VIII

  “You imagine no decision I take is hard?” He stares at me, then scrapes back his chair and bolts out of it. “I take hard decisions every day.”

  I manage not to flinch as he approaches. I say, “To fine a duke you don’t like and clink the coins into those chests over there?”

  He is looking at me intently. He whispers, “I had to execute a man she believed might be her brother.”

  “She?” But I know who he means. My mother. And that man, the Pretender…

  My father’s eyes are unfocussed, as if memories are replaying themselves in his mind. He says, “The Spanish demanded it. They refused to consider letting Catherine leave Spain unless, they said, not a drop of doubtful royal blood remained in England. This man had been in prison for years – I’d taken care that the Queen never saw him. But she had been hoping all along it was her brother… I knew that. And still I had him killed. To make an alliance England needed.”

  He rubs his face. “It half-killed her too. It weakened her health. Perhaps if I had not done it, she might be…” His voice tails off. He looks at me – and his expression hardens. “Do you think I don’t live with this every day? I am strong—” Raising a white-knuckled fist he thumps himself on the chest. Then he leers at me, savage and close. “Could you do it? Are you heroic enough?”

  He is close enough that I can see the texture of his skin, the individual dots of stubble, the greyish tinge to his pallor, the hairs protruding from his nostrils. His lips are dry, flecked with white spittle at the corners; his breath is sour. Sinews at his neck stand out like ropes. The gnarled, scarred hands are ink-stained. Here is the sanctified flesh of a king: ideals lost, soiled by struggle, decayed into a manipulative, frail sinner.

  I have never before felt so clean and shining. Righteousness fills me to the skin. And righteous anger too: why have I been blaming myself for my mother’s death? Here is the sorry creature who made calculations with my mother’s happiness – weighed it on the scales, counted up the cost on his grubby abacus. Thou art weighed in the balances, Father, I say to myself, and art found wanting. Disgust rises in my throat like bile.

  Confident and powerful, my voice no longer wavers: “It is God’s will that Catherine should be my wife.”

  “Is it?” My father limps back to his desk. His tone is sardonic. “Well… it is my will that she should not.” He leans on his hands as he lowers himself to sit. “You will reject the marriage. I command it. Or your life will become extremely unpleasant. Don’t push me to devise ways to make you suffer. But be assured – I will devise them if necessary.” He pulls papers towards him, dips his pen. “Now get out.”

  I slam the door behind me, startling the servants and guards standing outside. As I walk through the chamber beyond, I think: I only have to wait, Father. You are an old man.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ XXI ♦ ♦ ♦

  As far as the world is concerned, I am good. When I am with my father – as he receives his councillors or the ambassadors from foreign courts – I hold my tongue. I contrive to look intelligent. They flick their eyes to me, they look for something – anything – to interpret. But I say not a word. My face is framed for obedience. They cannot know my thoughts.

  And, on the eve of my fourteenth birthday, before Bishop Fox and a handful of other councillors in a stuffy chamber at Richmond Palace, I make a formal declaration that I protest vehemently against my marriage to Catherine and am utterly opposed to it. I state that the marriage was not binding because it was made when I was a minor. In coming to this decision, I say, I have been in no way forced. It is not true, of course – but while my father is king I have no option. I must simply bide my time.

  It’s only with the boys and men who joust that I can relax. There is something clean and honest about physical combat. With them, I am good-tempered. It comes easily. Nothing has touched me; I know what I am for. This time – this waiting – is like the ascent up a steep hill: when my father is dead and I am at the summit, I will see it – that golden land stretching before me, bathed in sunlight. The dark years are always brought to a close by a saviour. I am blessed.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ XXII ♦ ♦ ♦

  Three years later

  “She has land,” says Brandon, trailing one hand in the fountain as we pass it. “My father always told me to find a rich widow.”

  Harry Guildford wipes the spray off his jacket. “But you are contracted to marry her niece.”

  “A technicality.”

  “I thought the niece was pregnant?”

  “A slightly more, um, inconvenient technicality.” Brandon smoothes his hair back with his wet hand. “I did things in the wrong order.”

  “It sounds to me like you did them in exactly the right order,” says Compton, and gets Brandon’s racquet handle shoved in his gut. “Ouch.”

  “Sorry, it slipped,” says Brandon sunnily. He shrugs. “I don’t think, if I’m honest, that the aunt will live long. Then, you see, I can make things right with the niece.”

  Beside me, Bryan says under his breath, “Oh, that’s fine, then.”

  I slap the back of my hand into his stomach. There’s a party coming the other way.

  Crossing the sunny courtyard towards us: a strange bouquet of Spanish maidens – one tall and thin, one plump and ruddy, the duenna sour-faced and suspicious – as well she might be, I suppose… and, in the centre of them all, the small, upright figure of Catherine herself, her eyes angled down to the flagstones as she walks.

  She sees, therefore, our feet first: a straggling row of fine leather tennis shoes. The sight makes her stop. She looks up.

  I haven’t seen her in ages. And though it’s three years, now, since I signed a formal document in front of witnesses rejecting our marriage, my father still hasn’t let her go home. Has he even told her? He’s probably still trying to squeeze money out of her father.

  “My Lady Princess,” I begin, “you look…” She looks pale, and threadbare; in places, the velvet of her overskirt is worn smooth with brushing. “…well.”

  Wrong, wrong, wrong. She looks strained and ill cared for. And exquisitely beautiful.

  She smiles. “It is good to see you, my lord.”

  When I think about it, I’m surprised that I don’t bump into her more often. She lives at Court now, since that’s cheaper for my father than letting her have her own household. Perhaps she has instructions to show her face as little as possible.

  I say, “We’re off to play tennis.”

  “I can see that.” Catherine nods at Brandon as he flourishes his racquet, trying to catch the duenna’s eye. “I trust you will enjoy it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Catherine moves to leave, but as she draws level with me she hesitates. Quickly, quietly, out of the side of her mouth and in French, she says, “Your father keeps me, now, without enough money even for clothes. It is… humiliating. Whatever he intends, I am from the royal house of Spain. Can you speak to him for me?”

  “He does not take advice.”

  “I understand.” She drops her eyes; she’s disappointed. By the time I realise what a worm I feel, she and her ladies are walking away.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It’s the plump and ruddy one that answers the door. She won’t admit me, but after some discussion inside, with the door pushed to, it opens again and Catherine emerges.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” she says.

  “I know.” I’ve been leaning against the doorframe – I straighten up. “I just wanted to tell you… I’m sorry, would you walk with me? Don’t worry, there are servants by the entrance to the stairs. We are chaperoned, you see, but not overheard.”

  Catherine hesitates, glances along the passageway, then steps towards me, pulling the door to her chamber softly shut behind her.

  We head away from the servants, walking slowly side by side. Hangings line the walls, in dark and heavy colours; the passageway is gloomy, even on a sunny afternoon.

  “You wanted to tell me…?”

&nb
sp; “Yes – sorry. I wanted to say that it’s not just you. The money. I mean, my father not giving you enough. He’s obsessed. It’s…” This is harder to explain than I thought. I start again. “He fears… everyone. He fears that everything he has achieved will unravel. To him, money means control, you see.”

  “He does not need to keep me poor to control me.”

  “No. But the great landowners, the powerful nobles… He makes them swear to do what he wants – if they don’t comply they are fined, so heavily that they are ruined. It works. And it has become a habit. Now he does it with everyone. Keeping himself rich, keeping others in debt to him. I’ve seen the coffers in his private chambers – they’re stuffed full of coins.”

  We’ve come to a row of arched openings in the passageway wall, not on the side that looks out across the courtyard, but on the other side, the internal side. They give a view down into the cavernous space of the great hall.

  We stop beside the arches and I lean on one of the sills. Below me, the hall is empty – a great, still space, with bright sunbeams slanting down from the high windows and, between them, a world of thin grey shadows.

  At intervals along the walls stand the dark shapes of statues: kings and heroes frozen in action – trampling a dragon, holding aloft a sword, standing triumphant over an enemy bound in chains.

  Directly beneath us it’s the great Greek warrior Achilles; opposite – in the centre of the far wall – there’s a figure in full armour, brandishing a two-handed sword. It is supposed to be my father.

  I nod to it. “He doesn’t look like that any more.”

  Catherine follows my gaze. “I haven’t seen him in months.”

  “He’s grey. And coughing. He’s lost weight. He’s…” I hesitate. Last week, a man in the City had his ears sliced off for suggesting my father was dying.

  Catherine presses her fingertips to the velvet-covered sill, neatly, side by side, as if playing a chord on a keyboard. I notice that her nails are still bitten. She whispers, “Change is coming.”

  “Yes.”

  I turn and lean back against the edge.

  Out of the corner of my eye I can see her regarding me for a long moment. Then she looks out at the hall again. “You can’t blame him for not matching up to you,” she says. “You will eclipse him. The prophecy – I haven’t forgotten.”

  I turn to face the same way as Catherine, leaning my elbows on the sill. “I ask myself every day: what does it mean, what do I have to do, what do I have to be, to be this perfect king?”

  “And what do you answer?”

  “See that one, there?” I point to a statue diagonally to our right: a man in a suit of mail, with a crown on his helmet. “It’s Henry V. Came to the throne in his twenties, already battle-scarred – he’d taken a crossbow-bolt full in the face at sixteen, and was disfigured, but you’ll notice the sculptor hasn’t included that part.”

  “I can’t see from here.”

  “Take it from me. He hasn’t.” I glance at her, then look back at the statue. “He conquered France – made an Anglo-French empire. He’s my hero. But – he died leaving one newborn son, whom he hadn’t even seen. What followed? Civil war and chaos – and France slipped through our fingers. The son grew up to be king, but he was a disaster. He was murdered in the end.”

  I point across to the left, where there’s a statue of a young man fighting a lion. “And there, look: Alexander the Great – created one of the largest empires in ancient times…”

  “… but died leaving only one baby son not yet even born,” continues Catherine. “Result: civil war and chaos, and the son was murdered at the age of thirteen.”

  “Exactly.” I grin, impressed she knows so much. “So. I know how to do better. To be a great king, I have to achieve two things.” I hold up my hand to count them off. “One: build an empire. That means taking back France – the crown is rightfully ours. And two: have sons to carry on my legacy. Strong sons, grown to manhood before I die.” I meet her eyes; she’s looking at me levelly. There’s no scorn, no scepticism in her face. It’s as if she believes in me.

  For a moment we’re just looking at one another. Then I say, “Did they even bother to tell you?”

  “What?”

  “That my father made me reject our marriage?”

  “No. But I heard – eventually.” Catherine looks down at her hands. Then she turns to me, her face full of determination. “Don’t pity me. Please – that’s the one thing I couldn’t bear. All I need is money for my passage home.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦ XXIII ♦ ♦ ♦

  The following winter an anonymous note is nailed up on a church door in the City of London. It’s a translated quotation from the Bible, from St Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter thirteen:

  The night is past and the day is come nigh.

  Let us therefore cast away the deeds of darkness,

  and let us put on the armour of light.

  Beside it is a drawing of a tall, powerfully built youth seated on a warhorse, with a crown on his head.

  I am tall and powerfully built; I am seventeen years old.

  From my closet on the chapel balcony, I watch as my father kneels with difficulty, helped down by his men. He casts off his hat and crawls along the aisle towards the altar, his grey hair hanging over his face. I can hear in his rasping breath the effort it costs him. His gnarled hands press into the carpet; if a king is to abase himself and crawl to receive communion, he will crawl on the finest carpet he has.

  My lip curls; I turn away. The sight disgusts me, but it is no surprise. I have already heard that now he sees death coming, my father is performing penance for his sins. I have heard that he weeps and sobs for three-quarters of an hour together. I have heard he tells his servants repeatedly that if God will send him longer life they will see him a changed man. So much for his strength. So much for being able to live with his hard decisions.

  The spring is wet and squally. Birds nest and cats lie in wait in the long grass for their fluffy-feathered young. The world carries on with no regard for a thin old man who dreams of hellfire every night.

  It is an April morning when Compton comes to me in my chamber at Richmond and says he has heard that my father, today, cannot rise from his bed.

  I make my way to the King’s bedchamber. It is busy with doctors and councillors, with basins and cloths and hushed conversations, but when they see me the conversations stop, and the nearest men fall back to clear a path for me to approach the bed.

  There, beneath a crimson satin canopy, I find my father lying on his back, his arms laid out on top of the covers. His nose seems bigger, sharper: a hook of bone and old skin.

  It’s a moment before he becomes aware of my presence; then the eyes roll slowly towards me. “Henry.” He frowns. “It’s too soon.” Silence; he’s breathing shallowly. “You don’t know enough. Don’t try to…” It is an effort to swallow. “… rule alone. My councillors… keep them close. Listen to them.”

  His eyes slowly close. I hover, wondering whether he will open them again and say more. But he doesn’t – he seems to be sleeping.

  Hours pass; I am still in the chamber, and I find myself keeping something of a vigil, as my father slips in and out of sleep and the doctors whisper in corners, holding flasks of scant and foul-coloured urine up to the light.

  Late in the afternoon he sees me, though I am at some distance across the room. He opens his mouth to speak, and I hurry to the bedside, as his attendants move deferentially away. I slip my fingers under his hand where it lies on the bedclothes, limp and clammy. As I watch, his mouth twitches and strains, but the attempt to speak comes out only as a breath, a wheeze, a terrible column of stinking air from inside a body that seems half rotten already.

  Then the limp hand clutches mine and he manages at last to say, painfully slowly, “How… will… I… be… remembered? Am I… loved?”

  I lean in to his ear. I am a fiery angel, delivering God’s judgement. For a moment I could almost th
ink there are wings on my back. I say softly, “You are hated by your people. You will be remembered only as my father.”

  As I straighten his eyes lock onto mine – fierce, afraid – but he cannot respond. I smile down at him. The councillors and servants around me smile too. They think I have given my father loving words of comfort.

  Later still I am at the window. I have parted the curtains to look out into the night. Occasional lights show on the river, as here and there a lone boat heads towards the City. Below me, the walled Privy Garden is an arrangement of neat, dark shapes – hedges and paths and carved decorations. Spilled torchlight from the guards stationed at the doorways picks up glints from the eyes and talons of gilded beasts, crouching on poles and holding painted shields. In the wing of the building opposite, a small light winks along the windows of the gallery; someone is walking there. I think I catch a glimpse of a fair-haired young man. He stops at one of the gallery windows, and looks out – directly, it seems, at me.

  At that same moment, a voice behind me says, “Your Grace—”

  I turn to the room. On the table by the bed, a twist of smoke drifts from a burned-out candle. Everyone has turned to face me; everyone is kneeling. On the bed, my father lies motionless, in shadow. His mouth is ajar and, from a faint glistening, I can see that his sightless eyes are fixed on the canopy above. The King is dead.

  Long live the King.

  PART THREE:

  Lift Up Your Heads

  ♦ ♦ ♦ I ♦ ♦ ♦

  The embroidery on the cushion presses dints into my forehead. My breath, with nowhere to go, blows hot against my cheeks. I am lying on my face. My arms are spread wide, in the shape of a cross. The singing of the choir echoes up to the stone vaulting. And the Holy Ghost is descending from heaven and infusing me with divine grace. Right now.