The Taming of the Queen (49 page)

I rise up a little from my seat and then I sit down again. ‘Religion,’ I say flatly.

‘It’s a full inquiry,’ she says. ‘I was leaving the king’s rooms and the door to the Privy Council chamber stood open. I heard them say that Tom was being brought to answer charges, and that Bishop Bonner would report from the Howard lands in Essex and Suffolk. He’s been down there gathering evidence against Tom.’

‘You’re sure it is Tom Howard?’ I ask, suddenly fearful for the man I love.

‘Yes, and they know he has listened to sermons and studied with us. Bishop Bonner has gone through all his books and papers at his home.’

‘Edmund Bonner Bishop of London?’ I name the man who interrogated Anne Askew, a powerful supporter of the old church, hand in glove with Bishop Gardiner, a dangerous man, a vindictive man, a driven man. My influence and power forced him to let Anne Askew go, but there are few who leave the bishop’s palace without pleading guilty to whatever crime he names. There are few who leave without bruises.

‘Yes, him.’

‘Did you hear what he had to report?’

‘No,’ she says. She claps her hands together in her frustration. ‘The king was watching me. I had to walk past the door; I couldn’t stop and listen. I only heard what I have told you. That’s all I know.’

‘Someone will know,’ I say. ‘Someone will tell us. Get Anne Seymour.’

Catherine flits from the room and outside we hear the music of the lute suddenly break off as Anne Seymour puts the instrument aside and comes in, closing the door behind her.

‘Has your husband said anything about questioning young Tom Howard?’ Nan asks her bluntly.

‘Tom Howard?’ She shakes her head.

‘Well, get to your rooms and find out what the council think they are doing,’ Nan says furiously. ‘For Edmund Bonner is looking around Howard lands for heretics and the Privy Council is questioning Tom Howard for heresy, and everyone knows that he has been here listening to the sermons. And many people know that Edmund Bonner released Anne Askew because Her Majesty requested it. How does he now have the courage to question another of our friends? How is he so bold as to go to Howard lands and ask questions about the Howards themselves? Have we lost power without knowing it? Or has Gardiner turned against the Howards? What’s happening now?’

Anne looks from my pale face to Nan’s furious one. ‘I’ll go and find out,’ she says. ‘I’ll come back as soon as I know. I may not be able to speak with him till dinner.’

‘Just go!’ Nan spits, and Anne, usually so careful of her own importance, so slow to obey, scurries out of the room.

Nan rounds on me. ‘Your books,’ she says. ‘Your papers, the new book that you’re writing.’

‘What of them?’

‘We’ll have to pack them up and get them out of the palace.’

‘Nan, nobody is going to search my rooms for my papers. The king himself gave me these books. I am studying his own writings, his own commentaries. We just completed our work on the liturgy together. This is the king’s chosen area of study, not just mine. He is planning an alliance with the Lutheran princes against the Catholic kings. He is leading England away from the Roman Catholic church towards full reform—’

‘The liturgy, yes,’ she says, interrupting me, forgetting, in the grip of her fear, the respect that she should show. ‘You’re safe working on that, I suppose, as long as you agree completely with him. But what about
Lamentation
? What about that? Would the king think it conformed to
The King’s Book
? Is your secret work not heretical against his laws? Gardiner’s laws?’

‘But the law keeps changing!’ I exclaim. ‘Changing, and changing again!’

‘Doesn’t matter. It is the law. And your writing is outside it.’

I am silent. ‘Where can I send my papers?’ I ask. ‘Where is safe? Shall I send them to someone in the City? To Thomas Cranmer?’

‘To our uncle,’ she rules. I see that she has already thought of this, that she has been fearful for some time. ‘He’ll keep them safe. He’ll hide them and have the courage to deny them. I’ll pack up while you’re at dinner.’

‘Not my notes on the sermons! Not the translation of the gospels! I need them. I am in the middle of—’

‘Everything,’ she says fiercely. ‘Everything. Every single thing but the king’s Bible and the king’s own writings.’

‘You won’t come to dinner?’

‘I’ve no appetite,’ she says. ‘I won’t come.’

‘You’re never going to miss dinner!’ I say, trying to be cheerful. ‘You’re always hungry.’

‘I never ate a single meal in Syon Abbey when I lived there with Kitty Howard under arrest. My belly was stuffed with fear. And I feel like that now.’

The king dines in the great hall before his people, sending out the best dishes to his favourites, raising his cup to toast his best friends. The court is crowded, for the members of the Privy Council are all here, having worked up an appetite for their dinner with the questioning of Tom Howard. There are many who would be glad to see the younger son from such a great family take a tumble into the quietness of prison for a while and come out with the Howard pride humbled. Those who have been offended by the persistent rise of his father take a pleasure in humiliating the son. Those of the reformed faith are glad to see a Howard squirm. Those who are traditionalists direct their malice at the ardent young scholar. One swift glance tells me that young Tom is not at dinner: not on the table for the young friends and companions, not at the foot of the Howard table. Where can he be?

His father, the Duke of Norfolk, is completely impassive at the head of his family table, rising to his feet to toast the king when he sends down a massive haunch of beef, bowing respectfully to me. There is no way of knowing what is going through the old man’s head. He is a great friend of the old church, devoted to the Mass; but he denied his own beliefs and rode against the Pilgrimage of Grace. Though his heart was with the pilgrims who had enlisted to defend the old church, and fought under the banner of the five wounds of Christ, the duke declared martial law, ignored their royal pardons and killed them one by one in their little villages. He hanged hundreds of innocent men, perhaps thousands, and refused to allow them to be buried in sanctified ground. Whatever his loyalties, whatever his loves, he cares for nothing as much as keeping his place at the side of the king, second in wealth and honour only to Henry. He is determined that his house shall succeed and become the greatest in England.

I cannot understand why such a man, the head of such a noble house, would sell his own daughter into marriage with the Seymours. Her first marriage was to the king’s bastard heir and there is no comparison. As always, Thomas Howard will be thinking one thing and doing another. So what is he thinking when he proposes this match? What will Thomas Seymour have to do when he is the duke’s son-in-law?

And how can the duke, knowing that his second son has been questioned by the Privy Council, dine on the king’s dishes like a man without fear? How can Thomas Howard, frantically thinking where his son might be, raise a glass with a steady hand to the king? I cannot make him out. I cannot calculate what long careful game he is playing in this court of old gamblers.

There is to be a masque after dinner with dancers. The king’s chair with the footstool is placed on the dais and I stand beside him. Courtiers come and go as the dancers make their grand entrance, and Will Somers skips out of the way as the musicians play and the dancing begins.

Anne Seymour comes quietly to stand behind me, her voice masked by the music. She leans forward to whisper in my ear. ‘They offered to release Tom Howard without a charge if he would admit that heresy is preached in your rooms. They threatened him with a trial for heresy if he did not assist them. They said that all they need to know from him are the names of those who preach in your rooms and what they say.’

It is like falling from a horse: everything suddenly goes very slowly and I can see how this started and how it will end between one beat of the music and another. It is as if the court freezes, the little golden clock in my room freezes, as Anne Seymour tells me that the Privy Council are pursuing me for heresy, hunting me down from word to word. Tom Howard is just bait to lead them to me. He is their first step. I am the goal.

‘They asked him to name me?’ I glance sideways at my husband, who is smiling at the dancers and clapping in time to the music, quite blind to my descent into terror. ‘Was the king there? At the Privy Council meeting? Was this in his hearing? Did the king ask them to name me as a heretic himself? Has he told them to find me guilty?’

‘No, thank God. Not the king.’

‘Who then?’

‘It was Wriothesley.’

‘The Lord Chancellor?’

She nods, completely aghast. ‘The highest law lord in the land has ordered the duke’s son to name you as a heretic.’

I cancel the preachers who come to my rooms and instead I summon the king’s chaplains to give us readings from the Bible. I don’t invite them to comment or lead a discussion, and my ladies say nothing, but listen in respectful silence as if none of us is capable of thought. Even when the reading is of great interest to us, something that we would normally study, perhaps even go back to the original Greek to make a new translation, we nod like a convent of orthodox nuns hearing the laws of God and the opinions of man, as if we had no minds of our own.

We go to chapel before dinner and Catherine Brandon, the king’s new favourite, walks beside me.

‘Your Majesty, I am afraid that I have some bad news,’ she starts.

‘Go on,’ I say.

‘A London bookseller, who has supplied me for years with texts, has been arrested for heresy.’

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ I say steadily. ‘I am very sorry for the trouble for your friend.’ I make sure that I don’t even check in my stride as we go side by side down the gallery to the chapel. I incline my head to a group of bowing courtiers.

‘I’m not asking for your protection for him. I am warning you.’ She has to hurry to keep up with my rapid pace. ‘This man, a good man, was arrested on the orders of the Privy Council. The arrest was made out specifically to him by name. He is John Bale. He brings in books from Flanders.’

I raise my hand. ‘Better that you tell me nothing,’ I say.

‘He sold us the Testament in French that you have,’ she says. ‘And the Tyndale translation of the New Testament. They’re banned now.’

‘I don’t have them,’ I reply. ‘I have given away all my books, and you had better get rid of yours, Catherine.’

She looks as frightened as I feel. ‘If my husband were alive then Bishop Stephen Gardiner would never have dared to arrest my bookseller,’ she says.

‘I know,’ I agree. ‘The king would never have allowed Charles Brandon to be questioned by such as Wriothesley.’

‘The king loved my husband,’ she says. ‘So I was safe.’

I know that we are both wondering if he loves me.

The ritual of the court moves on, and I – who once led it boldly – am trapped inside it, going through my paces like a blinkered horse, allowed only to run the length of the tilt rail, blinded to the world outside my narrow, frightened view. We transfer to Greenwich for the pleasure of the gardens in the summer weather, but the king hardly emerges from his rooms. The roses bloom in the arbours and he does not smell their scent, heavy on the evening air. The court flirts and plays and competes in little games and he does not bellow advice nor award prizes. There is boating and fishing, riding at the quintain, racing and dancing. I have to appear at every pastime, smile on every winner and maintain the normal life of the court, running in its agreed course. But at the same time I know that people are whispering that the king is ill, and does not want me at his side. That he is an old man struggling with illness and pain but everyone can see his young wife watching the tennis, or the archery, or boating on the river.