VIII

He has never seen me as a person – he has seen my function: the backup son, the spare… the spare that could become a rival to Arthur.
    Now the barrier to him loving me has been swept aside. I am the precious one – I am his heir. All my talents, all the reasons why I was a threat to Arthur will now become advantages – traits to be cherished and praised.
    When the summons finally arrives it is late April, almost a month since Arthur’s death, and my father is at Richmond. With Compton and Guildford, I ride from Eltham to Greenwich, and from there take a boat upriver.
    It is a fresh spring day, and as we approach the Palace of Richmond the light gleams softly off the pale stone of its many towers, each topped with a dome and a lantern and a glinting golden weather vane.
    My heart lifts. I have it all planned out in my head – how it will happen. My father will smile at me and put his hands on my shoulders. He will speak gently to me and perhaps even apologise. It will be like a Biblical scene – like the tapestry that hangs in the Great Hall at Eltham, illustrating the parable of the prodigal son: the penitent young man kneels before his father; the father (in a modern gown of vivid blue and gold) bends to embrace him tenderly. Except that today, here at Richmond, it will be the father who is begging forgiveness.
    When we enter the palace, gentlemen-servants tell me the King is in his private rooms: I must pass through the grand public chambers to reach him: chamber after chamber opening in sequence, like a puzzle-toy made of boxes within boxes. These rooms become smaller and more intimate as they go; the people allowed through each door become fewer and fewer.
    Finally, as yet another pair of guards steps aside, a door is opened for me into a bedchamber where the walls are hung with cloth of gold, and the bed is emblazoned with my father’s emblems: portcullises and roses, dragons and greyhounds.
    The first thing I see on entering is my dead brother’s face: a portrait is fixed between the hangings on the wall opposite. My eyes slide quickly away, and I look about for my father. For a moment I can’t see him. Then I spy a chair facing the window at the far side of the room; above its back a section of black velvet cap is visible.
    “Approach, my lord,” says Hugh Denys, nodding me on.
    A length of vivid blue velvet drapes over the side of my father’s chair; as I walk round to face him I realise that this velvet is a robe, laid across his lap. He’s stroking it absently, as if it were an animal: a robe of blue velvet, lined with white damask: a robe of a Knight of the Garter.
    I kneel.
    “Rise,” he says. His voice is flat.
    Speaking, even focusing on me, seems to be an effort. “All my advisers – Fox, Warham, the others…” He waves one hand vaguely in what I suppose must be the direction of his Council Chamber. “All of them seem to think this meeting is necessary. I’m not sure I understand why. Your position has changed – but you know that. There is a great deal of hard work ahead of you – but I assume you have enough wit to realise that too. Beyond that, there is nothing to say. Unless you have any questions?”
    This, I had not expected. I rack my brains. “Am I to go to Ludlow, sir?”
    There is a brief moment of silence. Then suddenly my father’s chin juts forward and the eyes fix on me, alive and accusing. “Do not imagine you will take his place,” he snaps. “You will never take his place.”
    He sinks back against the chair again, looking down at the robe on his lap. I realise, with a twisting feeling in my gut, that it must be my brother’s. “I may send you to Ludlow, I don’t know,” he says. “I may make you Prince of Wales – I must, at some point, I suppose. But…” He lets out a breath. “Arthur and I understood one another. I have never understood you. Right from your earliest years you seem to have had an innate capacity to… irritate me. I don’t suppose you can help it.”
    He looks up at me. “I will oversee the changes necessary in your education. It goes without saying that you will be expected to put your all into your work. If I receive reports from your tutors that you are shirking in any way, the punishment will be severe, is that understood?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “That is all. Off you go.”
    I hesitate, momentarily confused. Can it really be over so soon?
    A flick of his fingers: “Go!”
    Feeling numb, I bow and exit the chamber.