The Taming of the Queen

I glance towards Lady Mary, who is pale with nausea, and I pinch my cheeks so that I look rosy beside her. I take a portion of everything that the king offers me and I make myself eat. Mouthful after mouthful of thick meat in rich sauce is piled on my plate and I chew and smile and force it down my throat with a swallow of wine. I feel myself become faint and I start to sweat. I can feel my gown dampen at my armpits and down my spine. The king, beside me, is sprawled almost supine in his chair, felled by food, groaning as he beckons for another serving and another.

Finally, as if it is an ordeal that we cannot escape, they blow a blast of trumpets to announce that we have achieved the halfway point, and the meats go out, and the puddings and sweetmeats come in. There is a cheer for a marchpane model of Hampton Court with two little figures made from spun sugar standing before it. The sugar cooks are artists: their Henry looks like a boy of twenty, standing tall and holding the reins of a charger. They have me in widow’s white and they have captured the interrogative tilt of my head as the little sugar Kateryn looks up inquiringly at the sparkling boy-prince Henry. Everyone exclaims at the artistry of the figures. It could be Holbein in the kitchen, they say. I have to keep the delighted smile on my face and swallow a sudden rush of tears. This is a little tragedy, crystallised in sugar. If Henry were still a boy-prince like this we might have had a chance of happiness. But the Katherine who married the boy was Katherine of Aragon, my mother’s friend, not Kateryn Parr – twenty-one years his junior.

The figures have little crowns of real gold and Henry gestures that I am to have both. He laughs when I put them on my fingers like rings, and then he takes the little sugar Kateryn and puts her whole in his mouth, breaking her legs to cram her in, as he eats her in one sucking gulp.

I am glad when he calls for more wine and more music, and slumps back in his throne. The choir from his chapel sings a pretty anthem and the dancers enter with a rattle of tambourines and perform a wedding masque. One of them, dressed as an Italian prince, bows low to me to invite me to join them. I glance to the king and he waves me to go out. I know that I dance well, the wide skirts of the rich gown billow as I turn and lead out the Lady Mary, and even little Lady Elizabeth hops behind me. I can tell that Mary is in pain; her hand rests lightly on her hip, her fingers are digging into her side. She holds up her head and smiles with gritted teeth. I cannot excuse her from dancing just because she is sick. We all have to dance at my wedding, whatever we feel.

I dance with my ladies, one dance after another. I would dance all night for him if it would keep him from nodding to the gentlemen of the bedchamber that the evening is over and the court is closing for the night. But midnight comes as I am seated on my throne, applauding the musicians, and the king turns his great bulk towards me, heaving himself sideways so that he can lean over and say to me with a smile: ‘Shall we go to bed, wife?’

I remember what I thought when I first heard his proposal. I thought, this is how it will be, from now till death parts us: he will wait for my assent, or he will continue without it. It really doesn’t matter what I say, I will never be able to refuse him anything. I smile and rise to my feet, and wait for them to haul him up, and then he struggles down the steps of the dais and waddles through the court. I go slowly beside him, fitting my stride to his rolling gait. The court cheers us as we go through them all, and I make sure that I keep my eyes forwards and meet no-one’s gaze. I can bear anything but a look of pity as I lead my ladies to my new bedchamber: the queen’s bedchamber, to undress and wait for my master, the king.

It is late, but I don’t allow myself to hope that he is too tired to come to my rooms. My ladies dress me in black satin, and I don’t hold the sleeve to my cheek and remember another night when I wore a night robe of black and threw a blue cloak on top and went in the colours of the night sky to a man who loved me. That night was only a little while ago, but I am obliged to forget it. The doors open, and in comes His Majesty, borne up on either side by the grooms of the bedchamber. They help him into the high bed: as if they are wrestling a bull into a press. He swears loudly when someone knocks his bad leg. ‘Fool!’ he snaps.

‘Only one Fool here,’ the king’s Fool, Will Somers, says briskly. ‘And I’ll thank you to remember that I am keeping my place!’