Lamentation

‘And it is nothing to them if common folk are kept waiting,’ I snapped. Philip looked at me, struck by my bitter tone. I thought, I must be careful, people will be taking me for an Anabaptist soon, and that creed of equality would have no more of a place under the new regime than it had under the old, however radical the religious changes which might come. I looked up at the windows above the wide arches of the Holbein Gate. There was the King’s study, to which he had called me on that dreadful night. He would never watch his people from his window again. All at once, I felt free.

Philip asked, ‘I do not suppose you have heard how Mistress Slanning fares?’

‘I have, in fact.’ Guy had kept me informed. He had been furious with me that night in August, and rightly so, but in the weeks that followed, when I was subject to blacker moods than ever in my life, he helped take care of me, counselled me. His compassion won out over his anger, for which I was eternally grateful. I looked at Philip, wondering how he would take what I had to say: ‘She is gone to France, as people may since the peace. She has returned to the Catholic faith and entered a nunnery, somewhere out in the French countryside.’

‘A nunnery?’ He sounded shocked.

‘I do not know if she has taken any vows yet. There is a long preparation.’ I wondered if Isabel had, at last, made her confession. ‘I think it is best for her, she would find it hard now to face the world. She has given her worldly goods to the nuns. Edward’s share of that house will pass to his family, for she had none left living.’

Philip inclined his head disapprovingly. ‘However comfortable a refuge the papists may provide, she has lost any chance of salvation.’

Nicholas looked at him narrowly. ‘Then you believe that when she dies she will burn, sir, as Mistress Anne Askew did, but in her case for all eternity?’

‘God’s laws are beyond human understanding, boy,’ Philip answered firmly.

I spoke quietly, ‘If such are his laws, then indeed they are.’ I thought of Hugh Curteys, my ward. As the persecution of Protestants had intensified in Antwerp the previous autumn, Hugh had moved to Hamburg, and worked now with the German Hanse merchants. This great struggle between Protestants and Catholics all across Europe could now make anyone a refugee, a prisoner, or worse.

Still the procession did not come, though officials had begun scurrying to and fro around the Holbein Gate, under which the procession would pass, one of them shivering in a clerical cassock. I remembered how the vicar had been late at the infinitely smaller ceremony a month before, when Josephine married Edward Brown. The wedding had been celebrated in the little parish church Edward attended; his family and friends from the Inn had come, together with Edward’s master. Josephine had no family and I had given her away; I had been proud to do so, though I would miss her greatly. They had moved to Norwich last week. I had hired an old fellow called Blaby, a grumbling creature, to look after my house until I found a new steward; apart from him, the household now consisted only of Timothy and myself. Gently, very gently, I was nudging the boy towards an apprenticeship with the Lincoln’s Inn farrier when he turned fourteen, which I would finance to give him a chance in life.

Then I saw them, for the first time in six months, near the front of the crowd a little way off. Barak and Tamasin. Tamasin wore a thick coat with a hood, but looked pale; I knew from Guy that, a fortnight before, on the night the King died, she had given birth to a healthy daughter. She should not be out in this cold so soon, but I imagined she had insisted.

Barak, beside her, still looked sick. There was a heavy puffiness to his features now, and he had put on weight. I saw, with a clutch of sorrow at my heart, how the right sleeve of his coat trailed empty. He glanced up and his eyes met mine. Tamasin looked up too; when she saw me her face stiffened.

‘They’re coming!’ Murmurs and an excited shuffling in the crowd, heads craning to look towards the Holbein Gate. From beyond, the sound of sung prayers in the clear cold air. But then, for another minute, nothing happened. People shuffled and stamped their feet, some beginning to mutter and grumble a little in the bitter cold.

A movement nearby. I turned to see Barak sidling through the crowd towards us. Tamasin stayed behind, glaring at me, fierce as ever.

Barak took Nicholas by the arm with his remaining hand. ‘How are you, Nick boy? I haven’t seen you since that night. Are you all right?’

‘Yes — yes. And you?’ Nicholas sounded surprised, as indeed he might, for when he had gone to visit Barak one night in October, Tamasin had slammed the door in his face. Money which I had sent to her via Guy had been returned without a word.

‘How’s he treating you?’ Barak asked, inclining his head towards me. ‘Keeping you busy?’

‘Yes — yes. We miss you at chambers.’