‘I like it,’ Henry says firmly, and there is a sort of breeze as the court releases its indrawn breath. ‘Very fair. Very well done.’ He glances at me and I see he looks just a little embarrassed. ‘You will be glad to see the children painted all together, and the honour that I have done to Edward’s mother.’
He looks at the pale painted face of his dead wife. ‘She might have sat beside me, just like that, had she had been spared,’ he says. ‘She might have seen Edward grow to be a man. Who knows? She might have given me more sons.’
There is nothing I can say while my husband publicly mourns a previous wife, gazing into her bleached stupid face as if to find some wit now that escaped everyone during her life. I find that my teeth are gritted to hold a fixed smile as if this is not an insult to me, as if I am not publicly denied, as if the king is not telling the world that all of us who came after Jane – Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, me – are ghost queens of less substance than her, the dead wife.
Of course, it is Anne Seymour, the dead queen’s sister-in-law, who steps forward and addresses the king as a kinswoman and fellow-mourner, taking advantage of his tears as she always does: ‘It is her to the life.’
Except she is dead.
‘Just as she was,’ he says.
I doubt that, for she is in my best gold-heeled shoes.
‘She must be looking down from heaven and blessing you and her boy,’ she says.
‘She must be,’ he agrees eagerly.
I note, drily, that the sainted Jane seems to have skipped purgatory, though there is a preacher imprisoned in the Tower of London right now facing a charge of heresy for suggesting that purgatory does not exist.
‘She was cruelly taken from me,’ he says, his little eyes blinking out easy tears. ‘And we had been married little more than a year.’
He’s not quite right. I could tell him exactly. They were married for a year and four months, a shorter marriage even than Kitty Howard, who lasted only a year and six months before he beheaded her; but far longer than his marriage to Anne of Cleves, now so well-regarded, who was pushed out inside half a year.
‘She loved you so much,’ Anne Seymour says mournfully. ‘But thank God that she left such a wonderful son as her living memorial.’
The mention of Prince Edward cheers Henry. ‘She did,’ he says. ‘At least I have one son, and he is handsome, isn’t he?’
‘The very image of his father,’ Anne smiles. ‘See how he stands in the portrait. He is the very image of you!’
I lead my ladies back to my rooms. I am smiling and they are all smiling. We are all trying to show that we are untroubled, that we have seen nothing that disturbs our position, our sense of entitlement. I am the queen and these are my ladies. Nothing is wrong.
When we get to my rooms I wait for them to settle to their sewing with a reader opening a book approved by the Bishop of London. Then I say that I have a little flux, something I ate, no doubt. I will go to my room alone. Nan comes with me because hell’s own horses would not keep Nan out of my hair right now, and she shuts the door behind us and looks at me.
‘Bitch,’ I say shortly.
‘Me?’
‘Her.’
‘Anne Seymour?’
‘No, Jane Seymour. The dead one.’
This is so unreasonable that not even Nan tries to correct me. ‘You’re upset.’
‘I am publicly humiliated, I am supplanted before everyone by a ghost. My rival is not some pretty girl like Catherine Brandon or Mary Howard but a cadaver who was not even very lively when she breathed. And yet now she is the wife that he will not forget.’
‘She is dead, poor lady. She cannot irritate him now. He can think of her at her best.’
‘Her death is her best! She was never as charming as she is now!’
Nan makes a little gesture with her hand, as if to say ‘stop’. ‘She did the best that she could, and my God, Kat, you would not be so hard on her if you had seen her die in such a fever, crying out for God and for her husband. She may have been a ninny; but she died a woman in lonely terror.’
‘What is that to me, who will now have to walk past her image every time I go to dinner? Who is not allowed to wear her pearls? But who has to raise her son? Bed her husband?’
‘You are angry,’ Nan says.
‘Indeed,’ I spit. ‘I see that your studies have not been wasted on you. I am angry. Excellent. Now what?’
‘You’re going to have to get over it,’ she says, as steady as our mother used to be when I raged against some nursery injustice. ‘Because you’re going to have to go to dinner with your head up, smiling, showing everyone that you are happy with the portrait, and happy with your marriage, and happy with your stepchildren and their three dead mothers, and happy with the king.’
‘Why do I have to do this?’ I pant. ‘Why do I have to pretend that I am not publicly insulted?’
Nan’s face is very pale and her voice is flat. ‘Because if you see a dead wife as your rival, you will be a dead wife,’ she predicts. ‘People are already saying that he will remarry. People are already saying that he does not like your religion, that you are too much for reform. You have to face them down. You have to please him. You have to walk in to dinner tonight like a woman whose position cannot be questioned.’
‘Who questions me?’ I yell at her. ‘Who dares to question me?’
‘I am afraid that you are widely questioned,’ she says quietly. ‘Already, the gossip has started. Almost everyone questions your fitness to be queen.’
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1545
In the quiet days before the start of the Christmas feast the king is troubled and openly irritated that neither his traditional advisors nor his new thinkers can get a truce with France. Charles of Spain is now urging that a truce be made so that he is free to turn on his own subjects. He is determined to stamp out the reformers in Flanders and the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. He says that he and Henry must forget their enmity against France to confront a greater danger. They must all three join together to make war against the Lutherans. He says that this must be the new crusade, that they must make war against people who are such sinners, they think that the Bible is the best guide to life.
I pray for the safety of the men and women of God in England, in Germany, in every corner of Christendom, who have done nothing wrong but have read the Word of God and study it in their hearts. Then they speak. Why should they not? Why should the scholars of the church and the priests of the church and – yes – the bullies and soldiers of the church be the only ones who can announce the truth as they see it?
Stephen Gardiner, still in Bruges, still desperately trying to gain a peace treaty with France, is passionately for peace with France and Spain, arguing in favour of a bloodstained crusade against Lutherans everywhere, especially in Germany, to start at once.
‘God only knows what he is offering, what he is promising on my behalf,’ Henry grumbles to me as we sit quietly playing cards together one evening.
Around us the court is dancing and flirting, someone is singing, and there is a small group standing around us, watching the play and betting on the outcome. Catherine Brandon is at the king’s elbow. He shows her his cards and asks for her advice, and she smiles and swears she will signal to me so that I have the advantage. Most people bet on the king. He does not like to lose. He does not even like someone betting against him. I see a weak card that he plays and I do not trump it. He roars at my mistake and scoops up the trick.
‘Shall you summon Bishop Gardiner home?’ I ask as calmly as I can. ‘Do you agree with him that the emperor should make a war against his own people?’
‘For certain they go too far in Germany,’ Henry says. ‘And these German princes have been no help to me at all. I won’t defend them. Why should I? They don’t understand the ways of man, why should they grasp the ways of God?’
I glance up and see Edward Seymour, Thomas’s brother, watching me. I know that he hopes tha
t I will use my influence to persuade the king that the Lutherans in Germany should be spared, and that the new thinking in England should be allowed. But I walk a very careful course with the king. I have heard Nan’s warnings and I am wary of making enemies. I know by now that when the king complains of one side he is often, at the very same time, working against the other. People overestimate my influence when they blame me for reform. I use my influence lightly, and there is a portrait hanging on the wall that denies I even exist.
‘Surely it cannot be wrong to think that we should live by the Bible, and that we will go to heaven by faith and the forgiveness of our sins,’ I remark.
Henry glances up from his hand of cards. ‘I see you are no better a theologian than you are a card player,’ he says. His twinkle of a smile takes the sting from his words.
‘I don’t expect to understand more about religion than you, my lord husband,’ I say. ‘And I certainly never expect to beat you at cards.’
‘And what about my girls?’ he asks, turning to Princess Mary, who stands at his elbow, while Elizabeth leans against my chair.
‘Cards or scholarship?’ Elizabeth asks pertly.
Her father laughs. ‘Which do you prefer?’
‘Scholarship,’ she says. ‘Because it is a privilege to be allowed to study, especially with a scholar like the queen; but cards are a pastime for anyone.’
‘Quite right,’ he says. ‘And only the learned and the thoughtful should study and discourse. Holy things should be considered in quiet and holy places, and only by those fit to understand them under the guidance of the church. Cards are for the taproom; the Bible is only for those who can read and understand it.’
Princess Mary nods, and he smiles at her. ‘I take it that you are not one for the wayside sermon, bawled out by any fool perched on a milestone, my Mary?’
She curtseys before she speaks to him. ‘I think the church must teach the people,’ she says. ‘They cannot teach themselves.’
‘That’s what I think,’ Henry says. ‘That’s just what I think.’
The king takes this careless talk at the card table and uses it as the basis for his speech to parliament. He goes to them on Christmas Eve, as the members are thinking about calling for their horses and going to their homes for the season. He makes a grand entrance, as the nation’s father, coming to address his people on the very night before the birth of Christ, like a fat lame herald angel, to tell them how Christ is to be served by them, here on earth. Everyone knows that this is to be a great statement of the king’s belief, perhaps the last that he ever makes, and that whether they agree or not, they had better be there. The kingdom knows what I believe – they have read the liturgy that I translated with Thomas Cranmer. They see me as temperate, traditional, but with a focus on personal belief, personal prayer. Some may suspect me of leaning towards reform but everything I have publicly authored has been approved by the king and cannot be heretical. They have seen Stephen Gardiner’s beliefs in the uncompromising King’s Book, which defines hundreds of true believers as heretics, so they feel the tide is against reform. But always, until now, they have had to guess at the king’s beliefs. He has written books and banned them, he has given people the Bible and taken it away again, he has told them that he is the Supreme Head of the church, but never before has he told them what he believes. Never before has the king gone to his parliament in person, and told them directly what they are to think about God.
Men are moved to tears. The crowds outside, gathered to see the great procession led by the huge king, stand with their heads uncovered as some climb up to peer in through the open windows of Westminster Hall and then shout down what the king, seated like a mountain on his throne under the golden cloth of estate, has pronounced. People are desperate to know if he will be like a German prince and pronounce for reform of the church, or whether he will be like the French king and the Spanish emperor and defend the old ways of the old church and ally with the pope.
‘It’s bad,’ Anne Seymour says to me shortly. ‘We’ve lost.’ She is first into my rooms with the news. Her husband, Edward, stood beside the king, his face impassive as the king complained bitterly to his commons that they mangled the Word of God in taverns and took His name in vain. As soon as they got back from parliament Edward came straight to his wife and muttered his report to her.
‘It’s very bad for those who think as we do. The king is moving back to the old ways. It will be the Catholic church as it was, everything is to be restored, and there are some who say that he will join in communion with the Greek Church.’
‘Greek?’ I say blankly. ‘What has the Greek Church to do with England?
She looks at me as if my husband is as ineffable as God himself. ‘Anyone but Protestants,’ she says bitterly. ‘That’s what he means. Anyone but reformers. He told parliament that he is tired of the constant debate and the questioning of the Bible. He is tired of the gospellers. He is tired of all the thinking and writing and publishing. Of course, he fears that people will question him next. He told them that he had given them the Bible only for men to read to their own families. They are not to discuss it.’
‘The Bible is only for men?’
She nods. ‘He says that it is for him to judge between truth and error. They are not to think, they are merely to read aloud to their household and children.’
I bow my head under this insult to God-given intelligence.
‘But then – just when you think that he is going back to papistry – he says that he is going to pull down all the chantries, and take their lands.’
This makes no sense. ‘Destroy the chantries and abolish Masses for the dead?’
‘He says it is nothing but a hollow superstition. He says that there is no purgatory and so no need for Masses for the dead and so no need for chantries.’
‘He says that there is no purgatory?’
‘He says it has been a way for the old church to make money from the innocent people.’
‘He’s right!’
‘But at the same time the service of the Mass is to be unchanged, with all the bobbing and bowing and ducking. And the bread and wine is to be regarded as the true body and blood. And it is heresy to question this.’
I look at her with a sort of despair. ‘What does your husband think that the king actually believes? In his heart?’
She shrugs. ‘Nobody knows. It is half Lutheranism and half Catholic, it is papist with the king as pope, it is Lutheranism with the king as Luther. It has become a religion quite of his own making. That’s why he has to keep explaining it to us. And so heresy, too, is what he says it is. We are all of us – papists and Protestants, Lutherans and gospellers alike – in danger.’
‘But what does he believe? Anne, we have to know. What does the king believe?’
‘All sorts of things, all at once.’
The king comes home very tired, and sends for me to visit him in his rooms. They have already put him to bed, and I hesitate on the threshold, wondering if he intended me to come in my nightgown, to bed him.
He beckons me in. ‘Come in,’ he says. ‘Sit with me. I want to tell you all about it before I sleep. You will have heard that they were in awe of me at Westminster? They wept as I told them I was their father and I would have command of them. They said that they had never heard such a speech before.’
‘How wonderful,’ I say faintly. ‘And how good you are to make the effort to go out to them, and on Christmas Eve as well.’
He waves a fat hand. ‘I wanted them to know my mind,’ he says. ‘It is important that they are clear. I think for them, I decide for them, they must know what I am thinking. How else are they to find their way through life? How else get to heaven?’
The door behind me opens and the first of the servers comes in with a platter and a spoon and knife. The king is to be served his dinner in bed. One after another the men come in with dish after dish. Henry piles food on his platter as they wrap a great linen napkin under his chin to keep the
bedclothes from being spattered with juices from the meats and sauces. I am served in my seat at a table at the foot of the great bed and I eat slowly, so that we may finish our meal together. Henry’s plate is constantly replenished and he drinks at least three bottles of wine, the meal takes for ever, and when he waves the last dish away he throws himself back against the pillows, exhausted and sweating. I am nauseous just from watching the huge plates of food come and go.
‘Should you see the doctor?’ I ask him. ‘Is your fever rising?’
He shakes his head. ‘Doctor Wendy can attend me later,’ he says. ‘Did you know that Doctor Butts is ill?’ He gives a wheezy laugh. ‘What sort of a doctor is that? I sent him a message – what sort of doctor are you, too sick to attend his patient?’
‘How amusing. But is he at court? Is he cared for?’
‘I think he went home,’ Henry says indifferently. ‘He knows better than to bring illness to court. As soon as he had the first symptom he sent me a message to tell me that he would not come near me till he is well again. He begged my pardon for not being able to attend to me. He should be here. I knew I would be overtaxed, going to my people, taking my wisdom to my people, like that. In this cold weather.’
I nod to the servers to take everything from the room but to bring the king another bottle of wine and the sweet pastries that he likes to have beside the bed in case he is hungry during the night.
‘I was inspiring.’ He belches with quiet satisfaction. ‘They listened to me in complete silence. When people talk about preaching, they should have heard me in Westminster this evening! People who call for a new prophet should have heard me speak tonight! I am a father to my people, and a better father than the false priest they call the Holy Father in Rome!’