London (85 page)

For several seconds she was so shocked that she did not move, but stood there staring idiotically. The woman who, expecting her to retire discreetly, had not altered her position, with a look of annoyance now lowered her feet to the ground while King Henry, to her amazement, calmly turned to face her.

What should she do? It seemed too late to run. Unaware that she was even doing so, she put her hand up to the cross she was wearing. How was one supposed to behave? Should she curtsy? Her body seemed paralysed. And then King Henry spoke.

“So, Mistress: you have seen the king today.”

She realized: it was her cue. This was the moment to say something amusing, to make the business pass off lightly. She racked her brains. Nothing came. Worse: without thinking, she had allowed her eyes to wander.

She couldn’t help it. She might have been taken aback by the sight of Henry, but now, as her gaze travelled down and she remembered the king’s reputation as a lover, she found herself thinking: he is no different from my husband. Rather less in fact. She also noticed something else. The shirt that Henry was wearing had come partly undone. The splendid figure she remembered lifting her up as a child was still recognizable, but time had taken its toll upon Henry; the thirty-four-inch waist of his prime had swelled to almost fifty-four, and the great, hairy, overhanging gut of which she caught a glimpse did not seem very appealing. She looked up to his face.

And Henry smirked.

That was what did it. She had seen that look before. Most princes had mistresses: it was to be expected. But this was different. After all the difficulties – the putting aside of a loyal wife, the problem with the Pope, the marriage to Anne – now with the all-important heir almost born and his new queen probably not a hundred yards away, this overweight king was casually indulging himself in a garden where anyone might see. That look said it all: guilty but triumphant, it was the greedy grin of the lecher. The heroic and pious king she had revered was suddenly a shadow; in the flesh, under the harsh light of the sun, she saw he was merely vulgar. She felt disgust.

Henry saw it. Very coolly, he fastened the cod-piece back in place while the lady, with practised swiftness, rearranged her dress. By the time he looked up again, the grin had vanished. “Methinks this lady has a sullen look.” The voice was quiet, and dangerous. He addressed the words to his companion, who gave a little shrug. He stared at Susan. “We do not know this lady,” he said with deliberate evenness; and then, loudly: “But we like her not!” And suddenly, remembering his power, Susan felt herself go cold.

“What is your name?”

Dear God. Had she just ruined her husband’s career before it had even begun? Her heart sank.

“Susan Bull, sire.” She saw him frown. His memory, as every courtier knew, was formidable, but it seemed the name of Bull meant nothing. “Your name before marriage?” he abruptly demanded.

“Meredith, sire.” Had she destroyed her brother too?

But there was a just perceptible change. His brow seemed to clear a little.

“Your brother is Thomas Meredith?”

She nodded. He looked thoughtful.

“Your father was our friend.” He gazed at her carefully now. “Are you our friend?”

He was offering her a chance, for her father’s sake. She knew she must take it. “Kings,” Thomas had once said, “have only friends or enemies.” Whatever her private feelings at his behaviour, she could not let her family down. She made her deepest curtsy.

“I have been Your Majesty’s friend all my life,” she said. And then, with a smile: “When I was a little girl, Your Majesty held me in his arms.” It was, she hoped, everything it should be: friendly yet submissive.

Henry watched carefully. He was an expert in submission. “See to it that you remain so,” he said quietly, and motioned that she should withdraw. But then, with one of those astonishing transformations that are the prerogative of kings, he suddenly decided to continue.

“You did wrong to come upon us in such a way,” he remarked gravely. It was a gentle, but firm rebuke. She bowed her head. From this moment, she instantly realized, in the royal mind, the incident would be marked down as her fault, and in no way his. It was always so with Henry. Any courtier could have told her. She began to withdraw.

Just as she reached the entrance to the garden, she turned and, thinking to reassure him of her loyalty blurted out: “I saw nothing, sire, when I was here.”

And the instant she said it, she realized her terrible mistake. By her thoughtless words she had just implied that he had something to hide, that, even for a moment, she had enjoyed a moral superiority over him. It was an impertinence. It was dangerous. He scowled and waved her to be gone; and so, miserably confused, she backed away, wishing that the ground of Hampton Court would open up and swallow her.

As she came away, she was trembling, not so much at the threat to herself and her family but because she had discovered in that horrible moment that in the innermost heart of the kingdom, stripped of the pomp and pious façade, lay a hideous corruption.

Dan Dogget waited and tried to look calm; but it was not easy, under the circumstances.

It was a cloudy September day; a sharp wind was passing across the waterfront at Greenwich and the grey-green Thames waters were choppy.

Nothing had altered in the last few weeks. Margaret and the children had settled in well enough at Hampton Court, but he still hadn’t found a berth for his truculent old father.

It was six weeks since he had first rowed Meredith, with two of his family, from Hampton Court one August evening; but straight away he had judged he was a coming man. At journey’s end, he had offered his services again, and before long had become Meredith’s regular boatman, picking him up whenever required. He had even put a fresh coat of paint on the boat and made sure he was cleanly turned out on each occasion; and the young man seemed to like the arrangement. In doing this, the waterman had no definite plan, but as his father would say: “Get on the right side of a gentleman and he may do you some good.” A week ago, an opening had come. Meredith had casually remarked that he was surprised such a fine-looking fellow was not working on one of the smarter barges. During the trip, from Chelsea to the city, Dan had explained his predicament. Meredith had said nothing, but two days later, on his way to Westminster from Greenwich he had remarked: “And if I could help you, good fellow, how would you serve me?”

“Why sir,” Dan had eagerly replied, “I’d do whatever you ask. But I think,” he added regretfully, “that you cannot help me get a barge.”

The young courtier had smiled. “My master,” he said quietly, “is Secretary Cromwell.” Square-jawed, surly-eyed, a man so compact he was like a boulder: everyone knew that, since the fall of Wolsey, it was Thomas Cromwell who ruled England for the king. Dan had not realized how well connected the young man was.

So when, just as he left him that morning, Meredith had casually remarked “I may have news for you today”, he had left the waterman in an agitated state.

When Dan Dogget considered the two great Tudor palaces on the Thames between which he plied his trade, they always seemed like two different worlds. Hampton, nearly twenty miles away upstream, amidst its lush meadows and woods, felt as though it was deep inland. But as soon as he passed the Tower, and entered the river’s great eastern loop, his heart began to beat with a different pulse. He would take a deep breath, and think he smelt a salty breeze; the sky seemed somehow wider; he was on his way to the open sea where everything was possible.

The palace of Greenwich shared this bracing air. Beside the old hamlet, its brown brick walls and turrets stretched right along the waterfront. It had a great tiltyard – for though, since the Wars of the Roses, improved firearms had made heavy armour out of date, Henry loved the dangerous sport and pageantry of the joust, in which he took an active part himself. There was a huge armoury on the eastern side of the palace, and a short distance upstream lay the Tudors’ new dockyard of Deptford, where seagoing vessels were fitted out and the air was redolent of tar.

Dan Dogget had always loved the place. He wondered if it would be lucky for him today.

Thomas Meredith’s career was progressing well. Thanks to a friendship recently formed with the new and still youthful Archbishop Cranmer, he had been allowed a privileged place at the christening of the new royal baby in the chapel in Greenwich Palace today. The baby had been wrapped in a purple mantle with an ermine train. With several other courtiers, Thomas had stood with a towel to receive the baby naked from the font. Cranmer had been godfather. They had given the baby a resounding and royal name: Elizabeth.

The birth of the eagerly awaited heir had turned out to be an unpleasant surprise: it was a girl. Queen Anne Boleyn was embarrassed; the court, considering all the king had been through, was shocked; Henry himself put the best face on it he could. The baby was healthy. There would be others. For the time being therefore, in the eyes of the English Church, the baby was heiress to the throne since, by annulling the king’s first marriage, Cranmer had made Princess Mary, technically, illegitimate. As for the view from the Vatican, it was impossible to say, since the Pope had still not given his decision between the king’s two marriages.

As he approached the wherry, Meredith smiled to himself. Here was his waterman, looking expectant. He took his seat without a word. Dogget cast off. Deciding to keep the fellow in suspense a few more minutes, Meredith waited until they were opposite the Deptford docks before he spoke. “Well, fellow, do you still seek a barge?”

“Aye, sir. But what barge?”

He saw the courtier smile. “Why, the king’s barge, fellow,” he quietly replied.

For a moment, Dogget was so astonished that he forgot to make his stroke. He stared open mouthed at Meredith. He was not sure exactly how much these lucky aristocrats of his trade were paid, but probably double what anyone else got. The king was also constantly moving up and down river, with Greenwich as his favourite residence, and with less frequent trips to Richmond and Hampton Court. He began to stammer his thanks, but Meredith raised his hands.

“It may be that I can find a lodging for your father too,” he continued, and seeing Dan gasp, he smiled again.

If asked why he, a young man already making friends with the greatest men in the kingdom, should concern himself with a humble waterman, Thomas Meredith would have had no trouble explaining himself. It was the courtier’s instinct – the same instinct that made him find Rowland his place with the chancellor – that you cannot have too many friends. Who could guess what service, at some future date, this fellow could do him in return? The art was to have dozens of such people, in every place imaginable, upon whom you could call.

“I am much in your debt, sir,” the awestruck Dogget said.

A week later, Meredith was as good as his word.

Perhaps in all London at this time, no place was more respected than the large grey-walled monastery that lay a short distance east of old St Bartholomew’s Hospital just outside the city wall. As well as the communal buildings, its chief feature was a large courtyard surrounded by little houses, each with its own tiny garden; and each of these was the cell of an individual monk. Its inhabitants, the Carthusians, were not the most ancient of orders; but unlike most others, no word of scandal had ever been whispered about them. Their rule was strict. Silence was maintained except on Sundays. The monks did not go out without the prior’s permission. They were above reproach. This was the Charterhouse.

A curious little procession formed outside its gateway that sunny day. At its head was Thomas Meredith. Behind him came a couple who had, until shortly before, been tending their stall in the street nearby – a profitable little venture selling crucifixes, rosaries and a splendid collection of brightly painted plaster figures. The man, whose name was Fleming, was of medium height, with a rather concave face; his wife as tall as he and stout, had for some minutes already been heaping praises upon the courtier, and the monks, for their wonderful kindness to her father: which was no doubt in order since she herself, for more than five years, had refused to take any interest in the old man. And bringing up the rear, his arm firmly held by Daniel who was now splendidly dressed in the livery of the king’s watermen, came Will Dogget.

He was somewhat stooped now, or he would have been as tall as his son. Though dressed in a clean shirt and tunic, and with his long grey beard freshly brushed, there was something vaguely disreputable about the old man’s walk which suggested that, after a lifetime of cheerfully doing as he liked, he was liable at any second to veer off in pursuit of pleasure. But now he had come to live in the Charterhouse.

There was not a religious house in London without its quota of dependants. Ruined gentlemen living quietly in furnished monastic cells; widows who did laundry or just swept the cloisters; to say nothing of the gang of hungry folk who were fed at the gates each day. Even the sternest critics of the more lax monastic orders would readily admit that they all fed and cared for the poor.

Though his brother Peter had not returned to the London Charterhouse yet, Thomas Meredith knew enough of the monks to beg a place for the old man. He would sleep in a cell with two other old fellows and work in the garden.

“You’re to behave yourself, now,” his son admonished him a few minutes later. “If you get thrown out of here, that’s it. I’m not taking you back.” To all of this, in his habitually cheerful manner, Will Dogget listened with a smile. “Though God knows how long he’ll last,” Dan remarked to his sister when they got outside.

Before leaving he went over to Meredith and bowed to him. “How can I repay you, sir?” he said.

Meredith smiled.

“I’ll think of something,” he said.

For Susan too, this was a happy time. In late summer, she and Rowland took a little house in Chelsea. It was charming, made of brick and oak beams with a tiled roof. There were two chambers on the upper floor, attics, outbuildings and a pleasant garden that led down to the river.