Anne's child was born with teeth, has six fingers on each hand, and is furred all over like a monkey, so her father has shown her off naked to the ambassadors, and her mother is keeping her on display in the hope of countering the rumours. The king has chosen Hatfield for her seat, and Anne says, ‘It seems to me waste might be saved, and the proper order of things asserted, if Spanish Mary's household were broken up and she were to become a member of the household of the princess Elizabeth my daughter.’
‘In the capacity of …?’ The child is quiet; only, he notes, because she has crammed a fist into her maw, and is cannibalising herself.
‘In the capacity of my daughter's servant. What else should she be? There can be no pretence at equality. Mary is a bastard.’
The brief respite is over; the princess sets up a screech that would bring out the dead. Anne's glance slides away sideways, and a sideways grin of infatuation takes over her whole face, and she leans down towards her daughter, but at once women swoop, flapping and bustling; the screaming creature is plucked up, wrapped up, swept away, and the queen's eyes follow pitifully as the fruit of her womb exits, in procession. He says gently, ‘I think she was hungry.’
Saturday evening: supper at Austin Friars for Stephen Vaughan, so often in transit: William Butts, Hans, Kratzer, Call-Me Risley. Conversation is in various tongues and Rafe Sadler translates adroitly, smoothly, his head turning from side to side: high topics and low, statecraft and gossip, Zwingli's theology, Cranmer's wife. About the latter, it has not been possible to suppress the talk at the Steelyard and in the city; Vaughan says, ‘Can Henry know and not know?’
‘That is perfectly possible. He is a prince of very large capacities.’
Larger by the day, Wriothesley says, laughing; Dr Butts says, he is one of those men who must be active, and recently his leg is troubling him, that old injury; but think, is it likely that a man who has not spared himself on the hunting field and in the tilt yard should not get some injury by the time he is the king's age? He is forty-three this year, you know, and I should be glad, Kratzer, to have your view on what the planets suggest, for the later years of a man whose chart is so dominated by air and fire; by the by, did I not always warn of his moon in Aries (rash and hasty planet) in the house of marriage?
He says, impatient, we heard very little about the Aries moon when he was settled with Katherine for twenty years. It is not the stars that make us, Dr Butts, it is circumstance and necessità, the choices we make under pressure; our virtues make us, but virtues are not enough, we must deploy our vices at times. Or don't you agree?
He beckons to Christophe to fill their glasses. They talk about the Mint, where Vaughan is to have a position; about Calais, where Honor Lisle seems more busy in affairs than her husband the Governor. He thinks about Guido Camillo in Paris, pacing and fretting between the wooden walls of his memory machine, while knowledge grows unseen and of itself in its cavities and concealed inner spaces. He thinks of the Holy Maid – by now established as not holy, and not a maid – no doubt at this moment sitting down to supper with his nieces. He thinks of his fellow interrogators: Cranmer on his knees in prayer, Sir Purse frowning over the day's transcripts, Audley – what will the Lord Chancellor be doing? Polishing his chain of office, he decides. He thinks of saying to Vaughan, below the conversation, was there not a girl in your house called Jenneke? What happened to her? But Wriothesley breaks in on his train of thought. ‘When shall we see my master's portrait? You have been at work on it a while, Hans, it is time it came home. We are keen to see what you have made of him.’
‘He is still busy with the French envoys,’ Kratzer says. ‘De Dinteville wants to take his picture home with him when he gets his recall …’
There is some laughter at the expense of the French ambassador, always doing his packing and having to undo it again, as his master commands him to stay where he is. ‘Anyway, I hope he does not take it too quick,’ Hans says, ‘because I mean to show it and get commissions off it. I want the king to see it, indeed I want to paint the king, do you think I can?’
‘I will ask him,’ he says easily. ‘Let me choose the time.’ He looks down the table to see Vaughan glow with pride, like Jupiter on a painted ceiling.
After they get up from the table his guests eat ginger comfits and candied fruits, and Kratzer makes some drawings. He draws the sun and the planets moving in their orbits according to the plan he has heard of from Father Copernicus. He shows how the world is turning on its axis, and nobody in the room denies it. Under your feet you can feel the tug and heft of it, the rocks groaning to tear away from their beds, the oceans tilting and slapping at their shores, the giddy lurch of Alpine passes, the forests of Germany ripping at their roots to be free. The world is not what it was when he and Vaughan were young, it is not what it was even in the cardinal's day.
The company has left when his niece Alice comes in, past his watchmen, wrapped up in a cloak; she is escorted by Thomas Rotherham, one of his wards who lives in the house. ‘Never fear, sir,’ she says, ‘Jo is sitting up with Dame Elizabeth, and nothing gets by Jo.’
Does it not? That child perpetually in tears over her spoiled sewing? That grubby little girl sometimes found rolling under a table with a wet dog, or chasing a peddler down the street? ‘I would like to talk to you,’ Alice says, ‘if you have time for me?’ Of course, he says, taking her arm, folding her hand in his; Thomas Rotherham turns pale – which puzzles him – and slides away.
Alice sits down in his office. She yawns. ‘Excuse me – but she is hard work and the hours are long.’ She tucks a strand of hair into her hood. ‘She is ready to break,’ she says. ‘She is brave to your faces, but she cries at night, because she knows she is a fraud. And even while she is crying, she peeps under her eyelids to see what effect she is making.’
‘I want it over with now,’ he says. ‘For all the trouble she has caused, we do not find ourselves an edifying spectacle, three or four of us learned in the law and the scriptures, convening day after day to try to trip one chit of a girl.’
‘Why did you not bring her in before?’
‘I didn't want her to shut the prophecy shop. I wanted to see who would come to her whistle. And Lady Exeter has, and Bishop Fisher. And a score of monks and foolish priests whose names I know, and a hundred perhaps whose names I don't know yet.’
‘And will the king kill them all?’
‘Very few, I hope.’
‘You incline him to mercy?’
‘I incline him to patience.’
‘What will happen to her? Dame Eliza?’
‘We will frame charges.’
‘She will not go in a dungeon?’
‘No, I shall move the king to treat her with consideration, he is always – he is usually – respectful of any person in the religious life. But Alice,’ he sees that she is dissolving into tears, ‘I think this has all been too much for you.’
‘No, not at all. We are soldiers in your army.’
‘She has not been frightening you, talking about the devil's wicked offers?’
‘No, it's Thomas Rotherham's offers … he wants to marry me.’
‘So that's what's wrong with him!’ He is amused. ‘Could he not ask himself?’
‘He thought you would look at him in that way you have … as if you were weighing him.’
Like a clipped coin? ‘Alice, he owns a fat slice of Bedfordshire, and his manors prosper very nicely since I have been looking after them. And if you like each other, how could I object? You are a clever girl, Alice. Your mother,’ he says softly, ‘and your father, they would be very pleased with you, if they were able to see.’
This is why Alice is crying. She must ask her uncle's permission because this last year has left her orphaned. The day his sister Bet died, he was up-country with the king. Henry was receiving no messengers from London for fear of contagion, so she was dead and buried