Portrait of an Unknown Woman

by Vanora Bennett

  John Clement said, loudly enough for More to hear as he pushed it open and stepped inside.

  Sir Thomas was blue jawed, with black smudges under his eyes and yesterday’s linen—in the rumpled physical disarray he so often scarcely noticed when he was away from the display of public life. But the threatening expression of the night had gone. Now he had the composure of a man who’d been in prayer for hours.

  “So have you told her?” More said sternly. “I’m sorry if I was abrupt last night; but you must understand how important this is for us all.”

  John Clement found he’d stood up straight, moving away from the table and away from Meg without even noticing. He was nodding with his usual almost reverential respect. “About Edward. Yes,” he said. His eyes were on More. But as More turned to his adopted daughter, he also became aware of Meg’s head rising and falling in an automaton’s nod.

  More strode over to Meg, who was still perched on the tabletop, hunching into it like a bird that has fluffed itself up on its branch ready to sleep, holding on tight with her hands. “Do you understand, Meg?” he said, very kindly, and Meg swayed toward him, as if hoping for a comforting arm around her shoulders. But More perched beside her instead, side by side, taking John Clement’s place. “Do you understand the life you’d be choosing by making this marriage?”

  She moved her head, but so indistinctly now that John Clement couldn’t tell whether she intended the movement to signify yes or no. Her eyes were as wide as saucers. There was no expression in them.

  John Clement could see the love More felt for her in the comforting way he was stroking one of his own hands with the other; but he also knew Meg, so close beside her father, was unaware of that movement. He looked away, trying not to see this small sign of his patron’s difficulty in communicating love. It wasn’t his place to criticize; he was devoted to this man.

  “The problem wouldn’t just be the secret in his past, always living a fragile version of the truth, and always living with the risk of discovery,” Sir Thomas was saying to Meg, in the softest, tenderest voice imaginable. “Difficult though that’s been at times, we’ve managed. And the situation’s been stable for years—peace and security; Edward in the countryside; John a remote younger brother. But it’s not stable now. There’s new danger on all sides. There’s sickness spreading through the land, and the curse of heresy, and people whispering in the streets about God’s retribution on the Tudor dynasty. Calling them usurpers; picking at old wounds. And the king so desperate to end his marriage to the queen, with or without the pope’s permission, that I fear he could easily be corrupted by the heretics gathering around the Lady Anne. If he is—if he does turn toward heresy”—he paused for dramatic emphasis, a public speaker’s trick, looking deep into Meg’s eyes—“then every Catholic king in Christendom will be looking for the man who could unseat him. The Tudor kings have brought with them a peace and prosperity that England has never known before; it’s been my duty and my pleasure to help preserve their reign in whatever modest ways I can. But they rule by right of conquest, not blood. If England divided along religious lines and the existence of a legitimate Plantagenet prince became known, Catholics from all over Europe would flock to support him against Henry Tudor. Until yesterday that would not have concerned you directly—it would have been Edward who interested them. But now poor Edward is dead,” and he crossed himself. “God rest his soul. And the last Plantagenet prince left is John.”

  John stepped forward, making inarticulate protesting noises in his throat. Sir Thomas waved him superbly aside. “I know, I know, John; it’s the last thing you’d want. Your one aim is to avoid being pulled into statecraft and the intrigues of kings; I know. But secrets get told. However lucky we’ve been all these years, enough people still know this secret that it might yet come out. And, if it did, you’d have more than the Catholic kings of Europe to worry about. There’d be the king of England too. Henry isn’t the timid man his father was. I always say that if my head could win him a castle, it would be off my shoulders tomorrow. But if he thought you represented a threat to his throne, yours would be off tonight.”

  John stepped back, nodding his head miserably at the undeniable truth of what Sir Thomas was saying. The statesman hardly saw; he was still looking searchingly at the girl beside him; and she was still looking away. Her hands were still clamped to the tabletop, but two fingers had been plucking at a fold of her skirt so hard that she’d made a stiff pleat in the yellow material.

  “Do you understand, Meg?” Sir Thomas said, his voice dropping to just above a whisper. “I’ve wanted this for years. This is the match I’d always have chosen for you. I couldn’t have been happier when I first saw the friendship between you deepen. But the time wasn’t yet right for it back then. I knew he’d been an impetuous hothead when he was young,

  always spoiling for a fight. I wasn’t sure, even once he came to us, that he’d settle down permanently into the new life I’d sketched out for him. And I didn’t want to marry you to a man who might go back someday to jockeying for political power, especially with so many religious troubles suddenly threatening to pull Christendom apart. I wouldn’t have wanted to put you in that danger. Anyway, if he were a prince of England, his high degree would rule him out as a husband for you—his blood would be too exalted for city people like us. He’d been John Clement since before you were born; and he’d been the teacher of my children for a good four or five years. But I still wasn’t sure of him. However sober he seemed to have become most of the time, there’d still be flashes of something else every now and then. Something dangerous. And before I could let you marry, I needed to be sure he’d want to go on being plain John Clement forever.”

  Sir Thomas paused. “And then there was the night after Ammonius died,” he said. Very quietly. Very neutrally. Looking down. But the measured words still brought a sweat to John Clement’s brow and made his guts churn hot with shame. “Only John could really tell you what happened that night, if he remembers. All I know is that he was dragged before me by the night constables after starting a brawl in a tavern on Cheapside. They’d recognized him as the tutor to our house; and anyway, I was the magistrate; they’d naturally have brought him to me. He was dead drunk. They said he’d attacked two men. Tipped their jug of Spanish red over their heads, so their clothes looked as though they were drenched in blood; then followed up that assault by bashing their heads together. And then drawn a knife on them. It took half a dozen men to wrestle him to his knees and disarm him, and they all looked as though they’d been dipped in a barrel of wine by the time they’d done it.

  When I asked him why, he wouldn’t say. Just snarled something about having been insulted. ‘If I’d had my sword,’ he said—slurred—‘I’d have run those bastards through.’ And that’s what the constables said he’d been yelling in the tavern too.”

  More paused to see if Meg responded. “Which was obviously a dangerous thing for a tutor to a London lawyer’s house to be yelling in a tavern,” he went on calmly, when she didn’t. “Because it’s one thing for a man in a tavern to pull out a knife, but it’s quite another for him to be raving about carrying a nobleman’s sword.”

  John Clement was still shaking his head, as if denying the story; but the voice went pitilessly on.

  “That’s why I took him away abroad with me that summer,” More was saying. “And that’s why I wouldn’t let him come back to you until he’d been properly tested by time. He wasn’t safe. I was always frightened that there’d be another of those moments of violent rage, and that it might destroy him. Or you.

  But I think he’s passed the test now. And with a doctorate and his place at the College of Physicians—and the steadiness of his wish to marry you through all these years—I truly believe he’s become the man he wanted to be. They’re kind enough to talk of me as a writer and lawyer and statesman—but my greatest creation, the one I’m most proud of, is John Clement, the civilized man of learning you see before you. This is the ou
tcome I most wanted from the task I’ve cared about most in my life. This is what I’ve hoped for.”

  Meg was still looking down at the pleat between her fingers. She wasn’t moving. Only her stillness showed she was listening. If she’d looked up for an instant, she’d have seen something else flash between More and John Clement.

  More sighed gently and went mellifluously on, turning his gaze back down to Meg.

  “If you choose him, you have to accept that you’re choosing a man who’s grown used to living with secrets. He may be unwilling to share everything from his past with you. But now that you know about this, I’m prepared to swear that I’m aware of nothing else in his life that could be an impediment to your marriage.”

  She raised her eyes finally and looked at her father. John Clement, watching, couldn’t read what was in her gaze. Yet he was comforted that Sir Thomas seemed encouraged by it.

  “You had to know the risks,” More went on, undaunted by her silence. “But you’re a grown woman. You know your mind. I’m not going to stand in your way if, knowing what you now know, you tell me that this marriage is still what you want.”

  He stopped. His eyes and his daughter’s were still locked together.

  John Clement waited, scarcely drawing breath. Meg said nothing; didn’t move.

  “Is it, Meg?” More went on, gently, implacably. “Do you want to marry this John Clement?”

  Silence. A long silence, long enough for John Clement to be aware of birdsong and the dust motes dancing in the first rays of sun to penetrate the window. Then the fierce, blank gaze turned to him for another long moment. Then back to her father.

  Then Meg put her hands up to her eyes and covered her face. Thinking she was about to cry, John Clement steeled himself to step forward and comfort her.

  But before he could move she brought her hands down again. Lifted herself off the table. Stared wildly at both of them, cried out, “I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know who he is!” and fled sobbing out of the door into the green of the garden.

  9

  Hans Holbein, sitting under a mulberry tree, shaded his eyes to squint after Kratzer’s departing back. Then he sighed, picked up his pencil, and went back to his sketch.

  Kratzer’s original purpose in coming out to talk to him before breakfast had been to discuss the astronomical treatise he wanted to write as a gift for the king. He wanted Holbein to illustrate it. But on the way into the garden he’d met his friend, the groom with the Lutheran sympathies. So by the time he’d found Holbein, pensive in the green shade, he was full of raw-boned indignation.

  “They’ve caught the Rickmansworth villagers,” the astronomer said hotly, jutting his jaw. “They’re in prison. They’re going to be hanged.”

  The Rickmansworth villagers came from near one of the country re treats of cardinal Wolsey.

  In Kratzer’s mind, Cardinal Wolsey, the lord chancellor—with his fleshy face, greed for earthly power, and pomander stuck perpetually under his nose to keep the stink of the people out of his nostrils—was the embodiment of everything that was wrong in church and state. The villagers shared that antipathy—but acted on it. All London had been whispering about them for days. They’d gone into their local church, wrapped tarred rags around the rood, and set fire to it.

  Holbein only shrugged when he heard what Kratzer had to say. Whatever his opinion of the cardinal, he had no time for suicidal fools like the Rickmansworth villagers either. It had always been obvious what price they’d have to pay for their pointless act of desecration. Why die when there was life to be lived? He began shading his sketch. He was only half listening to his friend’s voice. Holbein had been mooching round the house for the past day and a half, unable to concentrate on anything.

  He’d finished the last few details of the family portrait. He hadn’t, after all, had to make the revisions Sir Thomas had said he’d wanted when he first saw the picture the night before last. More had come up to him the following morning, out here in the garden where he was hiding from the enervating heat, and given him the sweet look of a friend, and said, “I’ve been looking again at your work, Master Hans.” Holbein had nodded, warily. However proud he was of the picture, and the effect it had had on almost every member of the family when they’d seen themselves through his eyes, it hadn’t escaped his notice that it had made Sir Thomas and Dame Alice feel uncomfortable.

  But More went on, in his gentlest voice, “Meg has been praising your talent—she says you have the gift of showing God in a humble human face—and I’ve spent an hour in front of your picture this morning, and I must say I agree. You’ve made us a masterpiece that we can treasure forever.”

  And Holbein suddenly felt warmed again by the glow of the older man’s personality; warmed and cherished; until, that is, he realized that if More accepted the painting as it was, there would be nothing more to keep him here in Chelsea. “But,” he stammered, “don’t you want me to paint in your lutes and viols on the back shelf anymore? Or give Dame Alice a chair?” He could see now that More was holding a bulging purse in one hand—his fee, already counted out—but he wanted to delay taking it and accepting that it was time for him to move on. “I’ve already done the sketch of how the changes should be,” he said hastily, playing for time.

  He looked in his sketchbook, finding the sheet, pulling it out to present to his patron. But More only smiled and shook his head. “Your painting is beautiful as it is, Master Hans,” he said. “It would be graceless of me to demand alterations now. And yet”—there was the glimmer of mischief in the smile now—“one never likes to think a fruitful partnership is ending altogether. I’ve enjoyed our conversations; and I’ve enjoyed seeing your work develop more than you might realize. I’d like to think you might come back someday soon to visit us and—who knows?—perhaps, if we haven’t thought of something better to occupy you, you’ll paint us some more lutes then. So perhaps you’ll leave me the sketch?”

  It was better than polite. It was a warm and gracious conversation with a generous patron. But it was a final one. And it meant there was nothing left for Holbein to do here but frame the picture, get his things together, and go: a couple of days’ work at most. He just didn’t have the energy to begin. Perhaps it was the heat. Or perhaps it was Meg’s face, glowing with happiness, hardly bothering to do more than sketch a smile at him as she passed, rushing about her new work tending the sick with all the vitality he would like to be feeling. He had an uncomfortable feeling that John Clement—that schoolmaster with the irritatingly handsome profile, whom he disliked more every day, and whom he darkly suspected of toying with all the girls’ affections in general, and of having encouraged Meg’s sister to fall in love with him in particular—might finally be about to take her away. It was enough to try the patience of a saint.

  “So are you saying we should announce our sympathy for the villagers and leave London, eh, Kratzer?” he said now, not especially pleasantly. “I’ve got a wife waiting at home and a child I’ve never seen. My leave of absence from Basel is about to run out. You can’t stay here forever either.

  And all the stories you hear in London these days are as crazy as the stuff we left home to get away from. Bloody fools and bigots at one another’s throats over the meaning of God. Nothing but ugliness whichever way you look, and us sitting in this house pretending we believe a whole lot of things we don’t. I’d say it would be more honest just to go.”

  He laughed at the baffled, cross look appearing on Kratzer’s face. “But we won’t, will we?” he pursued, lashing out at his friend for being unprincipled because—as he really knew—he was disgruntled with himself for having been such a fool as to fall in love. “We like to tell ourselves it’s because we can’t help admiring Thomas More when we’re with him, however ugly he might look when he’s burning our Bibles. But deep down we both know the truth. We just never have the courage to say it. The real reason we’re here is that he’s doing us a power of professional good. Our careers are going far t
oo well to think of leaving.”

  It was only after Kratzer started stumping back up the path, looking hurt, after raising his arms helplessly and saying, “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. You sound . . . cynical. I don’t know what’s got into you recently,” that he began to feel sorry. Kratzer was a good man. He hadn’t deserved to be snapped at.

  He was drawing Meg’s face again. From memory. Lingering over each stroke of the pencil as if it were a caress (his studio was full of images of her now). Enjoying the shade he was sitting in. Wondering idly what to do; knowing there was nothing he could do; adding another touch to her eyes.

  When suddenly there was a rush of footsteps over the grass, and the kind of short snuffling breaths that almost certainly meant tears, and she was there with him in person. The pale face above the skinny girl’s body; the long nose; those eyes. Flinging herself into the green shade, almost knocking him over in her eagerness to hide. Then stopping dead at the sight of someone else in what she must have thought would be a private place.

  “Mistress Meg,” he said, so happy to see her that it took him a while to make sense of the appalled look on her tear-streaked face.

  “Oh.” She began edging back, poised for flight, not wanting to talk. “I . . .” And she began to turn away.

  But now that he’d seen the state she was in, he wasn’t going to let her go so easily. He lunged forward, dropping his sketchbook, and grabbed her by both upper arms. “You’re upset. What’s happened? What’s the matter?”

  There was no fight left in her. She was drooping in his grasp. He had the feeling she might fall over if he let her go. She looked up at him with eyes full of some nightmare. Her teeth were clenched, as if to stop them from chattering. It wasn’t horror at the sight of him, Holbein realized with relief. “Tell me,” he said, almost shaking her in his urgency.