C. Sansom - Lamentation

‘You are not on the list,’ the guard answered stolidly. I thought, who was leaving? Was it me, now my work was done?

In the bay window overlooking the river some of the Queen’s ladies sat as usual, needlework on their laps, watching a dance performed with surprising skill by Jane Fool. I saw Mary Odell sitting with the highborn ladies despite her lack of rank. The pretty young Duchess of Suffolk, her lapdog Gardiner on her knee, sat between her and the Queen’s sister Lady Anne Herbert, whom I had seen at Baynard’s Castle. A tall thin young man with a narrow, beaky face and wispy beard stood behind them, watching with a supercilious expression.

Jane came to a halt in front of the gentleman and bowed. ‘There, my Lord of Surrey,’ she said to the man. ‘Am I not fit to be your partner at the dancing at Hampton Court for the admiral?’ So this was Surrey, the Duke of Norfolk’s oldest son, but reportedly a reformer, said to be a skilled poet, who last winter had been in trouble for leading a drunken spree in the city.

He answered curtly, ‘I dance only with ladies of rank, Mistress Fool. And now you must excuse me. I have to meet my father.’

‘Do not be harsh with Jane,’ the Duchess of Suffolk said reprovingly; for the fool’s moon face had reddened. But then Jane saw me standing a little way off, and pointed at me. ‘There is the reason the Queen has gone to Lord Parr’s chamber! The lawyer has come again to bother her with business! See, he has a back as hunched as Will Somers’!’

The company turned to look at me as she continued. ‘He would have had Ducky taken from me. But the Lady Mary would not let him! She knows who her true friends are!’ There was a glimmer in her eyes that told me Jane was indeed no halfwit; all this nonsense was deliberate, to humiliate me.

Mary Odell stood up hastily and came to my side. ‘Her majesty and Lord Parr are waiting for you, Master Shardlake.’

I was glad to walk away with her to the Queen’s inner sanctum.

Again the Queen was seated on a high chair under her red cloth of estate; today she wore a bright green dress on which flowers, leaves, even peapods on a bush, were sewn to scale. Under her French hood I thought I caught the glint of grey strands in her auburn hair. Lord Parr stood to one side of her in his usual black robe and gold chain, and Archbishop Cranmer on the other, in his white cassock. As I bowed deeply I saw the Queen’s chess set on a table nearby and thought: a black piece and a white.

All three had been studying a life-size portrait set before them on an easel, the newly painted colours so bright they drew the eye even amid the magnificence of Whitehall Palace. The background showed the dark red curtains of a four-poster bed, the foreground an open bible on a lectern and next to it the Lady Elizabeth, whom I recognized at once. She was wearing the same red dress as the day I saw her, when she had complained at having to stand so long, and being painted beside her bed.

Her trouble had been worthwhile, for the portrait was truly lifelike. Elizabeth’s budding breasts contrasted with the vulnerability of her thin, childlike shoulders. She held a small book in her hands and her expression was composed, with a sense of watchful authority despite her youth. I read the meaning of the painting: here was a girl on the brink of womanhood, scholarly, serious, regal, and in the background the bed as a reminder of her coming marriageability.

The Queen, who had been looking at the portrait intently, sat back in her chair. ‘It is excellent,’ she said.

‘It says everything that is needed,’ Cranmer agreed. He turned to me. ‘I have heard your latest news, Matthew,’ he said quietly. ‘That there was a spy in this group, and he is dead. His master is likely someone senior, a Privy Councillor, but we do not know who.’

‘Yes, my Lord,’ I added. ‘I am sorry.’

‘You did all you could,’ he said, echoing Barak. I glanced at the Queen. She looked troubled now, her body held with that air of slight stiffness I had come to recognize as denoting strain. She did not speak.

‘At least this group of Anabaptists is gone,’ Lord Parr said. ‘I’d have seen them burned!’

Cranmer said firmly, ‘The guard who Leeman suborned at the palace, and the gaoler Myldmore, must be sent abroad. For all our safety.’

‘You would have had them burned too, my Lord Archbishop,’ Lord Parr growled, ‘were moving them not necessary.’

‘Only if earnest preaching could not bring them from their heresy,’ Cranmer said, anger in his voice. ‘I wish no man burned.’

‘You have helped us greatly, Matthew,’ the Queen said gently, ‘with Leeman’s information about Bertano.’

I asked, ‘It is true, then, about him?’

Lord Parr glanced at Cranmer and then the Queen, who nodded. He spoke sternly. ‘This is for your ears only, Shardlake, and we tell you only because you first brought us that name and would welcome your view. Only we four know about Bertano. We have not even told the Queen’s brother or sister. And that man and boy who work for you must say nothing,’ he added in a threatening tone.

‘We know you have absolute trust in them,’ Cranmer said mildly.

‘Tell him, niece,’ Lord Parr said.

The Queen spoke: heavily, reluctantly. ‘A week ago, his majesty had a visitor brought to his privy quarters during the day. All the servants in the Privy Chamber were cleared out. Normally he tells me if a visitor from abroad is coming,’ she added, ‘but the night before this visit he said that it was for him alone to know about, and I was to stay on my side of the palace.’ She lowered her eyes.

Her uncle prompted her gently, ‘And then?’

‘I know the meeting did not go well. His majesty sent for me to play music for him afterwards, as he does sometimes when he is sad and low in spirits. He was in an angry humour, he even hit his fool Will Somers on the pate and told him to get out; he had no patience for idle jest. I dared to look at him questioningly, for poor Somers had done nothing to warrant being struck. The King said, “Someone wants the powers granted me by God, Kate, and dares send to ask for them. I have sent back such answer as he deserves.” Then he struck the arm of his chair so fiercely with his fist that it jarred his whole body and caused a fearful pain in his leg.’ The Queen took a deep breath. ‘He did not make me swear to keep his words confidential. So, though strictly it goes against the honour due my husband, because of the dire straits we have all found ourselves in, I confided in my uncle and the Archbishop.’

‘And now we have told you,’ Lord Parr said brusquely. ‘What do you make of it?’

‘It adds weight to the suspicion that what Vandersteyn learned on the Continent was true. Someone asking the King for the powers granted him by God. That can only mean the Supreme Headship, and only the Pope would demand that.’

He nodded agreement. ‘That is what we think. If Bertano was an emissary from the Pope it sounds as though the price for a reconciliation was the King’s renunciation of his Headship of the Church in England.’

‘And from all the King said, a message was to be sent back to the Pope?’

Cranmer answered. ‘I think it has already gone. And if it has, it would be through Paget.’ He smiled humourlessly. ‘And yesterday Paget told the Privy Council that after d’Annebault’s visit, the King and Queen will be going on a short Progress — only as far as Guildford — and announced those of the council he has chosen to accompany him, all sympathizers with reform. Gardiner, Norfolk, Rich, all our enemies, remain in London, kicking their heels and keeping the wheels of government turning. Those who will be about the King’s person, and have his ear, will be our allies.’