by V L Perry
Not Lord Chancellor any longer, I reminded myself. Only days ago Sir Thomas More had returned the Great Seal to the king without a word. The bill Cromwell had pushed through Parliament took legal authority away from the Church – including the right to arrest heretics – and gave them to the Crown. I remembered what Jane had told me of More, his zeal in burning enemies of the Church, and tried to reconcile that version of him with the gentle, wise man Kratzer spoke of. The dark eyes in the portrait gave no answers, no matter how long I studied them. How much longer would it hang here before it too vanished?
By far the best portraits were Holbein’s. Everyone agreed that if Holbein painted you, that was how you looked. They did not compare to Horenboute’s, or any of the English painters, though I didn’t say this. Instead I asked Jane, “Are these all the king’s?”
“Some,” she replied. “Noble families are eager to have pictures of their great lords and ladies on public view here; many pay to do so. And several are Cromwell’s.”
“Cromwell’s?” I could not think why he would want pictures of nobles, even with their bug bites and pockmarks erased.
“Holbein works for him,” she said. “When he wants information about someone, he commissions Master Holbein to spend a few weeks with them. Painters hear everything, talk to the servants, see whether they have any books, and of what sort. Sometimes Cromwell offer to sell the painting back to the person.”
“And they know what he’s really selling,” I said. “His good graces. So they buy.” I looked down the long rows of painted panels. It must be very profitable for him.
Not all the pictures were portraits. There were Crucifixion scenes by the Italians, and Madonnas and apostles by some of the artists from the Low Countries, all luminous flesh and rich fabrics. At the Imperial court I had seen magnificent paintings of Biblical stories and classical myths, as well as sculpture: Hercules, David with his sling, Mary holding the dead Christ, the cloth draped and flowing, the muscles and veins and sinews standing out so perfectly that I could scarcely draw breath as I stood before them, wanting to weep for their beauty.
No, I could never consign such works to the flames, or see them smashed into a thousand marble-handled penknives, no matter what kind of idolatry they represented.
These days Holbein and Horenboute received fewer commissions for religious scenes, and more for portraits. These were no less magnificent, containing as much gold and lapis lazuli to dazzle the eye as all those Madonnas and Ascensions. Though now the attention was all on the subject: you were invited to contemplate the person in all his or her naked realism--the beauty of the jewels and fine fabric as well as Meg Wyatt’s long nose or Sir Richard Southwell’s weak, stubbly chin. Each detail was carefully scrutinized by Cromwell’s agents for heresy of either sort, too Lutheran or too Papist.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Jane said in a soft voice, “whether there will be any beauty left at all if the Reformers have their way.”
I thought of Utopia, where beauty was a threat to order, and remembered something Kratzer had said once.
“Holbein could not paint so well without God’s inspiration and guidance. Maybe God works through Reformers as well as those of the True Faith. They’re hardly Infidels, who permit no images of living things.”
“To paint Christ or the Virgin is different from making images of the living. Yet the New Men would have use revere an image of a courtier as though it were a holy figure.”
Instead of replying, I moved aside the curtain covering a portrait of Carew in jousting armor, his lance held straight in front of him in a way that would get him a broken shoulder if he tried that in a pass. Once I noticed it, I had to try hard to press the giggles into my throat with both hands.
Jane finally asked whatever was the matter with me.
“See how he holds his staff?” I gasped, trying to keep my face straight and failing. “As if he’s so proud of it. And Norfolk,” I motioned to the Duke’s portrait. “They all have to show what men they are.” In portrait after portrait, the men clutched daggers, lances, rolls of parchment, sometimes low at their waists and sometimes jutting out at angles. The women held flowers or fruit, or clasped their hands demurely. Surely it was no accident; Kratzer had shown me the careful planning that went into even the simplest-seeming device.
Jane shrugged, though I could see her fighting a grin. “They’re just swords and staves. And anyway, it’s not true of Cromwell: he’s just got a piece of paper.”
“Maybe that’s because…” But I didn’t need to finish. We leaned together and laughed so hard, trying to quiet each other and only laughing harder, that the paintings blurred before our eyes into shapes of crimson and azure and charcoal.
“Even the king!” she gasped, and we got control of ourselves; to be seen japing in front of the king’s portrait was not wise. Still, he did cut a better figure than the rest; what seemed ridiculous on Norfolk or Carew was majestic on him.
The Princess Mary’s portrait still hung proudly, though the ones of Katharine of Aragon had been removed last summer. The clean square edges of spots where they had been showed behind the courtiers’ portraits that hung in their places. I wondered what would become of the princess’s. The girl in the portrait before me--the one commissioned at her betrothal to Charles—was as golden and beatific as one of the angels in the Annunciation pictures, as beautiful as I remembered her. I wondered what her sufferings had done to her looks by now.
We both stared at it for a long minute, and then Jane spoke: “They say you are loyal to her.”
“I’m sure they say all kinds of things,” I replied. “It’s not my concern what the gossips decide to chatter about.”
“They say you served her.”
“Officially, I was in the Princess Mary’s service for half a year. We shipped over ahead of her, to prepare her household, and then her betrothal to the Emperor was broken,” I said quickly. “That’s all. She was six years old, and I never even saw her.” Except that once.
This did not seem to be the answer she’d wanted. “Have you no loyalty to her still?”
“You yourself served the qu--the Princess Dowager,” I replied, though my voice was not quite as steady as I’d have liked. “It has nothing to do with loyalty. I’m surprised you listen at all.”
She turned to the next portrait, which happened to be Kratzer’s. He wore his scholar’s cap and a cool expression, a half-finished wooden dial in his hand. “If I want to hear about the moon shining in the water, or the latest trim on French gowns, I’ll go and listen to them” I said. “But you, I thought you had more sense. I never listen to any of what they…” I stopped my tongue, but too late.
“What they say about me,” she finished calmly. “You don’t need to tell me; I know well enough what they say, how they laugh.”
Had she scolded or raged, or turned cold, I could have responded in kind. But something in her face bespoke such a weary sorrow that the harsh words I had prepared melted away. “Jane,” I said, “no one is laughing.”
Something seemed to break in her, and her words rushed out: “They say other things, too. I don’t listen, but I have eyes to see for myself. Nothing English is good enough for you, is it? Everything’s better on the continent. The food, the music, the paintings, even the gowns you insist on wearing. She shouldn’t let you. `At the Archduke’s court, at the Archduke’s court…’ it’s as bad as hearing about the French all the time. You know what you are?” She was running out of breath. “You’re a hoyden. Like her.”
I let the storm run its course. “Tell me more about what I am,” I said evenly. I could feel my spleen rising. “What else do they say?”
She was flushed. “I fain would have said nothing. I pray you, forget my foolishness.”
“What else do they say?”
She sighed. “That you have fits. And that you can…see visions.” A pause. “Can you?”
“Is that why you come here, talk with me alone? Hoping I’ll tell your fortune?” Ang
er pushed at the back of my mind, but could not break through; instead I felt the familiar smothering, and worried that the trembling in my fingertips was not my imagination. I wondered what she would do if I fell down in a fit right in front of her. They would crowd round her later to hear of it. She would like that.
“And why do you come here with me? Because you want my brother?” Heat jolted through me, anger and shame together. “Oh, it’s obvious. Wherever he moves, you watch him like a hawk watching its prey. Only a fool would want him.”
“Just because I don’t blush and run from men,” I said, trembling. “Just because you cannot bear the company of men, only a bare-faced boy...”
“Oh yes, the company of men,” she mocked. “And what company you choose! A dusty old German who cares for nothing but books, and my brother. Why throw yourself away on such a man? You could have any man you wanted, even the king.”
Both of us stopped, shocked at ourselves, and hoping none of Cromwell’s or Chapuys’s spies was nearby. I breathed evenly, focused on counting between the beats in my head. And the demon retreated, sparing me this time.
It took me a moment to realize she was saying something else: “…about him.”
“Who?”
“The astronomer,” she said impatiently, and to my astonishment the brightness in her eyes was not anger, but tears. “Even if he’s not a heretic himself, he keeps company with them, all the Germans. They send letters to the Emperor, have secret meetings in Cromwell’s chambers at night.”
“Not so secret, if you know about them,”
“Oh, go ahead and scoff. You believe in nothing, I see; you prefer to go off on your own with your pens and ink, thinking she does it for your good. You want no one close to you.”
Maybe that was it; maybe that was what had been missing in me since I returned from Vienna. I had not known exactly what shape the hole in my heart was; I’d assumed it was the loss of Maria. Maria, raped by Turkish soldiers on a lonely road outside the city, her cries drowned by the thunder of canon and the shouts of her tormentors. Had they been laughing as they thrust their swords into her bowels, spilling her guts onto the dirt? Or had they done it in terrible silence, grim as executioners, part of their duty to their demon-god?
Jane laid her hand on my arm. “I am sorry; I sought only to know your mind. You’re one of the few people around here who has one.”
“Flattery is even less natural to you than intrigue” I said, though I could not help smiling weakly
She shook her head. She still wore the wooden gable headdress, for she owned no French hoods; it must be heavy in this warm weather. “Only God can know what the future will bring, or if it will come at all. Not fortune-tellers or astronomers. I care not where your loyalties lie. But you should. Look to yourself, and let no one draw you in.”
“Not even you?” I asked, and she was quiet.
“You need not worry about me,” I told her. “And you’ll hear no more from me about the continent. I thank you for your concern, and your advice.”
I turned away from Kratzer’s portrait, leaving him frozen with his instruments.
We did not see each other at dinner that night. But later, at the card tables set up in the Lady’s rooms, Jane chose me as her partner for karnöffel, and let me play the winning hand. It was not in her nature to give up victories, great or small, as I learned many times. At the time, though, it was the best she had to give.
The summer dragged on, hotter and more humid each day, and eventually the plague made its appearance.
The court stayed away from London, though pestilence was everywhere: it hit the poor folk hardest. First a fever and soreness, followed by swelling in the neck, armpits, and groin; the pustules turned a putrid purple-black and were said to be hot to the touch. Those who did not die in the first three days might bleed from the nose or the hole, sweating blood through the skin. But most were struck so quickly that they hardly had more than a few hours to know what was happening: mothers died while nursing their babies, and even members of families were loath to nurse their own sick, shutting them away in darkened rooms or even turning them into the streets to die.
We did not idle inside gorging and drinking and telling stories, as in Boccaccio’s tales; she set us to making clothing and sent her nervous pages to distribute it to those families worst stricken, along with bundles of blessed herbs. Still, it was an odd sensation to be surrounded by devastation and sit safe in the middle of it.
When I spoke of this to Kratzer, I should have known he would find a way to make a lesson from it. From between the pages of a large volume he drew several loose sheets, laying them out on the table before us. “Some work by my friend Master Holbein,” he explained. “His sketches for a series of woodcuts. He calls it the Dance of Death, though there are several by that name; I have urged him to think of a better.”
I had seen the great fresco in Lübeck where Death capered madly with persons from all stations, from the Pope to apprentices to babes. It was common enough, the memento mori; the reminder that Death eventually comes to all was hardly Holbein’s own invention. Yet these were different, and not just because they were of everyday scenes. In panel after panel, the dancing skeleton (sometimes more than one) walked with old men and women to their graves, or played drums and horns in a cemetery, or surprised unsuspecting merchants and duchesses and cottagers, or grasped at the hem of a gentleman’s coat, or even helped a farmer plough his field. Sometimes Death meted out justice, as to the judge taking bribes, or the dishonest lawyer. But most remarkable was the sheer joy that seemed to suffuse each panel, the good humor with which Death seemed to mark his victims, young or old, rich or poor, honest or soiled. You could all but hear Holbein chuckling as he’d sketched them. There was even an astronomer, as Kratzer showed me, studying an astrolabe while Death held up a skull for consideration instead.
When they were finished, he would publish them, probably in Basel. I could see why they would not be welcome here in England: a cardinal selling indulgences, a monk trying to flee with a precious cup, a nun closeted with her paramour. The Lady would probably love them.
“He will not put his name to these, though,” Kratzer said. “It might be dangerous.”
“Yet you show them to me?”
“I trust you to keep counsel,” he said, his eyes on mine. “Who would you tell?”
I dropped my eyes to where Death pulled a queen by the arms, wrapped his bony arms around a maiden’s thighs, one hand thrust up her skirts.
“Sic transit Gloria mundi – how fleeting is worldly glory. But forgive me, my pupil comes later than usual this day and I must excuse myself.”
Though I did not see little John Dee outside, I spotted the French ambassador Dinteville and Holbein himself coming toward Kratzer’s quarters as I made my way back up the east corridor. If I were more inclined to intrigue, I might have hidden myself to see whether they stopped at his door. But I did not.
There were no progresses that summer, and no trips. The journey to Calais had been forestalled; Norfolk had put it in danger last month by quarreling with the French Ambassador, and the Lady had much to do to put things right. The Duke’s head must still be ringing with the king’s anger. We stayed in the country until the worst of the plague had passed from the city, and the evenings brought a shade of coolness.
On the first of September, the king held an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle. Windsor was my favorite place, well worth the long, dusty journey there. It was the most royal of the king’s many residences, and his choice of it was no accident: the Lady was to be created Marquess of Pembroke, a title she could carry to France in her own right. And pass to her sons.
The chapel of St. George seemed more beautiful, more comforting than other such places. Although it was fairly new – from Edward III’s time - it had an ancient feel which I loved. Jane, however, was nervous there; its gloom made her melancholy. I teased her that it was blasphemy to feel melancholy in God’s presence, and anyway all ch
apels were gloomy.
The ceremony itself was brief: the king laid the mantle on the Lady’s shoulders, the coronet on her head. The daughter of a mere diplomat, she now ranked only below the immediate members of the royal family. And indeed, her diplomat father was present to witness it. I’d seldom seen him, as he did not often come to her apartments and was often away on the continent in any case. I’d expected him to be swelling with pride as the king read out the patent granting Madame Pembroke £1000 a year, and was surprised at the grimness of his countenance.
“Viscount Rochford looks as if he’d swallowed a poker,” I murmured to Jane.
She did not answer. Truly, the place seemed to have an oppressive effect on her humor. I reached for her hand and squeezed it. She made some small movement in return, but her hand was cool and slippery as a fish.
After Mass, Fox preached a sermon about the need to fight the Infidel. Hardly a subject for a joyous state occasion; I was about to whisper this to Jane, when he announced that the kings of England and France would join forces against heresy when they met in Calais this winter.
So it was to happen after all. She wanted this diplomatic visit and the countenance it would give her claim to queenhood, to be the English Marguerite de Navarre. More than that, she needed it.
Mary Howard, who had the honor of carrying the Lady’s train, was not listening, but was paying as much attention to the Duke of Richmond as he was to her. Perhaps if they hurried, there could be two weddings on the continent.
Before we left I meant to ask Kratzer more about Aristotle’s friendships – the good, the useful, and the pleasant, the need for equal levels of moral virtue between those who shared philia. It seemed so complicated, yet at the same time made a kind of sense. Most friendships were flawed, according to his definition, and no wonder, when so much at court was based on profit. Yet a few that stood out: Meg and the Lady, for instance, seemed to share true mutual goodwill. Was it possible for such a friendship to thrive between persons of such unequal stations? What did the books say?