C. Sansom - Lamentation

Within the reforming camp, the Seymours had won out over the Parrs. There was to be no Regency for Catherine Parr, despite her hopes. She was now merely Queen Dowager, while the council had immediately appointed Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, as Protector of the young King. He it was who sat now at the head of the Council table, to which he had also appointed his brother Thomas.

All sorts of stories were flying around that the King’s Will had been doctored after his death, Hertford conspiring with the careerists to insert a clause concerning ‘unfulfilled gifts’ from the King which allowed the new council to award them titles, setting their loyalty in stone. Certainly there was a great crop of new peers: Richard Rich, for instance, was now Lord Rich of Lees in Essex. But exactly what had happened in the days just after the King died, nobody knew for sure; perhaps no one ever would.

Attendance at the funeral procession was officially encouraged, but not compulsory. Most of the great crowd, like me, had come, I think, to witness the passing of an epoch. The younger people present would have known no other ruler, and I could only dimly recall, when I was seven, my dear mother telling me that King Henry VII was dead and a second Tudor had ascended the throne.

I shook myself and rubbed my gloved hands together. Opposite, Whitehall Palace was silent and empty; the procession was to begin at the chapel of Westminster Palace, further south. Next to me, Philip Coleswyn said, ‘Ay, a chill day, but perhaps there now begin the days of true religion.’

Nicholas, on my other side, murmured, ‘Days of snow, from the feel of that wind.’ His Lincolnshire accent lengthened the vowels of his words.

‘Ay,’ I agreed, ‘I think you are right.’

The boy had been a rock to me these last months. In chambers he had worked with a new energy and intelligence, taking over much that Barak had formerly done. Though he needed supervising, and could be too haughty in manner for some of Barak’s more lowly friends among the clerks and solicitors, he was learning fast. He still made mistakes and, as those promoted rapidly often will, had taken on a certain insolence that needed gentle correction. But I had come to see that under his bravado and flippancy there was a core of steel in Nicholas Overton. I did not know how long he would stay with me, or even why he was so loyal: perhaps he needed to root himself somewhere after the quarrel with his family. Whatever the reason, I was grateful, and had invited him to accompany me to the funeral procession today.

When the two of us reached Whitehall I saw a large crowd of lawyers, their status ensuring them places at the front of the crowd, just north of the great Holbein Gate. They were all in their black robes and most had their hoods up against the cold; for a moment they reminded me of a crowd of monks. Heads turned as we approached; as I had anticipated, news of my arrest and appearance before the council had got out and was soon an item of gossip, as was the fact that Barak, known round Lincoln’s Inn for his wit and disrespectfulness, was gone. I nodded to people I knew with formal politeness. Treasurer Rowland, his long nose red with cold, looked at me disapprovingly. Vincent Dyrick, a woman and three children at his side, gave me a quick glance before turning away. And right at the front, William Cecil raised a hand in greeting, and gave me a nod. I returned it, thinking how well Cecil had done; Secretary now to the Earl of Hertford, already this young man was becoming a power in the land.

A familiar figure shouldered his way through the lawyers and called a greeting. I had not seen Philip Coleswyn since the summer, but took his hand gladly as he led Nicholas and me to stand beside him in the front row. I asked after his family and he said all were well. He looked relaxed and content, his terrible anxieties over the summer long gone. When he asked after my health I said merely that I was well. Even though I wore my coif, and had the hood of my robe up against the cold like everyone else, Philip glanced at my head. Perhaps someone had told him that after that night in August my hair had turned completely white; first just at the roots, giving me the aspect of a badger, but growing out until only white was left. I had got used to it.

‘They’re late,’ Nicholas observed, stamping his feet.

‘There is much to organize at Westminster,’ Philip said. ‘There are near two thousand men going to Windsor, on horse and foot. Everyone will have to be in their correct place.’

‘And it is nothing to them if common folk are kept waiting,’ I snapped. Philip looked at me, struck by my bitter tone. I thought, I must be careful, people will be taking me for an Anabaptist soon, and that creed of equality would have no more of a place under the new regime than it had under the old, however radical the religious changes which might come. I looked up at the windows above the wide arches of the Holbein Gate. There was the King’s study, to which he had called me on that dreadful night. He would never watch his people from his window again. All at once, I felt free.

Philip asked, ‘I do not suppose you have heard how Mistress Slanning fares?’

‘I have, in fact.’ Guy had kept me informed. He had been furious with me that night in August, and rightly so, but in the weeks that followed, when I was subject to blacker moods than ever in my life, he helped take care of me, counselled me. His compassion won out over his anger, for which I was eternally grateful. I looked at Philip, wondering how he would take what I had to say: ‘She is gone to France, as people may since the peace. She has returned to the Catholic faith and entered a nunnery, somewhere out in the French countryside.’

‘A nunnery?’ He sounded shocked.

‘I do not know if she has taken any vows yet. There is a long preparation.’ I wondered if Isabel had, at last, made her confession. ‘I think it is best for her, she would find it hard now to face the world. She has given her worldly goods to the nuns. Edward’s share of that house will pass to his family, for she had none left living.’

Philip inclined his head disapprovingly. ‘However comfortable a refuge the papists may provide, she has lost any chance of salvation.’

Nicholas looked at him narrowly. ‘Then you believe that when she dies she will burn, sir, as Mistress Anne Askew did, but in her case for all eternity?’

‘God’s laws are beyond human understanding, boy,’ Philip answered firmly.

I spoke quietly, ‘If such are his laws, then indeed they are.’ I thought of Hugh Curteys, my ward. As the persecution of Protestants had intensified in Antwerp the previous autumn, Hugh had moved to Hamburg, and worked now with the German Hanse merchants. This great struggle between Protestants and Catholics all across Europe could now make anyone a refugee, a prisoner, or worse.

Still the procession did not come, though officials had begun scurrying to and fro around the Holbein Gate, under which the procession would pass, one of them shivering in a clerical cassock. I remembered how the vicar had been late at the infinitely smaller ceremony a month before, when Josephine married Edward Brown. The wedding had been celebrated in the little parish church Edward attended; his family and friends from the Inn had come, together with Edward’s master. Josephine had no family and I had given her away; I had been proud to do so, though I would miss her greatly. They had moved to Norwich last week. I had hired an old fellow called Blaby, a grumbling creature, to look after my house until I found a new steward; apart from him, the household now consisted only of Timothy and myself. Gently, very gently, I was nudging the boy towards an apprenticeship with the Lincoln’s Inn farrier when he turned fourteen, which I would finance to give him a chance in life.