going to waggle waggle to the queen’s apartments to beg for sweetmeats.’
He grins. ‘You sound bitter, Harry Norris.’
Why would he not? He’s served his time at the queen’s door. On her threshold.
Norris says, ‘She will play with him and pat his little rump. She’s fond of puppy dogs.’
‘Did you find out who killed Purkoy?’
‘Don’t say that,’ the Moor beseeches. ‘It was an accident.’
At his elbow, causing him to turn, is William Brereton. ‘Where’s that thrice-blasted dragon?’ he enquires. ‘I’m supposed to get after it.’
Brereton is dressed as an antique huntsman, wearing the skin of one of his victims. ‘Is that real leopard skin, William? Where did you catch it, up in Chester?’ He feels it critically. Brereton seems to be naked beneath it. ‘Is that proper?’ he asks.
Brereton snarls, ‘It’s the season of licence. If you were forced to impersonate an antique hunter, would you wear a jerkin?’
‘As long as the queen is not treated to the sight of your
The Moor giggles. ‘He wouldn’t be showing her anything she hasn’t seen.’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘Has she?’
Norris blushes easily, for a Moor. ‘You know what I meant. Not William’s. The king’s.’
He holds up a hand. ‘Please take note, I am not the one who introduced this topic. By the way, the dragon went in that direction.’
He remembers last year, Brereton swaggering through Whitehall, whistling like a stable boy; breaking off to say to him, ‘I hear the king, when he does not like the papers you bring in to him, knocks you well about the pate.’
You’ll be knocked, he had said to himself. Something in this man makes him feel he is a boy again, a sullen belligerent little ruffian fighting on the riverbank at Putney. He has heard it before, this rumour put about to demean him. Anyone who knows Henry knows it is impossible. He is the first gentleman of Europe, his courtesy unflawed. If he wants someone stricken, he employs a subject to do it; he would not sully his own hand. It is true they sometimes disagree. But if Henry were to touch him, he would walk away. There are princes in Europe who want him. They make him offers; he could have castles.
Now he watches Brereton, as he heads towards the queen’s suite, bow slung over his furry shoulder. He turns to speak to Norris, but his voice is drowned out by a metallic clatter, a clash as of guardsmen: shouts of ‘Make way for my lord the Duke of Suffolk.’
The duke’s upper body is still armed; perhaps he has been out there in the yard, jousting by himself. His large face is flushed, his beard – more impressive year on year – spreads over his breastplate. The valiant Moor steps forward to say, ‘His Majesty is in conference with –’ but Brandon knocks him aside, as if he were on a crusade.
He, Cromwell, follows on the duke’s heels. If he had a net, he would drop it over him. Brandon bangs once on the king’s door with his fist, then throws it open before him. ‘Leave what you’re doing, Majesty. You want to hear this, by God. You’re quit of the old lady. She is on her deathbed. You will soon be a widower. Then you can get rid of the other one, and marry into France, by God, and lay your hands on Normandy as dowry…’ He notices Chapuys. ‘Oh. Ambassador. Well, you can take yourself off. No use you staying for scraps. Go home and make your own Christmas, we don’t want you here.’
Henry has turned white. ‘Think what you are saying.’ He approaches Brandon as if he might knock him down; which, if he had a poleaxe, he could. ‘My wife is carrying a child. I am lawfully married.’
‘Oh.’ Charles blows out his cheeks. ‘Yes, as far as that goes. But I thought you said –’
He, Cromwell, hurls himself towards the duke. Where in the name of Satan’s sister did Charles get this notion? Marry into France? It must be the king’s plan, as Brandon has none of his own. It looks as if Henry is carrying on two foreign policies: one he knows about and one he doesn’t. He takes a grip on Brandon. He is a head shorter. He doesn’t think he can move half a ton of idiot, still padded and partly armed. But it seems he can, he can move him fast, fast, and try to get him out of earshot of the ambassador, whose face is astonished. Only when he has propelled Brandon across the presence chamber does he stop and demand, ‘Suffolk, where do you get this from?’
‘Ah, we noble lords know more than you do. The king makes plain to us his real intentions. You think you know all his secrets, but you are mistaken, Cromwell.’
‘You heard what he said. Anne is carrying his child. You are mad if you think he will turn her out now.’
‘He’s mad if he thinks it’s his.’
‘What?’ He pulls back from Brandon as if the breastplate were hot. ‘If you know anything against the queen’s honour, you are bound as a subject to speak plainly.’
Brandon wrenches his arm away. ‘I spoke plain before and look where it got me. I told him about her and Wyatt, and he kicked me out of the court and back to the east country.’
‘Drag Wyatt into this, and I’ll kick you to China.’
The duke’s face is congested with rage. How has it come to this? Only weeks ago, Brandon was asking him to be godfather to the son he has with his new little wife. But now the duke snarls, ‘Get back to your abacus, Cromwell. You are only for fetching in money, when it comes to the affairs of nations you cannot deal, you are a common man of no status, and the king himself says so, you are not fit to talk to princes.’
Brandon’s hand in his chest, shoving him back: once again, the duke is making for the king’s person. It is Chapuys, frozen in dignity and sorrow, who imposes some order, stepping between the king and the heaving, boiling mass of the duke. ‘I take my leave, Majesty. As always I find you a most gracious prince. If I am in time, as I trust I shall be, my master will be consoled to have news of his aunt’s final hours from the hand of his own envoy.’
‘I can do no less,’ Henry says, sobered. ‘God speed.’
‘I ride at first light,’ Chapuys tells him; rapidly, they walk away, through the morris men and the bobbing hobby horses, through a merman and his shoal, skirting round a castle that rumbles towards them, painted masonry on oiled wheels.
Outside on the quay Chapuys turns to him. Within his mind, oiled wheels must be revolving; what he has heard about the woman he calls the concubine, he will already be coding into dispatches. They cannot pretend between them that he did not hear; when Brandon bawls, trees fall in Germany. It would not be surprising if the ambassador were cawing in triumph: not at the thought of a French marriage, to be sure, but at the thought of Anne’s eclipse.
But Chapuys keeps his countenance; he is very pale, very earnest. ‘Cremuel,’ he says, ‘I note the duke’s comments. About your person. About your position.’ He clears his throat. ‘For what it is worth, I am myself a man of humble origins. Though not perhaps so low…’
He knows Chapuys’s history. His people are petty lawyers, two generations away from the soil.
‘And again for what it is worth, I believe you are fit to deal. I would back you in any assemblage this side of Heaven. You are an eloquent and learned man. If I wanted an advocate to argue for my life, I would give you the brief.’
‘You dazzle me, Eustache.’
‘Go back to Henry. Move him that the princess might see her mother. A dying woman, what policy can it hurt, what interest…’ One angry, dry sob breaks out of the poor man’s throat. In a moment he recovers himself. He removes his hat, stares at it, as if he cannot think where he got it. ‘I do not think I should wear this hat,’ he says. ‘It is more a Christmas hat, would you say? Still, I am loath to lose it, it is quite unique.’
‘Give it to me. I will have it sent to your house and you can wear it on your return.’ When you are out of mourning, he thinks. ‘Look…I will not raise your hopes about Mary.’
‘You being an Englishman, who never lies or deceives.’ Chapuys gives a bark of laughter. ‘Jesu-Maria!’
‘The king will not permit any meeting that could strengthen Mary’s spirit of disobedience.’
‘Even if her mother is on her deathbed?’
‘Especially then. We do not wants oaths, deathbed promises. You see that?’
He speaks to his bargemaster: I shall stay here and see how it goes with the dragon, whether he eats the hunter or what. Convey the ambassador up to London, he must prepare for a journey. ‘But how will you get back yourself?’ Chapuys says.
