We go to chapel before dinner and Catherine Brandon, the king’s new favourite, walks beside me.
‘Your Majesty, I am afraid that I have some bad news,’ she starts.
‘Go on,’ I say.
‘A London bookseller, who has supplied me for years with texts, has been arrested for heresy.’
‘I am sorry to hear it,’ I say steadily. ‘I am very sorry for the trouble for your friend.’ I make sure that I don’t even check in my stride as we go side by side down the gallery to the chapel. I incline my head to a group of bowing courtiers.
‘I’m not asking for your protection for him. I am warning you.’ She has to hurry to keep up with my rapid pace. ‘This man, a good man, was arrested on the orders of the Privy Council. The arrest was made out specifically to him by name. He is John Bale. He brings in books from Flanders.’
I raise my hand. ‘Better that you tell me nothing,’ I say.
‘He sold us the Testament in French that you have,’ she says. ‘And the Tyndale translation of the New Testament. They’re banned now.’
‘I don’t have them,’ I reply. ‘I have given away all my books, and you had better get rid of yours, Catherine.’
She looks as frightened as I feel. ‘If my husband were alive then Bishop Stephen Gardiner would never have dared to arrest my bookseller,’ she says.
‘I know,’ I agree. ‘The king would never have allowed Charles Brandon to be questioned by such as Wriothesley.’
‘The king loved my husband,’ she says. ‘So I was safe.’
I know that we are both wondering if he loves me.
GREENWICH PALACE, SUMMER 1546
The ritual of the court moves on, and I – who once led it boldly – am trapped inside it, going through my paces like a blinkered horse, allowed only to run the length of the tilt rail, blinded to the world outside my narrow, frightened view. We transfer to Greenwich for the pleasure of the gardens in the summer weather, but the king hardly emerges from his rooms. The roses bloom in the arbours and he does not smell their scent, heavy on the evening air. The court flirts and plays and competes in little games and he does not bellow advice nor award prizes. There is boating and fishing, riding at the quintain, racing and dancing. I have to appear at every pastime, smile on every winner and maintain the normal life of the court, running in its agreed course. But at the same time I know that people are whispering that the king is ill, and does not want me at his side. That he is an old man struggling with illness and pain but everyone can see his young wife watching the tennis, or the archery, or boating on the river.
My physician comes to see me as I am looking at my birds. Two pairs of canaries have nested and one cage has a row of adorable chicks, opening their beaks in unison, stretching their stubby pale wings. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ I say irritably. ‘I didn’t send for you. I am perfectly well. You will have been seen coming here, please make sure that you tell everyone that I am perfectly well and that I didn’t send for you.’
‘I know you didn’t, Your Majesty,’ Doctor Robert Huicke says humbly. ‘It is I who needs to see you. I can see that you are in your full health and beauty.’
‘What is it?’ I ask, closing the cage door and turning from the birds.
‘It is my brother,’ he says.
At once I am alert. Doctor Huicke’s brother is a known reformer and scholar. He has attended the sermons at my rooms, has sent me books from London for my studies. ‘William?’
‘He has been arrested. It was an order from the Privy Council naming him, him alone, not the other scholars that he studies with. None of his circle. Just him.’
‘I am sorry to hear it.’
My blue parrot sidles along his perch as if to listen. I offer him a seed and he takes it in claw and beak, positioning it so that he can crush it and eat the kernel. He drops the husk on the ground and looks at me with his bright intelligent eyes.
‘They asked him about your opinions, Your Majesty. They asked him what authors you cite, what books he has seen in your rooms, who else attends the sermons. They searched his rooms for anything written by you. They suspect him of taking your papers to a publisher. I think they may be building a case against you.’
I shiver as if I am cold despite the warm summer sunshine. ‘I am afraid you are right, Doctor.’
‘Can you speak to the king in favour of my brother, Your Majesty? You know he is no heretic. He has thoughts about religion, but he would never undermine the king’s settlement.’
‘I will speak if I can,’ I say carefully. ‘But you see for yourself that I am not influential at the moment. Stephen Gardiner and his friends the Duke of Norfolk, William Paget and Lord Wriothesley, who were my friends, are working against the new learning, and they are in the ascendancy. This time, while the king is in such pain, it is they who are admitted to his rooms. They are his advisors, not me.’
‘I will speak to Doctor Wendy,’ he says. ‘Sometimes he consults with me about the king’s health. He might mention my brother’s name to the king and ask him for a pardon, if they charge him.’
‘Perhaps all these interrogations and inquiries are just to frighten us,’ I say. ‘Perhaps the good bishop just wants to warn us all.’
The parrot dips up and down as if he is dancing. I recognise that he is hoping for more seeds and I carefully hand him another. He takes it daintily, turning it round with his black tongue and beak as Doctor Huicke continues quietly: ‘I wish that were so. You haven’t heard about Johanne Bette?’
I shake my head.
‘He is one of my congregation, the brother of one of your yeomen. And the Worley brothers, Richard and John, have been taken from your household, too, for questioning. God have mercy on poor Johanne – he has been condemned to death. If this is a warning it is written in the blackest of ink and addressed to you. It is your men that they are questioning, Your Majesty. It is your man who will have to climb the scaffold.’
From the darkened royal rooms comes an announcement: the king is ill again. The fever mounting from his wounded leg burns in his brain and enters every joint of his aching body. Doctor Wendy is in and out of his chambers, trying one remedy after another; the doors are shut to almost everyone else. We hear that they are cupping him, draining the blood from the great bloated body, tapping the wound, grinding gold pieces into it and then washing them out with jugs of lemon juice. The king moans with pain and they station guards to keep people out of the great presence chamber and the gallery beyond, so that no-one shall hear him sob in agony. He does not ask for me, he does not even reply to my messages wishing him well, and I don’t dare to enter without invitation.
Nan says nothing, but I know that she is remembering when the king locked himself away from Katherine Howard as they went through her little letters and her household accounts looking for a payment or a gift for Thomas Culpepper. Now, as then, the king hides in his rooms, watching, and listening, but never giving himself away.
Some days I wake in the morning certain that today they will come for me, and I will go in my royal barge, my new royal barge, which has given me such foolish pleasure, upriver to the Tower. I will enter through the watergate on the swelling tide, and they will take me, not to the royal rooms, but to the ones that overlook the green, where the prisoners are held. A few days later and I will watch from the barred window as they build a wooden scaffold and know that it is for me. A confessor will come in and tell me that I must prepare myself for death.