In the king’s privy chamber he is surprised to meet Rafe. ‘You are on the rota, Master Sadler?’
An esquire says, waspish, ‘Master Sadler has his own rota. He is always here.’
‘He talks about my lord of Norfolk,’ Rafe says. ‘He is angry with him. And he has sent for Richmond’s inventories.’
‘Meg Douglas, does he say …?’
‘Not inclined to mercy.’
‘Right,’ he says.
A Genoese tailor is draping the king in black velvet. He greets the man, motioning him out. Henry says, ‘You practise still that Italian tongue.’
And its variants. The king knows enough Italian to sing an amorous ballad, but not enough to talk about money.
The tailor retreats, bowing, folds of night draped across his arms. ‘I am amazed,’ the king says, ‘that the Duke of Norfolk should so far forget himself as to ignore my wishes. I said a closed cart. I said, discretion. Now I hear that black riders went before.’
‘He did not want to dishonour a king’s son.’
‘He defied my intentions.’
‘He did not perfectly understand what they were.’
Henry stares at him: that’s no excuse. ‘Tell him I shall send him to the Tower.’
‘I durst not take that message.’ He surprises himself – because, as he delivers this useful lie, he smiles.
Henry is disarmed – like someone who discovers a child’s fear, and sees an easy means to dispel it. ‘If you fear Thomas Howard, then of course I shall relieve you of your task. I did not think you feared anyone. You should not, my lord. You have my authority.’
‘The Tower is filling up,’ he says. ‘Your lady sister has written from Scotland, begging that her daughter’s life be spared.’
‘I own Scotland,’ Henry says. ‘After Flodden I should have taken it back.’
He thinks, you did not have the men or the money. You did not have me. ‘The cardinal used to say, marriages work better than wars. If you want a kingdom, write a poem, pick some flowers, put on your bonnet and go wooing.’
‘Good advice,’ Henry says, ‘for any prince whose heart is his own. Or one who has the disposal of other hearts. But if princesses dispose of themselves to men of no fortune, only because they like their verses, then I do not know what world we live in any more.’
‘I move you to mercy,’ he says.
‘My niece is a shame and a disgrace. She gave herself to the first man who asked her. She gave what was mine to give.’
He thinks, I wish Cranmer were here. It is the bishop’s task to show how sins can be forgiven or redefined: to prove how adultery is not adultery, and killing no murder. It is he who holds the key to the walled garden of the king’s mind; he knows its shady walks, its allées, its rank corners where sunbeams never creep. ‘It seems to me,’ he says, ‘if a word is given lightly, in haste, by a young person, without the advice of sober friends, under the intoxication of love, without knowledge of where it will lead … I ask myself, sir, does God in His wisdom not wink at such a promise?’
‘God is not mocked,’ Henry says. ‘As St Paul is pleased to tell us, men reap what they sow, and women too. To take an oath and not to mean it, that is blasphemy. And if words are no more than breath, if words are air … if they are not bonds, if they are not honour …’
‘I speak of lovers. Not princes.’
The king turns his face away. ‘True, there is a difference.’ A pause. ‘There are great lords and rash young women who have cause to be grateful to you, my lord Cromwell.’
He inclines his head. He thinks, Wriothesley will be amazed, that once again I have let Norfolk wriggle away, when I have him on the hook. He imagines himself shouting through to Thomas Avery, who does his accounts: invoice him for my fee, mercy is not gratis.
The king indicates a bundle of papers – inventories, as Rafe had said. He leafs through. ‘See Lady Mary gets the silver plate from Richmond’s household. The gold plate to me, of course.’ He turns the pages. ‘These sables and the lambskins, they should be sent to my officers of the Wardrobe. The tapestries … Moses found in the bulrushes … the plagues of Egypt … Moses leading his people through the deserts of Sinai … Make sure my son’s household stuff does not leak away to his mother’s people. I have done a great deal for Bessie – Lady Clinton, I should say – and am not inclined to do more. And beware of Norfolk’s daughter too – I want her goods listed, so we are sure they are not suddenly augmented by what should come to me.’
‘She will be due a settlement, sir. She is my lord of Richmond’s widow, even if she is still a maid.’
Henry snorts. ‘You wonder if she could be a maid, when she has embroiled herself in this affair of my niece, and filthied her own name. What should a virgin know of assignations, of back stairs and greased locks?’
So this is how it will be. He will use Mary Fitzroy’s misjudgement to cheat her of her dues and enrich the treasury. There could be worse punishments.
