The Mirror and the Light

‘One more thing, Francis. When Carew has written his letter, your sister Eliza must take it to Hunsdon herself, and confer with your lady mother. Lady Bryan has brought up Mary from her infancy. I trust her to have her interests at heart.’

‘And,’ Francis says, ‘my lady mother is not the dottypoll she seems.’

‘They must go to Mary, mother and daughter, and be earnest with her, and use any persuasion. I am trusting your whole family to serve me in this.’

‘Well,’ Francis says with distaste, ‘if you must pull the women into it.’

‘The women are already in it. It’s all about women. What else is it about?’

Francis looks into his cup. He swills the contents about, as if he were divining and trying to change the fate in the lees. ‘People say, Henry will not make away with his daughter. Others say, we did not think he would make away with his wife. But I – I always knew he would kill Anne Boleyn. Or if not, then some other man would do it for him.’

The warm weather is here. The long days in which, if rumour is true, the Lady Mary does not eat: the short, light nights, in which she paces sleepless, her face swollen, her eyes red-rimmed; in which she swims in her salt tears as in a drowning pool. Tears are good for young women, especially those in whom the menstrual flow is stopped, or those who want a man in their bed but are obliged to do without. If Mary stopped crying, she might be even sicker than she is now. So when she sobs and retches, no one stirs to comfort her. When she cries, ‘Jesus pity me,’ it appears He does not.

The jurists whom the king consults suggest that the oath should be put to Mary again, so there can be no doubt that she knows what is required. Of course she knows, the king says. She is in no doubt. But he adds, as he did last month in the matter of Anne Boleyn, ‘Cromwell, I wish to stand right with the law in every particular.’

‘Send for Chapuys,’ he tells Richard: he, Lord Cromwell. ‘He must take supper with me. He will plead he has no appetite. But he can watch me eat.’

Richard says, ‘You could have resolved this two weeks ago. You have put us in peril day after day. Why do you not go to Mary yourself?’

‘Because I can only do this at a distance,’ he says.

He remembers the castle at Windsor, a day of baking heat; the year of our salvation, 1531. In the great courts, the king’s baggage wagons stood ready, the household departing for a summer of hunting, dancing and other sport. He himself, compelled to melt into shadow, up staircases and through shuttered rooms empty of contents; through the queen’s suite of rooms to find Katherine sitting alone, abandoned, obdurate, knowing but not consenting to know that Henry had gone without a word of goodbye; the child Mary, fragile as straw, leaning on the back of her chair. Madam, he said, your daughter is ill, she should sit. A spasm of pain shook the girl and caused her to droop, and clench her hand on the gilding. Katherine spoke to her in Castilian: ‘You are a daughter of Spain. Stand up.’

He battled that day for the sick, narrow body, and he won. At his feet, a stool: on the stool, a cushion embroidered with a mermaid. He picked up the stool in one hand, the mermaid in the other. He held the gaze of the Spanish queen, and slammed the stool down on the flags. The sun streamed through coloured glass; squares of light, pale green and vermilion, fluttered like standards against pale stone.

Katherine had closed her eyes. As if she herself were suffering, she made the barest concession to a nod. Then she opened her eyes and shifted her gaze to the middle distance. He saw the princess sway; he moved and caught her, arm outstretched. He steadied her: he remembers her tiny bones, her weightless body quivering, her forehead sheened with sweat. She sank to the stool. He passed her the cushion, studying her face. She hugged the mermaid against her belly, wrapping her arms across herself, bending double to ease her pain. After a moment, she let out her breath with a grunt. Then her head jerked up, and she took him in, astonished and grateful. In an instant she had wiped the expression away. It was a transaction so swift that you could barely say it occurred. But until the interview was concluded and he bowed himself out of the room, her eyes followed him everywhere he moved.

After supper, as a hush falls and the long midsummer day folds itself and disposes to dusk, he and the ambassador climb one of the garden towers. London lurks below them in the blue haze. Before them is a dish of strawberries they must finish before the moon rises. The ambassador has left his papers at the foot of the tower. His folio of white leather, stamped with the Emperor’s double eagle, rests on a bank of turf starred with daisies.