Bess says, ‘She does not think you will throw me to the floor and ravish me. Perhaps she fears you will sit and whisper bad verses, and coax me into marriage.’
So she has heard about the Douglas affair. No doubt the gossip is everywhere. He says, ‘I have found a refuge for you. As I promised Wyatt. The Courtenay family will ask you to be companion to my lady marquise.’
‘Gertrude?’ She folds the linen on her lap; folds and folds it again, so it becomes a square, the needle inside. ‘But she doesn’t like you.’
‘She is in my debt.’
‘True. You could have brought her family down two years ago. What a forbearing man you are. I suppose you hold back, in the hope of a greater destruction. Queen Katherine always said, “Cromwell keeps his promises, for good or ill.”’ She looks away. ‘I know you kept your promise about Mary. I was in the room at Kimbolton when you made it. All I will say, my lord – beware of gratitude.’
I do not wonder, he thinks, that Wyatt cleaves to you. A jaundiced riddle sits as well on your lips as on his. ‘As for your condition, I leave to you what explanation you make. The Courtenays know what is owed to you. You helped Katherine in her last hour. It was you who wiped her death sweat. Now they boast of what they did for her, but they did nothing really. They will not press you for the man’s name. And if they do, and they don’t like it – they are still bound to you.’
‘They ought to like it,’ she says. ‘They are indebted to Wyatt and his testimony. Because it wrought this.’ She gestures around. ‘This land we live in now. England without Boleyn.’
‘Wyatt wrought nothing. His evidence was not needed.’
‘So you say. But then, you like to offer comfort, my lord. You pick your way over the battlefield with prayers for the wounded and water for the dying.’
‘It is true,’ he says simply. ‘I gave him the papers back so he could tear them up. He told me of the understanding between you, and I said I would find you a place of safety … I would offer you my own poor house, or any of my houses, but my counsellors – I mean those in my household who advise me, and have my interests at heart – have suggested to me –’
She laughs. ‘No, Lord Cromwell, I cannot lodge with you. An unmarried female, estranged from her family – your enemies would suggest such knavery – and you being the king’s Vicegerent, you would look no better than any lustful bishop, or Roman cardinal.’
He says, ‘The Courtenays do not know my part in this. Let us keep it so. Francis Bryan spoke to them for you. He has worked your salvation. He loves Tom Wyatt and admires him.’
‘I expect Francis is used to ridding himself of women,’ she says. ‘No, do not doubt me – I will take the chance, since you offer it. You have my gratitude during my life. You saved Tom Wyatt when he would not save himself.’
‘I unlocked the door,’ he says, ‘but it was you who made him walk out of his prison. If it were not for the child you carry, he did not care to live. Man or maid, this is a child of great power. It has already preserved its father from the axe.’
‘The child?’ she says. ‘It seems I was wrong about that.’
‘There is no child?’
‘No.’
‘Never was?’
‘I cannot be sure.’
‘Does Wyatt know you have deceived him?’
Fiercely she says, ‘He knows he’s still breathing.’
A silence. She unfolds her sewing, its whiteness flowering out across her skirts. She finds the needle, and examines it between finger and thumb, as if daring it to draw blood. She says, ‘Considering the result, you will understand my deceit.’
‘I like your deceit,’ he says. ‘It makes me think highly of you.’
‘You are right I need a refuge. No one wants me except Wyatt and he cannot have me. I have made him promises in my heart’s blood, and I count myself as well married as any woman in England, except he has a wife living.’
Amor mi mosse, he thinks: love moves me, love makes me speak.
‘Perhaps you want to stay here with Lady Salisbury.’
‘She can get another pair of eyes. And I think you are already provided with spies here. When I go to the Courtenays, what shall I do?’
‘You will live.’
‘But for you, Lord Cromwell – what shall I do for you?’
‘Write to me. Someone within the household will approach you. A servant. I will even send you the paper.’
‘And what shall I say?’
‘You will tell me who visits. If any of them plan to travel. Whether any of their ladies are breeding.’
She says, ‘I have no money.’
He has settled her gambling debts a time or two. The pious Katherine, even in her days of exile, played for high stakes, and she expected her household to pay out. ‘I will take care of that, if Wyatt cannot.’
She says, ‘I will be the judge of what passes among the Courtenays, and I will protect what is private. I shall tell you what touches the public weal. I shall tell you whatever it is in your interest to know.’
‘Thank you.’ He gets to his feet. ‘Bear in mind my field of interest is very wide.’
‘Before you go, let me show you my sewing.’
‘That would be pleasant,’ he says.
She holds up the work; she shows him how the Pole emblem, the pansy or viola, is worked in a border with the marigold. ‘They do it to encourage each other, and they give such work as tokens to their supporters. They are sewn into altar cloths, or made into cap badges. They gave one this last week to Ambassador Chapuys. The marigold stands for – well, I see you have arrived already – it stands for the Lady Mary, that exemplar of shining virtue. Look here,’ she indicates with the needle tip, ‘at how the flowers entwine. So may Reynold entwine himself about her body and heart.’
‘So was Lady Salisbury lying to me in toto this last hour or only in part?’
She glances at the door. ‘It is true Reynold has written her a letter.’
‘But surely the family have concocted it between them. It is a device, to shift blame away from them.’
‘It appears she is struck to the heart.’
‘That is how the king feels. Stung, dismayed, betrayed. They are prodigious efforts, these letters of Reynold’s. I marvel he does not write to me.’ He touches her hand. ‘Thank you,’ he says.
He can’t see Richard Riche framing a law against embroidery, but then he doesn’t need to. The laws are already capable of stretching to cover anything the Pole family have in mind – especially when you add in the new penalties against plotting to marry the king’s daughter. Nothing he has learned about the hopes of Lady Salisbury surprises him, but it’s useful to have the evidence stitched together. ‘I hope when that cloth is finished,’ he says, ‘the family will protect it from the light.’
Like the treasures of Heaven, he thinks, where no moth nor rust consumes.
She says, ‘I wonder where Anne Boleyn is now?’
It is not a question for which he came prepared. He imagines her whipping down some draughty hall of the hereafter, where the walls are made of splintered glass.
When he goes to see Jane the queen, he takes Mr Wriothesley with him. ‘Just in case there is another plot among the women. I shall trust only you from now on. If you see that anyone is married who should not be, point out the offender. Don’t try to be subtle. We’ve had enough of that.’
It is mid-morning, a broad summer light. The ladies have come from their devotions. Bess Oughtred, the queen’s widowed sister, is at her side. On her other hand sits Edward Seymour’s wife, Nan: Nan Stanhope, as she was before her marriage. She is not, of course, the wife who sinned with Old Sir John. That one is dead, and never mentioned at Wolf Hall. No gap is visible, where the Scottish princess should be. The ladies are settling to the task which has absorbed them for weeks – erasing the initial ‘A’ from satins and damasks, and replacing it with Jane’s initial, so she can wear the clothes of the late queen. A sympathetic murmur from Mr Wriothesley: ‘Will that false lady never be gone?’