‘Now, my Lady Hertford,’ Lord Parr chided. He bowed to the ladies and led me towards the door the servant had passed through. ‘Malaperts,’ he muttered. ‘Were it not for the loose tongues of the Queen’s ladies we might not be in this trouble.’ The guard stood to attention. Parr spoke to him in a low voice. ‘No one else in the Queen’s Privy Chamber till we finish our business.’ The man bowed, opened the door and Lord Parr ushered me in.
Another magnificent room. A series of tapestries on the theme of the miracle of the loaves and fishes hung on the walls; there was more linenfold panelling, as well as vases of roses on several finely carved tables, an ornate chess set on another. There were only two people within. The Queen sat on a raised chair under a cloth of estate. She was dressed even more magnificently than her ladies, in a farthingale of crimson under a French gown in royal purple. The farthingale was covered with geometric designs; and as it caught the light I saw the intricacy of the needlework: hundreds of tiny circles and triangles and squares shot through with gold leaf. The bodice tapered to a narrow waist from which a gold pomander hung, and I caught the sharp-sweet smell of oranges. The bodice was low-cut; round the Queen’s white powdered neck jewels hung on gold chains, among them a magnificent teardrop-shaped pearl. A French hood was set far back on her auburn hair. Yet beneath the magnificence, and the white ceruse covering her fine, intelligent features, I could see strain in Catherine Parr’s face. She was thirty-four now, and for the first time since I had known her she looked her age. As I bowed deeply, I wondered what had happened to her, even as I asked myself what the other man, standing beside her, was doing here: Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the man I had heard was keeping out of trouble down in Canterbury.
I raised myself. The Queen’s eyes were downcast; she did not meet my gaze. Cranmer, however, had no such hesitation. He wore a silken cassock over a black doublet, a simple black cap over his grey hair. His large, expressive blue eyes were troubled.
‘Serjeant Shardlake,’ Cranmer said in his quiet voice. ‘Why, it must be three years since we met.’
‘And more, my Lord Archbishop.’
The Queen looked up, cast her sorrowful eyes over my face, and smiled tightly. ‘Since the time you saved my life, Matthew.’ She sighed, then blinked and turned to Lord Parr. ‘Is Elizabeth gone to sit for her portrait?’
‘Not without some swearing. She thinks it unseemly to be painted in her bedroom.’
‘So long as she went. This portrait is important.’ The Queen looked at me again, then said quietly, ‘How have you fared this last year, Matthew?’
‘Well enough, your majesty.’ I smiled. ‘I labour away at the law, as usual.’
‘And young Hugh Curteys?’
‘Well, too. Working for the clothiers in Antwerp.’
‘Excellent. I am glad some good came out of that bad business.’ She bit her lip, as though reluctant to continue.
There was a moment’s silence, then Cranmer spoke. ‘As the Queen remarked, once you saved her life.’
‘It was my privilege.’
‘Would you save it again?’
I looked at the Queen. Her eyes were cast down once more. This subdued figure was not the Catherine Parr I knew. I asked quietly, ‘Has it come to that?’
‘I fear it may,’ Cranmer answered.
The Queen pressed her hands together. ‘It is all my fault. My vanity, my forwardness—’
Lord Parr interrupted, his voice authoritative. ‘I think it best we start at the beginning and tell Serjeant Shardlake all that has happened since the spring.’
The Queen nodded. ‘Fetch chairs, all of you.’ She sighed. ‘It is no simple tale.’
We obeyed, sitting in a semi-circle before the throne. She turned to her uncle. ‘Tell it all, tell it straight. Begin with what the King said in March.’
Lord Parr looked at me hard. ‘You will be only the fifth person to know this story.’
I sat still, trying to keep my hands unclenched on my knees. I realized that I had truly launched myself into a deep well this time. The Queen was looking at me with a sort of desperation, toying with the pearl at her neck.
‘The King was very ill in the spring,’ Lord Parr began. ‘He did not leave his rooms for many weeks. He would call the Queen to him for company; her presence much comforted him. The talk turned often to matters of religion, as it does with the King. At that time, though, Bishop Gardiner had just returned from abroad, in high feather from his success in negotiating his new treaty with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles.’
‘And then I made my great mistake,’ the Queen said, quietly and sadly. ‘I have ridden high for three years, always careful in everything I have said. But I was overcome by the sin of vanity, and forgot I am a mere woman.’ She looked down again, lifting the pearl on the end of its golden chain and staring at it. ‘I argued with the King too forcefully, trying to persuade him to lift the ban on those of low rank reading the Bible. I told him that all need access to Christ’s Word if they are to be saved . . .’