The engravers are cunning. They can write a prayer or verse very small. But, Hans warns, such a ring must be of a certain weight, and perhaps more than a woman with small hands can conveniently wear. But she can hang it on a chain at her girdle, just as she can hang an image of her father, in miniature – where formerly she carried two or three pious tokens, emblems of those saints to whom maidens pray: St Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, or Felicity and Perpetua, eaten alive in the arena.
Hans has a round face, practical and innocent. He would not say things against you, with a covert meaning: surely not.
‘Or why should you not,’ Hans says, ‘have it made into a pendant? A medal? You could get more good advice on it, that way.’
‘But a ring is more –’
‘More of a promise,’ Hans says. ‘Thomas, I wonder that you can be so –’
But then a message comes in, to tell him to attend the Duke of Richmond. He never manages to finish a conversation these days, in his own household or in the king’s, in stable yard or chapel or council chamber. ‘Yes, I’m on my way,’ he says. And to Hans, ‘Give it some thought.’
He leaves the table strewn with sketches – his offers, Holbein’s emendations. There is something he needs to repeat to Mary, because he hasn’t said it strongly enough. These last few years you have carried a great burden, and carried it alone – and look at the result. You are stooped, you are worn, you are bowed under the weight of your past, and you are only twenty years old. Now let go. Let others bear the burden, who are stronger, and appointed by God to carry the cares of state. Look up at the world, instead of down at your prayer book. Try smiling. You’ll be surprised how much better you feel.
Not that you can put it like that to a woman. Stooped, worn – she might take it badly. Sometimes Mary looks twice her age. Sometimes she looks like an unformed child.
At St James’s, Richmond’s people usher him to the sickroom, shuttered against the midsummer heat. ‘Dr Butts,’ he says, nodding, and makes his bow to a miserable heap under the bedclothes.
At the sound of his voice the young duke stirs. He pushes the covers back. ‘Cromwell! You did not do what I said. I told you Parliament must name me heir.’ He punches a pillow away, as if it were interfering with his rights. ‘Why is my name not in the bill?’
‘Your lord father is still advising on the matter,’ he says easily. ‘The bill permits him liberty to decide who follows him. And you know you stand high in his favour.’
Attendants cluster around the bed, and under the doctor’s eye they ease the boy back against the bolsters, shake the quilts, swaddle him. A great bowl of water stands atop a brazier, bubbling away to moisten the air. Richmond leans forward, coughing. His face is burning, his nightshirt patched with sweat. When he masters the fit he subsides, white as the linen. He touches his breast. ‘Sore,’ he tells Butts.
Dr Butts says, ‘Turn on your afflicted side, my lord.’
The boy slaps out at his attendants. He wants to view Cromwell and he means to do it. He begins to talk, but there is little sense in what he says, and presently his eyelids flutter and close; at a signal from the doctor they ease away the cushions and settle him.
Butts makes a gesture: creep over here, my lord. ‘Usually I would keep him upright to ease his breathing, but he needs to sleep – I have prescribed a tincture. Otherwise I fear he would be up and fomenting trouble. He was fretting about poison. He mentioned you.’ The doctor pauses. ‘I do not mean to say he accused you.’
‘Some men always think they’re poisoned. In Italy one hears it.’
‘Well,’ Butts says, ‘in Italy they are probably right. But I said to him, my lord, poison most usually shows in gripes and chills, vomiting and confusion, a burning in the throat and entrails. But then he talked about Wolsey, the pain in his chest before he died –’
He takes Butts by his coat, unobtrusively. He doesn’t want this conversation public. The outer chamber is seething with people – retainers, well-wishers, probably creditors, too. Safe in a window embrasure, he murmurs: ‘About Wolsey – I do not know how young Fitzroy heard it, but what is your opinion? Could he be right?’
‘That he was poisoned?’ Butts looks him over. ‘I really have no idea. More likely his heart gave out. Consult your memory, if you will. I admired your old master. I did all I could to reconcile him with the king.’ Butts seems anxious: as if he fears he, Cromwell, is nourishing a grudge. ‘Dr Agostino was with him at the end, not I. But they say he starved and purged himself, which is never advisable while travelling in winter … and think what he was travelling towards. A trial or an act of attainder, and the Tower. The fear would act upon a man.’
He says, ‘The cardinal was not afraid of the living or the dead.’
