‘You are free to go.’
‘Go where?’ she asks.
‘You are welcome in my house.’
‘Live with you?’ The chill in her tone pushes him backwards, even in the cramped space. She folds up the kerchief, so the design is hidden. ‘How is my brother Thomas Winter?’
‘He is well and provided for.’
‘By you?’
‘It is the least I can do for the cardinal. When your brother is next in England, I could arrange for you to meet.’
‘We would have nothing to say to each other. He a scholar. I a poor nun.’
‘I would keep him in my house and gladly. But for the sake of his studies he would rather live abroad.’
‘A cardinal’s son has no place in England. In Italy, I am told, he would be well accepted.’
‘In Italy he would be Pope.’
She turns her shoulder. Very well, he thinks. No more jokes.
‘When Anne Boleyn came down,’ she says, ‘we believed true religion would be restored. The whole summer has passed, and now we doubt it.’
‘True religion was never left off,’ he says. ‘You have had no opportunity to see the king’s manner of life – so you imagine the court spends its days in masques and dancing. Not so, I assure you. The king hears three Masses in daylight hours. He keeps all the feasts of the church, as ever he did. Fasting is observed, and the meatless days. We scant nothing.’
‘We hear the sacraments are to be put down. And that all monks and nuns will be dispersed. Dame Elizabeth is sure the king will take our house in the end. Then how would we live?’
‘There are no such plans,’ he says. ‘But if that were to occur, you would be pensioned. I believe your abbess would bargain hard.’
‘But what would we do, without our sisters in religion? We cannot go back to our families, if our families are dead.’ She flushes. ‘Or even if they are alive, they might not want us.’
He must be patient. ‘Dorothea, there is no need to weep. You are imagining harms that could never touch you.’
He thinks, should I embrace her? A king’s daughter has cried on my shoulder – or she would have, if I had stayed still.
‘I have come here to give you good assurances,’ he says. ‘I understand this place is all you have known till now. But you have all your life before you.’
‘Clancey brought me and left me here under his name. Everybody knew I was Wolsey’s daughter. It was not my choice to come, but no more is it my choice to leave. I do not wish to be turned out to beg my bread.’
This is women, he thinks – they must enact some scene, to wring tears from themselves and you. I have already offered her my house.
‘I will make you an annuity,’ he says.
‘I will not take it.’
He brushes that aside; it is the kind of thing that people say. ‘Or I will find you suitors, if you could like marriage.’
‘Marriage?’ She is incredulous.
He laughs. ‘You have heard of that blessed state?’
‘A bastard daughter? The bastard daughter of a disgraced priest? And no looks, even?’
He thinks, a good dowry would make you a beauty. But that is not what she wants to hear. ‘Trust me, you are a lovely young woman. Till now, no good man has held up a mirror, for you to see yourself through his eyes. Once you have clothes and ornaments, you will be a welcome sight for a bridegroom. I know the best merchants, and I know the fashions at the French court, and in Italy. I have dressed …’ He breaks off. I have dressed two queens.
She appraises him. ‘I am sure your eye is expert.’
‘Or if you would consider me, I could, I myself –’
He stops. He is appalled. That is not at all what he meant to say.
She is staring at him. You cannot take back such a word. ‘I’ll marry you, mistress, if you’ll have me. I am, you may not know this, I am a long time a widower. I lack graces of person, but I lack nothing else. I am rich and likely to grow richer, so your want of fortune is no obstacle to me. I have good houses. You would find me generous. I look after my family.’ He hears his own voice, recommending himself as if he were a servant, urging his merits on this shocked young woman. ‘I have no children to burden you, except Gregory, who is almost grown and will be married himself soon. I would like more children. Or not, as you wished. If you want a marriage in name only, so you have a place in the world, then for your father’s sake I would be prepared …’ He falters.
She crosses to the small window, and stares out of it furiously. There is nothing to see but a wall. ‘In name only? I do not understand you. Are you offering to marry me or not?’
‘You are alone in the world, and so am I. For your father’s sake I would cherish you. Who knows, you might grow fond of me. And if you did not, then – you would still have a home and a protector, and I would make no other demand on you.’
‘That is because you have a mistress?’
He does not answer.
‘Several, perhaps,’ she says, as if to herself. ‘It is true you have everything to commend you – if you were a buyer and I were for sale. You have money to buy any article, thanks to my father, who gave you your start in life.’
My start in life, he thinks: madam, you cannot imagine it. He feels bereft, injured, cold. Why should she have a stony heart towards him? Many times, that long winter at Esher, he had settled the cardinal’s debts. They were sums you would pay out of your pocket, but stilclass="underline" there were butchers, bargemen, rat-killers, men who make poultices for horses, purveyors of horoscopes and salt fish. And there had been other disbursements, that never went through the books: buying off the spies, for instance, that Norfolk had put in the household. ‘Your father was a liberal master,’ he says. ‘I owe him much that cannot be cast into figures. It was he who explained to me the king’s business. How things really work, not how people say they work. Not the custom, but the practice.’
‘Certainly,’ she says, ‘it was he who brought you to the king’s notice. With the result that we see.’
He thinks, she does not like my proposal, she does not. I should never have spoken, I know in my bones it is wrong; I am too old, and besides, so close to her father as I was, perhaps it seems to her we are related, almost as if she is my sister. He says, ‘Dorothea, tell me what it needs, to make you safe and comfortable. Forget I spoke of marriage.’ Despite himself, he smiles. He can’t stop himself trying to charm her. ‘There is still a way forward. Though you find my person defective.’
‘Your person is not defective,’ she says. ‘At least, not so defective as your nature and your deeds.’
He is still smiling. ‘You do not like my proceedings against the religious. I can understand that.’
‘Many of my sisters are keen to cast off their habits. If the house were dissolved they would go tomorrow. Dame Elizabeth does not speak ill of you. She says you are fair in your dealings.’
‘Well, then … I think it is my religion itself you do not like. I love the gospel and will follow it. Your father understood that.’
‘He understood everything,’ she says. ‘He understood you betrayed him.’
He gapes at her. He, Lord Cromwell. He who is never surprised.
‘When my father was in exile, and forced to go north, he wrote certain letters, out of his desperation to have the king’s favour again – letters begging the King of France to intercede for him. And he appealed to the queen – I mean Katherine, the queen that was – to forgive their differences and stand his friend.’
‘So much is true, but –’
‘You saw to it that those letters reached the Duke of Norfolk. You put upon them an evil construction, which they should never have borne. And Norfolk put them into the hand of the king, and so the damage was done.’
He cannot speak. Till he says, ‘You are much mistaken.’
She is shaking with rage. ‘You had your men in my father’s household in the north, do you deny it?’
‘They were there to serve him, to help him. Madam –’