That afternoon we have a sermon on the vanity of war, a powerful piece of reasoning from one of the London preachers. He argues that all Christians should live in peace, for whatever their way of worshipping God they are all praying to the one God. Jews also should not be persecuted since their God is our God – though we have a greater insight into Him. He reminds us that Our Saviour was born of a Jewish mother. He Himself was born a Jew. Even Muslims, in their benighted darkness, should not be attacked, because they too acknowledge the God of the Bible.
This is so strange and so radical that I check that the doors are locked and the sentries standing out of earshot, keeping all strangers at a distance, before we enter into a discussion. The preacher, Peter Lascombe, defends his thesis and appeals to the brotherhood of man. ‘And the sisterhood,’ he says, smiling, though this too is a great claim. I think it must be heretical. He says that, as in Spain in the old days, when the country was ruled by Muslim kings, everyone who believes in God should respect the others’ faiths. The enemy should be those who don’t believe in God at all and refuse to accept His Word: pagans and fools.
He takes my hand when it is time for him to go and bows over it. I feel between my fingers a little scrap of paper, double-folded. I let him go without a word and tell my ladies that I shall work at my studies for the next hour in silence, and I sit at my table and open my books. Unseen, hidden behind the great folios, I unwrap the note. It is from Anne Askew:
I write to tell you that a man came to me saying he was a servant of the Privy Council and asked me when I have preached before you and if you deny the Mass. I will say nothing. I will mention no names, I will never say yours. A.
I rise from my seat and stand before the small fire that brightens the room as the afternoon grows dark. I hold out my hands as if to warm them and flick the little scrap of paper into the heart of the embers where it flames and curls into ash. I notice how cold I feel and that my hands are shaking.
I don’t understand what is happening. On the one hand the king’s own daughter Princess Mary is to be betrothed to a Lutheran, on the other hand the forces of popery are gaining power. The Seymours are away from court, Thomas Cranmer keeps to his home, there is no-one to speak to the king for the new religion but me. I feel very alone, and I cannot read these contradictory signs. I cannot understand the king.
‘Is your hand cramped from writing?’ Nan asks me. ‘One of us could write for you if you would like a clerk, Your Majesty.’
‘No, no,’ I say. ‘I am well, all is well.’
Nan is at the head of my ladies as we are about to walk into court. As I enter my presence chamber from my private rooms in a new gown of dark red, she comes to my side as if to straighten the rubies at my neck, and whispers to me.
‘Lord Edward Seymour has written to his wife that there is a rumour in Europe that the king is planning to set you aside. Has the king said anything, anything at all to you? Has he even been critical of you?’
‘Just the usual,’ I say quietly. ‘That he wishes I were with child. Nan – don’t you think . . .?’
‘No,’ she says flatly. ‘A dead child would be your death warrant. Trust me. Let him long for it, get down on your knees and pray with him if you have to, but don’t conceive something that he would take as a sign from the devil.’
‘But if the child were to be well? Nan, I want a child. I am thirty-three! I want a child of my own.’
‘How could it be?’ she demands flatly. ‘There’s been no healthy child born of a living mother since Princess Elizabeth. And half the court say that she is Mark Smeaton’s bastard, from strong young stock. So – no legitimate child since Princess Mary, thirty years ago. He can’t get a healthy child on a healthy woman. Last time it killed the mother.’
She bends down and straightens the train of my silk gown. ‘So what shall I do about these rumours?’ I ask as she comes up.
‘Face them down,’ she counsels. ‘Complain about them. And we’ll pray to ride them out. There’s nothing we can do, anyway.’
I nod, my expression grim.
‘And even now, even with this gossip spreading we are safe, unless . . .’
‘Unless?’
‘Unless they come from the king himself,’ she says unhappily. ‘If he has said that he is thinking of a new wife, to someone who has repeated it elsewhere . . . if he is the source, then we are lost; but there is still nothing we can do.’
I look down the line of my ladies to Anne of Cleves preparing to come in to dinner with her cheerful smile, the former wife he now loves so well that he keeps her at court. She was invited for Christmas and she is still here although it is nearly Easter. Catherine Brandon is behind her, the widow of Henry’s dearest friend, the beautiful girl that he has watched grow into womanhood, perhaps his lover, perhaps his love; and there are the new ones, the pretty ones, the ones young enough to be my daughter, the ones as young as Kitty Howard when he first saw her, young enough to be his grandchild.
‘At least Anne of Cleves can go home,’ I say in sudden irritation.
‘I’ll see she does,’ Nan promises.
That afternoon, without warning, Thomas Seymour comes to court to report on the strength of the navy and the gathering danger of the French.
‘Come and listen to Tom Seymour.’ The king beckons me to the table in his presence chamber. He takes my hand and puts it on his, holding my fingers trapped between his, so that I must stand beside him, facing Thomas, as if I am yearning towards the king, my hand resting on my husband’s clenched unresponsive fist, listening to Thomas report on ships built and restored, docks dry and wet, outfitters and chandlers and rope merchants and sail lofts. He reports that another effort to raise the Mary Rose is being undertaken. She could be raised. She could sail again. Perhaps she might, like our king, defy time itself and go on and on forever, outliving the rest of the fleet, sailing on when all love and loyalty is gone, holding the future hostage, a live fleet yoked for ever to her rotting timbers.
‘There is an archery tournament in the garden for Your Majesty’s amusement,’ I say. ‘If you could walk to it?’
‘I can walk,’ he says. ‘Thomas, you will have seen I have an engine to get me up and downstairs. What d’you think? Should you bring me a crane from your shipyard? Will you fetch me a hoist from Portsmouth?’
Thomas smiles at his king, his eyes warm with sympathy. ‘If greatness were weighed, Your Majesty, nothing would ever lift you.’
Henry cracks a laugh. ‘You’re a pretty fellow!’ he exclaims. ‘Take the queen to the archery butts and tell them I am coming. They can get ready for me. I may take a bow myself and see what I can do.’
‘Your Majesty must come, and show them how to do it,’ Thomas recommends, and offers his arm to me and we go towards the door, my hand burning on his sleeve, both of us looking studiously forward, at the guards, at the parting courtiers, at the opening door, never anywhere towards each other.
Behind us come the ladies of my chamber and their husbands, behind them the king’s companions wait for him, while he is helped up from his chair to his close-stool. Someone fetches Doctor Wendy to give the king warm ale and a draught to help with the pain, and guards to help him into his carriage and wheel him out into the garden like a dead boar in a cart.
The double doors to the garden are thrown open by the yeomen of the guard as soon as Thomas and I approach them, and the warm spring air, smelling of the first cut of grass, floods into the palace. We glance at each other – it is impossible not to share our pleasure in the sudden sense of freedom, of release, in joy at the sunshine and the birdsong, and the court dressed in their best and preparing for another nonsensical game.