even listen in to my prayers. Well, master.’ She raises her face to the light. ‘How do you think I look? What will you say of me when the king asks you? I have not seen myself in a mirror these many months.’ She pats her fur cap, pulls its lappets over her ears; laughs. ‘The king used to call me an angel. He used to call me a flower. When my first son was born, it was the depths of winter. All England lay under snow. There were no flowers to be had, I thought. But Henry gave me six dozen roses made of the purest white silk. “White as your hand, my love,” he said, and kissed my fingertips.’ A twitch beneath the ermine tells him where a bunched fist lies now. ‘I keep them in a chest, the roses. They at least do not fade. Over the years I have given them to those who have done me some service.’ She pauses; her lips move, a silent invocation: prayers for departed souls. ‘Tell me, how is Boleyn’s daughter? They say she prays a good deal, to her reformed God.’
‘She has indeed a reputation for piety. As she has the approbation of the scholars and bishops.’
‘They are using her. As she is using them. If they were true churchmen they would shrink from her in horror, as they would shrink from an infidel. But I expect she is praying for a son. She lost the last child, I am told. Ah well, I know how that is. I pity her from the bottom of my heart.’
‘She and the king have hopes of another child soon.’
‘What? Particular hope, or general hope?’
He pauses; nothing definite has been said; Gregory could be wrong. ‘I thought she confided in you,’ Katherine says sharply. She scans his face: is there some rift, some froideur? ‘They say Henry pursues other women.’ Katherine’s finger strokes the fur: absently round and round, rubbing at the pelt. ‘It is so soon. They have only been married such a little space. I suppose she looks at the women about her, and says to herself, always questioning, is it you, madam? Or you? It has always surprised me that those who are untrustworthy themselves are blind when placing their own trust. La Ana thinks she has friends. But if she does not give the king a son soon, they will turn on her.’
He nods. ‘You may be right. Who will turn first?’
‘Why should I alert her?’ Katherine asks drily. ‘They say that when she is crossed she carps like a common scold. I am not surprised. A queen, and she calls herself a queen, must live and suffer under the world’s eye. No woman is above her but the Queen of Heaven, so she can look for no companionship in her troubles. If she suffers she suffers alone, and she needs a special grace to bear it. It appears Boleyn’s daughter has not received this grace. I ask myself why that could be.’
She breaks off; her lips open and her flesh draws itself together, as if squirming away from her clothes. You are in pain, he starts to say, but she waves him to silence, it’s nothing, nothing. ‘Gentlemen about the king, who swear now they will lay down their lives for her smile, will soon offer their devotion to another. They used to offer that same devotion to me. It was because I was the king’s wife, it was nothing to do with my person. But La Ana takes it as a tribute to her charms. And besides, it is not just the men she should fear. Her sister-in-law, Jane Rochford, now there is a vigilant young woman … when she served me she often brought secrets to me, love secrets, secrets I would perhaps rather not know, and I doubt her ears and eyes are less sharp nowadays.’ Still her fingers work away, now massaging a spot near her breastbone. ‘You wonder, how can Katherine, who is banished, know the workings of the court? That is for you to ponder.’
I don’t have to ponder long, he thinks. It is Nicholas Carew’s wife, a particular friend of yours. And it is Gertrude Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter’s wife; I caught her out in plotting last year, I should have locked her up. Perhaps even little Jane Seymour; though Jane has her own career to serve, since Wolf Hall. ‘I know you have your sources,’ he says. ‘But should you trust them? They act in your name, but not in your best interests. Or those of your daughter.’
‘Will you let the princess visit me? If you think she needs counsel to steady her, who better than I?’
‘If it stood to me, madam …’
‘What harm can it do the king?’
‘Put yourself in his place. I believe your ambassador Chapuys has written to Lady Mary, saying he can get her out of the country.’
‘Never! Chapuys can have no such thought. I guarantee it in my own person.’
‘The king thinks that perhaps Mary might corrupt her guards, and if permitted to make a journey to see you she might spur away, and take ship for the territories of her cousin the Emperor.’
It almost brings a smile to his lips, to think of the skinny, scared little princess embarking on such a desperate and criminal course of action. Katherine smiles too; a twisted, malicious smile. ‘And then what? Does Henry fear my daughter will come riding back, with a foreign husband by her side, and turn him out of his kingdom? You can assure him, she has no such intention. I will answer for her, again, with my own person.’
‘Your own person must do a good deal, madam. Guarantee this, answer for that. You have only one death to suffer.’
‘I wish it might do Henry good. When my death arrives, in whatever manner, I hope to meet it in such a way as to set him an example when the time comes for his own.’
‘I see. Do you think a lot about the king’s death?’
‘I think about his afterlife.’
‘If you want to do his soul good, why do you continually obstruct him? It hardly makes him a better man. Do you never think that, if you had bowed to the king’s wishes years ago, if you had entered a convent and allowed him to remarry, he would never have broken with Rome? There would have been no need. Sufficient doubt was cast upon your marriage for you to retire with a good grace. You would have been honoured by all. But now the titles you cling to are empty. Henry was a good son of Rome. You drove him to this extremity. You, not he, split Christendom. And I expect that you know that, and that you think about it in the silence of the night.’
There is a pause, while she turns the great pages of her volume of rage, and puts her finger on just the right word. ‘What you say, Cromwell, is … contemptible.’
She’s probably right, he thinks. But I will keep tormenting her, revealing her to herself, stripping her of any illusions, and I will do it for her daughter’s sake: Mary is the future, the only grown child the king has, England’s only prospect if God calls away Henry and the throne is suddenly empty. ‘So you won’t be giving me one of those silk roses,’ he says. ‘I thought you might.’
A long look. ‘At least, as an enemy, you stand in plain sight. I wish my friends could bear to be as conspicuous. The English are a nation of hypocrites.’
‘Ingrates,’ he agrees. ‘Natural liars. I’ve found it myself. I would rather the Italians. The Florentines, so modest. The Venetians, transparent in all their dealing. And your own race, the Spaniards. Such an honest people. They used to say of your royal father Ferdinand, that his open heart would undo him.’
‘You are amusing yourself,’ she says, ‘at the expense of a dying woman.’
‘You want a great deal of credit for dying. You offer guarantees on the one hand, you want privileges on the other.’
‘A state such as mine, it usually buys kindness.’
‘I am trying to be kind, but you do not see it. At the last, madam, can you not put your own will aside, and for the sake of your daughter, reconcile with
