WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1544
Bishop George Day comes to find me in my rooms, a roll of manuscript in his hand. ‘My clerk has completed the copying,’ he says with triumph in his voice. ‘It’s done. It’s fair.’
He gives me the pages. For a moment I simply hold them, as if they were my newborn baby and I wanted to feel his weight. I have never borne a child but I imagine I feel something of a mother’s pride. This is a new joy for me. This is the joy of scholarship. For long moments I don’t unfurl the pages; I know well enough what they are, I have waited for them.
‘The psalms,’ I whisper. ‘Bishop Fisher’s psalms.’
‘Just as you translated them,’ he confirms. ‘The Latin psalms set into English. They read very beautifully. They read as if the first psalmist spoke the finest English. As they should. They are an honour to God and an honour to you. They are an honour to John Fisher, God bless him. I congratulate you.’
Slowly, I spread the pages out and start to read them. It is like reading a chorus through time: the old, old voice of the original psalmist in Hebrew translated to Greek, the sonorous wise voice of the martyred bishop rendering the Greek into Latin, and then it is my voice which sounds through the English lines. I read one psalm:
Thou art our Defender, our refuge, and our God and in Thee we trust. Thou shalt deliver me from the snares of the hunters, and from the perils of my persecutors. Thou shalt make a shadow for me under Thy shoulders; and under Thy wings I shall be harmless. Thy truth shall be my shield and buckler; and no evil shall approach near unto me.
‘Should it be harmless?’ I ask myself.
George Day knows better than to answer. He waits.
‘Without harm is clumsy,’ I say. ‘Safe is too strong. But harmless has the merit of meaning without harm and without being able to do harm. It feels a little odd perhaps, but the oddness draws attention to the word.’ I hesitate.
‘My clerk can copy any changes you want into fair script for the printer,’ he offers.
‘Under Thy wings I shall be harmless,’ I whisper to myself. ‘It’s like poetry. It carries a sense that is greater than the words, greater than the simple meaning of the words. I think it’s right. I don’t think I should change it. And I love how it sounds – under Thy wings – you can almost feel the feathers of the great wings, can’t you?’
George smiles. He can’t. But it doesn’t matter.
‘I don’t want to change it,’ I say. ‘Not this, not anything.’
I glance up at George Day, nodding his head at the steady rhythm of the words. ‘Clear as plainsong,’ he says. ‘Clear as a bell. It is open and honest.’
Clarity means more to him than poetry, and so it should. He wants English men and women to understand the psalms that Bishop Fisher loved. I want to do something more. I want to make these verses sing as they once did in the Holy Land. I want boys in Yorkshire, girls in Cumberland to hear the music of Jerusalem.
‘I shall publish these.’ I shudder at my own daring. No other woman has ever published in English under her own name. I can hardly believe that I can find the courage: to stand up, to speak aloud, to publish to the world. ‘I really will. George – you do think that I should? You don’t advise against it?’
‘I took the liberty of showing them to Nicholas Ridley,’ he remarks, naming the great reformer and friend of Thomas Cranmer. ‘He was deeply moved. He said that this is as great a gift to the faithful Christians of England as the Bible that your husband the king gave them. He said that these will be spoken and sung in every church in England where the priest wants the people to understand the beauty of God as well as His wisdom. He said that if you will lead the court and the country to a true understanding you will be a new saint.’
‘But not a martyr!’ I say, cracking a weak joke. ‘So it can’t be known that I am the translator. My name, and the names of my ladies, especially Lady Mary and Lady Elizabeth, cannot be attached to it. The king’s daughters must never be mentioned. I will make many enemies at court if people know that I believe that psalms should be read in English.’
‘I agree,’ he says. ‘The papists would be quick to criticise and you cannot risk Stephen Gardiner turning against you. So these will be known only as the bishop’s psalms. Nobody need know that it is your study and scholarship that has brought them into English. I have a very discreet printer. He knows that the manuscript comes from me, and that I serve you at court, but I have not told him the name of the author. He thinks highly of me – I must say, he thinks far too highly of me – for he imagines that I could have done this translation. I have denied it, but not so strongly that he is searching for another candidate. I think we can publish and you not own it. Except . . .’
‘Except what?’
‘I think it’s a pity,’ he says frankly. ‘These are fine translations with the ear of a musician, the heart of a true believer and the language of a serious writer. Anyone – I mean any man – would be proud to publish them under his own name. He would boast of them. It seems unfair that you have to deny that you have such a gift. The king’s grandmother collected translations and published them.’
I have a wry smile on my face. ‘Ah, George,’ I say. ‘You would lure me with vanity, but neither the king nor any man in England wants to be taught by a woman, not even a queen. And the king’s grandmother was above criticism. I will publish these as you suggest, and I shall get great happiness from knowing that the bishop’s psalms translated by me and my ladies into English may guide men and women to the king’s church. But it must be for the glory of the bishop and the glory of the king. I think it better for all of us if they come without my name emblazoned on the cover, like a boast. We are all safer if we don’t advertise our beliefs.’
‘The king loves you. Surely he would be proud . . .’ George starts to argue when there is a tap on the door. At once he shuffles the pages out of the way as Catherine Brandon comes in, drops me a curtsey, smiles at George and says: ‘The king is asking for you, Your Majesty.’
I get to my feet. ‘He is coming here?’
She shakes her head but does not answer. George at once understands that she does not want to explain before him. He gathers up the papers. ‘I shall take these, as we agreed,’ he says, and I nod as he leaves.
‘His leg has gone bad,’ Catherine says quietly, as soon as the door is closed behind my almoner. ‘My lord husband warned me, and then sent a messenger to say that the king would see you this morning in his private rooms.’
‘Am I to go to him without being seen?’ I ask. There are interconnecting rooms between the king’s and the queen’s sides at Whitehall. I can either process through the great hall with everyone observing that I am visiting my husband, or I can go through to his wing by our shared gallery with only a lady in attendance.
‘Discreetly,’ she nods. ‘He doesn’t want anyone to know that he has taken to his bed.’
She leads the way. Catherine has been in and out of the royal palaces since childhood. She was the daughter of Katherine of Aragon’s most favoured lady-in-waiting, María de Salinas, and is the wife of Henry’s great friend Charles Brandon. She was brought up as an expert way-finder around palaces, avoiding wrong turnings and malicious courtiers alike. It is not the first time that I feel like a provincial nobody trailing behind one of the exclusive few, born and bred to this court.