‘There may be something in that.’
‘I suppose we should take a lesson,’ Norris says.
They turn together. Anne says, ‘Really, should we?’ and he says, ‘What lesson would that be?’
Norris is at a loss.
‘None of us are likely to be cardinals,’ Anne says. ‘Even Thomas, who aspires to most things, would not aspire to that.’
‘Oh? I wouldn't put money on it.’ Norris slouches off, as only a silken gentleman can slouch, and leaves him behind with the women.
‘So, Lady Anne,’ he says, ‘when you are reflecting on the late cardinal, do you take time to pray for his soul?’
‘I think God has judged him, and my prayers, if I make them or if I do not, are of no effect.’
Mary Boleyn says, gently, ‘He is teasing you, Anne.’
‘If it were not for the cardinal, you would be married to Harry Percy.’
‘At least,’ she snaps, ‘I would occupy the estate of wife, which is an honourable estate, but now –’
‘Oh, but cousin,’ Mary Shelton says, ‘Harry Percy has gone mad. Everybody knows it. He is spending all his money.’
Mary Boleyn laughs. ‘So he is, and my sister supposes it is his disappointment over her that is to blame.’
‘My lady,’ he turns to Anne, ‘you would not like to be in Harry Percy's country. For you know he would do as those northern lords do, and keep you in a freezing turret up a winding stair, and only let you come down for your dinner. And just as you are seated, and they are bringing in a pudding made of oatmeal mixed with the blood of cattle they have got in a raid, my lord comes thundering in, swinging a sack – oh, sweetheart, you say, a present for me? and he says, aye, madam, if it please you, and opens the sack and into your lap rolls the severed head of a Scot.’
‘Oh, that is horrible,’ Mary Shelton whispers. ‘Is that what they do?’ Anne puts her hand to her mouth, laughing.
‘And you know,’ he says, ‘that for your dinner you would prefer a lightly poached breast of chicken, sliced into a cream sauce with tarragon. And also a fine aged cheese imported by the ambassador of Spain, which he intended no doubt for the queen, but which somehow found its way to my house.’
‘How could I be better served?’ Anne asks. ‘A band of men on the highway, waylaying Katherine's cheese.’
‘Well, having staged such a coup, I must go …’ he gestures to the lute-player in the corner, ‘and leave you with your goggle-eyed lover.’
Anne darts a look at the boy Mark. ‘He does goggle. True.’
‘Shall I send him off? The place is full of musicians.’
‘Leave him,’ Mary says. ‘He's a sweet boy.’
Mary Boleyn stands up. ‘I'll just …’
‘Now Lady Carey is going to have one of her conferences with Master Cromwell,’ Mary Shelton says, in a tone of giving agreeable information.
Jane Rochford: ‘She is going to offer him her virtue again.’
‘Lady Carey, what can you not say before us all?’ But Anne nods. He may go. Mary may go. Presumably Mary is to carry messages that she, Anne, is too delicate to convey direct.
Outside: ‘Sometimes I need to breathe.’ He waits. ‘Jane and our brother George, you know they hate each other? He won't go to bed with her. If he is not with some other woman he sits up at night with Anne in her rooms. They play cards. They play Pope Julius till the dawn comes. Did you know the king pays her gambling debts? She needs more income, and a house of her own, a retreat, not too far from London, somewhere on the river –’
‘Whose house has she in mind?’
‘I don't think she means to turn anyone out.’
‘Houses tend to belong to somebody.’ Then a thought strikes him. He smiles.
She says, ‘I told you to stay away from her, once. But now we cannot do without you. Even my father and my uncle say so. Nothing is done, nothing, without the king's favour, without his constant company, and nowadays when you are not with Henry he wants to know where you are.’ She steps back, appraises him for a moment as if he were a stranger. ‘My sister, too.’
‘I want a job, Lady Carey. It isn't enough to be a councillor. I need an official place in the household.’
‘I'll tell her.’
‘I want a post in the Jewel House. Or the Exchequer.’
She nods. ‘She made Tom Wyatt a poet. She made Harry Percy a madman. I'm sure she has some ideas about what to make you.’
A few days before Parliament met, Thomas Wyatt had come to apologise for getting him out of bed before dawn on New Year's Day. ‘You have every right to be angry with me, but I've come to ask you not to be. You know how it is at New Year. Toasts are drunk, and the bowl goes round, and you must drain the bowl.’ He watches Wyatt as he walks about the room, too curious and restless and half-shy to sit down and make his amends face-to-face. He turns the painted globe of the world, and rests his forefinger on England. He stops to look at pictures, at a little altarpiece, and he turns, questioning; it was my wife's, he says, I keep it for her sake. Master Wyatt wears a jacket of a stiffened cream brocade trimmed with sables, which he probably cannot afford; he wears a doublet of tawny silk. He has tender blue eyes and a mane of golden hair, thinning now. Sometimes he puts his fingertips to his head, tentative, as if he still has his New Year headache; really, he is checking his hairline, to see if it has receded in the last five minutes. He stops and looks at himself in the mirror; he does this very often. Dear God, he says. Rolling about the streets with that crowd. I'm too old for such behaviour. But too young to lose my hair. Do you think women care about it? Much? Do you think if I grew a beard it would distract … No, probably not. But perhaps I will anyway. The king's beard looks well, does it not?
He says, ‘Didn't your father give you any advice?’
‘Oh yes. Drink off a bowl of milk before you go out. Stewed quinces in honey – do you think that works?’
He is trying not to laugh. He wants to take it seriously, his new post as Wyatt's father. He says, ‘I mean, did he never advise you to stay away from women in whom the king is interested?’
‘I did stay away. You remember I went to Italy? After that I was in Calais for a year. How much staying away can a man do?’
A question from his own life; he recognises it. Wyatt sits down on a small stool. He props his elbows on his knees. He holds his head, fingertips on his temples. He is listening to his own heartbeat; he is thinking; perhaps he is composing a verse? He looks up. ‘My father says that now Wolsey is dead you're the cleverest man in England. So can you understand this, if I say it just once? If Anne is not a virgin, that's none of my doing.’
He pours him a glass of wine. ‘Strong,’ Wyatt says, after he has downed it. He looks into the depth of the glass, at his own fingers holding it. ‘I must say more, I think.’
‘If you must, say it here, and just once.’
‘Is anyone hiding behind the arras? Somebody told me there are servants at Chelsea who report to you. No one's servants are safe, these days, there are spies everywhere.’
‘Tell me in what day there were not spies,’ he says. ‘There was a child in More's house, Dick Purser, More took him in out of guilt after he was orphaned – I cannot say More killed the father outright, but he had him in the pillory and in the Tower, and it broke his health. Dick told the other boys he did not believe God was in the Communion host, so More had him whipped before the whole household. Now I have brought him here. What else could I