‘and it comes on him when he starts to write. But the others look well enough. The family on the wall.’
‘You need not go to Chelsea for commissions now. The king has me at work at the Tower, we are restoring the fortifications. He has builders and painters and gilders in, we are stripping out the old royal apartments and making something finer, and I am going to build a new lodging for the queen. In this country, you see, the kings and queens lie at the Tower the night before they are crowned. When Anne's day comes there will be plenty of work for you. There will be pageants to design, banquets, and the city will be ordering gold and silver plate to present to the king. Talk to the Hanse merchants, they will want to make a show. Get them planning. Secure yourself the work before half the craftsmen in Europe are here.’
‘Is she to have new jewels?’
‘She is to have Katherine's. He has not lost all sense.’
‘I would like to paint her. Anna Bolena.’
‘I don't know. She may not want to be studied.’
‘They say she is not beautiful.’
‘No, perhaps she is not. You would not choose her as a model for a Primavera. Or a statue of the Virgin. Or a figure of Peace.’
‘What then, Eve? Medusa?’ Hans laughs. ‘Don't answer.’
‘She has great presence, esprit … You may not be able to put it in a painting.’
‘I see you think I am limited.’
‘Some subjects resist you, I feel sure.’
Richard comes in. ‘Francis Bryan is here.’
‘Lady Anne's cousin.’ He stands up.
‘You must go to Whitehall. Lady Anne is breaking up the furniture and smashing the mirrors.’
He swears under his breath. ‘Take Master Holbein in to dinner.’
Francis Bryan is laughing so hard that his horse twitches under him, uneasy, and skitters sideways, to the danger of passers-by. By the time they get to Whitehall he has pieced this story together: Anne has just heard that Harry Percy's wife, Mary Talbot, is preparing to petition Parliament for a divorce. For two years, she says, her husband has not shared her bed, and when finally she asked him why, he said he could not carry on a pretence any longer; they were not really married, and never had been, since he was married to Anne Boleyn.
‘My lady is enraged,’ Bryan says. His eyepatch, sewn with jewels, winks as he giggles. ‘She says Harry Percy will spoil everything for her. She cannot decide between striking him dead with one blow of a sword or teasing him apart over forty days of public torture, like they do in Italy.’
‘Those stories are much exaggerated.’
He has never witnessed, or quite believed in, Lady Anne's uncontrolled outbursts of temper. When he is admitted she is pacing, her hands clasped, and she looks small and tense, as if someone has knitted her and drawn the stitches too tight. Three ladies – Jane Rochford, Mary Shelton, Mary Boleyn – are following her with their eyes. A small carpet, which perhaps ought to be on the wall, is crumpled on the floor. Jane Rochford says, ‘We have swept up the broken glass.’ Sir Thomas Boleyn, Monseigneur, sits at a table, a heap of papers before him. George sits by him on a stool. George has his head in his hands. His sleeves are only medium-puffed. The Duke of Norfolk is staring into the hearth, where a fire is laid but not lit, perhaps attempting through the power of his gaze to make the kindling spark.
‘Shut the door, Francis,’ George says, ‘and don't let anybody else in.’
He is the only person in the room who is not a Howard.
‘I suggest we pack Anne's bags and send her down to Kent,’ Jane Rochford says. ‘The king's anger, once roused –’
George: ‘Say no more, or I may strike you.’
‘It is my honest advice.’ Jane Rochford, God protect her, is one of those women who doesn't know when to stop. ‘Master Cromwell, the king has indicated there must be an inquiry. It must come before the council. It cannot be fudged this time. Harry Percy will give testimony unimpeded. The king cannot do all he has done, and all he means to do, for a woman who is concealing a secret marriage.’
‘I wish I could divorce you,’ George says. ‘I wish you had a pre-contract, but Jesus, no chance of that, the fields were black with men running in the other direction.’
Monseigneur holds up a hand. ‘Please.’
Mary Boleyn says, ‘What is the use of calling in Master Cromwell, and not telling him what has already occurred? The king has already spoken to my lady sister.’
‘I deny everything,’ Anne says. It is as if the king is standing before her.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Good.’
‘That the earl spoke to me of love, I allow. He wrote me verse, and I being then a young girl, and thinking no harm of it –’
He almost laughs. ‘Verse? Harry Percy? Do you still have it?’
‘No. Of course not. Nothing written.’
‘That makes it easier,’ he says gently. ‘And of course there was no promise, or contract, or even talk of them.’
‘And,’ Mary says, ‘no consummation of any kind. There could not be. My sister is a notorious virgin.’
‘And how was the king, was he –’
‘He walked out of the room,’ Mary says, ‘and left her standing.’
Monseigneur looks up. He clears his throat. ‘In this exigency, there are a variety, and number of approaches, it seems to me, that one might –’
Norfolk explodes. He pounds up and down on the floor, like Satan in a Corpus Christi play. ‘Oh, by the thrice-beshitten shroud of Lazarus! While you are selecting an approach, my lord, while you are taking a view, your lady daughter is slandered up and down the country, the king's mind is poisoned, and this family's fortune is unmaking before your eyes.’
‘Harry Percy,’ George says; he holds up his hands. ‘Listen, will you let me speak? As I understand it, Harry Percy was persuaded once to forget his claims, so if he was fixed once –’
‘Yes,’ Anne says, ‘but the cardinal fixed him, and most unfortunately the cardinal is dead.’
There is a silence: a silence sweet as music. He looks, smiling, at Anne, at Monseigneur, at Norfolk. If life is a chain of gold, sometimes God hangs a charm on it. To prolong the moment, he crosses the room and picks up the fallen hanging. Narrow loom. Indigo ground. Asymmetrical knot. Isfahan? Small animals march stiffly across it, weaving through knots of flowers. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘Do you know what these are? Peacocks.’
Mary Shelton comes to peer over his shoulder. ‘What are those snake things with legs?’
‘Scorpions.’
‘Mother Mary, do they not bite?’
‘Sting.’
