‘Forlorn hope! The king says that nothing’s happened and it never will.’
‘Oh!’
‘He says God has saved him from the sin of bigamy.’
‘Oh.’
My uncle narrows his eyes to glare at me. ‘So, the council must decide if the queen is a bigamist. What d’you say about that? Going to say “oh” again?’
‘No, my lord. I’d heard there was a childhood betrothal; but the new Cleves ambassador is coming to Hampton Court for Lent. Won’t he bring the papers to show the childhood betrothal was ended?’
‘Better for us, if he doesn’t,’ my uncle whispers. ‘If the king’s marriage was annulled, he’d be free to marry. And he’s seen the bride he wants, hasn’t he? He’s all over Kitty?’
‘He’s given her several gifts.’
‘And she’s behaving herself?’
I nod without committing myself to words.
‘Very well. If the queen asks you for advice, you know what your answer should be: that the king can’t and won’t consummate, and she should admit a prior contract and let the marriage be annulled, and the king can be free to marry our girl, and Cromwell’s girl can go back to Cleves. We own the queen, and he looks like a fool.’
THE KING REVELSin the Easter rituals of the old church, creeping to the cross, blessing cramp rings, washing the feet of the poor men, and the queen obeys him in this, as everything else, though the traditions must seem completely pagan to her. They take Easter mass dressed in cloth of gold, side by side before an altar smoking with incense and drenched in holy water.
After the long church service, there is a dinner with roast beef, veal, lamb, porpoise, and puddings to celebrate the end of Lent. Then there is masquing and dancing by the younger noblemen and the queen’s ladies. The king’s older friends stand beside him, drink and watch the girls dance with a new generation of handsome sons of the great houses: Lord Lisle’s stepson, John Dudley; Anthony Kingston, son of my husband’s gaoler; Richard Cromwell, my spymaster’s nephew, and Gregory Cromwell, his son. George Carew, Sir Nicholas’ kinsman, is home on leave from Rysbank Fort, Calais, and there are several handsome young Howard men newly come to court, including Charles, my cousin. Margaret Douglas, back at court having learned nothing from disgrace and widowhood, dances twice with Charles Howard; but I tell the queen to nod her to a new partner for the third dance.
My spymaster, Lord Cromwell, is smilingly watching the dancing, chatting from time to time with the other lords and the king. My uncle’s belief he would fall is proved wrong by the king, who rewards him with a great honour: the title of Earl of Essex. Lord Cromwell takes the news with quiet pride; the king gives a dinner for him in the council chamber. Cromwell himself heads the table; and the court is treated to a new masque which could be calledThe Rise of the Common Man, as the new earl is seated on one side of the king, and Thomas Howard the Duke of Norfolk, stiff with offended pride, on the other.
Westminster Palace, May
1540
THEMAYDAYjoust is held at the beautiful tiltyard in Westminster Palace, and Thomas Seymour is the king’s challenger. He defeats all comers. Queen Anne, with the restoredHandAcurtains billowing in the warm breeze, awards him the trophy with a smile. Lord Lisle’s stepson John Dudley rides well, as does George Carew, who hopes to take the king’s eye for promotion before he returns to service at Calais. Gregory Cromwell, as brave as any nobleman’s son, breaks a spear on my young cousin Henry Howard Earl of Surrey, and Thomas Culpeper carries Bess Harvey’s favour.
‘Not yours?’ I ask Kitty.
She is red-eyed and defiant. ‘No!’ she says sharply. ‘He seems to prefer Mistress Harvey to me.’ Her lower lip trembles. ‘I don’t care, I am sure, Lady Rochford. If you see him, you can tell him that I don’t care at all.’
‘He probably decided to avoid you when he saw that the king favoured you,’ I comfort her. ‘The king makes much of you, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ she sniffs. ‘He gave me a gold chain, which is nice, but he’s older than my uncle!’
I laugh. ‘Not at all! His Majesty is in the prime of his life!’
She gives me her courtier smile. ‘I just forgot for a moment,’ she apologises.
ON THE DAYafter May Day, Richard Cromwell, my spymaster’s nephew, is knighted and is now Sir Richard, and Lord Lisle, visiting from Calais, hosts a great banquet at Dereham House. The queen looks beautiful in the French hood which I have persuaded her to wear, and the king beside her is noisy and cheerful, praising the jousters and the dinner. The wealth of the monasteries and the abbey lands pouring into the royal treasury makes the king as generous asPlutus. He gives every one of the champions a purse of a gold and a house of their own. Lord Lisle beams at the honour shown to his stepson and applauds the wildly extravagant gift to the jousters. Lord Cromwell, dressed plainly as usual in his black suit, claps his boy Richard on the back when no one is looking.
Lord Lisle is a tall, handsome man, good-looking and charming as all the royal Plantagenet family – all of them more kingly than any Tudor. He is high in royal favour; he, too, is to get an earldom for his loyal service in holding and managing Calais – a difficult posting, so close to France and so far from London, an exchequer for all spies and heretics going between France and Spain, Scotland and England. He has no idea that Thomas Cromwell and I imagined his downfall, and I am glad that the plot stayed as a speculation.
The deaths of my husband and sister-in-law have been fully avenged by the fall of the Courtenays. I don’t need more. I hope that Lord Lisle will use his time basking in the king’s favour to speak for his kinswoman, Lady Margaret Pole, who should be released from the Tower to finish her long life in the comfort of her own home. I will believe that a good tyranny is in power when I see her return to Bisham Abbey.
Lord Lisle attends a meeting of the privy council, confidently expecting his earldom to be announced by his beloved cousin the king, and I have the ladies ready in our best clothes for a late dinner to celebrate his new honour, though the queen is looking strained and Kitty Howard dazzling. I expect the king and his friends to come late after drinking the health of the new earl, and I take a moment to look out of the window of the queen’s chamber, over the river to the gardens and fields on the south bank, and upstream where the sun is setting over Lambeth Palace.
Below me, threading through the little boats on the Thames, is a dark barge silently rowing upriver, turning on the flat water and mooring, in complete silence, at the pier. As I watch, Sir William Kingston – the constable of the Tower – and his friend Lord Lisle come out of a little garden door below my window and walk through the golden light of the garden, down the stairs to the quay.
Lord Lisle is wearing his cloak, though the evening is mild. Sir William Kingston keeps pace beside him with his head bowed. They’re not arm in arm chatting, as if they were leaving a joyful party; they are both silent as they walk along the pier, past othergaily-painted barges with standards flying, up the gangplank of the black unmarked barge. They cast off and row away without a word, without anyone on the bank saying farewell. There is no escort to honour the new-made earl; there are no trumpeters. There is no sound but the crying of seagulls, no cheers from the rowers, no word from the bargemaster. It is all silent, like a bad dream. It can be nothing but an arrest; it has to be an arrest, though they are old friends and their sons were jousting together as comrades on May Day only yesterday.
I stare out of the window without moving, without a word. For once in my life, I don’t think: what does this mean, and how should I use this information? For once in my life, I think nothing, and I do nothing. I don’t even tap on the window so that his lordship knows someone has seen his departure and will write to his wife Lady Lisle in Calais and warn his stepdaughter Anne Basset, who is practising dance steps in the room behind me, with no idea that her stepfather has just stepped into the Tower barge and gone swiftly and silently downstream, like a dark cormorant speeding east, low over shining water.
