C. Sansom - Lamentation

Then I saw them, for the first time in six months, near the front of the crowd a little way off. Barak and Tamasin. Tamasin wore a thick coat with a hood, but looked pale; I knew from Guy that, a fortnight before, on the night the King died, she had given birth to a healthy daughter. She should not be out in this cold so soon, but I imagined she had insisted.

Barak, beside her, still looked sick. There was a heavy puffiness to his features now, and he had put on weight. I saw, with a clutch of sorrow at my heart, how the right sleeve of his coat trailed empty. He glanced up and his eyes met mine. Tamasin looked up too; when she saw me her face stiffened.

‘They’re coming!’ Murmurs and an excited shuffling in the crowd, heads craning to look towards the Holbein Gate. From beyond, the sound of sung prayers in the clear cold air. But then, for another minute, nothing happened. People shuffled and stamped their feet, some beginning to mutter and grumble a little in the bitter cold.

A movement nearby. I turned to see Barak sidling through the crowd towards us. Tamasin stayed behind, glaring at me, fierce as ever.

Barak took Nicholas by the arm with his remaining hand. ‘How are you, Nick boy? I haven’t seen you since that night. Are you all right?’

‘Yes — yes. And you?’ Nicholas sounded surprised, as indeed he might, for when he had gone to visit Barak one night in October, Tamasin had slammed the door in his face. Money which I had sent to her via Guy had been returned without a word.

‘How’s he treating you?’ Barak asked, inclining his head towards me. ‘Keeping you busy?’

‘Yes — yes. We miss you at chambers.’

Barak turned to me. ‘How goes it with you?’ His eyes, like his puffy face, were still full of pain and shock.

‘Well enough. But I have wished for news of you — ’

‘Listen,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll have to be quick. Tammy doesn’t want me talking to you. I just wanted to say, I’m all right. When I’m a bit better I’ve an offer from a group of solicitors to work with them; interviewing clients, finding witnesses, that sort of thing. Work where you don’t need two hands. So don’t worry.’

‘I am desperately sorry, Jack, desperately,’ I said. ‘Tamasin is right to think it was all my fault.’

‘Balls!’ Barak answered with something of his old vigour. ‘It was me decided to get involved with all that, me that told her lies about what I was doing. Am I not still a man with responsibility for my own decisions?’ A spasm of anger crossed his face and I realized that, in his own eyes, he was not fully a man any more. I did not reply.

‘How does the new baby fare?’ Nicholas asked. ‘We heard you have a daughter.’

Barak spoke with a touch of his old humour. ‘Can’t keep anything quiet within a mile of Lincoln’s Inn, can you? Yes, she’s lusty and healthy, lungs on her like her mother. We’re going to call her Matilda.’

‘Congratulations, Jack,’ I said quietly.

He glanced over his shoulder at Tamasin. ‘I’d better get back. Listen, I’ll be in touch when I’m working again. And this — ’ he gestured to his empty sleeve — ‘Guy’s making me some sort of attachment now the stump’s healed. It won’t be anything like a hand but I suppose it’ll be better than nothing. As for Tammy, give her time. I’m working on her. Easier for her to blame you than me, I suppose.’

There was some truth in that. Yet she had every reason to blame me for Barak’s maiming, as I blamed myself. He gave me a nod, then walked back to his wife. Tamasin had seen him speaking to me; the look she gave me now had in it something despairing, defeated, that cut me to the heart. I turned away.

The murmuring had ceased, the crowd fallen silent again. Beyond the Holbein Gate the singing of prayers was growing louder as it approached. People bared their heads. I lowered my own hood, feeling the icy air against my coif. Two officials on horseback rode under the main arch, looking up the roadway to ensure the way was clear. Then beneath the wide arches walked the choir and priests of the Chapel Royal, still singing. There followed perhaps three hundred men in new black coats, carrying torches. The poor men who, by tradition, headed the funeral processions of the great. Well, there were plenty of poor men in England now, more than ever there had been.

The men who came next, on horseback, dozens of them bearing standards and banners, were certainly not poor: the great ones of the realm, flanked by Yeomen of the Guard. I glimpsed faces I recognized — Cranmer, Wriothesley, Paget. I lowered my head in a pretence of mourning.

Eventually they all passed, and the great hearse approached. A lawyer behind me leaned round Nicholas, saying impatiently, ‘Aside, beanpole, let me see!’

The hearse was drawn by eight great horses draped in black, each ridden by a little boy, the children of honour, carrying banners. It was richly gilded, with a cloth-of-gold canopy covering the huge coffin, on top of which lay a wax effigy of King Henry, startlingly lifelike, though looking not as I had seen him last summer but as he was in the Holbein mural: in his prime, hair and beard red, body solidly powerful. The effigy was fully dressed in jewelled velvet, a black nightcap on its head. The face wore an expression of peace and repose such as I doubted Henry had ever worn in life.

Bells began to toll. People lowered their heads, and I even heard a few groans. I looked at the effigy as it passed and thought, what did he really achieve, what did his extraordinary reign really bring? I remembered all that I had seen these last ten years: ancient monasteries destroyed, monks pensioned off and servants put out on the road; persecutions and burnings — I shuddered at the memory of Anne Askew’s head exploding; a great war that had achieved nothing and impoverished the country — and if that impoverishment continued to deepen, there would be trouble: the common people could only stand so much. And always, always under Henry, the shadow of the axe. I thought of those who had perished by it, and in particular of one I had long ago known well, and still remembered: Thomas Cromwell.

Beside me Philip said softly, ‘And so it ends.’

It was a fortnight later that the horseman brought the note to chambers, riding from Chelsea through the heavy snow that had lain for days. Henry was buried now, and little King Edward crowned. There was a tale that while lying overnight on the way to Windsor, Henry’s body had exploded, that stinking matter had dripped out and attracted the attention of a dog, fulfilling an old friar’s prophecy that the dogs should lick Henry’s blood as they had Ahab’s in the Bible. But that sounded too neat, and I doubted it had happened.

I was working in my room when the messenger arrived, while outside Skelly prepared a case for court and Nicholas laboured, inky-fingered, over a deposition. I recognized the seal at once. That of the Queen; the Queen Dowager, as she was now. I opened the letter, bright light from the snow-covered square outside making the copperplate lettering stand out on the white paper. It was brief, from a secretary, asking me to attend her the following afternoon at Chelsea Palace.

I laid it down. I had not expected to hear from Catherine Parr again; after that confrontation with the King, I had tried, so far as I could, to put her from my mind. But the King’s edict against my coming near had died with him. I had been sorry that Catherine Parr had not, as she had hoped, been appointed Regent, though glad when people said the King had been generous in his Will to her, as well as to the Ladies Mary and Elizabeth; each now had great wealth and status of their own. People said Catherine Parr might marry again, in time, and the name Thomas Seymour was mentioned.