The Queen of Subtleties. Suzannah Dunn
could mean physically, because of all the building-works, but his demeanour suggests otherwise: he’s tense, tentative. I recall what Richard said: Le Corbeau isn’t best pleased about it, to put it very, very mildly. It’s true, then? I don’t look at Richard; resolutely, I don’t. Not that he’s looking at me: what I can feel is him listening. Perhaps this is how he does it: not jubilant, ribald exchanges of gossip, but stealth. Taking what he can, when he can. And now here’s me doing the same.
Mark almost whispers, ‘It’s a gift, isn’t it, to be so full of life. To be so sure. So sure of yourself.’
Ah, yes, but that’s the life of a king, isn’t it.
‘She’s—’ he frowns, thinking, ‘true to herself.’
She? ‘Who?’
‘The queen. True to herself. In this place, where everyone’s saying one thing and thinking another. Where everyone’s saying something to one person, and something else to the next. Which means, though, that she’s very alone.’
Alone? Anne Boleyn? Whenever I’ve seen her, she’s been the centre of attention: the king’s attention, indulgent and lavish; the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, playing up to her. Her family: that brother, father, uncle. It’s Queen Catherine who’s alone. Banished to some old castle. Forbidden, even, to see her own daughter. And she’s never had family, here: shipped, at sixteen, a thousand miles from her happy childhood home. Imagine: to be told, over the years, of the deaths; her mother, first, then father, big sister, little brother. Friends, though, she does have; and has always had. Proper friends. There was no playing up to Queen Catherine; no need for it. By all accounts, she made friends and kept them: a few came with her on that galleon and are locked away with her now in that castle.
Mark sighs. ‘I can’t understand why he’s doing it.’
The king, he means. The mistress. Well, yes: that, we can agree on.
‘He married for love,’ he says. ‘Married a fascinating woman: a clever and stunning woman. Had—has—a child by her.’
‘Beautiful kid,’ it has to be said.
‘So, why should he need to do this? If I were him, I’d never look at another woman.’
He is so serious that, oddly, I can’t help but smile. He’s looking tired, too, though. ‘Listen, Mark, I’m going to mix you a tonic.’ Perhaps even risk passing him a manus christi, one of the amber roses I was making when I first saw him, one of the few to which I added rosewater and later gilded. Let’s see if sugar, rosewater and gold can’t work their powers to wash away that lavender tint around his eyes.
His gloom vanishes. ‘Really? A potion? Later, though. I have to go.’
‘Go? Already?’
‘I shouldn’t be here. Things to do. I only dropped by. Just wanted to—’ He shrugs. ‘Lucy, you’re so…’
I’m so…?
‘…sane.’
Sane?
‘I’ll be back,’ he promises.
And he’s gone. I’d sort of forgotten about Richard; that he’s here. But here he is; as he has been, all along. The only sound, his blade scratching at a chunk of sugarloaf. Between us, nothing; silence. It’ll be me who breaks it. ‘Poor Mark.’ Something which means nothing at all; which simply means, Mark was here.
‘Oh, he’s always like that.’ This comes back very quickly.
And it surprises me in all kinds of ways. Not least, ‘Like what?’ And, anyway, how does he know?
‘That’s what Silvester says: Smeaton’s always like that. All chivalrous.’ Said as if it’s a dirty word. Which is a new one on me.
‘And since when has there been anything wrong with chivalry?’
He still doesn’t look up. ‘Oh, come on, Lucy,’ he murmurs, low-key, casual. ‘He’s like some fifteenth-century knight. Love and devotion. He’s kidding himself. This is the real world.’
Is it?
‘Of course, he’d like to be a knight; but he’s the son of a seamstress, you know, and a Dutch father who’s dead. You won’t know, of course, because he doesn’t like it known.’
Scrape, scrape, scrape.
He could at least look at me. If he’s going to be that rude about a friend of mine, he could at least look at me when he does it. ‘So? At least he knows who he’s the son of.’
Richard’s expression as he does look up isn’t the one I’m already cringing from. It’s one of surprise. ‘Oh, Lucy.’ And disappointment has softened his voice. ‘That was a bit close to the bone.’
But he deserved it; he deserved it, didn’t he? ‘Well, don’t be so quick to judge people!’
How on earth did I bring him up to be so shallow? Why have I always let him get away with it?
He makes a small show of giving in gracefully. Resumes his work. Says nothing.
Me, likewise.
So, we’re not speaking. Which has never happened before.
We moved into 1527 and it seemed that the rain that’d started a year earlier still didn’t let up. Spring was slow off the ground. Our rooms were choked with woodsmoke, our clothes bitter-smelling with it. I remember my brother’s wife at a window, wondering, ‘When will this weather break?’ I remember the longing in her voice. The weather didn’t bother me greatly; I was happy and had so much to look forward to. Henry would be divorced, that year, and he’d marry me. I’d be queen, we’d have a baby prince, and there would be a long-overdue new beginning: a young, strong monarchy, busy and respected in Europe. There’d be reform, if I had my way, and of course I would have my way. I wasn’t interested in looking out of windows at monotonous, drenching rain.
Mid-May, when summer should have been peeking from the trees but was in fact still slithering in the mud, Henry asked for an ecclesiastical court to meet in secret to rule his marriage invalid. Wolsey, Warham—the old archbishop—and the other bishops, and a lot of church lawyers, they were all there: the great and the good, in most people’s view, although I can think of other ways to describe them. They informed Henry that he’d be called to give evidence. He did his homework. He was nervous, and asked me to listen to him rehearsing his case. As far as I could see, there was no case to answer; it was open and shut: she was no wife to him. And anyway, why answer to them? ‘Who’s king?’ I’d complain. It infuriated me that he had to go scraping and bowing to those old men in their dingy robes.
I was right not to have held them in any esteem. They heard him out (which was big of them), then met twice more (to avail themselves of Henry’s ample hospitality), before announcing on the very last day of May that they weren’t men enough to give a ruling without the blessing of the Pope. Well, there was one problem with that: three weeks earlier, Rome and the Pope had been taken by the Imperial Army. Catherine’s own nephew, the emperor, was holding the Pope captive. How likely was it that the Pope could rule unfavourably for his captor’s aunt?
Nevertheless, that was what Wolsey reckoned we had to have: the Pope’s permission. But then off he went to France—with boatloads of servants—on some vague, alliance-building, anti-Spanish mission. I can’t say I missed him, but I was annoyed by the delay he was causing us. Although Henry knew, by now, not to bother asking me to spend the nights with him, there were evenings now when I made a point of retiring early. You know the deal, my sour glance said; sort it out.
I didn’t have all that many