Maleverer slapped her hard across the face. Barak took a step forward. I gripped his arm, the sudden movement making my head throb. Tamasin put a hand to her cheek but did not cry out, only looked at the floor, trembling.
‘Don’t speak to me like that, you malapert creature,’ Maleverer snapped. ‘That was all there was to it, then – you hatched this plan because you liked the look of that churl?’
‘That was all, sir. I swear.’
Maleverer took hold of her chin and lifted her head roughly to look her in the eye.
‘You are a wilful, saucy, unbroken wench. Mistress Marlin, you will see this girl’s behaviour is reported to Lady Rochford. It will serve you right if you are set back on the road to London. That is where you are from, by your tones?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then get out, back to your fellow scullions. And you, Mistress Marlin, keep a better eye on your servants instead of going around whining about how hard done by your fiancé is and making everyone laugh at you.’
Mistress Marlin reddened. ‘So this is why we were brought here? You feared I had involved Tamasin in some plot? That I am not loyal?’ Her voice rose. ‘I am made a victim again as poor Bernard has been.’ Maleverer stepped over to her but she did not quail, looking him hard in the eye. I had to admire her courage.
‘Do you want a slap too, you prune-faced baggage? Don’t think I wouldn’t give you one.’
‘I do not doubt it, sir.’
‘Oh get out, both of you. You’re wasting my time.’ He turned away and the women left the room, Tamasin scarlet-faced.
Maleverer gave Barak a look of distaste. ‘So that was all it was. God’s nails, the things the royal servants get up to on this Progress. They could both do with a whipping.’ He turned to me. ‘You said that Marlin creature saw you bring the box into the hall? You know her?’
‘I have spoken with her briefly,’ I said. ‘She told me of her fiancé in the Tower.’
‘She talks of nothing else. For all her local knowledge, she should not have been allowed to come on the Progress – she is fixated on the innocence of that papist Bernard Locke. She has been after him since she was a girl. It took her until she was thirty and his first wife dead before she cozened him into proposing. And then he gets snatched away to the Tower.’ He gave a bark of laughter. ‘Right. Go and make a copy of that family tree. And be careful, the eyes of the Privy Council will be looking at it. I shall have Master Wrenne in here to question.’ He must have seen my face fall, for he added, ‘You do not wish that?’
‘It is only – he seems a harmless old fellow.’
‘Harmless?’ Maleverer gave another bark of humourless laughter. ‘How do you know who is harmless and who is not in this place?’
OUTSIDE, THEY WERE MAKING the final arrangements for the Progress. Great drapes of cloth of gold were being set in layers over the tents. A queue of carts stretched from the gate to the church, loaded with bales of hay: the bedding and fodder for all the horses that would soon arrive. It was cold, with a raw wind, the sky grey. I took a deep breath, and felt giddy for a moment. Barak took my arm.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ I looked at him. ‘I am sorry about Mistress Reedbourne, but I had to tell him what I knew.’
He shrugged. ‘Well, it’s done now.’
‘Come, I must do that family tree. God’s death, Maleverer is a brute. I hope he is not rough with Master Wrenne.’
‘I think that the old fellow can look after himself.’
‘By God, I hope so.’
Barak looked back at the house. ‘We’ve got off lightly.’
‘Don’t be too sure,’ I said. ‘I doubt Maleverer has finished with us yet. Nor the people he was writing those notes for.’
Chapter Thirteen
AT OUR LODGINGS everyone was out at work; the building empty, the fire low. Barak fetched a bench and lugged it into my cubicle. He brought my cap too, which he must have retrieved from Craike’s office when he found me. He had fixed the feather back crudely with what was left of the pin.
I locked the door, then brought out a big sheet of paper from my knapsack and laid it on the bed while he sharpened a goose-feather quill for me.
‘You sure you can remember how the family tree looked?’
‘Ay.’ I shifted my position on the bench, trying to get my neck comfortable. ‘My head still feels woolly, but Maleverer’s backhanded compliment was right, lawyers are good at remembering what is in documents. Let me see what I can recall.’ I dipped the pen in the inkpot. I was relieved that Barak did not seem angry with me over Tamasin. He sat subdued, watching as I sketched out the tree. I recalled that the line of descent leading to the present King had been inscribed in bolder ink, and pressed the pen down more heavily there. In a little time a scrawled version of what I had seen lay before us.
‘I saw a lot of these genealogies round Whitehall Palace when I worked for Lord Cromwell,’ Barak said. ‘This looks different somehow.’
‘Yes. They have missed out a number of children, like Richard III’s son, who died young.’
‘And the King’s two sisters.’
‘Yes.’ I frowned. ‘Every genealogy tells a story. Its purpose is always to prove someone’s legitimacy to a title through descent. It is because the Tudor claim was originally so weak that they have put family trees showing the marriages that strengthened it everywhere in official buildings.’
Barak studied the tree. ‘Our King’s descent from Edward IV is marked in bold.’ He looked at me. ‘So this tree supports the King’s claim.’
‘Yet it includes the family of the Duke of Clarence, which most omit. See there, his daughter Margaret Countess of Salisbury and her son Lord Montagu, whom we spoke of with Master Wrenne. Both executed this year. And Montagu’s young son and daughter, who have disappeared in the Tower.’ I rubbed my chin. ‘Is the King’s claim marked thus for some other reason?’
‘Princesses Mary and Elizabeth are not marked in bold.’
‘They were not in bold on the one I saw. Remember neither has a claim to the throne; when the King’s marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn were annulled, their daughters were declared illegitimate. Prince Edward, Jane Seymour’s son, is the King’s sole heir.’
‘Unless the rumours are true and Queen Catherine is carrying a child.’
‘Yes, that child would become second in line and make the Tudor dynasty more secure. But is she pregnant?’ I turned to look at Barak, wincing as my neck twanged, and although the lodging-house was empty I lowered my voice. ‘The King’s divorce from Anne of Cleves last year cited non-consummation; he said he found her so repulsive he could not mount her. Yet when the Act of Annulment was discussed at Lincoln’s Inn, some said quietly that perhaps the King, ill as he often is now, had become impotent. That he married pretty young Catherine Howard in the hope she could stir his jellied loins.’
‘People said the same in the taverns. But quietly, as you say.’
‘Perhaps we shall find out if Queen Catherine is expecting when the King arrives. Perhaps it will be announced from those pavilions.’ I turned back to the family tree. ‘In any event, this is all quite orthodox.’
Barak pointed at the name that headed the list. ‘Who was Richard Duke of York? I confess I get lost among those competing claims during the Striving between the Roses.’
‘It all goes back to the deposition of Richard II as a tyrant in 1399. He had no children, and there were competing claims among his cousins. Eventually it came to war, and in 1461 the Lancastrian Henry VI was deposed and the rival house of York took the throne in the person of Edward IV. Edward’s father, Richard Duke of York, would have become King but he died in battle the year before.’