VIII

and spurs the horse into a gallop. I grip the front of the saddle; against my back I think I can feel the sliding metal of a mail-coat, as if the boy is wearing armour under his peasant’s gown.
    Away we speed through open country, across scrubby moorland, fields and ditches, so fast that we lose the serpent; there is no sign of it following. Soon the great dark mass of a forest looms before us. As the horse slows to a trot, we dip under a canopy of low branches, immersing ourselves in the cool, moss-green light. Far above us, brighter light shines in a dappled, broken pattern – beneath, I hear the horse’s hooves crushing soft bracken underfoot.
    The cool of the forest, the dark green shadows, the welcoming, delicious safety; how I would love to lose myself in here.
    I wake with such happiness. Somehow, days have passed. The fever is lifting.

PART TWO:
Acts Will Smooth Your Way
     
     
     

 
♦  ♦  ♦  I   ♦  ♦  ♦
     
     

Four years later
     
    “Tell the boy to move, Elizabeth. He’s blocking the view.”
    My mother’s fingers press my shoulder. She’s behind me but she must be leaning forward; her voice is right in my ear. “Hal. Sweetheart. Your father wants you to move along.”
    I get up. On the sand-strewn floor of the vast hall in front of us, youths clad in various quantities of half-armour and leather padding are grunting and sweating, slicing and chopping at each other with blunt-edged swords.
    “Go and sit over there. Next to Meg.”
    I edge along, holding the sword that’s slung on my belt upright, so it doesn’t poke anyone, and excusing myself as people are forced to stand up to let me pass.
    “Relegated to sitting with the girls,” says my elder sister Meg when I arrive. She speaks sideways out of her mouth; her jewel-encrusted hood is heavy, and I’m not worth the effort of a direct look. “What have you done?” She is sitting poised, straight-backed, speckled with rubies and pearls the size of bilberries. Beyond her my little sister Mary, who is five, is sitting similarly ramrod straight, confined by a tight-laced bodice and the beady-eyed supervision of her nurse.
    “Done?” I whisper back. “Only worn a hat with a feather when sitting in front of the Spanish ambassador.” I settle into my seat. “I wish Father would tell me himself. To get out of the way.”
    Meg gives a tight smile. “He hasn’t said one word to me since I arrived.”
    We are in Westminster Hall. It makes me think of a cathedral: it’s a huge cavern of cool, echoing stone. The windows – arched, churchy ones – are set high in the walls. When I look up, there’s an entire world of sunbeams and dust motes up there, swirling about. Beyond that – way, way up – the roof is an amazing construction: wooden, ribbed like the hull of an upside-down ship, and decorated with carved angels.
    Above us, then: the angels. Below, on the hall floor: the fighters, working like devils. One of them is my elder brother Arthur. We, meanwhile, are suspended in between, sitting on a raised and canopied platform along with half the Court and a party of Spanish envoys.
    The envoys have come to London to negotiate a treaty between England and Spain. To seal the deal my father wants a marriage: the groom will be my brother Arthur, his bride a Spanish princess. It’s a prize my father has been trying to secure for years, I know: the Spanish royal dynasty is ancient and powerful. By comparison we Tudors are puny newcomers; we need to convince the King and Queen of Spain that their precious princess will be in safe hands. Arthur’s fighting display is intended to prove, physically at least, that we are built to last.
    Which would be fine if he were any good with a sword.
    “Block! Block! ” I mutter now, my eyes on the fighting. My shoulder twitches, wanting to join in.
    It’s Charles Brandon that Arthur’s grappling with, a youth my father shows much favour to, since Brandon’s father was his standard-bearer, and died in the battle that made my father king.
    Brandon is seventeen and big and beefy; it’s like watching a tree in combat. Arthur, two years younger, is slight. If he trained hard enough he would be all sinew and gristle, like Father. As it is, he prefers to spend time bent over his desk, his soft white hands pressing open the pages of books. And it shows.
    “A gap! Urgh, why didn’t he attack?”
    “Shh! Try to sit still,” hisses Meg.
    She’s on my left; to my right, a little further