The Mirror and the Light

‘I hear the Duke of Cleves has asked for the Lady Mary’s portrait. It is time she made herself useful. And from what I hear, the most useful thing she could do is marry a German.’

‘We do not send pictures of our princesses abroad. It is not our custom.’

She tilts her head. ‘You invent customs very readily.’

He bows, as if she were complimenting him. It is the only thing to do, as he cannot well give her a slap. He says, ‘Duke Wilhelm’s envoys know Mary’s virtues and qualities. They have seen her.’

‘But not when she has toothache,’ Rochford says gaily.

He tucks Lord Morley’s gift under his arm. The king has nothing to learn from Niccolò’s book. But it may pass an hour for him, when his leg is giving him pain.

When Mary is asked whether she would like to marry into Cleves, she says she will do as her father tells her, but that given her choice, she would rather stay in the land of her birth and remain a virgin. It is a modest answer, which no one can fault.

When he gets home Richard Riche is waiting. ‘Ricardo,’ he says, ‘I shall want your help preparing for the Parliament. We shall be working long hours.’

‘When do we not?’ Riche says, like a man rising to the challenge. ‘I hear Wriothesley is to sit for Hampshire?’

‘I think he deserves it, after his travails abroad. I look for his return every day.’

‘A pity he did not have better success, and bring back a bride. And Bishop Gardiner is the king’s man in Hampshire – it will offend him, to have a rival.’

He nods: that’s the idea.

‘And young Gregory to sit – do you think he is ready? Forgive me, but your ill-wishers are bound to raise the point.’

‘The business is great. The hours are long. I do not see it as an occupation for old men.’

Riche offers papers. ‘Would you cast an eye? It is the pension list for the surrender at Shaftesbury. You always said the abbess would fight till the last ditch. But we have found a sum to buy her off.’

We should not begrudge. It is a rich house. He runs a dry quill down the list. There is the name he is looking for: Dorothea Clancey. ‘Do you know if the ladies have decided their future?’

‘Not our business, sir.’ But then Riche softens. ‘I look back fondly on our ride to Shaftesbury. I always think it a pleasure to be in your company for a day, my lord – and a privilege too. I relish to see how your lordship transacts business among all sorts and conditions of people. I am the better instructed, and I profit by it.’

Pleasure and profit. What could be more fitting for Richard Riche? The door is flung open. Christophe erupts into the room. ‘Look who!’

‘Call-Me!’ He opens his arms wide. The traveller, muddy from the Dover road, falls into them.

‘We lost sight of you!’ He hugs him. ‘Chapuys wrote to me from Calais – I think it was to say you were on the seas, but his words were all washed by salt water.’

‘As mine,’ Call-Me says. With his glove of red Spanish leather, he knocks a tear from his cheek; plucks off his hat, with its sweeping ostrich plume, and throws it down on the desk. ‘Sir, I cannot tell you how glad I am to see your face. Twice or thrice I made sure I was dead. I did not know what to wish for – that the king would fall in love with Chapuys and hold him till my escape, or that he would boot him into a boat, so I might start for home.’

‘It was the time between that we feared.’ Rafe is standing in the doorway. ‘When you were dissolved – neither here, nor there, nor in Heaven nor on earth.’ He crosses the room, and kisses the hero’s cheek. ‘Welcome home, Call-Me.’

Riche is looking at them puzzled: as if they were a tribe of Indians, at some feast of theirs.

‘Oh, and the knave Phillips!’ Call-Me exclaims: as if he must get it over. ‘Sir, you could not reproach me more than I reproach myself.’

‘Be at ease,’ he says. ‘A man like Phillips is an affront to God and reason. If I had been on embassy at your age, I am sure I should have been deceived, if only out of zeal for my country’s good.’

Riche says peevishly, ‘My lord would rather have Wyatt safe home than you. Wyatt has things to tell him.’

‘Oh?’ Wriothesley says.

‘Schemes for how we might set Italy in a roar,’ Riche says. ‘In Toledo he has the envoys of all nations in and out of his lodging and he spins them like a whipping top. Venice goes out of the back door, Ferrara comes in the front, while Mantua hides under the table and a Florentine up the chimney. He hears so many intrigues he says his skull is splitting. But he will not spill the facts except in secret to my lord.’

‘Oh,’ Wriothesley says. Richard Cromwell comes bounding in, hallooing like a houndmaster, and pounds him with his fist. Call-Me pounds him back, till Rafe says, ‘Wriothesley, go home to your wife!’

‘I should.’ Call-Me blushes. He glows. He picks up the ostrich-feather hat and sweeps the air, and catches a candle in its arc.

It is Richard Riche who steps forward and pinches out the damage. ‘Digits of iron,’ he says diffidently.