She laughs and shows me the key on the chain at her belt.
‘We’re not all as carefree as you,’ I say, as she whistles for her little dog, named after the bishop.
‘Puppy Gardiner is a fool who comes for a whistle and sits at a command,’ she says.
‘Well, don’t call him or command him by name in my rooms,’ I say. ‘I don’t need enemies, certainly not Stephen Gardiner. The king already favours him. You will have to rename your dog if my lord bishop continues to rise.’
‘I’m afraid he’s unstoppable,’ she says frankly. ‘He and the traditionalists are overwhelming us. I hear that Thomas Wriothesley is not satisfied by being the king’s Secretary and Lord Privy Seal, but is to be Lord Chancellor too.’
‘Did your husband tell you?’
She nods. ‘He said that Wriothesley is the most ambitious man in the king’s rooms since Cromwell. He said he is a dangerous man – just like Cromwell.’
‘Does Charles not advise the king in favour of reform?’
She smiles at me. ‘Not he! You don’t stay a favourite for thirty years by telling the king what you think.’
‘So why does your husband not try to contain you,’ I ask curiously, ‘as you name your spaniel for a bishop in order to tease him?’
She laughs. ‘Because you don’t survive four wives by trying to contain them!’ she says merrily. ‘I am his fourth and he lets me think what I like, and do what I like, as long as it does not disturb him.’
‘He knows that you read and think? He allows it?’
‘Why not?’ She asks the most challenging questions that a woman can ask. ‘Why should I not read? Why should I not think? Why should I not speak?’
The king cannot sleep for pain in the long dark nights of spring. He feels very low when he wakes long before dawn. I have commissioned a pretty clock to help me get through the hours, and I watch the minute hand move quietly over the brass face in the flickering light of a little candle that I leave beside it on the table. When the king wakes, fretful and bad-tempered at about five in the morning, I get up and light all the candles, stir the fire and often send a page for some ale and pastries from the kitchen. Then the king likes me to sit beside him and read to him as the candles gutter and slowly, so very slowly, the light comes in at the window, first as a greyer darkness, then as a dark grey, then only finally, after what seems like hours, can I see daylight and say to the king: ‘Morning is coming.’
I feel tender towards him as he endures the long nights in pain. I don’t begrudge waking and sitting with him though I know I will be tired when dawn finally comes. Then he can sleep but I have to attend to the duties of the court for us both – leading everyone to Mass, breakfasting in public before a hundred watching eyes, reading with Princess Mary, watching the court ride to hounds, dining with them at midday, listening to the councillors in the afternoon and dining, watching the revels and dancing all evening, and often dancing myself. This is sometimes a pleasure but it is always a duty. A court has to have a focus and a head. If the king is not well it is my task to take his place – and to conceal how very ill he is. He can rest during the day if I am there, smiling on the throne and assuring everyone that he is a little tired but better every day.
Stephen Gardiner supplies all the books for the king’s nighttime reading, it is a most limited library; but I am not allowed to read anything else, and so I find myself having to recite pious arguments for the unity of the church under the pope, or fanciful histories of the earliest church that stress the importance of the patriarchs and the Holy Father. If I believed these orthodox writings I would think that there were no women in the world at all, certainly no women saints in the early church laying down their lives for their faith. Bishop Gardiner is now a great enthusiast for the Eastern Church, which is a full member of the Catholic communion but not subservient to the pope. The Greek Church is to be our model and I read long sermons that suggest the fine level of purity that can be achieved in a Catholic church in partnership with Rome. I have to declare that people should be kept in sanctified ignorance and that it is best that they say their prayers and have no idea what the words mean. Knowingly, I recite nonsense, and I despise Bishop Gardiner for dictating lies.
Henry listens; sometimes his eyes close and I see that I have read him to sleep, sometimes the pain keeps him alert. He never comments on my reading, except to ask me to repeat a sentence. He never asks me if I agree with the plodding arguments against reform, and I take care to make no comment. In the quietness of the night-time room I can hear the little gurgle as the pus drains from his leg and drips into the bowl. He is shamed by the stink, and struggles with the pain. I cannot help him with either, except to offer him the draught that the physicians leave to drug him into sleep, and to assure him that I hardly smell anything. The rooms are laden with dried rose petals and the sharp scent of lavender heads, and in every corner there are bowls filled with the oil of roses, but still the stench of death seeps like a fog into everything.
Some nights he hardly sleeps at all. Some days he does not get up, but hears Mass in his bed, and his advisors and councillors meet in the chamber that adjoins his bedroom, with the door open so that he can hear them speak.
I sit beside his bed and listen as they plan the future union of England with Scotland through the marriage of Lady Margaret Douglas, the king’s niece, and Matthew Stuart, a Scottish nobleman. When the Scots reject this, I listen to the advisors plan an expedition to be led by Edward Seymour and John Dudley to lay waste the border country and teach the Scots to respect their masters. I am horrified by this plan. Having lived in the North of England for so many years I know how hard life is in those hills. The balance between harvest and hunger is so carefully weighed that an invading army will cause starvation just by marching through. This cannot be the way to bring about unity with the Scots. Are we to destroy our new kingdom before we gain it?
But, silently listening from the king’s room, I begin to see how the Privy Council works, how the country reports to the lords, who report to the council, who debate before the king. Then the king decides – quite whimsically – what shall be done and the council considers how it shall be drafted into law, put before the parliament for their consent, and imposed on the country.
The king’s advisors, those who filter all the news that he hears and draft the laws that he demands, have enormous power in this system, which depends on the judgement of one man – and that is a man in too much pain to rise out of his bed, who is frequently dazed and stupid with drugs. It is easy for them to withhold information that he should have, or cast the law in a way that suits themselves. This should give us all concern for the wellbeing of the country, whose destiny sits in Henry’s sweating hands. But it also gives me confidence to be regent, as I see that with good advisors I could judge just as well as the king. Almost certainly I could judge better, for Henry will suddenly bellow from his bed, ‘Move on! Move on!’ when something bores him, or a disagreement irritates him, and he favours one policy or another depending on who presents it.
I also learn how he plays one party against another. Stephen Gardiner is his preferred advisor, always pointing out that there should be more and more restrictions on the English Bible, that it must be strictly limited to the nobility and the learned, locked-up in their private chapels, that the poor must be prosecuted if they try to read it. He never misses an opportunity to complain that men everywhere are debating the sacred Word of God as if they could understand it, as if they are equal to educated men. But just as Stephen Gardiner thinks he has won and that the Bible will never be restored to the churches, stolen for ever from the very people that need it most, the king tells Anthony Denny to send for Thomas Cranmer.