‘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.’ He says, ‘Lady Anne, if the Pope cannot stop you becoming queen, and I do not think he can, Harry Percy should not be in your way.’
‘So shift him out of it,’ Norfolk says.
‘I can see why it would not be a good idea for you, as a family –’
‘Do it,’ Norfolk says. ‘Beat his skull in.’
‘Figuratively,’ he says. ‘My lord.’
Anne sits down. Her face is turned away from the women. Her little hands are drawn into fists. Monseigneur shuffles his papers. George, lost in thought, takes off his cap and plays with its jewelled pin, testing the point against the pad of his forefinger.
He has rolled the hanging up, and he presents it gently to Mary Shelton. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers, blushing as if he had proposed something intimate. George squeaks; he has succeeded in pricking himself. Uncle Norfolk says bitterly, ‘You fool of a boy.’
Francis Bryan follows him out.
‘Please feel you can leave me now, Sir Francis.’
‘I thought I would go with you. I want to learn what you do.’
He checks his stride, slaps his hand flat into Bryan's chest, spins him sideways and hears the thud of his skull against the wall. ‘In a hurry,’ he says.
Someone calls his name. Master Wriothesley rounds a corner. ‘Sign of Mark and the Lion. Five minutes' walk.’
Call-Me has had men following Harry Percy since he came to London. His concern has been that Anne's ill-wishers at court – the Duke of Suffolk and his wife, and those dreamers who believe Katherine will come back – have been meeting with the earl and encouraging him in a view of the past that would be useful, from their point of view. But seemingly no meetings have occurred: unless they are held in bath-houses on the Surrey bank.
Call-Me turns sharply down an alley, and they emerge into a dirty inn yard. He looks around; two hours with a broom and a willing heart, and you could make it respectable. Mr Wriothes-ley's handsome red-gold head shines like a beacon. St Mark, creaking above his head, is tonsured like a monk. The lion is small and blue and has a smiling face. Call-Me touches his arm: ‘In there.’ They are about to duck into a side door, when from above there is a shrill whistle. Two women lean out of a window, and with a whoop and a giggle flop their bare breasts over the sill. ‘Jesu,’ he says. ‘More Howard ladies.’
Inside Mark and the Lion, various men in Percy livery are slumped over tables and lying under them. The Earl of Northumberland is drinking in a private room. It would be private, except there is a serving hatch through which faces keep leering. The earl sees him. ‘Oh. I was half expecting you.’ Tense, he runs his hands through his cropped hair, and it stands up in bristles all over his head.
He, Cromwell, goes to the hatch, holds up one finger to the spectators, and slams it in their face. But he is soft-voiced as ever when he sits down with the boy and says, ‘Now, my lord, what is to be done here? How can I help you? You say you can't live with your wife. But she is as lovely a lady as any in this kingdom, if she has faults I never heard of them, so why can you not agree?’
But Harry Percy is not here to be handled like a timid falcon. He is here to shout and weep. ‘If I could not agree with her on our wedding day, how can I agree now? She hates me because she knows we are not properly married. Why has only the king a conscience in the matter, why not I, if he doubts his marriage he shouts about it to the whole of Christendom, but when I doubt mine he sends the lowest man in his employ to sweet-talk me and tell me to go back home and make the best of it. Mary Talbot knows I was pledged to Anne, she knows where my heart lies and always will. I told the truth before, I said we had made a compact before witnesses and therefore neither of us was free. I swore it and the cardinal bullied me out of it; my father said he would strike me out of his line, but my father is dead and I am not afraid to speak the truth any more. Henry may be king but he is stealing another man's wife; Anne Boleyn is rightfully my wife, and how will he stand on the day of judgment, when he comes before God naked and stripped of his retinue?’
He hears him out. The slide and tumble into incoherence … true love … pledges … swore she would give her body to me, allowed me such freedom as only a betrothed woman would allow …
‘My lord,’ he says. ‘You have said what you have to say. Now listen to me. You are a man whose money is almost spent. I am a man who knows how you have spent it. You are a man who has borrowed all over Europe. I am a man who knows your creditors. One word from me, and your debts will be called in.’
‘Oh, and what can they do?’ Percy says. ‘Bankers have no armies.’
‘Neither have you armies, my lord, if your coffers are empty. Look at me now. Understand this. You hold your earldom from the king. Your task is to secure the north. Percys and Howards between them defend us against Scotland. Now suppose Percy cannot do it. Your men will not fight for a kind word –’
‘They are my tenants, it is their duty to fight.’
‘But my lord, they need supply, they need provision, they need arms, they need walls and forts in good repair. If you cannot ensure these things you are worse than useless. The king will take your title away, and your land, and your castles, and give them to someone who will do the job you cannot.’
‘He will not. He respects all ancient titles. All
