‘The boy who played in the street! What, have you inherited a dukedom?’
The music began again, I slipped my mask back on to hide my annoyance and took her hand. We whirled together back into the figures.
‘Not yet,’ I told her. ‘And you? You left home? Married?’
My heart began to pound as I asked it. She laughed.
‘My father bought us a finer town house. Away from the stink of the river. Married! To marry me they would have to catch me. And courtiers are so horribly slow.’
‘But I caught you. Did I not?’
‘For a short time. But I am going somewhere I do not think you will find me.’
A jester tumbled and shrieked in front of us with a jangle of bells. I relaxed my hold for an instant and Hannah broke away, to vanish back into the dance. I ducked under the trees and ran after her; in a clearing I looked left and right, darted to the left towards the door of the hall, and then ran right up against my Uncle Bennet. He frowned in displeasure, and shook his head. I was furious and shamed. He was right: if I was caught, he would be the one to suffer. The chase was over. For the moment.
After Christmas, the plague began to ease. Bennet told me the King was moving his Court a little closer to London, and would be holding a great joust for all the nobility at his palace of Greenwich on Shrove Tuesday, to mark the beginning of Lent. ‘But this time,’ he added sternly, ‘you must be discreet.’ I thanked him. My meeting with Hannah Cage had made me greedy for more. And besides, if I was ever to break into the Court world I knew I had to keep watch, and follow the King in all his doings the way a thief follows his prey. So there I stood, on the morning of the sixth of February 1526, in the midst of the crowd at the Tiltyard, the open field that runs all down the eastern flank of the palace of Greenwich. Behind me rose its towers and pinnacles, while beyond began the low houses of the village, crouching like beggars at the King’s gate.
Down the centre of the field were the barriers, built some six feet high of stout planks, to separate the jousters. To my right was a huge cluster of tents. I saw squires and armourers moving between them carrying tongs, hammers and bags of rivets, stablemen in their particoloured tabards and gentlemen waiters in white satin carrying steaming hot wine. There was the King’s great lodging pavilion, its conical roofs topped with gilt dragons and lions, where men must now be helping King Henry into his armour. Further off were the cook-tents, with smoke rising from vents in their roofs, and the camp of the King’s mariners who had come off their ships bringing capstans and cranes to set up all the various pavilions. Some thirty trumpeters and drummers on horseback stood waiting.
At last I saw the flaps of the great tent drawn back, and out rode King Henry. He was in full armour from head to toe, brilliant steel where it could be seen, but draped all over with surcoats of cloth of gold and silver, on which was some device in crimson, and a motto or poesy snaking round it. His horse too was in armour, with crimson ostrich feathers on its brow. The King held his lance upright in his hand, gilt and painted, a tremendous length, yet cunningly hollowed for lightness and ease. Eleven other riders came out from among the tents and fell into line behind him, all in the same colours, and they came trotting forward, their horses kicking up clods of the muddy turf. With a tremendous sudden clangour the drums beat and the trumpets sounded. The crowd around me took off their hats, and I cheered with the loudest of them and cried, ‘God save you! God save King Harry!’
A second line of horsemen gathered at the lists at the opposite end, all in coats of green and crimson satin. Both troops rode to the Queen’s pavilion halfway down the field, where they dipped their lances in salute. Beyond them I scanned the courtiers ranged on either side of the Queen, searching for signs of Hannah, but without success.
I saw the armourers helping the King lower his lance into position. This was no simple matter. The butt end of the lance was secured to the body armour by clips, and the King’s right gauntlet was hooked over the lance and locked by more fastenings to his left arm. Another pair of clips caught the lance firmly in the crook of his left elbow, resting on the notch in his shield. Then, with legs straight, and his jousting spurs reaching up on their long steel wires to touch the horse’s flanks, King Henry set himself in motion.
His horse’s hoofs tumbled forward in turn, never breaking into a canter or a gallop, in the peculiar, rolling gait called the amble that is proper for the joust: for only with this steady gait can the rider hope for any kind of accuracy in his hit. Like a stormcloud the King rolled forward, not fast, but with an immense, calm strength, and his lance dead level. The Marquis of Exeter, one of Henry’s oldest childhood friends, launched himself into an amble on the other side of the barrier, closing the distance with the King. He was skilful too, but the sway of his lance showed that he lacked King Henry’s strength and control. When the pair met, the King’s lance struck full on Exeter’s shield with a bang. The lance shattered, Exeter swayed and his own lance swung clear. I cheered and huzzaed for the King, whose broken lance marked him as the victor. He rode on, wheeled round and then came slowly back up to the top of the course. He passed by not ten feet away from me, and I had my first clear view of the design on his coat. I stared after him. My palms began to sweat, and my pulse beat in my ears.
What I saw, repeated on the King’s back, on his shield, and on his horse’s flank, was a crimson heart in flames. This heart was trapped in a press, perhaps a wine-press or the sort that book-binders use. Beneath it curled the motto, DECLARE JE NOS. Declare I dare not. This was the heart of a tortured lover, caught in the agony of a secret and unrequited passion. Four years ago, when I had just returned from my first venture to Lisbon, the King had ridden to a joust wearing just such an emblem. His badge then was a wounded heart, and the other jousters sported a variety of matching symbols, hearts shattered, hearts chained, hearts in prison. Their mottoes had groaned in concert: ‘Without remedy’, ‘My heart is broken’, ‘Between joy and pain’. No one at the time read the meaning in it; but shortly afterwards it became known Henry had begun an affair with a new mistress. Mrs Mary was a niece of the great Duke of Norfolk, married to a certain William Carey, the King’s distant cousin and another of his childhood friends. She had been at the French Court, and now she was one of the Queen’s ladies, while Carey became an obliging Court cuckold.
I had watched the progress of this affair from Goldsmiths’ Row, where I saw in preparation the gold lockets, the crystal scent bottles, the crosses and pendants bloated with rubies and pearls. I cursed my luck that I was too young and too poor to share in the profits of King Henry’s love. In time the flow of jewels from Cheapside to the King’s various palaces slowed. Indeed, according to Uncle Bennet, the King had recently handed Mrs Mary back to her husband, pregnant with Henry’s child. The King’s wounded heart of four years ago had healed. But now this: a heart once more in flames, and Declare I dare not.
A fresh pair of riders thundered past, their lances wavering and failing to hit, and the audience groaned in disappointment. Who was she, I wondered. One of his wife’s ladies, perhaps, as Mary and his previous mistress, Bessie Blount, had been? But whoever the woman was, I was in no doubt that this, at last, was my moment: the chance, the piece of fortune I had been waiting for. The spoils for those who supplied jewels to feed the King’s passion would be immense. And this time I was determined to have my share.
As I travelled back up to London, squeezed on a bench between the tiltboat’s other passengers, to the rattle and bump of the oars and the splash of riverwater against my back, my mind hammered at the problem before me. It was exasperating. I had waited a long time. I had schooled myself, trained my senses, my skill and my judgement until they were fine tools, ready for use. But if I was to make a serious attempt I had to have funds on a scale beyond anything I could raise on my own. There was no way round it: I would have to ask my mother. My pride rebelled against it, going