Jane the queen says, ‘I would like her company, myself. I could ask the king. But he is displeased with me. Because I am not, yet.’
‘With child,’ Jane Rochford supplies.
The queen says, ‘I hear agates are helpful. You lay them next the skin.’
‘No doubt the Wardrobe will have some,’ Rafe says. ‘If not, we will get them. In Cornwall you can practically pick them up in the street.’
The queen looks surprised. ‘In Cornwall? Do they have a street?’
Call-Me steps forward. ‘If I may suggest, my lord Privy Seal? We might rehearse her Highness in a pretty speech? We might approach his Majesty by first praising him.’
Sound, he thinks. Let’s try it. ‘“Sir,”’ he begins, ‘“you have raised me to a sphere apart.”’
‘He has,’ Jane says. ‘And I heartily congratulate you, Lord Cromwell.’
‘No, your Highness,’ Jane Rochford explains. ‘That is not what Cromwell says, that is what you say. “Sir, you have been pleased to set me above all other Englishwomen.”’
‘“I all unworthy,”’ Wriothesley offers.
‘“I unworthy,”’ he says, ‘that’s very good – “exalting me into a sphere apart. With whom then can I be at ease? There is no lady of my rank with whom I can share a confidence.”’
‘Then continue,’ Rafe suggests, ‘“Sir, out of your liberality and generous, fatherly heart, please to let the Lady Mary come to court, so that I may have comfort in her society, and be merry.”’
‘Let me try it,’ Jane says. She takes a breath. ‘Sir, out of your liberality … Is it his liberality, or his something else?’
‘Liberality has a fine ring to it,’ Rafe urges.
‘Then we’ll proceed with liberality,’ Jane says, ‘and see where it gets us. But Lord Cromwell, I must raise a matter with you –’ She nods to the ladies. They exchange glances and withdraw. Rafe, Wriothesley, both fall back. For a moment, unspeaking, the queen watches her court recede. Then she detaches from her girdle a small flask for rosewater. ‘It is of great antiquity,’ she says. ‘The king gave it me. He says it is Roman.’
The glass in his hand is darkened, fragile as air. ‘It’s possible.’
‘Once it contained a sacred relic. He did not say of which saint.’ As if anticipating his question she says, ‘I don’t ask. I wait to be told.’
‘I do the same.’
‘The king tells me his dreams.’ He wonders at the expression of dread on her face. ‘He talks about when he was a child.’
‘Women want to know about a man’s childhood.’ It had not struck him before, but he has never known a woman shun an anecdote, however mendacious.
‘It is because they wish to love them,’ Jane says. ‘They cannot always love the man, but they think they could love the child he was.’
He feels unease. The glass is only a diversion – but from what? ‘The king was a very handsome child,’ he says. ‘So it is reported.’
‘Lady Rochford,’ the queen says, ‘could you stand off, please? No – further off. With the other ladies. Thank you.’ She turns her face to him, her expression opening like a flower. ‘He talks about his brother Arthur. He thinks he killed him.’
He is startled into simplicity. ‘He didn’t kill him. He just died.’
‘He killed him with envy – with wishing against him. Even when he was very young, when he was Duke of York, he wished to be a king himself, even if not King of England. It was his intention, he says, to reconquer France, then Arthur would give it him as a reward.’
‘Highness, wishes do not kill people.’
‘Nor prayers?’ Jane says. ‘It is wicked to pray for our advantage at the expense of another. But we cannot always help what comes into our head.’
He says, ‘There must be a mechanism. Like a gun or a knife or a disease.’
‘But then, Henry says, he imagined all the misfortunes that might overtake his French war. Such as flux, mud, penury.’
‘That was sage, in one so young.’
‘But he thought, I should like to be a king anyway. And God read his heart. And so Arthur died, and Henry inherited all his brother’s dignities and titles, and married Katherine his wife.’
‘Or tried to marry her,’ he says. He feels tired. ‘It was not a real marriage, of course, that is established.’
‘And Arthur never came home,’ Jane says, ‘but lies in a tomb at Worcester cathedral, where they left him at dead of winter. And Henry never goes to see him.’
After a moment she says, ‘My lord? You are going to stand there and not speak?’
He says, ‘Why now?’ Cranmer and I believed we had vanquished that spectre: in one winter’s night of persuasion and prayer, refined Arthur into thin air. But it seems Henry withheld something. We took him for the helpless victim of a spirit, rudely appearing. We did not know his shame fetched it.
He says, ‘If the king raises the matter I shall say it was a child’s fantasy, and he should dwell on it no more.’
‘Thank you. I tried my brother, Lord Hertford, in this matter. But he said, “Tush, sister, superstition.”’
‘Did he?’ He smiles.
‘You may go,’ the queen says. ‘If anyone asks what we spoke of, tell them I wanted to show you the glass and know about the Romans. I do not believe everything the king tells me.’
Rafe and Call-Me follow him out. They are twitching with curiosity. Call-Me says, ‘Do you think she will make bold and ask? About Mary?’
Rafe says, ‘I hope she will, because if Mary is here, no misunderstandings can arise, about who she meets or writes to.’
‘You see?’ Lady Rochford is behind them. ‘Even your own people do not trust Mary. But she will come with all speed. I hear she pines for you, Lord Cromwell.’
He takes her arm and steers her away. She is his ally, like it or not. She snaps, ‘I have deserved gentler treatment at your hands. And at the queen’s, I may say.’
He lets go. She rubs her arm, as if he had injured her. He thinks, if wishes were death, I would be superfluous to the state. Henry hated both his wives at divers times, but they spitefully lived on, until God put an end to one, the French executioner to the other. Henry could not wish them away, for all his power. Only I could do that. It is I who tell him who he can marry and unmarry and who he can marry next, and who and how to kill.
But perhaps it will not matter, he thinks. Perhaps the Yorkshiremen will come and slay us all.
The queen makes her request before Henry in sight of the court. Note his alert face, the modest inclination of her head. ‘Sir,’ she begins, ‘out of my unworthiness, you have been – what? – liberal. I am in a sphere. Please to bring the Lady Mary to court. I may have comfort in her society, and share a confidence.’
Henry looks at her in tender bewilderment. ‘Are you lonely, sweetheart? Of course we will have her, if it will make you merry.’
‘Merry. That was the word I forgot.’ Jane does not smile. She sinks low to the ground, collapsed inside a stiff tent of brocade and satin. ‘Will you hear me?’
What now? He tries to catch Rochford’s eye, but the whole assembly is staring at the queen. ‘My heart is moved, sir, by the divisions that arise between your subjects and your most sacred self.’
There is a rustle of consternation. This is not Jane’s own language, surely?
Henry gazes at her. ‘I take these words as they are meant. A queen has a double duty. As a wife, she feels for her husband when he is troubled. As a queen, she feels as a subject to her lord.’
‘I am only a woman,’ Jane says. ‘I do not presume to be wiser than your Grace. But my heart misgives when honourable and devout customs are left off, sanctified by usage since the world began. We must cherish them, as a son or daughter will cherish an aged father.’
Henry frowns. ‘What customs?’
‘Nan!’ he says to Edward’s wife. ‘Nan, quick.’
Lady Seymour steps forward, ‘Madam –’
Jane says, ‘Your people want the Pope of Rome. They want the statues they have known all their lives, and blessed candles, and holy days.’