‘Well, really that is my son's tale, he should be here.’
‘If he were,’ Richard says, ‘the ladies would all be making goggle eyes at him, and sighing – yes you would, Alice – and they would not care about any lion tale.’
When Sir Henry was mended after his imprisonment he became a powerful man at court, and an admirer sent him a present of a lion cub. At Allington Castle I brought her up like my child, he says, till, as a girl will, she developed a mind of her own. One careless day, and mine the fault, she came out of her cage. Leontina, I called to her, stand till I lead you back; but then she crouched, quite silent, and sighted me, and her eyes were like fire. It was then I realised, he says, that I was not her father, for all that I had cherished her: I was her dinner.
Alice says, a hand to her mouth, ‘Sir Henry, you thought your last hour had come.’
‘Indeed I did, and so it had, if it had not been that my son Thomas chanced to step into the courtyard. In a second he saw my peril, and called out to her, Leontina, here to me; and she turned her head. In that moment, her glare distracted, I stepped back a pace, and another. Look at me, Thomas called. Now that day he was dressed very brightly, with long fluttering sleeves, and a loose gown the wind got inside, and his hair being fair, you know, which he wore long, he must have looked like a flame, I think, tall and flickering in the sun, and for a moment she stood, puzzling, and I stepped away, back and back …’
Leontina turns; she crouches; leaving the father, she begins to stalk the son. You can see her padding feet and feel the stink of blood on her breath. (Meanwhile he, Henry Wyatt, in a cold lather of fear, backs off, backs away, in the direction of help.) In his soft enchanting voice, in loving murmurs, in the accents of prayer, Tom Wyatt speaks to the lion, asking St Francis to open her brutish heart to grace. Leontina watches. She listens. She opens her mouth. She roars: ‘What does she say?’
‘Fee, fi, fo and fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.’
Tom Wyatt stands still as a statue. Grooms with nets creep across the court. Leontina is within feet of him, but once again she checks, listening. She stands, uncertain, ears twitching. He can see the pink drool from her jaw and smell her musty fur. She crouches back on her haunches. He scents her breath. She is ready to spring. He sees her muscles quiver, her jaw stretch; she leaps – but she spins in the air, an arrow stinging her ribs. She whirls, smashes at the barb, cries out, moans; another arrow thuds into her dense flank, and as she circles again, whining, the nets drop over her. Sir Henry, striding calmly towards her, places his third arrow in her throat.
Even as she dies she roars. She coughs blood and strikes out. One of the grooms bears her claw mark to this day. Her pelt can be seen on the wall at Allington. ‘And you will come and visit me, young ladies,’ Sir Henry says. ‘And you can see what a brute she was.’
‘Tom's prayers were not answered,’ Richard says, smiling. ‘St Francis did nothing about it, so far as I can see.’
‘Sir Henry,’ Jo pulls at his sleeve, ‘you have not said the best part.’
‘No. I forgot. So then my son Tom walks away, the hero of the hour, and is sick into a bush.’
The children release their breath. They all applaud. In its time the story had reached court, and the king – he was younger then, sweet in disposition – was a little awed by it. When he sees Tom even now, he will nod, and murmur to himself, ‘Tom Wyatt. He can tame lions.’
When Sir Henry, who is fond of soft fruit, has eaten some fat brambles with yellow cream, he says, ‘A word with you alone,’ and they withdraw. If I were in your place, Sir Henry says, I'd ask him to make you Keeper of the Jewel House. ‘From that post, when I had it, I found I had an overview of the revenue.’
‘Ask him how?’
‘Get Lady Anne to ask him.’
‘Perhaps your son could help by asking Anne.’
Sir Henry laughs; or rather, he indicates with a little ahem that he knows a joke has been made. By the account of drinkers in Kent alehouses, and the backstairs servants at court (the musician Mark for one), Anne has done Thomas Wyatt all the favours a man might reasonably ask, even in a brothel.
‘I mean to retire from court this year,’ Sir Henry says. ‘It's time I wrote my will. May I name you as executor?’
‘You do me honour.’
‘There is no one I'd rather trust with my affairs. You've the steadiest hand I know.’
He smiles, puzzled; nothing in his world seems steady to him.
‘I understand you,’ Wyatt says. ‘I know our old fellow in scarlet nearly brought you down. But look at you, eating almonds, with all your teeth in your head, and your household around you, and your affairs prospering, and men like Norfolk speaking to you civil.’ Whereas, he doesn't need to add, a year ago they were wiping their feet on you. Sir Henry breaks up, in his fingers, a cinnamon wafer, and dabs it on to his tongue, a careful, secular Eucharist. It is forty years, more, since the Tower, but his smashed-up jaw still stiffens and plagues him with pain. ‘Thomas, I have something to ask you … Will you keep an eye on my son? Be a father to him?’
‘Tom is, what, twenty-eight? He may not like another father.’
‘You cannot do worse than I did. I have much to regret, his marriage chiefly … He was seventeen, he did not want it, it was I who wanted it, because her father was Baron Cobham, and I wanted to keep my place up among my neighbours in Kent. Tom was always good to look at, a kind boy and courteous as well, you'd have thought he would have done for the girl, but I don't know if she was faithful to him a month. So then, of course, he paid her in kind … the place is full of his doxies, open a closet at Allington and some wench falls out of it. He roams off abroad and what comes of that? He ends up a prisoner in Italy, I shall never understand that affair. Since Italy he's had even less sense. Write you a piece of terza rima, of course, but sit down and work out where his money's gone …’ He rubs his chin. ‘But there you have it. When all's said, there is no braver boy than my boy.’
‘Will you come back now, and join the company? You know we take a holiday when you visit us.’
Sir Henry levers himself upright. He is a portly man, though he lives on pottage and mashes. ‘Thomas, how did I get old?’
When they return to the hall it is to find a play in progress. Rafe is acting the part of Leontina and the household is roaring him on. It is not that the boys don't believe the lion tale; it is just that they like to put their own words to it. He extends a peremptory hand to Richard, who has been standing on a joint-stool, squealing. ‘You are jealous of Tom Wyatt,’ he says.
‘Ah, don't be out of temper with us, master.’ Rafe resumes human form and throws himself on to a bench. ‘Tell us about Florence. Tell us what else you did, you and Giovannino.’
‘I don't know if I should. You will make a play of it.’
Ah, do, they persuade him, and he looks around: Rafe encourages him with a purr. ‘Are we sure Call-Me-Risley is not here? Well … when we had a day off, we used to take down buildings.’
‘Take them down?’ Henry Wyatt says. ‘Did you so?’
‘What I mean is, blow them up. But not without the owner's permission. Unless we thought they were crumbling and a danger to passers-by. We only charged for explosive materials. Not for our expertise.’
‘Which was considerable, I suppose?’
‘It's a lot of digging for a few seconds of excitement. But I knew some boys who went into it as a profession. In Florence,’ he says, ‘it was just what you might do for your recreation. Like fishing. It kept us out of trouble.’ He hesitates. ‘Well, no, it didn't. Not really.’
Richard says, ‘Did