth in the knowledge that he is a Tudor son and heir, and everything is expected of him. In contrast, Elizabeth has never been sure of her position: her name and even her safety are completely uncertain. At the execution of her mother she fell, almost overnight, from the grandeur of being a tiny beloved princess addressed as ‘Your Grace’ in her own palace, to being a neglected bastard named ‘Lady Elizabeth’. If anyone could prove the rumours that still swirl around her paternity, she would be an orphan ‘Miss Smeaton’ in a moment.

The Howards ought to love and support her as their girl, the daughter of the Boleyn queen, their kin. But when the king is counting his injuries, and brooding over the wrongs done to him, the last thing the duke and his son want him to remember is that they have put several Howard girls in his bed and two on the throne, and that both queens ended in heartbreak, disgrace and death. Alternately, they support or neglect the little girl, as serves their purpose.

She cannot be betrothed to any foreign prince while nobody knows if she is a princess or a bastard. She cannot even be properly served while no-one knows if she is to be called Princess or Lady Elizabeth. Nobody but her governess and Lady Mary have loved this little girl and her only refuge from her fear and loneliness is in books.

My heart goes out to her. I too was once a girl too poor to attract a good marriage, a girl who turned to books for company and comfort. As soon as she comes to court I see that she is given a bedroom near to mine. I hold her hand as we go together to the chapel every morning, and we spend the day together. She responds with relief, as if she has been waiting all her life for a mother, and finally I have arrived. She reads with me, and when the preachers come from London she listens to them and even joins in the discussion of their sermons. She loves music, as we all do, she loves fine clothes and dancing. I am able to teach her and, after a few days, joke with her, pet her, reprimand her, and pray with her. In a very little while, I kiss her forehead in the morning and give her a mother’s blessing at night almost without thinking.