The Taming of the Queen

She hides her terror behind a rigid formality – she has a veneer of royalty like a shell – but I am sure that inside, the soft little creature is cringing like a Whitstable oyster squirted with lemon juice. She curtseys low to her father and then she turns and curtseys to me. She speaks to us in French, expressing her gratitude that her father should allow her into his presence, and her joy in greeting her new honoured mother. I find I am watching her almost as if she is a poor little beast from the menagerie at the Tower, ordered by the king to do tricks.

Then I see a swift glance between Elizabeth and Lady Mary and I realise that they are sisters indeed, both of them afraid of their father, completely dependent on his whim, uncertain of their position in the world and instructed never to put a foot wrong on a most uncertain path. Lady Mary was forced to wait on Elizabeth when she was a baby princess, but this failed to breed enmity. Lady Mary came to love her half-sister, and now she nods encouragingly as the little voice trembles over the French words.

I rise from my seat and step quickly down from the dais. I take Elizabeth’s cold hands and I kiss her forehead. ‘You’re very welcome to court,’ I say to her in English – for who speaks a foreign language to their daughter? ‘And I shall be very glad to be your mother and care for you, Elizabeth. I hope you will see me as a mother indeed, and that we will be a family together. I hope that you will learn to love me and trust that I will love you as my own.’

The colour floods into her pale cheeks, up to her sandy eyebrows, her thin lips tremble. She has no words for a natural act of affection though she had speeches prepared in French.

I turn to the king. ‘Your Majesty, of all the treasures that you have given me, this – your daughter – is the one that gives me most delight.’ I glance at Lady Mary, who is blanched with shock at my sudden informality. ‘Lady Mary I love already,’ I say. ‘And now I will love Lady Elizabeth. When I meet your son my joy will be complete.’

The favourites, Anthony Denny and Edward Seymour, look from me to the king to see if I have forgotten my place and embarrassed him – his commoner wife. But the king is beaming. It seems that this time he wants a wife who is as loving to his children as she is loving to him.

‘You speak to her in English,’ is all he remarks, ‘but she is fluent in French and Latin. My daughter is a scholar like her father.’

‘I speak from my heart,’ I say, and I am rewarded by the warmth of his smile.

HAMPTON COURT PALACE, SUMMER 1543

They tell me I must put aside mourning for my wedding day and wear a gown from the royal wardrobe. The groom of the wardrobe brings one sandalwood chest after another from the great store in London and Nan and I spend a happy afternoon pulling out gowns, looking them over, and taking our pick as Lady Mary and a few other ladies advise. The robes are powdered and stored in linen bags and the sleeves are stuffed with lavender heads to keep away the moth. They smell like wealth: the cool soft velvets and the sleek satin panels have an odour of luxury that I have never known in my life before. I take my choice from the queens’ gowns, in cloth of silver and cloth of gold, and I look at all the many sleeves and hoods, and the underskirts. By the time I have made my choice, of a richly embroidered gown in dark colours, it is nearly time for dinner. The ladies pack the spare gowns away, Nan closes the door on everyone and we are alone.

‘I have to talk to you about your wedding night,’ she says.

I look at her grave face, and at once I fear that she somehow knows my secret. She knows I love Thomas and we are lost. I can do nothing but brazen it out. ‘Oh, what is it, Nan? You look very serious? I’m not a virgin bride, you need not warn me of what’s to come. I don’t expect to see anything new,’ I laugh.

‘It is serious. I have to ask you a question. Kat – do you think you are barren?’

‘What a thing to ask me! I’m only thirty-one!’

‘But you never got a child from Lord Latimer?’

‘God didn’t bless us, and he was away from home, and in his later years he wasn’t . . .’ I make a dismissive gesture. ‘Anyway. Why do you ask?’

‘Just this,’ she says grimly. ‘The king cannot bear to lose another baby. So you can’t conceive one. It’s not worth the risk.’

I am touched. ‘He would be so grieved?’

She tuts with impatience. Sometimes I irritate my London-bred sister with my ignorance. I am a country lady – worse even than that – a lady from the North of England, far from all the gossip, innocent as the Northern skies, blunt as a farmer.

‘No, of course not. It’s not grief, for him. He never feels grief.’ She glances at the bolted door and draws me further into the room so that no-one, not even someone with their ear pressed to the wooden panels, could hear us.

‘I don’t believe that he can give you a baby that can stay in the womb. I don’t think he can make a healthy child.’