The Queen of Subtleties

by Suzannah Dunn

  He wasn’t a pleasant sight, close up. I let go, paced, but picked up a jug and threw it at a wall. ‘You do this,’ I shouted over the smash, ‘and—you know what?—I’ll see you’re executed for it.’

  He said, ‘Don’t threaten me.’ He was managing to look half-amused.

  ‘I’m not “threatening” you,’ I said, at the door, ‘I’m telling you. You do this, you die for it.’

  ‘You can’t touch me,’ he said, and what struck me as odd even then was that he said it almost sadly. Did he know, even then? Did he have an inkling?

  One person I did expect trouble from was my sister-in-law, and, that summer, I got it; albeit at a distance. Back at Greenwich, there was a demonstration by some of the women who’d stayed, along with wives of some prominent city men, in favour of the old Spaniard and her sickly bastard. Reports as to who was involved were hazy—perhaps deliberately so—by the time they reached us, but something everyone agreed upon was that Jane Parker had been one of the ringleaders. So, she’d switched allegiance. Well, she was no loss to me. Indeed, I rather liked the thought of her hitching up her skirts and hammering on Thomas’s door, or whatever it was they’d done: it amused me. Made a welcome change, to be amused by Jane. But of course it wouldn’t do. So, Henry sent her to the Tower, to cool down.

  I continued to make light of it. ‘You really do have an awful wife,’ I said to my brother.

  Game, he leaned to whisper in my ear, ‘And I’m not so sure about your husband.’

  It was intended to make me laugh, of course. And it did, in that I obliged. But actually his playful little aside had brought a lump to my throat.

  I knew, then, didn’t I. I knew something. Knew trouble was coming; just didn’t know where from. I’d have never guessed at the Seymours. The Seymour boys seemed to be loyal courtiers. They’d become favourites of Tom’s. And I assumed Tom could be trusted. I trusted his judgement. There had been Seymour-trouble, but only amongst themselves. What trouble, though. For what seemed like a nice, quiet family, they’d done spectacularly well for scandal. Five years previously, one of the boys had discovered that his wife had had a long affair with his father. The two children he’d assumed were his own looked likely to be his father’s. The wife was dispatched to a nunnery, the two little boys disowned. Then, father and son set about patching up Seymour family relations. And made a good job of it. Five years on, no one ever mentioned the scandal. No one except me, that is. As we rode up to their house, that summer, I was recapping for George, who’d been abroad for the worst of it.

  Henry, though, made clear he was having none of it. ‘Anne!’ A pained look.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well.’ He lowered his voice to say, ‘Don’t you think they’ve suffered enough? Let them put it behind them.’

  Admirable sentiments indeed. I raised my eyebrows at George, and no more was said. Or not in Henry’s company.

  The Seymour family was relatively new to money, and everyone knew that there wasn’t much of it. Their house, Wolf Hall, was old—three hundred years—but Sir John had had an extension built especially for our stay there. Our five or six days there were lovely: I wish I could say otherwise, now, but I’d be lying. I liked Sir John: he reminded me of my own dad, but seemed—well—nicer. Cousin Francis, who was with us, was a close friend of the brothers. And Jane? I barely noticed her. I knew her from her time at court, but she’d made no impression on me then and made even less when we stayed with her family. A dim, plain spinster, I’d have said if you’d asked me at the time. I still say so. I said it to Henry, I remember, while we were there, when she came up in conversation.

  He shook his head. ‘She’s nice,’ he said, his voice rising in surprise. Then, lower, more decided: ‘She’s nice.’

  Lucy Cornwallis

  SUMMER 1536

  When my fears hammer in the small hours, I give up trying to do anything but work. I creep, wick-led, to the kitchen to smooth sugar-crusts and lay acres of goldleaf. Then, sometimes, morning is up and running before I’ve quite noticed, and I wonder if I have, somehow, slept. Richard is careful to follow my cue and talk about nothing but work. Not difficult: there’s so much of it; the kitchen is padded, barricaded, with it. Moulds, jars, pans, braziers, stacks of sugar-shapes. And, fittingly, in the middle, emerging, soaring above it all, our centrepiece. This is a royal wedding banquet, no less, in preparation. ‘Nothing clever,’ we’ve been instructed, ‘just plenty of old-fashioned favourites.’

  No one added, Not like for—

  But of course we never did a wedding banquet for her. No, for the wedding that changed the world, we made not a single pea-sized comfit. For the coronation, later, yes: sugar hardened by the tens of pound, towering and shimmering under the torches. But the wedding was secret. One dawn, I’m told, in the king’s private chapel at Whitehall. Anne Boleyn in red, I’m told. Isn’t it unlucky, to marry in red? We’d have been close by, Richard and I, but oblivious, asleep. (Those were the days—nights—when I slept.) Our services not required. William Brereton, though, knew all about it and his services were required; he was a witness. And when he married, a year or so ago, the king wanted us to make a subtlety for the feast. He summoned me. ‘Billy’s more of a romantic than he looks,’ he said.

  Which meant nothing to me, I didn’t know how he looked. They all look the same, to me.

  ‘So,’ the king asked me, ‘what will you make?’

  I was at a loss; I wasn’t any kind of romantic. ‘A galleon,’ I tried.

  ‘A galleon?’ He seemed to like the idea; or, it amused him.

  And I tried to explain. I told him how I used to stand on a cliff-top, with chalk-matted grass between my toes and the sea slipped everywhere under the sky. ‘And then, sometimes, there’d be a galleon…’

  ‘Well, a galleon it is, then,’ he said. ‘Or three.’ He grinned at me. ‘Three, please, Lucy. Because never forget: safety in numbers. Sea-faring is treacherous.’

  I don’t know what it is that frightens me. Everything. Everything and nothing. A door closing, somewhere over in the main kitchens: that’s enough to make my heart sit up and listen. But silence is just as bad, perhaps worse. Silence seems like a trick; I have to listen hard and deep into it, trying to catch it out before it catches me out. And then a torch extinguished across the courtyard will signal some unspecified danger; but, later, the appearance of another will be just as unsettling, as inexplicable. Why am I frightened? It’s not for me that I’m frightened; it can’t be; I don’t care about me.

  For this coming wedding, I’ve had a specific instruction. Not that I was told, at that stage, about the wedding. Just given the instruction. So, I started it in all innocence—just another project—and it was what I was working on when Richard came in, that awful day, and pulled me from the room.

  Every day, the subtlety seems bigger. I’m building it bigger, of course I am, but it seems to be bigger still whenever I return to it. Or perhaps it’s me who’s smaller. I spend a lot of time standing up on the workbench. Have to, to reach. Most days, I’m up there. Most nights. Free of my clogs, nudging the grain with the balls of my feet. I have to be alone, up there; there’s no room for anyone else. Daytimes, I listen to the boys. I hear differently, up here. Or just hear, perhaps, for a change. The tapping of Kit’s pestle. Stephen’s rhythmic, absent-minded puffing, pa-pa-pa.

  When the Master of Revels showed me the drawings of the subtlety that was required, my response was that it was impossible. Having any kind of response was a surprise to me, the way I’ve been feeling, but I suppose it was inevitable. Because there I was, the king’s confectioner, being consulted by the Master of Revels, and what else could I have done? Crouched on the floor with my hands over my ears? So, there I was, the king’s confectioner, and the king’s confectioner is never pleased to be given specific instructions. The king’s confectioner is the king’s subtlety-maker. Was I suddenly not capable of coming up with designs of my own?

  The required timescale wasn’t the p
roblem, it seemed to me, as I did my job and took those drawings from the Master of Revels, leafed through them. The difficulty was the subtlety itself: its shape. Looking at the drawings—and failing, initially, to appreciate the scale—I’d said, ‘We can work with the falcon, I suppose,’ the falcon mould, Anne Boleyn’s heraldic falcon. I’d said it more to myself than to the Master of Revels; but he insisted: ‘Not the falcon. It isn’t a falcon.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘we’ve no mould for this; and with the deadline you’re giving me, we can’t commission one.’

  His reply was, ‘Can’t you just…model it?’

  I really don’t know what they think sugar is. Or what they think I am.

  I’m improvising, though, and, actually, I’m making it work. Cobbling together and coaxing it. Working around each problem as I reach it. Shapes are just shapes, after all, and they’re everywhere. I’m using the moulds we do have, bits and pieces of them turned this way and that. Feathers from our swans, and the beak from our falcon. There’s a fair amount of the falcon in there, put to good use. Its nasty, open beak pushed shut and turned small on this new, giant bird.

  I suspect that Richard sees me working and thinks that my being busy is a blessing. He doesn’t know that no matter what I do, the memory of Mark reaches back and tears at me. And I’m glad of it, too. Because not to think of Mark would be to betray him. Which is what everyone else has done. They thought nothing of him beyond how he could be useful to them. Now he’s gone, they don’t think of him at all. As if he was never here.

  But he was, he was. And now, some days, nights, all I can think is that he isn’t. He’s not here, he’s not here, he’s not here: the absurdity of it beats around me. Because how can it be? That he was here and now he isn’t. I could go anywhere, everywhere—chapel, gardens, riverbank, royal apartments—and he wouldn’t be there, because he’s nowhere, and how can I make sense of that? How can he be nowhere?

  When there was still time, did he think I’d come for him? That somehow I’d use my royal favour to his advantage?

  What, then, did he think when I didn’t?

  Visitors to the kitchen are banned, these days, by order of the Master of Revels himself. In the interests of secrecy.

  Good: peace and quiet.

  And anyway there’s no room here for visitors.

  Visitors, that is, who aren’t the Master of Revels. He’s checking up on me, which is something he’s never done. It’s not a problem, because he seems appreciative: Well, look at that! I don’t know that anyone would know what the subtlety is, anyway. I didn’t, at first. Perhaps I wouldn’t ever have done, had Richard not told me.

  Richard explained it to me, that morning I arrived back from the step. When he first saw me, he took a deep breath, but all I had to say was, ‘No,’ to make clear I didn’t want to tell him anything of my conversation with Cromwell. So, what he said instead, after a silence, in a change of subject, was, ‘You were making a subtlety.’ He indicated the mess I’d left.

  I shrugged: so what?

  He asked me what it was for.

  I shrugged again. Some banquet. I was so very, very tired.

  ‘It’s a kind of castle,’ he said. Because that was the mould I’d been preparing: a castle.

  Oh, really, Richard, does it matter? I shook my head. ‘That’s just the base. And it has to be burning, that castle; needs flames. And a giant bird coming out of it. The castle’s the easy bit.’ I’m not doing it, anyway, I told myself; not now. Richard can do it. Seeing as he’s so interested.

  ‘Someone asked you to do this?’

  I considered saying, No, it’s for my own supper; but I raised my head and nodded towards the drawings.

  Richard fetched them, unrolled them. ‘Mr Holbein,’ he remarked, seeing the signature.

  I said, ‘A great big bird coming out of a burning castle, as seen from a number of angles. And I quote: To help you in your task.’

  Richard rolled them up again. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  ‘It’s an insane amount of work.’ So tired.

  ‘It’s the Seymour coat of arms.’

  ‘Is it?’ So, the Seymours have something to celebrate. Well, hip, hip, hooray.

  ‘It’s a phoenix rising from a castle.’

  ‘A phoenix, is it. Well, we’ve no mould for a phoenix.’

  Richard gave me a look, a Richard-look. ‘We’ve a mould for a duck; we should go for a duck waddling from a burning castle.’ Then he wanted to know when it was for.

  I told him.

  He gave a low whistle; then said, ‘I’ll do it.’

  No, I said. I didn’t say, It’s not as if I’ve anything else to do.

  ‘A wedding,’ he said, ‘so soon.’

  I didn’t want to think about time; the days out there, rolling in. Nor did I want to hear about weddings.

  ‘He’s going to marry her.’ He turned his green eyes to me. ‘The king’s getting a new wife.’

  Oh, will you ever stop your rumour-mongering? ‘The king’s already married, Richard.’

  He shrugged, and stayed shrugging; hugged himself. ‘Presumably he won’t be, by then.’

  I was tired of this nonsense. ‘I doubt even the king can get himself a divorce so quickly. The last time he tried, he couldn’t.’

  Richard said, ‘This won’t be a divorce.’ He looked over at me, unblinking, until I understood.

  I didn’t quite believe him, though. ‘A queen?’ A king can’t kill his queen, can he? No one can kill a queen.

  The other day, he said, ‘Roses. Shouldn’t we have roses? For this wedding.’ He was looking up at the phoenix, frowning, as if to say, This is all very well, but…‘We don’t have roses, Lucy.’

  I said, ‘You know where the moulds are.’

  There’s something I’ve been thinking of making. I can’t quite stop thinking about making it. Gold. A kind of gold. The kind made with arsenic. I think about mixing up the powders, making the paste and painting it onto the feathery wings of the phoenix. And gilding Richard’s little round roses. Could I do it so that no one would notice any difference from goldleaf? If anyone could do it, it’d be me: king’s confectioner. Perhaps I should experiment, on one of my sleepless nights. Just one night, just an experiment. Perhaps I should gild just one special celebration treat each—a manus christi—for Cromwell and the king.

  It’d be difficult to suspect gold: the brash shine of it; the clear gleam. No hint of subterfuge; nothing underhand. So unlike a suspicious green. I wonder if it’d be the very last suspect of all. And me? Am I right to think that it would be almost as hard to suspect me? And, anyway, what if anyone did? I don’t care. I don’t care what happens to me.

  One day a couple of weeks ago, returning from his morning meal, Richard was a shadow in here, indecisive and soundless. So, I realized: it had happened. But he felt he couldn’t say. I climbed down from the workbench and began boiling sugar; I was making manus christi. Back to good old-fashioned sugar-boiling. I tracked the boiling sugar through its various changes, up and up in temperature, stickier and stickier, and then, when at last it was on the brink, poised for its noisy plunge into the basin of water, I said, quickly, to Richard, ‘There is something you can tell me.’

  In the corner of my eye, he folded his arms high, dropped his head: listening.

  ‘Cromwell made me a promise,’ I said, ‘that the sentence—Mark’s—would be commuted. Just tell me, yes or no: did he keep that promise?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  The wedding feast is over and done with. We now have our kitchen back as it was, thanks to Stephen’s good job of cleaning up. It was a whole day’s work, for him, yesterday, to clear. We all helped, of course. Even Richard. And now, this morning, I’m sitting below orderly shelves, among the bare bones of my kitchen.

  I had a visitor, earlier: the Master of Revels came to tell me that the king is very pleased with how I rose to the challenge of preparing for the celebrations at such short notice. ‘Rumour has it,’
he said, with a smile, ‘that he’s acting very generously. I’m quite sure he’ll be showing you his appreciation.’

  I smiled back, because that was what seemed to be required. I can’t imagine what the king could give me that I’d want. He’s already taken everything from me without even knowing it. He wouldn’t even want to know.

  I’m sitting here in this bare-boned kitchen because I don’t know where else to go. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be; this is as good a place as any. And I’m alone, which is what I want. I’ve sent Richard, Stephen and Kit away, given them a day’s rest. Perhaps I should be outside, on the riverbank or in the gardens, but the prospect exhausts me: even just the clear blue of the sky to have to acknowledge.

  What would Mark think, to see me like this? Not much, perhaps. There have been far more drastic changes around here than what’s happened to me. There’s far more to think about, for anyone given to thinking.

  And for those not given to thinking, it seems, the past few years are suddenly understood to have been a kind of bewitchment. The king, I’ve heard, is tearful with gratitude. Regards himself as having woken in the nick of time; saved himself, his family, his kingdom.

  Me, I’m sleepwalking: that’s how it feels. I don’t know how I’ll carry on, but I do know that it’ll happen. Regardless of me. I’ll go on making confectionery. Making it for a christening, probably, in the not too distant future. Before that, there’s the summer progress. The various festivals.

  The door’s opening. It’s Richard. He’s lingering in the doorway; his reluctance frightens me. He’s saying my name; and now, ‘I’ve something to tell you.’ He shakes his head, ‘Nothing—’ Nothing awful.

  My anxiety drops a notch. But only a notch.

  He takes a step or two forward but his heart isn’t in it. It peters out, his approach. ‘Lucy,’ he says, quietly, ‘I’m going.’

  I shrug. Fine by me. He can see there’s nothing to do, here, today. And didn’t I tell him that he could have a free day?