Luckily, Lord Cromwell has been everywhere. He knows the eastern ports, the castles on the high fells. For the cardinal he used to ride to Durham. He could go north himself, get more certain news, and escort some of the king’s treasure to pay the troops. ‘But suppose they seized your person?’ Mr Wriothesley says. ‘Suppose they asked a ransom?’
‘How much do you think Henry would pay? He should set my value against what I bring in to the treasury.’
Richard Riche frowns. ‘And he should estimate, my lord, what you might bring in years to come, should God spare you.’
Call-Me suppresses a smile. Riche says, ‘Why the sneer, Wriothesley?’
‘It is not for any rebel to know Lord Cromwell’s worth.’
Riche turns on him. ‘You are not named in their songs, are you? Obscurity has its merits.’
Gregory says encouragingly, ‘They will hate you once they know you, Call-Me.’
He says, ‘I am sure you have deserved ill of them. They cannot find a rhyme for you, that’s all. They are worse poets than Tom Truth.’
An army must be supplied. With the king’s forces go the harness-makers and blacksmiths, the armourers, purveyors of soup kettles, bowstrings, blankets, buckets, trivets, rivets: and unless they are to go unpaid you need clerks to keep accounts, and the clerks need ink-horns and parchment and wax for seals. Each man in the field needs ale or beer, bacon and beef, salt fish and cheese, biscuits baked and not too old, peas or beans to boil in salt liquor, and a pot to boil them in. To get these things you need ready cash in a strongbox. When you are at war a promise will not do.
And as for the greater business of the realm – it does not stop because some arsewipes in the shires are waving pitchforks. Marriages are made and children born, and children grow and need new gowns, new household goods and minders. It is time Anne Boleyn’s child began learning her letters. The Lady Mary longs for an infant of her own to love and in default she tries to love her half-sister; the child cannot be blamed, she says, for what her mother was. As her features emerge from baby flesh, Eliza is beginning to resemble less a piglet and more the king, so these days no one suggests she is Norris’s by-blow. No child should be left floating queasily, in the space between fathers. She is still a bastard, of course. But even a bastard daughter has value on the marriage market, if the King of England acknowledges her: so her education should be that of a princess.
He has arranged a stipend for a young woman, Cat Champernowne, whom he knows to be kind and a good Latinist. He trusts Eliza will live to thank him. It is important a child’s first tutor should be gentle and like a mother, so the child is not afraid of making mistakes. Look at Gregory, who now promises so well. His first tutor was Margaret Vernon, who was prioress at Little Marlow – a small house which closed this summer. Margaret has visited him in London, to exclaim over her pupil, his height, his looks, his manners. ‘Where have the years gone? It seems only yesterday since he was learning his Pater Noster.’
No one should think he hates nuns, or monks either. Many of them have been his friends. He used to ride up to Little Marlow, making business in the neighbourhood. His mother-in-law Mercy said, ‘What does she look like, this Margaret Vernon?’
He understood the question. ‘She’s not young.’
Gregory prospered with her. Now she must prosper in her turn. He makes a note: Margaret Vernon to Malling, Kent. Malling is a solid house, she will be well enough there: for as long as Malling lasts.
He thinks of Dorothea. He draws a monster in the margin of his papers. He thinks about Dr Agostino and his potions. If there is a mystery about the cardinal’s death, he is no nearer to solving it. The solution, he must suppose, lies in the heart of the king.
When he goes to the queen’s private apartments with Rafe and Call-Me, he finds her seated as usual among her women. Today everybody is sewing and no one singing; the queen’s neckline is edged with goldsmiths’ work, from which depend single fat pearls in the shape of tears. ‘Highness,’ he says, ‘why not ask the king to fetch Lady Mary here?’
‘That would cheer us up,’ Jane Rochford says. ‘She is famous for her japes.’
The women hide their smiles. He says, ‘I think Lady Mary’s health would improve with gentle company.’
‘Do you?’ Rochford says. ‘I suppose it were pity if she went on praying till she wore out her knees. In the country one loses any looks one has.’
‘Lady Rochford speaks from experience,’ says Edward Seymour’s wife.
Rochford says, ‘If Mary is here with us, the rebels cannot take her. Nor she, for that matter, resort to them.’
‘She would never do so,’ he says. ‘I have her pledge.’
Rochford folds her hands, smiling.
Jane the queen says, ‘I would like her company, myself. I could ask the king. But he is displeased with me. Because I am not, yet.’
‘With child,’ Jane Rochford supplies.
The queen says, ‘I hear agates are helpful. You lay them next the skin.’
