says. His eyepatch, sewn with jewels, winks as he giggles. ‘She says Harry Percy will spoil everything for her. She cannot decide between striking him dead with one blow of a sword or teasing him apart over forty days of public torture, like they do in Italy.’
‘Those stories are much exaggerated.’
He has never witnessed, or quite believed in, Lady Anne's uncontrolled outbursts of temper. When he is admitted she is pacing, her hands clasped, and she looks small and tense, as if someone has knitted her and drawn the stitches too tight. Three ladies – Jane Rochford, Mary Shelton, Mary Boleyn – are following her with their eyes. A small carpet, which perhaps ought to be on the wall, is crumpled on the floor. Jane Rochford says, ‘We have swept up the broken glass.’ Sir Thomas Boleyn, Monseigneur, sits at a table, a heap of papers before him. George sits by him on a stool. George has his head in his hands. His sleeves are only medium-puffed. The Duke of Norfolk is staring into the hearth, where a fire is laid but not lit, perhaps attempting through the power of his gaze to make the kindling spark.
‘Shut the door, Francis,’ George says, ‘and don't let anybody else in.’
He is the only person in the room who is not a Howard.
‘I suggest we pack Anne's bags and send her down to Kent,’ Jane Rochford says. ‘The king's anger, once roused –’
George: ‘Say no more, or I may strike you.’
‘It is my honest advice.’ Jane Rochford, God protect her, is one of those women who doesn't know when to stop. ‘Master Cromwell, the king has indicated there must be an inquiry. It must come before the council. It cannot be fudged this time. Harry Percy will give testimony unimpeded. The king cannot do all he has done, and all he means to do, for a woman who is concealing a secret marriage.’
‘I wish I could divorce you,’ George says. ‘I wish you had a pre-contract, but Jesus, no chance of that, the fields were black with men running in the other direction.’
Monseigneur holds up a hand. ‘Please.’
Mary Boleyn says, ‘What is the use of calling in Master Cromwell, and not telling him what has already occurred? The king has already spoken to my lady sister.’
‘I deny everything,’ Anne says. It is as if the king is standing before her.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Good.’
‘That the earl spoke to me of love, I allow. He wrote me verse, and I being then a young girl, and thinking no harm of it –’
He almost laughs. ‘Verse? Harry Percy? Do you still have it?’
‘No. Of course not. Nothing written.’
‘That makes it easier,’ he says gently. ‘And of course there was no promise, or contract, or even talk of them.’
‘And,’ Mary says, ‘no consummation of any kind. There could not be. My sister is a notorious virgin.’
‘And how was the king, was he –’
‘He walked out of the room,’ Mary says, ‘and left her standing.’
Monseigneur looks up. He clears his throat. ‘In this exigency, there are a variety, and number of approaches, it seems to me, that one might –’
Norfolk explodes. He pounds up and down on the floor, like Satan in a Corpus Christi play. ‘Oh, by the thrice-beshitten shroud of Lazarus! While you are selecting an approach, my lord, while you are taking a view, your lady daughter is slandered up and down the country, the king's mind is poisoned, and this family's fortune is unmaking before your eyes.’
‘Harry Percy,’ George says; he holds up his hands. ‘Listen, will you let me speak? As I understand it, Harry Percy was persuaded once to forget his claims, so if he was fixed once –’
‘Yes,’ Anne says, ‘but the cardinal fixed him, and most unfortunately the cardinal is dead.’
There is a silence: a silence sweet as music. He looks, smiling, at Anne, at Monseigneur, at Norfolk. If life is a chain of gold, sometimes God hangs a charm on it. To prolong the moment, he crosses the room and picks up the fallen hanging. Narrow loom. Indigo ground. Asymmetrical knot. Isfahan? Small animals march stiffly across it, weaving through knots of flowers. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘Do you know what these are? Peacocks.’
Mary Shelton comes to peer over his shoulder. ‘What are those snake things with legs?’
‘Scorpions.’
‘Mother Mary, do they not bite?’
‘Sting.’ He says, ‘Lady Anne, if the Pope cannot stop you becoming queen, and I do not think he can, Harry Percy should not be in your way.’
‘So shift him out of it,’ Norfolk says.
‘I can see why it would not be a good idea for you, as a family –’
‘Do it,’ Norfolk says. ‘Beat his skull in.’
‘Figuratively,’ he says. ‘My lord.’
Anne sits down. Her face is turned away from the women. Her little hands are drawn into fists. Monseigneur shuffles his papers. George, lost in thought, takes off his cap and plays with its jewelled pin, testing the point against the pad of his forefinger.
He has rolled the hanging up, and he presents it gently to Mary Shelton. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers, blushing as if he had proposed something intimate. George squeaks; he has succeeded in pricking himself. Uncle Norfolk says bitterly, ‘You fool of a boy.’
Francis Bryan follows him out.
‘Please feel you can leave me now, Sir Francis.’
‘I thought I would go with you. I want to learn what you do.’
He checks his stride, slaps his hand flat into Bryan's chest, spins him sideways and hears the thud of his skull against the wall. ‘In a hurry,’ he says.
Someone calls his name. Master Wriothesley rounds a corner. ‘Sign of Mark and the Lion. Five minutes' walk.’
Call-Me has had men following Harry Percy since he came to London. His concern has been that Anne's ill-wishers at court – the Duke of Suffolk and his wife, and those dreamers who believe Katherine will come back – have been meeting with the earl and encouraging him in a view of the past that would be useful, from their point of view. But seemingly no meetings have occurred: unless they are held in bath-houses on the Surrey bank.
Call-Me turns sharply down an alley, and they emerge into a dirty inn yard. He looks around; two hours with a broom and a willing heart, and you could make it respectable. Mr Wriothes-ley's handsome red-gold head shines like a beacon. St Mark, creaking above his head, is tonsured like a monk. The lion is small and blue and has a smiling face. Call-Me touches his arm: ‘In there.’ They are about to duck into a side door, when from above there is a shrill whistle. Two women lean out of a window, and with a whoop and a giggle flop their bare breasts over the sill. ‘Jesu,’ he says. ‘More Howard ladies.’
Inside Mark and the Lion, various men in Percy livery are slumped over tables and lying under them. The Earl of Northumberland is drinking in a private room. It would be private, except there is a serving hatch through which faces keep leering. The earl sees him. ‘Oh. I was half expecting you.’ Tense, he runs his hands through his cropped hair, and it stands up in bristles all over his head.
He, Cromwell, goes to the hatch, holds up one finger to the spectators, and slams it in their face. But he is soft-voiced as ever when he sits down with the boy and says, ‘Now, my lord, what is to be done here? How can I help you? You say you can't live with your wife. But she is as lovely a lady as any in this kingdom, if she has faults I never heard of them, so why can you not agree?’
But Harry Percy is not here to be handled like a timid falcon. He is here to shout and weep. ‘If I could not agree with her on our wedding day, how can I agree now? She hates me because she knows we are not properly married.