The Mirror and the Light

‘Fol-de-dee, fol-de-dee, fol-de-dee-do,’ trills Lady Bryan. ‘When sparrows build churches upon a green hill … No? Never mind, darling. Bite on this.’ She produces a circle of ivory, garlanded with green ribbons; the child seizes it and falls to. ‘Her teeth come very slowly forth.’

Suffolk stares down from his vast height. ‘Thank God they are no faster. I should be afraid she would nip me.’

‘Perhaps we could come back at a better time,’ he says.

‘Aye,’ Suffolk mutters, ‘when she is thirty.’ But he likes children, and he cannot help leaning down and making faces at her. The little girl breaks off grizzling, touches his beard; she rubs it, and looks at her fingers, dubious.

‘It doesn’t come off,’ Charles tells her. The child’s black eyes snap at him; she thrusts her ivory ring back into her mouth, but she does not cry again.

‘I never saw a child suffer so,’ Lady Bryan says. ‘It makes me give way to her when perhaps I should not. Sir John lets her sit at table, and she is too young to be refrained from what she has a fancy for.’ She turns to him. ‘Master Cromwell, how does your little Gregory these days?’

‘A head taller than me, and in want of a wife.’

‘How the years fly! It seems no time since you brought him to … wherever we were …’

‘Hatfield.’

‘Mary was wasting away.’ She turns to the dukes. ‘Till Thomas Cromwell came, we could do nothing with her. We could not make her come to the common board, because she would have had to sit lower than her sister – Eliza was a princess then. And Sir John said, mark my words, give way to one, and they will all be wanting to dine in private, and the cooks will be put about, and the expense will run beyond my means – no, he said, Mary dines and sups in the hall with us, or she must go without. But Master Cromwell got the physicians to state, on their honour, that Mary could not thrive without a trencher of red meat at her first rising in the morning. Sir John could hardly refuse her a breakfast, for that meal we all take apart. So she had her fill of venison while the larder lasted, and salt beef when needs must.’

Suffolk smiles. ‘She breakfasted like Robin Hood and his men, feasting in the green wood. I trust it did her good.’

‘So is Mary now a princess again?’ Lady Bryan asks.

He says, ‘She remains as she was, Lady Mary the king’s daughter.’

‘And this lass,’ Norfolk says, ‘is to be known as My Lady Bastard, till you hear different.’

‘For shame!’ Lady Bryan is distraught. ‘Whoever she may be, she is a gentleman’s daughter, and I know not how to keep her in that degree. All children do grow, sir, and this last month she has outgrown every stitch she owns, and Sir John says he has no budget and no instructions. We have patched and mended till we can do no more. She needs nightgowns, she needs caps –’

‘Madam, am I a nursemaid?’ Norfolk says. ‘Tell Cromwell about it – I dare say he can understand the child’s requirements. No trade is beyond him – give him some cambric and a needle and you will find your little dame clad before supper time.’

The duke turns on his heel and stalks out of the room. They can hear him on the stairs, calling for John Shelton to fetch the horses.

‘Write to me,’ he says to Lady Bryan. He wants to get after Norfolk. He doesn’t want him alone with Mary.

But Lady Bryan follows him, a buzz at his elbow. On the stairs, ‘Cromwell, I spoke to her. As you demanded. So did my daughter, Lady Carew.’ Her voice is low. ‘We did what you asked.’

‘Good.’

‘You have broken her pride. It is ill-done.’

‘It saved her life.’

‘To what purpose?’

He strides ahead. ‘Send me a list of what the little maid needs.’

Shelton is outside, with the horseboys. Lady Shelton says, laughing, ‘No need to haste away. Mary has run upstairs. Did you think she would be rushing to confer with your enemies? You take her for a fickle mistress.’

He checks his pace. ‘The dukes are not my enemies. We are all the king’s servants.’

‘You appear to have Suffolk in awe.’

True, he thinks. Brandon gives no trouble these days.

He turns and takes her hand; but there is a yell from below, like a hunting call. ‘Cromwell!’

It is Charles, stopped on the threshold, head thrown back, pointing upwards. ‘Cromwell, see that?’

He has to clatter downstairs, to look from another angle. Far above them, in a haze of blood-coloured light, the initials of the late Anne rest on a glazed cushion.

‘Shelton!’ the duke yells. ‘You’ve got a HA-HA. Knock it out, man. Do it while the weather’s fine.’ Charles bellows with laughter. ‘Get the Lady Mary to heave a brick at it.’

The boy Mathew is outside, holding his horse’s bridle. ‘Keep steady,’ he says. He doesn’t mean the horse.

He mounts, and below the creak of saddle and harness the boy murmurs, ‘Get me home when you can, sir.’

‘I’ll tell Thurston you miss him.’

Mathew backs away. ‘God be with you, sir.’

He gathers his reins. John Shelton is standing in their path, apologising for the HA-HA. ‘I thought I had got them. Every last one.’