The Mirror and the Light

On 11 December Anna arrives in Antwerp. The English merchants, led by Stephen Vaughan as their governor, meet her four miles outside the town with eight score of great torches held aloft, the flames licking and kissing the twilight. The whole city has turned out, Vaughan writes, more than would come out to see the Emperor. Anna is gentle in manner, he says: a smiling, sedate princess, encased in her strange glittering gowns. She brings a troop of ladies dressed in the same fashion, but not one of them fairer than she.

Vaughan does not mention Jenneke. Whether he has seen her. But then, the posts are not always secure.

Next day Anna is en route to Bruges. From Bruges she goes to Calais, where Fitzwilliam and his train ride outside the walls to meet her.

It is barely light. Her escort, their horses trapped in black velvet, seem to materialise from nowhere. As they approach the walls, guns are fired in salute, so the party proceeds, through smoke that obliterates their vision, to the Lantern Gate.

Once Henry has settled his own marriage, he turns his mind to Lady Mary. The Duke of Bavaria has come into the realm, with a modest entourage as the king advised: unmarried, a very proper man. He assures the king he will make no demands. He will take Mary purely for friendship’s sake, to strengthen the German league against Emperor and Rome.

He sends Mr Wriothesley up-country to prepare the lady for a meeting. Call-Me is his usual messenger now. Mary has warmed to him, and made him a satin cushion with his family coat of arms.

He, the Lord Privy Seal, is working with the Household officers on the final plans for the queen’s grand reception. He has included Lady Mary in a place of honour, but the king says, perhaps not, Crumb. They might take it ill in Cleves. That sort of thing, parading one’s bastards, we leave to the Scots.

He bows. Agrees it might be better if the two ladies meet privately: stepmother and stepdaughter, just a year apart in age. Let them sit down and get to know each other. Perhaps they will walk hand in hand together, as Mary did with Queen Jane.

He says to Call-Me, put the new offer to Mary, but expect her usual reply: would rather stay a maid, but will obey her father. Take it as it is given, and leave; state Bavaria’s merits, but do not over-persuade her. Because when you have gone she will rage about, saying she would rather be eaten by wild beasts than marry a Lutheran.

The king is pleased with Duke Philip. He brings him into his chambers at Whitehall, to show him the Henry on the wall. If the king sees any gap between the monarch that Hans painted and the man who exhibits him, it does not trouble him. ‘Behold my last queen,’ he says. ‘Most excellent among women.’

They are speaking Latin. Philip bows to the image.

‘Behold my father.’ Now the king reverts to English. ‘Do you know, he had only seven ships, and two of them not fit to put to sea? Whereas I have been able to send fifty ships to Calais, merely for the escort of your cousin of Cleves.’

Behind his son, the figure of the old king shrinks a little.

‘I felicitate you,’ Philip says. He may not speak English but he gets the gist. ‘Most valiant of princes,’ he adds.

The king draws him aside. Philip served against the Turk, when they laid siege to Vienna. The king wants to hear his war stories. They are closeted all afternoon.

A day or so later he is on his way up to Enfield, Rafe with him, to see Mary himself. ‘Your presence alone will have an effect,’ Rafe says. ‘She will know the king is in earnest.’

Henry has already begun talking terms. He has asked for a draft contract.

Mary keeps him waiting, but he sees she has dressed up: a sweep of black velvet gown, a bodice of rosy satin. ‘How was the road, my lord?’

‘Miserable,’ he says. ‘But not impassable. We shall be able to get you to Greenwich, if it pleases your father to order you there. And your new apartments in Whitehall are building. I am just drying the plaster out. I have seen the glaziers this last week.’

‘HA-HAs?’ she says.

‘Yes. And the emblems of the queen’s grace.’

‘It seems odd to me,’ Mary says. ‘To call her the queen. When we have never seen her. Still. I congratulate my lord father. Naturally.’

‘Duke Philip is a well-made man,’ he says. ‘Fair. Blue eyes. Not unlike your lady mother, in colouring.’

She looks out of the window.

‘I thought Mr Wriothesley might not have told you that.’

She smooths her hands down her skirt, and hums a little. When sparrows build churches upon a green hill …

‘What we don’t want from you,’ he says, ‘is any late retraction. You say yes, yes, yes, and then at the last minute you say no. Because that would leave the king embarrassed.’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘No.’ He waits. ‘Yes, it would leave him embarrassed. No, I would not do it. I have said I will obey.’

‘The king is a tender father, he would not force you into a marriage with a man you cannot love.’