‘He will tire of you,’ he says bitterly, ‘and if you give him no cause to divorce you, he will kill you to be rid of you.’
It is such a deadly prediction that I am stunned into silence for a moment. ‘No, Thomas, you are wrong. He loves me. He made me regent. He trusts me like no other. I have brought his children to court. I am their mother. I am an exception. He has never loved a wife as he loves me.’
‘It is you that are wrong, you little fool. He made Katherine of Aragon regent. He ordered a nationwide service of thanksgiving for Katherine Howard. He can turn in a moment and kill within the week.’
‘Not so! Not so!’ I am shaking my head like one of the little figures on my clocks. ‘I swear to you that he loves me.’
‘He threw Queen Katherine into a cold damp castle and she died of neglect, if not poison,’ he lists. ‘Anne, he beheaded on false evidence. My sister would have been abandoned within the year if she had not got a child, and even then he left her to die alone. He would have executed Anne of Cleves for treason if she hadn’t agreed to a divorce. His marriage to Katherine Howard was invalid because she was married already, so he could have abandoned her to her shame, but he chose to execute her. He wanted her dead. When he is tired of you he will kill you. He kills his family, his friends, and his wives.’
‘Traitors must be executed,’ I whisper.
‘Thomas More was no traitor. Margaret Pole, the king’s cousin, was no traitor, she was an old lady of sixty-seven! Bishop John Fisher was a saint, Thomas Cromwell was a loyal servant, Robert Aske and all the Pilgrims of Grace held a royal pardon. Katherine Howard was a child, Jane Rochford was mad: he changed the law so he could behead a madwoman.’
I am trembling as if I have an ague. I clamp my jaw to stop my teeth chattering. ‘What are you saying? Thomas, what are you saying to me?’
‘I am saying what you know already, what we all know but none of us dares to say. He is a madman. Kateryn, he has been mad for years. We have sworn loyalty to a madman. And every year he is blinder and more dangerous. None of us is safe from his whims. I saw it. I finally saw it in France, for I have been blind too. He is a murderer without cause. And you will be his next victim.’
‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘That is why he will kill you. He cannot bear excellence.’
I lean back against the cold stone wall. ‘Thomas, oh, Thomas, this is a terrible thing to say to me!’
‘I know. This is the man who let my sister die.’
He crosses the little hall in two swift strides and he wraps his arm around me and kisses me savagely, as if he would bite me, as if he would devour me. ‘You are the only person I would say this to!’ he says urgently in my ear. ‘You have to keep yourself safe from him. I won’t speak to you again. I may not be seen with you, for both of our sakes. Guard yourself, Kateryn! God keep you. Goodbye.’
I cling to him. ‘It can’t be goodbye again! I will see you. Surely, now you are home, now we are at peace, I will at least see you every day?’
‘I am the new admiral of the king’s navy,’ he says. ‘I shall be at sea.’
‘You’re going back into danger! Not now, when the whole court is safely home?’
‘I swear to you, I will be safer at sea than you with that killer in your bed,’ he says grimly, and he wrenches himself from me, and goes.
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1544
A new painter, Nicholas de Vent, has been commanded to come from Flanders to paint a picture, a massive near-life-size portrait of the royal family in the style of the late Hans Holbein. I am so proud that there is to be a family portrait of us all. I have triumphed in bringing this family together, in persuading the king to acknowledge his daughters publicly as princesses and heirs, in bringing father and son under the same roof. I may not be able to help them to understand and love each other, but at least they have met. The father is not an entirely imaginary being to this lonely little boy. The child is not the phantom son of a sainted mother but a real boy, deserving attention in his own right.
The king and I spend a happy afternoon discussing how the portrait shall look, and how it must fit on the wall at Whitehall Palace, where it is to be placed for ever. People hundreds of years from now will see it as if they were standing before us, as if they were being presented to us. We decide that it is to be almost like an altarpiece, with the king centre stage and I beside him, Edward leaning against the throne, his heir. On either side, almost in side panels defined with some frame we can’t yet decide, will be the two girls, Elizabeth and Mary. I want to see a lot of colour in the picture, on the walls and on the ceiling. The girls and I are keen embroiderers and love strong colours and patterns, and I want the portrait to reflect this. I want it to be as beautiful as the things that we make. The king suggests a ruined Boulogne glimpsed behind the throne on the skyline with his standard flying from the crumbling turret, and the painter says that he will sketch it and show it to us.
The work will start with preliminary sketches done of each of us, individually. The princesses are to go first. I help Elizabeth and Mary pick out their gowns and their jewels for their sittings with the artist. He is to draw them in chalk and charcoal and then copy their images onto the rich background, which the apprentices will paint in his studio.
Henry comes to watch Master de Vent make his first sketches of Mary. She is wearing a skirt of deep scarlet and an overgown with sleeves of brocade. She has a golden French hood on her auburn hair and she looks beautiful. She is standing a little stiffly and she bobs a curtsey, afraid to move, as the king comes in. Henry blows her a kiss, as if he were a courtier.
‘We have to show ourselves to the people,’ he tells me. ‘They have to see us, even when we are not here, even when we are away on progress or travelling or hunting. People have to be able to see the king and all the royal family. They have to recognise us, as they would their own brothers and sisters. D’you see? We have to be as distant as gods and as familiar as their own painted saints in the parish church.’
Mary stands looking proud and fragile. I think she looks both like a woman ready to fight for her rights, and a girl who fears that no-one will love her. She is such a contradiction of fierceness and vulnerability that I don’t know if the painter can capture all the aspects of her, if he can understand that here is a daughter accustomed to being denied, and a young woman longing to be loved. Posed with her hands clasped before her in her gown of deep crimson, I see her pale stern face and think how dear she is to me, this staunch, intractable young woman.
Elizabeth will come next and she will raise her dark eyes and smile at the artist. She is pleasing while Mary is defiant, but under the veneer of Elizabeth’s coquetry is the same passionate need for love and the same anxiety to be acknowledged.
The painter has showed me the first drafts, and now there is to be an outside rim of the portrait showing two beautiful archways into the gardens beyond, and in the doorways he is going to paint the two Fools: Will Somers with his little monkey, and Mary’s female Fool. This is an improvement on the ruins of Boulogne, but I am not sure that I want a pair of Fools in a portrait of the royal family. The painter explains their purpose: they are there to signify that we have not grown overly great. We still have people who challenge us, who speak to our human failings, who laugh at us as sinners.