The Queen of Subtleties Read online

  ‘Catherine’s losing hope,’ my cousin Nick said to me, one evening, when we were gossiping about the day’s events.

  ‘Hope of what?’ I asked. What hope had she ever had?

  ‘That he’ll get fed up of you.’

  I took a moment to take it in. ‘Really?’ I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘You really think she thought that might happen?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Nick said, cracking a walnut. ‘That woman has faith.’

  ‘That woman is mad.’ I opened my mouth so that he was obliged to feed me the nut. ‘Or stupid. Or both.’

  He reached into the bowl for another.

  ‘Don’t you think?’ I asked him.

  A flash of his eyes. ‘I don’t, actually.’

  What?

  ‘But I do think she’s blind to what’s good for her.’

  ‘Well, that is “stupid”, isn’t it?’

  He shrugged.

  Other people, I noticed, seemed unsure how they felt about Wolsey now that he was no longer around. Even Henry. When he heard, mid-January, that Wolsey was ill—a bad chest—Henry decided to send a doctor. I found them at the gatehouse.

  ‘Is this really necessary?’ Wolsey was never ill; everyone knew that. Wolsey and his six oranges a day.

  Neither of them seemed to hear; they were peering at the rain, sizing it up. Then Henry turned to me and asked in all seriousness, ‘Have you anything we can send him, Anne?’

  ‘Like what?’ Some poison?

  Amazingly, he didn’t pick up on my tone; his eyes remained a cool, blank blue. ‘I don’t know, something to cheer him up.’

  ‘Something expensive, then,’ I said, sarcastically.

  Again, no response; just the two pairs, now, of cool, blank eyes. Rain was darkening my gown. Arguing that Wolsey should have nothing from us would take longer than unpinning my brooch. ‘Here.’

  Henry handed it to the doctor and gave him one of his lovely smiles, as if nothing untoward had happened. ‘From Anne, tell him, with all best wishes for his recovery.’

  He did rally, the old codger, although I doubt it was to do with my ‘best wishes’, which he’d have known full well were insincere. His miraculous recovery came when Henry pardoned him. ‘Let’s just pension him off,’ Henry had decided, despite my much-voiced disapproval. ‘He can’t do any more harm.’ As it happened, he was wrong about that.

  In the meantime, our campaign was progressing. In the spring, we began hearing back from the universities on Thomas’s treatise that Henry’s marriage was invalid. Some agreed, some didn’t. Oxford and Cambridge did; the Spanish universities of course didn’t. The Italians didn’t seem able to make up their minds, despite ever-increasing donations to their college funds. The next step was a letter to the Pope, drafted by Dad and George, asking him to make a decision soon: for the sake of peace in England, was how they put it. Billy spent a couple of weeks, that summer, taking it around and charming everyone into signing it: bishops, abbots, peers. Just about everyone: if it achieved nothing else, we now knew who was on our side and who wasn’t.

  Henry spent much of that time, and then the wait for the Pope’s response, shut away in his library; I’d find him there in the afternoons. He seemed to believe that if he made his way through enough books, he’d find an answer. There had to be a way around the problem, was his view; a loophole. Diligence, he felt, would pay.

  And then one afternoon he wasn’t in his library. I turned a corner and he was down a hallway in the midst of a commotion. His mouth, mean; his eyes, popped. Rushing, he was getting nowhere, too busy rounding on people. His exact words, at a distance, were inaudible to me but the tone was unmistakable: furious, accusatory.

  I’d almost reached him and still he hadn’t seen me. ‘Henry? Henry?’

  My uncle was there; Stephen Gardiner, too; Billy, and cousin Nick; and the Spanish ambassador, Chapuys.

  ‘Henry?’

  Those small, pale eyes shunted, stopped at me. No greeting or acknowledgement; only, ‘We have our answer.’

  Bad news, then. A clamp of dread on my heart.

  ‘It’s an edict,’ he barked, again as if it wasn’t me he was addressing. ‘You should be sent from court.’ And in case I hadn’t understood: ‘I should leave you.’

  I laughed; or, a blast of something—high, dizzying—came from me. Because surely it was a joke: some dried-up old bloke in Rome, who never had and never would set foot in England, ruling what the English king could and couldn’t do. And me? Oh, but it wasn’t about me, was it; I was nothing. The love I had for Henry, the plans I had for England: nothing. A thirty-year-old flesh-and-blood woman: nothing. ‘Who does he think he is?’

  Henry, taken off-guard, said, ‘The Pope.’

  ‘Yes, and what is that?’

  No one moved, but Chapuys drew himself up to his full—and, frankly, unimpressive—height. The look he gave me was as black as any he might have summoned for the Devil. Then he turned on his heel and strode away. We all turned to watch this extraordinary sight: an ambassador taking Henry’s leave without a word. He didn’t return for four or five days. Went to friends, apparently, outside London. A pity he didn’t stay there.

  In those four or five days, rumour was running rife: Wolsey had had something to do with the Pope’s outburst. I don’t know where it started, but it found an ear with me. It made sense: Wolsey was regaining physical strength and favour, and probably had his eye on a return to power. Which wasn’t going to happen while I was around, was it. Strange though it might seem after all he’d done to ruin her life, his best bet now was Catherine. For Wolsey, things had to go back to how they were. I took it, this rumour, to my uncle: if I was chief Wolsey-hater, he was my loyal deputy. And if there are rumours, he hears them. That’s if he hasn’t started them.

  Oh, yes, he told me, he’d heard; and—one better—was working on someone close to Wolsey.

  ‘“Working on”?’ And, ‘Who is close to Wolsey?’

  He grinned. ‘Think about it.’

  I did.

  A clue: ‘Lately.’

  Still nothing.

  ‘His doctor.’

  Oh. Yes.

  He laughed, his repellent nasal one-note. ‘For a bright spark, Anne…Anyway, the point is, the doctor’s seen rather a lot of our corpulent ex-cardinal, lately.’

  Yes, ‘And?’

  ‘And give me time. Results take time.’ From the doorway he added, ‘Steadfast fellows, aren’t they, these doctors.’

  ‘Results’ took a further day—that was when my uncle took me aside, with a tap to my arm. It was as we’d suspected, he whispered. Wolsey had been writing to the Pope. Urging Henry’s excommunication unless he gave me up.

  ‘You’ve proof of this?’

  ‘I have, now.’ That thin smile. ‘I have the testimony of his now slightly wealthier doctor.’

  As usual, Henry wouldn’t discuss it with me. Worse, he actually walked out on me. The next morning, though, it was already done: a warrant for Wolsey’s arrest. High treason, Henry informed me. And ‘informed me’ was what he did, as if it were purely a matter of business and thus his idea. Again, no discussion. I held my tongue—no way was I going to jeopardize this—and was careful to mirror his brisk nonchalance. Really, though, I was jubilant, blood fizzing in my ears. I barely heard him say, ‘He’s up at Cawood.’

  Cawood: Wolsey’s palace in Yorkshire. Henry was voicing concern over the practicalities of making an arrest at such a distance.

  ‘Cawood?’ Well, how about this for an idea? ‘Give the warrant to Harry Percy.’

  Henry looked at me; he looked and looked, presumably flummoxed that I’d dare mention my ex- to him. His expression revealed nothing; there was no expression.

  I brazened it out, shrugged it off. ‘He’s your nearest earl.’ Northumberland. And if an earl can’t be trusted to supervise an arrest…

  ‘Oh. Yes.’ Henry gave up, rubbed his eyes. Clearly, he hadn’t slept well. ‘Yes.’

  What I was thinking as I
sauntered from that room, was, Harry, this comes from me to you with love: poetic justice.

  Wolsey cheated me, though, even in death: he never did face trial and execution. He dawdled his way down the country until, one November day, he died in his bed at Leicester. He’d certainly made the most of that final journey: people lined the roadsides, I heard, to cheer him. They seemed to have forgotten the decades of his absurd riches; they saw no despot being brought to answer for abuses of privilege. They saw a sick, troubled man, and their hearts went out to him.

  Their fickle hearts.

  Lucy Cornwallis

  AUTUMN 1535

  Making gingerbread always warms me up and keeps me busy. Which is what I want, today, here in The Vyne’s draughty old kitchens with nothing much to do except suffer the curiosity of Lord Sandys’ own staff. This is exactly what I need: to stir long and hard over a flame, east to west for luck, turning spiced breadcrumbs and a pool of claret into a glossy dough. Breathing the sharp ginger, the rounder, polished smell of aniseed, and rough, woody cinnamon. Usually I’d ask Kit to do it for me—Kit, with his sugar-smashing muscles—and then I step in for the easier tasks of rolling it and pressing it into moulds.

  Only one more night here, anyway, and then we leave Hampshire, finally leave the West altogether for good this year, and head back for Windsor. The official end of the summer. A summer already long gone, though. Every time the door gusts open—bang, bang, bang, all day; people careless with a loose latch—I glimpse rain seething among the cobbles. And so it’s been for weeks. Not that we didn’t know it was coming, because it rained on Ascension Day. All this rain has stopped us going blackberry-picking, and now it’s too late: after Michaelmas, bad luck. We’ve spent the whole summer inching through mud from grand house to grand house, bedraggled. Not the impressive display that was intended.

  You’d think that if The Vyne can have a whole new gallery for the king’s four-day visit, it’d manage to have one functional latch on the kitchen door. But at least I can work, here. Unlike at Wolf Hall, where I had absolutely nothing to do for a whole week because, at some time prior to our arrival, the Seymours had hired the services of a confectioner. The kitchen was packed with boxes of confectionery and subtleties. I did get a look at some of it, despite a defensive head cook. I asked him who the confectioner was; he named a woman who, he said, lives in Bristol. I made quite a show of appreciation, but actually that wasn’t difficult: she’d had her work cut out for her, using the old type of sugar plate for her subtleties. Presumably no one has shown her the alternative. For me, the good news came six or seven years ago via Bartolommeo Scappi, the cook who accompanied Cardinal Campeggio on his extended visit from Rome. I’m quite ashamed to think how what were distressing months for everyone else were so entertaining and enlightening for us in the confectionery.

  Looking at those Bristol-made subtleties, though, I was faintly nostalgic for the old art, the casting of figures in liquid, boiling sugar. The rapid turning of the sealed moulds, over and over, to coat the insides, then the insertion of a hot needle to break the vacuum. Rather than what we do now, a mere pressing of paste into carvings or plaster impressions. But the old method has drawbacks: it’s difficult to colour translucent sugar solution. Our white paste is ideal for working dyes into, or we can paint onto its dull, dried surface. Lately, I’ve been grinding rose-petals directly into sugar. More and more petals into the merest sprinkle of sugar. Pushing beyond pink into red, then deeper into red.

  Roses are survivors: despite this weather, they’re still around. I’ve been looking for the reddest, picking their petals and putting them into my pockets, taking them to my room to store in a jar. And then, when I know I’ll have a little time alone, they’re back in my pockets, handful by handful, and down into the kitchen.

  The Bristol-woman’s moulds were old but beautiful—a set of King Arthur and his knights, intricately detailed; probably an heirloom—and she’d made a good job of gilding the figures. She’d also gilded several marchepanes, an impressive gold bird soaring in the centre of each big disc, although the marchepane itself, underneath, looked a touch oily, yellow, to me; the almonds and sugar beaten a moment too long.

  Here, at The Vyne, a couple of days ago, Richard stencilled a perfectly pale marchepane of ours with blue and silver fleur de lys. Cornflowers, two huge bundles of them beneath our table: that’s what I saw, to my delight, when I arrived in the kitchen, that morning.

  ‘Blue?’ I asked.

  ‘With silver,’ he said, barely looking up from his work. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘But where’d you get them, these cornflowers?’ I crouched for a close look, because don’t cornflowers deserve the closest of looks? Their colour so far into blue that the only way out is purple. I hadn’t seen any for a while; we’d used our supply by the end of August, and hadn’t been back anywhere to replenish. We’d been making do with red, yellow, green: rose-petals, crocus stamens, and spinach juice.

  Richard was squeezing a sludge—petals he’d ground into rosewater—in a cloth, over a bowl. Judging from what had collected in the bowl, he’d been at it for a while. He’d had an early start. Another pleasant surprise, because another of the big difficulties this summer—as if I need more—has been Richard. Making heavy weather of everything. It seems to me that he’s spent most of the summer sitting on one stool or another, his arms folded high and heels kicking. Forever asking about the next move and the next, and the next: who’ll be there and what we’ll be doing. And that’s when he’s been in the kitchen at all; although, at these smaller houses or lodges, he’s usually just outside, pacing the yard. Occasionally, though, for three or four days at a time, he’s been as he was with these cornflowers: serene, and energetic.

  ‘Richard?’ I prompted. ‘Where’d they come from?’

  ‘I placed an order.’

  ‘You what?’

  A quick grin. ‘I asked someone, Lucy. Asked someone to think of me, if he saw any. To bring me some, if he could. They’re from Norris-land.’

  ‘Oh.’ Via the Silvester-person, presumably. ‘Sir Henry’s here?’

  ‘Yep. To celebrate.’

  Celebrate? Panic: what had I forgotten?

  ‘Love is in the air.’ He was looking pleased with himself: a small smile, and briskness with the blue-leaky bag. ‘Wedding bells, if rumours are to be believed, and—trust me—they are.’

  He’d lost me. ‘Who?’

  A playful tut. ‘Sir Henry.’

  ‘Oh. Oh.’ Nice. Nice Sir Henry: happiness at last for the widower. Good.

  ‘And Meg Shelston.’

  ‘Meg Shelston?’

  No response; a tilting of the blue-spattered bowl into candlelight.

  ‘But…’

  He paused, bowl precarious, and looked at me.

  ‘Wasn’t she…Didn’t you say…’

  He didn’t even blink.

  ‘Meg Shelston,’ I said, exasperated, ‘and the king.’

  ‘Oh.’ He pushed the bowl aside. ‘Oh, that. That was nothing. Ages ago.’ A conspiratorial grin, although I don’t know whom he regarded as his co-conspirator. ‘In fact, the king’s trying to take credit for bringing them together.’ He seemed to consider this. ‘Best friend and ex-mistress? He could have a point.’

  For some reason, I asked, ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Meg? Blonde and bubbly. And kind.’ I was waiting for a quip when he repeated, ‘Yes, kind,’ in all seriousness.

  Whenever my grandfather said I had cornflower-blue eyes, my sister Ellie would add, ‘And straw-coloured hair.’ Both my sisters liked to joke that they were jealous of my being blonde. Is there much grey, now, in their chestnut-brown hair? If there wasn’t, before this summer, there probably is, now; because what kind of harvest have they had? I’m so lucky that this endless rain means nothing more to me than some chilly journeys and a muddy hem. Will there still be harvest-home suppers in the village, this autumn? For commiseration, perhaps, rather than celebration. Hard to imagin
e the usual noisy singing as those last carts trundle back from the fields; the garlanding of each farmer’s last sheaf.

  It’s nearly Hallowtide, Allantide, which has always seemed the very end of the year, to me. The day we spend with the dead; thinking of the dead, hard, all day long and into the evening. It was my favourite festival when I was a child: the one day of the year I was allowed to spend with my mother. Me and me alone, with her. And what a day: the church bells for so long after evensong, singing to the dead across the churchyard and into the blue-black sky. The church humming with candlelight. One year—a particularly good harvest, probably—two ladies from somewhere else in Sussex were booked to come and play their harps. When I’m gone, there’ll be no one to remember my mother; no one to pray for her. She was her parents’ only child, and I’m hers. I’m not even convinced that my sisters and my brother remember me now, when I’m still alive.

  Richard tells me there’ll be no candles, this Hallowtide. ‘Part of the changes,’ was how he put it.

  ‘Candles?’ I was aghast. ‘What’s wrong, now, with candles?’

  ‘You really want to know?’ We were in my room, a couple of evenings ago, sitting in front of the fire.

  ‘I do, actually; yes.’ I felt Hettie’s gaze on us; back and forth between us.

  ‘Well, apparently, there’s nothing we can do for the dead. They’re either good enough to get to Heaven, or they’re not. No amount of praying for them can give them a leg-up.’

  ‘And where’s Purgatory, in all this?’

  Richard laughed, or sort of. ‘Where indeed? Haven’t you heard? There is no Purgatory.’

  Ridiculous: ‘It was there for all those years, and now it’s not?’

  He shrugged. ‘Or never was.’