Lamentation

I went into the maze of buildings, tight-packed around their little inner courts. Some of the guards recognized me by sight now, though as always at strategic points my name had to be checked against a list. All the magnificence within had become familiar, almost routine. I was accustomed now to avoid looking at all the great works of art and statuary as I passed along, lest they delay me. I saw two stonemasons creating a new and elaborate cornice in a corridor, and remembered Leeman saying how every stone in the palace was built on common people’s sweat. I recalled that craftsmen were paid a lower rate for royal work, justified by the status that accrued from working for the King.

I was admitted again at the Queen’s Presence Chamber. A young man, one of the endless petitioners, stood arguing with a bored-looking guard in his black-and-gold livery. ‘But my father has sent to Lord Parr saying I was arriving from Cambridge today. I have a degree in canon law. I know there is a position on the Queen’s Learned Council come vacant.’

‘You are not on the list,’ the guard answered stolidly. I thought, who was leaving? Was it me, now my work was done?

In the bay window overlooking the river some of the Queen’s ladies sat as usual, needlework on their laps, watching a dance performed with surprising skill by Jane Fool. I saw Mary Odell sitting with the highborn ladies despite her lack of rank. The pretty young Duchess of Suffolk, her lapdog Gardiner on her knee, sat between her and the Queen’s sister Lady Anne Herbert, whom I had seen at Baynard’s Castle. A tall thin young man with a narrow, beaky face and wispy beard stood behind them, watching with a supercilious expression.

Jane came to a halt in front of the gentleman and bowed. ‘There, my Lord of Surrey,’ she said to the man. ‘Am I not fit to be your partner at the dancing at Hampton Court for the admiral?’ So this was Surrey, the Duke of Norfolk’s oldest son, but reportedly a reformer, said to be a skilled poet, who last winter had been in trouble for leading a drunken spree in the city.

He answered curtly, ‘I dance only with ladies of rank, Mistress Fool. And now you must excuse me. I have to meet my father.’

‘Do not be harsh with Jane,’ the Duchess of Suffolk said reprovingly; for the fool’s moon face had reddened. But then Jane saw me standing a little way off, and pointed at me. ‘There is the reason the Queen has gone to Lord Parr’s chamber! The lawyer has come again to bother her with business! See, he has a back as hunched as Will Somers’!’

The company turned to look at me as she continued. ‘He would have had Ducky taken from me. But the Lady Mary would not let him! She knows who her true friends are!’ There was a glimmer in her eyes that told me Jane was indeed no halfwit; all this nonsense was deliberate, to humiliate me.

Mary Odell stood up hastily and came to my side. ‘Her majesty and Lord Parr are waiting for you, Master Shardlake.’

I was glad to walk away with her to the Queen’s inner sanctum.

Again the Queen was seated on a high chair under her red cloth of estate; today she wore a bright green dress on which flowers, leaves, even peapods on a bush, were sewn to scale. Under her French hood I thought I caught the glint of grey strands in her auburn hair. Lord Parr stood to one side of her in his usual black robe and gold chain, and Archbishop Cranmer on the other, in his white cassock. As I bowed deeply I saw the Queen’s chess set on a table nearby and thought: a black piece and a white.

All three had been studying a life-size portrait set before them on an easel, the newly painted colours so bright they drew the eye even amid the magnificence of Whitehall Palace. The background showed the dark red curtains of a four-poster bed, the foreground an open bible on a lectern and next to it the Lady Elizabeth, whom I recognized at once. She was wearing the same red dress as the day I saw her, when she had complained at having to stand so long, and being painted beside her bed.

Her trouble had been worthwhile, for the portrait was truly lifelike. Elizabeth’s budding breasts contrasted with the vulnerability of her thin, childlike shoulders. She held a small book in her hands and her expression was composed, with a sense of watchful authority despite her youth. I read the meaning of the painting: here was a girl on the brink of womanhood, scholarly, serious, regal, and in the background the bed as a reminder of her coming marriageability.

The Queen, who had been looking at the portrait intently, sat back in her chair. ‘It is excellent,’ she said.

‘It says everything that is needed,’ Cranmer agreed. He turned to me. ‘I have heard your latest news, Matthew,’ he said quietly. ‘That there was a spy in this group, and he is dead. His master is likely someone senior, a Privy Councillor, but we do not know who.’

‘Yes, my Lord,’ I added. ‘I am sorry.’