The Taming of the Queen

by Philippa Gregory

  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:

  Thomas must pull us all the way

  Over the mountains to Germany,

  For Stephen is dragging us up and down

  Over the Alps to Rome.

  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 level
ly. ‘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.

  Nan marches into my bird room where I am sitting in the window seat with a pair of yellow canaries on one hand pecking at a speck of manchet bread that I hold in the other. I am revelling in their bright little eyes, the cock of their heads, the brilliance of their colour, the intricate detail of feather upon feather and their warm, scratchy little feet. They are like a miracle of intense life, sitting in the palm of my hand. ‘Sshh,’ I say without raising my head.

  ‘You need to hear this,’ Nan says in a tone of muted fury. ‘Put the birds away.’

  I glance up to refuse; but then I see her grim face. Behind her Catherine Brandon is pale. Beside her is Anne Seymour looking grave.

  Gently, so as not to startle them, I put my hand into the pretty cage and the pair hop to their perches, and one of them begins to preen and tidy his feathers as if he was an important ambassador, returned from a visit, and must straighten his cloak.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the new Act of Succession,’ Nan says. ‘The king is naming his heirs before he goes to war with France. Charles Brandon and Edward Seymour were with him when he was taking advice, and Wriothesley – Wriothesley! – was there with the lawyers drawing it up.’

  ‘I know all about this,’ I say calmly. ‘He discussed it with me.’

  ‘Did he tell you that he is naming the heirs of your body to follow Prince Edward?’ she demands.

  I wheel round and the little birds in the cage flutter at my sudden movement.

  ‘My heirs?’ I demand.

  ‘We have to take care what is said.’ Anne Seymour glances anxiously around as if the parrot might report to Bishop Gardiner any words of treason.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ I nod. ‘I was just surprised.’

  ‘And any other heirs,’ Catherine Brandon says, her voice very quiet, her face carefully expressionless. ‘That’s the point, really.’

  ‘Other heirs?’

  ‘From any future queen.’

  ‘Any future queen?’ I repeat. I look at Nan, not at Catherine or Anne. ‘He is planning for a future queen?’

  ‘Not really,’ Anne Seymour reassures me. ‘He is just drawing up an Act of Succession that would still apply even if he were to outlive you. Say you died before him . . .’

  Nan gives a little choke. ‘From what? She’s young enough to be his daughter!’

  ‘It has to be provided for!’ Anne Seymour insists. ‘Say you were to be so unlucky as to become unwell and die . . .’

  Catherine and Nan exchange blank glances. Clearly Henry has a habit of outliving his queens and none of them has ever become unwell.

  ‘Then he would be obliged to marry again and to get a son if he could,’ Anne Seymour concludes. ‘It is not to say he is planning it. It is not to say it is his intention. It is not to say that he has anyone in mind.’

  ‘No,’ Nan snarls. ‘He did not have it in mind, someone has put it into his mind. They have put it into his mind now. And your husbands were there when they did so.’

  ‘It may just be the proper way to draw up the Act of Succession.’ Catherine suggests.

  ‘No it isn’t.’ Nan insists. ‘If she were to die and he remarried and had a son, then the boy would become heir after Edward by right of birth and sex. There’s no need for the king to provide for this. If she were to die then a new marriage and a new heir would mean a new Act of Succession. It does not need to be provided for here and now. This is just to put the idea of another marriage into our minds.’

  ‘Our minds?’ I ask. ‘He wants me to consider that he might put me aside and marry again?’

  ‘Or he wants the country to be prepared for it,’ Catherine Brandon says very quietly.

  ‘Or his advisors are thinking of a new queen. A new queen who favours the old ways,’ Nan replies. ‘You have disappointed them.’

  We are all silent for a moment.

  ‘Did Charles say who added the clause?’ Anne Seymour asks Catherine.

  She gives a little shrug. ‘I think it was Gardiner. I don’t know for sure. Who else would want to prepare for a new queen, a seventh queen?’

  ‘A seventh queen?’ I repeat.

  ‘The thing is,’ Nan concludes, ‘as King of England and head of the church, he can do what he likes.’

  ‘I know that,’ I say coldly. ‘I know that he can do exactly as he likes.’

  WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1544

  Thomas Cranmer has worked constantly on his liturgy, he brings it to the king, prayer by prayer, and the three of us read it and reread it. Cranmer and I study the original Latin, and rephrase it, and read it again to the king, who listens, beating his hand on the chair as if he were listening to music. Sometimes he nods his head approvingly at the archbishop or at me and says: ‘Hear it! It’s like a miracle to hear the Word of God in our own language!’ and sometimes he frowns and says: ‘That’s an awkward phrase, Kateryn. That sticks on the tongue like old bread. No-one will ever say that smoothly. Rework it, what d’you think?’ And I take the line and try it one way and then another to make it sing.

  He says nothing about the Act of Succession and neither do I. It goes before the Houses of Parliament and is passed into law without my remarking to my husband that he is providing for my death, though I am young enough to be his daughter, that he is providing for a queen to follow me, though he has made no complaint of me. Gardi
ner is away from court, Cranmer is a frequent companion, and the king loves to work with us both.

  Clearly, he is serious about this translation being made and offered to the churches. Sometimes he says to Cranmer: ‘Yes, but this has got to be heard up in the gallery, where the poor people stand. It’s got to be clear. It’s got to be audible even when an old priest is muttering away.’

  ‘The old priests won’t read it at all unless you force it on them,’ Cranmer warns him. ‘There are many who think that it cannot be the Mass unless it’s Latin.’

  ‘They will do as I command,’ the king replies. ‘This is the Word of God in English and I am giving it to my people whatever the old priests and the old fools like Gardiner want. And the queen is going to translate the old prayers, and write some new ones.’

  ‘Are you?’ Cranmer asks me with a gentle smile.

  ‘I am thinking about it,’ I say cautiously. ‘The king is so kind as to encourage me.’

  ‘He is right,’ Cranmer says with a bow. ‘What a church we will make with the Mass in English and prayers written by the faithful! By the Queen of England herself!’

  The warmer weather brings an improvement to the king’s leg, which has been drained of the worst of the pus and is now only weeping gently, and this improves his temper. Working with me and his archbishop he seems to regain some of his old joy in study, and it even deepens his love of God. He likes us to come to him when he is alone before dinner, perhaps with only a page to serve him some pastries, or one of his clerks in attendance. He has to wear his spectacles for reading now, and he does not like the court to see him with the gold-rimmed glasses tied on his nose. He is shamed by the blurring of his sight and fearful that he will go blind, but he laughs when one day I take his fat face in my hands and kiss it and tell him he looks like a wise owl and that he is handsome in his spectacles and should wear them everywhere.