‘We thought she was carrying some fabulous beast,’ Richard says. ‘But she never conceived, is that not the truth?’
A tear drops on a map of Lisle’s new property. He leans across. ‘Tell Lord Lisle we will pray his lady will amend.’
‘Oh, she must,’ Husee says. ‘Were she to die, how would we settle her debts? She has wept a salt ocean. My lord set so much store by his heir. But good gentleman that he is, he will love her no less, he only asks her to stop grieving. If I could tell her the abbey were signed over, it would do her heart good.’
‘Husee, go away,’ Richard says. He sounds tired.
‘I will, Master Richard. But by your favour, do not forget the abbey.’
The door closes. ‘Christ,’ Richard says. ‘Who will tell the king?’
‘That lucky man sits not far from you.’ He lifts the topmost papers from the pile Husee has left. ‘If Lisle wants his abbey he needs to find money for the clerks’ fees, they will not give him credit.’ He scratches his chin. ‘I wish John Husee worked for me. He only gets eightpence a day with the Calais garrison, and I warrant Lisle never shows him gratitude. He is a tenacious man.’
Richard says, ‘This will strike Henry to the heart.’
He gets up, heavily. His feet seem reluctant to walk. ‘I’ll make sure he is sitting down, and help at hand.’
Henry does not stagger at the news. He just stares, mute, his colour rising, till he says, ‘Gone? Gone where? St Gabriel help and guide us.’
‘I have never heard of such a case,’ he says, ‘nor I suppose have the physicians.’
‘Oh, have you not?’ Henry’s tone is savage. ‘If your memory were longer you would know that Katherine misled me in the same fashion. God punish these women, they are serpents!’
‘I did not know,’ he says. ‘I was not here then.’ He feels like Tom Thumb, an inch high.
‘We were but newly wed,’ Henry says. ‘What did I know of women and their schemes? She miscarried of one child, but kept her chamber, and claimed she was carrying its twin. Till the imposture was found out.’
‘Majesty, was it not an honest mistake?’
‘Women are the beginning of all mistakes. Read any of the divines, and they will tell you.’ Henry turns and looks at him. ‘Always you, Cromwell, with the bad news.’
Tom Thumb is caught in a mousetrap. He is baked in a pudding. He is swallowed by what beast you please, not to emerge till it shits.
‘But then, no one else tells the truth,’ the king says. ‘So how does Lady Lisle now?’
‘Weeping.’
‘She may well. My poor uncle.’ A pause. ‘Send my doctors over.’
Relieved, he bows again. ‘Lord Lisle will be indebted.’
Henry says, ‘I want to know what is inside her. Some women carry dead flesh in their wombs, they call it a mole, it is not alive and it cannot be born. But sometimes it is sloughed off, it proves to have the features of a monster child, such as hair, or teeth.’
When the king sees the mural Hans has painted, he says nothing. It is not for him to thank a mere artist. But he glitters: not merely augmented, but enhanced.
The queen stands by him, and his hand steals out, and rests on her belly, as if testing what he finds there: as he has many times in the last few days, while she holds her breath and wonders why. On the advice of her brother, her ladies and the doctors, the news from Calais has been kept from her. And she has trained herself not to pull away, but to keep her frame steady and her face as immobile as the face of a marble Madonna. If she shrinks a little now, and averts her eyes, it is from the man on the walclass="underline" from his fist planted on his hip, from his hand on the pommel of his dagger, from his belligerent gaze; from his straddled legs, unbandaged calves bulging with muscle; from his bejewelled manhood, with a bow tied on top.
Jane stands herself, caught in her own gaze, crimson and tawny: her painted eyes resting beyond the frame. Behind her, our king’s gracious mother, in an old-fashioned hood with long lappets. And leaning on the altar which bears his son’s praises, the pale invader who carried his banners from the sea to the altar at Paul’s: narrow-faced, narrow of shoulder, his robe twitched across his person, his hand half-concealed by the ermine lining his great sleeve. Four-square in front of him, his son seems twice his girth; he could tuck mother and father both inside his jacket, he could swallow them whole.
‘By the saints you were right,’ Hans whispers, ‘when you said I should turn him to face us.’ He seems awed by his own creation. ‘Jesus Maria. He looks as if he would spring out of the frame and trample you.’
‘I wish France could see this,’ Henry tells the company. ‘Or the Emperor. Or the King of Scots.’
‘There can be copies, Majesty,’ Hans says, modestly. Mirrors of his lively image: ever larger, more active with every telling.
‘Come, Jane.’ The king plucks his eyes away. ‘We are done here. Time to be off to the country.’
Like a cottager he takes his wife by the hand, and kisses her mouth. My dear darling, I to Esher, you to Hampton Court. I to pleasure, you to pain: but not just yet.
August: the Lady Mary requests a greyhound to course with the royal party, and so before the sport begins he is taking her one: pure white, clean-limbed, with a small proud head and a green and white collar of plaited leather. Himself, Richard his nephew, Gregory his son – soon to be a happy bridegroom – and Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp – soon to be a happy brother-in-law. And as their escort, Dick Purser to lead the hound, and the boy Mathew, in his Cromwell livery coat; and a score of followers who have tagged along.
Lord Beauchamp frowns at the boy Mathew. ‘Did you not use to be my man, down at Wolf Hall?’
‘Aye, sir. But I came to seek my fortune, and I have found it.’
‘I am at fault,’ he says. ‘I drew the boy from his rustic innocence.’
‘Country mouse to town rat,’ Dick Purser says, shoving Mathew in the back.
‘Stop that,’ he says. ‘Arrange your faces. Here is Norfolk’s boy.’
A blazing day, a young lord in orange satin: Surrey advances, his long limbs flying, his eyes screwed up, his hands beating the air like a man in a cloud of mosquitoes; the court is swarming with rumours about his father, and all of them sting.
‘Seymour!’ the young man yells.
I shall speak first, he thinks, the soul of courtesy – ‘My lord, I see you have quit Kenninghall –’
‘You are not wrong,’ Surrey says.
‘– and the court is the gainer.’
Surrey is upon them. His father is right, he looks ilclass="underline" his face has fallen in. ‘My business is with Lord Beauchamp. I have nothing to say to you.’
Edward Seymour says, ‘Surrey, stand where you are.’
‘Or take a pace back,’ Richard Cromwell says. ‘I sincerely advise it.’
‘I stop where I please,’ Surrey says. ‘Do not tell me where to stop.’
‘Armed like a man,’ Richard says, ‘yet talks like a three-year-old.’
Surrey does step back, as if he wants to view them better: the servants in their grey marbled coats, Gregory and Richard and Seymour in their peacock silks, and Lord Cromwell in his indigo gown, body solid beneath its soft folds. The greyhound steps sideways, grizzles and yaps, and Dick Purser bundles her backwards for fear she should snap: how tempting must be Surrey’s thigh, the tender flesh in its flashing hose. Surrey jerks a thumb at him – at the Lord Privy Seaclass="underline" ‘Seymour, are you so in love with this churl’s money that you drag your family name through the mire? When they told me of this match you have made I could scarce believe it – not even of you.’
‘He means me,’ Gregory says. ‘I am the match.’
‘Aye, you,’ Surrey says, ‘you squat little clod.’ He whips around, long body glinting like a viper’s and ready to bite. ‘What evil persuasion is this, Seymour, to marry your sister to these shearsmen, these sheep-runners – I ask you, what disparagement is it, to your own family’s coat of arms, and to the name of the late Oughtred, so worthy a man –’