VIII

“Uhuh.”
    Reaching over, I take hold of her chin and turn her face to me. I say, “I would beg alms from door to door for the rest of my days.”
    “To keep me in finery, I hope.”
    “Of course. And I would lie at your feet in my stinking rags like a dog, and you could feed me scraps from your plate.” I kiss her. “Is that enough?”
    I kiss her again. She wrinkles her nose and says, “Maybe.”
    I kiss her repeatedly – kiss, kiss, kiss. I say, “Maybe, hm? Maybe.”
    Suddenly I feel Anne tense, though she doesn’t move away. I realise that someone has come in. A bulky figure is standing in the shadows beyond the window. I let go of Anne, stretch, get up – say, “Cromwell, my diligent man, what have you brought in your ink-stained hands for me now? Come on. How many things on your list?”
    The hands holding today’s documents are thick as a black-smith’s. Cromwell is a fighting dog, born in a back alley – a start in life so unheralded that he doesn’t even know his own age. I like his savage teeth; I like his charm. He is quick to see my purposes. God’s purposes. He gets things done.
    Right now he is scanning his list. I say, “Oh, don’t depress me. Just start.” I turn to Anne. “Business is troublesome. Yours should be all happy thoughts. Take yourself to your ladies. For the child’s sake.”
    She’s standing beside the virginals, queenly and authoritative. She says, “I’m fine.”
    “For the child.”
    She shoots me a withering look – and a concession. “I’ll sit down.”
    Cromwell’s first subject is Catherine, whose title now is not Queen, of course, but – as my brother’s widow – Princess Dowager. He says, “Your Majesty. The latest report from Buckden says that the Princess Dowager hasn’t been out of her room for an entire month. Except to hear Mass in a gallery.” Anne gives a snort of exasperation; gets up again.
    Cromwell refers to his notes. “She won’t eat or drink what her new servants provide. The little she does eat is prepared by her chamber-women. And her room is used as her kitchen—”
    “So – what?” I slap the sideboard next to me. “What should I be doing about it? Did I order any of this? This squalid situation is—” I beat my hand on the wood for emphasis, “ entirely of her own making . What does she think? That we intend to poison her?”
    “Of course,” Anne says. She follows me with her eyes as I cross to one of the windows. The fog seems to press against the glass. Below, dim silhouettes appear and disappear in the near distance – the builders are doing what they can despite the weather. This palace of Hampton Court is to have entirely new queen’s lodgings; we are impatient for them to be finished.
    Cromwell says, “The Princess Dowager complains that the house at Buckden is too near the river, sir, and that the damp is destroying her health.”
    “Nothing will destroy her health so well as keeping to her chamber, taking no air or exercise, and thinking nothing but obstinate and vengeful thoughts.” I turn to face him. “But if she is determined to hasten to her grave, I will not stop her.”
    “And she asks, again, to see the Lady Mary.”
    The Lady Mary, our daughter – our illegitimate daughter, since she was born during an invalid marriage. Now no longer Princess, and now almost eighteen years old.
    Anne answers quietly: “Mary can see her mother when she tames the obstinacy of her Spanish blood and recognises that she herself is a bastard.”
    Cromwell’s eyes flick to me: checking.
    I say, “Exactly. I expect Lady Shelton has told you – Mary is playing the same trick as her mother and keeping to her chamber, so she won’t have to encounter our daughter Elizabeth.”
    “And curtsey to her,” Anne puts in.
    “Catherine must be encouraging her. No doubt the Emperor’s ambassador has been in touch with her, too. Are you intercepting correspondence?”
    “Of course,” says Cromwell.
    The Emperor’s current ambassador, Chapuys, is a mincing little twig of a man, and an inveterate gossip. “He can go to hell,” I say. “I loathe him.”
    Cromwell rubs his sausagey fingers over his chin. He’s clean-shaven, but his hair is so dark that the skin there is permanently grey. He says, “But I’d suggest, sir, that you shouldn’t say anything – yet – about the advice Chapuys is giving her. It would reveal our surveillance – and bring it to an end. We’re waiting to land a bigger fish: we want