The Queen of Subtleties Read online

  Leviticus 20, verse 21: And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless. Henry’s wife was his—had been his—brother’s wife, briefly, before his brother’s death. The marriage had been deemed a non-event because, according to Catherine, Arthur hadn’t been up to doing his husbandly duty. The problem was, Henry and Catherine still had no children. Well, no sons. There was of course the daughter, pathetic example though she was. A mis-translation, said Henry, turning sudden specialist in Hebrew: it should read ‘sonless’. Henry and Catherine’s lack of a surviving son, he decided, was God’s judgement on a sinful marriage. That’s what he said, and he believed it; he talked himself into believing it and from then onwards his fervour was unshakeable.

  I didn’t suggest Leviticus to him. Why would I? In my view, he had grounds enough to rid himself of that Spaniard: she’d proved no use at all, and now—aunt of a rampaging emperor—she was a liability. And Leviticus was no discovery for him: he’d quoted it, years before we met, in his book on Luther. As for the dubious validity of his marriage: he knew that it had been an issue at the time; and he knew, too, that for some the misgivings had persisted. A French bishop, for example, had queried the brat’s legitimacy during a round of marriage-brokering. None of it was news, and none of it—yet—was due to me.

  Like anyone else at court, I’d heard speculation from time to time about a royal divorce: Why doesn’t he just get rid of her? Marriage breakdown and separation happens all the time. Sometimes an annulment, or a divorce. And in this particular case? Our lovely young king married to a babbling old nun? Worse: a babbling old Spanish nun, when England’s focus was firmly on France. Her being a Spaniard could be overlooked, though; she’d been here a long time. What really mattered was that distinct lack of live baby boys.

  If Wolsey had had his way, he’d have got Henry his divorce and then shipped in some French flesh to produce princes, and to have French friends and deck up for functions. Well, I could do that. And more. And I wouldn’t have to be royal; Elizabeth Woodville hadn’t been, and it hadn’t stopped her marrying Edward IV. And anyway I wasn’t completely un-royal; I had that smidgeon of Plantagenet blood. (Didn’t we all, though. All except Wolsey, that is.) Surely I could produce sons—my useless sister had just managed one—and I was practically French, I’d done a long stint at the French court and was liked by anyone, there, who was anyone. There was another way in which I was queen material, too: no one in England rivalled my dress sense. I dressed the part. So, I’d do. Better still, I’d be no homesick half-wit. But best of all, this was my country and I had plans for it, along with the guts to see them through. And one of those plans was going to make me very popular with just about anyone who wasn’t Wolsey: I wanted rid of Wolsey.

  I’d say Wolsey was too big for his boots, but let’s not beat about the bush: what Wolsey was too big for was England. Never before had there been a man in England so rich and powerful who wasn’t a king. Moreover, this was a man who wasn’t anything at all, not originally: a nobody turned cleric, a butcher’s boy become cardinal. The nobles had a thing or two to say about that, behind his back.

  I suppose that’s why Henry trusted him with the kingdom: no friends to favour; no claim to the throne. Henry’s talent—the best talent of all—is for recognizing other’s talents. I wonder, now, if I should include myself in that. Did he see that I’d flinch at nothing to rid him of that used-up wife? He recognizes talent and he trusts: he trusts absolutely; right up until when, suddenly, he doesn’t. It’s Thomas Cromwell whom he trusts now: Cromwell, the next and even better Wolsey. Wolsey’s talent had been running the country for Henry. And serious statesman though Henry is…well, when he was young, his passion was for the good life. He’d do a certain amount of work, but then he’d want to go hunting or dancing. Wolsey would stay behind and pick up the pieces. And build palaces from them.

  If anyone was a match for Wolsey, glorified butcher’s boy, then it was me, king-favoured granddaughter of a merchant. I knew where he was coming from. He, however, didn’t even know I was coming. Me being a woman, he didn’t see me coming. And I was ample match for him: no chinless wonder; no Stafford, who, four or five years earlier, had assumed he could click his fingers and have the nobility collect quietly behind him while he asked the Tudors a few awkward questions about their lineage. When Stafford clicked his fingers, Henry overheard. Henry did some clicking of his own—for quill, ink, warrant—and Stafford went to the block. This, from a king not given in those days to bloodshed; a king who loved to be loved. Stafford’s execution had left them all—even my Uncle Norfolk—sulking, subdued. But me, no. Stafford was history for me, I’d never known the man and wouldn’t have liked him if I had. He was no loss for me: one more English aristocrat peering down his pox-eroded nose at the likes of us Boleyns. What had happened to Stafford was no warning to me. I wasn’t about to lose my nerve.

  Lucy Cornwallis

  SPRING 1535

  The door’s opening, and there’s someone in the doorway. The someone’s asking, ‘Miss Cornwallis?’ Male, young, not a voice I know. Bad timing: I can’t take my eyes from this pan of boiling sugar, it’s just about to reach the crucial point. He shouldn’t be knocking at the confectionery door; he should know better. There’s delicate work going on, in here; everyone knows that. What’s the matter with these boys, knocking on this door all day long? ‘Richard’s not here,’ I tell him. ‘Can you shut the door, please?’ I can’t have the temperature drop; and it’s barely spring, outside.

  He obliges. But he’s still here. True, I didn’t actually say, With you on the other side of it. Swiping the pan from the flame, I glimpse him. Glossy black hair; pale-faced, kid-pale; dark eyes. I settle the pan in a basin of water; and through the hiss of steam, I hear him saying, ‘You’ve a sore throat.’ Concerned. For me, by the sound of it; not for himself, for the prospect of contagion.

  ‘Dry,’ I clarify; feel obliged to. ‘Sticky. Comes of working in here.’ Our confectionery kitchen is purpose-built, here, at Hampton Court: we’re on the first floor above the pastry ovens. Good for sugar, not so good for me. ‘And from the sugar.’ Sugar, powdered, gets everywhere. In my hair and down my throat. When I glimpsed him, just now, it was through sugared eyelashes. ‘Look,’ I ask him, ‘if you find Richard, can you tell him to get back here?’

  He draws breath, as if he’s about to say something, but I hear no more.

  Good. I’m not passing messages.

  And he goes. Gently closing the door. Not a typical Richard-visitor, in that respect.

  Time to take the pan to the marble slab, to drop and settle the syrup, bit by bit, into the warmed, oiled moulds. Three dozen Tudor roses, each the size of the circle made by forefinger and thumb. Old-fashioned sugar plate, the boiled-up kind. The temperamental kind. Why isn’t Richard doing this? I could be getting on with something else. It’s not as if there isn’t a lot else for me to do.

  And lo and behold: Richard, slipping into the room as if his absence has been of no consequence. In his twenties, but acting as if he’s still in his teens. An odd mix, Richard: worldly and other-worldly. Whatever he says—and whatever I feel—I’m not in fact old enough to be his mother. Yet it’s as if there’s not just a generation’s difference between us, but a lifetime’s. He steps out of his clogs and, shoeless, pads across the warm oak floor. Standing a head above me, he looks down over my shoulder at the glistening, amber roses. And keeps looking. Which makes me uneasy. I scan the roses for imperfections—bubblings, darkenings—and wonder how it happened that he checks up on my work.

  Now he has his back to me, bending down, putting his leather slippers on. ‘What needs doing?’

  ‘You know what needs doing. Because you did half of it, earlier.’

  We both look at it: a Marchepane, an embossed disc of marzipan as big as the king’s biggest dinner plates. Not long out of the mould, it’s cooling. But if Richard isn’t quick, it’ll b
e too cool and the goldleaf won’t stick.

  ‘Did we get the goldleaf?’ he asks.

  ‘I got the goldleaf, yes. I need this pan washed—where is Stephen?’ A glance out of the window reveals nothing but wet cobbles and a smile from the yeoman guarding the spicery office. ‘Oh—’ I remember—‘did he find you?’

  ‘Stephen?’ Richard’s peering into Kit’s abandoned mortar; shifting the pestle among the grains, his eyes closed and head cocked.

  ‘No. That boy, just now.’

  ‘Who?’ He touches a fingertip to the inside of the mortar, then raises the hand, palm upwards, into the light, as if setting something free.

  ‘He didn’t, then.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. Someone came looking for you.’

  He dabs the forefinger into the basin of water, rubs it with his thumb. ‘What’d he look like?’

  ‘Nice-looking.’ Because it occurs to me that this was what he’d been.

  ‘Nice-looking?’ Richard regards me admiringly. He enunciated the expression as if it had never been used before. ‘Well, could have been anyone,’ he concludes, breezily. ‘You know what I always say: if he wants me badly enough, he’ll come looking again.’

  ‘Is that—’ I nod towards the mortar—‘up to it?’ Down to it: ground sufficiently for today’s purposes.

  ‘Of course. Kit’s a good man.’

  True, but Richard rarely says so. He can be a hard taskmaster, even though it isn’t his job to be any kind of taskmaster at all; it’s mine. I say, ‘You’re in a good mood.’

  He’s browsing along the shelves of spices, doesn’t look at me. ‘Yeah, well,’ is all he says.

  And yet again I wonder: how come he’s so familiar with me, and I know so little about him? I brought him up from an orphan, an under-sized urchin living on his wits. I made him who he is, now: confident, respected assistant to the king’s confectioner. (Equal, really: face it. Equal, now, in skill. Rival, if he so chose.) But in so many ways he’s a mystery to me. Sometimes I can barely believe that we’ve spent a decade living alongside each other, working together all day every day and then spending our nights in adjacent lodgings. All these years living like sister and brother. Perhaps that’s why he still captivates me. I find myself watching him when he’s absorbed, when a peculiar clarity comes into those river-green eyes of his and everything that is Richard dissolves away in them, leaving them with a life of their own. For all the contrived appearance to the contrary, he’s deadly serious about his work. That’s something I do know about him. Something I’ve learned. It’s probably the only aspect of life that he’s serious about. I’m probably the only person who ever gets to see beyond his flippancy.

  When he arrived, a decade ago, to chance his luck in the royal kitchens, he was just one of so many boys hanging around in hope of paid work. Who could blame them? Doubtless they’d heard how there were wages to be earned as well as two meals a day and, at night, space to curl up near the massive ovens. A job in the royal household is a job for life, and it’s a good life; and when we’re not up to the job—sick, or old—we’re still paid. Less, yes, of course, but enough to keep body and soul. It’s hard work, in the kitchens, but worth it. If the boys couldn’t find paid work, they worked anyway and made it pay: muscling in on household life, and trading in the leftovers which were supposed to go to beggars. They made lives for themselves, even if they were barely clothed. My own little kitchen had a bevy of such boys, always coming and going. I’d inherited a situation which had been gaining ground, unchecked, for years. I didn’t like it; didn’t like the chaos. I only managed any serious work after the boys had gone away to sleep and before they returned in the mornings. And then, inevitably, there was the filching. The sticky fingers. The Chief Clerks hold me personally accountable for the most valuable substance in all the kitchens, but how could I watch every grain? How could I supervise hordes of hungry, destitute children around sugar?

  The day I came across Richard, I was doing just as I was doing a moment ago: boiling sugar syrup. One of the boys wanted my attention. Mrs Cornwallis? Mrs Cornwallis? Mrs Cornwallis? I was very busy; surely that was obvious. No? Well, I’d make it obvious, by ignoring him. Not that I had much choice—I couldn’t take my attention from the sugar—but I could have spoken. I could have said, Hang on, please, Joseph, or whoever. Just a moment, John. Missuscornwallismissuscornwallismissuscornwallis—Before I knew it, I’d shot round and was glaring at him, furious with myself for having been distracted. Heat bloomed in the pan behind me, and there was a coppery flash as I whirled back to it. It was gone from the charcoal brazier; it was sinking into a basin of water. I was there, instantly, assessing the damage: none. It was saved, it was saved. I took a moment to appreciate that some kid had done it. Some boy had not only judged the critical point—and from across the room—but had acted without hesitation, snatching a weight of flame-hot and explosive gold from the king’s own confectioner. Then he’d relinquished it, immediately; he was already busy wiping a workbench. He didn’t look at me.

  I asked him: ‘Who are you?’

  Strange eyes: green, slanted. Elfin. He could have been any age between seven and twelve. ‘Richard.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Richard,’ I repeated, stupidly, because I didn’t know what else to say; where to start. And, anyway, he was wiping again. His mousy hair was a little matted at the back, I noticed.

  Less than a fortnight later, we were visited by a representative of the Cofferer. A not unexpected visit. Word was that Cardinal Wolsey had decreed a great clean-up, a great head-count in the household: enough is enough; time’s up for hangers-on, and hangers-on of hangers-on. When the representative had finished remarking on the fact that I’m the only woman working in the kitchens, which was hardly news to me or to anyone else, he explained his mission: ‘When I’ve finished, there should be around two hundred people working in the kitchens. Not…’ he faltered. ‘Well, not more.’ He said, ‘Basically, anybody who’s not somebody has to go.’ He looked at Kit. ‘Obviously the yeoman here is somebody.’ Kit smiled. Kit, in his yeoman’s green. What Kit is, actually, is a pair of hands, and a very useful, capable one, at that. The man asked me. ‘And you have a groom?’

  Someone to wash up and run errands, yes. ‘Geoffrey,’ I said. (These were the days before Stephen; the days before Geoffrey moved on up in the world into the Privy Kitchen and Stephen stepped into his shoes.) ‘He’s at the scullery.’

  ‘And…these.’ It might have been intended as a question but it fell flat, leaving us facing them. The boys. Seven or so of them; or ten, perhaps. They looked back, as nonchalant and calculating as cats.

  I sighed. Their days were numbered, here, and they knew it. Turning so that they couldn’t see me, I said so that they couldn’t hear me, ‘Richard has to stay.’

  ‘Richard?’ The man frowned; he wanted no difficulties.

  I lied, ‘He’s my assistant.’

  The man consulted his notes.

  I came clean. ‘He’ll be my assistant,’ I said, and folded my arms, which was, and still is, the only way I know to stand my ground. ‘Confectionery is skilled work,’ I proclaimed; I was trying hard, now.

  He sighed. ‘Richard who?’

  I had to turn around and face them all; to brazen it out. I half-turned, and quietly asked Richard: ‘Richard who?’

  He shrugged.

  I looked back at the man, and shrugged in turn.

  The man sighed, frowned, and opened his mouth to say something.

  ‘Cornwallis,’ I said.

  It’s the nice-looking boy, again; the black-haired one who came here the other day. Luminous complexion.

  ‘He’s not here.’ I roll my eyes; more biddable, today.

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘Yes. Richard. Not here.’ Seeds scuttle beneath my fingertips—fennel, aniseed, caraway, coriander—as syrup dries around them, making sugar hailstones. ‘Any message?’

  ‘For Richard?’

  ‘Yes.�
�� What is this? ‘For Richard.’ I spoon more syrup into the pan, and the stranger raises his eyes back to mine. Presumably he hasn’t ever seen this before: a pan swinging on cords above a brazier. His eyes aren’t dark, I see now; they’re shadowed by dark eyelashes, lots of them. The eyes are blue. I nod at the pan. ‘There’s a good reason for it. Maintains an even heat.’

  He nods, still wide-eyed.

  This is no kitchen-lad: no yeoman’s uniform, and his clothes are much better than a groom’s. Much better than any household employee’s, it occurs to me. But nor is he a courtier. He doesn’t have the pristine, polished appearance. Doesn’t have the strut; there’s no trace of it in his stance. He’s wearing battered clogs. What’s his link with Richard? What on earth does Richard—fastidious Richard—make of him?

  He says, ‘I don’t know…Richard.’ It’s a gentle voice.

  ‘Well, he’ll be back later, if you want to try again then.’

  ‘No—’ the eyes dip away into a smile, ‘I mean, I’m not here to see Richard.’

  ‘Oh. Oh. Sorry. It’s just that…well, everyone always is.’ We exchange smiles, now. ‘Can I help?’

  This is somehow unhelpful in itself, because he freezes, lips parted. Mute. I can wait; I’ve plenty to occupy me. Comfits take hours; hours and hours of this, to get them perfectly round.