went out on a May morning, it seems. And none of them came back. She has scooped up the money he left her. On her face, as she greets him, no sign of the night’s transaction; but she comes out and speaks to him, her voice low, as they prepare to ride. Christophe, with a lordly air, pays the reckoning to their host. The day is milder and their progress swift and without event. Certain images will be all that remain from his ride into middle England. The holly berries burning in their bushes. The startled flight of a woodcock, flushed from almost beneath their hooves. The feeling of venturing into a watery place, where soil and marsh are the same colour and nothing is solid under your feet.
Kimbolton is a busy market town, but at twilight the streets are empty. They have made no great speed, but it is futile to wear out horses on a task that is important, but not urgent; Katherine will live or die at her own pace. Besides, it is good for him to get out to the country. Squeezed in London’s alleys, edging horse or mule under her jetties and gables, the mean canvas of her sky pierced by broken roofs, one forgets what England is: how broad the fields, how wide the sky, how squalid and ignorant the populace. They pass a wayside cross that shows recent signs of excavation at its base. One of the men at arms says, ‘They think the monks are burying their treasure. Hiding it from our master here.’
‘So they are,’ he says. ‘But not under crosses. They’re not that foolish.’
In the main street they draw rein at the church. ‘What for?’ says Christophe.
‘I need a blessing,’ he says.
‘You need to make your confession, sir,’ one of the men says.
Smiles are exchanged. It is harmless, no one thinks the worse of him: only that their own beds were cold. He has noticed this: that men who have not met him dislike him, but when they have met him, only some of them do. We could have put up at a monastery, one of his guard had complained; but no girls in a monastery, I suppose. He had turned in the saddle: ‘You really think that?’ Knowing laughter from the men.
In the church’s frigid interior, his escort flap their arms across their bodies; they stamp their feet and cry ‘Brr,’ like bad actors. ‘I’ll whistle for a priest,’ Christophe says.
‘You will do no such thing.’ But he grins; can imagine his young self saying it, and doing it too.
But there is no need to whistle. Some suspicious janitor is edging in with a light. No doubt a messenger is stumbling towards the great house with news: watch out, make ready, lords are here. It is decorous for Katherine to have some warning, he feels, but not too much. ‘Imagine it,’ Christophe says, ‘we might burst in on her when she is plucking her whiskers. Which women of that age do.’
To Christophe, the former queen is a broken jade, a crone. He thinks, Katherine would be my age, or thereabouts. But life is harsher to women, particularly women who, like Katherine, have been blessed with many children and seen them die.
Silently the priest arrives at his elbow, a timid fellow who wants to show the church’s treasures. ‘Now you must be …’ He runs through a list in his head. ‘William Lord?’
‘Ah. No.’ This is some other William. A long explanation ensues. He cuts it short. ‘As long as your bishop knows who you are.’ Behind him is an image of St Edmund, the man with five hundred fingers; the saint’s feet are pointed daintily, as if he is dancing. ‘Hold up the lights,’ he says. ‘Is that a mermaid?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ A shadow of anxiety crosses the priest’s face. ‘Must she come down? Is she forbidden?’
He smiles. ‘I just thought she’s a long way from the sea.’
‘She’s stinking fish.’ Christophe yells with laughter.
‘Forgive the boy. He’s no poet.’
A feeble smile from the priest. On an oak screen St Anne holds a book for the instruction of her little daughter, the Virgin Mary; St Michael the Archangel hacks away with a scimitar at a devil entwining his feet. ‘Are you here to see the queen, sir? I mean,’ the priest corrects himself, ‘the Lady Katherine?’
This priest doesn’t know me from Adam, he thinks. I could be any emissary. I could be Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. I could be Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. They have both tried on Katherine their scant persuasive powers and their best bully-boy tricks.
He doesn’t give his name, but he leaves an offering. The priest’s hand enfolds the coins as if to warm them. ‘You will forgive my slip, my lord? Over the lady’s title? I swear I meant no harm by it. For an old countryman such as I am, it is hard to keep up with the changes. By the time we have understood one report from London, it is contradicted by the next.’
‘It’s hard for us all,’ he says, shrugging. ‘You pray for Queen Anne every Sunday?’
‘Of course, my lord.’
‘And what do your parishioners say to that?’
The priest looks embarrassed. ‘Well, sir, they are simple people. I would not pay heed to what they say. Though they are all very loyal,’ he adds hastily. ‘Very loyal.’
‘No doubt. Will you please me now, and this Sunday in your prayers remember Tom Wolsey?’
The late cardinal? He sees the old fellow revising his ideas. This can’t be Thomas Howard or Charles Brandon: for if you speak the name of Wolsey, they can hardly restrain themselves from spitting at your feet.
When they leave the church, the last light is vanishing into the sky, and a stray snowflake drifts along towards the south. They remount; it has been a long day; his clothes feel heavy on his back. He doesn’t believe the dead need our prayers, nor can they use them. But anyone who knows the Bible as he does, knows that our God is a capricious God, and there’s no harm in hedging your bets. When the woodcock flew up in its flash of reddish brown, his heart had knocked hard. As they rode he was aware of it, each beat a heavy wing-beat; as the bird found the concealment of trees, its tracing of feathers inked out to black.
They arrive in the half-dark: a hallooing from the walls, and an answering shout from Christophe: ‘Thomas Cremuel, Secretary to the king and Master of the Rolls.’
‘How do we know you?’ a sentry bellows. ‘Show your colours.’
‘Tell him show a light and let me in,’ he says, ‘or I’ll show his backside my boot.’
He has to say these things, when he’s up-country; it’s expected of him, the king’s common adviser.
The drawbridge must come down for them: an antique scrape, a creak and rattling of bolts and chains. At Kimbolton they lock in early: good. ‘Remember,’ he says to his party, ‘do not make the priest’s mistake. When you talk to her household she is the Dowager Princess of Wales.’
‘What?’ Christophe says.
‘She is not the king’s wife. She never was the king’s wife. She is the wife of the king’s deceased brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales.’
‘Deceased means dead,’ Christophe says. ‘I know it.’
‘She is not a queen, or former queen, as her second so-called marriage was not licit.’
‘That is, not permissible,’ Christophe says. ‘She make the mistake of conjugation with both brothers, Arthur first then Henry.’
‘And what are we to think of such a woman?’ he says, smiling.
Flare of torches and, taking form out of dimness, Sir Edmund Bedingfield: Katherine’s keeper. ‘I think you might have warned us, Cromwell!’
‘Grace, you didn’t want warning of me, did you?’ He kisses Lady Bedingfield. ‘I didn’t bring my supper. But there’s a mule cart behind me, it will be here tomorrow. I have venison for your own table, and some almonds for the queen, and a sweet wine that Chapuys says she favours.’
‘I am glad of anything that will tempt her appetite.’ Grace Bedingfield leads the