VIII

between horse and rider and I have been training up several mounts, learning with each one how best to keep in rhythm – how to keep my backside stuck to the saddle no matter what the animal does.
    It’s a bitter day. Even inside my gloves, my hands feel raw.
    I jump down from my horse and sit on the sandy ground, tugging on one stirrup and the reins. I am teaching the horse not to drag me if I fall off.
    A shape blocks out the meagre sunlight.
    “Sir?”
    It’s Compton. I carry on with what I’m doing. He waits.
    “Sir?”
    And waits.
    “Will you stop, sir, for one second?” he says at last, exasperated.
    “No.” I get up and walk past him.
    My hand hovers over the lances laid out in a rack; I can’t quite decide. Then I pick one.
    Compton says, “Bishop Fox is waiting to speak with you.” He’s come to stand beside me. “There’s some news.”
    I turn to him for the first time. He looks stricken, agitated. The wind is blowing the fur on the collar of his gown flat, showing the pale roots of the hairs.
    Somehow I know what the news is without being told: my mother is dead. I say, “When did it happen?”
    Compton looks at me searchingly. Then he says, “In the night. I’m really sorry, Hal.”
    High above us, the flags crack and slap in the wind; somewhere a bird takes off, screeching. I search my mind for something to say, but all I find is a great emptiness, like an expanse of grey sea.
    Beyond Compton, a tall figure stands waiting: Richard Fox, the Bishop of Winchester. I can see his long, lined face from here, his black cap pulled well down over his ears. He’s one of the men closest to my father – one of the gang who shared his exile in France during the old wars. Well rewarded for his loyalty, Fox is now a high-ranking minister.
    “Send him away.”
    “I can’t, sir,” says Compton. “The King ordered him to come.”
    So I approach, and suffer the telling with perfect calm. My mother is dead, and the baby too.
    I ask, “Where is my father?”
    “His Grace the King has retreated to his chamber,” says Fox. “He cannot receive anyone. He is deep in sorrow.”
    I thank Fox, wish him good day and turn to the nearest groom: “Tack up the black mare.”
    By the end of the day I’ve trained with five different horses. It is slow, hard work. But I am getting better.

 
♦  ♦  ♦  XVI   ♦  ♦  ♦
     
     
    February drags on, as Februarys do, and the weather gets worse. Damper, less decidedly wintry, and all the drearier for it. I return to Eltham and continue my studies. I don’t see my father. By day I try to fill every waking moment with work, with sport, with gambling for distractingly high stakes – anything. By night my dreams float towards me on black rivers, full of visions of my mother, white-faced and unreachable.
    And then an idea comes, and fixes like a tick to my mind, resisting removal, growing fatter and fatter until I must do something about it.
    I persuade my tutor to arrange a visit to Westminster, arguing that it would help my studies to have access to my father’s impressive library there. The real purpose of the visit, however, lies elsewhere. Just a short scull downriver from the palace, there is a set of landing stairs at what, for a private house, is an impressive waterside gate. This gate belongs to Durham House, the London residence of the Bishops of Durham – a grand house, currently used as lodgings for the Dowager Princess of Wales: in other words, for Princess Catherine.
    I instruct Compton to find some pretext for getting me into a boat during a break from lessons. He does it. I don’t even bother to ask what story he’s made up.
    And so, after three hours spent sweating over Latin and Greek texts, Compton and I and a couple of guards are on the river. Swans accompany us as we glide along, passing Lambeth Palace on the far bank and approaching, on the near bank as the river starts to curve west, the first back-gates of a whole row of great houses, whose faces give on to the Strand and whose gardens reach right down to the river.
    The third of these is Durham House. We disembark at the landing stairs and Compton speaks to the guard at the gate, who stands aside smartly to let me pass.
    I’ve heard that Catherine has retained a whole Spanish household about her, and I’m cowed at the idea of a roomful of women like her duenna, their critical black eyes fixed on me as I try to talk. So I send Compton to present himself at the house, and