The Taming of the Queen (44 page)

The king watches the dancers, applauding one or another. He puts his hand around my waist, while I look fixedly at the windows where a pale winter sun is setting over the trees in the gardens. He slides his hand downwards to pat my buttocks. I make sure that I don’t flinch. I don’t look at Thomas, I look blindly out of the window, and when the king releases me and I can step aside, I see that Thomas has gone.

At the gift-giving for the New Year Princess Elizabeth asks me to accompany her to take her present to the king. Together with Princess Mary we go to his presence chamber where he is receiving his court and giving and dispensing gifts. He almost always gives a purse of money, and Anthony Denny is at his side, tactfully judging the correct weight of the purse for each smiling recipient. Everyone falls back when the princesses and I enter the room and I curtsey to Henry but step aside, so that Elizabeth can go forward alone. I look around for Thomas, and see he is standing near to the king, a fat purse in his hand. Carefully, he looks away from me, carefully, I keep my eyes on Elizabeth.

‘Your Majesty, my honoured father,’ she says in her clear voice, speaking French. As he smiles at her she changes into Latin. ‘I have brought your Christmas gift. It is not riches in the eyes of the world but it is a treasure from heaven. It is worthless from the hands of its maker, for that was I, your most humble daughter, who made the translation and the copy for you. But I know that you love the author, and I know that you love the work and that gives me the courage to offer you: this.’

From behind her back she brings out her beautifully written translation of my private prayers, translated into Latin, French and Italian. She goes towards her father, bows very low and puts it into his hands.

The court bursts into applause and the king beams. ‘This is a work of great learning and good sense,’ he says. ‘Published by my wife and approved by every scholar. And here it is translated by another good scholar into a work of great beauty. I am proud that my wife and my daughter are women of scholarship. Learning is an ornament to a good woman, not a distraction.’

‘And what do you have for your stepmother?’ he asks Elizabeth.

She turns to me and presents my gift. It is another translated book and she has embroidered a cover with the king’s name and my own. I exclaim with pleasure and show it to the king. He opens the book and sees the title, written in Elizabeth’s meticulous hand. It is an English translation of a book of theology by the reformist thinker Jean Calvin. Only a few years ago this would have been heresy, now it is a New Year’s present. It defines precisely how far we have come, what Elizabeth is allowed to read, and that reform is the new religion.

The king smiles at me and says, ‘You must read this to me and tell me what you think of it, and of my daughter’s scholarship.’

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer comes to me during the period of quiet study in my rooms and says that he would like to read to us the reforms he is going to suggest to the king, for our thoughts and comments. He glances at Princess Mary, who loves the old ways; but she bends her head, and says that she is sure that the good bishop will suggest only godly reforms, and that, anyway, nothing made by man is perfect. Anne of Cleves looks up with interest. She was raised as a Lutheran, she always hoped to bring sincere religious feeling into England. I have to take care not to look triumphant. This is God’s victory: not mine.

There is a small lectern in the corner of my presence chamber where the visiting preachers put their Bibles or their books and Thomas Cranmer places his sheaf of papers there, and looks shyly round at us.

‘I feel as if I am about to preach a sermon,’ he says, smiling.

‘We would welcome a sermon,’ I say. ‘We have had many godly preachers here, and you, dear archbishop, would be one of the greatest.’ I take care not to look at Anne of Cleves as I welcome a reformist archbishop to my rooms. If I believed in confession I would have to admit the sin of pride.

‘I thank you,’ he says. ‘But today I want to learn from you. I think my task has been to take the church’s many additions from the old act of the Mass. The challenge is to cut the words and actions of man and keep the intention of God.’

Anne Seymour and Catherine Brandon take up their sewing, but do not make so much as a stitch. I make no pretence of doing anything but listening. I fold my hands in my lap and Princess Elizabeth, sitting beside me, does the same, copying me exactly. Anne of Cleves sits beside her and puts her arm around Elizabeth’s narrow shoulders. I have to suppress a little pang of quite unworthy jealousy. Of course, she still thinks of herself as Elizabeth’s stepmother. She too cared for the motherless child. So does sin come into the smallest moments of daily life; but really, she was Elizabeth’s stepmother for no more than months!

The archbishop reads his list of proposed changes and his explanation. All the ritual of the church, which is nowhere described in the Bible, never required by Jesus, is to go. Curtseying to the cross, kneeling on command, all this must change. Old superstitions like ringing a peal of bells on All-Hallows Eve to scare away bad spirits and welcome the good saints, is to stop. Statues in churches will be rigorously inspected to see that they have no popish tricks like moving eyes or bleeding wounds. No-one is to pray to them as if they might intervene in day-to-day life, and they must remain uncovered during the season of Lent.

‘The Bible tells us that Christ fasted in the wilderness,’ Cranmer says reasonably. ‘That is all the model that we need to take for Lent.’

We agree. Even Princess Mary cannot defend the paganism of binding the statues’ eyes, or putting cloths over their heads.

Cranmer takes his changes to the king and then returns to my rooms elated.

‘Stephen Gardiner is still in Bruges working on the Spanish treaty, and so the king had no contrary voice urging him to the old ways,’ he says, delighted. ‘There was no-one there to accuse me of wrong-thinking. The Howards didn’t like it but the king is tired of them. He listened without argument. He was interested; indeed, he even suggested some more reforms to me himself.’

‘He did?’ Anne of Cleves asks, following the rapid talk.

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘I thought that he might,’ says Catherine Brandon. ‘He spoke to me about the danger of setting up a graven image. He thinks the people do not understand that the cross and the statues in church are there to represent God. They are signs, not objects of faith. They are not things to be worshipped for themselves.’

Without turning her head so much as an inch, Anne of Cleves slides her eyes towards mine to see if I have observed that Catherine Brandon is in the king’s confidence, and that he talks to her about religious reform. Anne of Cleves saw her maid-in-waiting pretty Kitty Howard dancing attendance on the king, absent without permission from the queen’s rooms. Now her sidelong glance asks me: is it the same for you?

I raise my eyebrows slightly. No, it is not the same for me. I have no concerns.

‘That’s what he said to me!’ Archbishop Cranmer says delightedly. ‘He suggests that there should be no kneeling to the cross, no bowing to the cross on entry to church, and no creeping to the cross from the church door on Good Friday.’

‘The cross is the symbol for the sacred crucifixion,’ Princess Mary objects. ‘It is revered for what it represents. Nobody thinks it is a graven image.’

There is a silence. ‘Actually, the king does,’ Catherine corrects her.

Instantly, Mary bows her head in obedience to the woman that people think is her father’s mistress. ‘Then I am sure he is right,’ she says quietly. ‘Who would know better than the king what his people think? And he has told us all that God has appointed him judge of these matters.’

We cannot discuss Thomas Cranmer’s reforms without mentioning the Mass, and we cannot discuss the Mass because it is illegal to speak of it. The king has outlawed debate on this most holy event. Only he shall think and speak.

‘And yet they can interrogate me,’ Anne Askew points out after she has delivered her sermon on the miracle of the wine at the wedding in Cana. ‘I may speak about the wedding wine, and about the wine at the Last Supper, but not the wine that is poured by a priest into a cup in the church in our own days, before our own eyes.’

‘You really may not,’ I say quietly. ‘I understand the point you are making, Mistress Askew, but you may not say it in words.’

She bows her head. ‘I would never speak of things that you wish to keep silent,’ she says carefully. ‘I would never bring trouble to your door.’

It is like a pledge between one honest woman and another. I smile at her. ‘I know you would not,’ I say. ‘I hope that there is no trouble for you, either.’

‘And what is your married name?’ Anne of Cleves asks abruptly.

Anne Askew’s beautiful face lights up with laughter. ‘His name was Thomas Kyme, Your Majesty,’ she says. ‘But I do not have a married name, for we were never married.’

‘You believe that you can be the one to declare that your marriage is over?’ asks the divorced queen who is now named princess, and is to be regarded as the king’s sister.

‘Nowhere in the Bible does it say that marriage is a sacrament,’ Anne replies. ‘It was not God who joined us together. The priest says it was; but this is not true. This is the word of the church, not the Bible. Our wedding, like every wedding, was an act of man, not of God. It was not a holy sacrament. My father forced me into an agreement with Thomas, and when I was old enough and had understanding enough I revoked that agreement. I claim the right to be a free woman, with a soul equal to any man under God.’

Anne of Cleves – another woman who was married with no choice, and divorced against her will – gives Anne Askew a little smile.

Thomas Cranmer goes home in triumph to codify the agreed reforms into a new law to put before parliament; but the king sends a message after to him to tell him to stop his work and do nothing.

‘I had to halt Thomas in his tracks the moment that I heard from Stephen Gardiner,’ he says to me as we watch a game of tennis at the royal court. The conversation is punctuated by the loud thwack of the racquet on the ball and then the delay as the ball rolls down the roof to fall into the court below, and the players run into position to hit it again. I think that the king’s religious policy is like this – a great advance in one direction and then an immediate return.