‘That he has a chill. A lax. Each day a flux.’
The king laughs. ‘So delicate a soul. Like the Princess Madeleine.’
Hans tuts. ‘A solemn countenance, if it sorts with your Majesty? And eyes to me? If my lord Cromwell does anything worth turning around for, I shall let your Majesty know.’
The silence returns. In Florence, he thinks, an artist would make a whole man in a mould. You strip him naked and rub him with grease and close him in a case up to his chin. You pour in plaster and let it set, and when you are ready you take a chisel and open the case like a nut. You draw out the man, his skin rose-red all over, and wash him, then you promise to model his head another day: but you have his form you can use ever after, to make satyrs or saints or gods from Mount Olympus.
Down below in the privy kitchen they are roasting dottrels for dinner. His spaniel starts awake, and runs in excited circles as the savour drifts up. The king’s eye follows her; Hans scoops her up and gives her to a menial, saying severely, ‘Collect her later, my lord.’
As the hour passes, more and more noise crowds into it: the ring of horseshoes on cobbles, bursts of shouting from distant courtyards, trumpeters clattering past to practice: till finally it seems as if the whole of the court is in there with them. Meanwhile the king’s expression changes slowly, as if the moon waxes; so by the time Hans signals that he is done, Henry seems to glow from within. He gathers himself, rearranges his robes. He says, ‘I think the queen should be in my picture.’
Hans groans.
The king says, ‘Come to me later, Cromwell.’
‘How much later, sir?’
No reply: Henry sweeps away. A boy belonging to Hans gathers in the drawings. The king’s heads are turned this way and that; his brow is furrowed or clear, his eyes are blank or hostile, but the mouth is always the same, small and set.
‘Enough time, Hans?’
‘I suppose. I only wanted his head.’
‘We should have a lute player next time.’
‘With you in the room? You’re dangerous to them.’
Mark Smeaton resists oblivion. It is not yet a year, after all. He says, ‘I tell you again, I did not hurt Mark.’
‘I hear when he left your house his eyeballs hung out on his cheeks.’
Hans does not sound indignant: more curious, as if he imagines making an anatomical drawing.
‘Witnesses saw him on the scaffold,’ he says, ‘uninjured. Do not try my patience. And do not try the king’s.’
Hans says, ‘Henry is easy. He never shows he would like to be elsewhere. He takes it as his duty to be painted. Do you not see? His face shines with the wonder of himself.’
Towards the end of May the queen’s child quickens. The Te Deums of Trinity Sunday celebrate not only the hope in her womb but the close of the campaigning season. The parish churches ring their bells, cannon are fired at the Tower, and butts of free wine trundle over the cobbles so even the beggars can join in crying, ‘God bless our good Queen Jane.’ Banners drop from windows, streamers fly from housetops, thrushes sing, salmon leap, and the dead in London’s churchyards jiggle thighbone and knee.
Jane has objected to the taking of her portrait, saying, ‘Master Hans will look at me.’
But she has yielded to the king’s pleasure, requesting only that Lord Cromwell be present: she seems afraid that the artist will shout at her in a foreign tongue. He makes the introductions and then retreats, so he is out of the painter’s eyeline.
‘Here?’ Jane says.
The queen takes up her stance. Her sister Lady Oughtred, now in attendance, stoops to arrange her skirts. Jane is as stiff as a woman on a catafalque. She stands with her hands clasped over her child, as if keeping it in order. ‘It is very correct to breathe,’ Hans reminds her. ‘And certainly your Highness may sit if she pleases.’
Jane’s gaze rests on the middle distance. Her expression is remote and pure. Hans says, ‘If your Highness could lift her chin?’ He sighs; he shuffles, he walks around the queen, and hums. He is dissatisfied; her face is puffy; he cannot find the bones in it.
Jane speaks only once: ‘Is Lady Lisle delivered yet?’
‘It cannot be long, madam,’ he says, from his seat in the window.
‘God send her a good hour,’ Lady Oughtred says.
His mind shifts, wanders: he takes a prayer book out of his pocket and thumbs through it, but an image of water, of daylight on water, begins to flicker and flow between his eyes and the page. He thinks of a woman sitting upright in a tangle of linen sheets, her breasts bare, sunlight sliding over her arms. He thinks of himself at nightfall, on the slippery paving beside the German House in Venice, his friend Heinrich asking as they step out of their boat: ‘You want to see our goddesses on the wall? You, guard, hold up your torch.’
Almost imperceptibly, Jane’s chin has dropped again. Hans approaches him. It does not matter, he whispers, whether she sits, stands, kneels, anything she has a fantasy to do; her hands, her posture, I can fix it later, and we can put her in another gown if she likes, or paint on different sleeves, we can push her hood back a little, and as for her jewellery I will give her pieces of my own design, which will be a good advertisement of my skill, Thomas, do you not think so? But I must have her face, just for this one hour. So implore her – spare me a glance.
‘The king will want her as she is,’ he warns. ‘No flattery.’
‘It is not my habit.’
‘I warrant when he married her,’ her sister says, ‘she did not look so much like a mushroom.’
The queen’s happy condition is now known all over Europe, and the Seymour name exalted. It is time he, Cromwell, opened talks with Edward.
‘Your lady sister,’ he says. ‘Oughtred’s widow.’
‘Yes,’ Edward says.
‘Her hand in marriage.’
‘Yes?’
‘I believe you’re talking to the Earl of Oxford? You know he’s older than I am?’
‘Is he?’ Edward frowns. ‘Yes, I dare say.’
‘So would Bess not prefer a young lad?’
Edward looks as if something improper has been hinted. ‘She knows her duty.’
‘I see it is promotion for you, to marry into the Vere family. Yet the Seymours are as old a house, I would have thought, old and just as good, if less rewarded till now. The Veres have more power, but not more estimation.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Edward is cautious.
‘You don’t need Oxford to make your fortune. It is already made. And I suggest that a bride could be happier elsewhere.’
‘This is a surprise,’ Edward says. ‘Would you then …?’ He closes his eyes as if in prayer. ‘That is, are you willing …’
‘We are willing,’ he says.
‘And ready? To talk about money?’
‘It is my favourite subject,’ he says.
We rough Cromwells, eh? Edward tries to smile.
‘But Edward, this could be a great thing,’ he says. ‘We can make an alliance in blood, as well as in the council chamber. Have no qualms. All the grace and goodwill lie on your side, and the rude substance will come from mine. I will build Bess a new house. While she is waiting she will not be short of a roof over her head – Mortlake is much enlarged, and there is Stepney which is a very pleasant house at any season, and there is Austin Friars of course – all my property is at her disposal, and if there is some house of the king’s she has a fancy to, I feel sure that of his kindness he will lend it us. She will have whatever I can give to make her happy.’
Edward says, ‘I have heard gentlemen venture – saving your lordship – that Thomas Cromwell is not base-born after all. That you are the natural son of some nobleman.’
He is amused. ‘Do they say which one?’
‘They reason, how else to explain your talent for ruling men?’
Walter ruled with his fist, he thinks.