‘Human beings all look rather alike to me — and there have been quite a few.’ They asked it more questions, and its answers continued to be maddeningly polite but, on the matter of how to find their quarry, utterly useless.
‘Now, please,’ said the cat finally. ‘You promised food and water when I started talking, and I’ve been going on and on.’
Quill took one of the cans of cat food he’d bought from the cupboard and spooned some into a saucer, leaving another saucer of water beside it. The cat stepped out of its cage and started eating, pausing only to excuse itself when its stomach made a sudden noise. It looked up when it had finished. ‘I do believe,’ it said, ‘that my mistress would wish you to know more about her. Once you do, you will surely share her point of view and perhaps also, we can but hope, her cause. Allow me,’ it said, licking a claw, ‘to tell you her story.’
TWENTY-TWO
FOUR HUNDRED AND
SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
Mora Losley stood at the window of the master bedroom, at the top of what the locals called ‘the tower’. She was sixteen years old, full of fear and foreboding. She could feel London in the distance tonight, she was sure. For the first time, she could see the glamour of it, the light of heaven that flickered between the meadows and the villages and the gardens of the great, all the way to the great palaces along the river, York Place and the Palace of Westminster and the Tower, which radiated importance and threat. The musician had claimed it was the light of heaven. She had heard people at court talk about it as the very opposite: as something one must never see if one was to retain one’s soul. Or perhaps it was still only her imagination. Perhaps she wanted too much to be like her mistress Anne, the Queen. She was kinder to Mora than even her mother had been, who had herself served as maid to an earlier Queen. But perhaps this royal kindness would soon result in horror.
Anne Boleyn had been the best wife King Henry ever had. He had split the Church for her, for her mind as well as for having her in his bed, since he had read all the books she’d given him on the evils of Rome. She had borne him a daughter, and that had pleased him, for a while. But he wanted a son, he wanted a son, till that desire and those words echoed around every corner of Hampton Court and Greenwich. Mora had watched her mistress’ desperate struggles to do as he wished, the care she took when bathing after she had been to his bed, the horrors of her howling in grief at both miscarriages. The sand was trickling through the glass. The King’s patience was stretching thin. He now looked at other women in the same way that he looked at fillies of good stock. One day, Mora had entered the Queen’s chamber to find her with one of her musicians, and at first she had thought they were practising some new dance. He was rehearsing gestures with her, over her stomach. Mora had noticed how her mistress had turned every holy icon in the room to face away from them, and she began to fear. Strange smells wafted from a brazier and, to Mora’s horror, blood was dripping from the Queen’s palms. She had then stepped forward, afraid that he had wounded her.
‘Don’t be scared,’ the musician had said. ‘This is what is called sortilege, the creating of obligations in the world, the weaving of the pressures.’ She had been shocked then by the coarseness of his accent. She had seen him play instruments at the court, but had never heard him speak. ‘It is learned in cities. But I hope,’ he smiled, ‘that it will be of benefit to the country.’ Mora’s mistress had made eye contact with her then, to assure her that all was well.
Mora had not been able to ask the question in her mind: was this not witchcraft? Back then it was never mentioned at court, but Mora had heard it said in the streets that her mistress was a whore, even that her mistress was a witch. She had changed the peoples’ age-old religion, had whispered of change in all sorts of ways into the ear of the good King, and they hated her for it. But Mora could not believe that anything Anne did was wrong, so she instead asked, as she did with every art used around the Queen, if she too might learn it, so she could be of service to her mistress whenever the musician was absent. The Queen agreed, as long as, and Anne managed a scared smile as she said it, it wouldn’t make the girl conceive a child. It took some effort, but the Queen then persuaded the musician to begin tutoring her. Mora was angered by how boldly he spoke back to her mistress, but Anne needed him, and he knew it. Mora noticed the coins jangling in his purse.
And that was how she had learned of the other tides surging through London, sweeping down the river and off the hills and round the buildings, and in the minds and hearts of. . well, women more than men, beggars more than courtiers. That was how desperate the Queen had become. During that time of learning, the whispering started to be heard in the palace too. As Henry grew more distant, everyone became interested in who visited the Queen’s apartments, and when, and the maids were warned to be careful who was paying court to them. Even the Queen’s brother George, who came and went freely, started to be looked at in the way that Mora started to be afraid of: that look given by dangerous dogs sizing up a weaker member of the litter.
Anne had become desperate, sensing every eye in the palace on her, sensing them acutely now, as she seemed to look through the walls and into a great vault beyond. ‘A gigantic prison, this London is,’ she told Mora. She requested that she be allowed to take her retinue to one of the King’s houses outside the city, in the village of East Ham. To everyone’s surprise, the King agreed. And for the last few weeks, it had been fine, and the weather had become better as winter turned to spring. Anne had brought with her a merry court of musicians, dancers and debaters, though sometimes Mora thought that was more to distract her courtiers than to entertain the Queen herself, who concentrated on her studies with her special musician and with Mora, and for days at a time would stay in her chamber, calling only them to her side. And the things Mora had seen there, the way she started to be able to see, by angling her hand, the weight they were all under all the time; the ocean they were at the bottom of. She dreamed one night of London as an underwater kingdom, itself with pressures and tides and waves, and at the centre of it all was the King, the whirlpool itself. Mora wondered, on waking, what the King looked like to informed eyes like the musician’s. Did he shine like the sun? Did he reflect the forces of London, like the moon was said to reflect all the lights below it? (That was a dangerous thought.) Or, more dangerous still, was his light the infernal kind that the Queen sometimes talked of seeing, when she grew frightened of what she had taken on, and would desperately ask Mora if what they were doing was a sin?
Now, as Mora looked out towards London one noon, she tried not to think of what had happened during the last few days. The musician had suddenly vanished, could no longer be found anywhere in the house or the village beyond. Then, early this morning, while Anne had been distracting herself from her growing fears by watching a game of tennis, a messenger had arrived from the King at Westminster, ordering the Queen to appear before the Privy Council. The tone of the message itself was at least basically courteous, but it was the attitude of the messenger that spoke loudest to Mora and, judging from the look on her face, to her mistress. His expression was like that of a goodwife in a whorehouse.
Anne promised she would obey, then she rushed back to her chamber, accompanied by Mora, and the two of them had spent the next few hours ripping blood from Anne’s palms, desperately seeking a pregnancy through whatever means, crying out for the Queen’s womb to bear fruit, even though they neared the end of the time when it could reasonably have been Henry’s child. Finally, Anne had sent Mora off for an hour of troubled sleep.