The Mirror and the Light

‘Anthony Browne was behind him, carrying the sables for her. But Henry waved him back. He was looking in the lady’s face and all the time talking.’

‘Gregory,’ he says, ‘did Hans paint her truly?’

‘He would not dare do other, would he?’

‘And she is beautiful?’

‘Not sideways. She has a long nose. But you know he had no time to draw her from all angles. She is pleasant-looking. She is a little marked with smallpox, but I only saw that when the sun chanced to come out. The king cannot have seen it, he had turned his back.’

She is lovely in the shadows, then. And when facing front. He could almost laugh. ‘Is he disappointed?’

‘If he is, he did not show it. He led her by the hand. They went aside and sat down with the interpreters. He asked how she liked England and she said, very well. He asked, how was she entertained in Calais, and she said, very well. He congratulated her on making the voyage so bravely, and asked had she been on the sea before? When they translated this, she looked startled.’

He pictures the king, sweating with the effort. His eyes roaming around, looking for a diversion.

‘The king called for music. A consort came in and they played “O fair white hand that heals me”. She attended to it very sweetly. She said, through the interpreter, she would like to learn to play some instrument. The king said, easier when young. She said, I am not so old, and my fingers are kept supple by plying my needle. The king asked, could she sing, and she said, in praise of Mary and the saints. He said, would she sing, and she said, not before all these lords, but I will sing when we are alone. And she blushed.’

‘That is a very proper modesty.’ Think of Anne Boleyn; she would have sung in the street, if she thought it might get her some attention.

‘We say we like modesty,’ Gregory picks up one of the pastries, and Bella, at his feet, touches him with her paw. ‘But really we prefer it when maids show their favour plain. We like to know we are well-accepted, before we begin to court them. I should never have dared speak to Bess, if you and Edward Seymour had not helped me. If a woman might despise us, we would rather avoid her.’

And when we find the courage to present ourselves, he thinks, we do not want to see shock on her face. ‘So you think damage is done?’

‘I don’t see how she will undo that first moment, even if she were the Queen of Sheba.’ Gregory takes a bite of his pastry; Bella leans against his shin and adores him. ‘They went into supper. She was very attentive, turning her eyes to everything he said. It is a poor beginning, but considering one cannot talk to her, I like her very much, and so do we all. Fitzwilliam himself says, she is as good a woman as he will find if he scours Europe.’

‘I think he has scoured it,’ he says. ‘I have, at least. Well … he will understand, when he thinks about it, that she was startled. And you say yourself, he was happy enough afterwards.’ He considers. His eye falls on Lord Morley’s history. ‘We must roll back time. It will be as if the king blinked, and then lived that first moment again.’

Gregory says, ‘But is that how time works?’ As the pastries disappear, the plate’s pattern emerges. Fatto in Venezia, it depicts the Fall of Troy: the wooden horse, the screaming women, the rolling heads, and the towers in bursts of flame.

Wonderful, how they get it all in.

He arrives at Greenwich not long after the king. ‘My lord, his Majesty is in his library.’

Henry sits amid boxes of books. ‘These are from Tewkesbury Abbey.’ He rises heavily from his chair. ‘Cromwell, we have not had the papers from Cleves about the Lorraine marriage, the pre-contract. It was stated emphatically the lady would bring them with her, but it appears she did not. Even the least suspicious man would ask himself why they have still not shown them, after all these months.’

He begins to speak, but the king holds up his hand. ‘I cannot proceed. I cannot marry her till I am sure she is clear of all past promises.’

The king closes one fist in the other. ‘I find the lady nothing so well as she is spoken of. Fitzwilliam wrote from Calais and praised her outright. Lisle too. What made them do so?’

‘I have not seen her, sir.’

‘No, you have not seen her,’ the king says. ‘You have been at the mercy of reports, as have I, so you cannot be blamed. But when I encountered her yesterday, I tell you, I had much ado to master myself. A great outlandish bonnet with wings sticking out either side of her head – and with her height, and stiff as she is – I thought to myself, she looks like the Cornhill Maypole. I believe she had painted her mouth, which if true is a filthy thing.’

‘Her attire can be changed, sir.’

‘Her complexion is sallow. When I think of Jane, so white and clear, a pearl.’