The Taming of the Queen (48 page)

‘Why Mary Howard?’ I ask incredulously. Someone bows to me and I smile and nod my head to acknowledge their greeting. A few archers start to line up for practice shots. Princess Mary walks towards us.

‘So that the Howards and us Seymours should forget our differences,’ he says. ‘It’s not a new proposal. They made it before, when she was first widowed. So that the Howards can become kinsmen to Prince Edward. Princess Elizabeth is not royal enough for them.’

‘You didn’t seek it then?’ I can feel a taste in my mouth as bitter as the morning drink of rue. I realise that this is the flavour of jealousy.

‘I don’t seek it now,’ he points out.

I want to pinch my face as it feels numb. I want to shake my hands and stamp my feet. I feel as if I am frozen, as still as ice on my throne, as Princess Mary comes slowly towards me across the grass.

‘Why would you?’ I ask.

‘It is advantageous,’ he says. ‘A set of alliances to link the families. We gain their alliances: they’re friends with Gardiner and all who think like him. We would cease the endless struggle over the king. We could agree together how far reform is to go instead of fighting it out step by step. And they’d give me a fortune with her.’

I can see it is a good match. She is a daughter of a duke, and sister to Henry Howard, one of the king’s young commanders, reckless in Boulogne but still a favourite. If Thomas marries her, she will come to court, she will ask to be one of my ladies. I will have to watch him walk with her, dance with her, whisper to her. She will ask permission to leave my rooms early to go to his bed, she will go away from court to join him at Portsmouth. She will be his wife; I will attend her wedding and hear him swear to love and honour her. She will promise him to be bonny and blithe at bed and board. I think: I will never be able to bear it. I know that I must.

‘What does the king say?’ I ask the all-important, the only, question.

Thomas shows me his twisted smile. ‘He says that if Norfolk wants to give his daughter a husband he might as well choose a man so young and lusty as he will please her at all points. ’

‘Points?’

‘That’s what he said. Don’t torture yourself. It was years ago.’

‘But the marriage is proposed again now!’ I exclaim.

He bows, as if I have made a good remark in an argument that anyone may join. ‘It is.’

‘What will you do?’ I whisper.

‘What d’you wish?’ he returns, his eyes on Princess Elizabeth. ‘I am yours heart and soul.’

‘Is the king my father coming to watch?’ Princess Mary joins us and nods her head to Thomas’s bow.

‘Yes, he’s coming at once,’ I reply.

As I walk to dinner at the head of my ladies that night I pass Will Somers. He is throwing a ball in the air and catching it in a cup, a foolish little game. We hesitate as we go by.

‘Would you like to try?’ he asks Princess Elizabeth. ‘It’s harder than it looks.’

‘It can’t be,’ she says. ‘I can see, it’s nothing but catch.’

Will turns and gives her a fresh cup, a new ball. ‘You try,’ he says.

She throws the ball high, and confidently she stretches out the cup as it falls. She catches it perfectly and a splash of water from the cup drenches her. ‘Will Somers!’ she shouts and she runs at him. ‘I am soaked! I am drowned! You are a wretch and a varlet and a rogue!’

Instead of running, Will drops to his hands and knees and bounds down the gallery giving tongue as if he were a naughty dog. Elizabeth hurls the cup after him and catches him on his rump. Will howls and leaps up a stair and we all laugh.

‘At least you caught him,’ I say to her. Nan hands me a napkin and I pat Elizabeth’s laughing face and the lace at the neck of her gown. ‘You gave as good as you got.’

‘He’s a wretch,’ she says. ‘And I will tip a chamber pot on his head when he next walks beneath my window.’

The gentlemen of the court are waiting for us outside the hall. The king, tired by the archery, is dining in his rooms this evening.

‘What’s this?’ Thomas Seymour asks Elizabeth, seeing her damp hair. ‘Have you gone swimming?’

‘Will Somers and his stupid games,’ she says. ‘But I flung a cup at him.’

‘Shall I fight him for your good name?’ he smiles down at her. ‘Shall you have me as your knight errant? Just say the word and I am yours.’

I see her colour rise. She looks up at him and she is speechless, like a flustered child.

‘We will call on you,’ I say, to spare her.

He bows. ‘I am dining with the king. I will come to the hall after dinner.’

Without any word the ladies align themselves in order of precedence. I go before everyone and behind me comes Princess Mary, and then Elizabeth, then my ladies, in order, Anne Seymour in her place. We walk through the crowded hall and the men stand and salute me and the women curtsey. I go to the dais and my steward helps me into my great chair.

‘Tell Thomas Seymour to come to me when he leaves the king’s rooms,’ I say quietly.

The dinner is served far more quickly than when the king is calling for extra portions and sending the dishes all around the room. When everyone has eaten they clear the tables.

Thomas Seymour comes in through a side door, speaks to one man and then another and then appears at my side. ‘Will you dance, Your Majesty?’ he asks me.

‘No, I shall go to the king shortly,’ I say. ‘Was he in good spirits?’

‘I thought he was well.’

‘He is certain to ask me if you are still here, if you are staying for many days?’

‘You can tell him that I am leaving for Portsmouth tomorrow.’

Nan moves out of earshot and Catherine Brandon and some of the others take their places in a dance.

‘What do you think?’ Thomas says abruptly. ‘About my marriage?’

‘I have to say this without anyone knowing what I am feeling,’ I say. ‘I have to be stony-faced.’

‘You must,’ he says. ‘We have no choice.’

‘We have no choice in the matter of your marriage either.’ I turn and smile at him as if I have made an interesting small point of conversation.

He nods courteously and then from the breast of his jacket he draws a little notebook, filled with sketches of rigging and sails. He opens it and shows it to me as if I may want to study it. ‘You are saying that I have to marry her?’

Blindly, I turn a page. ‘Yes. What possible excuse could you give for refusing? She is young and beautiful, probably fertile. She is wealthy and she comes from a great family. An alliance with them would be good for your house. Your brother would ask it of you. How can you refuse?’

‘I can’t,’ he says. ‘But what if you were to become free? And I was then married?’

‘I would be your mistress,’ I promise without a moment’s hesitation. I keep my face calm as if I am deeply interested in the book he holds out to me. ‘If I am free and you are married I will become your sinful adulteress lover. If it costs me my soul I will do it.’

He breathes out. ‘My God, Kat. I so long for you.’

Silently, we turn the pages for a few moments, then he says, ‘And when I am married and happy and she is with child, and she gives me a son and heir, and her boy takes my name, and I love him and am grateful to her, will you be able to forgive me? Will you be my lover then?’

He does not even hurt me with this picture, the worst that he could draw. I am prepared for it. I close the book and give it back to him. ‘We’re beyond that,’ I tell him. ‘We’re beyond jealousy and wanting to own each other. It’s as if we went down with the
Mary Rose
: we’re beyond hating each other or forgiving each other or even hope. All we can do now is try to swim.’

‘They were trapped,’ he remarks. ‘The sailors were trapped by the nets that were stretched over the decks to prevent boarders. They should have dived from the boat as she went down and swum for shore but they were caught in their own grave and drowned.’

I turn my head and blink away the tears. ‘So are we,’ I say. ‘Swim if you can.’

Of course the Howards, always quick to gobble up any advantage, had Mary Howard in their rooms ready for sale, and they visited the king before dinner was even served to ask for his permission for Thomas Seymour and Mary Howard to be married. The king saw them in his privy chamber where he was dining with a few lords and he agreed to the renewed proposal. While I was dining before the court in the great hall, doing my duty as queen, they were agreeing – Seymours and Howards – with the king that the marriage should go ahead. When I told Thomas that we were trapped like his drowning sailors the king was drinking the health of the young couple.

Anne Seymour brings the gossip to the ladies’ rooms. Her husband has told her that the king is pleased that the two great families of England will unite in marriage and content that his daughter-in-law shall remarry.

‘Did you know, Your Majesty?’ Anne Seymour asks me curiously. ‘Has His Majesty spoken with you?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘This is the first I have heard of it.’

Anne cannot hide her pleasure that she has this news before me, and I have to allow her the little triumph.

‘Just as well,’ Nan says to me as we go into my bedroom before the night-time prayers.

‘Just as well – what?’ I say disagreeably as I sit down before the glass and look at my pale face.

‘Just as well to get Mary Howard out of the way. The king has always liked her and they are a family with no feeling but ambition, and no scruples at all.’

‘She is the widow of the king’s dead bastard son,’ I say with assumed patience. ‘She is hardly likely to be a temptation to the king.’

‘She is a beautiful girl and the Howards would propose their own grandmother to him if it suited their purpose,’ Nan says, paying no attention to my ill humour. ‘If you had seen them with Anne Boleyn, if you had seen them with all the other Howard beauties – for Kitty Howard was only one of many – you would be glad to see Mary Howard safely settled.’

‘Oh, I am,’ I say coldly.

Nan waits as the maid lays my sleeves of gold brocade in the scented chest under the window. ‘You don’t mind for him?’ she asks very quietly.

‘Not at all,’ I say clearly. ‘Not at all.’

Thomas leaves court without speaking to me again and I don’t know if he goes directly to Portsmouth or travels to Suffolk to make arrangements for the wedding at Framlingham. I wait for someone to tell me that Thomas Seymour has caught himself an heiress and obliged the cause of reform by making an alliance between the Seymours and the Howards, which will make us all safer at court; to take the Howards from their alliance with Stephen Gardiner is to weaken his power. I wait for Anne Seymour to boast that the match is done and Tom Seymour wedded and bedded. But she says nothing, and I cannot ask. I so dread hearing that he is married that I don’t ask.

Catherine Brandon taps on the door to my room when I am changing my gown to go to dinner, and dismisses the maids with a swift wave of her hand. Nan raises her eyebrows to me in the mirror. She is always alert for Catherine to show any sign that she is taking advantage of her growing favour with the king.

‘This is important,’ Catherine says tersely. ‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘Tom Howard, the duke’s second son, has been summoned before the Privy Council. They’re questioning him. About religion.’