Helen collects the disciples. ‘Christophe, you can take these, but mind St Luke, I think he is chipped. Richard Riche must have gnawed him. I shall have to use him for flowers.’
‘Chapuys looks upon you with lust,’ Christophe tells her. ‘He says, when I gaze on Mistress Sadler, I burn with desire, I wish command of her tongue. I shall fight King Henry for her.’
‘He does not!’ Helen is laughing. ‘Get inside, Christophe.’ She takes his arm. ‘You did not finish the story, sir. About Atalanta. In the tapestry.’
He thinks, I wish it were some other story.
‘She was a virgin,’ Helen prompts. ‘But her father, you said. Then you stopped.’
‘He wished to find her a husband. But she was averse to matrimony.’
‘She challenged her suitors to a race,’ Gregory says. ‘She was the fastest person in the world.’
‘If the man outpaced her, she must wed him,’ he says, ‘but if she won, then –’
‘Then she was allowed to cut off his head,’ Gregory says. ‘Which she greatly enjoyed. There were heads bouncing everywhere, you could not go a pace without one rolling out of an olive grove and eyeing you. In the end she married a man who outran her, but he only did it with the help of the goddess of love.’
Later, back at his own house, in the gallery’s waning light. ‘You see the golden apples?’ Gently, Gregory aligns her, points them out. ‘Venus gave them to the suitor, and when they began to race, he threw them at Atalanta’s feet.’
‘Those are apples?’ Helen is staring at the arras. She sucks her finger, laughs. ‘I did not know they were running, I thought they were having a bowling match. Look at her hand – I thought she had just sped the ball away.’
He sees how it scoops the air. He grasps her error. ‘So, what happened,’ someone says, ‘did she trip on the apples?’ Their voices are a murmur. They recede. The light falters. Nesting birds rustle under the eaves. Vespers are sung and Compline, the offices of night. The dew is cold in the grass. Shutters are closed against the exhalations from meres and ponds. Atalanta snapped up the gold, she sold the race. You cannot say she lost on purpose, but she knew the consequence if she swerved. ‘Perhaps she was tired of running,’ Helen says.
‘She was not insensible to the value of money,’ he says. ‘Et in Arcadia.’
‘Did she like being married?’ Helen appraises her – a wild-haired woman, a bare arm flung before her. ‘I suppose her husband stopped her running around like that, with her duckies on view. Or perhaps a husband didn’t mind in those days.’
He thinks, I have seen her in Rome, carved in marble: her slim running legs, her pleated tunic, her torso straight as a boy’s. She got a taste, some versions claim, for the carnal life. She bedded her spouse in the temple of a heathen god, after which she was changed into a lioness.
At least, he thinks, that’s one worry I don’t have. Daughter into beast, it won’t happen to Henry’s child. One day she will have to marry, but for now she is safe from adventurers who have special arrangements with the goddess of love. She is to go back to Hertfordshire tomorrow morning. The king and queen are planning their first summer together. They will make their visit to Dover. When Parliament rises, they will go hunting. The ring, impulsively offered, will be reduced to fit. In recompense, the emerald pendant will be worn not by Mary, the branch and flower of Aragon and Castile, but by Jane, the daughter of John Seymour of Wolf Hall.
Perhaps you have seen, in Italy, a painting of a house with one wall removed? The painter does this to show you the deep interior of a room, where at a prie-dieu a virgin kneels, surrounded by bowls of ripening fruit. Her expression is private and reserved; she has kicked off her shoes and she is waiting to be filled with grace. Already you can see the angel hovering above the rooftops, a blur of gold on the skyline, while below in the street the people go about their business, and some of them glance upward, as if attracted by a quickening in the air. In the next street, through an archway, down a flight of steps, a housewife is hanging out washing, and someone is rising from the dead. White pelicans sit on rooftops, waiting for Christ’s imminence to be pronounced. A mitred bishop strolls through the piazza, a peacock perches on a balcony among potted plants, and striated clouds like bales of silk roll above the city: that city which itself, in miniature form, is presented on a plat for the viewer, its inverse form dimly glowing in the silver surface: its spires and battlements, its gardens and bell towers.
Imagine England then, its principal city, where swans sail among the river-craft, and its wise children go in velvet; the broad Thames a creeping road on which the royal barge, from palace to palace, carries the king and his bride. Draw back the curtain that protects them from the vulgar gaze, and see her feet in their little brocade slippers set side by side modestly, and her face downturned as she listens to a verse the king is whispering in her ear: ‘Alas, madam, for stealing of a kiss …’ See his great hand creep across her person, fingertips resting on her belly, enquiringly. His hands are alive with fire, rubies on every finger. Within the stones their lights flicker, and clouds move, white and dark. This stone gladdens the heart and protects against the plague. The speculative physicians speak of its heated nature: notice the heated nature of the king. The emerald too is a stone of potent virtue, but if worn during the sexual act is liable to shatter. Yet it has a greenness to which no earthly green can compare, it is an Arabian stone and found in the nests of griffins; its verdant depths restore the weary mind and, if gazed on constantly, it sharpens the sight. So look … see a street opened to you, a house with its walls folded back: in which the king’s councillor sits, wrapped in thought, on his finger a turquoise, at his hand a pen.
At midsummer, the walls of the Tower are splashed with banners and streamers in the colours of the sun and the sea. Mock battles are staged mid-current, and the rumble of celebratory cannon fire shakes the creeping channels of the estuaries and disturbs the fish in the deep. In sundry and several ceremonies, Queen Jane is shown to the Londoners. She rides with Henry to Mercers’ Hall for the ceremony of setting the city watch. A parade of two thousand men, escorted by torchbearers, walks from Paul’s down West Cheap and Aldgate, and by Fenchurch Street back to Cornhill. The city constables wear scarlet cloaks and gold chains, and there is a show of weaponry, and the lord mayor and sheriff ride in their armour with surcoats of crimson. And there are dancers and morris men and giants, wine and cakes and ale, and bonfires glowing as the light fades. ‘London, thou art the flower of cities all.’
III
Wreckage (II)
London, Summer 1536
Do you know why they say, ‘There’s no smoke without fire?’ It’s not just to give encouragement to people who like fires. It’s a statement about the danger of chimneys, but also about the courts of kings – or any space where trapped air circulates, choking on itself. A spark catches a particle of falling soot: with a crackle, the matter ignites: with a roar, the flames fly skywards, and within minutes the palace is ablaze.
Early July, the grandi hold a triple wedding, combining their fortunes and ancient names. Margaret Neville weds Henry Manners. Anne Manners weds Henry Neville. Dorothy Neville weds John de Vere.
My lord cardinal had these things at his fingertips: the titles and styles of these families, their tables of ancestry and grants of arms, their links by second and third marriages; who is godparent and godsib, guardian and ward; the particulars of their landed estates, their income, their outgoings, their law suits, ancient grudges and unpaid debts.
The celebrations are graced by Norfolk’s son and heir, Henry Howard Earl of Surrey. The young earl intends to pass the summer in hunting, with the king and Fitzroy. Since childhood he has been a companion to the king’s son, and Richmond looks up to him. Surrey is conspicuous in all he does: laying down the cards and throwing dice, playing at tennis and betting on it, cantering in the tilt yard, dancing, singing his own verses and inscribing them in the manuscript books kept by the ladies, where they decorate them with drawings of ribbons, hearts, flowers and Cupid’s darts. His marriage to the Earl of Oxford’s daughter is no bar to gallantry. We give poets latitude – we need not think Surrey performs all he promises. He is a long youth: long thighs, long shins, long parti-coloured hose; he picks his way on stilts among common men. His disdain for Lord Cromwell is complete: ‘I note your title, my lord. It does not change what you are.’