He laughs. ‘But Mary, you do encourage men. It is what you do. You cannot help it.’
‘So Harry Norris said, I will give that puppy a kick in the ribs he will not forget. Though Harry is not that sort of man, to go around kicking puppies. And the queen my cousin said, no kicking in my chamber, if you please. Harry said, by your royal favour I will take him out to the courtyard and kick him, and –’ she cannot help laugh, though shakily, miserably, ‘– and Francis standing there all the time, though they were talking about him as if he were absent. So Francis said, well, I should like to see you kick me, for at your great age, Norris, you will wobble over –’
‘Mistress,’ he says, ‘can you make it short?’
‘But they go on like this an hour or more, scrapping and digging and scratching around for favour. And my lady the queen is never weary of it, she eggs them on. Then Weston, he said, do not agitate yourself, gentle Norris, for I come not here for Mistress Shelton, I come for the sake of another, and you know who that is. And Anne said, no, tell me, I cannot guess. Is it Lady Worcester? Is it Lady Rochford? Come, tell us, Francis. Tell us who you love. And he said, madam, it is yourself.’
‘And what did the queen say?’
‘Oh, she defied him. She said, you must not say so, for my brother George will come and kick you too, for the honour of the Queen of England. And she was laughing. But then Harry Norris quarrelled with me, about Weston. And Weston quarrelled with him, about the queen. And both of them quarrelled with William Brereton.’
‘Brereton? What had he to do with it?’
‘Well, he happened to come in.’ She frowns. ‘I think it was then. Or it was some other time that he happened to come in. And the queen said, now, here is the man for me, Will is one who shoots his arrow straight. But she was tormenting them all. You cannot understand her. One moment she is reading out Master Tyndale’s gospel. Next moment…’ She shrugs. ‘She opens her lips and out slides the devil’s tail.’
So then, by Shelton’s account, a year passes. Harry Norris and Mistress Shelton are speaking again, and soon they have made it up and Harry is creeping to her bed. And all is as before. Until today: 29 April. ‘This morning it began with Mark,’ Mary Shelton says. ‘You know how he hovers? He is always outside the queen’s presence chamber. And as she goes by she does not speak to him but laughs and tugs his sleeve or knocks his elbow, and once she snapped off the feather in his cap.’
‘I never heard of this as love play,’ he says. ‘Is it something they do in France?’
‘And this morning she said, oh, look at this little doggie, and she tousled him and pulled his ears. And his silly eyes brimming. Then she said to him, why are you so sad, Mark, you have no business to be sad, you are here to entertain us. And he offered to kneel down, saying, “Madam –” and she cut him off. She said to him, oh for Mary’s sweet sake, stand on your two feet, I do you favours in noticing you at all, what do you expect, do you think I should talk to you as if you were a gentleman? I cannot, Mark, because you are an inferior person. He said, no, no madam, I do not expect a word, a look suffices for me. So she waited. Because she expected him to praise the power of her glance. That her eyes are lodestones, and so on. But he did not, he just burst into tears, and “Farewell,” he said, and walked away. Just turned his back on her. And she laughed. And so we went in to her chamber.’
‘Take your time,’ he says.
‘Anne said, does he think I am some item from Paris Garden? That is, you know –’
‘I know what Paris Garden is.’
She blushes. ‘Of course you do. And Lady Rochford said, it were well if Mark were dropped from a height, like your dog Purkoy. Then the queen burst into tears. Then she struck Lady Rochford. And Lady Rochford said, do that again and I will buffet you back, you are no queen but a mere knight’s daughter, Master Secretary Cromwell has your measure, your day is over, madam.’
He says, ‘Lady Rochford is getting ahead of herself.’
‘Then Harry Norris came in.’
‘I was wondering where he was.’
‘He said, what is this commotion? Anne said, do me a good turn, take away my brother’s wife and drown her, then he can have a fresh one who may do him some good. And Harry Norris was amazed. Anne said to him, did you not swear you would do anything I wanted? That you would walk barefoot to China for me? And Harry said, you know he is droll, he said, I think it was barefoot to Walsingham I offered. Yes, she said, and repent your sins there, because you look for dead men’s shoes, if aught came to the king but good, you would look to have me.’
He wants to write down what Shelton says, but he dare not move in case she stops saying it.
‘Then the queen turned to me, and said, Mistress Shelton, you perceive now why he does not marry you? He is in love with me. So he claims, and has claimed this long while. But he will not prove it, by putting Lady Rochford in a sack and carrying her to the riverbank, which I much desire. Then Lady Rochford ran out.’
‘I think I understand why.’
Mary looks up. ‘I know you are laughing at us. But it was horrible. For me it was. Because I thought that it was a jest between them that Harry Norris loved her, and then I saw it was not. I swear he had turned pale and he said to Anne, will you spill all your secrets or only some? And he walked away and he did not even bow to her, and she ran after him. And I do not know what she said, because we were all frozen like statues.’
Spill her secrets. All or only some. ‘Who heard this?’
She shakes her head. ‘Perhaps a dozen people. They could not help but hear it.’
And then, it appears, the queen was frantic. ‘She looked at us ranged about her, and she wanted to get Norris back, she said a priest must be fetched, she said Harry must take an oath that he knew her to be chaste, a faithful good wife. She said he must take back everything said, and she would take it back too, and they would put their hands on the Bible in her chamber, and then everybody would know that it was idle talk. She is terrified Lady Rochford will go to the king.’
‘I know Jane Rochford likes to carry bad news. But not such bad news as that.’ Not to a husband. That his dear friend and his wife have discussed his death, with a view to how they will console themselves after.
It is treason. Possibly. To envisage the death of the king. The law recognises it: how short the step, from dreaming to desiring to encompassing. We call it ‘imagining’ his death: the thought is father to the deed, and the deed is born raw, ugly, premature. Mary Shelton does not know what she has witnessed. She thinks it is a lovers’ quarrel. She thinks it is one incident in her own long career of love and love’s misfortunes. ‘I doubt,’ she says dully, ‘that Harry Norris will marry me now, or even trouble himself pretending he is going to marry me. If you had asked me last week has the queen given way to him, I would have told you no, but when I look at them now, it is clear such words have passed between them, such looks, and how can I know what deeds? I think…I don’t know what to think.’
‘I’ll marry you, Mary,’ he says.
She laughs, in spite of herself. ‘Master Secretary, you will not, you are always saying you will marry this lady and that, but we know you hold yourself a great prize.’
‘Ah well. So it’s back to Paris Garden.’ He shrugs, he smiles; but he feels the need to be brisk with her, to hurry on. ‘Now understand me, you must be discreet and silent. The thing you must do here – you and the other ladies – you must protect yourselves.’
Mary is struggling. ‘It could not tend to bad, could it? If the king hears, he will know how to take it, yes? He may suppose it is all light words? No harm? It is all conjecture, perhaps I have spoken in haste, one cannot know that anything has passed between them, I could not swear it.’ He thinks, but you will swear it; by and by you will. ‘You see, Anne is my cousin.’ The girl’s voice falters. ‘She has done everything for me –’
Even pushed you into the king’s bed, he thinks, when she was carrying a child: to keep Henry in the family.
‘What will happen to her?’ Mary’s eyes are solemn. ‘Will he leave her? There is talk but Anne does not believe it.’
‘She must stretch her credulity a little.’
‘She says, I can always get him back, I know how. And you know she always has. But whatever has happened with Harry Norris, I will not continue with her, for I know she would take him from me and no scruple, if she has not already. And gentle-women cannot be on such terms. And Lady Rochford cannot continue. And Jane Seymour is removed, for – well, I will not say why. And Lady Worcester must go home for her lying-in this
