Lamentation

Mary Odell, perhaps concerned the Queen was saying too much, approached us. ‘Your majesty,’ she said. ‘You asked me to remind you to take these to the King when you see him. They were found down the side of a chair in his Privy Chamber.’ She had produced a pair of wood-framed spectacles from the folds of her dress, and held them out to the Queen.

‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Mary.’ The Queen turned to me. ‘The King needs glasses now to read. He is always losing them.’ She tucked the spectacles away, then began walking down the gallery again. ‘The court will be moving from Whitehall next week,’ she said, more brightly. ‘The French admiral is to be received first at Greenwich and then at Hampton Court, so everything is to be moved.’ She waved a hand. ‘All this packed up, transported by boat, set out again in a new place. The Privy Council meeting in a new chamber. With Lisle and Hertford both present,’ she added with a note of satisfaction.

I ventured, ‘I saw Lord Hertford with his brother Sir Thomas Seymour at the palace last time I came.’

‘Yes. Thomas is back, too.’ She looked me in the eye. ‘You do not like him, I know.’

‘I fear his impulsiveness, your majesty.’

She waved a dismissive hand. ‘He is not impulsive, just a man of strong feeling.’

I did not reply. There was a brief, awkward silence, then she changed the subject. ‘You have knowledge of portraiture, Matthew. What was your opinion of the picture of my stepdaughter?’

‘Very fine. It shows the coming substance of her character.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Prince Edward, too, is a child, well advanced for his years. There are those in my family who hope that one day I may be appointed Regent when he comes to the throne, as I was when the King went to France two years ago. If so, I would try to do well by all.’

‘I am sure of it.’ But the Seymours as well as the traditionalists would oppose her there, I knew.

She came to a halt. ‘Soon the French admiral will come, and afterwards the King and I go on Progress, as you heard.’ She looked at me seriously. ‘You and I may not have another opportunity to talk.’

I answered quietly, ‘A young courtier waiting outside said there is a vacancy on your Learned Council. Do you wish me to resign my position?’

‘The vacant post is not yours but Master Cecil’s. He asked to go. What he experienced at the docks was too much for him, not that he is a coward, but he fears if anything happened to him his wife and children would be left alone. And Lord Hertford has asked him to become one of his advisers. I consented; Cecil is a man of great loyalty and will say nothing of the Lamentation. As for you, Matthew, I wonder if it might be best for all if you were to leave as well.’

‘Yes. After all, I was supposedly appointed only to find a missing jewel.’ I smiled. ‘And sadly, it indeed seems there is no chance of finding your book. Perhaps it would be — politic — for me to leave now.’

‘So my uncle thinks, and I agree.’ She smiled tiredly. ‘Though I would still rather have your counsel.’

‘If you need to call on me again — ’

‘Thank you.’ She looked at me, hesitated, then spoke with quick intensity. ‘One thing more, Matthew. Your lack of faith still troubles me. It will eat away at you from the inside, until only a shell is left.’

I thought sadly: was the real purpose of our talk for her to make another essay at bringing me to faith? I answered truthfully, ‘I have wished for God, but I cannot find him in either Christian faction today.’

‘I pray that may change. Think on what I said, I beg you.’ She looked into my eyes.

‘I always do, your majesty.’

A sad little smile, then she nodded and turned to Mary Odell. ‘We should go back, sit with the ladies awhile. They will think we are neglecting them.’

We walked back up the gallery. Near the door she paused at a table on which stood a magnificent gold clock a foot high, ticking softly. ‘Time,’ the Queen said softly. ‘Another reminder we are but grains of sand in eternity.’

Mary Odell went in front of us and knocked at the door. A guard opened it from the other side and we stepped through into the heavily guarded vestibule, with its doors leading to the Queen’s rooms, the King’s, and the Royal Stairs. At the same moment another guard opened the doors leading to the King’s chambers, and two men stepped out. One was the red-bearded Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, the other Secretary Paget, a leather folder thick with papers under his arm. They had probably just come from seeing the King.

Seeing the Queen, they bowed deeply. I bowed to them in turn, and rose to see both staring at me, this hunchbacked lawyer wearing the Queen’s badge, who had been walking with her in her gallery. Wriothesley stared with particular intensity, his gaze only relaxing a little when he saw Mary Odell standing by the door: her presence showed the Queen had not been walking alone with a man who was not a relative.