Hans whistles up a boy, who scuffles through the sheets bearing the king’s head, till he finds a version the master is content to show. He, Cromwell, puts his thumb on the king’s forehead, as if he were smudging him with chrism. ‘Turn the head. Turn it full on. Make him look at us.’
‘God in Heaven,’ Hans says, ‘that will be frightening. Turn body and all?’
Frowning face and massive shoulders. Bloated waist, padded cod. Legs like the pillars that hold the globe in place. Legs that could never stagger, feet never lose the path.
As July comes in Lord Latimer is down from the north, complaining to all who will listen of his sufferings at the hands of the Pilgrims. He will be glad to see much less of Yorkshire; he knows the king’s business will force him back, but for the rest of the time he will be content to live on his property in Pershore: and so says his wife Kate.
Lord Latimer wonders why young men hide smiles. What’s funny about his wife Kate?
News comes from Scotland that Princess Madeleine is dead. Her triumphant entry into Edinburgh will not now take place. The banners are furled, the pageants dismantled, the silver trumpets laid in their cases.
Henry says, ‘Surely James will seek another Frenchwoman. But I do not think François will let him have his younger daughter, to be exposed to the Scottish air. There is the Duchess of Vendôme – though James turned her down once, and I do suppose her people are offended.’
‘The Duke of Longueville has died,’ he says, ‘leaving a widow – a very handsome woman, they say, only three years wed, yet with a son in her arms and another child in the womb. James might look that way.’
But I don’t know, he thinks, if she would look at James. The family of Marie de Guise are such lofty people they might not know where Scotland is. Anyway, James will be mourning a while yet. A pension was to come with Madeleine, thirty thousand francs a year; it will not continue with a corpse.
Madeleine was one month shy of her seventeenth birthday. In fairness to the French, they did advise James to choose a more robust bride.
With Lady Oughtred, on a fine evening, he walks in the queen’s privy garden. Bess rests her hand on his arm. ‘So the marriage, when shall it be?’ she asks.
‘As soon as you like. But,’ he stops and turns her to face him, ‘you do like?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Her eyes are warm. ‘I know some would think …’
‘There are disparities, of course. I have talked it over with your brothers. I have not shirked the point.’
‘But after all, I am a widow,’ she says, ‘and not some inexperienced girl.’
He is not sure what she means; but then, why should he expect to understand this young woman’s mind? ‘My lady, may I ask – it is perhaps too private a matter –’
‘Whatever it is, I am bound in obedience to tell you.’
‘Well then … I should like to know, do you mourn your husband still?’
She turns her face away; he admires her: her face, like Jane’s, has a soft smooth shape, and she has the same habit of dipping her chin, as if taking a covert survey of what’s around her.
She says, ‘I make no complaint of Oughtred. He was a good husband and I regret his passing. But you will not think me heartless if I say I could also be happy with a different kind of man?’ She turns her face up to his, earnest; he sees how she wants to please him. ‘I am quite ready to make trial of it.’
‘When my wife died,’ he says, ‘I missed her out of all measure. Considering what my life was then, always riding up the country, over to Antwerp half a dozen times a year, late nights with the cardinal, livery dinners and conclaves at Gray’s Inn … sometimes when I’d come in she’d say, “I’m Lizzie Cromwell, have you seen my husband?”’
‘Lizzie,’ she says. ‘Just as well I’m Bess these days. It is the same with all Elizabeths – as we are called, we answer.’
He smiles. ‘I won’t confuse the two of you.’
‘We did suppose, myself and Jane, that you were fond of your wife, because you never took any opportunity you were offered – and Jane says you were friendly with Mary Boleyn, and could have married her if you pleased.’
‘Oh, that was just Mary’s whim,’ he says. ‘She wanted to upset her people. Put Uncle Norfolk in a rage. And she thought I would do a good job of that. Mary has a good heart, and they say she suits well with that fellow Stafford she wed. But I thought of her as … God love her, well-used.’
She is anxious. ‘But you do not object to a widow?’
‘My first wife was a widow.’
‘If you had wed Mary Boleyn you would have been related to the king.’
‘After a manner.’
‘You will be related to him now. Though it has taken longer.’
He thinks, how gentle she is, to give thought to my state of mind. How careful she is, for she has mentioned the old gossip about Mary Boleyn, but never the new gossip about Mary the king’s daughter.
He halts; the garden’s scents rise around them; he turns her to face him, taking her two hands. ‘Let’s not talk about the dead. I would rather talk about you. We must dress you up. We must order some silks and velvets. And I thought, emeralds?’
