The Taming of the Queen

I forget the gravity of my position and I laugh. ‘You’ll puff up like a cock sparrow! And wouldn’t Mother have been pleased! Can you imagine?’

Nan laughs out loud and claps her hand over her mouth. ‘Lord! Lord! Can you imagine it? After marrying you off and setting me to work so hard, and all for brother William’s benefit? After teaching us that he must come first and we had to serve the family and never think of ourselves? Teaching us all our lives that the only person who mattered was William and the only country in the world was England, and the only place was court, and the only king was Henry?’

‘And the heirloom!’ I crow. ‘The precious heirloom that she left me! Her greatest treasure was her portrait of the king.’

‘Oh, she adored him. He was always the handsomest prince in Christendom to her.’

‘She would think me honoured to marry what remains.’

‘Well, you are,’ Nan points out. ‘He will make you the wealthiest woman in England; nobody will come near you for power. You’ll be able to do exactly as you please, you’ll like that. Everyone – even Edward Seymour’s wife – will have to curtsey to you. I’ll enjoy seeing that, the woman is unbearable.’

At the mention of Thomas’s brother I lose my smile. ‘You know, I was thinking of Thomas Seymour, for my next husband.’

‘But you haven’t said anything directly to him? You never mentioned him to anyone? You’ve not spoken to him?’

Bright as a portrait I can see Thomas naked in the candlelight, his knowing smile, my hand on his warm belly, tracing the line of dark hair downward. I can smell the scent of him as I kneel before him and put my forehead against his belly, as my lips part. ‘I’ve said nothing. I’ve done nothing.’

‘He doesn’t know that you were considering him?’ Nan presses. ‘You were thinking of marriage for the good of the family, not for desire, Kat?’

I think of him lying on the bed, arching his back to thrust inside me, his outflung arms, the dark lashes on his brown cheeks as his eyes close in abandonment. ‘He has no idea. I only thought his fortune and kin would suit us.’

She nods. ‘He would have been a very good match. They’re a family on the rise. But we must never mention him again. Nobody can ever say that you were thinking of him.’

‘I wasn’t. I would have had to marry someone who would benefit the family; him as well as any other.’

‘It has to be as if he is dead to you,’ she insists.

‘I’ve put aside all thought of him. I never even spoke to him, I never asked our brother to speak to him. I never mentioned him to anyone, not to our uncle. Forget him; I have.’

‘This is important, Kat.’

‘I’m not a fool.’

She nods. ‘We’ll never speak of him again.’

‘Never.’

That night I dream of Tryphine. I dream that I am the saint, married against my will to my father’s enemy, climbing a darkened stair in his castle. There is a bad smell coming from the chamber at the head of the stairs. It catches me in the back of my throat and makes me cough as I climb upwards, one hand on the damp curving stone wall, one hand holding my candle, the light bobbing and guttering in the pestilential breeze that blows down from the chamber. It is the smell of death, the scent of something dead and rotting coming from beyond the locked door, and I have to enter the door and face my greatest fear, for I am Tryphine, married against my will to my father’s enemy, and climbing a darkened stair in his castle. There is a bad smell coming from the chamber at the head of the stairs. It catches me in the back of my throat and makes me cough as I climb upwards, one hand on the damp curving stone wall, one hand holding my candle, the light bobbing and guttering in the pestilential breeze that blows down from the chamber. It is the smell of death, the scent of something dead and rotting coming from beyond the locked door, and I have to enter the door and face my greatest fear, for I am Tryphine, married against my will to my father’s enemy, and climbing a darkened stair in his castle . . . And so the dream repeats itself, over and over again, as I climb up and up the stair, which grows into another stair, which grows into another stair, up and up while the candlelight glitters on the dark wall and the smell from the locked room becomes stronger and stronger until finally I choke so hard on the stench that the bed shakes and Mary-Clare, another lady-in-waiting, who shares the bed with me, wakes me and says: ‘God bless you, Kateryn, you were dreaming and coughing and crying out! What’s the matter with you?’

I say, ‘It’s nothing. God bless me, I was so afraid! I had a dream, a bad dream.’