VIII

wondered how I can dream such things. She has given me a healthy girl. Next it will be a fine warrior son.
    So Anne tells me – and she is right. She is as defiant and determined as in those dark years of struggle over the annulment of my marriage to Catherine, and she is delighted with our daughter, too – whom I have named Elizabeth, after my mother. She is delighted with Elizabeth’s strong limbs and her vigorous cry, her dark Boleyn eyes and her tuft of red-gold Tudor hair.
    When I look at the child, I am also proud. But as soon as she is taken away, the feeling fades. I think: the boy Anne was carrying when she climbed the wharf steps at the Tower, the boy who shone his brilliant light in that place of dark horrors – where has he gone? He existed; I knew him. I put my hand on her belly and I felt him move and kick.
    Behind me, the bishop has paused now; he is waiting for a response, though I have no idea of the question. I tell him I will deal with the matter later and I leave him, walking through my Privy Chamber and my Presence Chamber and a short gallery to my private closet on the first-floor balcony of the Chapel Royal.
    Norris has followed me. At the chapel door I tell him to remain outside. As I enter, I see the Dean and one of the chaplains below me, standing near the dark-wood choir stalls; I dismiss them. I want to be alone. When they have gone I descend the spiral stair that leads into the main body of the chapel, approach the altar and kneel.
    What is it I want to say to my God? That waiting a single moment longer for my son is an agony: that I have done too much waiting these last twenty years: that I am pulled taut, as if I am lashed to a wheel, or on the rack. I waited so long to marry Anne. Marrying her meant the end of waiting – I thought.
    I know God has a plan for me but I do not understand why it should require this. Perhaps, then, I am praying for strength. Perhaps I am asking God to reveal to me His reasons…
    The chapel is a cold and empty chamber. Candles are lit at the altar and beneath the stern-faced statues; from time to time a wick sizzles. Gradually, I become aware of the stillness of the space behind me. It seems eerily like a presence; like something waiting.
    I look over my shoulder. The balcony is dark and seems unoccupied; beneath it, there is no movement in the shadows.
    I turn back and bow my head. But now I can hear something: an indistinct brushing or scraping. I think of nesting birds. I think of rats. I try to block it out – to focus on my prayer. I hope the sound will stop. I don’t want to see what makes it.
    But the sound doesn’t stop. And I feel compelled to find its source.
    In front of anyone else, I would never move like this, would never edge towards a sound, which I now sense comes from behind the pulpit to my right. I don’t want to see but I must see; I am already clammy inside my clothes.
    Peering slowly, inch by inch, round the edge of the pulpit, I spot a sliver of something dark, down near the floor. The sliver shifts in sudden jerks – it is part of something active; I am not alone.
    I cringe against the pulpit’s wooden panelling – then force myself to look. The sliver I saw was the edge of a doublet: dark fabric. Its wearer is kneeling on the floor; the soft scraping sound I heard is made by his fingernails as he drags them in great tearing sweeps along his skin. The scratching is violent and brutal. Unlaced at the wrists, his sleeves are pushed back – red tracks are raised on the surface of his forearms, intermittently speckled with blood.
    As I watch he bends his head, puts his hands – like bony rakes – beneath the straw-coloured hair at the nape of his neck and drags them downwards around the curve of his throat, leaving fork-tracks of red. The effort pulls from him a gutteral grunt – the effort and perhaps the pain.
    The sight is contemptible, disgusting; I lean against the side of the pulpit, then stumble up its short staircase and lunge for the Bible as for a talisman that will ward him off.
    The great book is lying open on the lectern. It takes me a moment to focus on the words. To drown out the sound of him – the thing, the boy – I read loudly the first sentence my eye falls on: “ Be sober and watch, for your adversary the Devil as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour …”
    I can still hear him; still louder I read, declaiming the words as if to a congregation: “ The God of all grace, which