I followed him through another door. He led me on down a corridor, our footsteps making no sound on the thick rush matting that covered the floors from wall to wall. Through an open door I glimpsed the Queen’s Presence Chamber, and caught sight of the Queen herself sitting sewing at a window, dressed in red, with some of the ladies who had been also present earlier. Gardiner, the Duchess of Suffolk’s spaniel, sat on the floor, playing with a bone.
‘We are passing on to the Queen’s privy lodgings,’ Lord Parr said. ‘My office is there. The Queen likes me close to her since I was recalled from the country in the spring.’ He opened the door to a small, dark office, with a window giving onto another courtyard, the papers on chests and the little desk in neatly ordered piles. ‘Here,’ he said, taking a lawyer’s robe in fine silk from a chair and handing it to me. ‘Change into this.’ The Queen’s brightly coloured badge of St Catherine, I saw, was sewn onto the breast. Before taking his place behind the desk he went over and closed the window. Then he bade me sit.
‘I prefer it open these summer days,’ he said ruefully. ‘But in this place one never knows who may be listening from the next window.’ Lord Parr sighed. ‘As you have probably realized, the court is a place full of fear and hate; there is no real amity anywhere. Even among families; the Seymours quarrel and scratch like cats. Only the Parr family is united; we are loyal to each other.’ He spoke with pride. ‘It is our strength.’
‘You have been here only since the spring, my Lord?’ I ventured.
‘Yes. For much of the last few years I have delegated my duties and stayed on my estates. I am old now, not always well. No longer the man I was, when I served the King.’ He smiled in reminiscence. ‘As did my brother, the Queen’s father; and the Queen’s mother was lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon. The Parrs have been a part of the court for a long time. The Queen’s mother died just before the full storm of the King’s Great Divorce broke. Well, she was spared that.’ He looked up, eyes sharp again under the white brows. ‘I have stood in loco parentis for my niece since then. I will do anything to protect her. When she asked me to come back to court, I did so at once.’
‘I understand.’
‘I should swear you in.’ He took a Testament from a drawer, and I solemnly swore to serve the Queen loyally and honestly. Lord Parr nodded brusquely, returned the Testament to the drawer, and said, ‘Well, what news?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Not good, my Lord.’ I told him that the first of the attacks on Greening had taken place before the Lamentation was stolen, that the authorities had given up on the case, that Greening’s friends seemed to have gone to ground and might even be Anabaptists. Finally I explained how Elias had fled. I had promised to tell only the Queen of anything that might endanger the boy, but Lord Parr had to know of his plight. None of it made good hearing, and I had to mention Nicholas’s careless use of the name Bertano, which had caused such distress to Elias, though I praised his discovery of the scrap of silk. I had brought it with me, and now laid it on the table. Lord Parr examined it.
‘A fine piece of work, expensive,’ he said. ‘The blackwork decoration is distinctive.’ He turned it over. ‘The Queen’s embroiderer, Hal Gullym, has worked all his life at the Queen’s Wardrobe in Baynard’s Castle; he knows all the fine shirt-makers in London. He might be able to find out who made this.’
‘From a mere piece of sleeve?’
‘Of this quality, possibly.’ He frowned. ‘The apprentice was certain that the first attack on Greening happened before the Lamentation vanished?’
‘Certain. I am sorry he ran away. When that name Bertano was mentioned he became terrified.’
‘I have never heard it before. And Okedene, he overheard them talking of this Bertano as one who would bring down the country, an agent of the Antichrist?’
‘He is quite sure. And I believe Okedene is an honest man.’ I added hesitantly, ‘He asks that we leave him alone now; he fears for his family.’
‘As I fear for mine,’ Lord Parr answered bluntly. ‘And yet – eleven days now since the book was stolen and not a word, nothing. Who could have taken it?’
‘Not a religious radical, surely.’
‘And yet if it was a papist, surely the book would be public knowledge by now, and God knows what would have happened to my niece. The King has a hard view of anything that smacks of disloyalty.’ He bit his lip.
‘We should find that apprentice,’ I said.
He looked at me sternly. ‘You should not have lost him.’
‘I know, my Lord.’
‘And those three associates of Greening’s. Gone to ground?’