The Taming of the Queen (39 page)

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.’

So much for your dark warnings, Nan, I think. ‘Lord husband, I am glad,’ I say, and I mean it. ‘If I can please you then I am the happiest woman in England. But I have heard some rumours.’

‘Of what?’ he demands as his sandy brows twitch together.

‘Some say that you might want a new queen,’ I say, taking the risk of speaking Nan’s warning out loud.

He chuckles and waves a dismissive hand. ‘There will always be rumours,’ he says. ‘While men have ambitious daughters, there will always be rumours.’

‘I am glad they mean nothing.’

‘Of course they mean nothing,’ he says. ‘Nothing but people talking about their betters, and plain women envying your beauty.’

‘Then I am happy,’ I tell him.

‘And the children are well and thriving,’ he says, continuing to list his blessings. ‘And the country is at peace, though all but bankrupt. And for once I have some quiet in my court for my rival bishops have taken the summer off from their wrangling.’

‘God smiles on the righteous,’ I say.

‘I have seen your studies,’ he says in the same smug tone of congratulation. ‘I was pleased, Kate. You have done well to study, anyone can see how I have influenced your learning and your spiritual growth.’

I am sick with sudden fear. ‘My studies?’ I repeat.

‘Your book of prayers,’ he says. ‘That’s right, it is dutiful and pleasing to have a wife who spends her time on prayers.’

‘Your Majesty honours me with your attention.’ I say feebly.

‘I glanced at them,’ he says. ‘And I asked Cranmer what he thought. And he praised them. For a woman they are scholarly work. He accused me of helping you, but I said – no, no, they are all her own. I am glad to see your name on the cover, Kate. We should credit them to a royal author. What other king in Christendom has a scholarly wife? Francis of France has a queen who is neither wife nor scholar!’

‘I only put my name on the page as a sign of my gratitude to you,’ I say carefully.

‘You do that,’ he says, comfortable. ‘I am a lucky man. I have only two things that trouble me, and neither of them overmuch.’ He eases himself back in his chair, and I stand at once and move a little table laden with sweet cakes and wine closer to his hand.

‘What are they?’

‘Boulogne,’ he says heavily. ‘After all our courage in taking it, the council want me to return it to the French. I never will. I sent Henry Howard out there in place of his father just so that he will persuade everyone that we can keep it.’

‘And does he convince them?’

‘Oh, he swears he will never leave it, says he is dishonoured by the very suggestion.’ Henry chuckles. ‘And his father whispers to me that he is a boy who should come home and live at his father’s say-so. I love it when a father and son disagree. It makes my life so much easier if they are dancing to different tunes, but both of them played by me.’

I try to smile. ‘But how do you know which to believe?’

He taps the side of his nose with his hand to indicate his cunning. ‘I don’t know. That’s the secret. I listen to one, I listen to the other, I encourage each to think he has my ear. I weigh them as they bicker, and I choose.’

‘But it puts father against son,’ I point out. ‘And sets your chief commander in France against your Privy Council, and makes a deep division in the country.’

‘All the better, for then they cannot conspire against me. Anyway, I cannot return Boulogne to the French, whatever the Privy Council wants, for Charles of Spain insists that I keep it, insists that we don’t make peace with France. I have to play Spain and France like two dogs in a fight as well. I have to match them against each other like a dog-master.’

‘And your other worry?’ I ask gently.

‘God be praised, it’s just a little worry. It’s nothing. Just a plague at Portsmouth.’

‘Plague?

‘Ripping through my navy, God help them. Of course they will take it hard. The sailors sleep on the ships or in the worst of lodgings in that poor little town, the captains and the bo’suns little better. They’re all crammed on top of one another and the marshes are pestilential. The soldiers in my new castles will die like flies when it goes through them.’

‘But your admirals must be safe?’

‘No, for I insist they stay with the fleet,’ he says, as if the life of Thomas Seymour is an afterthought. ‘They have to take their chances.’

‘Can’t they go to their homes while the plague is in Portsmouth?’ I suggest. ‘It must make sense that the captains and commanders are not lost to the plague. You will need them in battle. You must want to keep them safe.’

‘God will watch over those who serve me,’ he says comfortably. ‘God would not raise his hand against me and mine. I am His chosen king, Kateryn. Never forget it.’

He sends me away at midnight – he wants to be alone – but instead of going to my bed I go to the beautiful chapel, kneel before the altar and whisper to myself: ‘Thomas, Thomas, God bless you, God keep you, my love, my only love. God keep you from the sea, God keep you from the plague, God keep you from sin and sorrow and send you safe home. I don’t even pray that you come home to me. I love you so dearly that I would have you safe, anywhere.’

The king’s leg swells up again and the wound opens up further. He cannot bear to put weight on it at all and instead has wheels put under his strengthened chair and has himself wheeled around the palace. Unusually, his spirits stay high and he continues to be the dog-master, as he boasted to me. He is going to send Stephen Gardiner to meet the emperor at Bruges to negotiate a treaty with the French that will bring an end to war between the three great kings of Europe; but at the same time, and in complete contradiction, he invites delegates from the German Lutheran princes to mediate between England and France for a secret peace to betray the Spanish emperor. At this rate, we will end up with two peace treaties, one brokered by papists and one brokered by Lutherans, and unable to sign either.

‘No, this is a great chance for our faith,’ Catherine Brandon disagrees, as we sit down behind my long table, assemble our pens and papers and prepare to listen to the sermon of the day. ‘If the Lutheran lords from Saxony can bring peace to Christendom then the reformed faith will be seen as the moral leader, as a light to the world. And they will work for the king, as they want him to save them from the emperor. That papist monster is calling for a crusade against them, his own people, for nothing more than their religion – God save and keep them.’

‘But Bishop Gardiner will beat the Lutheran lords to it,’ I predict. ‘He’ll bring home a peace with France before they can.’

‘Not him!’ she says disdainfully. ‘He’s a spent force. The king doesn’t listen to him any more. He sending him on a fool’s errand to Bruges. He wants Gardiner out of the way so that he can talk freely to the Germans. He told me so himself.’

‘Oh, did he?’ I say levelly, and Nan, coming in, notes the edge in my voice and glances across at me.

‘Don’t think that I have said anything to betray us,’ Catherine says quickly. ‘I would never reveal what we study and what we read. But I swear that the king knows, and that he sympathises. He speaks of your learning with such praise, Your Majesty.’

‘It was the king who gave the English their Bible,’ I agree. ‘That’s what the Lutherans want.’

‘And it was Stephen Gardiner who took it away again. And now the king is meeting with Lutherans and Stephen Gardiner is far away. He can stay away from court for ever, for all I care. While he is gone, and while the king supports Henry Howard’s captaincy of Boulogne against his father the duke, our greatest enemies are ignored and we grow stronger every day.’

‘Well, God be praised,’ Nan says. ‘Just think if this country were to come to a true faith based on the Bible, not a hodge-podge of superstition based on spells and images and chants.’

‘Indulgences,’ Catherine says. She almost shudders with disdain. ‘That’s what I hate most. D’you know that the day after my lord died some damned priest came to me and said that for fifty nobles he could guarantee Charles’ ascent to heaven and would show me a sign that it was so?’

‘What sign?’ I ask curiously.

Catherine shrugs: ‘Who knows? I didn’t even ask. I am sure he could have given me anything that I would wish: a bleeding statue saved from some wrecked abbey? A portrait of the Madonna that spurts milk? It is such an insult to suggest that a man’s soul should be saved by half a dozen vile old men bawling out a psalm. How can anyone ever have believed it? How can anyone suggest it now that they can read the Bible and know that we get to heaven through faith alone?’

There is a tap on the door, the guards swing it open, and in walks Anne Askew, as trim and as pretty as if she had just come from the seamstress. She steps in, a gleeful little smile on her face, and dips a deep curtsey to me.

‘God bless us!’ Nan exclaims and, forgetting herself completely, crosses herself as if she were seeing a ghost.

‘You’re a welcome stranger!’ I say. ‘It’s a long time since we saw you! I was glad to know you were safe, that Bishop Bonner had released you, but we heard he sent you home. I didn’t think to see you again at court.’

‘Oh, yes, I was sent home to my husband,’ she says, quite matter-of-fact. ‘And I thank Your Majesty for letting it be known that I am under your protection. You saved me from more questioning, and a trial, I know. They did send me home to my husband, I was paroled into his keeping, but I have left him again and here I am.’

I smile at the boldness of the young woman. ‘Mistress Anne, you make it sound easy.’

‘As easy as sin,’ she says cheerfully. ‘But it is not sin, I promise you. My husband knows nothing of me, nor of my faith. I am as strange to him as a deer in the sheep pen. There is no way that we could marry in the sight of God and no way that such vows could be binding. He thinks as I do, though he has not the courage to say it to the bishop. He does not want me in his home, any more than I can tolerate being there. We cannot be yoked together – a deer and a sheep.’

Nan gets to her feet, alert as a yeoman of the guard. ‘But should you be here?’ she asks. ‘You cannot bring heresy to the queen’s rooms. You cannot come here if you have been ordered to stay with your husband, whether he is a sheep and you a deer or both of you a pair of fools.’

Anne puts out her hand to halt Nan’s anxious torrent of words. ‘I would never bring danger to Her Majesty’s door,’ she says calmly. ‘I know who I have to thank for my release. I owe you a debt for life,’ she adds with a little curtsey to me. Then she turns back to Nan. ‘They were satisfied with my answers. They questioned me over and over but I did not say a word that was not in the Bible and they had no handle to hold me, nor rope to hang me.’

Nan hides an involuntary shudder at the mention of the hangman and glances towards me. ‘Bishop Bonner has no complaint against you?’ she repeats incredulously.

Anne lets out a ringing, confident laugh. ‘That’s a man who would always be complaining about something. But there was nothing he could fix on me. The Lord Mayor asked me did I think the Host was holy, and I did not answer, because I know that it is illegal to speak of the bread of the Mass. He asked me if a mouse ate the Host would the mouse be holy? I just said, “Alack, poor mouse.” That was the best of his questions: trying to trap me with a holy mouse!’

Despite myself I cannot help but laugh, and Catherine Brandon catches my eye and she giggles.

‘Anyway, thank God that they released you, and obeyed the queen,’ Catherine says, recovering. ‘We are winning the argument, almost everyone is persuaded by the queen’s thinking. The king listens to her, and the whole court thinks as we do.’

‘And the queen has translated a book of prayers that have come out under her own name,’ Nan says proudly.

Anne turns her brown gaze to me. ‘Your Majesty, this is to use your education and your position for the good of all true believers, and especially for the good of women. To be a woman and to write! To be a woman and to publish!’

‘She is the first,’ Nan boasts. ‘The first woman to publish in the new printed books in England, the very first woman to publish in the English language. The first to write her own prayers and not merely translate.’

‘Hush,’ I say. ‘There are many scholars like me, and many better read. There have been women writers before me. But I am blessed with a husband who allows me to study and write, and we are all blessed with a king who allows the prayers of the church to be understood by his people.’

‘Thank God for him,’ Anne Askew says fervently. ‘Do you think he will allow the Bible back into the churches again for everyone to read?’