The Cardinal's Court Read online

  I was worried about James, though. It was less than a week since I had arrived back to Hampton Court, but I had at the time thought he was different, older and more silent than he had been when I had seen him a few months earlier, in the late autumn, when I came across to discuss the possible marriage with the cardinal. Then, as now, James had been a great favourite with the cardinal, but then he had been boisterous and funny, joking with his fellow wards and swapping tri-syllabic metric poems with the court poet, John Skelton. He had seemed, then, to be very happy, excited at the thought of his marriage to Mary Boleyn’s younger sister, who was at the French court. James had been thrilled at the idea that then, through this marriage, he would be heir to the Ormond earldom and there would be no more legal battles with English lords over his Irish inheritance. I had met Mary during my visit in November, newly married, very sweet, and thought that if her sister was like her, then she and James would get on very well.

  That thought came back to me as I went again under the clock tower, crossed the Base Court and emerged through the great west gate. Mistress Anne Boleyn had turned out to be very different to her pleasant, easy-going sister and their brief meeting this first day of March when she was introduced to both of us by cardinal, before all the wards had got dressed for the pageant, had seemed to me not to go well. I remembered now how she had surveyed young James coolly from head to toe, dropped a polite curtsey, but then stood very silent and very self-possessed while he endeavoured, in schoolboy French, to make conversation about her journey from Calais to Dover.

  Once again, I checked the stables, but James’s horse was still there. This time, however, one of the stable boys noticed me and came forward, abandoning his pitchfork against a wall.

  ‘Are you looking for Master Butler, sir?’ He lowered his voice when he spoke the name and gave a hasty glance around. Already the news had spread that James was in trouble, was a suspect. ‘I saw him go towards the butts, in the Wildernesse, an hour or so ago. Don’t know whether he would be still there, though. It’s terrible weather to be out if you don’t have to.’ He glanced up at the grey sky and the frozen snowflakes fluttering down now in greater numbers.

  James was still there at the butts when I reached him, still sending arrows thudding against the wooden butt. But he wasn’t alone. There was a man watching James. One of the yeoman, a tall fellow wearing the cardinal’s mulberry livery. He looked cold, but he stood stolidly between James and the pathway to the road. The boats were tied up at the landing stage, but all were without oars and too big to be managed without half a dozen stout men to row, and, of course, one to steer. In any case, this one guard was twice the breadth of James who had not yet grown into full strength. I gave the man a pleasant nod. It was not his fault. He was only obeying orders and we stood side by side watching the incessant thud of the arrows.

  ‘Run and get yourself a hot drink from the kitchen,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll stay until you return.’

  He hesitated and then looked up at the clerks’ rooms above the works gate. There was a movement at the window and in a minute another yeoman was by our side.

  ‘Just going to …’ The first man jerked his head towards that jakes built on the far side of the gatehouse and the other nodded. I walked away feeling rather shaken. Two men to watch the boy. The serjeant must be very sure of his facts. I needed to talk with James. He must have been aware of my presence, must have heard me speak, but he did not look towards me. His face, despite the bitter wind, was white and his lips compressed into a hard line. I stopped by the hedge that screened the workshops from the shooting green. I would wait until the first man came back, I decided. Then I would propose that we all go into the warmth.

  ‘Better leave him,’ said a voice from behind me. ‘He shoot his demons.’

  I turned around and smiled at the Flemish lady, Susannah Horenbout. A tall girl: I wasn’t used to women looking me in the eye, or almost, anyway. They said that the Flemish ate lots of butter and cheese and that made them big, both men and women.

  ‘Have you eaten up all of your stale eggs and your charred almond shells?’ I wondered whether her English would be good enough to understand the joke, but she smiled instantly, small white teeth between parted lips. There was a slight smudge of green paint on one cheek and her hair was more dishevelled than it had been earlier, one lock of pale gold had escaped from her linen cap and trailed down the side of her neck.

  ‘Come and see,’ she said. ‘Come and see what I do with your charred shells. It is lucky for me that the cardinal’s court eat so, so many sweetmeats. Pounds and pounds of almonds to make those pretty subtleties.’

  I cast one more glance back at James. He did look as though he were battling with demons, and I doubted that he was in the mood to confide in me. For the moment, thanks to the cardinal, he was safe. Until Monday. Four days and the scant remains of this one. I cast a glance at the sky. Ash Wednesday. The snow clouds, leaden above the bleached fields and skeleton trees, were the colour of dead ashes and there was that almost hush in the air that presaged heavy snow. My hands were cold and my feet ached with the icy chill, despite the good leather in my boots. It was tempting to go indoors.

  ‘You are a good friend of Master Cook,’ she enquired as we walked side by side towards the carpenter’s yard. ‘But not a cook, yourself.’ I could see her surveying my clothes. At home in Ossory I wore the traditional léine, and a jerkin in winter, covered with a lawyer’s gown on formal occasions, but here, under my cloak, I was dressed in the customary doublet and hose, topped with a leather jacket.

  ‘No, I’m a lawyer. Rechtsanwalt.’ I knew no Flemish, but reckoned that she would know German.

  Mistress Susannah Horenbout smiled at that, but made no comment, just opening the door of one of the lodgings and beckoning me to follow her up the stairs when she had closed it behind us. She and her brother would have their living quarters downstairs and their workshop upstairs where the light was better, I guessed. I had been to one of the carpenter’s shops and he had that arrangement. The large room that she ushered me into was just under the roof, cold, despite the fire. It took up the whole space under the roof and there were windows on both sides, north and south. Even on this gloomy day there was plenty of light.

  ‘The almond shells, different now,’ she said with a laugh, and pointed to a pestle and bowl in the middle of the table. The bowl was white and it enhanced the soft deep black of the thick mixture it contained.

  ‘Just burned almond shells and pure spring water with a little size added,’ she said.

  ‘And then you have a nice pot of black paint! And what about the fish spine, the fish spine from the queen’s own plate, what did you do with that?’ She had a lovely smile. I was glad that I had slightly overacted my surprise.

  ‘Ah, come and see.’ She led me across the room to where an oak panel was covered with paint. It was the sea, lovely waves in ultramarine and flecks of white. There were the folds of a fishing net, just outlined in charcoal for the moment, and there were fish darting in and out of the net. Some had been painted, some were just charcoal outlines. But one stood out, just in the forefront of the picture. The backbone and ribs of the fish skeleton that she had got in the kitchen had been gilded and were glued onto the sea background and while I watched, the girl took a very small brush, just some hairs, probably miniver, stuck into the point of a chicken quill, and delicately coated the gold with a different green from another small pot.

  ‘When that dries, I will put another coat and then another and in the end the gold backbone will be just a faint memory in the depths of the fish,’ she said, and I smiled with pleasure. There was something about this picture that made it like a puzzle. At first glance it was turbulent waves, a net and some fish, but then as you looked, here and there, lurking beneath the green-blue of the waves, were shellfish, tiny fronds of seaweed, a hint of coral, a dark spike of rock.

  ‘This will be the apostles fishing in the Sea of Galilee when Jesus calls them. It
is for the cardinal’s room. It will be a full wall telling a story. Many, many panels to cover his walls.’ Delicately she smeared some more green onto the seaweed frond. And then she said without looking at me. ‘What is the matter with James?’

  So she knew James, well enough to call him James. Not Master Butler, but James.

  ‘How do you make that green? It’s so bright, so vivid.’ I wanted to know the answer to my question, but I also wanted a little time to think.

  ‘You pour some verjuice or vinegar over a piece of copper. Leave for a day, or even two.’ She was waiting for an answer to her question while I silently counted the number of different greens that I could see in her picture.

  ‘Did he kill that man, the instructor of the wards?’ This was even more direct.

  ‘No, certainly not.’

  ‘I heard that there was a body. My brother told me that the carpenters had measured it. They were making a … a box for it. Stiff as board, they said.’

  There was a mask on the table and I picked it up. Just like the one that James had been sporting last night.

  ‘Did you make these? How do you do them?’

  ‘But yes, easy. Just grind up a bit of ochre, some tailor’s chalk together, a little bit of Armenian clay, this to stiffen the paper. When the paper is dry, I go a little silver powder get, left over from making ornaments and cups of silver, and I mix that with a little mordaunt and then the paper paint. When it is dry, I make the masks. This one was for me to try.’

  She picked up the mask and placed it against her face. It had two ovals for the eyes to shine through, covered her cheekbones and nose, but not her mouth, and it scrolled up to a peak on the outer edge of her blonde eyebrows. It intrigued, but could not conceal and I immediately shelved one notion that I had that someone else, wearing a mask, might have been mistaken for James. This mask would hide nobody’s identity. In any case, his red hair would make it a certainty that he would be recognised.

  ‘And then with a brush, I write the names on them, just so.’ Seizing the brush she dipped it into the small pot of black and wrote without hesitation, the word ‘Brehon’.

  ‘That’s what James calls you. The Brehon. He tell me that you are a judge. He was happy the last time you came. But …’

  ‘But not this time.’

  She did not disagree with the statement, but after a moment said thoughtfully, ‘He worries about something.’

  ‘Tell me about last night. Were you there, at the pageant? Did you go to see your masks, take them over to the great hall, perhaps?’

  ‘I went to the great hall, gave them over to the gentleman usher, Master George Cavendish, sixteen masks as he had desired; the king, His Grace and the gentlemen from the court bringed their own masks. He told me that I could watch if I pleased and he invited me to come back and to watch the dance after supper, after the sugar banquet. He said that it was planned that all would be masked until the king commanded that they should be removed.’

  ‘And how did you enjoy watching … did you notice anything?’ I changed my general query. This was a girl with a sharp eye and one that would notice small details.

  ‘I noticed the king paying a lot of attention to Lady Mary Carey.’

  ‘But not to her sister, Mistress Anne Boleyn.’

  She smiled and her smile said: that’s what you want to know, isn’t it?

  ‘No,’ she said, her face becoming grave. ‘No, Mistress Anne danced with Master Harry Percy for the whole evening.’

  ‘Did you think that upset James?’

  She considered this for a moment. ‘I think it annoy him. But he danced with Mistress Anne Browne, the lady who played the part of Pitie and I think that he, your James, was happy with her. She admired his red hair and I saw her reach up and touch it. He smiled and laughed, then, but when he looked across at Master Percy and Mistress Boleyn, his face was very angry.’

  That was quite valuable evidence. One could not imagine a boy who had murdered a man a few hours ago would have been annoyed at being deserted by the lady who was due to be betrothed to him. It would be more likely that he would have gone off to bed, pretending to sulk at being deserted.

  ‘Where were you standing to watch the dance?’ I smiled at her. It seemed a shame that such a pretty girl should have had to watch other girls dance with young men.

  ‘By the arras, that was in the beginning, but then one of the yeomen moved me away just because I was touching the tapestries. I wanted to look at the flowers on the border; it’s a skill that I don’t have, but I would like to do some small pieces, perhaps the cardinal’s coat of arms. But then he told me to go away and so I moved over beside the table with the refreshments. I could see the dancing very well. It was very beautiful. The girls were all in white. Your Anne Boleyn looked well with the lace scarf, they call it a caul, I think, wound like, like a crown across her brow and her dark hair that shine out underneath it.’

  ‘And dancing with Harry Percy.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘And he so dark, too. A handsome couple. He had a jerkin woven from silver thread. That was the way with the young men and ladies, silver and white, like moonbeams. But these two, well, you could tell that they were in love, the way that he looked down so tenderly and she looked up at him and then when everyone took off their masks, she smiled like an angel.’

  ‘Tell me about the arrows, was it you that made the arrows for the boys to shoot?’

  ‘That is correct, and the bags.’

  ‘And the bags.’ I was surprised at that. Without taking much thought in the matter, I had assumed that the boys had used their own arrow bags.

  ‘I show you.’ She went swiftly to a large chest with a hinged lid. It had come to England with the brother and sister, I reckoned. The grain and colour of the wood was unfamiliar.

  ‘Here,’ she said, picking out a neat package and undoing it. ‘Here are the eight bags: one for each of the cardinal’s wards. See their pageant names are written on them.’

  The little arrow bags were beautifully stitched, the names written in gold, in that same elegantly curving script that I had seen on the masks: Dangier, Disdain, Gelousie, Vnkyndenes, Scorne, Malebouche, Straungenes …’ Suddenly, I noticed something. I picked up the bag marked ‘Gelousie’.

  ‘There are some arrows left in this bag,’ I said.

  ‘Just pieces. I pick the pieces from the floor of the great hall when all had gone to their sugar banquet. There was no one around. The servants and carpenters were carrying away the wooden walls of the château and picking up the orange and the dates, but I take these.’ She sounded a little hesitant and there was a slightly troubled expression on her face which had not been there a moment earlier. ‘They would be swept out, Master Brehon. They would be no use to anyone else. I use those small leather particles, crumbs, to build up a relief on friezes, like in the queen’s chamber. By the time that they are painted or gilded, then …’ she was talking fast now, but I interrupted her.

  ‘There’s a whole arrow here. Someone did not fire all of his arrows.’

  She made no comment. James, I knew, had been Danger. He was the oldest, then it was Harry Percy for Disdain, Thomas Arundel, I knew had been given Unkindness because he had lamented that the Howard girl would never marry him if he was called by that name.

  Jealousy must have been Gilbert Tailboys.

  I would have to make sure about that, but it was a puzzle that an arrow had been left over.

  ‘Was it in this bag when you picked up the pieces?’ I asked and after a moment she nodded. That made sense. She found the bag with the arrow in it and then used it to store the other pieces.

  But why should Gilbert Tailboys have one arrow left over? The boys had been practising this assault on the king and his men. Every move, according to James, had been scripted by George Cavendish and he, together with the instructor of the wards, had taken them through their part in the proceedings. The eight young wards had been told when to fire and where. If I remembered right
ly, all of the last of the arrows were to be shot off just at the very moment that the king scaled the battlements and seized the first lady in his arms.

  ‘Who was rescued first by the king?’

  ‘It was Lady Mary, the sister of Mistress Anne Boleyn,’ she said in her precise English.

  I nodded. ‘Anyone fire an arrow after that?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, all the boys dropped their arrow bags on the floor and started to tear off those strange cloaks they wore. And the ladies threw some of the comfits and the orange to them as they came up to the wall of the château. Everyone was laughing and shouting and all was very gay.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then all went into the great chamber next to the hall. There was a banquet laid out for them. I gathered up what might be useful and then I went. When I was going out, Master Cavendish reminded me, very kindly, to come back and watch the dancing and suggested that perhaps I should bring a few spare masks back with me just in case some had been trodden on, or got torn. He said that the ladies and gentlemen would continue to wear their masks during the banquet and for the dancing, and until the king gave a signal. I told him that I would also bring my brush and my paint so as to paint the name on it.’

  ‘And did anyone require a replacement, a new mask?’ I had to wait for a few moments for her answer.

  ‘It was Master Tailboys,’ she said then. ‘He dropped his mask when the king seized Lady Carey in his arms. That is what he told me.’

  I pondered on that. Why should Gilbert drop his mask at that moment? Who was Lady Carey to him? It was not as though it had been Bessie Blount who was the focus of the king’s attention once more. According to the cardinal, when King Henry tired of an amusement, he seldom went back to it again, and this, I gathered from the cardinal, included ladies. The king, apparently, had not slept with Bessie Blount ever since she had borne his child, or, as the cardinal put it, more delicately, His Grace had ceased to frequent her company.