‘But not like that,’ he says. She watches me, he thinks, as one watches some rare beast – what might it do, if it would? ‘I promised Katherine I would look after her.’
‘What?’ Rafe is shocked. ‘When? When did you?’
‘When I went up to Kimbolton. When Katherine was ill.’
‘And you bedded that woman at –’ Gregory breaks off. ‘Sorry.’
‘At the inn. Yes. But I did not have her husband poisoned. Or invent a new crime and have him hanged for it.’
‘No one thinks you did,’ Riche says soothingly.
‘Bishop Gardiner does.’ He laughs. ‘I never saw the woman after.’
But I remember her, he thinks: at dawn, singing on the stairs. I remember the sickroom at the castle, and Katherine shrunken into her cape of ermines: her face marked with what she had already endured, and what she knew she would endure in the weeks to come. No wonder she was not afraid of the axe. ‘Contemptible,’ Katherine had called him that day. He remembers the young woman – whom he knows, now, was Bess Darrell – gliding away with a basin. Master Cromwell, Katherine had asked him, do you take the sacraments still? In what language do you confess? Or perhaps you do not confess at all?
What had he said? He can’t recall. Perhaps he said he would confess if ever he was sorry, which mostly he wasn’t. He was leaving, but – ‘Master Secretary? A moment.’
He had thought, it is always the case: it is just as you are heading out of the door – as if to show you no longer care – that your prisoner concedes guilt, or offers you a bargain, or yields up the name you have been waiting for. Katherine had said, ‘You recall when we met at Windsor?’ She had added, unflinching, ‘The day the king left me?’
The very swans on the river stunned with heat, the trees drooping, the hounds from the courtyard making their hound music, till their bell-like voices withdrew into the distance, and the train of gallant horsemen moved away over the meadows, and the queen knelt praying in the afternoon light, and the king who went hunting never came back.
‘I remember,’ he said. ‘Your daughter was ill. I made her sit. I did not intend she should faint and crack her head.’
‘You think I am a bad mother.’
‘Yes.’
‘But still I believe you are my friend.’
He had looked at her, astonished. Painfully, clasping her hands on the arms of her chair, the dowager got to her feet. The ermines slid to the floor, nosing each other, curling at her feet in a soft feral heap. ‘I am dying, as you see, Cromwell. When the time comes that I can no longer protect her, do not let them harm the Princess Mary. I commend her to your care.’
She did not wait for his answer. She nodded to him: you go now. He could smell the leather binding of her books, the stale sweat from her linen. He made his reverence to her: Madam. Ten minutes later he was on the road: and ridden here, to the conclusion of the enterprise, to the place where promises are kept.
Gregory says, ‘Why did you do it?’
‘I pitied her.’ A dying woman in a strange country.
You know what I am, he thinks. You should by now. Henry Wyatt told me, look after my son, don’t let him destroy himself. I have kept the promise though I had to lock him up to do it. In the cardinal’s day they used to call me the butcher’s dog. A butcher’s dog is strong and fills its skin; I am that, and I am a good dog too. Set me to guard something, I will do it.
Richard Cromwell says, ‘You could not know, sir, what Katherine was asking.’
That’s the point of a promise, he thinks. It wouldn’t have any value, if you could see what it would cost you when you made it.
‘Well,’ Rafe says. ‘You kept this close.’
‘Since when was I an open book?’
‘I don’t think it was a good idea,’ Gregory says.
‘What, you don’t think it was a good idea to stop the king killing his daughter?’
Richard Riche says, ‘Tell me, sir, I am curious – how far does your care of her extend? Were she openly to rebel against the king, what would you do then?’
Richard Cromwell says, ‘My uncle is the king’s sworn councillor. The promise he made to Katherine was – I will not say a word lightly given, but it was no solemn oath. It could not bind him, if there were any conflict with the king’s interest.’
He is silent. Chapuys had said, you may renegotiate with the living, but you cannot vary your terms with the dead. He thinks, I bound myself: why did I? Why did I bow my head?
Riche says, ‘Does Mary know of this … what shall we term it … this undertaking?’
‘No one knows, except myself and the dowager Katherine. I have never spoken about it till now.’
Riche says, ‘Best if it goes no further. We will consign it to the shadows.’ He smiles. Perhaps nothing is quite clear, that is spoken in a garden on an evening like this. In Arcadia.
Richard Cromwell looks up. ‘Don’t try and make it a dirty little secret, Riche. It was an act of kindness. No more.’
‘But here comes Christophe,’ Rafe says. ‘Et in Arcadia ego.’
Christophe’s bulk occludes the last rays of sunlight. ‘Chapuys is here. I told him, stay in the house, till I see if my lord desires your company.’
‘I hope you put it more courteously,’ Rafe says. He gets up.
‘I’ll fetch him,’ Gregory says.
His son has seen that Rafe needs to arrange his face. Rafe takes off his cap and flattens down his hair.
‘You look tidier now,’ he tells him, ‘but no happier.’
Rafe says, ‘Truly, Mary shocked me, when I went up to Hunsdon with the papers for her to sign. Running downstairs like that – I never saw a gentlewoman go unshod – at least, not unless a fire broke out. When she snatched the letter from my hand, I thought she meant to rip it up. Then she went shrieking away with it as if it were a map for buried treasure.’
‘That treasure,’ he says, ‘is her life.’
‘I could not answer for the worth of that lady,’ Riche says. ‘I fear she may be counterfeit coin.’
Helen looks up. ‘Hush. Our visitor.’
Gregory says, ‘He doesn’t understand English.’
‘Doesn’t he?’ Helen says.
They watch the ambassador pick his way across the lawn, flickering like a firefly in his black and gold. ‘I took a chance on my welcome,’ he says. ‘Master Sadler, how happy I am to see you in the midst of your family. How well your garden flourishes! You ought to set a vine here, and train it over a trellis, like the one Cremuel has at Canonbury.’ He takes Helen’s hand. ‘Madame, you have no French, and I no English. Yet could I command your tongue, words are needless, for at so sweet a flower, it is enough to gaze.’ He swivels on his heel. ‘So, Cremuel, we survive the dies irae. And all your boys are here. I think we may congratulate ourselves. Echoes have reached me. I hear the king has given his daughter a thousand crowns, not to mention a diamond worth as much again, and made her great guarantees as to her future. And I tell you, gentlemen, if Cremuel can pacify the Lady Mary, I expect soon to see him descend to Hell and fetch up Satan to shake hands with Gabriel. Not that I compare the young lady to a devil, you understand. But he is quite justified in reproaching her with being the most stubborn woman alive.’
Ah, he thinks. She showed you the billet doux I sent her. They embrace. He is careful not to crush the ambassador’s bones. Chapuys looks around him, smiling. ‘My friends, let this be a new era of concord. No one wants another dead lady, or a war. Your prince cannot afford it, and mine is a lover of peace. What I always say is, wars begin in man’s time, but they end in God’s time. What a pretty summerhouse.’ He shivers. ‘Forgive me. The damp. We could go inside, perhaps?’
‘What a deficient climate,’ Rafe says.
‘Alas,’ says the ambassador. He follows Rafe towards the house. ‘When once you have been in Italy …’