The princess is right, he thinks. There is room for negotiation. ‘Nothing here is irrevocable.’
‘No, you wait to see what I will bring to your treaty table.’ Katherine holds out her hands – little, stubby, puffy hands – to show that they are empty. ‘Only Bishop Fisher defends me. Only he has been constant. Only he is able to tell the truth, which is that the House of Commons is full of heathens.’ She sighs, her hands fall at her sides. ‘And now under what persuasion has my husband ridden off without a farewell? He has not done so before. Never.’
‘He means to hunt out of Chertsey for a few days.’
‘With the woman,’ Mary says. ‘The person.’
‘Then he will ride by way of Guildford to visit Lord Sandys – he wants to see his handsome new gallery at the Vyne.’ His tone is easy, soothing, like the cardinal's; perhaps too much so? ‘From there, depending on the weather, and the game, he will go to William Paulet at Basing.’
‘I am to follow, when?’
‘He will return in a fortnight, God willing.’
‘A fortnight,’ Mary says. ‘Alone with the person.’
‘Before then, madam, you are to go to another palace – he has chosen the More, in Hertfordshire, which you know is very comfortable.’
‘Being the cardinal's house,’ Mary says, ‘it would be lavish.’
My own daughters, he thinks, would never have spoken so. ‘Princess,’ he says, ‘will you, of your charity, cease to speak ill of a man who never did you harm?’
Mary blushes from neckline to hairline. ‘I did not mean to fail in charity.’
‘The late cardinal is your godfather. You owe him your prayers.’
Her eyes flicker towards him; she looks cowed. ‘I pray to shorten his term in Purgatory …’
Katherine interrupts her. ‘Send a box to Hertfordshire. Send a package. Do not seek to send me.’
‘You shall have your whole court. The household is ready for two hundred.’
‘I shall write to the king. You may carry the letter. My place is with him.’
‘My advice,’ he says, ‘take this gently. Or he may …’ He indicates the princess. His hands join and drift apart. Separate you.
The child is fighting down pain. Her mother is fighting down grief and anger, and disgust and fear. ‘I expected this,’ she says, ‘but I did not expect he would send a man like you to tell me.’ He frowns: does she think it would come better from Norfolk? ‘They say you had a trade as a blacksmith; is that correct?’
Now she will say, shoe a horse?
‘It was my father's trade.’
‘I begin to understand you.’ She nods. ‘The blacksmith makes his own tools.’
Half a mile of chalk walls, a mirror for the glare, bounce at him a white heat. In the shadow of a gateway, Gregory and Rafe are jostling and pushing, insulting each other with culinary insults he has taught them: Sir, you are a fat Fleming, and spread butter on your bread. Sir, you are a Roman pauper, may your offspring eat snails. Master Wriothesley is leaning in the sun and watching them, with a lazy smile; butterflies garland his head.
‘Oh, it's
‘Sir? Katherine says?’
‘She says our precedents are fake.’
Rafe: ‘Does she understand that you and Dr Cranmer sat up all night over them?’
‘Oh, wild times!’ Gregory says. ‘Seeing the dawn in, with Dr Cranmer!’
He throws an arm around Rafe's bony little shoulders and squeezes him; it is a liberation to be away from Katherine, from the girl flinching like a whipped bitch. ‘Once I myself, with Giovannino – well, with some boys I knew –’ He stops: what is this? I don't tell stories about myself.
‘Please …’ Wriothesley says.
‘Well, we had a statue made, a smirking little god with wings, and then we beat it with hammers and chains to make it antique, and we hired a muleteer and drove it to Rome and sold it to a cardinal.’ Such a hot day, when they were ushered into his presence: hazy, thunder in the distance, and white dust from building sites hanging in the air. ‘I remember he had tears in his eyes when he paid us. “To think that on these charming little feet and these sweet pinions, the gaze of the Emperor Augustus may have rested.” When the Portinari boys set off for Florence they were staggering under the weight of their purses.’
‘And you?’
‘I took my cut and stayed on to sell the mules.’
They head downhill through the inner courts. Emerging into the sun, he shades his eyes as if to see through the tangle of tree-tops that runs into the distance. ‘I told the queen, let Henry go in peace. Or he might not let the princess move with her up-country.’
Wriothesley says, surprised, ‘But it is decided. They are to be separated. Mary is to go to Richmond.’
He did not know. He hopes his hesitation is not perceptible. ‘Of course. But the queen had not been told, and it was worth a try, yes?’
See how useful Master Wriothesley is. See how he brings us intelligence from Secretary Gardiner. Rafe says, ‘It is harsh. To use the little girl against her mother.’
‘Harsh, yes … but the question is, have you picked your prince? Because that is what you do, you choose him, and you know what he is. And then, when you have chosen, you say yes to him – yes, that is possible, yes, that can be done. If you don't like Henry, you can go abroad and find another prince, but I tell you – if this were Italy, Katherine would be cold in her tomb.’
‘But you swore,’ Gregory says, ‘that you respected the queen.’
‘So I do. And I would respect her corpse.’
‘You would not work her death, would you?’
He halts. He takes his son's arm, turns him to look into his face. ‘Retrace our steps through this conversation.’ Gregory pulls away. ‘No, listen, Gregory. I said, you give way to the king's requests. You open the way to his desires. That is what a courtier does. Now, understand this: it is impossible that Henry should require me or any other person to harm the queen. What is he, a monster? Even now he has affection for her; how could he not? And he has a soul he hopes may be saved. He confesses every day to one or other of his chaplains. Do you think the Emperor does so much, or King Francis? Henry's heart, I assure you, is a heart full of feeling; and Henry's soul, I swear, is the most scrutinised soul in Christendom.’
Wriothesley says, ‘Master Cromwell, he is your son, not an ambassador.’
He lets Gregory go. ‘Shall we get on the river? There might be a breeze.’
In the Lower Ward, six couples of hunting dogs stir and yelp in the cages on wheels which are going to carry them across country. Tails waving, they are clambering over each other, twisting ears and nipping, their yaps and howls adding to the sense of nearpanic that has taken over the castle. It's more like the evacuation of a fort than the start of a summer progress. Sweating porters are heaving the king's furnishings on to carts. Two men with a studded chest have got wedged in a doorway. He thinks of himself on the road, a bruised child, loading wagons to get a lift. He wanders over. ‘How did this happen, boys?’
He steadies one corner of the chest and backs them off into the shadows; adjusts the degree of rotation with a flip of his hand; a moment's fumbling and slipping, and they burst into the light, shouting ‘Here she goes!’ as if they had thought of it themselves. Be packing for the queen next, he says, for the cardinal's palace at the More, and they say, surprised, is that so, master, and what if the queen won't go? He says, then we will roll her up in a carpet and put her on your cart. He hands out coins: ease up, it's too hot to work so hard. He saunters back to the boys. A man leads up horses ready for harnessing to the hounds' wagons, and as soon as they catch their scent the dogs set up an excited barking, which can still be heard as they get on the water.
The river is brown, torpid; on the Eton bank, a group of listless swans glides in and out of the weeds. Their boat bobs beneath them; he says, ‘Is that not Sion Madoc?’
‘Never forget a face, eh?’
‘Not when it's ugly.’
‘Have you seen yourself,
