It was years before he realised the boy who went to Smithfield was not the one who came home. The child Thomas still crouched under the stand, vigilant as the dogs, his hands cupped to catch the rainwater, the icy drops on his palm. It is a work he has never undertaken, to go back and retrieve himself. He can see that small figure, at the wrong end of time; he can feel the heave of its ribs as it tries to cry without uttering. He can see and feel, without pitying the child; only suspect that, to keep the streets tidy, someone ought to collect it and send it home.
Summer approaches. The French ambassador says to him, ‘Limping, my lord Cremuel?’
‘I got an injury long ago in your country’s service. The leg sometimes lets me down.’
Castillon says, ‘I wonder your king does not think you are mocking him.’
Leave that to the King of Scots. The second week of June, Madame de Longueville lands at the town of Fife, and is met by James and his nobles. She looks bonny; she has had a luckier voyage than the Princess Madeleine. With the blessings and acclamation of their countrymen on both sides, she and James ride to their wedding.
The Emperor, meanwhile, seems to have cooled towards the project of our marriage with Christina. The king tells our man in Brussels to spend whatever money it takes, to make it happen. But it is spelled out to the English that since their king was formerly married to Katherine of Aragon, who was Christina’s near kin, they will need a dispensation from the Pope. In which matter, Ambassador Mendoza says, you may find you have made a difficulty for yourself.
Archbishop Cranmer says, I wish all this diplomacy would stop, this casting of Master Hans to the four winds and this bandying of women’s honour. The king’s bride should be someone he knows and feels he can love. Because Henry thinks marriage should not be contracted without love. He used to sing a song about it in Katherine’s day:
But the council says, if a king makes a love-match once in his life, count him lucky. He can’t expect to do it again and again.
Since the king cannot have a wife he occupies himself in building. A new palace is to arise in Surrey, not far from Hampton Court. It is designed to create hunting grounds stretching many miles. At first it seems that a modest lodge will do, but then the king decides it will be one of the wonders of the world. He indents for Italian craftsmen and fetches in all the building stone from the demolition of Merton Abbey. He clears the manor house that stands already, with its farms, barns and stables, and knocks down the ancient parish church. He buys up tracts of adjacent manors. He orders a thousand loads of timber and begins building brick kilns.
Thomas Lord Cromwell, Vicegerent and Privy Seal, no longer has time to oversee the king’s building. He is able to advise on the choice of Italians, but the king is pleased to place Rafe Sadler in charge of the project. Anything Cromwell does for the king, Sadler and Thomas Wriothesley will be able to do: in time, and between them. He has trained them, encouraged them, written them as versions of himself: Rafe as the plain text, and Mr Wriothesley in cipher.
The building of the marvel goes on through the summer of 1538. When the king has a new wife he will place her in it, as a jewel in its setting. Meanwhile, separated from us by the Narrow Sea, the ladies of Europe watch the misty land through crystal mirrors; down the winding flowery path the messengers of the king advance, on high-stepping white steeds. In the old stories, princesses are never too old or too young or too papist. They wait patiently for the prince seven years and more, while he does his valiant deeds, and they spin out their fates from a single thread, growing the while their long golden hair.
Sometimes the king weeps for his late wife. Where shall we find a lady so benign, so meek, and so comely as Jane? As he cannot he amuses himself with the creation of the new palace, the rarest ever seen: and the name of the palace is Nonsuch.
II
Corpus Christi
Wyatt has followed the Emperor from the shores of Spain to Nice, where Charles has disembarked to meet the Pope and the King of France. Their meeting is like some ill-starred conjunction in the heavens, which we could forecast but not prevent. Early June, Wyatt is in England, pacing a room at St James’s. The Lord Privy Seal, sitting in a splash of weak sun, follows him with his eyes.
‘I saw Farnese,’ Wyatt says. ‘Close enough to spit. With Polo leaning on his shoulder, conspiring in his papal ear. I should have spitted him on my dagger, and carried home his collops.’
