you carry your colours in the joust.’
Richard bows. And then the king, because he is the essence of courtesy, turns to Gregory, and says, ‘And you, Master Gregory, you are a very fine young man too.’
As the king walks away, Gregory's face opens in simple pleasure. He puts his hand on his arm, the place the king has touched, as if transferring regal grace to his fingertips. ‘He is very splendid. He is so splendid. Beyond anything I ever thought. And to speak to me!’ He turns to his father. ‘How do you manage to speak to him every day?’
Richard gives him a sideways look. Gregory thumps him on the arm. ‘Never mind your grandfather the archer, what would he say if he knew your father was that big?’ He shows between finger and thumb the stature of Morgan Williams. ‘I have been riding at the ring these many years. I have been riding at the Saracen's image and putting my lance just so, thud, right over his black Saracen's heart.’
‘Yes,’ Richard says patiently, ‘but, squib, you will find a living knight a tougher proposition than a wooden infidel. You never think of the cost – armour of show quality, a stable of trained horses –’
‘We can afford it,’ he says. ‘It seems our days as foot soldiers are behind us.’
That night at Austin Friars he asks Richard to come to speak with him alone after supper. Possibly he is at fault, in putting it as a business proposition, spelling out to him what Anne has suggested about his marriage. ‘Build nothing on it. We have yet to get the king's approval.’
Richard says, ‘But she doesn't know me.’
He waits, for objections; not knowing someone, is that an objection? ‘I won't force you.’
Richard looks up. ‘Are you sure?’
When have I, when have I ever forced anyone to do anything, he starts to say: but Richard cuts in, ‘No, you don't, I agree, it's just that you are practised at persuading, and sometimes it's quite difficult, sir, to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in the street and stamped on.’
‘I know Lady Carey is older than you, but she is very beautiful, I think the most beautiful woman at court, and she is not as witless as everyone thinks, and she has not got any of her sister's malice in her.’ In a strange way, he thinks, she has been a good friend to me. ‘And instead of being the king's unrecognised cousin, you would be his brother-in-law. We would all profit.’
‘A title, perhaps. For me, and for you. Brilliant matches for Alice and Jo. What about Gregory? A countess at least for him.’ Richard's voice is flat. Is he talking himself into it? It's hard to tell. With many people, most people perhaps, the book of their heart lies open to him, but there are times when it's easier to read outsiders than your own family. ‘And Thomas Boleyn would be my father-in-law. And Uncle Norfolk would really be our uncle.’
‘Imagine his face.’
‘Oh, his face. Yes, one would go barefoot over hot coals to see his expression.’
‘Think about it. Don't tell anybody.’
Richard goes out with a bob of the head but without another word. It seems he interprets ‘don't tell anybody’ as ‘don't tell anybody but Rafe’, because ten minutes later Rafe comes in, and stands looking at him, with his eyebrows raised. Red-headed people can look quite strained when they are raising eyebrows that aren't really there. He says, ‘You need not tell Richard that Mary Boleyn once proposed herself to me. There's nothing between us. It won't be like Wolf Hall, if that's what you're thinking.’
‘And what if the bride thinks different? I wonder you don't marry her to Gregory.’
‘Gregory is too young. Richard is twenty-three, it is a good age to marry if you can afford it. And you have passed it – it's time you married too.’
‘I'm going, before you find a Boleyn for me.’ Rafe turns back and says softly, ‘Only this, sir, and I think it is what gives Richard pause … all our lives and fortunes depend now on that lady, and as well as being mutable she is mortal, and the whole history of the king's marriage tells us a child in the womb is not an heir in the cradle.’
In March, news comes from Calais that Lord Berners has died. The afternoon in his library, the storm blowing outside: it seems when he looks back a haven of peace, the last hour he had to himself. He wants to make an offer for his books – a generous one, to help Lady Berners – but the folios seem to have jumped off their desks and walked, some in the direction of Francis Bryan, the old man's nephew, and some to another connection of his, Nicholas Carew. ‘Would you forgive his debts,’ he asks Henry, ‘at least for his wife's lifetime? You know he leaves –’
‘No sons.’ Henry's mind has moved ahead: once I was in that unhappy state, no sons, but soon I shall have my heir.
He brings Anne some majolica bowls. The word maschio is painted on the outside, and inside are pictures of plump blond-haired babies, each with a coy little phallus. She laughs. The Italians say for a boy you have to keep warm, he tells her. Heat up your wine to heat up your blood. No cold fruit, no fish.
Jane Seymour says, ‘Do you think it's already decided, what it will be, or does God decide later? Do you think it knows itself, what it is? Do you think if we could see inside you, we would be able to tell?’
‘Jane, I wish you were still down in Wiltshire,’ Mary Shelton says.
Anne says, ‘You needn't cut me up, Mistress Seymour. It is a boy, and no one is to say or think otherwise.’ She frowns, and you can see her bending, concentrating, the great force of her will.
‘I'd like a baby,’ Jane says.
‘Watch yourself,’ Lady Rochford tells her. ‘If your belly shows, mistress, we'll have you bricked up alive.’
‘In her family,’ Anne says, ‘they'd give her a bouquet. They don't know what continence means, down at Wolf Hall.’
Jane is flushed and trembling. ‘I meant no harm.’
‘Leave her,’ Anne says. ‘It's like baiting a fieldmouse.’ She turns to him. ‘Your bill is not passed yet. Tell me what is the delay.’
The bill, she means, to forbid appeals to Rome. He begins to explain to her the strength of the opposition, but she raises her eyebrows and says, ‘My father is speaking for you in the Lords, and Norfolk. So who dare oppose us?’
‘I shall have it through by Easter, depend upon it.’
‘The woman we saw in Canterbury, they say her people are printing a book of her prophecies.’
‘That may be, but I shall make sure no one reads it.’
‘They say on St Catherine's Day last, while we were at Calais, she saw a vision of the so-called princess Mary crowned queen.’ Her voice runs on, fluid, rapid, these are my enemies, this prophetess and those about her, Katherine who is plotting with the Emperor, her daughter Mary the supposed heir, Mary's old governess Margaret Pole, Lady Salisbury, she and all her family are my enemies, her son Lord Montague, her son Reginald Pole who is abroad, people talk of his claim to the throne so why can he not be brought back, his loyalty examined? Henry Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter, he believes he has a claim, but when my son is born that will put him out of his conceit. Lady Exeter, Gertrude, she is forever complaining that noblemen are being put down from their places by men of low birth, and you know who she means by that.
My lady, her sister says softly, do not distress yourself.
I am not distressed, Anne says. Her hand over the growing child, she says calmly, ‘These people want me dead.’
The days are still short, the king's temper shorter. Chapuys bows and writhes before him, twisting and grimacing, as if he had in mind to ask Henry to dance. ‘I have read with some perplexity certain conclusions reached by Dr Cranmer –’
‘My archbishop,’ the king says coldly; at great expense, the anointing has taken place.
‘–