kitchen is so good, there are aldermen out there, with their hoods up so we don't know them. And I have a houseful here, whether you are with us or not – I have Frenchmen, Germans, I have Florentiners, they all claim to know you and they all want their dinner to their own liking, I have their servants down here, pinch of that, soupçon of the other. We must feed fewer, or build another kitchen.’
‘I'll get it in hand.’
‘Master Rafe says for the Tower you have bought out the whole of a quarry in Normandy. He says the Frenchmen are all undermined, and dropping into holes in the ground.’
Such beautiful stone. The colour of butter. Four hundred men on the payroll, and anyone standing about instantly redeployed to the building work at Austin Friars. ‘Thurston, don't let anybody put pinches or soupçons in our dinner.’ He thinks, that's how Bishop Fisher nearly died; unless it was an unboiled stockpot after all. You could never fault Thurston's stockpot. He goes and views it, bubbling away. ‘Where is Richard, do you know?’
‘Chopping onions on the back step. Oh, you mean Master Richard? Upstairs. Eating. Where's anybody?’
He goes up. The Easter eggs, he sees, bear his own unmistakable features. Jo has painted his hat and his hair in one, so he seems to be wearing a cap with ear-flaps. She has given him at least two chins. ‘Well, sir,’ Gregory says, ‘it is true you are getting stout. When Stephen Vaughan was here he could not believe you.’
‘My master the cardinal waxed like the moon,’ he says. ‘It is a mystery, because he hardly sat down to dine but he would be leaping up to deal with some exigency, and even when he was at the table he could hardly eat for talking. I feel sorry for myself. I have not broken bread since last night.’ He breaks it, and says, ‘Hans wants to paint me.’
‘I hope he can run fast,’ Richard says.
‘Richard –’
‘Have your dinner.’
‘My breakfast. No, never mind it. Come.’
‘The happy bridegroom,’ Gregory says, taunting.
‘You,’ his father threatens him, ‘are going north with Rowland Lee. If you think I'm a hard man, wait till you meet Rowland.’
In his office, he says, ‘How is your practice in the lists?’
‘Good. Cromwells will knock down all-comers.’
He is afraid for his son; that he will fall, be maimed, be killed. Afraid for Richard too; these boys are the hope of his house. Richard says, ‘So am I? The happy bridegroom?’
‘The king says no. It is not because of my family, or your family – he calls you his cousin. He is, at this moment, his disposition to us, I would say it is excellent. But he needs Mary for himself. The child is due in late summer and he is afraid to touch Anne. And he does not wish to resume his celibate life.’
Richard looks up. ‘He said this?’
‘He left me to understand it. And as I understand it, I convey it to you, and we are both amazed, but we get over it.’
‘I suppose if the sisters were more alike, one could begin to understand it.’
‘I suppose,’ he says, ‘one could.’
‘And he is the head of our church. No wonder foreigners laugh.’
‘If he were a model of conduct in his private life, one would be … surprised … but for me, you see, I can only concern myself with his kingship. If he were oppressive, if he were to override Parliament, if he were to pay no heed to the Commons and govern only for himself … But he does not … so I cannot concern myself with how he behaves to his women.’
‘But if he were not king …’
‘Oh, I agree. You'd have him locked up. But again, Richard, leave aside Mary and he has behaved well enough. He hasn't filled a nursery with his bastards, as the Scottish kings do. There have been women, but who can name them? Only Richmond's mother, and the Boleyns. He has been discreet.’
‘I dare say Katherine knew their names.’
‘Who can say he will be a faithful husband? Will you?’
‘I may not get the chance.’
‘On the contrary, I have a wife for you. Thomas Murfyn's girl? A Lord Mayor's daughter is not a bad prospect. And your fortune will more than match hers, I will make sure of that. And Frances likes you. I know because I have asked her.’
‘You have asked my wife to marry me?’
‘Since I was dining there yesterday – no point in delay, was there?’
‘Not really.’ Richard laughs. He stretches back in his chair. His body – his capable, admirable body, which has impressed the king so much – is rinsed with relief. ‘Frances. Good. I like Frances.’
Mercy approves. He cannot think how she would have taken to Lady Carey; he had not broached the topic with the women. She says, ‘Don't leave it too long to make a match for Gregory. He is very young, I know. But some men never grow up until they have a son of their own.’
He hasn't thought about it, but it might be true. In that case, there's hope for the kingdom of England.
Two days later he is back at the Tower. The time goes quickly between Easter and Whit, when Anne will be crowned. He inspects her new apartments and orders in braziers to help dry out the plaster. He wants to get on with the frescoes – he wishes Hans would come down, but he is painting de Dinteville and says he needs to push on with it, as the ambassador is petitioning Francis for his recall, a whining letter on every boat. For the new queen we are not going to have those hunting scenes you see painted everywhere, or grim virgin saints with the instruments of their torture, but goddesses, doves, white falcons, canopies of green leaves. In the distance, cities seated on the hills: in the foreground, temples, groves, fallen columns and hot blue skies delineated, as within a frame, by borders of Vitruvian colours, quicksilver and cinnabar, burnt ochre, malachite, indigo and purple. He unrolls the sketches the craftsmen have made. Minerva's owl spreads her wings across a panel. A barefoot Diana fits an arrow to her bow. A white doe watches her from the trees. He scribbles a direction to the overseer: Arrow to be picked out in gold. All goddesses have dark eyes. Like a wingtip from the dark, dread brushes him: what if Anne dies? Henry will want another woman. He will bring her to these rooms. Her eyes may be blue. We will have to scour away the faces and paint them again, against the same cities, the same violet hills.
Outside he stops to watch a fight. A stonemason and the bricklayer's gaffer are swiping at each other with battens. He stands in the ring with the trowel men. ‘What's it about?’
‘Nuffing. Stone men have to fight brick men.’
‘Like Lancaster and York?’
‘Like that.’
‘Have you ever heard of the field called Towton? The king tells me more than twenty thousand Englishmen died.’
The man gapes at him. ‘Who were they fighting?’
‘Each other.’
It was Palm Sunday, the year 1461. The armies of two kings met in the driving snow. King Edward the king's grandfather was the winner, if you can say there was a winner at all. Corpses made a bobbing bridge across the river. Uncounted numbers crawled away, rolled and tumbled in their own blood: some blinded, some disfigured, some maimed for life.
The child in Anne's womb is the guarantee of no more civil war. He is the beginning, the start of something, the promise of another country.
He walks into the fight. He bellows at them to stop. He gives them both a push and they bowl over backwards: two crumbly Englishmen, snappable bones, chalky teeth. Victors of Agin-court. He's glad Chapuys isn't there to see.
The trees are in full leaf when he rides into Bedfordshire, with a small train on unofficial business. Christophe rides beside