Free The Taming of the Queen by Philippa Gregory Page A

the Latimer girl, your stepdaughter?’
    ‘Margaret is very dear to me,’ I say, suddenly hopeful. ‘Can I have her with me? And Elizabeth my stepdaughter? And Lucy Somerset, my stepson’s betrothed? And my Brough cousin, Elizabeth Tyrwhit?’
    ‘Of course, and I thought you’d appoint Uncle Parr to something in your household, and his wife, Aunt Mary, will come too, and our cousin Lane.’
    ‘Oh, yes!’ I exclaim. ‘I would want Maud with me.’
    Nan smiles. ‘You can have whoever you want. Whatever you want. You should ask for everything you want now, in the early days, when everything will be granted you. You need people who are yours, heart and soul, around you to guard you.’
    ‘Against what?’ I challenge her as they put my hood on my head, as heavy as a crown.
    ‘Against all the other families,’ she whispers as she smooths my auburn hair in the golden net. ‘Against all the previous families who enjoyed their kinswoman’s patronage, and don’t want to be excluded now by a new queen: families like the Howards and Seymours. And you will need protection against the king’s new advisors, men like William Paget and Richard Rich and Thomas Wriothesley, men who have risen from nowhere and don’t want a new queen advising the king instead of them.’
    Nan nods towards Catherine Brandon, who comes into the room carrying my small chest of jewels for me to make my choice. She lowers her voice. ‘And against women like her, wives of his friends, and any pretty lady-in-waiting who might be the next favourite.’
    ‘Not now!’ I exclaim. ‘We were married only yesterday!’
    She nods. ‘He’s greedy,’ she says simply, as if it were a question of numbers of dishes at dinner. ‘He always wants more. He always needs more. He cannot get enough admiration.’
    ‘But he married me!’ I exclaim. ‘He insisted on marrying me.’
    She shrugs. He married all my predecessors; it didn’t stop him wanting the next one.

    At chapel, on the second storey, in the queen’s box, looking down at the priest going about God’s work, creating the miracle of the Mass and turning his back on the congregation as if they are not fit even to see it, I pray for God’s help in this marriage. I think of the other queens who have knelt here, on this footstool embroidered with the royal coat of arms and the pied rose, and prayed here, too. Some of them will have prayed with increasing anguish for live Tudor sons, some of them will have mourned the loss of their previous lives, some will have been homesick for their childhood home and the family who loved them for themselves, not for what they could provide. One, at least, had a heartache like mine, had to wake each day and put away the thought of the man she loved. I can almost feel them around me as I rest my face in my hands. I can almost smell their fear in the wood of the book rest. I imagine that if I licked the polished grain I would taste the salt of their tears.
    ‘Not merry?’ The king meets me in the gallery outside the chapel. He with his friends behind him – Queen Jane’s brother, Queen Anne’s uncle, Queen Katherine’s cousin – I with my ladies behind me. ‘Not merry on your wedding morning?’
    At once I beam. ‘Very merry,’ I say determinedly. ‘And you, Your Majesty?’
    ‘You can call me “my lord husband”,’ he says, and takes my hand and crushes it between the curve of his thickly padded waistcoat and the embroidered sleeve. ‘Come with me to my privy chamber,’ he says informally. ‘I need to talk with you on our own.’
    He releases me so that he can lean on a page and slowly limp forward. I follow him through his great waiting chamber, where there are hundreds of men and women gathered to see us pass, through the presence chamber, where scores more are waiting with petitions and requests, and into his privy chamber where only the court is admitted. At each doorway more people fall away, excluded from the room within, until it is just