‘You should have prevented it, sir. You are his councillor.’
‘Gregory, drink off a cup of this, and get warm. I thought you were staying with the queen?’
‘I came to warn you. Henry passed the night, but now he is on his way back.’
One of Thurston’s boys comes in with a platter of pastries, and whisks off the cloth. ‘Venison and currant jelly. Pike and horseradish. Plum and raisin.’
‘You see,’ he says, ‘this is why I’ve come home. At court your food has to walk half a mile, you get it cold.’
Another boy brings a bowl of hot water and a napkin, and Gregory is forced to silence till they are alone. Bella capers on her hind legs as if to divert them. He thinks of the scenes he used to stage with George Cavendish, the cardinal’s man. He would say, ‘Show me how it was, George – who sat where, who spoke first.’ And Cavendish would jump up and play the king.
He can lay out this stage in his mind, where bride and groom meet: the old hall at Rochester, the great fireplace with its carved emblems: a fern, a heart, a Welsh dragon holding an orb. He can follow the king with his train of merry men; they hold their masks loosely, playfully, because they expect to be recognised in seconds. And indeed, as they pass, the new queen’s servants kneel.
‘Anna was warned?’ he asks. ‘She was ready?’
‘She was warned, but she was not ready. The king billowed in, but she was looking out of the window – they were baiting a bull in the courtyard. She cast a glance over her shoulder, then she turned away to the sport.’
He can see what Gregory saw: the bulky shape of the king blacking out the light. And the foggy outline of the queen, with the window behind her: the blank oval of her face, a swift glance from her dark eyes, and then the back of her head.
‘I suppose she did not believe a prince would come in secret. Maybe Duke Wilhelm goes everywhere with trumpeters and drums.’
Even to nourish love, he thinks. There is talk that the Emperor has offered Anna’s brother the Duchess Christina as his bride, if he will hand back Guelders without a fight. He thinks, if I were the Duke of Cleves, I would not give my sea coast for her dimples.
‘The king bowed low.’ Gregory takes a gulp of his wine. ‘And addressed her, but she did not turn. I think she took him for – I do not know what – some Jolly Jankin dressed up for the festival. And so he stood, his hat in his hand – then her people swarmed in, and someone called out, “Madam,” and a phrase to alert her …’ Gregory falters. ‘And then she turned. And she knew who he was. And as Christ is my Saviour, Father, the look in her eye! I will never forget it.’ Gregory sits down, as if at the end of his strength. ‘Nor will the king.’
He picks Bella up, and begins to feed her a pastry, crumb by crumb. ‘Why should she be astonished? I made no false representation.’
‘You did not tell her he was old.’
‘Am I old? Is that what you would first think of, if you described Cromwell? Oh, he is old?’
‘No,’ Gregory says unwillingly.
‘She knew his date of birth. She knew he was stout. Surely, enough gentlemen from her court have passed to and fro? And Hans – Hans could have described him. Who better?’
‘But Hans will never get himself in trouble.’
That much is true. ‘What did the king do?’
‘He fell back. Any man would have been stricken. She flinched from him. He could not miss it.’
‘And?’
‘Then she recovered herself. She dissimulated marvellous well. And so did he. She said in English, “My lord and my king, welcome.”’
It was for him to say, welcome. ‘Go on.’
‘She made a smooth curtsey, very low, as if nothing had occurred. And the king smiled and uplifted her. He said, “Welcome, sweetheart.”’ What it is to be royal, he thinks. Gregory adds, ‘His hand was trembling.’
In his imagined hall at Rochester, the light is failing. Below the queen’s window, soundless, the bull-baiters roar. The dogs hang from the bull’s flesh. Slow gouts of blood patter onto the paving. ‘And the king’s gentlemen? What did they do?’
What he means is, did they see it all?
‘Anthony Browne was behind him, carrying the sables for her. But Henry waved him back. He was looking in the lady’s face and all the time talking.’
‘Gregory,’ he says, ‘did Hans paint her truly?’
‘He would not dare do other, would he?’
‘And she is beautiful?’
‘Not sideways. She has a long nose. But you know he had no time to draw her from all angles. She is pleasant-looking. She is a little marked with smallpox, but I only saw that when the sun chanced to come out. The king cannot have seen it, he had turned his back.’
She is lovely in the shadows, then. And when facing front. He could almost laugh. ‘Is he disappointed?’
‘If he is, he did not show it. He led her by the hand. They went aside and sat down with the interpreters. He asked how she liked England and she said, very well. He asked, how was she entertained in Calais, and she said, very well. He congratulated her on making the voyage so bravely, and asked had she been on the sea before? When they translated this, she looked startled.’
He pictures the king, sweating with the effort. His eyes roaming around, looking for a diversion.
‘The king called for music. A consort came in and they played “O fair white hand that heals me”. She attended to it very sweetly. She said, through the interpreter, she would like to learn to play some instrument. The king said, easier when young. She said, I am not so old, and my fingers are kept supple by plying my needle. The king asked, could she sing, and she said, in praise of Mary and the saints. He said, would she sing, and she said, not before all these lords, but I will sing when we are alone. And she blushed.’
‘That is a very proper modesty.’ Think of Anne Boleyn; she would have sung in the street, if she thought it might get her some attention.
‘We say we like modesty,’ Gregory picks up one of the pastries, and Bella, at his feet, touches him with her paw. ‘But really we prefer it when maids show their favour plain. We like to know we are well-accepted, before we begin to court them. I should never have dared speak to Bess, if you and Edward Seymour had not helped me. If a woman might despise us, we would rather avoid her.’
And when we find the courage to present ourselves, he thinks, we do not want to see shock on her face. ‘So you think damage is done?’
‘I don’t see how she will undo that first moment, even if she were the Queen of Sheba.’ Gregory takes a bite of his pastry; Bella leans against his shin and adores him. ‘They went into supper. She was very attentive, turning her eyes to everything he said. It is a poor beginning, but considering one cannot talk to her, I like her very much, and so do we all. Fitzwilliam himself says, she is as good a woman as he will find if he scours Europe.’
‘I think he has scoured it,’ he says. ‘I have, at least. Well … he will understand, when he thinks about it, that she was startled. And you say yourself, he was happy enough afterwards.’ He considers. His eye falls on Lord Morley’s history. ‘We must roll back time. It will be as if the king blinked, and then lived that first moment again.’
Gregory says, ‘But is that how time works?’ As the pastries disappear, the plate’s pattern emerges. Fatto in Venezia, it depicts the Fall of Troy: the wooden horse, the screaming women, the rolling heads, and the towers in bursts of flame.
Wonderful, how they get it all in.
He arrives at Greenwich not long after the king. ‘My lord, his Majesty is in his library.’
Henry sits amid boxes of books. ‘These are from Tewkesbury Abbey.’ He rises heavily from his chair. ‘Cromwell, we have not had the papers from Cleves about the Lorraine marriage, the pre-contract. It was stated emphatically the lady would bring them with her, but it appears she did not. Even the least suspicious man would ask himself why they have still not shown them, after all these months.’