That Christmas of 1523, when I was back in England after another voyage with Mr William, Uncle Bennet smuggled me into a general audience in the King’s great hall at Westminster. He whispered to me to keep close by his side, and not to draw attention. I stood among the pages and lesser followers of the Cardinal, and looked at the ranks of great personages where the various factions and powers of the Court were on display. My heart was beating hard. I had never before been this close to the King. There he sat, immobile, a daunting and powerful presence: our sovereign lord, King Henry the Eighth. He was in his early thirties, as handsome a man as there was in the world, large-limbed, with a long, lean face, bearded, even though the common English fashion was to go clean-shaved. He darted his gaze about the hall. He was in a towering temper: news had just reached England that the Turks had driven the Knights of Saint John from Rhodes. An envoy from the Pope was before him and his powerful voice thundered repeatedly, ‘I am Defender of the Faith!’ The title was a gift of the Pope in which Henry took great pride.
As he was speaking, I took in every aspect of his appearance with a goldsmith’s eye. His black velvet cap had a badge in it bearing a large, pyramid-cut diamond. His shirt collar was of gold thread set with emeralds; his doublet was sewn with gold in a lozenge pattern, and at every crossing a cluster of pearls. Round his neck was a gold chain set with great table-cut sapphires and amethysts; a heavy pendant hung from this chain, and in it shone four dark rubies. At his belt was a dagger, its sheath set with yet more stones. He wore rings on the forefingers of both hands, one an opal, one a diamond; and over his crimson silk hose, below his right knee, was the Garter, enamelled and set with pearls. When he moved, a sparkle of jewels darted from his chest, his fingers, his legs, just as if he were God himself seated in his glory.
Beside him sat Queen Katherine, almost forty, with a plump, heavily painted face and a jutting chin. At her bosom she wore a gold cross and several chains of rubies and pearls: doubtless a part of the wardrobe she had brought from Spain. I knew from my friends on Goldsmiths’ Row that she seldom bought anything new. Seated with her was the Princess Mary, a small, half-pretty seven-year-old with dark eyes, the only surviving child of Henry and his Queen after fourteen years of marriage. It appeared more and more likely that she would one day be Queen Regnant herself, and so an aspiring merchant would do well to cultivate her favour. But that was far in the future. The real prize was the King.
I knew that Henry acquired mountains of gems each year, and that he had made Cornelius Heyes and the others rich. The trade was there, but how to break in on it? Everything flowed through the hands of those few great goldsmiths. If I only had a patron at Court. I looked along the ranks of the great courtiers. There was Cardinal Wolsey, with two tall priests carrying the silver crosses, nine feet high, that represented his authority as Papal Legate and Archbishop of York. His pride was immense. At a distance stood his almoner, his chamberlains and treasurers, and then in a gaggle round us the constables, the audiencers, the clerks, and even the official whose job it was to melt the Cardinal’s sealing wax. I suspected that Uncle Bennet, a humble lawyer, did not have as much influence with the Cardinal as he liked to pretend.
Then, across from the Cardinal, were the other, rival, powers at Court: there was the wise and ironical Sir Thomas More, who had just been made Speaker of the House of Commons; and stern Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the tough old soldier and veteran of Flodden who had spent years watching, greedily and in vain, for the fall of the Cardinal. He was a figure of little practical power, though much patronage and grandeur. To enter the graces of any of these men was almost as difficult as approaching King Henry himself. What I needed was a chance, an advantage, a piece of luck.
In 1524, on the anniversary of my visit to my mother, I once more opened my casket to her. By now my collection included a small but perfect sapphire, which I handed to her as a gift. She rolled the stone under her finger, then pushed it back to me over the table.
‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘Sell it. You may yet need your pennies. Carry on, my Richard. You have not persuaded me yet.’
Somehow, the old band was never all in London at the same time. In the autumn I was home once more. But by then John had left for Hungary, on a venture concerning salt. The great mines there were threatened by the savage advance of the Turks, and the house of Lazar was looking for a swift profit before the market was closed to them.
‘He has found his adventure,’ commented Thomas, as we sat together on the wharf, his eyes on the moving swirls of the river. ‘If he lives through it.’ Thomas was more and more downcast these days. Still he was reading with the Franciscan. The Cardinal’s college was not yet ready; the monasteries destined for funding it refused to disband.
‘Can you not find a place somewhere else?’ I prompted him.
He shook his head. ‘Our mother says wait. A little longer.’
The next summer, 1525, I turned twenty. Over these years I boiled with discontent. Ventures with Mr William had lost their savour for me. I had learnt all that I could from him, and my profits were slow. The Portuguese had no real interest in gems, even though their ships touched in at all the best markets: Surat, Calicut, Pegu. No, ‘Let it be spice,’ declared their King, chief grocer of Portugal, and spice it was. The city I longed for was Venice: that was the place for stones, as well as every other luxury that could give life opulence and wonder. When the day came to display my treasures to my mother again I poured out before her opals and amethysts, garnets, jacinths and pearls, and threw down my three purses of gold beside them with a loud chink. She raised one eyebrow.
‘If you would only lend me a little money,’ I protested. ‘If you would let the Rose trade a little further.’
She sat back in her chair and stared at me with her ice-blue eyes. ‘And why should I “let” you do anything of the kind? As long as you follow the firm of Dansey, my boy, Naples is our furthest port. Between London and there we can find all that we need.’
But her eyes as they lingered on my jewels had a thoughtful gleam. With the right proposition I believed I might just win her over.
I pestered Uncle Bennet for openings at revels and mummeries, audiences, maying, processions, pilgrimages, feasts … He was a hard man to catch up with, that summer; he was involved in Wolsey’s great visitation of the abbeys, that squeezed so much gold from the abbots and raised so many angry murmurs. Nevertheless, he obliged me when he could, half out of liking for me, I thought, and half to prove his importance to my mother.
As winter came, the Court stayed out of London. The plague was running fiercely, and we crept about, all of us, with herbs clasped to our faces, keeping well clear of anyone we saw on the streets. ‘The King is keeping Christmas in the country at Eltham Palace,’ Bennet told us. ‘The Secret Christmas, they are calling it. Still, I believe I can smuggle you in, if you have a mind to it.’ I arrived there by night, and Bennet helped me to slip into the Great Hall, mingling with the servants who were serving gold cups and bowls of wine. I stopped in the doorway in amazement. The hall was a forest: trees of green damask stood in groves, and from their branches hung leaves of beaten gold and bunches of gilded acorns that flashed in the glare from the burning torches. Between the trees were wondrous beasts, antelopes and oliphants and lions made of canvas with gold crowns and tails of iron wire, and jesters dressed as wild men who leapt about in masks draped with ivy, letting out shrill shrieks and hoots. Laughter and music filled the room. Round the forest were bowers of silken roses, and through these the King and his courtiers danced to the sound of shawms and violins. They were in masks too, gilded and smiling, the men all with beards of gold thread. The couples dipped their heads beneath the hoops of the arbours, the ladies’ pearl chains clinking on their bosoms. It made me burn with longing as I watched from my place among the butlers and pages, and the bowls of steaming wine. Why should I be apart from all this? What iron law kept me a tradesman in bales of woad and boxes of spice, while these golden creatur
es taunted me with their laughter? In an instant I grabbed up a mask that was lying by the wine, and slipped among them. The dancers separated and whirled beneath the arbours, and I was swept after them, the fiddlers skipping among us and the wild men chattering, the men and the ladies gasping and laughing.
One girl especially I noticed, wilder and freer than all the rest, flinging her head back as she spun round, the black hair streaming from beneath her hood. She was strong-hipped and tall; her breasts pressed against the white cambric stomacher stretched across the opening of her sea-blue gown. Around her neck she wore two ropes of good pearls of the Orient, which descended her bust and vanished down beneath her bodice. When the dancers separated briefly I darted after her through the glittering trees and caught her hands. Her eyes, dark brown behind the gold of her mask, sparkled with surprise. We swung together between the trees, while the shawms bayed and the violins sang. I was, in that instant, one of them, a blessed, golden being in a world of beauty and gems. I swung her fast, and she put her head back and laughed. But the music was dying already, and the dance swaying to a halt. We stopped at the foot of an arbour of paper roses. They had become torn by the violence of the dance, and lay scuffed underfoot.
The girl said, ‘Are you not going to let go of my hands?’
Already I was behaving like a fool, and showing I was no courtier. ‘Only if you show me your face.’
I released her hand, and just as she lifted off her mask, so I did mine. Her face was round, soft, alight with excitement: an excitement so far from the world of trade that it made me gasp. She cared for nothing, nothing but the pleasure of the moment and the delight of being alive. She gave me a sense of infinite promise. With a girl like this beside me I could go anywhere, become anything. Even as I was thinking these thoughts, I saw the girl’s face change, and take on a curious smile. And yes, I saw it too. I had not seen that face for six years, but there was no doubt whatsoever. The girl was Hannah Cage. She threw back her head and laughed.
‘The boy who played in the street! What, have you inherited a dukedom?’
The music began again, I slipped my mask back on to hide my annoyance and took her hand. We whirled together back into the figures.
‘Not yet,’ I told her. ‘And you? You left home? Married?’
My heart began to pound as I asked it. She laughed.
‘My father bought us a finer town house. Away from the stink of the river. Married! To marry me they would have to catch me. And courtiers are so horribly slow.’
‘But I caught you. Did I not?’
‘For a short time. But I am going somewhere I do not think you will find me.’
A jester tumbled and shrieked in front of us with a jangle of bells. I relaxed my hold for an instant and Hannah broke away, to vanish back into the dance. I ducked under the trees and ran after her; in a clearing I looked left and right, darted to the left towards the door of the hall, and then ran right up against my Uncle Bennet. He frowned in displeasure, and shook his head. I was furious and shamed. He was right: if I was caught, he would be the one to suffer. The chase was over. For the moment.
After Christmas, the plague began to ease. Bennet told me the King was moving his Court a little closer to London, and would be holding a great joust for all the nobility at his palace of Greenwich on Shrove Tuesday, to mark the beginning of Lent. ‘But this time,’ he added sternly, ‘you must be discreet.’ I thanked him. My meeting with Hannah Cage had made me greedy for more. And besides, if I was ever to break into the Court world I knew I had to keep watch, and follow the King in all his doings the way a thief follows his prey. So there I stood, on the morning of the sixth of February 1526, in the midst of the crowd at the Tiltyard, the open field that runs all down the eastern flank of the palace of Greenwich. Behind me rose its towers and pinnacles, while beyond began the low houses of the village, crouching like beggars at the King’s gate.
Down the centre of the field were the barriers, built some six feet high of stout planks, to separate the jousters. To my right was a huge cluster of tents. I saw squires and armourers moving between them carrying tongs, hammers and bags of rivets, stablemen in their particoloured tabards and gentlemen waiters in white satin carrying steaming hot wine. There was the King’s great lodging pavilion, its conical roofs topped with gilt dragons and lions, where men must now be helping King Henry into his armour. Further off were the cook-tents, with smoke rising from vents in their roofs, and the camp of the King’s mariners who had come off their ships bringing capstans and cranes to set up all the various pavilions. Some thirty trumpeters and drummers on horseback stood waiting.
At last I saw the flaps of the great tent drawn back, and out rode King Henry. He was in full armour from head to toe, brilliant steel where it could be seen, but draped all over with surcoats of cloth of gold and silver, on which was some device in crimson, and a motto or poesy snaking round it. His horse too was in armour, with crimson ostrich feathers on its brow. The King held his lance upright in his hand, gilt and painted, a tremendous length, yet cunningly hollowed for lightness and ease. Eleven other riders came out from among the tents and fell into line behind him, all in the same colours, and they came trotting forward, their horses kicking up clods of the muddy turf. With a tremendous sudden clangour the drums beat and the trumpets sounded. The crowd around me took off their hats, and I cheered with the loudest of them and cried, ‘God save you! God save King Harry!’
A second line of horsemen gathered at the lists at the opposite end, all in coats of green and crimson satin. Both troops rode to the Queen’s pavilion halfway down the field, where they dipped their lances in salute. Beyond them I scanned the courtiers ranged on either side of the Queen, searching for signs of Hannah, but without success.
I saw the armourers helping the King lower his lance into position. This was no simple matter. The butt end of the lance was secured to the body armour by clips, and the King’s right gauntlet was hooked over the lance and locked by more fastenings to his left arm. Another pair of clips caught the lance firmly in the crook of his left elbow, resting on the notch in his shield. Then, with legs straight, and his jousting spurs reaching up on their long steel wires to touch the horse’s flanks, King Henry set himself in motion.
His horse’s hoofs tumbled forward in turn, never breaking into a canter or a gallop, in the peculiar, rolling gait called the amble that is proper for the joust: for only with this steady gait can the rider hope for any kind of accuracy in his hit. Like a stormcloud the King rolled forward, not fast, but with an immense, calm strength, and his lance dead level. The Marquis of Exeter, one of Henry’s oldest childhood friends, launched himself into an amble on the other side of the barrier, closing the distance with the King. He was skilful too, but the sway of his lance showed that he lacked King Henry’s strength and control. When the pair met, the King’s lance struck full on Exeter’s shield with a bang. The lance shattered, Exeter swayed and his own lance swung clear. I cheered and huzzaed for the King, whose broken lance marked him as the victor. He rode on, wheeled round and then came slowly back up to the top of the course. He passed by not ten feet away from me, and I had my first clear view of the design on his coat. I stared after him. My palms began to sweat, and my pulse beat in my ears.
What I saw, repeated on the King’s back, on his shield, and on his horse’s flank, was a crimson heart in flames. This heart was trapped in a press, perhaps a wine-press or the sort that book-binders use. Beneath it curled the motto, DECLARE JE NOS. Declare I dare not. This was the heart of a tortured lover, caught in the agony of a secret and unrequited passion. Four years ago, when I had just returned from my first venture to Lisbon, the King had ridden to a joust wearing just such an emblem. His badge then was a wounded heart, and the other jousters sported a variety of matching symbols, hearts shattered, hearts chained, hearts in prison. Their mottoes had groaned in concert: ‘Without remedy’, ‘My heart is broken’, ‘Between joy and pain’. No one at the time read the meaning in it; but
shortly afterwards it became known Henry had begun an affair with a new mistress. Mrs Mary was a niece of the great Duke of Norfolk, married to a certain William Carey, the King’s distant cousin and another of his childhood friends. She had been at the French Court, and now she was one of the Queen’s ladies, while Carey became an obliging Court cuckold.
I had watched the progress of this affair from Goldsmiths’ Row, where I saw in preparation the gold lockets, the crystal scent bottles, the crosses and pendants bloated with rubies and pearls. I cursed my luck that I was too young and too poor to share in the profits of King Henry’s love. In time the flow of jewels from Cheapside to the King’s various palaces slowed. Indeed, according to Uncle Bennet, the King had recently handed Mrs Mary back to her husband, pregnant with Henry’s child. The King’s wounded heart of four years ago had healed. But now this: a heart once more in flames, and Declare I dare not.
A fresh pair of riders thundered past, their lances wavering and failing to hit, and the audience groaned in disappointment. Who was she, I wondered. One of his wife’s ladies, perhaps, as Mary and his previous mistress, Bessie Blount, had been? But whoever the woman was, I was in no doubt that this, at last, was my moment: the chance, the piece of fortune I had been waiting for. The spoils for those who supplied jewels to feed the King’s passion would be immense. And this time I was determined to have my share.
As I travelled back up to London, squeezed on a bench between the tiltboat’s other passengers, to the rattle and bump of the oars and the splash of riverwater against my back, my mind hammered at the problem before me. It was exasperating. I had waited a long time. I had schooled myself, trained my senses, my skill and my judgement until they were fine tools, ready for use. But if I was to make a serious attempt I had to have funds on a scale beyond anything I could raise on my own. There was no way round it: I would have to ask my mother. My pride rebelled against it, going to her begging. I would have to fight her old distrust of the bewitchment of beautiful stones that had cost her husband so much money down the years.
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