Henry eases his shoulders, flexes his knees. Portrait-taking freezes muscle, makes feet hard to manage, makes elbows feel as if they belong to someone else. The harder he tries to hold still, the more the king fidgets. He says, ‘I have messages from Ireland. They want you to go over for a season, my lord Cromwell. They think you could bring order. I do suppose you could.’
‘So am I to go?’
‘No. They might murder you.’
Hans hums.
The king shifts his stance. ‘When are the bishops going to utter?’
Since early in the year the bishops have been working on their profession of faith. It is only last July that the ten articles were issued, and gave birth to months of debate. The king hopes a new statement will consolidate opinion. But every time the bishops send Henry some text, he writes over it and makes nonsense of their propositions. Then the papers go back to Thomas Cranmer: who emends the king’s emendations, and corrects his syntax while he is about it.
Hans says, ‘Would your Majesty be so gracious as to turn his face? Not to Lord Cromwell, to me?’
Henry obeys. He stares at the painter and speaks to his minister: ‘Has Lisle’s man been here? I marvel Lady Lisle has not taken to her chamber. She must be near her time.’
‘Your Majesty will be the first to know.’
Hans says, ‘If she has a boy Lord Lisle will shoot off cannon, so if it is a still day they will hear it in Dover and put a rider on the road. I hope the walls of Calais do not fall down.’
‘Master,’ he whispers, ‘you forget yourself. Apply to your trade.’
Sometimes, sitting beside the king – it is late, they are tired, he has been working since first light – he allows his body to confuse with that of Henry, so that their arms, lying contiguous, lose their form and become cloudy like thaw water. He imagines their fingertips graze, his mind meets the royal will: ink dribbles onto the paper. Sometimes the king nods into sleep. He sits by him scarcely breathing, careful as a nursemaid with a fractious brat. Then Henry starts, wakes, yawns; he says, as if he were to blame, ‘It is midnight, master!’ The past peels away: the king forgets he is ‘my lord’; he forgets what he has made him. At dawn, and twilight, when the light is an oyster shell, and again at midnight, bodies change their shape and size, like cats who slide from dormer to gable and vanish into the murk.
But today it is not ten o’clock: a morning in early spring, the light a primrose blur. ‘Is it not dinnertime?’ the king says, and then, ‘What do you hear from Norfolk?’
‘That he has a chill. A lax. Each day a flux.’
The king laughs. ‘So delicate a soul. Like the Princess Madeleine.’
Hans tuts. ‘A solemn countenance, if it sorts with your Majesty? And eyes to me? If my lord Cromwell does anything worth turning around for, I shall let your Majesty know.’
The silence returns. In Florence, he thinks, an artist would make a whole man in a mould. You strip him naked and rub him with grease and close him in a case up to his chin. You pour in plaster and let it set, and when you are ready you take a chisel and open the case like a nut. You draw out the man, his skin rose-red all over, and wash him, then you promise to model his head another day: but you have his form you can use ever after, to make satyrs or saints or gods from Mount Olympus.
Down below in the privy kitchen they are roasting dottrels for dinner. His spaniel starts awake, and runs in excited circles as the savour drifts up. The king’s eye follows her; Hans scoops her up and gives her to a menial, saying severely, ‘Collect her later, my lord.’
As the hour passes, more and more noise crowds into it: the ring of horseshoes on cobbles, bursts of shouting from distant courtyards, trumpeters clattering past to practice: till finally it seems as if the whole of the court is in there with them. Meanwhile the king’s expression changes slowly, as if the moon waxes; so by the time Hans signals that he is done, Henry seems to glow from within. He gathers himself, rearranges his robes. He says, ‘I think the queen should be in my picture.’
Hans groans.
The king says, ‘Come to me later, Cromwell.’
‘How much later, sir?’
No reply: Henry sweeps away. A boy belonging to Hans gathers in the drawings. The king’s heads are turned this way and that; his brow is furrowed or clear, his eyes are blank or hostile, but the mouth is always the same, small and set.
‘Enough time, Hans?’
‘I suppose. I only wanted his head.’
‘We should have a lute player next time.’
‘With you in the room? You’re dangerous to them.’
Mark Smeaton resists oblivion. It is not yet a year, after all. He says, ‘I tell you again, I did not hurt Mark.’
‘I hear when he left your house his eyeballs hung out on his cheeks.’
Hans does not sound indignant: more curious, as if he imagines making an anatomical drawing.
‘Witnesses saw him on the scaffold,’ he says, ‘uninjured. Do not try my patience. And do not try the king’s.’
