C. Sansom - Lamentation

Evening was come and the square of light fading fast when the guard returned with a note for me. I opened it eagerly, watched by Philip and Edward. It was from Barak.

I returned to Whitehall, and managed to persuade the guard to admit me to the Queen’s Presence Chamber. The Queen has left for Hampton Court, with most of her servants, Mistress Odell, too, it seems. Workmen were removing the tapestries, watched by some sort of female fool or jester with a duck on a leash; when the guard asked if she knew where Mistress Odell was she said Hampton Court, and when he said I brought a message from you she turned and made childish faces at me. I got the guard to ensure the note is forwarded. I am sorry, I could do no more.

Jane Fool, I thought, who had taken against me so fiercely. I put down the note. ‘No news. But my message has been forwarded to — an important person.’

Edward looked at me with incomprehension, as though this were all happening to someone else; he had retreated inside himself again. Philip said nothing and lowered his head.

It was a long, long night. I slept fitfully, waking several times, tormented by fleas and lice that had been drawn from the bedding. I think Philip slept badly too; once I woke to hear him praying softly, too quietly for me to make out the words. As for Edward, the first time I woke he was snoring, but the next time I saw the glint of his open eyes, staring despairingly into the dark.

They sat in a long row behind a table covered with green velvet, six members of the King’s Privy Council, the supreme body answerable to him for the administration of the realm. All wore the finest robes, gold chains and jewelled caps. Philip Coleswyn and Edward Cotterstoke and I were given seats facing them, the three Tower guards who had brought us in taking places behind us. My heart pounded as I thought, this was where Anne Askew had sat, and many others as well these last few months, to answer the same charge of heresy.

Sir Thomas Wriothesley, Lord Chancellor of England, waved a beringed hand in front of his face. ‘God’s death, they stink of the Tower gaol. I’ve said before, can people not be washed before they are brought here?’ I looked at him, remembering his fear at Anne Askew’s burning that the gunpowder round the necks of the condemned might hurt the great men of the realm when it exploded. Nor did I forget that he had tortured Anne Askew together with Rich. He caught me looking at him and glared at my presumption, fixing me with cold green little pebble eyes.

All the councillors had documents before them, but Sir William Paget, sitting at the centre of the table in his usual dark silken robe, had a veritable mound of paperwork. The square pale face above the long dark beard was cold, the thin-lipped mouth severe.

On Paget’s left sat Wriothesley, then Richard Rich. Rich’s face was expressionless. He had made a steeple of his slim white fingers and looked down, his grey eyes hooded. Next to him Bishop Stephen Gardiner, in cassock and stole, made a complete contrast. With his heavy build and powerful features, he was all force and aggression. He laid broad, hairy hands on the table and leaned forward, inspecting us with fierce, deep-set eyes. The council’s leading traditionalist, with his supporters Wriothesley and Rich beside him. I wondered if he had known of Anne Askew’s torture.

Two other councillors sat to Paget’s right. One I hoped was a friend: Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, tall and slim, his face and body all sharp angles. He was sitting upright. I sensed a watchful anger in him and I hoped that if it emerged it would be to our advantage. Beside him sat a slim man, lightly bearded, with auburn hair and a prominent nose. I recognized the Queen’s brother, William Parr, Earl of Essex, from my visit to Baynard’s Castle. My heart rose a little on seeing him: he owed his place at the council table to his sister. Surely if she were in trouble today he would not be here. His presence made up a little for the absence of the figure I had hoped most of all to see — Archbishop Cranmer, counterweight to Gardiner. But Cranmer, whose attendance at the council was said always to be motivated by strategy, had stayed away.

Paget picked up the first paper on his pile. He ran his hard eyes over us, the slab face still expressionless, then intoned, ‘Let us begin.’

We had been brought to Whitehall Palace by boat. The Privy Council followed the King as he moved between his palaces, and I had thought we might be taken on to Hampton Court, but apparently the council was still meeting at Whitehall. First thing that morning the three of us, red-eyed, tousled and, as Wriothesley noted, smelly, were led to a boat and rowed upriver.

At the Common Stairs there had been a great bustle, as Barak had described; servants were moving everything out. A little procession of laden boats was already sculling upriver to Hampton Court. I saw huge pots and vats from the royal kitchen being carried to one boat and thrown in with a clanging that reverberated across the water. Meanwhile a long tapestry wound in cloth was being lifted carefully into another waiting boat by half a dozen servants. A black-robed clerk stood at the end of the pier, ticking everything off on papers fixed to a little portable desk hung round his neck.

One of our guards said to the boatman, ‘Go in by the Royal Stairs. It’s too busy here.’

I looked at my companions. Philip sat composed, hands on his lap. He caught my eye. ‘Courage, Brother,’ he said with a quick smile. It was what I had said to him when he grew faint at Anne Askew’s burning. I nodded in acknowledgement. Edward Cotterstoke stared vacantly at the great facade of polished windows, his face like chalk. It was as though the full seriousness of his position had only just sunk in.

The boat halted at the long pavilion at the end of the Royal Stairs, green-and-white Tudor flags fluttering on the roof. We climbed stone steps thick with the dirty green moss of the river, then a door in the pavilion was opened by a guard and we were led into the long gallery connecting the boathouse to the palace, fitted out with tapestries of river scenes. We were hustled along the full length of the pavilion, past more servants carrying household goods, then into the palace itself. We found ourselves in a place I recognized, the vestibule which formed the juncture of the Royal Stairs with three other sets of double doors, all guarded. I remembered that one led to the Queen’s Gallery, the second to the Queen’s privy lodgings and the third to the King’s. It was the third door which was now opened to us by the guards. A servant carrying a decorated vase almost as large as himself nearly collided with me as he emerged, and one of our guards cursed him. We were marched quickly to a small door, the lintel decorated with elaborate scrollwork, and told we would wait inside until the council was ready. It was a bare little chamber stripped of furniture, but with a magnificent view of the gardens. A few minutes later an inner door opened and we were called into the council chamber itself.

Paget began by getting each of us to confirm our names and swear on a Testament to tell the truth before God, as though we were in court. They had that power. Then he said, with a note of heavy reproval which, I suspected from long dealings with judges, was intended to intimidate us, ‘You are all charged with heresy, denial of the Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Mass, under the Act of 1539. What do you say?’

‘Sirs,’ I said, surprised by the strength in my own voice, ‘I am no heretic.’

Philip answered with a lawyer’s care, ‘I have never breached the Act.’

Edward Cotterstoke closed his eyes and I wondered if he might collapse. But he opened them again, looked straight at Paget, and said quietly, ‘Nor I.’