Sisters of Treason (8 page)

“You are only just fifteen. Hardly an old maid yet. Besides,
I
will be on the shelf with you, so you will not be alone.”

“I am sorry, Mouse,” she says, pushing Stan to the floor and rushing to the casement, where she sits on the window seat so we are the same height and holds out her little finger for me to take. “I wasn’t thinking; it was unkind of me to be so concerned with my own woes when . . .” She doesn’t say it, but what she means is, when
I
am too deformed to be of interest to anyone at all, ever.

She slides her wedding ring off, saying, “Here.” Then she lifts my hand very gently and slips it onto my middle finger. “You have pretty hands and a pretty face, and you may be small of stature but you have great intelligence; and you may be crooked but you are good and kind.” She pauses, and I can see that there are tears welling again in the corners of her eyes. “
I
am not good and kind. You are worth a dozen of me.”

As she is saying this I have a teary feeling in the back of my throat. I am not one for crying much, but my sister’s tenderness is making me go soft inside.

“
And
,” she adds, “there is Claude, who was Queen of France once. Have you not heard of her? She was crookbacked like you and she was married to King François . . . and she was boss-eyed to boot.”

I nod, taking a breath to quell my feelings. I am not sure that I want to know about Queen Claude of France, for knowledge of a crookbacked queen makes me feel less safe in my skewed body.

“What happened to her?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But she was mother to the next King of France and in France they named the greengage after her.”

“The greengage,” I repeat, thinking how ordinary a fruit it is. “And what fruit will be named for me? A gooseberry? I am as sour and as prickly.”

“Mouse! This is not like you.”

But I am thinking that it
is
like me.

“Your eyes are perfect. You see, all is not lost and you are of the blood, as Queen Claude was, so . . .” She leaves her words hanging and spreads out her arms as if to show me that the whole world is mine for the taking.

“Yes, Kitty,” I say, just to please her, my resentment hiding itself once more. “Of the blood, both of us.” This makes her smile, and when she smiles it is as if the sun is out. We can hear the clatter of people in Base Court returning from the tiltyard. “They will be going to sup. We had better go too before we are missed.”

We walk, little fingers clasped, to the hall where the boards are laid out and people are arriving. I watch my sister crane her neck, seeking out Harry Herbert. His father is here but he is not, and I can sense Katherine’s upset in her stiffness. Maman is over by the dais, beckoning us up to where the King and Queen are receiving. I take a breath and Katherine helps me up, for the steps are too high for me. We curtsy before Their Majesties and a fuss is made of the fact that we have changed, when everyone else has come straight from the jousting. Felipe moves away to where his men are
gathered and the Queen pats her lap—my cue to sit myself upon it—and I am back to playing her pet monkey again.

February 1555

Smithfield/Whitehall

Levina

Levina’s horse picks his way through the crowds. She is glad her groom is just up ahead for there is violence in the air. They are moving in the opposite direction to the river of people headed for Smithfield, where she has just been collecting new pigments from her supplier whose shop lies tucked in behind St. Bartholomew’s. She is due at Whitehall; the Cardinal is to sit for her. She fears being late for him and disgracing herself, but the crowds are thickening and increasingly frenzied. She had passed through the market square itself earlier and seen the stake at its center waiting for the prisoner to arrive and be strapped to the post for burning. It is the prebendary of St. Paul’s awaiting such a fate—he refused to revoke his beliefs. Levina has seen him about the city on occasion; he always seemed a reasonable man; his manner was gentle. She tries not to think of it, but wonders if it is coincidence that the burnings have begun so soon after the return of the Cardinal from his long exile in Rome, and the reinstatement of the old heresy laws.

A great roar goes up and her horse takes fright, rearing, its flailing hooves almost striking a man’s head.

“Get that blasted beast under control!” he shouts, waving his fist and baring his teeth like a cur.

Levina struggles with her nervous mount, made all the more agitated by the shouting, and is thankful when her groom grabs her bridle, coming in close, whispering in the animal’s ear and soothing him.

Another roar goes up in the square. “Oh God!” she cries, the words escaping her mouth involuntarily. The prisoner must have arrived. She had hoped to avoid this, but they are stuck and the crowds are pushing to see the spectacle before it is too late. She prays it will be over quickly, thankful for the strong breeze as the fire will burn well, and hopes that someone has thought to send the poor man a pouch of saltpeter to send him off quicker still. She feels a weight in her gut—that mild man, meeting such an end. She has never witnessed a burning and doesn’t want to.

She looks behind to check that Hero has kept up with them; his ears are back and she can see the whites of his eyes; even he has a sense that something bad is afoot, more than the usual rowdy mob. He can sense the bloodlust. She hears a tortured screech and sees a coil of smoke rising, wishing she hadn’t turned. It is blowing their way, catching their nostrils, woodsmoke and still that terrible screaming, striking to the heart of her. Then sickeningly there is a whiff of roast pork, which sets Levina’s mouth watering involuntarily. Disgusted with her body’s response, her eyes prickle and she wraps a kerchief tightly around her face to shut out the stench. Thankfully now the mob has thinned and they can pick up the pace.

•  •  •

Cardinal Pole sits before Levina, his hands folded in his lap. He has not spoken a single word; it is as if she doesn’t exist. Perhaps he doesn’t like being painted by a woman. But it is the Queen’s commission, so he has no choice in the matter. He avoids meeting her gaze. His hooded brown eyes give the appearance of kindness, but Levina is sure they are deceiving. She cannot get that terrible stench out of her mind, it clings to her clothes; she fears it will never wash out of her and that she will be cursed with the sound of that anguished howl reverberating about her head forever.

There are five more imprisoned awaiting the same fate next week, and that is just the beginning. Archbishop Cranmer has
been taken. They will want to make an exhibition of
him
—the one who annulled the marriage of the eighth Henry and the Queen’s mother, rendering Mary Tudor a bastard. The Queen will have her revenge now. Levina asks herself how much of it is driven by the man sitting before her, how much the King, how much the Queen. She has taken to attending Mass daily, even at home away from court, for you never can tell who might be watching and Bishop Bonner has eyes everywhere. George had been right to get rid of her English Bible.

She puts down her brush to look at her sitter more carefully, watching the light play on the jewel in his ring, stretching her hand down absently to stroke Hero’s ear. Pole has an abundance of beard, which obscures his features, making him hard to read. She tries to tease the man out from those eyes that will not look at her. But she struggles to depict him, so focuses on rendering the red of his robes, mixing a vermilion pigment paste, looking carefully at how the scarlet satin is touched with a bright sheen, almost white, where the light kisses it and how it darkens in the folds, to the color of blood.

She cracks an egg, allowing the white to slip through her fingers into a bowl and rolling the tender glob of yolk around in her palm to dry it a little, so it takes on a thicker texture. She takes up her knife and slices through the yolk’s membrane, dripping it into the pigment, stirring fast until it reaches the perfect consistency, looking again at the Cardinal’s robes, adding a few grains of cadmium. She rarely uses egg tempera these days, but this picture, with its crimson expanses, calls for it. She hears her father’s voice: “It will still be bright a thousand years hence.” He said it more than once of tempera.

She begins to apply the color in tiny cross-hatched strokes. The Cardinal heaves out a deep breath, shifting in his seat. His robes settle differently, which irritates her, for she felt she was on the brink of something with her red pigments. There was a dead cat hung from a gibbet. She saw it the other day on her way to the
vellum merchant at Cheapside. Someone had dressed the creature in a cardinal’s habit. After six firm years of reform under the boy King Edward they do not suppose it will be such a smooth transition to return the English to the Catholic faith, do they? People are not so malleable, and Levina is beginning to believe that if those who feared the Inquisition finding its way to these shores with the Spaniard might have been right. There is a palpable sense of fear hanging over the city, and she is wondering too if the people have come to regret favoring Mary Tudor when there was a choice to be made, if they might not be ruing the day they rejected Jane Grey.

The English are looking for alternatives; they fear becoming an annex of Catholic Spain. Elizabeth’s name is whispered about, as is Katherine Grey’s. There are many who would have either one of those girls on the throne tomorrow. It is no wonder Frances is sick with worry, and Levina wishes there were something tangible she could do to help. The King wants Elizabeth married off to the Duke of Savoy, a cousin of his, and safely packed off to the Continent. But the girl resists, and her will seems greater than the whole of the Privy Council put together, so she festers at Woodstock out of harm’s way and under watchful eyes. As long as Elizabeth remains unwed and on these shores, the danger to Katherine is lessened. But the Catholic heir that the Queen has in her belly may save the Greys yet, particularly if it is a boy. She counts in her head: six full months since the wedding—that baby must be half cooked by now. She sets down the crimson paint, wiping her brush on a rag.

The Cardinal’s hands are slightly clenched and his knuckles are yellow like shelled nuts. Levina looks again at the shiftiness in his eyes, the way they refuse to meet hers. What is buried beneath that beard, beyond a slash of pink mouth? She takes her fine brush to render the coarse chestnut hair, woven through with steely threads. It is an attempt to find truth in the detail. She imagines a looser style, creating more the idea of a scene or a person, rather than attempting such verisimilitude. It is something she had discussed
much with her father. The way in which, however akin to life, there is something, an essence, a movement, that resists capture. Levina feels, when she is attempting a likeness, that she must render not only what can be seen but also what is hidden. The light drops quite suddenly and she looks to the window, where sodden sludge-colored clouds are billowing, flattening the hues of the Cardinal, rendering his skin an unappealing shade of gray. She finds herself thinking it is fortunate that the rain held off this morning, for that poor man’s death would have taken longer still with the wood damp, then is suddenly aware of the irony of her thoughts—nothing is fortunate about it, only marginally better.

“I fear the light has gone, Your Grace,” she says. “May I beg an hour more of your time tomorrow?”

He looks at her at last, with the words, “Show me,” prodding a hand towards the painting.

Levina does not usually allow her sitters to see themselves unfinished, unless she knows them well, but the Cardinal’s manner makes her feel unable to refuse, so she takes down the portrait, which is not large, not even a foot across. Holding it carefully by the edges, so as not to smudge the wet paint, she holds it up for him. He cranes his neck forward.

“Closer.” He speaks to her as if commanding a dog to perform a trick. She moves towards him; as she nears she can smell the incense that clings to his robes and can see more clearly the gauntness that hangs about his face. He looks in silence for some time, seeming satisfied, which is a relief to her for she has not tried to flatter him as she does with some. Then he reaches out a finger towards the close work of his beard. “The detail,” he says, seemingly to himself. But as he speaks he over-reaches, touching the paint, smearing all the fine hairs Levina has spent the better part of the last hour rendering and leaving a russet mark on his finger. “Oh . . . I . . . I didn’t . . .” He appears unable to spit out an apology, though he is clearly embarrassed by his own clumsiness. For a fragment of time he seems just like an awkward aging man
and she thinks it
may
be kindness, or something like it, she sees in those eyes after all.

“It can easily be redone, Your Grace,” she says, handing him a rag to wipe his hand. At least he can’t refuse her another sitting now. She begins to clean her brushes, rubbing the excess paint off them with a rag, popping the cork out of the jar of spirit. It makes her eyes smart, and the sour smell seeps out into the room. She watches from the side of her vision as the Cardinal clicks his fingers sharply to beckon his page. She wants to catch him when he thinks he is not observed, trying to discover a little more of the man through the occasional fissure in his careful veneer. As the boy helps him out of his seat, he seems to creak like an old door on the hinges of his gouty knees. The two of them cross the room, the Cardinal leaning heavily on the boy. Levina drops into a deep curtsy when they near and he surprises her by stopping and saying with a vague smile, “You are blessed with a gift, Mistress Teerlinc. It is a sign God favors you.”

“I am most grateful for your kind words, Your Grace.” She sees that he notices, with an almost indiscernible nod, the rosary hanging from her girdle. It is an old one, a relic from her grandmother, and the wooden beads are worn down with use. She imagines he must think their erosion a sign of her faith—everyone is dissimulating in this place, one way or another.