The salt cellar, a foot high and particularly ornate, was set at the very top of the table, opposite a high chair thick with cushions. That meant nearly all the guests would be below the salt and therefore that a guest of the highest status was expected. I wondered if it might even be Cromwell.
Marchamount smiled and nodded round at the company. A dozen guests were standing talking, mostly older men, though there was a smattering of wives, some wearing heavy lead rouge to brighten their cheeks. Mayor Hollyes himself was there, resplendent in his red robes of office. The other men mostly wore Mercers’ Company livery, though there were a couple of clerics. Everyone was perspiring in the oppressive heat despite the open windows; the women in their wide farthingales looked especially uncomfortable.
A boy of about sixteen with long black hair and a thin, pale face, badly disfigured with a rash of spots such as boys sometimes have, was standing by himself in a corner, looking nervous. ‘That’s Henry Vaughan,’ Marchamount whispered. ‘Lady Honor’s nephew. Heir to the old Vaughan title and to their lands, such as they have left. She’s brought him down from Lincolnshire to try and get him received at court.’
‘He looks ill at ease.’
‘Yes, he’s a poor fellow; hardly cut out for the rumbustuous company the king likes.’ He paused, then said with sudden feeling, ‘I wish I had an heir.’ I looked at him in surprise. He smiled sadly. ‘My wife died in childbirth these five years past. We would have had a boy. When I began my petition to establish my family’s right to a coat of arms, it was in hope my wife and I would have an heir.’
‘I am sorry for your loss.’ Somehow it never occurred to me to see Marchamount as a man who could be bereaved and vulnerable.
He nodded at the mourning ring in the shape of a skull I wore. ‘You too have known loss,’ he said.
‘Yes. In the plague of ’thirty-four.’ Yet I felt a fraud as I spoke, not just because Katy had announced her betrothal to another shortly before she died but because these last two years I had thought of her less and less. I thought with sudden irritation I should stop wearing it.
‘Have you resolved that unpleasant matter we discussed earlier?’ Marchamount’s eyes were sharp, all sentiment gone.
‘I make progress. A strange thing happened in the course of my investigations.’ I told him of the books that had gone missing from the library.
‘You should tell the keeper.’
‘I may do.’
‘Will your investigation be - ah - hindered, without the books?’
‘Delayed a little only. There are other sources.’ I watched his face closely, but he only nodded solemnly. A serving man took up a horn and sounded a long note. The company fell silent as Lady Honor entered the room. She wore a wide, high-bosomed farthingale in brightest green velvet and a red French hood with loops of pearls hanging from it. I was pleased to see she wore no leaden rouge; her clear complexion had no need of it. But it was not to her that all eyes in the room turned; they fixed on the man who followed her, wearing a light scarlet robe edged with fur despite the heat, and a thick gold chain. My heart sank - it was the Duke of Norfolk again. I bowed with everyone else as he strode to the head of the table and stood eyeing the company haughtily. I wondered with a sinking heart whether he would remember I had been sitting next to Godfrey on Sunday; the last thing I wanted was to attract the notice of Cromwell’s greatest enemy.
Lady Honor smiled and clapped her hands. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please, take your places.’ To my surprise I was placed near the head of the table next to a plump middle-aged woman wearing an old-fashioned box hood and a square-cut dress, a large ruby brooch glinting on her bosom. On her other side Marchamount sat just below the duke. Lady Honor guided the nervous-looking boy to a chair next to Norfolk, who stared at him enquiringly.
‘Your grace,’ Lady Honor said, ‘may I present my cousin’s son, Henry Vaughan. I told you he was coming from the country.’
The duke clapped him on the shoulder, his manner suddenly friendly. ‘Welcome to London, boy,’ he said in his harsh voice. ‘It’s good to see the nobility sending their pups to court, to take their rightful place. Your grandfather fought with my father at Bosworth, did you know that?’
The boy looked more nervous than ever. ‘Yes, your grace.’
The duke looked him up and down. ‘God’s teeth, you’re a skinny fellow, we’ll have to build you up.’
‘Thank you, your grace.’