Lamentation

Chapter Thirty-nine

And so I took a boat to Whitehall Palace. I had no more information to bring Lord Parr about what might have happened to the Queen’s book; and I realized that, with all Greening’s group gone, its fate might remain unknown.

On the way to Temple Stairs I called in at chambers to tell Barak I would be away that day, I did not know for how long. He was alone — Nicholas and Skelly had not yet come in — and I summoned him to my room.

‘Whitehall?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I found McKendrick last night.’ I told him what had happened at the hospital.

‘So the late Master Curdy was the spy.’

‘So it seems.’ I sighed. ‘I have reached a dead end.’

‘Then leave it to the politicians now,’ he said roughly. ‘You’ve done all you can.’

‘I cannot but feel I have failed the Queen.’

‘You’ve done all you can,’ he repeated impatiently. ‘Risked your life.’

‘I know. And yours, and Nicholas’s.’

‘Then have done with it. If Queen Catherine falls, it will be through her own foolishness.’

I entered the palace by the Common Stairs again, the wherry jostling for space at the pier along with boats carrying newly slaughtered swans for the royal table and bolts of fine silk. The pier ran a long way out into the water, so that unloading could take place even at low tide. The tide was almost full now, though, just starting to ebb. Dirty grey water washed round the lowest of the stone steps. I thought for a moment of poor Peter Cotterstoke, tumbling into the river on a cold autumn day. As I left the boat, gathering my robe around me and straightening my cap, I looked upriver to the Royal Stairs. There, a narrow, brightly painted building two storeys high jutted out of the long redbrick facade of the palace. It ended at a magnificent stone boathouse, built over the water. A barge was heading towards it, oarsmen pulling hard against the tide. A man in a dark robe and cap sat in the stern. I recognized the slab face and forked beard: Secretary Paget, master of spies, and one of those who knew whether an emissary of the Pope called Bertano was truly in London.

I went into the maze of buildings, tight-packed around their little inner courts. Some of the guards recognized me by sight now, though as always at strategic points my name had to be checked against a list. All the magnificence within had become familiar, almost routine. I was accustomed now to avoid looking at all the great works of art and statuary as I passed along, lest they delay me. I saw two stonemasons creating a new and elaborate cornice in a corridor, and remembered Leeman saying how every stone in the palace was built on common people’s sweat. I recalled that craftsmen were paid a lower rate for royal work, justified by the status that accrued from working for the King.

I was admitted again at the Queen’s Presence Chamber. A young man, one of the endless petitioners, stood arguing with a bored-looking guard in his black-and-gold livery. ‘But my father has sent to Lord Parr saying I was arriving from Cambridge today. I have a degree in canon law. I know there is a position on the Queen’s Learned Council come vacant.’

‘You are not on the list,’ the guard answered stolidly. I thought, who was leaving? Was it me, now my work was done?

In the bay window overlooking the river some of the Queen’s ladies sat as usual, needlework on their laps, watching a dance performed with surprising skill by Jane Fool. I saw Mary Odell sitting with the highborn ladies despite her lack of rank. The pretty young Duchess of Suffolk, her lapdog Gardiner on her knee, sat between her and the Queen’s sister Lady Anne Herbert, whom I had seen at Baynard’s Castle. A tall thin young man with a narrow, beaky face and wispy beard stood behind them, watching with a supercilious expression.

Jane came to a halt in front of the gentleman and bowed. ‘There, my Lord of Surrey,’ she said to the man. ‘Am I not fit to be your partner at the dancing at Hampton Court for the admiral?’ So this was Surrey, the Duke of Norfolk’s oldest son, but reportedly a reformer, said to be a skilled poet, who last winter had been in trouble for leading a drunken spree in the city.

He answered curtly, ‘I dance only with ladies of rank, Mistress Fool. And now you must excuse me. I have to meet my father.’

‘Do not be harsh with Jane,’ the Duchess of Suffolk said reprovingly; for the fool’s moon face had reddened. But then Jane saw me standing a little way off, and pointed at me. ‘There is the reason the Queen has gone to Lord Parr’s chamber! The lawyer has come again to bother her with business! See, he has a back as hunched as Will Somers’!’

The company turned to look at me as she continued. ‘He would have had Ducky taken from me. But the Lady Mary would not let him! She knows who her true friends are!’ There was a glimmer in her eyes that told me Jane was indeed no halfwit; all this nonsense was deliberate, to humiliate me.

Mary Odell stood up hastily and came to my side. ‘Her majesty and Lord Parr are waiting for you, Master Shardlake.’

I was glad to walk away with her to the Queen’s inner sanctum.

Again the Queen was seated on a high chair under her red cloth of estate; today she wore a bright green dress on which flowers, leaves, even peapods on a bush, were sewn to scale. Under her French hood I thought I caught the glint of grey strands in her auburn hair. Lord Parr stood to one side of her in his usual black robe and gold chain, and Archbishop Cranmer on the other, in his white cassock. As I bowed deeply I saw the Queen’s chess set on a table nearby and thought: a black piece and a white.

All three had been studying a life-size portrait set before them on an easel, the newly painted colours so bright they drew the eye even amid the magnificence of Whitehall Palace. The background showed the dark red curtains of a four-poster bed, the foreground an open bible on a lectern and next to it the Lady Elizabeth, whom I recognized at once. She was wearing the same red dress as the day I saw her, when she had complained at having to stand so long, and being painted beside her bed.

Her trouble had been worthwhile, for the portrait was truly lifelike. Elizabeth’s budding breasts contrasted with the vulnerability of her thin, childlike shoulders. She held a small book in her hands and her expression was composed, with a sense of watchful authority despite her youth. I read the meaning of the painting: here was a girl on the brink of womanhood, scholarly, serious, regal, and in the background the bed as a reminder of her coming marriageability.

The Queen, who had been looking at the portrait intently, sat back in her chair. ‘It is excellent,’ she said.

‘It says everything that is needed,’ Cranmer agreed. He turned to me. ‘I have heard your latest news, Matthew,’ he said quietly. ‘That there was a spy in this group, and he is dead. His master is likely someone senior, a Privy Councillor, but we do not know who.’

‘Yes, my Lord,’ I added. ‘I am sorry.’

‘You did all you could,’ he said, echoing Barak. I glanced at the Queen. She looked troubled now, her body held with that air of slight stiffness I had come to recognize as denoting strain. She did not speak.

‘At least this group of Anabaptists is gone,’ Lord Parr said. ‘I’d have seen them burned!’

Cranmer said firmly, ‘The guard who Leeman suborned at the palace, and the gaoler Myldmore, must be sent abroad. For all our safety.’

‘You would have had them burned too, my Lord Archbishop,’ Lord Parr growled, ‘were moving them not necessary.’

‘Only if earnest preaching could not bring them from their heresy,’ Cranmer said, anger in his voice. ‘I wish no man burned.’

‘You have helped us greatly, Matthew,’ the Queen said gently, ‘with Leeman’s information about Bertano.’

I asked, ‘It is true, then, about him?’

Lord Parr glanced at Cranmer and then the Queen, who nodded. He spoke sternly. ‘This is for your ears only, Shardlake, and we tell you only because you first brought us that name and would welcome your view. Only we four know about Bertano. We have not even told the Queen’s brother or sister. And that man and boy who work for you must say nothing,’ he added in a threatening tone.

‘We know you have absolute trust in them,’ Cranmer said mildly.

‘Tell him, niece,’ Lord Parr said.

The Queen spoke: heavily, reluctantly. ‘A week ago, his majesty had a visitor brought to his privy quarters during the day. All the servants in the Privy Chamber were cleared out. Normally he tells me if a visitor from abroad is coming,’ she added, ‘but the night before this visit he said that it was for him alone to know about, and I was to stay on my side of the palace.’ She lowered her eyes.

Her uncle prompted her gently, ‘And then?’

‘I know the meeting did not go well. His majesty sent for me to play music for him afterwards, as he does sometimes when he is sad and low in spirits. He was in an angry humour, he even hit his fool Will Somers on the pate and told him to get out; he had no patience for idle jest. I dared to look at him questioningly, for poor Somers had done nothing to warrant being struck. The King said, “Someone wants the powers granted me by God, Kate, and dares send to ask for them. I have sent back such answer as he deserves.” Then he struck the arm of his chair so fiercely with his fist that it jarred his whole body and caused a fearful pain in his leg.’ The Queen took a deep breath. ‘He did not make me swear to keep his words confidential. So, though strictly it goes against the honour due my husband, because of the dire straits we have all found ourselves in, I confided in my uncle and the Archbishop.’

‘And now we have told you,’ Lord Parr said brusquely. ‘What do you make of it?’

‘It adds weight to the suspicion that what Vandersteyn learned on the Continent was true. Someone asking the King for the powers granted him by God. That can only mean the Supreme Headship, and only the Pope would demand that.’

He nodded agreement. ‘That is what we think. If Bertano was an emissary from the Pope it sounds as though the price for a reconciliation was the King’s renunciation of his Headship of the Church in England.’

‘And from all the King said, a message was to be sent back to the Pope?’

Cranmer answered. ‘I think it has already gone. And if it has, it would be through Paget.’ He smiled humourlessly. ‘And yesterday Paget told the Privy Council that after d’Annebault’s visit, the King and Queen will be going on a short Progress — only as far as Guildford — and announced those of the council he has chosen to accompany him, all sympathizers with reform. Gardiner, Norfolk, Rich, all our enemies, remain in London, kicking their heels and keeping the wheels of government turning. Those who will be about the King’s person, and have his ear, will be our allies.’

Lord Parr raised his hands. ‘The pieces all fit.’

Cranmer smiled, more warmly this time. ‘Those left behind did not look pleased to hear the news at the council table. I think Bertano’s mission has failed at the start.’ There was satisfaction in his voice, relief too.

I said, ‘But there remains the Lamentation.’

‘There is nothing more to be done about that,’ Lord Parr said bluntly. ‘Except hope that whoever stole it realizes they have squandered their chance, that the Catholic cause is lost, and — forgive me, Kate — that they dispose of it.’ He added, ‘The King will not turn his policy again.’

Cranmer shook his head emphatically. ‘With the King, that can never be ruled out. But I agree, the trail on the book is quite cold.’

I looked at the Queen. ‘Believe me, your majesty, I wish I had been able to recover it. I am sorry.’

‘God’s wounds,’ Lord Parr said abruptly. ‘You did your best, even if it wasn’t good enough. And now, all that remains is for you to keep quiet.’

‘I swear I will, my Lord.’

Cranmer said, ‘Your efforts to serve her majesty will not be forgotten.’

It was a dismissal. I adjusted my posture a little, so I could bow to them without pain, for I was still suffering from when Nicholas had thrown me to the ground, to save me from the man with the gun. But the Queen rose from her chair. ‘Matthew, before you go I would talk a little with you again. Come, you have seen my Privy Gallery, but not by daylight. Let us walk there. Mary Odell can accompany us.’ She nodded to Cranmer and Lord Parr, who bowed low. I followed the Queen as she walked to the door, silk skirts rustling.

With daylight coming in through the high windows, showing the gorgeous colours to full effect, the Queen’s Privy Gallery was magnificent. The little birds in their cages hopped and sang. The Queen walked slowly along; I kept a respectful pace or two away, while Mary Odell, summoned from the gallery, brought up the rear. The expression on her plump face was neutral, but her eyes were watchful, I saw, as I glanced back.

The Queen halted before an alcove in which a jewelled box was set atop a marble pillar. Within were coins of gold and silver, showing portraits of long-dead kings and emperors. Some were worn almost smooth, others bright as though new-minted. She stirred them with a long finger. ‘Ancient coins have always interested me. They remind us we are but specks of dust amid the ages.’ Carefully, she picked up a gold coin. ‘The Emperor Constantine, who brought Christianity to the Roman Empire. It was found near Bristol some years ago.’ She lifted her head and looked out of the window; it gave on to the Thames bank below the palace, exposed now as the tide ebbed. I followed her gaze, my eye drawn to a heap of rubbish from the palace that had been thrown onto the mud: discarded vegetable leaves, bones, a pig’s head. Gulls swooped over it, pecking and screaming. The Queen turned away. ‘Let us try the view on the other side,’ she said.

We crossed the gallery. The opposite window looked down on another of the small lawned courtyards between the buildings. Two men I recognized were walking and talking there. One was Bishop Gardiner, solidly built, red-faced, dressed again in a white silk cassock. The other, younger man was sturdy, dark-bearded, saturnine: John Dudley, Lord Lisle, who had commanded the King’s naval forces at Portsmouth last year. His defensive strategy had done much to ward off invasion. So the other senior councillor who favoured the radicals was back from his mission abroad. All the chess pieces were in place now. Gardiner, I saw, was talking animatedly, his heavy face for once wearing a civil expression. Something in their postures suggested Gardiner was on the defensive. Lord Lisle inclined his head. This, I thought, was how the real power-play went: conversations in corners and gardens, nods, shrugs, inclinations of the head. But nothing in writing.

The Queen joined me. An expression of distaste and fear, quickly suppressed, crossed her face at the sight of Gardiner.

‘Lord Lisle is back,’ I observed.

‘Yes. Another ally. I wonder what they are discussing.’ She sighed and stepped away from the window, then looked at me and spoke seriously. ‘I wanted you to know, Matthew, the depth of my gratitude for the help you have given. I sense it has cost you much. And my uncle can be — less than appreciative. But all he does is for my interest.’

‘I know.’

‘It looks as though my book will never be found. It saddens me to think it may be on some rubbish tip, for all it may be safer there. It was my confession of faith, you see, my acknowledgement that I am a sinner, like everyone, but through prayer in the Bible I found my way to Christ.’ She sighed. ‘Though even my faith has not protected me from terrible fear these last months.’ She bit her lip, hesitated, then said, ‘Perhaps you thought me disloyal, earlier, for repeating words spoken to me by the King. But — we needed to know what this visit from abroad signifies.’

I ventured a smile. ‘Mayhap a turn in fortune for you, your majesty, if the meeting went badly.’

‘Perhaps.’ She was silent again, then said with sudden intensity, ‘The King — you do not know how he suffers. He is in constant pain, sometimes he near swoons with it, yet always, always, he must keep up the facade.’

I dared to say, ‘As must you, your majesty.’

‘Yes. Despite my fear.’ She swallowed nervously.

I remembered what Lord Parr had said about how the King might react to disloyalty. For all that the Queen revered her husband, her fear of him over these last months must have been an unimaginable burden. I felt a clutch at my heart that she so valued me as to unburden herself thus. I said, ‘I can only imagine how hard it must have been for you, your majesty.’

She frowned. ‘And always, always there are people ready to whisper poison in the King’s ear —’

Mary Odell, perhaps concerned the Queen was saying too much, approached us. ‘Your majesty,’ she said. ‘You asked me to remind you to take these to the King when you see him. They were found down the side of a chair in his Privy Chamber.’ She had produced a pair of wood-framed spectacles from the folds of her dress, and held them out to the Queen.

‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Mary.’ The Queen turned to me. ‘The King needs glasses now to read. He is always losing them.’ She tucked the spectacles away, then began walking down the gallery again. ‘The court will be moving from Whitehall next week,’ she said, more brightly. ‘The French admiral is to be received first at Greenwich and then at Hampton Court, so everything is to be moved.’ She waved a hand. ‘All this packed up, transported by boat, set out again in a new place. The Privy Council meeting in a new chamber. With Lisle and Hertford both present,’ she added with a note of satisfaction.

I ventured, ‘I saw Lord Hertford with his brother Sir Thomas Seymour at the palace last time I came.’

‘Yes. Thomas is back, too.’ She looked me in the eye. ‘You do not like him, I know.’

‘I fear his impulsiveness, your majesty.’

She waved a dismissive hand. ‘He is not impulsive, just a man of strong feeling.’

I did not reply. There was a brief, awkward silence, then she changed the subject. ‘You have knowledge of portraiture, Matthew. What was your opinion of the picture of my stepdaughter?’

‘Very fine. It shows the coming substance of her character.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Prince Edward, too, is a child, well advanced for his years. There are those in my family who hope that one day I may be appointed Regent when he comes to the throne, as I was when the King went to France two years ago. If so, I would try to do well by all.’

‘I am sure of it.’ But the Seymours as well as the traditionalists would oppose her there, I knew.

She came to a halt. ‘Soon the French admiral will come, and afterwards the King and I go on Progress, as you heard.’ She looked at me seriously. ‘You and I may not have another opportunity to talk.’

I answered quietly, ‘A young courtier waiting outside said there is a vacancy on your Learned Council. Do you wish me to resign my position?’

‘The vacant post is not yours but Master Cecil’s. He asked to go. What he experienced at the docks was too much for him, not that he is a coward, but he fears if anything happened to him his wife and children would be left alone. And Lord Hertford has asked him to become one of his advisers. I consented; Cecil is a man of great loyalty and will say nothing of the Lamentation. As for you, Matthew, I wonder if it might be best for all if you were to leave as well.’

‘Yes. After all, I was supposedly appointed only to find a missing jewel.’ I smiled. ‘And sadly, it indeed seems there is no chance of finding your book. Perhaps it would be — politic — for me to leave now.’

‘So my uncle thinks, and I agree.’ She smiled tiredly. ‘Though I would still rather have your counsel.’

‘If you need to call on me again —’

‘Thank you.’ She looked at me, hesitated, then spoke with quick intensity. ‘One thing more, Matthew. Your lack of faith still troubles me. It will eat away at you from the inside, until only a shell is left.’

I thought sadly: was the real purpose of our talk for her to make another essay at bringing me to faith? I answered truthfully, ‘I have wished for God, but I cannot find him in either Christian faction today.’

‘I pray that may change. Think on what I said, I beg you.’ She looked into my eyes.

‘I always do, your majesty.’

A sad little smile, then she nodded and turned to Mary Odell. ‘We should go back, sit with the ladies awhile. They will think we are neglecting them.’

We walked back up the gallery. Near the door she paused at a table on which stood a magnificent gold clock a foot high, ticking softly. ‘Time,’ the Queen said softly. ‘Another reminder we are but grains of sand in eternity.’

Mary Odell went in front of us and knocked at the door. A guard opened it from the other side and we stepped through into the heavily guarded vestibule, with its doors leading to the Queen’s rooms, the King’s, and the Royal Stairs. At the same moment another guard opened the doors leading to the King’s chambers, and two men stepped out. One was the red-bearded Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, the other Secretary Paget, a leather folder thick with papers under his arm. They had probably just come from seeing the King.

Seeing the Queen, they bowed deeply. I bowed to them in turn, and rose to see both staring at me, this hunchbacked lawyer wearing the Queen’s badge, who had been walking with her in her gallery. Wriothesley stared with particular intensity, his gaze only relaxing a little when he saw Mary Odell standing by the door: her presence showed the Queen had not been walking alone with a man who was not a relative.

The Queen’s face immediately assumed an expression of regal composure; still, quiet, a little superior. She said, ‘This is Serjeant Shardlake, of my Learned Council.’

Wriothesley’s stare intensified again. Paget’s large brown eyes held mine with a forceful, unblinking look. Then, turning to the Queen, he lowered his eyes and spoke smoothly. ‘Ah yes, the man appointed to help you seek your stolen jewel.’

‘You have heard of that incident, Master Secretary?’

‘Indeed. I was grieved to hear of its loss. A present from your late stepdaughter Margaret Neville, I believe, God save her.’

‘It was.’

‘I see Serjeant Shardlake’s name has been added to the list of those on your Learned Council. And I see young William Cecil has moved to Lord Hertford’s service. He will be a loss, your majesty, he is marked down as a young man of ability.’ I thought, yes, Paget would know of all the changes in the royal household; he would inspect all the lists and ensure nothing of interest passed him by. He would have learned that trick from Thomas Cromwell, his old master and mine.

The Queen said, ‘Serjeant Shardlake is also leaving my council. My jewel has not been discovered, despite his best efforts. There seems little chance of finding it now.’

Paget looked at me again, that stony unblinking stare, and ran a hand down his long forked beard. ‘A great pity the thief could not be caught, and hanged,’ he said, a note of reproof in his voice. He patted his thick leather folder. ‘If you would excuse us, your majesty, the King has just signed some important letters, and they should be immediately dispatched.’

‘Of course.’ She waved a hand in dismissal. Wriothesley and Paget bowed low, then passed through a small door leading into the labyrinthine depths of the palace. The Queen, Mary Odell and I were left standing with the impassive-faced guards. In their presence the Queen’s face remained regally expressionless, giving away nothing of how she had felt at thus encountering Wriothesley and Paget. She knew that Wriothesley, at least, would have had her in the fire.

With a formal smile she said, ‘Farewell, then, Matthew. I thank you again.’

I bowed low, touched her hand briefly with my lips; a scent of violets. In accordance with the rules of etiquette I remained bowed until she and Mary Odell had walked back into her quarters and the doors closed behind her. Then, painfully, I straightened up.

I left my robe bearing the Queen’s badge with one of the guards before I quitted Whitehall, my relief tinged with sadness.