Lamentation

‘Be calm!’ she cried. ‘How? When the theft has already caused two deaths! And whoever these people are who stole my book, it looks as though someone else was after them and has it now! All because of my sin of pride in not taking Archbishop Cranmer’s advice and destroying the manuscript! Lamentation! Lamentation indeed!’ She took a long, shuddering breath, then turned a face of misery upon us. ‘Do you know what the worst thing is, for me who wrote a book urging people to forget the temptations of the world and seek salvation? That even now, with those poor men dead, it is not of them that I think, nor my family and friends in danger, but of myself, being put in the fire, like Anne Askew! I imagine myself chained to the stake, I hear the crackle as the faggots are lit, I smell the smoke and feel the flames.’ Her voice rose, frantic now. ‘I have feared it since the spring. After the King humiliated Wriothesley I thought it was over, but now — ’ She pounded her dress with a fist. ‘I am so selfish, selfish! I, who thought the Lord had favoured me with grace — ’ She was shouting now. The spaniel at her feet whined anxiously.

Lord Parr took her firmly by the shoulders, looking into her swollen face. ‘Hold fast, Kate! You have managed it these last months, do not crumble now. And do not shout.’ He inclined his head to the door. ‘The guard may hear.’

The Queen nodded, and took a number of long, whooping breaths. Gradually, she brought herself under control, forcing her shaking body to be still. She looked at me, ventured a watery smile. ‘I imagine you did not think to see your Queen like this, Matthew?’ She patted her uncle’s hand. ‘There, good my lord. It is over. I am myself again. I must wash my face and get one of the maids to make it up again before I venture outside.’

‘It sore grieves me to see you in such distress, your majesty,’ I said quietly. But a thought had come to me. ‘Lord Parr. You told her majesty that if she shouted the guard might hear?’

The Queen’s eyes widened in alarm. Lord Parr patted her hand. ‘I exaggerated, to calm her. These doors are thick, deliberately so that the Queen may have some privacy. The guard might make out a raised voice, but not each individual word.’

‘What if it was a man who shouted?’ I said. ‘A man with a loud, deep voice, the voice of a preacher, trained to carry far?’

He frowned. ‘No man would dare come here and shout at the Queen.’

But the Queen leaned forward, eyes wide, balling a handkerchief in her palm. ‘Archbishop Cranmer,’ she said. ‘That evening when we argued over the Lamentation, and I resisted his arguments, I shouted and — yes — he shouted, too.’ She gulped. ‘We are good friends, we have discussed matters of faith together many times, and he was very afraid of what could happen if I let the Lamentation become public. How many times must he have feared the fire himself these last dozen years? And he was right, as I realize now.’ She looked at me again. ‘Yes, if the guard outside could have distinguished the words of anyone shouting in here, it would have been the Archbishop’s. Telling me that if I tried to publish the Lamentation now, the King’s anger might know no bounds.’

Lord Parr frowned. ‘He had no right — ’

I said, ‘That was in early June, you told me?’

The Queen nodded. ‘Yes.’ She frowned. ‘The ninth, I think.’

I turned to Lord Parr. ‘My lord, do you know the evening duty hours?’

‘Four till midnight.’

‘It would be interesting to find out who was on duty outside on the night of the argument. Captain Mitchell will have the records.’

The Queen said, aghast, ‘Then Leeman might have been outside when the Archbishop and I argued?’

I spoke with quiet intensity. ‘And could have heard of the existence of the book, and made his plans to steal it. So long as he was able to get a copy of the key. It all rests on that. My Lord, let us find out who was on duty then. And afterwards, I think we should question the carpenter again.’

It was Leeman on duty that night; Mitchell confirmed it. That made it almost certain: he had overheard Cranmer and learned of the existence of the Lamentation. Then he had planned, and waited, and bribed. But with what money, I wondered. I felt sure he was not acting alone.

Lord Parr and I left the distraught captain, and took the smaller of the Queen’s two barges to Baynard’s Castle, the rowmen in her livery sculling fast down the Thames, a herald with a trumpet signalling other craft to get out of the way. Mary Odell had been called to the Queen and would be with her in her private apartments now, making her fit to face the public again.

Lord Parr and I sat opposite each other under the canopy. In the sunlight he looked his age, with pale seamed skin and tired eyes. I ventured, ‘My Lord, has her majesty often been — like that?’