The Taming of the Queen (8 page)

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!’

Clever as always, he breaks the tension, the king laughs and everyone joins in. Somers winks at me as he goes by, his kind brown eyes twinkling. No-one else even looks at me. As they bow and leave they keep their eyes on the ground. I think that they fear for me, left alone with him at last, as the fumes of the wine seep from his head and the food curdles in his belly and his mood sours. My ladies dash to get out of the room. Nan is the last to leave and she gives me a little nod as if to remind me that I am doing God’s work as much as if I were a saint about to lie down on the rack.

The door closes behind them and I am kneeling at the foot of the bed in silence.

‘You can come closer,’ he says gruffly. ‘I won’t bite. Get into bed.’

‘I was saying my prayers,’ I say. ‘Shall I pray aloud for you, Your Majesty?’

‘You can call me Henry now,’ he says. ‘When we’re alone.’

I take that as a refusal of the prayers, and I lift up the covers and slip into bed beside him. I don’t know what he is going to do. Since he cannot even roll on his side unaided, he certainly cannot mount me. I lie beside him perfectly still and wait for him to tell me what he wants.

‘You’ll have to sit on my lap,’ he says eventually, as if he has been puzzling at this too. ‘You’re not a foolish girl, you’re a woman. You’ve been wedded and bedded more than once. You know what to do, eh?’

This is worse than I had imagined. I lift the hem of my nightgown out of the way, and creep towards him on my hands and knees. Unbidden, the vision of Thomas Seymour, outstretched and naked, his back arched, his dark eyelashes sweeping his brown cheeks, comes into my mind. I can see the muscles of his hard belly ripple with pleasure at my touch as he thrusts upwards.

‘Latimer was no great lover, I take it?’ the king enquires.

‘He was not a man of great strength like you, Your . . . Henry,’ I say. ‘And of course, he was unwell.’

‘So how did he do?’

‘His health?’

‘How did he do the act? How did he bed you?’

‘Very rarely.’

He grunts in approval at that, and I see that he is aroused. The thought that he is more potent than my former husband excites him.

‘That must have made him angry,’ he says with pleasure. ‘Taking a woman like you to wife and not being able to do the act.’ He laughs. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You’re very lovely. I can’t wait.’

He takes hold of my right wrist and tugs me towards him. Obediently I kneel up and try to straddle his body. But his fleshy hips are so wide that I cannot get across, and he pulls me down so that I squat on him as if I were astride a fat horse. I have to hold my face rigid so that I don’t grimace. I must not tremble, I must not cry.

‘There,’ he says, excited at his own potency. ‘Feel that? Not bad for a man just over fifty, is it? You won’t have got that from old Latimer.’

I murmur a wordless response. He pulls me towards him and struggles to push upwards against me. He is soft, a half-formed thing, and now I am disgusted as well as embarrassed.

‘There!’ he says again more loudly. His face is becoming redder, the sweat is pouring off him with the effort of pulling me down with his hands and squirming his huge haunches upwards.

I put my hands over my face to block the sight of him labouring beneath me.

‘You’re not shy!’ he exclaims, his voice loud in the room.

‘No, no,’ I say. I must remember that I am doing this for God and for my family. I will be a good queen. This is part of my duty, my God-given duty. I put my hands to the neck of my nightgown and I untie the ribbons at the front. When he sees my naked breasts he puts both fat hands over them and grasps at them, pinching the nipples. At last he penetrates me and I feel him try to thrust, then he gives a strangled shout, and falls back and lies still, completely still.

I wait, but nothing else happens. He says nothing. The brick red colour drains from his face leaving his cheeks grey in the candlelight. His eyes are closed. His mouth sags open and he gives a long loud snore.

That seems to be it. Gently, I lift myself off his damp lap and carefully I slide off the bed. I gather my robe around me and I wrap it tightly, tying the sash around my waist and pulling it close. I sit at the fireside on the big chair that has been specially widened and strengthened for his weight, and I pull my knees to my chest and hug myself. I find I am shivering and I pour a glass of the mulled wedding ale that stands at my side on the table. It was supposed to give me courage and him potency. It warms me a little and I wrap my hands around the silver cup.

After a bleak time of staring blankly at the fire I creep into bed beside him. The mattress is deeply bowed under his weight, the blankets and the expensive coverlet heaped high over his great bulk. I am like a little child lying beside him. I close my eyes. I am thinking of nothing. I am absolutely determined to think of nothing at all. I close my eyes and I fall asleep.

Almost at once, I am dreaming that I am Tryphine, married against my will to a dangerous man, trapped in his castle and going up and up the spiral staircase, one hand on the damp wall, one holding the bobbing light of the candle. There is a terrible smell coming from the door at the top of the stairs. I go to the heavy brass ring of the door latch and slowly turn it. The door creaks open, but I cannot bear to go into the room, into that miasma of stink. I am so afraid that I struggle in the dream and struggle in my sleep, turning in the bed, and waking myself up. Even though I am awake, fighting sleep and feeling the fear of the dream, the smell still floods over me as if it were pouring out of my dream into the waking world, and I choke and struggle for breath as I wake. The smell of the nightmare is in my bed, it is stifling me, it has come from the dark night into my own bedroom, it is real and I am gagging on it. The nightmare is here, now.

I cry out for help and then I am awake and I realise it is not a dream: it is real. The suppurating wound on his leg is leaking, and yellow and orange pus is oozing through the bandages, staining my gown as if he had pissed the fine linen sheets, making the best bedroom in England smell like a charnel house.

The room is dark but I know that he is awake. The rumbling bubbling snores have stopped. I can hear his stertorous breathing, but it does not fool me: I know that he is awake, listening and looking for me. I imagine his eyes, wide open in the dark, staring blindly towards me. I lie completely still, my breathing steady and slight, but I am afraid that he knows, like a wild beast always knows, that I am afraid of him. He knows by some animal cunning that I am awake, and afraid of him.

‘Are you awake, Kateryn?’ he says very softly.

I stretch and give a little false yawn. ‘Ah . . . yes, my lord. I am awake.’

‘And did you sleep well?’ The words are pleasant but there is an edge to his voice.

I sit up, tucking my hair under my nightcap, and turn towards him at once. ‘I did, my lord, thanks be to God. I hope that you slept well?’

‘I felt sick; I tasted vomit in my throat. I was not propped up high enough on the pillows. It’s terrible to feel like that in sleep. I could have choked. They have to prop me so that I am sitting up, or I choke on bile. They know that. You must make sure that they do that when I am in your bed as well as my own. There must have been something tainted in the dinner that made me sick. They have all but poisoned me. I shall send for the cooks in the morning and punish them. They must have used some bad meat. I need to vomit.’

At once I am out of the bed, my soiled gown slick against my legs, fetching a bowl from the cupboard, a flask of ale. ‘Will you take a drink of small ale now? Shall I send for the doctors?’

‘I shall see the doctor later. I was quite dizzy in the night.’

‘Ah, my dear,’ I say tenderly, as if I am a mother speaking to a sickly boy. ‘Perhaps you can take a drink of ale and sleep again?’

‘No, I can’t sleep,’ he complains peevishly. ‘I never sleep. The whole court sleeps, the whole country sleeps, but I am wakeful. I keep watch all night while lazy pages and slothful women sleep. I keep watch and ward over my country, over my church. D’you know how many men I will burn in Windsor next week?’

‘No,’ I say, shrinking.

‘Three,’ he says, pleased. ‘They’ll burn them in the marshes and their ashes will float away. For questioning my holy church. Good riddance.’

I think of Nan asking me to speak for them. ‘My lord husband . . .’

He has drained his cup of ale in three great gulps, and he gestures for more. I serve him again.

‘More,’ he says.

‘They left some pastries for us in the cupboard too, if you might want one,’ I offer doubtfully.

‘I think one might steady my stomach.’

I pass him the plate and watch as, absent-mindedly, he folds one after another over and over and posts them into his little mouth and they disappear. He licks his finger and dabs at the crumbs on the plate and passes it back to me. He smiles. He is soothed by the food and the attention. It is as if sugar can sweeten him.

‘That’s better,’ he says. ‘I was hungry after our pleasures.’

His mood is almost miraculously improved by ale and pastries. I think that he must carry a monstrous hunger with him all the time. He suffers with a hunger so great that he eats beyond nausea, a hunger so great that he mistakes it for nausea. I manage a smile.

‘Can’t you pardon those poor men?’ I ask very quietly.

‘No,’ he says. ‘What o’clock is it?’

I look around. I don’t know: there is no clock in the room. I cross to the window and pull back the hangings, open the windowpane inwards, crack open the shutter and swing it outward to see the sky.

‘Don’t let the night air in,’ he says crossly. ‘God knows what pestilence might be on it. Close the window! Close it tight!’

I slam the window closed on the fresh cool air, and peer through the thick glass. There is not a glimmer of light in the east though I blink my eyes to rid them of candlelight and wish it into being. ‘It must be early still,’ I say, longing for the sunrise. ‘I can’t see any dawn.’

He looks at me like an expectant child wanting to be entertained. ‘I can’t sleep,’ he says. ‘And that ale is resting on my belly. It was too cold. It will give me colic. You should have mulled it.’ He moves a little and belches. At the same time a sour smell comes from the bed where he has farted.

‘Shall I send to the kitchens for something else? A warm drink?’

He shakes his head. ‘No. But stir up the fire and tell me that you are glad to be queen.’

‘Oh! I am so very glad!’ I smile as I bend and put on some kindling and then some great logs from the basket by the fireplace. The embers glow. I stir them with a poker, raising the logs so they rest one against another and flicker into life. ‘I am glad to be queen, and I am glad to be a wife,’ I say. ‘Your wife.’

‘You are a housewife,’ the king exclaims, pleased with my success at fire-making. ‘Could you cook my breakfast?’

‘I have never cooked,’ I say, a little on my dignity. ‘I have always had a cook, and kitchen maids too. But I know how to command a kitchen and a brewhouse and a dairy. I used to make my own physic from herbs, and perfumes and soaps.’

‘You know how to run a household?’

‘I commanded Snape Castle and all our lands in the North when my husband was away from home,’ I tell him.