I smile. ‘This is generous of you, my lord. The girls will be glad to know that they have your favour. That will mean more to them than being listed to succeed. To know that their father loves and acknowledges them is all that your girls want. They are blessed with such a father.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘You have shown me that. I have been surprised.’
‘Surprised?’ I repeat.
He looks awkward. It makes him, for a moment, endearingly vulnerable, a weak father: not a cursed tyrant. ‘I have had to think of them always as heirs or usurpers,’ he says, fumbling for the words. ‘D’you see? I’ve had always to consider whether I accept them as my daughters or put them aside. I have had to think of their mothers, and my terrible wars with their mothers, and not think of them. I have had to suspect them as if they were my enemies. I’ve never before had them at court, together, with their brother, and just seen them, all three, as my children. Just seen them as themselves.’
I am enormously, absurdly touched. ‘Each one of them is a child to be proud of,’ I tell him. ‘You can love each one as your own.’
‘You have shown me that,’ he says. ‘Because you deal with Edward like a little boy, and Elizabeth as a little girl, and Mary as a young woman. I see them through your eyes. I see the girls without thinking of their poisonous dams, almost for the first time.’
He takes my hand and kisses it. ‘I thank you for this,’ he says very quietly. ‘Truly, I do, Kateryn.’
‘My dear,’ comes easily from my lips.
‘I love you,’ he says.
And I reply easily, without thought, ‘I love you, too.’
We are hand-clasped for a moment, united in tenderness, and then I see his eyes narrow as a pulse of pain grips his whole body. He grits his teeth, determined not to cry out.
‘Should I leave you to rest now?’ I ask.
He nods. Anthony Denny is on his feet at once, to show me from the room and I see in the way that he glances at the king without curiosity that he knew all of this, before it was explained to me. Denny is the king’s confidant and friend, one of the closest of the circle. His quiet confidence reminds me that I should remember that just as I hint that the Howards and Wriothesley and Gardiner are self-serving fools, there are those, close to the king, who could do just the same to me. And that Denny is one of several men whose fortunes have been made in royal service, who have the king’s ear in his most private moments, and whisper to him alone, just as I do.
I allow myself the pleasure of telling the king’s daughters that they are to be princesses again. I speak to them separately. I am aware that this makes them rivals once more, and that they can only succeed to the throne on the death of their brother, that Elizabeth can only succeed through the unlikely combination of the death of her younger brother and her older sister.
I find her at her studies in my privy chamber with her cousin little Lady Jane Grey and Richard Cox, their tutor, and I call her aside to tell her that this is a symbol of her father’s favour. Of course, she jumps at once to the idea of her inheritance.
‘Do you think a woman can rule a kingdom?’ she asks me. ‘The word would suggest not. It’s not called a queendom, is it?’
The cleverness of the ten-year-old girl makes me smile. ‘If you are ever called to rule this kingdom or any other you will take on the courage and wit of a man. You will call yourself a prince,’ I assure her. ‘You will learn what every clever woman has to learn: how to adopt the power and courage of a man and yet to know that you are a woman. Your education can be that of a prince, your mind can be that of a king, you can have the body of a weak and feeble woman and the stomach of a king.’
‘When is it to happen? When do I get my title back?’
‘It has to go through the parliament,’ I warn her.
She nods. ‘Have you told Lady Mary?’
What a Tudor she is, this little girl; these are a statesman’s questions: when is it official? And which daughter was told first? ‘I’m going to tell her now,’ I say. ‘Wait here.’
Lady Mary is in my presence chamber, embroidering a part of an altar cloth that we are making. She has delegated the boring blue sky to one of the ladies and she herself is working on the more interesting flowers that will form the border. They all rise and curtsey as I come in from the privy chamber and I gesture that they may sit and continue with their work. Joan, Anthony Denny’s wife, is reading from the manuscript of our translation of Fisher’s psalms, and I beckon Lady Mary into the oriel window so we can speak privately. We sit on the window bench, our knees touching, her earnest gaze on my face.
‘I have some very good news for you,’ I say. ‘You will learn it from the Privy Council, but I wanted to tell you before the announcement. The king has decided to name the succession, and you are to be called Princess Mary and inherit the throne after Edward.’ She looks down, veiling her dark eyes with her eyelashes, and I see her lips move in a prayer of thanksgiving. Only her rising blush tells me that she is deeply moved. But it is not for a chance at the throne. She has not Elizabeth’s ambition. ‘So, finally, he accepts my mother’s purity,’ she says. ‘He withdraws his claim that they were not married in the sight of God. My mother was a widow to his brother and then a true wife to him.’
I put my hand on her knee to silence her. ‘He said no word of that, nor do I, nor should you. He names you as princess, and Elizabeth as princess also. Elizabeth comes after you in the succession, Lady Margaret Douglas and her line after her. He said nothing about the old matter of your mother’s marriage and him putting her aside.’
She opens her mouth to argue for only a moment, and then she nods. Anyone of any intelligence can see that if the king names his daughters as legitimate then he must, logically, accept his marriage to their mothers as valid. But – as this highly intelligent daughter realises – this is not a logical man. This is a king who can command reality. The king has ruled that they are princesses again, just as once he ruled that they were both bastards, on a whim, with no good reason.
‘Then he will arrange a marriage for me,’ she says. ‘And for Elizabeth. If we are princesses then we can be married to kings.’
‘You can,’ I say smiling. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. It will be the next step. But I don’t know that I can bear to spare either of you.’
She puts her hand on top of mine. ‘I don’t want to leave you,’ she says. ‘But it is time I was married. I need my own court and I want to have a child of my own to love.’
We sit hand-clasped for a moment. ‘Princess Mary,’ I say, trying out her new title, ‘I cannot tell you how glad I am that you are come to your own again, and that I can call you aloud what I have always called you in my heart. My mother never spoke of you as anything but a princess, and never thought of your mother as anything but a great queen.’
She blinks the tears from her dark eyes. ‘My mother would have been glad to see this day,’ she says wistfully.
‘She would,’ I say. ‘But her legacy to you is your descent and your education. Nobody can take either, and she gave you them both.’
A Spanish duke, Don Manriquez de Lara, is to come to court though the king is still unwell.
‘You’ll have to entertain him,’ Henry snaps. ‘I can’t.’
I am a little aghast. ‘What should I do?’
‘He’ll come in and see me, I’ll receive him in my privy chamber, but I can’t stand it for more than a moment. Understand?’
I nod. Henry is speaking in a tone of tight fury. I know that he is frustrated by his pain and bitter at his disability. In a mood like this he can lash out at anyone. I glance around the room: the pages are standing with their backs against the wall, the Fool sitting quietly at the king’s side. The two secretaries are bent over documents as if they dare not raise their eyes. ‘He can dine with your brother, and with Henry Howard. That’s the flower of the court, the handsome young men. Should be good enough for him. Agreed?’