THEY SAT IN A LONG ROW behind a table covered with green velvet, six members of the King’s Privy Council, the supreme body answerable to him for the administration of the realm. All wore the finest robes, gold chains and jewelled caps. Philip Coleswyn and Edward Cotterstoke and I were given seats facing them, the three Tower guards who had brought us in taking places behind us. My heart pounded as I thought, this was where Anne Askew had sat, and many others as well these last few months, to answer the same charge of heresy.
Sir Thomas Wriothesley, Lord Chancellor of England, waved a beringed hand in front of his face. ‘God’s death, they stink of the Tower gaol. I’ve said before, can people not be washed before they are brought here?’ I looked at him, remembering his fear at Anne Askew’s burning that the gunpowder round the necks of the condemned might hurt the great men of the realm when it exploded. Nor did I forget that he had tortured Anne Askew together with Rich. He caught me looking at him and glared at my presumption, fixing me with cold green little pebble eyes.
All the councillors had documents before them, but Sir William Paget, sitting at the centre of the table in his usual dark silken robe, had a veritable mound of paperwork. The square pale face above the long dark beard was cold, the thin-lipped mouth severe.
On Paget’s left sat Wriothesley, then Richard Rich. Rich’s face was expressionless. He had made a steeple of his slim white fingers and looked down, his grey eyes hooded. Next to him Bishop Stephen Gardiner, in cassock and stole, made a complete contrast. With his heavy build and powerful features, he was all force and aggression. He laid broad, hairy hands on the table and leaned forward, inspecting us with fierce, deep-set eyes. The council’s leading traditionalist, with his supporters Wriothesley and Rich beside him. I wondered if he had known of Anne Askew’s torture.
Two other councillors sat to Paget’s right. One I hoped was a friend: Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, tall and slim, his face and body all sharp angles. He was sitting upright. I sensed a watchful anger in him and I hoped that if it emerged it would be to our advantage. Beside him sat a slim man, lightly bearded, with auburn hair and a prominent nose. I recognized the Queen’s brother, William Parr, Earl of Essex, from my visit to Baynard’s Castle. My heart rose a little on seeing him: he owed his place at the council table to his sister. Surely if she were in trouble today he would not be here. His presence made up a little for the absence of the figure I had hoped most of all to see – Archbishop Cranmer, counterweight to Gardiner. But Cranmer, whose attendance at the council was said always to be motivated by strategy, had stayed away.
Paget picked up the first paper on his pile. He ran his hard eyes over us, the slab face still expressionless, then intoned, ‘Let us begin.’
WE HAD BEEN BROUGHT to Whitehall Palace by boat. The Privy Council followed the King as he moved between his palaces, and I had thought we might be taken on to Hampton Court, but apparently the council was still meeting at Whitehall. First thing that morning the three of us, red-eyed, tousled and, as Wriothesley noted, smelly, were led to a boat and rowed upriver.
At the Common Stairs there had been a great bustle, as Barak had described; servants were moving everything out. A little procession of laden boats was already sculling upriver to Hampton Court. I saw huge pots and vats from the royal kitchen being carried to one boat and thrown in with a clanging that reverberated across the water. Meanwhile a long tapestry wound in cloth was being lifted carefully into another waiting boat by half a dozen servants. A black-robed clerk stood at the end of the pier, ticking everything off on papers fixed to a little portable desk hung round his neck.
One of our guards said to the boatman, ‘Go in by the Royal Stairs. It’s too busy here.’