The Mirror and the Light

He is making his farewells, but Anna calls him back. She seems preoccupied with the fifty sovereigns he sent her, as if he might expect to be paid back. She explains she has broken the coins into those of lesser value and given some in largesse. Women came out of their houses, she explains, at –

‘At Sittingbourne,’ Jane Rochford says.

‘– offering me delicacies to eat.’

He says to the interpreters, ‘Tell her whenever she issues out, she should carry suitable coins – or have them carried, in her case. She need not wait for gifts to be made her, but should hand them freely to bystanders. Be generous especially to children, as it stores up goodwill for the future.’

Jane Rochford is studying Anna’s lips as they move, as if to pick out the words. She is a woman with a good wit, he thinks, but she has never found a use for it; perhaps this is her time to shine. Soon the great ladies, Bess Cromwell included, will go home to their households and children, and Rochford will assist Lady Rutland with the queen’s daily round, keeping a hand on the young maids and ensuring order and piety.

One of the interpreters asks him, ‘My lord, what comes next?’

‘Evensong,’ he says. ‘Then the French ambassador will be joining us for Caesar’s invasion of Britain, with more bagpipes and drums; then it will be tumblers or magicians, then supper and bed.’

At twilight they play Britannia unconquered. The queen sits up straight and looks alert, while one of the interpreters rehearses to her what will unfold: the repulse of the Romans, how the island stood firm and resisted tribute. He recognises the King of Britain as one of George Boleyn’s men.

Henry will like the queen to see what manner of countrymen she has now: they refuse all slavery, detect all knavery. The monarch that was then, in Caesar’s time, armed the Thames itself, planting iron-tipped staves below the waterline to rip out the belly of the Roman ships. When the survivors hauled themselves to shore, the Britons butchered them.

There were ninety-nine kings, the chroniclers tell us, before we came to our present monarch. He suspects them of snipping sections out of history, so Henry makes one hundred.

‘I don’t suppose you have anything like this at home,’ the king says to Anna.

The remark is laboriously relayed to her.

No, she says. More is the pity. She looks bewildered.

The players take up their stance and menace each other with drawn blades. Solemnly, they perform the actions of fighting men, till those who are Romans fall to their knees and then judiciously, thoughtfully, checking the floor is clear, topple forward on their faces. The maids of honour nudge each other, laughing. The king glances over at them, and smiles, like a man reminiscing. He says to his wife, ‘Kings of Britain have conquered Rome.’

He, Lord Cromwell, keeps finding reasons to get up and walk about, to speak to one and then another. He views the queen from different angles and in different lights. Some expressions need no translator; he sees she is resolute, whatever the evening may bring. Behind the rampaging battle there is a pavilion made in twenty-six sections, with windows like a house. It was sewn over with ‘H&K’ but that has been unpicked. The walls are purple and gold, and the lining is of green sarcenet – which lends a spring-like air. ‘Anybody could issue forth from that tent,’ he says. ‘King Arthur himself would be proud.’

‘Is there much more of this?’ the French ambassador enquires.

The interlude comes, and everybody sits up. First a masque of lovers is played. Two gentlemen hold lyres, their expressions bereft, their garb sewn over with scallop shells: they are the heart’s pilgrims, they declare.

‘There are no other sorts of pilgrims now,’ Norfolk says. ‘Even Walsingham is down.’ He grimaces. ‘It seems to me this conceit is stale. The master of revels thinks to save a little money.’

‘I am all for that,’ he says.

Presently two maidens come out of the tent, and are kind to the swains. They dance a little jig together. ‘That’s my niece, Katherine,’ Norfolk says. ‘Edmund’s girl.’

‘I know.’

‘How do you like her?’

He has no opinion. The lovers hop away, arm in arm, and in come Friar Flip-Flap and Friar Snip-Snap, trying to pickpocket the spectators, till one races in with a dog and chases them. The dog’s name is Grime. He yearns towards dainties held out to him, and his keeper hauls him back. Beneath the keeper’s hood, a familiar face. ‘Is that Sexton? I thought I had banished that churl for good and all.’

The boy Culpeper says, ‘He must find some employment, I suppose. Nicholas Carew took him in but Carew is dead.’

Sexton leaves Grime to tussle with the friars, ambles off and comes back in another guise, his belly thrust out, wearing purple and with great sleeves like a ship’s sails. He is Privy Seal, he says, a man low born, whose dam and sire he hides in his sleeves for shame.