‘No,’ she says.
He turns to Meg: ‘So no one was present when these words were spoken – I say “words”, I will not dignify them as “pledge” or “promise” –’
Deny it, he tells Meg under his breath: deny the whole and deny every part, then persist in denial. No words. No witnesses. No marriage.
Meg flushes. ‘But I have a witness. Mary Shelton stood outside the door.’
‘Outside?’ He shakes his head. ‘You can’t call that a witness, can you, Mr Wriothesley?’
Wriothesley looks at him fiercely. It is he who has found out the plot, and he doesn’t want it talked away. ‘Lady Margaret, have you and your lover exchanged gifts?’
‘I have given Lord Thomas my portrait, set with a diamond.’ Proudly, she adds, ‘And he has given me a ring.’
‘A ring is not a pledge,’ he says reassuringly. His eye falls on the drawings. ‘For example, look at these – I am having a ring made for the Lady Mary. A pleasant token that indicates friendship, nothing more.’
Mary Fitzroy interrupts. ‘It was only a cramp ring, such as acquaintances exchange. It was of little worth.’
Wriothesley says, ‘And next you will tell me it was a very small diamond.’
‘So small,’ Mary Fitzroy says, ‘that I for one never noticed it.’
He wants to applaud. She is not afraid of Call-Me; though sometimes, he thinks, I am.
‘There’s nothing on paper, is there?’ he says to Meg. ‘I mean, other than …?’
The rhymes, he thinks.
The girl says, ‘I will not give you my letters. I will not part with them.’
He looks at Mary Fitzroy. ‘Did the late queen know of these dealings?’
‘Of course.’ She sounds contemptuous; but whether of him, or the question, or of Anne Boleyn, he cannot say.
‘And your father Norfolk? Did he know?’
But Meg cuts in: ‘My husband –’ she relishes the word – ‘my husband said, let us be secret. He said, if my brother Norfolk hears of this, he will shake me till my teeth fall out, so let us not tell him till we must. But then –’ Meg closes her eyes. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he did tell him.’
He remembers the day at Whitehall – he in conversation with Norfolk, Tom Truth trotting up with a message – when he had said, ‘The ladies show your verses around,’ the poet had panicked. He grabbed his kinsman’s arm and as he, Cromwell, walked away, the two Thomas Howards fell into furious whispering. When he thinks back, he reads an irate, confused expression on the duke’s face: what, you’ve done what, boy? It all fits. It would not be like Norfolk to make a plot ab origine, with so many fissile elements, but he can believe Tom Truth has appealed to him for protection and that the duke, after blasting and damning him, has worked out how he can turn this folly to his family’s advantage.
He leans across the table towards Meg. If she were not a royal lady – and she is at pains to point out she is – he might pat her hand. ‘Dry your tears. Let us think afresh. You say that Lord Thomas has visited you in the queen’s chambers. All come there, I do suppose, for purposes of pastime. They come to sing and make merry. There need be no sinister intent. So over the months – in that very busy place – you have been drawn into some conversation, and Lord Thomas admires you, as is natural, and he has said, “My lady, if you were not far above me –”’
‘He is a Howard,’ Wriothesley says. ‘He does not think anybody above him.’
He holds up a hand. His scene is too gorgeous to be interrupted. ‘“If you were not far above me, and intended by the king for some great prince, I swear I would beg your hand in marriage.”’
‘Yes,’ Mary Fitzroy says, ‘that is exactly how it was, Lord Cromwell.’
‘And you of course said, “Lord Thomas, I am forbidden to you. I see your pain, but I cannot assuage it.”’
‘No,’ Meg says. She begins to shake. ‘No. You are wrong. We are pledged. You will not part us.’
‘And being a man and ardent, and you so lovely and a great prize, he did not desist – he presented you with verses – he – well, and so on. But you stood firm and permitted him not so much as a nibble of your nether lip.’
He thinks, I shouldn’t have said that. I should have made do with ‘kiss’.
Meg stands up. Her handkerchief is bunched in her fist – this one is scattered with the Howards’ silver crosslets, light as summer snow. ‘I will unfold this matter to the king alone. Even despite this dignity to which you are raised, he will not permit you to hold me and question me and make such imputations, that I am not married when I say I am.’
Mr Wriothesley says, ‘My lady, can you not grasp the point? It would be better for you to be seduced and slandered, and to have ballads sung in the streets, than to promise yourself in marriage without the king’s knowledge.’
Mary Fitzroy says, ‘For the love of Christ, sit down, Meg, and try to comprehend what my lord is telling you. He is trying his best.’
‘He cannot part what God has joined!’
Mary Fitzroy raises her eyes to his. ‘I am sure Lord Cromwell has been told that before.’
He smiles. ‘We must ask ourselves, Lady Margaret, what marriage is. It is not just vows, it is bedwork. If there were promises, and witnesses, and then bed, you are fast married, your contract is good. You would be Mistress Truth, and you would have to live with the king’s extreme displeasure. And I cannot say what form that would take.’
‘My uncle will not punish me. He loves me as he loves his own daughter.’
She falters there. From her own mouth, she hears it, and now she understands: how does the king love his daughter? Two weeks past, Mary stood on thin ice. It was cracking under her feet. Only Thomas Cromwell would walk on it to retrieve her.
Call-Me rises, as if Meg might faint. But the princess sits down neatly enough. ‘The king will say I have been foolish.’
‘Or treacherous.’ Mr Wriothesley stands over her: he looks almost tender now.
Meg says, ‘My marriage is not a crime, is it?’
‘Not yet,’ he says. ‘But I am sure it will be. We can get a bill through before Parliament rises.’
Mary Fitzroy says, ‘You are making a law against Meg Douglas?’
‘You can see the sense of it, my lady Richmond. Ladies do not always know their own interests. Sometimes they do not know how to protect themselves. So the law must do it. Otherwise, any poet can try to carry them off as a prize, and if he succeeds he makes his fortune, and if he fails he suffers nothing but a blow to his pride. That cannot be right.’
‘You do not write verse yourself?’ Mary Fitzroy asks.
‘Why enter a crowded field?’ he says. ‘Mr Wriothesley, would you take a note for me?’
Call-Me resumes his seat and dips a quill. He dictates: ‘An Act against those who, without the king’s permission, marry, or attempt to marry, the king’s niece, sister, daughter –’
‘Better throw in aunt,’ Call-Me says.
He laughs. ‘Throw in aunt. The offence will be treason.’
Mary Fitzroy is incredulous. ‘Marrying will be treason, even though the woman consents?’
‘Especially if she consents.’
‘Tra-la,’ Call-Me says, scribbling. ‘Trolley lolly … hey ho … hey derry down, penalties the usual. I’ll get Riche on the wording.’
‘Luckily,’ he says, ‘in this case there is no issue of consent. It is doubtful Lady Meg really made a marriage, because it lacks consummation, as Master Wriothesley says.’
‘I do?’ Call-Me raises his sandy eyebrows, and blots the paper.
Mary Fitzroy says, ‘Meg, nothing of an unchaste nature occurred between you and Lord Thomas. You will say that and you will stick to it.’
‘Lady Margaret, you have a good counsellor in your friend.’ He turns to Mary Fitzroy. ‘You should be with your husband. I will give you an escort to St James’s.’