The Taming of the Queen (53 page)

‘You are Helios,’ he tells Henry. ‘And I am just a little cloud.’

‘You are a great Fool,’ Henry says affectionately, ‘and you have disrupted my wife’s rooms, frightened her ladies and caused endless confusion with your folly.’

‘We are a pair of young fools,’ Will says, smiling up at his master. ‘As foolish as we were when we were twenty. But at least Your Majesty is wiser than you were then.’

‘How so?’

‘You are more wise and more kingly. You are more handsome and more brave.’

Henry smiles, anticipating the joke. ‘I am indeed.’

‘Your Majesty, there is more of you altogether,’ Will crows. ‘Much more. The queen has more of a husband than most women.’

Henry bellows his deep-throated laugh and loses his breath in coughing. ‘You are a varlet; go and get your dinner with the hounds in the kitchen.’

Will bows gracefully and retires out of the way. As he passes me I catch a quick smile from him, almost as if he was acknowledging to me that he has done his best; all I have to do is to get through dinner. Not for the first time, I wonder how much of a fool Will Somers can be: a long-term survivor of this knife-edge court.

‘Shall we go in to dinner?’ the king asks me.

I smile and curtsey, and we proceed, a strange awkward procession, headed by the king in his chair and the panting pages, with me walking beside my husband, my hand on his, resting on the arm of his chair, while he wheezes, sweat pouring from his huge body, staining the armpits of his gold silk jacket and soaking his collar, and I wonder how long this can go on.

‘Did you have a sermon this afternoon?’ he asks courteously as the server pours water from a golden jug over his hands and another pats his fingers dry with a white linen napkin.

‘Yes,’ I say holding out my hands for fresh scented water. ‘We had Your Majesty’s chaplain talk to us about grace. It was very interesting, very thought-provoking.’

‘Nothing too wild,’ the king says with an indulgent smile. ‘Nothing that would make young Tom Howard argumentative, I hope. He is released from the Tower but I can’t have him upsetting his father again.’

I smile as if it means nothing to me but an afternoon’s entertainment. ‘Nothing wild at all, Your Majesty. Just the Word of God and a churchman’s understanding of it.’

‘It’s all well and good in your rooms,’ he says, suddenly irritable. ‘But they can’t go on discussing it in the streets and the taprooms. It’s one thing for scholars to debate, it’s quite another when it’s some girl from a farm and some fool of an apprentice trying to read and wrestle with ideas.’

‘I quite agree,’ I say. ‘That is why Your Majesty was so gracious when you gave them a Bible in English, and they so wish they could have it back again. Then they can quietly read and learn. Then they have a chance of understanding. They don’t have to gather to have one recite and another explain.’

He turns his big face towards me. His neck is so thick and his cheeks are so fat that his face is quite square from the white embroidered collar at the neck of his jacket to the sparse fringe of his hair at the top of his forehead. It is like being glared at by a block of stone. ‘No. You misunderstand me,’ he says coldly. ‘I didn’t give them the Bible for that. I don’t think that a farm girl from Lincoln should be reading and learning. I don’t think she should be studying and thinking. I have no desire to advance her understanding. And I am very sure she should not be preaching.’

I swallow a sip of wine. I see that my hand is steady on the glass. On the other side of the king I notice the small downturned face of Stephen Gardiner, ibbling at his dinner and straining his ears to listen.

‘You gave the people the Bible,’I persist. ‘Whether you wish them to keep it in the churches for everyone to read, or whether you want it to be read only reverently and quietly in the better sort of houses, must be your decision. It is your gift, you shall decide where it goes. But there are preachers who have read the words and learned them and understand them better than some of the greatest men in the church. And why is that? For they did not go to college to chop logic, and invent ritual, and pride themselves on their learning; they went to the Bible, to nowhere else and nothing else. It is beautiful. Your Majesty, the piety of simple people is beautiful. And their loyalty to you and their love of you is beautiful as well.’

He is a little mollified. ‘They are loyal? They don’t question me along with the teachings of the church?’

‘They know their father,’ I say firmly. ‘They were brought up in your England, they know that you make the laws that keep them safe, they know that you lead the armies that protect their country, that you plan and direct the ships that keep the seas for them. Of course they love you as their holy father.’

He snorts with laughter. ‘A Holy Father? Like a pope?’

‘Like a pope,’ I say steadily. ‘The pope is nothing more than the Bishop of Rome. He leads the church in Italy. What are you but the greatest of the churchmen in England? You are the Supreme Head of the church, are you not? You sit above every other churchman, do you not? You lead the church in England.’

Henry turns to Gardiner the bishop. ‘Her Majesty has a point,’ he says. ‘Don’t you think?’

Gardiner finds a thin smile. ‘Your Majesty is blessed in a wife who loves scholarly discussion,’ he says. ‘Who would have thought that a woman could reason so? And to a husband who was such a lion of learning? Surely she has tamed you!’

The king commands that I sit with him after dinner and I take this as a mark of his favour. Doctor Wendy prepares a sleeping draught for him as the court stands around him, his great bandaged leg sticking out into the concerned circle. Stephen Gardiner and old Thomas Howard stand on one side, and my ladies and I are opposite, as if we would forcibly drag his chair from one side to the other. For a moment I look at the faces around my husband, the set smiles of the courtiers, the self-conscious charm of everyone, and I realise that everyone is anxious as I, everyone is weary as I am. We are all waiting for the king to put an end to this evening, to release us all for the night. In truth, some of us are waiting for a more lasting peace. Some are waiting for him to die.

Whoever wins the battle for the king’s wavering attention now, will win the next reign. Whoever he favours now, will inherit a prime place when Edward comes to the throne. My husband has described these people to me as dogs waiting for his favour, but for the first time I see it for myself, and know that I am one of them. My future depends on his favour just as theirs does, and tonight I cannot be sure that I have it.

‘Is the pain very bad?’ Doctor Wendy asks him quietly.

‘It is unbearable!’ the king snaps. ‘Doctor Butts would never have let it get this bad.’

‘This should help,’ Doctor Wendy says humbly, and proffers a glass.

Sulkily, the king takes it and drinks it down. He turns to a page. ‘Sweetmeats,’ he says abruptly. The lad dashes to the cupboard and brings out a tray of candied fruits, sugared plums, toffee apples, marchpane and pastries. The king takes a handful and crushes them against his rotting teeth.

‘God knows it was merrier in England before every village had a preacher,’ Thomas Howard says, continuing one of his slow thoughts.

‘But every village had a priest,’ I counter. ‘And every priest a tithe, and every church a chantry, and every town a monastery. There was more preaching then, than there is now; but it was done in a language that nobody could understand, at a terrible price for the poor.’

Thomas Howard, slow of wit and bad-tempered, scowls his disagreement. ‘I don’t see what they need to understand,’ he says stubbornly. He looks down at the king and sees the great moon face turn one way then the other. ‘I don’t hold with fools and women setting themselves up as learned,’ the duke says. ‘Like that stupid girl today.’

I dare not speak of Anne by name. But I can defend her beliefs. ‘Since Our Lord spoke in simple language to simple people, in stories that they could understand, why should we not do so?’ I ask. ‘Why should they not read the stories in the simple words of the Son of God?’

‘Because they go on and on!’ Thomas Howard suddenly bursts out. ‘Because it’s not as if they read and think in silence! Every time I ride by Saint Paul’s cross there are half a dozen of them, cawing away like crows! How many shall we endure? How much noise shall they be allowed to make?’

Laughing, I turn to the king. ‘Your Majesty does not think like this, I know,’ I say with more confidence than I feel. ‘Your Majesty loves scholarship and respectful discussion of the Bible.’

But his face is sour. ‘Sweetmeats,’ he says again to the page. ‘You can leave us, ladies. Stephen, you stay by me.’

It is a snub, but I am not going to let Stephen Gardiner or that fool Norfolk think I am offended. I rise to my feet and curtsey to the king and kiss him goodnight on his damp cheek. He does not squeeze my haunches as I bend over him, and I am relieved that all the court does not watch him pet me like his hound. I give a cool nod to the bishop and the duke, who seem to be clinging to their places. ‘Goodnight, my lord husband, and God bless you,’ I say gently. ‘I shall pray that your pain is eased by the morning.’

He grunts a farewell, and I lead my ladies out of the room. Nan glances back as we go and sees that Stephen Gardiner has been given a seat and he is head to head with the king.

‘I’d like to know what that false priest is saying,’ Nan says irritably.

I kneel at the foot of my gorgeously carved wooden bed and I pray for Anne Askew, who will be lying on a stinking pallet of straw at Newgate tonight. I pray for all the other prisoners of faith, those that I know, since they have been in my rooms talking with me, and those that have been in my service and are now being forced to betray me, and those that I will never know: in England, in Germany and far, far away.

I know that Anne will endure this for her faith but I cannot bear to think of her lying in the dark, listening to the rats rustle in the corners, and the groans of other prisoners. The punishment for heresy is death by burning. Although I am certain that neither Gardiner nor the king will send a young woman, a young gentlewoman, to such a brutal end, the thought of her facing public trial is enough to make me shudder and bury my face in my hands. All she has said is that the bread of the Mass is bread, the wine of the Mass is wine. Surely they won’t keep her in prison for saying no more than everyone knows?

Our Lord said: ‘This is my body, this is my blood,’ but he was no trickster like the false priests who dribble red ink from the wounds of statues. He meant: ‘Think of me when you eat bread, think of me when you drink wine. Consume me in your heart.’ Thomas Cranmer’s liturgy makes this clear, and the king himself supports this reading. We have published this; it can be read in English. Why then should Anne be sleeping tonight in Newgate with a trial before her and the Bishop of London demanding that she recant, when she has said no more than the King of England has ruled?

It is late when I finally go to bed and Nan is already asleep on her side. The sheets are cold but I don’t send for the maid to warm them. I am ashamed of the luxury of the smooth sheets and the white on white embroidery under my fingertips. I think of Anne on her bed of straw, and Thomas in a cramped bunk at sea, his cabin swaying around him, and I think that I suffer nothing; and yet I am unhappy, like a spoilt child.