‘Your only safety is in his love for you. He does still love you?’
I make the tiniest gesture, of denial. ‘Thomas, I don’t know that he has ever loved anyone. I don’t know that he can.’
Thomas and I cross the king’s presence room filled with petitioners, lawyers, doctors and hangers-on watching our footsteps, estimating our confidence at every stride. He pauses at the door of the king’s privy chamber.
‘I can’t bear to leave you here,’ he says unhappily.
Hundreds of people watch us as I give him a cool smile. I extend my hand to him.
He bows, touching my fingers with his warm lips. ‘You are a brilliant woman,’ he says quietly. ‘You have read and thought more than most of the men in there. You are a loving woman and you believe in God and speak to Him far more intensely and sincerely than they ever will. You can surely explain yourself to the king. You are the most beautiful woman at court, by far the most desirable. You can rekindle his love for you.’
He bows formally, and I turn and go into the king’s rooms.
They are in the middle of a discussion about chantries and monasteries. To my speechless amazement I realise that they are agreeing how many religious houses – closed at such cost and with such heartbreak – might be reopened and restored. Bishop Gardiner believes that we need monasteries and convents in every town to keep the country peaceful and the people supplied with religious solace and comforts. The corrupt marketplaces that traded in fear and superstition, which the king rightly closed, are now to reopen, as if there had never been a reformation in England. And they are to return to the business of selling lies at a profit. As I come in, Stephen Gardiner is suggesting the restoration of some shrines and some pilgrim routes. Slyly, he suggests that they might pay their fees directly to the crown, not to the church – as if that makes them holy. He says that it is possible to do God’s work at a profit. I sit quietly beside Henry, fold my hands in my lap, and listen to this wicked man suggest the restoration of superstition and paganism to the country in order that poor people might be robbed by the rich.
But I make sure that I say nothing. Only when the conversation turns to Cranmer’s liturgy do I speak to defend the reform version. Thomas Cranmer was commissioned by the king to translate the Latin into English. The king himself worked on it, and I sat at his side and read and reread the English version, compared it to the old Latin original, checked it for copying errors when it came back from the printers, wrote my own translations. In a low voice I suggest that Cranmer’s work is adequate and should be used in every church in the land; but then I get stirred and argue that it is more than adequate, it is beautiful, it is even holy. The king smiles and nods as if he agrees with me, and I am emboldened. I say that people should be free to speak directly to God in church, their contact with God should not be mediated through a priest, should not be undertaken in a language that they cannot understand. As the king is father to his people, so God is father to him. The line between king and people is just like the communion between people and God; it should be clear and open and direct. How else shall there be an honourable king? How else shall there be a loving God?
I know in my heart that this is true; I know that the king believes it too. He has gone so far to drive popery and paganism out of this country, to bring his people to true understanding. I forget to sweeten every sentence with praise of him as I speak earnestly and passionately, and then I realise that his face has grown dark with ill-temper and Stephen Gardiner is looking down, hiding a smile, not meeting my bright eyes. I have spoken too passionately, too cleverly. Nobody likes a clever passionate woman.
I try to retreat. ‘Perhaps you are tired. I will say goodnight.’
‘I am tired,’ he agrees. ‘I am tired, and I am old, and it is a fine thing in my old days that I should be taught by my wife.’
I curtsey very low, leaning forward so that he can see down the top of my gown. I feel his eyes on my breasts and I say: ‘I could never teach you, Your Majesty. You are so much wiser than I.’
‘All of this I have heard before,’ he says irritably. ‘I have had wives before, who thought they knew better than me.’
I flush. ‘I am sure not one that ever loved you as much as I do,’ I whisper, and I bend and kiss his cheek.
I hesitate at the smell of him: the stink of his rotting leg, like decaying meat, the sweet sickly smell of old sweat on old skin, the bad breath from his mouth, his constipated flatulence. I hold my breath and I lay my cool cheek against his hot damp face. ‘God bless Your Majesty, my lord husband,’ I say gently. ‘And give you good night.’
‘Goodnight, Kateryn Parr,’ he says, biting off his words. ‘Don’t you think it odd that every one of your predecessors called herself by her name: Queen Katherine or Queen Anne or – God bless her – Queen Jane? But you call yourself Kateryn Parr. You sign yourself Kateryn the Queen KP. P for Parr.’
I am so surprised at this ridiculous challenge that I reply before I can think. ‘I am myself!’ I say. ‘I am Kateryn Parr. I am my father’s daughter, educated by my mother. What else should I call myself but by my name?’
He looks across at Stephen Gardiner – who uses his name and his title without question – and they nod at each other as if I have revealed something that they long suspected.
‘What can be wrong with this?’ I demand.
He does not even answer me, he waves me away.
When I wake in the morning the privy chamber outside my bedroom is oddly quiet. Usually there is the low reassuring buzz of my ladies arriving for the day and then the tap on the door by the maid-in-waiting for that day bringing in the hot water. As I get up and wash my face and hands in a golden bowl of warm water, the ladies bring my gowns drawn from the queen’s wardrobe for me to choose what I will wear, and the sleeves and the bodice and the hood and the jewels. They will offer something to eat; but I will not taste anything or drink until we have been to Mass, for I am uncertain, as everyone is now uncertain, as to whether we are to fast before Mass or not. It may be well known as a meaningless ritual, or Gardiner may have restored it to the court as a holy tradition. I am not sure. It is a sign of how ridiculous the times have become that I – a queen in my own rooms – do not know if I may eat a bread roll or not. It is ludicrous.
Ludicrous, and yet this morning I cannot hear the noise of the baker’s boy bringing bread from the kitchen. It is so eerily quiet outside my private chamber that I don’t wait for the arrival of my maids-in-waiting; I get up, pull my robe over my nakedness and open the door to look out. There are half a dozen women outside, three of them holding gowns from the royal wardrobe. They are oddly silent, and when I open my door and stand wordlessly, looking at them, they don’t exclaim good morning and smile. They drop into silent curtseys and when they rise up they keep their eyes on the floor. They will not look at me.
‘What’s the matter?’ I demand. I scan the half-dozen of them, and then I ask, more impatiently, ‘Where is Nan? Where is my sister?’
Nobody answers, but Anne Seymour steps reluctantly forward. ‘Please allow me to speak with you alone, Your Majesty,’ she says.
‘What is it?’ I say, stepping back into my bedroom and beckoning her in. ‘What’s the matter?’
She closes the door behind her. In the silence I can hear the ticking of my new clock.
‘Where is Nan?’
‘I have some bad news.’
‘Is it Anne Askew?’
At once I think that they are going to execute her. That they have done the thing that we were sure they would not do. That they have taken her to trial, and rushed through a guilty verdict, and they are going to burn her. ‘Tell me it’s not Anne? Has Nan gone to the Tower to pray with her?’