The Mirror and the Light

But first the king must send for her. Bring her to the light of his presence. Till then she is the maiden embowered. She sits in the closed garden, ready to be discovered. She lies under an enchantment, in a thicket of thorns, and waits for someone who has the commitment to hack through.

‘Go yourself, sir,’ Wriothesley says.

He shakes his head.

‘Perhaps you do not want to be the one to bring her bad news.’

‘She loves her father,’ he says. ‘She cannot believe – well – but she must be brought to believe. He will not tolerate defiance. Not from a child to whom he gave life.’

The sun is declining: a last ray of warmth flits across the books on his table: the Decretals of Pope Gregory, a copy heavily annotated, and marked with the monogram ‘TC’ – Thomas Cardinalis. In the shifting twilight, shadowed like water, he can see a figure of the king’s daughter: huddled into herself, her face pale and set. It entrances him, the stealthy movement of the light where she forms herself, a living ghost. She does not look at him; he looks at her. ‘You must tell her, Wriothesley, “Obedience, madam, is the virtue that will save you. Obedience is not servility, either of your person or your conscience. Rather, it is loyalty.”’

‘Well,’ Call-Me says, ‘yes … if you think I should address her as you might address the House of Commons. I might suggest, I suppose, that with obedience comes some diminution of responsibility.’

‘That might ease her mind. But Call-Me, don’t speak to her as if she were a little girl. And don’t try to frighten her. She is brave like her mother and will strike out, she is stubborn like her mother and will dig in. If she angers you, step back and let Rafe speak. Appeal to her womanly nature. To her daughter’s love. Tell her how much it hurts her father,’ he puts a hand to his heart, ‘tell her it hurts him, here, that she should put the dead before the living.’

The outlines of Master Wriothesley have blurred; he sinks into indistinction, as if the night were lapping at him. He would like the princess to linger, till she melts in the heat of his will: till she dissolves into acquiescence – which she will, if only he can find the right phrases to unresolve her.

‘Sir,’ Wriothesley says, ‘I think you know something no one else does.’

‘Me? I don’t know anything. Nobody tells me a thing.’

‘Is it something to do with Wyatt?’

Rafe has told him that verses are written against Wyatt, coded accusations and bitter jokes, circulated by the courtiers within breath of the king’s own person. A paper is inserted into a prayer book, or tucked into a glove, or played instead of the king of spades. ‘They are all afraid,’ Call-Me says. ‘They are looking over their shoulders. They don’t know if more charges will be laid. I was deep in talk with Francis Bryan, and when Wyatt’s name came up, he lost the thread of what he was saying, and he looked at me as if he had never seen me before.’

‘Francis?’ He laughs. ‘He was probably drunk.’

‘The women are afraid too, it seems to me. When I carried a message to Jane the queen, there were glances – hushing, and shuffling, and signs between them –’

‘My poor boy! You come in and women make signs at each other? Has this happened before? Tell me what the signs were and I will try to interpret them.’

Call-Me flushes. ‘Sir, it is not a joke. The queen – I mean, the other one – she is paid out for her evil dealings, but there is more. There is something else. You go into a room, you hear a door bang, you feel someone has run from your approach. But at the same time, you feel that someone is watching you.’

Someone is, he thinks.

‘Everyone believes,’ Call-Me says, ‘that it was Wyatt’s testimony that condemned Anne – but they do not know why he would give it, because they think him brave and reckless and …’

‘Witless?’

‘Not that, but he is very gallant – and they think, what did Anne do to him, to turn the honey to gall? They imagined he would be buried in her tomb with her, rather than –’

No wonder you break off. Sometimes our fantasies make a leap, sudden and precise, like dancers in a line. We see the arrow chest, barely wide enough for one. ‘They think Wyatt should have died for love? When they would not cross the street for it?’

He thinks of Wyatt in his prison, as dusk slips through the runnels and estuaries of the Thames, where the last light slides like silk, floating, sinking; it is the light that moves, when the stream is still. Wyatt seems distant to him, as if held in a mirror; or as if he had lived a long time ago. He says, ‘Safe journey tomorrow. Remember everything Mary says. As soon as you leave her, write it down.’

He goes to his room, Christophe thumping along behind him. ‘The ridiculous Mathew,’ Christophe says. ‘I hear he is promoted. You should send him back to Wolf Hall. He is more fit for a pig-keeper than for a servant to a lord.’

‘I could go up and see Mary myself,’ he says. ‘There and back before anyone knew I was gone.’