‘Madge,’ the Queen scolded my mistress, ‘shame on you for bringing your maid outside on such a cold morning wearing only a flimsy cloak. Go fetch her a fur bonnet before her ears be frozen. Come Avis, walk with me a little.’
‘I have something for you,’ Queen Anne said when my mistress was gone. She reached inside her mantle and from the folds of her heavy sleeve she brought out a cambric bonnet that she had been working for the baby she had lost. The blackwork stitching was exquisite but unfinished.
‘It is a bonnet for a prince.’ She tucked it into my sleeve. ‘Keep it safe for me. I waited for you, Avis. Don’t you know that I waited for you to give me some sign, to tell me of the bonny prince I carried. Why do you think I brought you to court? I have watched you sewing, or tending to Mistress Shelton’s attire and when I caught your eye you hid behind your mistress, too shy to so much as glance at the Queen, that queen who remembered her promise to you and has brought you higher than a mean girl who weeded the gardens could ever have dreamed.’
We walked beside the hedge and I said nothing. What was there to say? She knew that when she carried Princess Elizabeth I told her only what I truly believed. What was I supposed to do if I foresaw no living child?
‘We will all be happier, Your Grace, when the summer is here,’ I said trying to sound cheerful.
‘Oh, yes, indeed, how I wish for the mayflowers, the harbingers of summer.’
‘My mother would say that we are wishing our lives away.’
‘Your mother has brought you up to be a good, honest girl,’ the Queen said. ‘When I came to you at Hatfield Palace and questioned you about my child, you told me it was too early for you to know, and I believed you. Did you lie to me Avis? Did you know that my first boy would never live?’
I bowed my head.
‘Never fear, Avis, I understand,’ she said kindly. ‘I will not ask you again. Next time my boy will be strong and when you see that this is so, you will not need to say anything at all, only return the little bonnet to me and I will know.’
‘If the child is a healthy girl?’
‘If you do not return the bonnet I will know that I carry a maid child. There will be no more stillbirths, there cannot be. God would never be so unkind. When the roses bloom, you will seek me in my garden and return the bonnet and I will be so happy to know the good news.’
‘There is something I need to tell you, Your Grace,’ I faltered.
‘What? I am not with child. Not now, it cannot be.’
Next time, I had promised myself, I would do everything I could to help the Queen take her pregnancy full term. I remembered the day almost three years ago, when the miller’s wife had lost her newborn son and Aunt Bess had told me what I could give to a woman to break the pattern of miscarriages and stillbirths. ‘Watch the pattern of Queen Anne’s childbearing,’ she had said, and I had watched and indeed the pattern was just the same as Queen Katherine’s and that miller’s wife.
‘There is something you can do, Your Grace, to ensure a healthy child, to prevent the child from leaving the womb too soon. There are herbs, potions that midwives know of that will …’
‘Be silent, wench, the Queen snapped. ‘Would you have me swallow a witch’s potion. Such concoctions are the devil’s work.’
‘It is herbal medicine, Your Grace, nothing more, just such as you might take for a headache or a stomach pain. My aunt is a midwife, she knows these things, she has helped many women but she is not a witch. Your Grace, I beg you ...’
‘I have told you before, Avis,’ the Queen said more gently. ‘Remember, I told you that it is faith that saves us. I will have no potion. My faith is strong. I will pray to God and he will save me. He will give me a living son. When the mayflowers bloom you will see a baby boy growing – but hush, here comes Mistress Madge, tell her nothing of this.’ The Queen smiled. ‘When she asks about our conversation, as she will do, what will you say?’
‘I shall tell her we talked of mayflowers,’ I said.
Mistress Madge brought a white fur bonnet shaped like a little gable hood with a peek at the top and sides. They were very fashionable amongst ladies at this time and were called lettuce caps. I was so proud to wear it. The Queen herself pulled it gently over my ears. While we walked around the garden I pulled off my gloves and ran my fingers through the soft fur so often that Mistress Shelton feared that it would moult and smacked my knuckles.
I was not the only one to offer advice to the Queen that day. My mistress was more persuasive than I. When they rested on a bench she told the Queen what she should do to make the King love her again.
‘You must make the King jealous if you want him to leave the Seymour woman and return to you,’ she said. ‘Flirt with some of the King’s men here in your chambers. Let the King know that they admire your beauty. Henry will not let himself be given cuckold’s horns by the gentlemen of his own Privy Chamber.’
‘You know full well that I will not permit lewd behaviour in my apartments.’
‘Just courtly games of love, nothing more.’
‘It is for the gentleman to begin such games. I am Queen, I cannot … they cannot ...’
‘Fie, fie, I have seen how Will Brereton seeks out your company for your conversation and your wit. Let him come closer, let the King see him whisper into your ear. As for Smeaton and that lustful poet, Wyatt, they make a cuckold of the King every time they look at you.’
‘This is a very dangerous game you would have me play, Madge. It is treason to contemplate adultery with a queen.’
‘We talk only of chivalrous games, Cousin Anne, to make the King love you again. You must make the King remember how beautiful you are. You cannot let that tight-lipped Seymour woman steal your husband and do nothing. Such forbearance as Katherine endured towards Henry’s mistresses is not in your nature.’
Chapter 29
Spring 1536
The Queen called for her favourite painter, Hans Holbein, to complete a portrait he had begun before Christmas.
I was sitting on a stool stitching shirts for the poor with the other ladies’ maids. The Queen posed on her dais beneath her canopy with her greyhound, Urian, sleeping at her feet. Mark Smeaton was playing his lute and I thought every word he sang was for the Queen, for he looked towards no other lady. My mistress was sitting within a little semi-circle of sewing ladies. She was stitching a lawn ruffle on to the cuff of a gentleman’s cambric shirt. It was supposed to have been a New Year present for Sir Henry Norris but it was far from finished.
‘Do you intend to present it to Sir Henry for a betrothal gift at next year’s New Year festivities’ Lady Rochford enquired, ‘for it appears that neither of you are in a hurry to marry?’
‘Norris is quite impatient to wed,’ Mistress Madge replied without looking up from her work. ‘As to the shirt, I am proud of my neatness and will not be compromised by haste, whatever the occasion.’
‘Does the Queen intend this portrait to be a present for the King?’ the Little Duchess asked. ‘It is meant to be a gift to commemorate the third anniversary of her coronation in June,’ Lady Lee said.
‘Master Hans is very much at ease with the Queen while he paints. See how he smiles and gossips just as he would if she were merely the wife of a merchant,’ Lady Rochford said. ‘I’m surprised that the Queen allows him to be so familiar with her.’
‘Nonsense, Jane, the artist has to ensure that his sitter is at ease or else he will not manage to reproduce a true likeness,’ Lady Lee promptly replied.
‘Brereton and Weston are also over-familiar with my sister-in-law. I have not seen them painting portraits.’
‘Perhaps you would wish those gentlemen to ignore my cousin, the Queen, and to pay yourself a little attention in the absence of your husband’s affection,’ Mistress Madge said and thus put an end to the conversation.
The artist looked towards where I was sitting. ‘Come, come, kleine mädchen,’ he beckoned to me. Flustered, I dropped my needlework and glanced at Mis
tress Madge whereupon she nodded her approval and I approached the dais making my curtseys to the Queen. The artist placed a stool sideways between himself and Queen Anne and indicated that I should sit. The Queen showed her consent by a kindly smile to me and a slight incline of her head to the artist.
Mistress Madge had told me that portrait painting was highly fashionable and much in demand. Master Hans had painted portraits of Sir John and Lady Shelton some years previously and these days he was kept very busy at court. I thought that he must earn many thousands of marks for his paintings.
He cupped my chin firmly in one hand and turned to the Queen. ‘Pray, allow me tell you something of the form of the human face, madam.’
I liked his voice, the way he spoke English with a foreigner’s strange accent. He studied my face while I tried to hide myself somewhere inside my head where he couldn’t see. His face was so close to mine I could see little red veins on his broad cheeks and the pores where the black wiry hairs of his beard curled all in opposite directions. If I touched them would they feel as coarse as horsehair? The urge to reach out my fingers made me want to giggle.
He pushed my chin upwards. ‘This maid’s face is not symmetrical. Her eyes are not perfectly level nor are they of the same form or size: see madam, the right is larger, the lid fuller. What is the colour of this maid’s eyes? She will answer “blue”. Yes? Not so: verdant green, cobalt blue, white light, these colours also, I see in this maid’s eyes. Look, madam.’
He placed his hand over the right side of my face. Then he covered the left side. ‘Now madam, pray, look again. Two halves, identical, yes? No so! This is the form of the human face. This is the seed from which I create a portrait.’
The artist stepped back a little and studied my face. Both of us can do this, I said to myself, looking into his eyes as he did mine. It is not bad manners. It is art.
His large heavy-lidded eyes appeared friendly. I thought my father would have got along with him well enough if they had ever met. And what the artist had said about my face not being symmetrical was true of his own. His right eye was smaller than the left, which was rounder, had a deeper lid and a raised eyebrow. His eyes weren’t brown or grey or green, but a mixture of all three. The very same hue as Tom’s eyes, I thought. And unexpectedly, a bolt of sadness struck through me inside my ribs, making me shudder. The artist raised his left eyebrow even higher.
‘Do you fear that I see inside your soul, kleine mädchen?’
I must have looked horrified because he laughed. ‘Forgive me, I only tease.’
His was a friendly mouth and pretty too, if it had been upon a maid’s face, the way the top lip curved either side of his long straight nose. I supposed his square face would look even broader if he hadn’t such a fine nose, but a lumpy one, like mine.
‘Surely, it is possible for a person to have a perfectly formed face?’ the Queen suggested and stroked each of her cheekbones with the three middle fingers of her right hand.
‘You think, perhaps that symmetry is at one with beauty, madam?’
‘True beauty is to be found in perfection, is it not, Master Hans?’
‘Beauty is a perception, madam: it is for a person to seek and he will find it wherever he will. Perfection comes not into it at all.’
‘Is beauty found in imperfections?’ She glanced at her fingers in her lap then swiftly tucked the little finger of her right hand behind the thumb to hide the extra nail. ‘How so Master Hans? How is it that something blemished can be beautiful? Is not a blemish an evil thing?’
‘Evil, madam, I cannot comprehend. That is for priests or sorcerers to explain. I look not for perfection in the sitter’s face. I look for the play of eyes and mouth; neither one, nor the other, but the product of both.’ He was speaking faster now. ‘The whole is greater than the sum of the parts and this is what I capture with my brush and my colours. You think, madam, that this is all I do to capture the integrity of the sitter. Yes? Not so. Also I paint their hopes, fears, loves, dreams. Thus, do my sitters live inside their portraits.’
He can see into my soul, I thought, feeling naked. He knows all about me just by looking into my face.
‘And what of beauty?’ the Queen asked.
‘I think perhaps, madam, that you would have me capture beauty like a butterfly in a net. Yes? Not so. One man finds beauty where another sees ugliness.’
Queen Anne frowned. Did she understand what Master Hans was saying? That there is nothing beautiful in the world unless a person sees it so. I thought how Anne Boleyn had so beguiled the King with her dark beauty that he had discarded his wife and the Pope to have her. Maybe she was thinking that the King had seen beauty in her face one day and sought it elsewhere the next, in plain Mistress Seymour.
I liked what Master Hans had said. Just as soon as I could, I would borrow my mistress’s looking glass and study my face, look for all those colours in my eyes.
The artist clenched and unclenched his hands if he were kneading dough in mid-air. His voice became louder, his words even faster.
‘The features, they change, always, they change. They are a looking glass in which I see humour, temper, spirit. In this maid’s eyes within these few moments I have seen cheerfulness, fear, sorrow and hope. You ask, madam, about the true nature of portraiture. To capture the humours that reveal the living being; this is my work; this is my art.’
‘Which you manage to perfection, Master Hans,’ a deep, grinding voice declared.
The man who entered the chamber fingered the sable collar to his black gown and with a sweeping bow addressed the Queen.
‘Your Grace, I plead forgiveness for intruding. I come from the King. His Majesty would see you in his apartments at your pleasure.’
‘You are the King’s messenger these days, Master Cromwell? Was there no page at hand?’ the Queen asked with a catch in her breath that began as a laugh but managed to finish almost as a sneer and I thought, they do not like each other. They are behaving like friends who have had a falling out.
Mistress Madge had told me the Queen had argued with Master Secretary Cromwell about the review of the monastic houses. She favoured gentle reform and endowments for charitable causes from the monastic wealth. Cromwell and the King wanted dissolution and profit for the Crown. But this was not the only reason for the bitterness between them. Everyone knew that Master Secretary had recently vacated his chambers adjacent to the King’s and given them to the Seymours. Queen Anne was in a terrible temper when she discovered this. There was a secret gallery leading directly from the King’s chambers to where Mistress Seymour was lodged.
The secretary spoke in a level tone that poorly disguised hostility with politeness.
‘I have saved His Majesty’s page the trouble, madam, hoping to catch Master Hans for a little business when you are finished. He has hardly a minute to spare for his friends these days,’
‘You wish to commission another portrait, Master Secretary, to display your chain of office about your neck?’
‘Purely a social arrangement, madam,’ he replied reddening as he bowed again. ‘The most excellent portrait Master Hans accomplished almost three years ago will suffice.’
The Queen rose from her seat and roused the greyhound from its slumber. Mark Smeaton ceased his playing. The artist and the secretary bowed, like two actors at the finish of a masque. The Queen’s ladies ceased their chattering and their skirts rustled together in one billowing obeisance. While I crouched in a low curtsey the curved train of the Queen’s gown swept over my skirts and I could not resist the temptation to stroke the soft velvet as it passed. Raising my head a little I glanced sideways. The Queen hesitated at the doorway where a page, clad in her blue and purple livery, clipped a lead on Urian’s jewelled collar. Calling for Lady Lee to accompany her, she left the chamber.
Master Secretary grabbed the artist by his elbow and shook his hand vigorously, ‘How now Master Hans, well met, well met indeed. I am having a few friends to my house this Wednesday eve
for supper and a small banquet afterwards. You are most welcome, most welcome indeed.’
‘Many thanks, Master Secretary, you are most kind.’
‘Do come, do come,’ insisted Cromwell who was still shaking the artist’s hand. ‘Our Hanseatic merchant friends from the steelyard look forward to your company.’
‘My good friend, the merchant, Master Georg Gisze? He, also, is your guest?’
‘He and several other of your clients are invited and others too who may request your services in the future.’
‘Master Georg Gisze was the first merchant in England to welcome me. He was newly betrothed and commissioned a portrait to honour the occasion.’
The artist turned to his painting and put one or two little dabs with a brush so small that I marvelled that he should ever finish a painting of the size Mistress Madge had described. He appeared to have forgotten that I was sitting on the stool where he had placed me and I would have quietly returned to my mistress but Master Secretary blocked my way.
‘Now there is a man, who understands art,’ the artist said, without turning away from his painting. ‘His commission gave me freedom to test my skill to the utmost.’
‘Truly,’ replied Cromwell, ‘young Master Gisze sits on the wall in his great portrait as real as if he were in his office conducting business before us.’
‘It is the detail, Master Secretary.’ The artist spoke faster. He put down his brush and began to knead dough in the air again. ‘This is the paradox. To bespeak the truth, I must misshape reality.’
‘You speak in riddles, Master Hans. Such wit will truly grace my dining table.’
‘It is the distortion of the instruments in the background that enhances the reality, my dear friend. Master Gisze understood this, for which, to him I owe much thanks. I look forward to your dinner, Master Secretary.’
‘The pleasure will be mine and my guests’ also.’
Master Hans will look very out of place, I thought, sitting at dinner in Cromwell’s grand house amongst the well-to-do merchants and velvet and furred courtiers, wearing his plain blue jerkin with his simple net about his head. Perhaps he has some better clothes for such occasions.
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