‘I give you warning,’ Dame Elizabeth says. ‘And you can carry the warning to the king. I will not surrender this house. Not this year, nor next, nor any year this side of Heaven.’
He holds up his hands. ‘The king has no thought of it.’
‘Here.’ She pushes a door open. ‘Wolsey’s daughter.’
Dorothea half-rises. With a gesture, he bids her sit. ‘Madam, how do you? I have brought gifts.’
They are in a side room, small and sunless. He permits himself a single long look. She is not like the cardinal. Her mother’s daughter? She is pleasant enough to look at, though she cannot fetch up a smile. Perhaps she is thinking, where have you been these years past?
He says, ‘I saw you once when you were a little child. You will not remember me.’
She does not reach out for her presents, so he places them in her lap. She unties the bundle, glances at the books and lays them aside. But she picks up a kerchief of fine linen, and holds it to the light. It is worked with the three apples of St Dorothea, and with wreaths, sprigs and blossoms, the lily and the rose.
‘One of my household made it to honour you. Rafe Sadler’s wife – you may have heard your father speak of young Sadler?’
‘No. Who is he?’
He takes out of his pocket a letter. It is from John Clancey, a gentleman-servant to the cardinal, who acted for her father in placing her here. He has had the letter for some time, and he has formed the habit, not of carrying it around, but of knowing where it is.
‘Clancey tells me you want to continue in this life. But I think, you were very young when you made your vows.’
Her head is bent over the kerchief, studying the work. ‘So I can be dispensed?’
‘You are free to go.’
‘Go where?’ she asks.
‘You are welcome in my house.’
‘Live with you?’ The chill in her tone pushes him backwards, even in the cramped space. She folds up the kerchief, so the design is hidden. ‘How is my brother Thomas Winter?’
‘He is well and provided for.’
‘By you?’
‘It is the least I can do for the cardinal. When your brother is next in England, I could arrange for you to meet.’
‘We would have nothing to say to each other. He a scholar. I a poor nun.’
‘I would keep him in my house and gladly. But for the sake of his studies he would rather live abroad.’
‘A cardinal’s son has no place in England. In Italy, I am told, he would be well accepted.’
‘In Italy he would be Pope.’
She turns her shoulder. Very well, he thinks. No more jokes.
‘When Anne Boleyn came down,’ she says, ‘we believed true religion would be restored. The whole summer has passed, and now we doubt it.’
‘True religion was never left off,’ he says. ‘You have had no opportunity to see the king’s manner of life – so you imagine the court spends its days in masques and dancing. Not so, I assure you. The king hears three Masses in daylight hours. He keeps all the feasts of the church, as ever he did. Fasting is observed, and the meatless days. We scant nothing.’
‘We hear the sacraments are to be put down. And that all monks and nuns will be dispersed. Dame Elizabeth is sure the king will take our house in the end. Then how would we live?’
‘There are no such plans,’ he says. ‘But if that were to occur, you would be pensioned. I believe your abbess would bargain hard.’
‘But what would we do, without our sisters in religion? We cannot go back to our families, if our families are dead.’ She flushes. ‘Or even if they are alive, they might not want us.’
He must be patient. ‘Dorothea, there is no need to weep. You are imagining harms that could never touch you.’
He thinks, should I embrace her? A king’s daughter has cried on my shoulder – or she would have, if I had stayed still.
‘I have come here to give you good assurances,’ he says. ‘I understand this place is all you have known till now. But you have all your life before you.’
‘Clancey brought me and left me here under his name. Everybody knew I was Wolsey’s daughter. It was not my choice to come, but no more is it my choice to leave. I do not wish to be turned out to beg my bread.’
This is women, he thinks – they must enact some scene, to wring tears from themselves and you. I have already offered her my house.
‘I will make you an annuity,’ he says.
‘I will not take it.’
He brushes that aside; it is the kind of thing that people say. ‘Or I will find you suitors, if you could like marriage.’
‘Marriage?’ She is incredulous.
He laughs. ‘You have heard of that blessed state?’
‘A bastard daughter? The bastard daughter of a disgraced priest? And no looks, even?’
He thinks, a good dowry would make you a beauty. But that is not what she wants to hear. ‘Trust me, you are a lovely young woman. Till now, no good man has held up a mirror, for you to see yourself through his eyes. Once you have clothes and ornaments, you will be a welcome sight for a bridegroom. I know the best merchants, and I know the fashions at the French court, and in Italy. I have dressed …’ He breaks off. I have dressed two queens.
She appraises him. ‘I am sure your eye is expert.’
‘Or if you would consider me, I could, I myself –’
