‘What is her worst?’ Johane's mouth is ajar; the duke's words will be rolling down Gracechurch Street, rolling to the river and across the bridge, till the painted ladies in Southwark are passing them mouth to mouth like ulcers; but that's the Howards for you, that's the Boleyns; with or without him, news of Anne's character will reach London and the world.
‘She provokes the king's temper,’ he says. ‘He complains Katherine never in her life spoke to him as Anne does. Norfolk says she uses language to him you wouldn't use to a dog.’
‘Jesu! I wonder he doesn't whip her.’
‘Perhaps he will, when they're married. Look, if Katherine were to withdraw her suit from Rome, if she were to submit to judgment of her case in England, or if the Pope were to concede to the king's wishes, then all this – everything you've said, it won't happen, it will be just –’ His hand makes a smooth, withdrawing motion, like the rolling up of a parchment. ‘If Clement were to come to his desk one morning, not quite awake, and sign with his left hand some piece of paper he's not read, well, who could blame him? And then I leave him, we leave him, undisturbed, in possession of his revenues, in possession of his authority, because now Henry only wants one thing, and that is Anne in his bed; but time marches on and he is beginning to think, believe me, of other things he might want.’
‘Yes. Like his own way.’
‘He's a king. He's used to it.’
‘And if the Pope is still stubborn?’
‘He'll go begging for his revenue.’
‘Will the king take the money of Christian people? The king is rich.’
‘There you are wrong. The king is poor.’
‘Oh. Does he know it?’
‘I'm not sure he knows where his money comes from, or where it goes. While my lord cardinal was alive, he never wanted for a jewel in his hat or a horse or a handsome house. Henry Norris keeps his privy purse, but besides that he has too much of a hand in the revenue for my liking. Henry Norris,’ he tells her before she can ask, ‘is the bane of my life.’ He is always, he does not add, with Anne when I need to see her alone.
‘I suppose if Henry wants his supper, he can come here. Not this Henry Norris. I mean, Henry our pauper king.’ She stands up; she sees herself in the glass; she ducks, as if shy of her own reflection, and arranges her face into an expression lighter, more curious and detached, less personal; he sees her do it, lift her eyebrows a fraction, curve up her lips at the corner. I could paint her, he thinks; if I had the skill. I have looked at her so long; but looking doesn't bring back the dead, the harder you look the faster and the further they go. He had never supposed Liz Wykys was smiling down from Heaven on what he was doing with her sister. No, he thinks, what I've done is push Liz into the dark; and something comes back to him, that Walter once said, that his mother used to say her prayers to a little carved saint she'd had in her bundle when she came down as a young woman from the north, and she used to turn it away before she got into bed with him. Walter had said, dear God, Thomas, it was St fucking Felicity if I'm not mistaken, and her face was to the wall for sure the night I got you.
Johane walks about the room. It is a large room and filled with light. ‘All these things,’ she says, ‘these things we have now. The clock. That new chest you had Stephen send you from Flanders, the one with the carving of the birds and flowers, I heard with my own ears you say to Thomas Avery, oh, tell Stephen I want it, I don't care what it costs. All these painted pictures of people we don't know, all these, I don't know what, lutes and books of music, we never used to have them, when I was a girl I never used to look at myself in a mirror, but now I look at myself every day. And a comb, you gave me an ivory comb. I never had one of my own. Liz used to plait my hair and push it under my hood, and then I did hers, and if we didn't look how we ought to look, somebody soon told us.’
Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of ourselves for having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice. Even Liz, once when they were young, when she'd seen him early in the morning putting Gregory's shirt to warm before the fire, even Liz had said sharply, don't do that, he'll expect it every day.
He says, ‘Liz – I mean, Johane …’
You've done that once too often, her face says.
‘I want to be good to you. Tell me what I can give you.’
He waits for her to shout, as women do, do you think you can buy me, but she doesn't, she listens, and he thinks she is entranced, her face intent, her eyes on his, as she learns his theory about what money can buy. ‘There was a man in Florence, a friar, Fra Savonarola, he induced all the people to think beauty was a sin. Some people think he was a magician and they fell under his spell for a season, they made fires in the streets and they threw in everything they liked, everything they had made or worked to buy, bolts of silk, and linen their mothers had embroidered for their marriage beds, books of poems written in the poet's hand, bonds and wills, rent-rolls, title deeds, dogs and cats, the shirts from their backs, the rings from their fingers, women their veils, and do you know what was worst, Johane – they threw in their mirrors. So then they couldn't see their faces and know how they were different from the beasts in the field and the creatures screaming on the pyre. And when they had melted their mirrors they went home to their empty houses, and lay on the floor because they had burned their beds, and when they got up next day they were aching from the hard floor and there was no table for their breakfast because they'd used the table to feed the bonfire, and no stool to sit on because they'd chopped it into splinters, and there was no bread to eat because the bakers had thrown into the flames the basins and the yeast and the flour and the scales. And you know the worst of it? They were sober. Last night they took their wine-skins …’ He turns his arm, in a mime of a man lobbing something into a fire. ‘So they were sober and their heads were clear, but they looked around and they had nothing to eat, nothing to drink and nothing to sit on.’
‘But that wasn't the worst. You said the mirrors were the worst. Not to be able to look at yourself.’
‘Yes. Well, so I think. I hope I can always look myself in the face. And you, Johane, you should always have a fine glass to see yourself. As you're a woman worth looking at.’
You could write a sonnet, Thomas Wyatt could write her a sonnet, and not make this effect … She turns her head away, but through the thin film of her veil he can see her skin glow. Because women will coax: tell me, just tell me something, tell me your thoughts; and this he has done.
They part friends. They even manage without one last time for old time's sake. Not that they are parted, really, but now they are on different terms. Mercy says, ‘Thomas, when you're cold and under a stone, you'll talk yourself out of your grave.’
The household is quiet, calm. The turmoil of the city is locked outside the gate; he is having the locks renewed, the chains reinforced. Jo brings him an Easter egg. ‘Look, we have saved this one for you.’ It is a white egg with no speckles. It is featureless, but a single curl, the colour of onion-skin, peeps out from under a lopsided crown. You pick your prince and you know what he is: or do you?
The child says, ‘My mother sends a message: tell your uncle, for a present, I'd like a drinking cup made of the shell of a griffin's egg. It's a lion with the head and wings of a bird; it's died out now, so you can't get them any more.’
He says, ‘Ask her what colour she wants.’
Jo plants a kiss on his cheek.
He looks into the glass and the whole bright room comes bouncing back to him: lutes, portraits, silk hangings. In Rome there was a banker called Agostino Chigi. In Siena, where he came from, they maintained he was the richest man in the world. When Agostino had the Pope around for dinner he fed him on gold plates. Then he looked at the aftermath – the sprawled, sated cardinals, the mess they left behind, the half-picked bones and fish skeletons, the oyster shells and the orange rinds – and he said, stuff it, let's save the washing-up.
The