The joust is not his model for public affairs. You don’t want your opponent to see you coming. The last thing you want is a tent and a flag. Mr Wriothesley complains of the time wasted. ‘I see it makes him happy, impressing young Gregory. But as far as business is concerned, not enough is done to justify the royal hour.’
The king flaps the score sheets down. ‘I could have made a living at it, riding through Europe, one tournament to another, if I had not been called to rule.’ His hands knead Gregory’s shoulders: ‘Look how this young master is putting on muscle.’ He ruffles his hair. ‘Daily practice is what I advise. If you cannot get into the tilt yard, still you can wear your armour for an hour. That way, you start to bear the weight as if it were a silk jerkin.’
‘Sir, even on a Sunday?’ Gregory says.
‘Ask your father.’ The king winks. ‘He is over the church, you know. I know him for an unholy fellow, making up accounts on the Sabbath, rattling away on an abacus and taking his pleasure. So why should you not have your sport? There is nothing like the wearing of harness, for any man who wishes to be lean as well as strong. With the heat inside, surplus runs from you like fat from a spit-roast.’
There are those who believe – and perhaps the king is one of them – that the health of the land depends on the health of its prince, and on his beauty besides. If you speak of an ordinary man you might say, ‘He cannot help his face.’ But a king must learn to help it. If he is ugly, so is the commonwealth. If the king is sick, so is his realm. Old men will tell you how the king’s grandfather King Edward grew soft in middle age, his eye always rolling in the direction of any woman at court, wife or maid, under the age of thirty. He lolled on a daybed with supple flesh, while his own brothers plotted against him, and when one brother was dead the other plotted alone: so golden a prince, lucky on the battlefield, blessed by God, was spoiled by sloth and neglect of business, because you cannot have your hand on your ministers when your fingers are creeping up a cunt. Even King Edward’s sons, two likely young sprigs, were pulled out like weeds and their corpses thrown God knows where.
He tells the doctors, ‘You forget the king is a newly married man. A man who wishes to produce strong children cannot do it on a vegetable diet.’
True, the doctors say, but neither can he eat as much as he did when he exercised every day. Not without an imbalance of the humours and congestion in the organs, a sluggish digestion and a fat liver.
Afternoon: he sits with the king in his library, where books are kept in great chests, volumes covered with embroidered velvet or scented leather, emblazoned with the royal arms or the badges of former owners. When our forefathers defeated the French under Great Harry, we shipped their manuscripts home across the sea. They were mirrors for princes, texts that prescribed how to be a king: they were written for kings to read.
‘Great Harry was not only a soldier,’ the king says. ‘He took his harp on campaign. He composed songs, but all of them are lost.’
In the king’s prayer book is portrayed King David, who plays his harp. Turn the page: David studies his psalter – it is an edition, in miniature, of the volume our king now holds. His red beard curled, his gown loose, the King of Israel sits at his leisure, holding in his hand the very book in which he is pictured.
‘Come, Gregory,’ the king says. ‘You are fond of stories of Merlin. My father had many books made about him. Choose and read.’
‘Are you not afraid of him?’ Gregory says. ‘His prophecies?’
‘Not I,’ the king says. ‘Merlin has been killing me these ten years. I have had my bones rotted and my head cankered, and as for London Bridge, I cannot count how many times it has crumbled, and this very castle in which we now sit washed downriver and into the sea. I am inclined now to doubt when I hear his pronouncements.’
‘Wizards are made like other men,’ Gregory says. ‘Offer Merlin an abbey. It could not hurt.’
‘Tell the Master of Augmentations,’ the king says, laughing. ‘I shall like to see Riche’s face.’
He is surprised the king does not burn such books. Merlin is popular in certain quarters, and you can see why he gets so much credit. He foretold a day would come when churches would be flattened and monks forced to marry; where German heathens sat at table with the king, and true noblemen were herded starving from the hall. But of course, Merlin also said that the river Usk would boil, and that bears would hatch out of eggs; that the soil of the future would become so rich that men would leave farm work and spend their days in fornication.
