The Taming of the Queen

I can feel a giggle starting, and I dare not look at Nan. ‘Why should it not be all right, Miss Mary?’

The girl shrugs. ‘I didn’t know that a good woman could preach, Your Majesty. I thought a good woman had to be silent. It’s what my father always told me.’

‘Your father thought, no doubt, that he was telling the truth,’ I say carefully, conscious of Nan’s bright eyes and hidden smile. ‘But we know that God’s Word comes equally to men and women and so men and women can equally speak of it.’

She does not understand. I can see by her glazed eyes that she only wants to know if she should let this odd being – a woman preacher – into my rooms; or have the stable boys throw her back into the cobbled streets that circle the palace.

‘Can you speak, Miss Mary?’ I ask her.

She dips a curtsey. ‘Of course, Your Majesty.’

‘Can you read?’

‘I can read a little, if it is writ plain.’

‘Then if the Bible is writ plain you could read God’s Word. And then you could tell others of it.’

She drops her head. We make out from her embarrassed mutter that the Bible is not for the likes of her, she knows only what the priest tells her, and he only speaks loud enough for them to hear at the back at Christmas and Easter.

‘It is for you,’ I insist. ‘The Bible is written into English for you to read. And Our Saviour came from heaven for you and for everyone, as He makes it plain in the Bible that He gave us.’

Slowly her head comes up. ‘I could read the Bible?’ she asks me directly.

‘You could,’ I promise her. ‘You should.’

‘And a woman could understand it?’

‘She can.’

‘And so this woman can preach?’

‘Why not?’

This silences her again. Centuries of male priests and men teachers, monk scholars and bullying fathers, have told her and me – told every woman in England – that a woman cannot preach. But under my hand I have the Bible in English, given by my husband to the people of England, which says that Jesus came for everyone – not just for male priests and men teachers, monk scholars and bullying fathers.

‘Yes, she can,’ I say to conclude the lesson. ‘And you can show her in. What is her name?’

‘Mistress Anne Askew.’

She comes in and curtseys as low as if I am an empress, then she shoots a little smile at Catherine Brandon and curtseys again to the ladies. I see at once why Mary hesitated to allow her into my chamber. She is an outstandingly pretty young woman, dressed like a country lady, the young wife of a wealthy farmer or town merchant. She’s not nobility, but one of those on the rise who probably have an old name and have used it to get a new fortune. Her white cap on her glossy brown hair is trimmed with expensive white lace. It frames an exquisite heart-shaped face with bright brown eyes and a ready smile. She is wearing a plain gown of wool in brown with a kirtle of red silk. Her sleeves are plain brown too, and round her neck she has a filet of good linen. She looks like a young woman that we might meet on a progress, voted as Queen of the May for her pure beauty, shining among the other girls of the village. We might see her in a tableau, chosen to play the princess to a painted dragon in a prosperous town. She is so lovely that any mother would get her married young, any father would see that she married extremely well.

She is certainly not how I imagine a woman inspired by God. I was expecting someone older, with a scrubbed, plain face, engraved with benevolent lines. Someone more like one of the abbesses of my childhood, certainly someone more austere than this little beauty.

‘Have we met before?’ She seems oddly familiar, and I am sure that I recognise her dazzling smile.

‘I did not dare to hope that Your Majesty would remember me,’ she says politely. I hear the rolling Lincolnshire accent. ‘My father, Sir William, served your father-in-law, Lord Brough, at Gainsborough and I used to be invited to the hall when you held a feast and dancing. I always came to the hall for the Twelve Days of Christmas, and at Easter, too, and at Maytime. But I was a little girl. I didn’t expect you to recognise me now.’

‘I thought I knew you.’

‘You were the most learned young lady I’d ever seen,’ she confesses. ‘We talked together once, and you told me that you were reading Latin with your brother. I understood then that a woman can study, a woman can learn. It set me on my path to learn and memorise the Bible. You were my inspiration.’

‘I’m glad that I talked to you, if this is the result. Your reputation as a gospeller goes before you. Do you think you can teach us?’

She bows her head. ‘I can only tell you what I have read and what I know,’ she replies.

‘Have you read more than me and these learned ladies?’

She gives me a sweet respectful smile. ‘I doubt it, Your Majesty, for I had to learn from my Bible when I was blessed with it, and I had it snatched from my hands many a time. I had to fight for my understanding. But I expect that you all have been given a Bible and taught by the finest scholars.’