C. Sansom - Lamentation

I looked at Barak. His breathing was ragged, irregular. Guy said, ‘I tried to make him drink something, poured some apple juice into his mouth. It made him gag, and waken for just a second.’

‘Is that a hopeful sign?’

‘He did not swallow. I have to get some nourishment into him, so his body can make more blood to replace all he has lost.’

Then I heard footsteps outside. Nicholas’s fast, heavy tread, lighter steps behind. The door opened; Nicholas held it as Tamasin came in, her eyes wide, breathing hard and fast. When she saw the state of her husband I thought she might scream or faint but she only looked at Guy. ‘Is he dead?’ she asked in a trembling voice.

‘No, Tamasin, but he is very badly hurt.’

I stood up and indicated the chair. ‘Tamasin, please sit down.’

She did so, but without looking at me, brushing aside some strands of blonde hair which had escaped from her coif. She held her stomach with her free hand, as though to protect the baby within from the sight on the bed. She spoke to Guy again. ‘Nicholas said Jack was badly injured. He would not say why, but I pressed him and he said there was a sword fight. He said Jack had lost a hand. Dear God, I see now that it is true.’ Her voice still trembled but she made a fist of her hand, willing herself not to break down.

Nicholas said, ‘She insisted I tell her, Dr Malton — ’

Guy nodded. ‘Yes, there was a fight.’

Tamasin turned her face to me, full of fury. ‘Why? Why was there? Why did you get Jack to lie to me about where he was tonight?’

I said, ‘I needed help. He gave it, as he always did.’

She shook her head angrily. ‘I thought he was past all that now, I’ve suspected there was something going on for weeks but I told myself he would never endanger himself again, nor you lead him into trouble.’ She cried, ‘Well, it is for the last time. He cannot do your dirty work any more now, can he? Even if he lives? And if he does, he will not work for you again, not ever. I shall see to that!’

‘Tamasin, I am sorry, more than I can say. You are right. It was my fault. But if — when he recovers — he can come back to work for me, in the office — ’

Tamasin answered savagely, ‘How? What can he do? When he will no longer even be able to write?’

‘I will arrange something — I will make sure you do not lose — where money is concerned — I will take care of you — ’

She stood up, fists bunched at her side. ‘I see how you have taken care of my husband! You will leave us alone, never come near us again!’ Nicholas reached out a hand to steady her, but she slapped it aside. ‘Get off me, you!’ She turned back to me. ‘Now, get out! Get out!’ She put her face in her hands and sat down, sobbing.

Guy said, ‘You should go, Matthew. And you, boy. Please, go.’

I hesitated, then walked to the door. Nicholas joined me. Just as we reached it we heard a sound like a groan from the bed. Whether from all the commotion or from hearing his wife’s voice, Barak appeared to be waking. I glanced back at Tamasin; she reached out to her husband. I took a step back into the room but she cast me such a look that without further ado I let Nicholas lead me out.

He took me home, carrying a lamp the porter gave him. He could see I was nearly spent. He had the sense not to speak, only to take my arm when I stumbled a couple of times. I asked him once, ‘Do you think, now he is awake, Jack may live?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’ He spoke with a confidence which, I could tell from his voice, he did not feel.

He walked me up the path to my door. As we approached it opened and Josephine stood in the doorway. The only one of my household left now. As I came up to her I saw she was smiling. She said, ‘We found him. Edward and I. At that pond on Coney Garth where he goes to fish sometimes. He was there, trying to catch something to eat.’ Then she saw my face and her eyes widened. ‘Sir, what has happened?’

I walked past her into the kitchen. Timothy, filthy dirty, sat at the table with Edward Brown. As I came in the boy essayed a nervous smile, showing the wide gap in his teeth. He said tremulously, ‘Josephine said you were not angry any more, sir.’

I said, my voice breaking, ‘No, Timothy, I was wrong to hold a grudge so long. And what Martin Brocket told you was untrue. His leaving was not your fault. Are you safe?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He looked at me, then at Nicholas standing in the doorway behind. ‘But sir, has something happened to you?’

‘It is nothing.’ I laid my hand on Timothy’s, small and thin and dirty. I thought, at least I did not lose him. Of all those whose lives had been uprooted by the trap the King and Paget had set, he was the least important — to them, though not to me, not to me.

FEBRUARY 1547, SIX MONTHS LATER

The crowds stood six deep outside Whitehall Palace. They lined both sides of the roadway, up past Charing Cross and along Cockspur Street. Some said people were standing all the way to Windsor. Everyone was huddled in their warmest clothes; the sky was blue but there was an iron-hard frost in the air, the puddles grey and frozen, a bitter wind from the east. Some from the poorer classes, in leather jerkins or threadbare coats, were shivering and hunched in the cold. But they stayed, determined to see the spectacle.

I wore my heavily furred winter robe, but no gold chain. That had been returned to the goldsmith back at the end of August. For on this royal occasion there was no great central figure to impress. King Henry VIII was dead, and his funeral procession about to begin.

The King, it was known, had fallen gravely ill again during the short royal Progress to Guildford in September, and never fully recovered. He worsened again in December and at the end of January he had died. The gossips at the Inns of Court had had much to chew over in recent months. It was, as ever, hard to distinguish truth from rumour, but most agreed that during the autumn the religious radicals had utterly triumphed; Bishop Gardiner had been publicly struck in the face by Lord Lisle in the Privy Council, and the King had refused to see him in the weeks before he died. It made sense to me: the conservative faction had bet everything on the Queen being found guilty of heresy, and on the success of Bertano’s mission. Both gambits had failed and the King, knowing he was dying, had turned to those who would ensure that the Royal Supremacy over the Church was preserved for his son.

In December the Duke of Norfolk and his son the Earl of Surrey had been suddenly arrested, the Earl accused of illegally quartering the royal arms with his own. Parliament had passed an Act of Attainder convicting both of treason; the young Earl had been executed in January, and Norfolk, the arch-conservative, would have followed him to the block had not the King died the night before the execution. It sounded to me like a put-up job — the King had used such methods before, to rid himself of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell. For now the old Duke remained alive, in the Tower.

It was said that as he lay dying at Whitehall the King had called for Archbishop Cranmer, but by the time he arrived Henry was past speech. And when the prelate asked him to give a sign that he died in the faith of Christ, he had been able only to clutch Cranmer’s hand. No confession then for Henry, no last rites. His death — perhaps by accident — had been one which Protestants could approve. And yet, extraordinarily, the King in his Will had ordered traditional requiem Masses to be said over his body. Henry, in death, was as inconstant as he had been in life.

‘Vive Le Roi Edward the Sixth!’ So the heralds proclaimed the new King, that thin, straight-backed little boy. The new Council which the old King had appointed by his Will made shortly before his death, to govern England during Edward’s minority, was dominated by those identified with the Protestant cause. Lord Lisle and the Earl of Essex, Catherine Parr’s brother, had places. So, too, did those in the middle, who would bend with the wind: Paget remained Master Secretary, Wriothesley was still in place on the Council, and Rich. All had bent to the King’s final change of path. But not Bishop Gardiner; he was left seething impotently on the sidelines. It was said that radical religious reform would soon be coming.