VIII

speaking-to-an-idiot tone. “But this time I don’t have the money to mount a campaign on my own. I. Am. Destroyed.” I dig my hands into my hair. “ This was the year. Christ! This was the year I was going to be crowned in Paris.”
    “Any agreement made with the French won’t last.”
    I stride over to her, take her shoulders. “Were you in on it? That’s all I need you to tell me. Because I know you have this, this—” I grimace in disgust, “ private correspondence with your father, and I’m sure he advises you on how you should string me along like a dog, and I want to know just how much the two of you have been making a fool out of me.”
    “He can write what he likes, my loyalty is to you.”
    “Then it’s so strange – isn’t it? – that you don’t deliver.”
    Silence. We hold one another’s gaze. I say, quietly and distinctly, “This is what you are for. Do you think I married you for love? I married you to give me an alliance with Spain. And sons.” I look down at her belly. “Will this one live, do you think? For a change?”
    My God, her control is magnificent. Not a single muscle in her face twitches. But her eyes… She looks as if she is drowning.

    ♦   ♦   ♦
     
    Six months later, on a clear and crisp autumn day that I spend flying hawks, another small coffin is placed in the crypt of the friars’ chapel at Greenwich.

 
♦  ♦  ♦  XIV   ♦  ♦  ♦
     
     
    Four more winters pass. How do I stand it? I cannot even bear waiting while they dress me in the mornings.
    The old King of France dies in his bed, leaving no sons to succeed him. The King of Spain – Catherine’s father – dies, too, before I can take revenge on him for his shitty betrayal of my glorious plan.
    I find that I am no longer the youngest ruler in Christendom. A horse-faced young duke named Francis is the new king of France; he is as keen on empire-building as I am, and has his sights set on Italy. In Spain, the new king is Catherine’s eighteen-year-old nephew Charles, who has been brought up Dutch and whose mother, they say, is mad.
    How curious the world is.
    And now the campaigning season has come round again. I am not in an incense-clouded Paris cathedral or even a gunsmoke-filled battlefield. I am not in France in any capacity. I am at Hampton Court, Wolsey’s redbrick palace on the Thames. In a garden. Waiting, still, for my empire. Waiting, still, for my sons.
    There is a child, though: a girl. Mary. Two years old now, she is standing next to me on the gravel path, staring at a clump of marigolds and pointing one small finger towards a bee.
    “Stripy,” she says gravely. She watches it for a long moment, then she looks at me. “The bee is buzzy.” She frowns and corrects herself. “ Busy .” Then she smiles delightedly. “The bee is buzzy too!”
    I swing her up into my arms. Her face is level with mine. Carved beasts on green-and-white wooden poles stand sentry at intervals along the clipped borders: lion, dragon, greyhound, antelope, dun cow, unicorn. The unicorn is odd, short-snouted and fierce-looking, its white-painted body lit by bright sunlight against a background of dark, gathering rain clouds.
    Seeing it, Mary squeaks and hides her face in the crook of my neck, one hand gripping the gold chain that lies across my shoulders.
    In her stiffened bodice and thick skirts she is a solid little bundle, though she is small for her age. If I shut my eyes and open them again, can I will myself to be holding a boy?
    “ Look at it,” I instruct her. “You are not afraid of anything.”
    She lifts her head. She is a pretty child, her eyes the same blue as the sapphires edging her hood. Her gown is violet tinselled satin, the cuffs fur-edged, the sleeves lined with green silk. She is studying the jewels on my collar now, tapping them to see if they will pop, like bubbles.
    “Look at it.”
    She looks. Then she brings her hands up in front of her, fingers curled like claws, and makes a little growling noise.
    “Stop laughing, Papa,” she tells me. “I am fiercing the monster.”
    As I set the girl down, Catherine says, “Her women tell me she never cries.”
    “Of course she doesn’t. She’s my daughter.”
    The small girl in violet satin runs off, stops, comes back, does a wobbly curtsey to me, and runs off again. Catherine turns and walks after her. I watch my wife’s retreating back for a moment – the long thick skirts, the black veil. From the back you