He puts down his cup. ‘My lady, we should join the others. I shall stand between you and Norfolk. If he rends the arras, he shall not rend me.’
He thinks, Mary Boleyn once leaned against me, mistaking me for a wall. Norfolk will drive his fist into me, but it will bounce.
Lady Shelton says, ‘John and I wonder – is this household to be broke up?’
‘Not yet.’ He hesitates. ‘The king will not receive Mary himself till news of her submission has gone abroad, and he knows from Rome and the Emperor that they have understood.’
‘Of course. Or it would look as if he had just changed his mind, and let her off. Or as if the Emperor had frightened him.’
‘You are a woman of sense. Come here.’ He holds out his hand to her. He thinks, all the Boleyns are politicians. ‘You might ease her conditions. No visitors unless I say so, but let her take the air in the park. She may have letters.’
She takes his hand. ‘I think she only simulates her obedience.’
‘Lady Shelton,’ he says, ‘I don’t care.’
When they come into Mary’s presence they kneel. It is for Norfolk, as their senior, to greet her on behalf of her father, that puissant and merciful prince, long may he reign: begging her pardon for any offence given, by their rude solicitations, on a previous occasion. Their severity occasioned only, he says, by their fear for her.
‘Thomas Howard,’ Mary says, ‘I wonder you dare.’
Norfolk’s head rears back; he glares.
‘My lord Suffolk,’ Mary turns to Brandon, ‘you have given no offence.’
‘Oh, in that case …’ Brandon begins to scramble to his feet; but one look, and he subsides again.
‘You must think a woman a very feeble creature,’ Mary tells Norfolk, ‘if you think her memory does not reach back a week. Mine is good for that, and more. I know very well how you persecuted my mother.’
‘Me?’ Norfolk says. ‘What about –’
‘I know how you promoted the ambitions of Anne your niece, and afterwards disowned her, and condemned her to death. Do you think I have no pity for that misguided woman?’ She checks herself, drops her voice. ‘I have compunction. I am no stranger to it.’
From his kneeling position, he appraises the king’s daughter. She is twenty, so it is not to be expected she will grow. Her person is as meagre as when he saw her at Windsor five years back: her face wan, her eyes dull, puzzled and full of pain. She wears a bodice and gown of tansy colour, which nothing becomes her, and her hair is scooped into a net of braided silk; she has left off her hood, no doubt because her head aches too much to bear the weight.
‘My sweet lady,’ Charles says. His voice unexpectedly lulling, he repeats the phrase: but then, it appears, he has nothing to add. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘here’s Cromwell. All will be right.’
‘It will be right,’ she snaps, ‘when my lord Norfolk makes it right. Would you use me as you do your wife?’
‘What?’ The duke’s eyebrows shoot up, and an unwilling grin creeps over his face.
She blushes. ‘I mean, would you beat me?’
‘Who told you I beat my wife? Cromwell, was it you? What has that blasted woman been telling you?’ He wheels around, arms spread to the company. ‘That scar she shows folk, on her temple – she had that before ever I knew her. She says I dragged her up from childbed and knocked her across the room. By John the Baptist, I did no such thing.’
Mary says, ‘If I did not know this tale before, I know it now. You have no respect for any woman, though she be set above you by God. Go out of here. I want to speak with Lord Cromwell alone.’
‘Oh, do you?’ Norfolk is chastened, but not chastened enough. ‘And why can you say things to him that you cannot say to us?’
Mary says, ‘To explain that to you, my lord, eternity is not long enough.’
Brandon is on his feet. His dearest wish is to be out of the room. For Norfolk, getting up is less easy. A leg shoots out – he treads down hard on the rushes, trying for leverage – he grunts, and an arm thrashes the air. Charles grips him under the elbow, ready to hoist. ‘Hold hard, I’ve got you, Howard.’
Norfolk beats off assistance. ‘Unhand me. It’s cramp.’ He will not admit it’s age. But he swerves around both dukes – allow me, my lord Suffolk – grips Thomas Howard, double-handed, by the back of his coat, and sets him on his feet with one contemptuous twitch. His heart is singing.
‘So,’ she says. ‘I hear you are Lord Privy Seal. What will happen to Thomas Boleyn?’
‘The king has permitted him to go down to Sussex, and live quietly.’
She sniffs. She rubs her forehead; even the net seems to fret her. ‘I will say that Boleyn was civil in his dealings with my mother, unlike Thomas Howard. He never gave her harsh words – not in her hearing, at least. Still, he was a cold and selfish man, and he consorted with heretics. The king is merciful.’
‘Some say, too much so.’
It is a warning. She does not hear it.
‘You are grown very grand, Lord Cromwell. I suspect you were always very grand, only we did not see it. Who knows God’s plan?’
Not I, he thinks. ‘I directed Carew to write to you. I trust he did?’
‘Yes. Sir Nicholas gave me certain advice.’
‘Which disappointed you.’
‘Which surprised me. You see, my lord, I know that he has taken the oath, even though he loved my mother and stood up in her cause. I think all have taken it, who are alive today.’
Not all, he thinks. Not Bess Darrell, Tom Wyatt’s lady.
‘My lady Salisbury signed it,’ Mary says. ‘And Lord Montague her son, and Lord Exeter and all the Courtenays. When Anne Boleyn was alive, they would have suffered if they had not bent to that lady’s will. But when I knew she was cut down, I thought, what needs this concealment now? Will they not say plain what I know they believe, that my father should reconcile with the Pope? And will they not aid me, to be restored to my father’s favour, and to have my rights and title? I did not know he meant to persist in error, I did not know –’
That you had so many faint hearts about you? Time-servers and placemen and cowards? ‘They left you to bear the risk,’ he says. ‘They have practice in scuttling for cover.’
‘Since then – since I received this advice from my friends, so much contrary to what preceded it – you must understand me, my lord, I have felt so alone.’
She moves towards him – he’s forgotten her clumsiness, the way she blunders like a blind woman. A low table is set with wine, in a jug of silver and crystal; she sees it, sidesteps, clips it; it sways, the wine slops, a tide of crimson washes over the white linen. ‘Oh,’ she cries, and her hand dives out – the jug leaps from her fingertips –
‘Leave it,’ he says.
She stares at her shoes, appalled. Picks her feet out of the shards. ‘It is John Shelton’s. He had it of the Venetians.’
‘I will send him another.’
‘Yes, you have friends in those parts. So Ambassador Chapuys tells me.’
‘I am glad he succeeded in bringing home to you the peril in which you stood. This last week has been –’ He shakes his head.
‘Chapuys said, “Cromwell has used all the grace that is in him. Risked all.” He said, “He feels the axe’s edge.”’ The hem of her skirt has soaked up the claret. She shakes it, ineffectually. ‘No other lord has spoken for me. Not Norfolk, he would not. Not Suffolk, he durst not. This goes far with us to mitigate –’
She breaks off. He thinks, she is using the royal plural. Already.
‘The ambassador says, “Cromwell is a heretic. But we may hope God will guide him to the truth.”’
‘We may all hope that,’ he says piously.
‘I often think, why did I not die in the cradle or the womb, like my brothers and sisters? It must be that God has a design for me. Soon I too may be elevated, beyond what seems possible now.’