The Queen of Subtleties Read online

  Quite by coincidence, and of course unknown at the time to any of us, the banquet took place on the evening of the sack of Rome. While our king and his guests were relaxing on the bank of the moonlit Thames, renegade Spanish soldiers were rampaging through Rome, hacking at its citizens, committing acts of barbarism on people as they lay dying. Never had the world heard anything like it. I lost heart for big events, after that. Celebrations seem to allow disaster to crash in, somewhere, unchecked.

  And this summer, what is there to celebrate? Apart from these last few days, the weather has been dreadful, the coming harvest ruined and plague taking hold. The king has been excommunicated. And Sir Thomas More has been executed. We were at Hanworth when the execution happened. Richard came into the kitchen and said, ‘Well, More’s for the chop about now.’

  I asked him, in no uncertain terms, not to be so disrespectful. How could he talk like that about a man who had served his country as chancellor for so many years?

  His answer—who on earth had he been listening to?—was that Sir Thomas had imprisoned a lot of men for heresy, in his time, and burned six of them.

  I despaired. ‘If he did—if he did—he didn’t do it personally, did he. That was the law.’

  He shrugged. ‘And this, now? This is the law, now. He’s the heretic, now.’ Then, softening, he said, ‘Listen: this is the last of it, I’m sure. This is the ringleader going.’

  The evening of Sir Thomas’s death, the spice plate came back untouched, delivered by the usher of the king’s chamber, no waiting for Stephen to fetch it in the morning. The usher looked grave. The king was tired from hunting, he told us; he’d been hunting all day and didn’t want to eat.

  I know that the king never doesn’t want to eat.

  ‘And by the way,’ he said, ‘we’re moving, tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Richard protested. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ We’d only just arrived, and were due to stay another three days. ‘To where?’

  The usher shrugged.

  ‘Tell me this,’ said Richard. ‘Is the queen’s household moving, too?’

  The usher looked at the floor. ‘No.’

  Last week, I was introduced to Anne Boleyn. The king sent for me. He does, sometimes. I don’t know why. No doubt he regrets it when I appear, dowdy and tongue-tied. Not that he shows it. On the contrary, and I wish I could reciprocate. I envy those who are at ease with him. Richard once told me that Mr Hill, my counterpart in the wine cellars, often spends evenings playing cards with him.

  My summons, as usual, came via an usher: ‘His Majesty wishes to see you.’ This usher was an impeccably-dressed young man. He leaned against the lintel, crossed his long legs at the ankle. Folded his arms.

  ‘Now?’

  He said nothing.

  I untied my apron and rushed to my room. And there was Hettie on her pallet-bed, pulled from beneath my own bed. ‘Hettie!’ Sick?

  She was struggling up, flustered and sleep-damp.

  ‘Hettie?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said: ‘headache.’

  I knelt to get a good look at her. She looked back at me, clear-eyed. A headache, she said again, sounding disappointed: she’s prone to them; they dog her. I stood, ruffling her hair; she was almost certainly right, was my instinct. It was almost certainly nothing worse than a headache. I’d make a paste of rose-petals for her, as soon as I could; press it to her forehead. ‘The king’s sent for me.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Steady,’ I said, ‘I can get it.’

  But she was already there, at the chest, extracting my gown.

  Arriving back downstairs in the confectionery, I detected some tension between Richard and the usher; they both seemed absurdly glad at my reappearance. The usher immediately remembered himself, and affected nonchalance. Richard left his sugar-sculpture—an archer, as big as a child—and hurried towards me. I opened my arms in invitation for him to circle. When he was behind me, he swiped my bonnet; my hair dropped unfastened down my back.

  ‘Richard!’

  ‘Trust me.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, no, no.’ I simply couldn’t go cavorting to the king like some girl. I’m unmarried, yes, but the point is that I’ll never be married. I’m not some young, unmarried girl, whatever Richard thinks to the contrary.

  ‘Trust me,’ he said, the bonnet held behind his back. ‘He’ll like it.’

  I glared at him but his eyes didn’t meet mine, he was too busy arranging my hair over my shoulders.

  ‘There,’ he announced; and touched my forehead with his lips.

  I began following the usher, and realized that I didn’t know where we were heading: which chamber? My guess was the Presence Chamber: hardly the hubbub, but not as intimate as the king’s own rooms. And it wasn’t just where we were heading that I didn’t know; I didn’t even know where we were. Fifty yards from my kitchen and I was lost. How had that happened? This boy was adept at finding deserted corridors and passageways. Judging from the retreating clamour, he’d somehow slipped us past the whole main kitchen. I’d been assuming this was for my benefit—to avoid a parade in front of a couple of hundred men—but now I wondered if it could be for his. Perhaps he didn’t particularly want to be seen with a middle-aged working woman.

  I scuttled along behind him with a familiar dread. It’s not the king I mind: of course not; far from it. It’s the retinue; the retinue was what I was dreading as I rushed along behind the usher. A roomful of nobility, and their attendants. So many people; their scrutiny. And me with my hair down. Silently, I cursed Richard. Then, to be fair, I cursed myself for allowing him to hold such sway over me. And Mark: would Mark be there, too? Would he be one of them, in there? How would I look, to him, there? Just as I look to the rest of them. Tongue-tied, bare-headed and loose-haired in my dowdy gown.

  In the end, everything happened before there was time to think about it. The king was on his feet the instant I was in the doorway: up and out of his chair, striding towards me. The smile. The sheer height of him. His clothes: made of gold; solid gold, thread-thin and made into cloth. His shoes: down in my curtsey I focused on the square-toed purple velvet shoes, and the carpet beneath them. There was music; strings. Mark?

  ‘Lucy,’ the king said, ‘Lucy,’ a hand on my arm to draw me up, guiding me towards a fireplace which was unlit, cavernous and cool…We’d turned our backs on the throng. My back: my hair hanging down it. I can never believe that he calls me Lucy until I hear it. I love it. ‘How are you?’ he was asking me. He’d caught the sun: there hadn’t been much of it, but what there’d been, he’d caught. He looked younger than when I’d last seen him. And those eyes: those small, intensely blue, unflinching eyes.

  ‘You’re looking wonderful,’ he was saying. ‘And you’ve been doing marvellously, lately—the midsummer subtleties in particular; they were stunning—and we’re all very grateful to you…’

  And I was saying the usual: Oh, no, Your Majesty; Oh, yes, Your Majesty; Thank you, Your Majesty; Your Majesty is too kind.

  He asked some detailed questions about what I was working on, and so we began talking about the consecration of the three new bishops in six weeks’ time: the celebratory feast planned for Winchester. ‘This one’s important,’ he stressed. ‘No, really. It’s…’ his glittery eyes to the ceiling, ‘what I mean, Lucy, is that I want this summer to go out with a bang.’

  Down in the household, the fear is that the summer is about to go out with quite a different kind of bang: there’s a lot of talk of the threat of war with Spain. Those of us who rely on shipped supplies have our own particular concerns.

  ‘This has been such a good summer, and we should finish it in style.’

  A good summer? With everything that’s happened? My heart dropped away from my smile. Is he mad? He didn’t look mad. He looked entirely sure of himself. There was something else, though, when I looked closer; I could see what might be tiredness beneath that touch of sun.

  Then he said, ‘Come w
ith me,’ and suddenly there was a blur of people, all standing. Fabrics, head-dresses sparkling. A haze of perfumes. Everyone was looking at us. No, at him, of course; the murmured conversations had stopped and everyone was looking at him. A rasp of that cloth-of-gold, beside me, and he’d made whatever gesture they were waiting for, because they re-settled onto stools and floor cushions. But they hadn’t all been standing; I now realized that they hadn’t all stood; someone had been sitting. I knew who, too: I knew, despite not having dared look. I knew from the fact of her sitting, and from the colour of her gown. A sitting, purple-clad woman: a queen. This queen had no ladies around her; no queen’s ladies. Just two men. These two men were now re-taking their seats. One of them was looking at me, his look so direct that I jumped as if he’d whispered in my ear. He was so dark that he could be an ambassador from Spain, but no ambassador would dare look at an Englishwoman in such a manner. Then it occured to me: the brother; he was her brother. Mark had told me how she usually sits after dinner with her brother and one or more of her favourites, debating religion and politics.

  Unfortunately, we seemed to be heading for this trio. ‘Anne,’ the king called, ‘let me introduce Mrs Cornwallis, who keeps us all sweet: our confectioner.’

  I made my curtsey deep and slow, ducking to avoid her gaze. The sheen of her skirt captivated me. She made one comment, to my lowered head: ‘Your midsummer dancers were beautiful.’

  ‘Yes,’ the king said, ‘I told her,’ and then we were away again, pacing the room while he talked more of the Winchester feast. Tapestries hung on every wall, ceiling to floor: a biblical story, would be my guess, told in many scenes; there was no time for a proper look. A clock stood on a writing desk: a clock small enough to stand on a writing desk. Many-wicked candles everywhere. Most of my attention, though, was homed to the music, the mix of fingertips and strings, trying to identify which might be Mark’s. The musicians—perhaps four, six—occupied a corner, and I kept my eyes averted.

  I was reeling from my encounter with Anne Boleyn. The look she’d given me was similar to her brother’s in its directness. Not detached or hard, as I’d expected. Nor arrogant, there was none of the fabled arrogance, although she did hold her head high on that long, slender neck of hers. She’d regarded me with weary, sympathetic amusement. Her eyes had said something like, Well, hello, there. Something like, Well, here we all are. And what I’d actually felt, against all the odds, was a rush of concern for her. Two years ago, I’d seen her on that canopied barge bound for the Tower, before her coronation, and she’d been a girl in white, her loose black hair ablaze with sunshine. Now, despite the elaborate riches of her gown, her head-dress and jewellery, she looked sallow and scrawny. True, she’d never been the type who could expect to age well; she’d had no bloom. But this decline was shocking. The fragile skin of her throat and around those famously-huge eyes was dry, lined, darkened. Healthy face, healthy soul: that’s what people say. What had struck me loud and clear when I’d looked into her face was that she’s running out of time. She’s choleric, if not already melancholic. She’ll need help if she’s ever to have another child. Which she must. Debating is all very well, but that’s not what she’s for, any more. Not the sharpness of her wit, the depth and breadth of her learning. Sugar, I thought. Cucharum. Warms the blood, brings a flush to the skin. Healthy for anyone, any time, any place: that’s what I was taught. Every other food trails an interminable list of qualities and qualifiers with which we who practice the art of cookery are supposed to be acquainted: warm in the first degree, dry in the second, good for old people with damp temperaments if eaten during spring. But sugar is unequivocal. White and dry, it runs sparkling around a body.

  The other day, in the shade of the riverbank trees, Mark asked me how long I’ve been making confectionery. ‘Forever’, I said, before remembering myself: ‘but probably not as long as you’ve been singing.’ I’ve been working in kitchens since I was twelve. As a child, I knew nothing of confectionery and my fascination was for tiles. We had a neighbour who was a tilemaker. He’d tiled the floors of churches—our own, in the village—and other religious houses such as Lewes Priory, as well as wealthy people’s homes. Sometimes he went away to supervise the laying; other times, he sent crates by packhorse and barge. His tiles were red-brown with honey-coloured designs: a fleur de lys, perhaps, or rosette, or shield. Near our chalky land was a weald of clay which he dug during the winter. In the summer, he’d hammer the drying clay into hand-sized square moulds and then, into each, he’d tap down a wooden stencil. The indents—a lion, deer, boar, bird, fish—he filled with slip. His kiln, below ground and brushwood-burning, took a week to load, fire, cool and unload.

  At twelve years old, I went to the local manor house to work in the kitchens. Some of the floors, in that house, were tiled. Dark green tiles. I’d come from the biggest house in our village—my father was a yeoman farmer—but this manor was brick-built, glazed, slate-roofed. My father’s house was half-timbered and thatched, open windows hung with sacking. The manor had kitchens, with fireplaces and chimneys. At home, our cooking had been done on an open fire in the middle of the one main room, the smoke finding its way to a vent in the roof.

  The mistress of my new home was nineteen. Alice. The master’s second wife. No children of her own; just the two stepchildren. She was keen on confectionery and I worked alongside her, learning. Once, she flung sugar syrup at a rosebush and we watched it dry on the petals. Ingenious: real sugar roses; sugar real roses. We picked the crisp, glowing petals for storage, allowing ourselves to sample a few. I’ve never dared do it, myself: that flinging of sugar, that gloriously haphazard sugaring. And it’s not quite what I have in mind, now; I don’t want to preserve a real rose in sugar, to sugar a rose. What I want to do is make something like a real rose from sugar. As like a real rose as I can. A rose made of sugar, but with very little that’s sugary about it. It’s easy with other fruits and plants such as oranges and lemons, nuts and berries: solid, they lend themselves to sugar sculpture. But roses, folded in on themselves, are hard to capture.

  I adored Alice. Everyone did. She loved to entertain, and one day the Nevilles came to dine. We struggled to produce a spread lavish enough. They declared themselves very impressed with the confectionery, and the master of the household suggested they take me to work for them. It was the Nevilles who, eventually, in turn, sent me to work for the king. Before I left, I visited my sisters. They told me that Alice had died of sweating sickness. ‘It was like it always is,’ said Kate, ruefully. ‘She was fine at lunchtime, dead by dark.’

  Mark asked me if I like what I do.

  ‘Working in a kitchen?’ I asked him, ‘or making confectionery?’

  ‘Either,’ he said. ‘Both.’

  ‘I like getting things right,’ I decided. The royal kitchens are as good a place as any to do that. ‘I like working in kitchens if I’m the head. And I like working with Richard, if you can believe that.’

  He laughed.

  ‘He’s my sharpest critic, but I trained him.’ That’s something else I’ve liked: training Richard. ‘And I’m lucky,’ I said, ‘working for someone who appreciates what I do and encourages me, no expense spared.’ I asked him, ‘And you? Do you like being a musician?’

  He simply said, ‘Yes.’ He said it immediately, but there seemed something uncertain about it. No, not uncertain, it was certain enough: flat, was what it was. He said, ‘I didn’t really appreciate it, at the time, but I was very lucky to make that transition. It could’ve all stopped for me when I was twelve. But instead of just a broken voice, I got a new one. Otherwise, I’d be teaching music, somewhere, I suppose; that would’ve been the best I could’ve hoped for.’ Then he said, ‘All that “sings like an angel” business; I was completely unaware of it, at the time. To me, life was a series of difficult choirmasters and a bit of bullying from the other boys; and it was always cold, and the hours were long.’ He shrugged. ‘It was hard, but I suppose any childhood’s hard, isn’t i
t.’

  I didn’t say, Not my own; not really. I wanted to say that Richard was a foundling, but that’s for Richard to tell people, if he wishes. Sometimes he does: And me, a poor little foundling! Mark asked me where I come from.

  ‘Sussex,’ I said. ‘You?’

  ‘Here.’ That same flatness. ‘London.’

  For no particular reason—perhaps the heat, the river—I said, ‘We weren’t that far from the sea.’

  ‘We?’ Gentle and shy, as if he very much wanted to know something but was wary that the answer could be difficult for one or both of us. He wanted to know about my family, I presumed.

  ‘My sisters and me.’

  He asked me how many sisters.

  Two, I told him: Ellie and Kate. It’d take all morning, that walk to the sea. Some of the afternoon, too, when the girls were small. On the odd day when we were released from chores. We’d walk from village to village, and past the yew that people said was a thousand years old. Thank goodness for the yew, it kept us going: there for us on the way there and the way back. We’d sit on it, in it, and think about who could have been there a thousand years ago: princesses, pirates, wizards. The walk must have been worth it for the pleasure of paddling, but the lovely sting of the water isn’t what I remember. What I remember is the look of it. The gloss on it. Everyone always talked about the cruel sea, the depth of it, the immensity. And yet there it was, at my feet, flexing beneath a supple, shiny skin. He asked me where my sisters are now.