The Mirror and the Light

Henry is bending down, peering into a trunk the Wardrobe has sent. He stands up, cheerful: ‘My lord, I have decided to make speed and meet the bride in my own person.’

‘Why, sir? It will only be a day or two before she arrives.’

Henry says, ‘I want to nourish love.’

‘Majesty,’ Mr Wriothesley says, ‘with all respect, was this not aired in council? It was your councillors’ earnest prayer that your Majesty spare himself the journey, and greet the queen at Blackheath. And you were pleased to accede.’

‘Can I not change my mind, Wriothesley? At Blackheath there will be music and ordnance and processions and crowds and we shall not speak a dozen private words before we must ride back here to the palace, and then it will be hours before we have a chance to be alone. And I want to surprise her, and gladden her heart, and bid her a proper welcome.’

‘Sir, if you will be advised by me …’ he says.

‘But I will not. Admit it, Cromwell, you are no adept in courtship.’

True. He’s only been married once. ‘She is hardly off the ship, sir. Think how shamed she will be, if she cannot appear at her best.’

Mr Wriothesley adds, ‘And she may, of course, be overwhelmed by your Majesty’s presence.’

‘But that is why I must go! I will spare her anxiety. She will be working herself up towards great ceremonies.’ Henry smiles. ‘I shall go in disguise.’

He closes his eyes.

‘It is what a king does,’ Henry tells him. ‘You cannot know, Cromwell, you are not a courtier born. When my sister Margaret went into Scotland, King James and his hunting party surprised her at the castle of Dalkeith, he in a jacket of crimson velvet, his lyre slung over his shoulder.’

One has heard. The dashing youth with burning eyes, swift to bend the knee; the bride in the pretty confusion of thirteen summers, her cheek blushing, her body trembling.

Mr Wriothesley says, ‘May I ask, what disguise does your Majesty mean to adopt?’

They exchange a glance. When Katherine was queen she was repeatedly ambushed by Robin Hood, or Arcadian shepherds. When they threw off their disguise, lo and behold! It was the king and Charles Brandon; it was Charles Brandon and the king.

‘I have sables for her,’ Henry says. ‘Perhaps I should arrive as a Russian nobleman, in great fur boots?’

Mr Wriothesley says, ‘Unless we send word ahead, I am afraid that your Majesty might alarm his own guard. It could lead to –’

‘A shepherd, then. Or one of the Magi. We can quickly get disguisings for the other two kings. Send to Charles –’

‘Or perhaps, sir,’ he says, ‘just go as a gentleman?’

‘A gentleman of England.’ Henry is thoughtful. ‘A gentleman with no name. Yes,’ he looks downcast, ‘very well, I shall be ruled by Lord Cromwell, as all the foreigners claim I am. I shall astonish her anyway.’ He pauses and says kindly, ‘My lord, I know it is not what we agreed. But a bridegroom must have his caprices, and disguising always gives pleasure. The dowager Katherine,’ he says to Wriothesley, ‘she would pretend not to know me. Of course, she did but play with me. Everybody knows the king.’

Thomas Culpeper follows them out. ‘Your papers, gentlemen?’

Wriothesley snatches them. He, Lord Cromwell, walks away. ‘Christ,’ he says.

Culpeper says, ‘You did what you could.’

He thinks, I spoke to him as a subject to a prince. What if I had taken courage and said: Henry, I am advising you, man to man, not to do it?

Culpeper says, ‘Why are you apprehensive? Everybody praises her, don’t they? Are you afraid he will find her not as reported?’

‘Cease to hang on my sleeve, Culpeper.’

Culpeper smiles. ‘I know she will find him not as reported. We appreciate you bend the facts, Lord Cromwell, to please foreigners – but you have not described him as a god, I hope? Is she expecting Apollo?’

‘She is expecting a proper court reception. It is what her people have prepared her for.’ He turns to Wriothesley. ‘I need someone to make speed to Rochester and warn her. The king will come on the river with a small train and Anna should be ready for him. No heralds, no ceremony – he will enter her chamber and she should be astonished.’

‘So you are going to spoil his surprise,’ Culpeper says. ‘She must not know him, then she must? She will be lucky to time it right.’

‘I wonder,’ he says to Wriothesley, ‘should I have insisted I go with him?’

Call-Me says, ‘It could be worse, sir. At least he’s not going to wear his Turkish costume.’

The king intends to join the queen in Rochester on New Year’s Day, and stay overnight; even if he sends a messenger back to say how he likes her, it will be hours before word arrives at Greenwich.

So, he thinks, the news can come to Austin Friars almost as fast. He journeys home, to start 1540 under his own roof.