We also don’t know how intimate Kateryn was with Thomas Seymour while she was queen. Certainly they look as if they were promised to each other—they were writing love letters and making assignations to spend the night together only weeks after the death of the king, and they were married, despite their initial decision to wait, within four months of Henry’s death. It may be that their marriage was loving and happy. It is well known that Princess Elizabeth left her stepmother’s house after sexualized play with her new stepfather, Thomas Seymour. There were spiteful quarrels with his family about the dowager queen’s dower and the royal jewels; Thomas was a jealous and possessive husband. Kateryn and Thomas were to be married for less than a year and a half before she died in childbirth. There were reports of her reproaching him for not loving her, but he was at her deathbed and he seems to have been stunned by her loss, giving up their house and leaving their child to be cared for in the household of Edward Seymour and his wife.

Writing a fictional version of a medieval woman’s life has been, as it always is, strangely moving and relevant to my own times. Although she lived so long ago, when I think of the fear she faced and the courage she must have drawn on, I cannot help but admire her. Her careful, mostly self-taught scholarship must resonate with any woman who has tried to enter the exclusive circles of male power: industry, politics, churches, learning. Anyone who loves words will admire Kateryn Parr, thinking of her poring over manuscripts in Latin and Greek, trying to find the perfect English word for translation, and anyone who likes women must warm to her: in love with one man and forced to marry another, a tyrant, but—hurrah—survivinghim.

This novel, about a scholarly woman, is dedicated to two great scholars who taught me: Maurice Hutt at the University of Sussex and Geoffrey Carnall at the University of Edinburgh. To me, they exemplify those many teachers throughout the centuries who have knowledge and the grace to share it, who occupy the bastions of male learning and open the gates.

No words can express my gratitude to them—which they would immediately remark is both a cliché and a paradox. Heavens! I miss them both so much.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Here is a list of the most helpful books and journals I consulted for this fiction. With special thanks for Susan James for her biography and Janel Mueller for her scholarly edition of Kateryn’s writing.

BOOKS

Alexander, Michael Van Cleave. The First of the Tudors: A Study of Henry VII and His Reign. London: Croom Helm, 1981.

Bacon, Francis. The History of the Reign of King Henry VII and Selected Works. Edited by Brian Vickers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.