Anne Bassett must have finer linen, so fine the skin shows through. She needs a gable hood, and a girdle sewn thickly with pearls. When she reappears by the queen’s side, it is with her hair hidden, her skull squeezed, and in a gown belonging to my lady Sussex.
When next he sees John Husee and hails him, Husee shoots off in the other direction.
Whitehall: he arrives outside the Lady Mary’s presence chamber, Gregory attending him. Some grand arrival is in the air. Household folk crowd him, chattering: ‘Who is it, Lord Cromwell?’ Mary’s silkwoman has brought a basket. A boy has come to tune her virginals. A little dwarf woman called Jane is waddling around the chamber: ‘Welcome, one and all.’
‘Dodd!’ He greets Mary’s usher. ‘Big fish today.’ He speaks for everyone to hear. ‘A Spanish gentleman has come from the Emperor, to assist Ambassador Chapuys in wooing the Lady Mary.’
One of the queen’s ladies, Mary Mounteagle, has coins in a net purse; the queen lost at cards last night, and now pays her debts. Another lady, Nan Zouche, escorts her, as if she might be robbed. Both of them hang on his elbows: ‘A Spanish gentleman? Is not Dom Luis a Portuguese?’
‘Though it is all the same,’ Nan Zouche says. ‘All the Emperor’s cousins.’
Mounteagle asks, ‘Does Dom Luis speak English? If not, Lord Cromwell will have to kneel at their bedside, interpreting.’
‘I do not speak Portuguese, so they must make shift,’ he says. ‘Does the Lady Mary always collect her winnings?’
‘Always,’ Nan says. ‘And she is such a gambler! One day she bet her breakfast on a game of bowls.’
The little woman says, ‘I hope the ambassador does not bring her comfits. Her teeth are not sound.’ She shows her own. ‘Me, I can crack nuts.’
The great men enter to the sound of giggling. The new envoy, Don Diego de Mendoza, is followed by Chapuys, followed in turn by his Flemish bodyguard. Don Diego is one of those men who requires a big space around himself. Chapuys looks jittery: he backs away to allow the new man to be admired, in his plumes and black velvet. Prominently and reverently, Mendoza carries a black-ribboned letter, sealed with the double-headed eagle. ‘Lord Cremuel,’ he says. ‘I have heard a great deal about you.’
‘And I,’ he says pleasantly, ‘feel I know you already. For you must be related to that Mendoza who was ambassador in the cardinal’s time?’
‘I have that honour.’
‘The cardinal locked him up.’
‘A violation of every agreed principle of diplomacy,’ Mendoza says. The chill in his voice would blight a vineyard. ‘I did not know you were at court then.’
‘No. As I was the cardinal’s man, I have inherited his concerns.’
‘But not his methods,’ Chapuys says quickly.
It is evident that Eustache is keen to make a success of the encounter. ‘You have much in common, gentlemen. Don Diego has been in Italy. At the universities of Padua, and Bologna.’
‘You were there, Cremuel?’ Mendoza asks.
‘Yes, but not at the university.’
‘Don Diego knows Arabic,’ Chapuys offers.
He is alert. ‘Does it take years to learn?’
‘Yes,’ Don Diego says. ‘Years and years.’
He asks, ‘Have you brought Dom Luis’s portrait for my lady?’
‘Just this,’ the ambassador says, showing his letter.
‘I thought perhaps you had it in miniature, and carried it next to your heart.’
It is obvious that Don Diego is carrying something of which he is painfully aware: as you might be aware if someone slid a hot iron under your shirt. No doubt it is a second letter, perhaps in code.
‘There are presents, of course. Which follow by mule,’ says Mendoza.
‘Because they are large,’ Chapuys says.
‘Good. Lady Mary has lavish tastes. That’s why her father has brought her to court. He could not maintain her in a separate household. She wrote for more money every week.’
‘She is generous with her small means,’ Chapuys says. ‘Charitable.’
‘I suppose she lives as befits a princess?’ Don Diego says. ‘You would not expect her to do other?’
‘Ordinarily,’ Chapuys advises, ‘Lord Cremuel would kick your shin if you spoke her proper title. They call her by her plain name, Mary. But behold – when they are offering her in marriage, we call her “princess” and suddenly,’ he smirks, ‘Cremuel does not mind at all.’
The door of the chamber opens and out issues Mary’s chaplain, in conference with her doctor, a Spaniard. To the chaplain he says, ‘How do you, Father Baldwin? How does my lady?’ The doctor he greets in his best Castilian: suck on that, Mendoza. ‘I will give you a quarter of an hour, ambassador. Then I regret I shall interrupt you.’
Chapuys protests: ‘It is hardly time enough for them to pray together.’
‘Oh, will they do that?’ He smiles.
Dodd the usher bows Mendoza into the presence chamber. ‘Has she attendance?’ Nan Zouche says, and the two ladies exchange a glance and slip in after the ambassador. The door closes.
Chapuys mutters something. It sounds like, ‘Hopeless.’
‘I’m sorry, ambassador?’ he says.
‘I think those ladies are your friends, who have just intruded on the Lady Mary.’
