he says, and his son dives to catch the ex-princess, before she sits down on empty air. Gregory does it as if it were a dance step; he has his uses.
‘I am sorry to keep you standing. You might,’ she waves vaguely, ‘sit down on that chest.’
‘I think we are strong enough to stand. Though I do not think you are.’ He sees Gregory glance at him, as if he has never heard this softened tone. ‘They do not make you sit alone, and by this miserable fire, surely?’
‘The man who brings the wood will not give me my title of princess.’
‘Do you have to speak to him?’
‘No. But it would be an evasion if I did not.’
That's right, he thinks: make life as hard as possible for yourself. ‘Lady Shelton has told me about the difficulty in … the dinner difficulty. Suppose I were to send you a physician?’
‘We have one here. Or rather, the child has.’
‘I could send a more useful one. He might give you a regimen for your health, and lay it down that you were to take a large breakfast, in your own room.’
‘Meat?’ Mary says.
‘In quantity.’
‘But who would you send?’
‘Dr Butts?’
Her face softens. ‘I knew him at my court at Ludlow. When I was Princess of Wales. Which I still am. How is it I am put out of the succession, Master Cromwell? How is it lawful?’
‘It is lawful if Parliament makes it so.’
‘There is a law above Parliament. It is the law of God. Ask Bishop Fisher.’
‘I find God's purposes obscure, and God knows I find Fisher no fit elucidator. By contrast, I find the will of Parliament plain.’
She bites her lip; now she will not look at him. ‘I have heard Dr Butts is a heretic these days.’
‘He believes as your father the king believes.’
He waits. She turns, her grey eyes fixed on his face. ‘I will not call my lord father a heretic.’
‘Good. It is better that these traps are tested, first, by your friends.’
‘I do not see how you can be my friend, if you are also friend to the person, I mean the Marquess of Pembroke.’ She will not give Anne her royal title.
‘That lady stands in a place where she has no need of friends, only of servants.’
‘Pole says you are Satan. My cousin Reginald Pole. Who lies abroad at Genoa. He says that when you were born, you were like any Christian soul, but that at some date the devil entered into you.’
‘Did you know, Lady Mary, I came here when I was a boy, nine or ten? My uncle was a cook to Morton, and I was a poor snivelling lad who bundled the hawthorn twigs at dawn to light the ovens, and killed the chickens for the boiling house before the sun was up.’ He speaks gravely. ‘Would you suppose the devil had entered me by that date? Or was it earlier, around the time when other people are baptised? You understand it is of interest to me.’
Mary watches him, and she does it sideways; she still wears an old-style gable hood, and she seems to blink around it, like a horse whose headcloth has slipped. He says softly, ‘I am not Satan. Your lord father is not a heretic.’
‘And I am not a bastard, I suppose.’
‘Indeed no.’ He repeats what he told Anne Shelton: ‘You were conceived in good faith. Your parents thought they were married. That does not mean their marriage was good. You can see the difference, I think?’
She rubs her forefinger under her nose. ‘Yes, I can see the difference. But in fact the marriage was good.’
‘The queen will be coming to visit her daughter soon. If you would simply greet her respectfully in the way you should greet your father's wife –’
‘– except she is his concubine –’
‘– then your father would take you back to court, you would have everything you lack now, and the warmth and comfort of society. Listen to me, I intend this for your good. The queen does not expect your friendship, only an outward show. Bite your tongue and bob her a curtsey. It will be done in a heartbeat, and it will change everything. Make terms with her before her new child is born. If she has a son, she will have no reason afterwards to conciliate you.’
‘She is frightened of me,’ Mary says, ‘and she will still be frightened, even if she has a son. She is afraid I will make a marriage, and my own sons will threaten her.’
‘Does anyone talk to you of marriage?’
A dry little laugh, incredulous. ‘I was a baby at the breast when I was married into France. Then to the Emperor, into France again, to the king, to his first son, to his second son, to his sons I have lost count of, and once again to the Emperor, or one of his cousins. I have been contracted in marriage till I am exhausted. One day I shall really do it.’
‘But you will not marry Pole.’
She flinches, and he knows that it has been put to her: perhaps by her old governess Margaret Pole, perhaps by Chapuys, who stays up till dawn studying the tables of descent of the English aristocracy: strengthen her claim, put her beyond reproach, marry the half-Spanish Tudor back into the old Plantagenet line. He says, ‘I have seen Pole. I knew him before he went out of the kingdom. He is not the man for you. Whatever husband you get, he will need a strong sword arm. Pole is like an old wife sitting by the fire, starting at Hob in the Corner and the Boneless Man. He has nothing but a little holy water in his veins, and they say he weeps copiously if his servant swats a fly.’
She smiles: but she slaps a hand over her mouth like a gag. ‘That's right,’ he says. ‘You say nothing to anybody.’
She says, from behind her fingers, ‘I can't see to read.’
‘What, they keep you short of candles?’
‘No, I mean my sight is failing. All the time my head aches.’
‘You cry a good deal?’ She nods. ‘Dr Butts will bring a remedy. Till then, have someone read to you.’
‘They do. They read me Tyndale's gospel. Do you know that Bishop Tunstall and Thomas More between them have identified two thousand errors in his so-called Testament? It is more heretical than the holy book of the Moslems.’
Fighting talk. But he sees that tears are welling up. ‘All this can be put right.’ She stumbles towards him and for a moment he thinks she will forget herself and lurch and sob against his riding coat. ‘The doctor will be here in a day. Now you shall have a proper fire, and your supper. Wherever you like it served.’
‘Let me see my mother.’
‘Just now the king cannot permit it. But that may change.’
‘My father loves me. It is only she, it is only that wretch of a woman,
