The Taming of the Queen

We go on progress after the French visit and the king is even able to hunt. He cannot walk, but his indomitable spirit drives him on and they lift him into the saddle, and once astride he can ride to hounds. At each of our beautiful palaces on the river they build a hide for him, equipped with bows and arrows, and drive the game towards him. Dozens of deer and many stags go down before the royal box, with arrows in their eyes and their faces ripped open. It is more intensely cruel than when we are in the open field. The king takes careful aim with the beautiful beast herded towards him, the animal goes down with a barb in its face and a hound tearing at its hindquarters. Henry is not troubled by the cold savagery of killing a trapped animal. He watches the huntsman cut the throat of a struggling beast with complete calm. Indeed, I almost think that the suffering pleases him. He watches the little black hooves kicking until they are still and then he gives a short laugh.

He is watching the death throes of some poor doe when he suddenly remarks, ‘What do you think of Thomas Seymour as a match for Princess Elizabeth? I know the Seymours would like it.’

I flinch, but he is not looking at me but at the glaze that is coming over the sloe-black eye of the wounded deer.

‘Whatever you think best,’ I say. ‘Of course, she is still young. She could be betrothed and stay with me until she is sixteen.’

‘Do you think he would make her a good husband? He’s a handsome devil, isn’t he? Does she like him? Would he get a boy on her, d’you think? Is she eager for him?’

I hold my scented leather glove to my lips to hide the tremble that I can feel. ‘I can’t say. She’s very young still. She likes him well enough, as she should, as her half-brother’s uncle. I think that he would make her a good husband. His courage cannot be questioned. What do you think, Your Majesty?’

‘He’s handsome, isn’t he? As randy as a dog? He’s a terrible man for the ladies.’

‘No more than many others,’ I say. I have to take care. I cannot think what I should say to keep myself safe and promote Thomas’s hopes.

‘D’you like him?’

‘I hardly know him,’ I say. ‘I know his brother far better, because his wife is in my rooms. When I speak with Sir Thomas he is always interesting, and he has served you most loyally, hasn’t he?’

‘He has,’ the king concedes.

‘He has been a great help in the safety of England, the fleet and the ports?’

‘Yes; but to give him a daughter would be an exceptional reward. And it would make the Seymours greater still.’

‘But an English marriage would keep her in England,’ I say. ‘And that would be a comfort to us both.’

He looks as if he is considering it, as if the thought of keeping her at home moves him. ‘I know Elizabeth,’ he says. ‘She would have him if I let her. She is a slut, just like her mother.’

Although our stay at Windsor is in fine weather, suddenly, for no apparent reason, the king withdraws from court. I do not think he is ill, but he takes to his rooms with a small circle of gentlemen and will see no-one. The court, accustomed to sunny days of informal sports and pastimes, continues without him as if they hardly care that the lynchpin and the source of all power and wealth is absent. They have become accustomed to his going and then his reappearing. They do not see this as a sign of decline; they think he will come and go for ever. But the men who advise him, the men who are watchful of him every day, and hopeful for the future, gather closely around him, almost as if they dare not trust him with each other, dare not trust him alone.

From behind the closed doors the word seeps out, the men in his rooms tell their wives who attend me: he is ill again, and this time he seems deeply tired by the pain of the old wound and the fever. He sleeps for much of the day, waking up to order enormous meals but having no appetite when the servers bring the heaped platters to his bedside.

The old court – the papists like Thomas Howard, Paget and Wriothesley – are slowly, irresistibly excluded. It is the reformers who are in the ascendant now. Sir Thomas Heneage is dismissed from his intimate post of groom of the stool after years of faithful service, without warning and with no reason given. We are quietly triumphant, for the new groom is to be Joan’s husband, Sir Anthony Denny, and he joins Nan’s husband, Sir William Herbert, to stand beside the king when he labours on his close stool and blows out constipated wind.