К Сэнсом - Lamentation

‘No rumours,’ I said. ‘I was at the burning. She could not stand, she was put to death sitting in a chair.’

‘We fear the torture was used to try and extract damaging information about the Queen. Though her majesty had never met the woman, Lady Hertford and Lady Denny had sent her money while she was in prison –’

‘Lest she starve!’ the Queen burst out. ‘It was charity, charity. Mistress Askew –’

‘Mistress Kyme,’ Cranmer corrected gently.

‘Mistress Kyme, then! That I may have been the cause of her torture …’ Tears had appeared at the corners of the Queen’s eyes again she who had always been so self-controlled. I thought, what must it have been like for her these last months, knowing she was under investigation, but unable to say anything; all the time trying to behave normally with the King. I saw she was at the end of her tether, in no condition even to tell her story without help.

‘We do not know that was the reason.’ Lord Parr placed a gnarled hand on his niece’s. ‘But in any event, it seems the King has now had enough. He was angry, too, that his friend George Blagge was sentenced to burn; he has pardoned him.’

Cranmer nodded agreement. ‘Gardiner’s plot has failed. The King decided it was time to cry, “Enough!”’ So that, I thought, explained Rich’s worried look at Smithfield. Perhaps it explained, too, why Cranmer felt it safe to come back to court now. With a wry smile he added, ‘And so he decided to teach the heresy hunters a lesson they would not forget.’ He looked at the Queen. She closed her eyes.

The Archbishop took a deep breath. ‘Three years ago, when Gardiner was after my head, hunting for heretics in my diocese, the King called me to see him. He said he had agreed that I should be examined by the Privy Council.’ The Archbishop paused, and his face worked: a memory of fear. He took a deep breath. ‘But his majesty told me the investigation into my diocese would be headed by me, and gave me his ring to present to the Privy Council to show I had his favour. Though not before he had frightened me by telling me he knew, now, who was the greatest heretic in Kent. Frightened me, warned me, but at the same time showed me I had his confidence.’ He paused. ‘And last week he used the same strategy with her majesty.’ Cranmer looked pointedly at the Queen.

She lifted her head. ‘I was called to the King’s private chamber. Near two weeks ago, on the third. What he said astounded me. He said quite directly that Gardiner and his friends had tried to make him believe wicked lies about me, but now he knew better. He was unaware that I knew what had passed. Or perhaps he did know, but said nothing; he can be so –’ She broke off, fingering the pearl again, before resuming in strangely wooden tones. ‘He said his love for me was undiminished, and asked for my help in teaching Gardiner and Wriothesley a lesson. He said he would have articles drawn up for my arrest, and tell Wriothesley to take me into custody. But we would pretend a copy of the articles had fallen into my hands by accident. I would be heard crying out in despair, and he would come to comfort me.’ Her voice broke for a second and she swallowed hard. ‘So that is what we did.’ My heart beat hard with rage that the King should manipulate her so.

‘Then the next evening I was to call on him in his chamber, and, in front of his gentlemen, apologize for going too far in discussing religion.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I was to say I knew a woman’s duty is to be instructed by her husband, and that I was only seeking to distract him from the pain in his legs. I did as he asked, playing my part in the performance.’ I discerned a note of bitterness, quickly suppressed, in her voice.

‘The next day, I was to walk in the garden with him and my ladies. By prearrangement with the King, Wriothesley was to come and arrest me with fifty of the guard. Wriothesley thought he had won, but when he arrived the King tore the warrant from his hand, called him a beast and a knave in front of the men of the guard and my ladies, and ordered him from his presence.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Since then his majesty has been loving and attentive to me in front of all. I am to have new jewels; he knows I love bright jewels. I have ever had good measure of the sin of covetousness, as well as vanity.’ She lowered her head.

‘Then – then the crisis is over?’ I said. ‘That dreadful burning and the new proclamation on forbidden books – that was the last act? Wriothesley and the conservatives have been humiliated?’

‘Would that it were the last act!’ the Queen cried out. ‘I have one book missing, the most dangerous of all, and it is my fault!’

Lord Parr put his hand over hers again. ‘Calm, Kate, stay calm. You are doing well.’

Cranmer stood, walking to a window which looked out over a garden to the river, blue in the summer sunshine, dotted with the white sails of wherries and tilt-boats. Another world. There was a distant hammering from where the Lady Mary’s new chambers were being built. The Archbishop said, ‘I spoke of Bishop Gardiner negotiating a new treaty with the Empire. And Paget has succeeded in making peace with the French. Lord Lisle and the Earl of Hertford played their parts, too; both are abroad just now, but they will return next month, with feathers in their own caps, and the balance on the Privy Council will change in favour of the reformers. That, and the King’s annoyance with Gardiner’s faction, will help us. But something else is going on, Master Shardlake.’ Cranmer turned and I felt the full force of those penetrating eyes. ‘We do not know what it is, but we see the senior councillors in the conservative faction – Norfolk, Gardiner, and others like Paget – still smiling and talking in corners, when after their setback they should be cringing like whipped dogs. The other day, after the council, I heard Paget muttering to Norfolk about a visitor from abroad; they fell silent as I approached. Something else, something secret, is going on. They have another card still to play.’

‘And I have given them a second,’ the Queen said bleakly. ‘Placed myself and all those I care for in jeopardy.’

This time neither her uncle nor the Archbishop sought to reassure her. The Queen smiled, not the gently humorous smile that in happier times was ever ready to appear on her face, but a sad, angry grimace. She said, ‘It is time for you to know what I have done.’

WE ALL LOOKED AT HER. She spoke quietly. ‘Last winter, it seemed the King was moving in the direction of reform. He had made Parliament pass the bill that gave him control of the chantries; another bastion of popish ceremony had fallen. I had published my Prayers and Meditations that summer, and felt the time was safe for me to write another book, a declaration to the world of my beliefs, as Marguerite of Navarre has done. And so I wrote my little volume. I knew it might be – controversial – so I composed it in secret, in my bedroom. A confession – of my life; my sins, my salvation, my beliefs.’ She looked at me intently; the light of conviction shone in her eyes now. ‘It is called the Lamentation of a Sinner . I speak in it of how, when I was young, I was mired in superstition, full of vanity for the things of this world; of how God spoke to me but I denied His voice, until eventually I accepted His saving grace.’ Her voice had risen with passion; she looked at Lord Parr and the Archbishop, but they had cast their eyes down. She continued, more quietly. ‘It was God who brought me to realize it was my destiny to marry the King.’ She cast her own head down, and I wondered if she was thinking of her old love for Thomas Seymour. ‘In my Lamentation I speak in the most plain terms of my belief that salvation comes through faith and study of the Bible, not vain ceremonies.’ I closed my eyes. I knew of books like this, confessions by radical Protestants of their sinfulness and salvation. Some had been seized by the authorities. The Queen had been foolish to write such a thing in these faction-ridden times, even in secret. She must have known it; but for once her emotions had overridden her political sense. And her hope that the times were shifting in favour of reform had again proved disastrously wrong.