The Taming of the Queen (20 page)

I feel tender towards him as he endures the long nights in pain. I don’t begrudge waking and sitting with him though I know I will be tired when dawn finally comes. Then he can sleep but I have to attend to the duties of the court for us both – leading everyone to Mass, breakfasting in public before a hundred watching eyes, reading with Princess Mary, watching the court ride to hounds, dining with them at midday, listening to the councillors in the afternoon and dining, watching the revels and dancing all evening, and often dancing myself. This is sometimes a pleasure but it is always a duty. A court has to have a focus and a head. If the king is not well it is my task to take his place – and to conceal how very ill he is. He can rest during the day if I am there, smiling on the throne and assuring everyone that he is a little tired but better every day.

Stephen Gardiner supplies all the books for the king’s nighttime reading, it is a most limited library; but I am not allowed to read anything else, and so I find myself having to recite pious arguments for the unity of the church under the pope, or fanciful histories of the earliest church that stress the importance of the patriarchs and the Holy Father. If I believed these orthodox writings I would think that there were no women in the world at all, certainly no women saints in the early church laying down their lives for their faith. Bishop Gardiner is now a great enthusiast for the Eastern Church, which is a full member of the Catholic communion but not subservient to the pope. The Greek Church is to be our model and I read long sermons that suggest the fine level of purity that can be achieved in a Catholic church in partnership with Rome. I have to declare that people should be kept in sanctified ignorance and that it is best that they say their prayers and have no idea what the words mean. Knowingly, I recite nonsense, and I despise Bishop Gardiner for dictating lies.

Henry listens; sometimes his eyes close and I see that I have read him to sleep, sometimes the pain keeps him alert. He never comments on my reading, except to ask me to repeat a sentence. He never asks me if I agree with the plodding arguments against reform, and I take care to make no comment. In the quietness of the night-time room I can hear the little gurgle as the pus drains from his leg and drips into the bowl. He is shamed by the stink, and struggles with the pain. I cannot help him with either, except to offer him the draught that the physicians leave to drug him into sleep, and to assure him that I hardly smell anything. The rooms are laden with dried rose petals and the sharp scent of lavender heads, and in every corner there are bowls filled with the oil of roses, but still the stench of death seeps like a fog into everything.

Some nights he hardly sleeps at all. Some days he does not get up, but hears Mass in his bed, and his advisors and councillors meet in the chamber that adjoins his bedroom, with the door open so that he can hear them speak.

I sit beside his bed and listen as they plan the future union of England with Scotland through the marriage of Lady Margaret Douglas, the king’s niece, and Matthew Stuart, a Scottish nobleman. When the Scots reject this, I listen to the advisors plan an expedition to be led by Edward Seymour and John Dudley to lay waste the border country and teach the Scots to respect their masters. I am horrified by this plan. Having lived in the North of England for so many years I know how hard life is in those hills. The balance between harvest and hunger is so carefully weighed that an invading army will cause starvation just by marching through. This cannot be the way to bring about unity with the Scots. Are we to destroy our new kingdom before we gain it?

But, silently listening from the king’s room, I begin to see how the Privy Council works, how the country reports to the lords, who report to the council, who debate before the king. Then the king decides – quite whimsically – what shall be done and the council considers how it shall be drafted into law, put before the parliament for their consent, and imposed on the country.

The king’s advisors, those who filter all the news that he hears and draft the laws that he demands, have enormous power in this system, which depends on the judgement of one man – and that is a man in too much pain to rise out of his bed, who is frequently dazed and stupid with drugs. It is easy for them to withhold information that he should have, or cast the law in a way that suits themselves. This should give us all concern for the wellbeing of the country, whose destiny sits in Henry’s sweating hands. But it also gives me confidence to be regent, as I see that with good advisors I could judge just as well as the king. Almost certainly I could judge better, for Henry will suddenly bellow from his bed, ‘Move on! Move on!’ when something bores him, or a disagreement irritates him, and he favours one policy or another depending on who presents it.

I also learn how he plays one party against another. Stephen Gardiner is his preferred advisor, always pointing out that there should be more and more restrictions on the English Bible, that it must be strictly limited to the nobility and the learned, locked-up in their private chapels, that the poor must be prosecuted if they try to read it. He never misses an opportunity to complain that men everywhere are debating the sacred Word of God as if they could understand it, as if they are equal to educated men. But just as Stephen Gardiner thinks he has won and that the Bible will never be restored to the churches, stolen for ever from the very people that need it most, the king tells Anthony Denny to send for Thomas Cranmer.

‘You’ll never guess what task I am going to give him,’ he says, slyly smiling at me as he lies back on his great heap of pillows and I sit beside his enormous bed, his fat damp hand in mine. ‘You’ll never guess!’

‘I am sure I never will,’ I say. I like Thomas Cranmer, a constant believer in the reform of the church, whose sermon was published at the front of the Great Bible in English, and who has always urged that the king should rule the English Church and that the sermons, psalms and prayers should be in English. The quiet courage that he showed when he faced the plot against him has confirmed my liking for him, and he often comes to my rooms as an honoured friend, to see what I am writing and to join our discussion.

‘This is the way to play them,’ Henry confides in me. ‘This is the way to rule a kingdom, Kateryn. Watch and learn. First you appoint one man, then you appoint another, his rival. You give one a task – you praise him to the skies, then you give an opposite task, a complete contradiction, to his greatest enemy. While they fight one against the other, they can’t conspire to plot against you. When they are divided to death they are yours to command. D’you see?’

What I see is a zigzag confusion of policy so that no-one knows what the king believes or truly wants, a muddle in which the loudest voice or the most pleasing person can triumph. ‘I am sure Your Majesty is wise,’ I say carefully. ‘And cunning. But Thomas Cranmer would serve you in anything; surely you don’t have to trap him into obedience?’

‘He is my balance,’the king says. ‘I balance him against Gardiner.’

‘Then he will have to drag us to Germany,’ Will Somers suddenly intervenes. I had not realised he was listening. He has been sitting so quietly on the floor, his back against the great pillars of the bed, throwing a little golden ball from one hand to the other.

‘Why so?’ Henry asks, always tolerant of his Fool. ‘Jump up, Will. I can’t see you down there.’

The Fool springs up, tosses the golden ball high in the air and catches it, half singing:

Henry laughs. ‘I have my counterpoise to Gardiner,’ he tells me. ‘I am going to get Cranmer to write an exhortation and litany in English.’

I am stunned. ‘An English prayer book? In English?’

‘Yes, so that when people come to church they can hear the prayers in their own language and understand them. How are they to make a true confession in a language they don’t understand? How are they to truly pray if the words mean nothing to them? They stand at the back and say “yammer yammer yammer – amen”.’

This is exactly what I thought when I translated Bishop Fisher’s psalms from Latin to English. ‘What a gift to the people of England it would be!’ I am almost stammering in excitement. ‘A prayer book in their own tongue! What a saving of souls! I should be so pleased if I were to be allowed to work on it, too!’

‘And I say good morning to the queen,’ Will Somers says suddenly. ‘Good morning to the morning queen.’

‘Good morning to you, Will,’ I reply. ‘Is this a joke?’

‘It is a morning joke. And the king’s idea is the plan for this morning. After dinner you will find it quite different. This morning we send for Cranmer, tonight – heigh ho – it will be my lord Gardiner who is the fount of all knowledge, and you will be the morning queen and quite out of your time.’

‘Hush, Fool,’ Henry says. ‘What do you think, Kateryn?’

Despite Will’s warning, I cannot resist speaking. ‘I think it is an opportunity to write something both true and beautiful,’ I say enthusiastically. ‘And something that is beautifully written must lead people to God.’

‘But it cannot be ornamental,’ Henry insists. ‘It cannot be a false god. It has to be a true translation from the Latin, not a poem grafted on it.’

‘It must be the Word,’ I say. ‘The Lord spoke in simple language to simple people. Our church must do the same. But I think there is great beauty in simple language.’

‘Why don’t you write some new prayers yourself?’ Henry asks suddenly. ‘Write in your own hand?’

For a moment I wonder if he knows of my book of translated psalms published without a name on the cover. I wonder if his spies have told him that I have already translated prayers and discussed them with the archbishop. I stammer. ‘No, no, I could not presume . . .’

But he is sincere in his interest. ‘I know that Cranmer thinks highly of you. Why not write some original prayers? And why don’t you translate some prayers from the Latin Mass and show your version to him? Bring one to me to read. And Princess Mary works with you, doesn’t she? And Elizabeth?’

‘With her tutor,’ I say cautiously. ‘As part of Elizabeth’s study, with her cousin Jane Grey.’

‘I believe that women should study,’ he says kindly. ‘It is not part of the duty of woman to remain ignorant. And you have a learned and scholarly husband; there is no chance of you outpacing me, after all!’ He laughs at the thought of it and I laugh with him.

I don’t even look at the Fool, though I know he is listening for my reply. ‘Whatever you think best, my lord,’ I say levelly. ‘I should enjoy to do the work and it would be an education for the princesses also. But you will judge how far it should go.’

‘It can go far,’ the king rules. ‘It can go as far as Cranmer can compose it. Because I will send my dog Gardiner after it to bring it back if it goes too far.’

‘Is it possible to find a middle way in this?’ I wonder aloud. ‘Cranmer either writes the prayers of the Mass in English and publishes in English or he does not.’

‘We’ll find my way,’ Henry replies. ‘My way is inspired by God Himself to me, His ruler on earth. He speaks to me. I hear Him.’

‘You see,’ Will suddenly bounds to the fireside and addresses the sleeping hound, lifting his big head and putting it on his knee, ‘if she said that, or I said that, they would beg us as a madwoman and a Fool. But if the king says that, everyone thinks it is nothing but true since he is descended from God, and has the holy oil on his chest so he can never be wrong.’

The king narrows his eyes at his favourite. ‘I can never be wrong for I am king,’ he says. ‘I can never be wrong because a king is above a mortal man, seated just below the angels. I can never be wrong because God speaks to me, in words that no-one else can hear. Just as you can never be wise for you are my Fool.’

He glances towards me. ‘And she can never have an opinion that is not mine, for she is my wife.’

I pray that night for discretion. All my life I have been an obedient wife, first to a young, fearful and foolish boy, then to a powerful, cold man. To both of them I showed complete obedience for that is the duty of a wife, laid down by God and taught to every woman. Now I am married to the King of England and owe him three sorts of duty: as a wife, as a subject, and as a member of the church over which he sits as Supreme Head. That I should read books that he would not like, and think of opinions that he does not hold is disloyalty, or worse. I should think as he does, morning and evening. But I cannot see that God would give me a brain and not want me to think for myself. The words ring in my head:
I cannot see that God would give me a brain and not want me to think for myself.
And with them comes the couplet:
And God has given me a heart, He must want me to love.
I know that the pairing of the two sentences is not the logic of a philosopher: but that of a poet. It comes from having a writer’s ear; it is the words that persuade me as well as the idea.
God has given me a brain – He must want me to think. God has given me a heart – He must want me to love
. I hear them in my mind. I don’t say them out loud, not even here, in the deserted chapel. But when I look up from my place at the chancel rail at the painting of the crucified Christ, all I see is Thomas Seymour’s dark smile.