Mayflowers for November

by Malyn Bromfield

  ‘Now, who is this young lady?’

  Cromwell turned to me and I hung my head feeling like an eavesdropper.

  ‘Ah, I see it is the confectioner’s daughter. Come, we will leave Master Hans to his work.’

  He put his hand to my arm and steered me towards the door. I had seen Master Secretary around court occasionally talking with the Queen and the courtiers. How come he knew me, an unimportant servant? We had never met. I looked across the chamber to Mistress Shelton. She was standing by the fireplace, alert to Cromwell’s interest in me.

  At the door, he paused at the Queen’s English New Testament and flicked his broad, ink-stained thumb across the gold page edges. His hands would have served him well, I thought, if he had followed his father into the blacksmith’s forge, for the Queen’s ladies gossiped about his rise to power from such humble origins. Cromwell closed the Bible and stroked the black leather cover. He turned to the artist.

  ‘The Queen’s brother, Lord Rochford, will join us on Wednesday eve.’

  ‘And others of our persuasion, yes?’ Master Hans replied, too busy at his painting to look at Master Secretary.

  What persuasion? Was Master Hans a friend of the Gospel like Constantine, Cromwell and the Queen?

  Outside, in the waiting chamber, Cromwell put an arm around my shoulder. He asked me to go to my mother that afternoon to remind her of her promise to provide something towards his banquet. His servants would bring the sugar and spices she needed and her payment. I was surprised that a man in his high position at court, being so close to the King, did not have his own confectioner at his new house. Perhaps his confectionary was not yet finished.

  He seemed to be reading my thoughts.

  ‘I know that your mother is very distressed following her bereavement. The pudding wife has kindly agreed to allow her do the extra work in the confectionary because keeping busy distracts her from grieving overmuch.’

  I softened to Master Secretary hearing these words, knowing that he was a widower who had lost his wife and daughters to the sweating sickness and I fancied I heard a note of real sympathy in his bass tone.

  ‘Mistress Shelton will not wish for your attendance this afternoon now that the Queen is gone to the King. She has her own private affairs ... well, we will leave it at that. No need to delve into the affairs of a lady who ...’

  I said nothing but still he made me feel that I was giving away my mistress’s secrets. Then he led me into a corner.

  ‘The boy named Thomas who used to catch the rats in the great kitchen. Where is he?

  How strange, that he should ask after Tom within minutes of my thinking of him.

  ‘I don’t know, Master Secretary.’

  ‘Well, that is a pity. You were good friends I believe?’

  Master Secretary kept his arm confidentially around my shoulder the way my father sometimes used to do. But he was not my father and I didn’t like it. What business was it of Master Secretary who my friends were? Then I remembered that if Tom were involved in the passing of privy messages to the Lady Mary, it would be very much Cromwell’s business. I had better take care what I said.

  ‘He left the great kitchen a few months before I came into the Queen’s household, sire. No one knows where he has gone.’

  ‘No one knows where he has gone, is that so? Well, young lady, it is to be hoped that a boy whom the late Cardinal Wolsey sent to school will have found a more fitting occupation than catching rats.’

  ‘Tom went to school Master Secretary? Tom learned to read and write?’

  ‘In English and in Latin. He showed an aptitude for both, I believe.’

  ‘And arithmetic, Master Secretary?’

  ‘Indeed so, and other studies.’

  ‘Did he learn to read maps and study the moons and the stars in the sky?’

  No one in the great kitchen would ever have suspected that Tom could read and write. I had often fancied that he was cleverer than a rat boy should be. Reading and writing, these were for my lords and my ladies not us lowly folks in the outer courtyard. If Tom wrote a letter, who did he know who could read it? And what would Tom want to read? A prayer book? Forbidden books? Tyndale’s English Bible that the Queen was trying to persuade the King to read? I thought not. One thing I did know about Thomas was his strong commitment to the Catholic faith.

  ‘Your friend …’ Cromwell hesitated as if waiting for a response. ‘Your good friend from the kitchen, had the best of education under the patronage of the late cardinal.’

  He let go of my shoulder and tapped his chin. He wore a huge green jewel on the pointing finger of his left hand. Did he wear an emerald to ward off pestilence or to calm a troubled soul? Emeralds were said to have powers to do both. His cuticles were stained black and he smelled of wet ink, like a scribe. How could it be that he knew things about Tom that I didn’t know?

  ‘Where is Thomas?’

  He shot his question like an arrow. Straight to the target. I could almost feel it quivering in my ribs.

  ‘In truth I have no knowledge of him, sire, since the Thursday of the Queen’s river pageant in 1533,’ I stammered.

  He fetched a coin from within the folds of his sleeve, showed me the figure of Saint George on his horse slaying the dragon with his lance.

  ‘This is a George noble,’ he explained as if he were educating a young child. He flipped the coin then held it temptingly before me between his finger and thumb. ‘These are the initials H and K for Henry and Katherine. The ship bears the Tudor rose.’ He spoke slowly, his low voice deep as a bass gut string. ‘If anyone should know the whereabouts of Thomas, the rat boy, it would be to their advantage.’ His words seemed to vibrate in the air.

  Now he held two nobles in his hand, like a conjuror performing tricks.

  ‘I know nothing of Tom’s whereabouts, Master Cromwell, and the people I know, in the outer courtyard, my mother and the pudding wife, they don’t know either.’

  Master Cromwell was tipping three coins from one hand to the other as if he were shuffling cards, all the while scrutinising my face as Master Hans had done, trying to see my private thoughts. I had had enough. I told him that lesser servants in the outer courtyard wouldn’t know what to do with those coins because folks would think they had stolen them. Master Secretary’s features lost their genial smile. The lips tightened. The piggy eyes glared.

  ‘Might they, by any chance, know what to do with an angel noble, Avis?’

  So he knew my name. Why did he talk of angel nobles? Did he know about the coins Tom had sent to me? Of course, Lady Shelton would have told him all about my coin hidden inside the orange pomander when he visited the Lady Mary at Hatfield. Well, there was one thing he didn’t know: Tom’s whereabouts. No one did.

  ‘If you should find him, Master Secretary, perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me how he fares,’ I said, as sweetly as I could despite a tremor in my voice where anger fought with fear. ‘My father thought highly of him, almost like a son.’

  Master Secretary’s features softened and the hand he placed on my shoulder felt kindly and strangely comforting.

  ‘Ah, your father, Avis, I regret I have been remiss since his tragic demise. I should have sought an opportunity sooner to offer to you my deepest sympathies. Of course, I have already done so to your mother.’

  That bass voice, uttering the words so quietly. I could not reply. Fear and anger I could manage. Sympathy made me want to weep.

  Master Secretary’s hand left my shoulder.

  ‘Your cousin, Anthony, has left the outer courtyard. Where is he? Is he gone to the rat boy?’

  At least this question I could answer truthfully and without fear.

  ‘Why do you ask, Master Secretary? Surely, everyone knows that he has gone to sea to be a sailor aboard one of King Henry’s ships. I believe I have already told you, Master Secretary, that no one knows where Tom has gone.’

  ‘You think you keep your secrets well hidden, young lady? Each time you lower your eyes
you tell me what I want to know. There will be someone who knows of his whereabouts, wench. Ask some questions,’ and he took my wrist with the same vigour with which he had shaken hands with Master Hans but without the friendliness and pushed the coins inside my sleeve.’

  ‘No one knows sire. I am sure of it,’ I pleaded to his retreating back.

  Did he sneak into every corner of the palace, this powerful man with his threatening friendliness who took heed of rat boys, foreign diplomats and the Queen’s ladies alike? What were Tom’s whereabouts and Mistress Shelton’s flirtations to him? I remembered my father’s warning when I went to live in the inner court: ‘Conversations at court are like autumn leaves in the wind, blown hither and thither into corners and crevices where they be discovered later, rotten and corrupt.’

  I hid Master Secretary’s coins inside my sleeve and returned to my sewing in the corner of the chamber. Mistress Madge left the group of ladies and examined my stitching.

  ‘You are improving Avis,’ she said aloud. ‘I shall inform the Queen of your progress. This shirt is well enough stitched to go with the next consignment to the poor people when the King makes his summer progress.’ Leaning towards me she asked, ‘What did Master Secretary want with a maid like you?’

  ‘He wants my mother to make a pudding for his banquet.’

  ‘So why do you look so flustered? Did he enquire anything of me? Hush, tell me later,’ she whispered. Master Hans was standing close by and must have heard our conversation.

  ‘Pray, assist me, Mistress Shelton if you please. Come, you too, kleine mädchen.’

  Mistress Madge surveyed the painting from the left, from the right, took a step backwards then forwards then peered closely as if looking for every brushstroke.

  ‘I believe my cousin, Queen Anne, will be well pleased, Master Hans,’ she said in the tone of a royal personage offering patronage. Master Hans didn’t reply. He retreated a few steps and stood for a long time with his arms folded and his head tilted, studying his work.

  Mistress Shelton had talked a great deal about Master Holbein’s paintings for the King, some of which, she had said, were so big they would almost fill a wall of the King’s presence chamber so when he beckoned us to come and see the painting I got a shock.

  ‘Oh,’ I exclaimed. ‘It is so beautiful and so very small.’ The portrait was no larger than the palm of my hand. ‘If it had not been circular I would have thought it to be a playing card.’

  Master Hans smiled and the lines either side of his eyes wrinkled. ‘I can see my work surprises you, kleine mädchen.’

  ‘It looks like a detail from a Bible decorated by monks except that it is not a religious picture but a portrait of the Queen.’

  Master Hans raised his right eyebrow and studied my face for a while. ‘You speak well, kleine mädchen. I have indeed used a playing card for the canvas. Also, you have surmised correctly that the art of miniature painting has developed from the illuminated manuscripts so painstakingly worked by monks in monasteries throughout Europe.’

  ‘Portrait miniatures have become very fashionable at court, for royalty,’ Mistress Madge put in the moment he had finished speaking. ‘This one will be mounted in a gold frame with jewelled pendants befitting a queen.’

  Trust Mistress Madge to be more interested in the frame and the jewels than the portrait itself. I fancied she would ask Master Hans to paint her own miniature upon her marriage to Sir Henry Norris. After all, she was a relative of the Queen and considered herself to be of the royal family.

  ‘Queen Anne appears healthy and happy in her portrait,’ she said. ‘Did she sit recently?’

  These days, Queen Anne was so tired and thin. I, too, thought the portrait flattered her a lot, making her face rounder and less strained.

  Master Hans raised his right eyebrow high. ‘You question the realism in my portrait Mistress Shelton? Would you have me paint the Queen looking wan and sick following her recent lying in? Remember, if you please, that the Queen initially sat for this portrait before Christmastide when she was well.’

  ‘You are the master,’ Mistress Madge conceded with her coy smile. ‘My cousin, the Queen, would most certainly wish the portrait to show her at her best.’

  ‘Her Grace is delighted with the portrait. It is to be a gift for the King to be given in May upon the third anniversary of her coronation. There remains only the matter of her jewellery and the portrait is finished. Advise me, if you please, Mistress Shelton. Would the Queen wish this portrait to show the same chain and jewel about her neck as on the large painting which hangs in His Majesty’s privy chamber at Hampton Court, or the ruby jewel she wore today. The Queen retired before I had opportunity to inquire. Pray, what think you, Mistress Shelton?’

  ‘I believe my cousin, the Queen, would prefer her new chain of pearls,’ my mistress replied in the dignified tone of someone who shares the Queen’s confidence. ‘Shall I enquire of Her Grace if the set should be sent to your studio at Westminster for you to copy?’

  ‘Pray, please do. That is most kind. Many thanks, Mistress Shelton,’ he replied with a bow. ‘It is all that is required to complete the miniature.’

  Chapter 30

  Easter 1536

  ‘The George noble had a lesser value than an angel noble,’ White Boy says whilst idly shifting the tokens on my husband’s counting frame. ‘The King’s chancellor had less to give than the rat boy.’

  ‘Perhaps he knew that he was wasting his money. I didn’t want his coins. I sewed them into the hems of shirts for the poor while my mistress’s back was turned.’

  ‘If bribes don’t have effect, controlling men will use other methods. Mistress, I fear you were in danger from Master Secretary.’

  ‘No, White Boy, the danger was never mine. There were others in very great danger, although even Cromwell did not know who they would be until later. When the mayflowers bloomed, that’s when Cromwell planned what he would do. He sat in his office and he wrote his lists. Then he took out his knife and sharpened a quill.

  ‘A quill to hand to King Henry for the signing of a death warrant.’

  ‘The tide teases as it turns,’ I tell White Boy. ‘Rolling waves spread on to the shore before they pull back into the sea. They surge forward again, and wet your shoes, and you think the tide is coming in. You have to watch for a long time before you know for sure that the tide is going out. And thus it was for Anne Boleyn. She watched Henry, and he smiled. She declared herself to be ‘The Most Happy’. She did not see how fast the tide was turning.

  *

  On Easter Sunday, the King walked proudly to chapel with Queen Anne and Princess Elizabeth.

  ‘They are friends again,’ Mistress Madge said. ‘He says she is his “best beloved wife”.’

  Then, on Easter Tuesday, something happened to cause her to believe that now that Katherine was dead, everyone, even her enemies, accepted her as Henry’s legitimate queen. When Henry and Anne went to the altar for the Mass, Katherine’s friend, Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, came face to face with her. I see now that she must have arranged that this should happen, being confident that the ambassador would not insult her after what Henry had said. Everyone was crowding around and watching to see what they would do because this had never happened before. He had always avoided her. He had to bow to her, of course. What else could he do? Anne gave him her most charming smile. Never before had he acknowledged her as queen.

  ‘Anne is happy now,’ Mistress Madge said.

  ‘She will be if Mistress Seymour is sent away from court.’

  ‘The Seymour brothers’ claws are gripped to their perches adjoining the King’s apartments. Anne need only wait for Henry’s passion for their sister to droop and they will fall. He never keeps a mistress for long.’

  Master Secretary Cromwell was not happy. He had left court very suddenly. He pleaded illness but no one believed this to be true. He had argued with the King about foreign policy.

  ‘The King is playing cat and mou
se with France and Spain and has severely reprimanded Cromwell for interfering, and in public too. Everyone is talking about it. Cromwell has skulked off with his tail between his legs and Anne is laughing. They hate each other,’ Mistress Madge said.

  When Cromwell returned three days later he began to make new friends - Chapuys, Sir Nicholas Carew and the Seymours: men who hated Anne and the new religion. The Lady Mary was seen thanking him for kindly returning a crucifix that her mother had left her.

  *

  On the day after Master Secretary returned to court I attended my mistress in the Queen’s privy chamber. Queen Anne was accompanied by her brother, some of her ladies and maids of honour and, of course, there were gentlemen around as there always were, playing cards or making music, or trying to outdo each other with their wit and their conversation. It was like any other early evening in the Queen’s apartments except that the Queen’s brother was in a bad humour. He had expected to receive the Order of the Garter on St George’s Day but the King had preferred to honour Sir Nicholas Carew.

  ‘The Seymour brothers are pushing their friends under the King’s nose.’

  Lord Rochford threw his hand of cards across the table.

  ‘Pray do not sulk, cousin George. It gives you an ugly countenance and spoils your handsome face,’ Mistress Madge scolded, and beckoned me to pick up a playing card that had fallen on the floor. ‘Carew has been the King’s friend since he was a youth. They were carousing and sharing their women when you were a babe in tail-clouts. It is natural that he should be honoured by the King. Henry has just presented Uncle Wiltshire with King’s Lynn and two abbeys. How much generosity do you expect the King to show towards the Boleyn family within one month?’

  ‘Why has Henry recalled Bryan to court?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ the Queen asked.

  ‘I can’t stand the man. He’s overbold with the King and Henry listens to him. Also, I’m reliably informed that writs will shortly be sent out to recall Parliament. Do you know ought of this, Anne?’