ONE
Bridewell Palace, London, November, 1528
Lady Thomasin Marwood stared upriver into the autumn drizzle. She had been waiting an hour but there was still no sign of the princess’s barge.
Rain was falling lightly. It spattered the blue silk of her skirts and flecked the quayside around her feet. The toes of her slippers were beginning to turn dark, absorbing the damp, which would soon seep through to her stockings and into her bones. Court slippers were made for dancing, she thought, for gliding along behind her mistress to the tune of a lute, not for waiting around in muddy puddles.
This section of the river was busy. Bridewell Palace sat between Queenhithe and Whitefriars, surrounded by the town houses of the rich, the grave churches and cloisters, and the warehouses of trading companies, all with their steps leading down to the Thames. Opposite them, the south bank was barely visible through the mist, just a few roofs and towers, boatyards and the towering spire of Southwark Priory.
At eighteen, Thomasin’s warm brown eyes had developed an air of experience, even cynicism. Gone was the naïve country girl who had arrived in the city a year ago, with her ideals of love, wide-eyed from the meadows of Suffolk. In service to Queen Catherine, she had witnessed heartbreak and betrayal, love and loss, emerging with a sense of the pain that great ones might inflict upon each other. King against Queen, husband against wife, lovers, rivals and politicians watching each other, waiting to deliver the caress or the fatal blow.
And yet, in the softness of her lips and rosiness of her cheeks, she still held her youth, and the hope that somehow, amid it all,there remained a glimmer of optimism. She still loved London, the court, the queen, her dear friends: the joy of life here in these lofty palaces rung in her veins. She was young, very young really, although women of her age were often made mothers already. She still wanted to believe in life, in love, in the goodness of others. Only she had learned to approach it warily, on tip-toes, observant and cautious, rather than rushing headlong into its embrace. When she fell in love, it would be little by little. Forever.
Thomasin pulled her shawl about her shoulders. She was still getting used to this new palace, with its unfamiliar layout. Bridewell loomed up behind her, tall and proud against the sky, with its red-brick façade, grey corner towers and windows piled up four storeys high. The court had been in residence for a week now, and she admitted that it was convenient, being right in the heart of the city, and attractive, with its grand staircase, double courtyard and long gallery. It had been one of the king’s first building projects, rising up from the former St Bride’s Inn on the site, of which now only the church of that name remained. It was easy to access by river, too. A set of wide steps led to a quay washed by the waves, where Thomasin was waiting. Curling round to the left, the Thames joined with its tributary of the Fleet, and the two currents met in white eddies and choppy swirls. Little sprays of salt water splashed and danced.
The messenger had promised that the princess’s barge would arrive by two, but not even he could control the tide.
“You’re still waiting?”
Thomasin turned at the familiar voice with its foreign lilt. Before her stood the Italian courtier Nico Amato, dressed to simple perfection in a black cloak, boots and leather gloves. His golden eyes and soft curls, his sartorial elegance, seemed out of place in an English November. Yet for all his beauty, she felt the familiar catch at the back of her throat.
“You must be freezing, Thomasin. Here, take my cloak.”
He unlaced it at his throat and placed it gently about her shoulders in a protective gesture. The rich folds of black and gold, edged with fur, fell about her. Thomasin inhaled his exotic scent, redolent of spices and fruits from a warmer climate.
“This English weather!” he muttered, looking up at the grey skies. “How do you survive it?”
This, she realised, was Nico’s first experience of an English winter. They had met that March when he was in the service of the Venetian ambassador, and she was with Queen Catherine at Windsor. With Thomasin’s help, Nico had earned a more permanent position in the household of Thomas Cromwell, servant of the king’s leading minister, Cardinal Wolsey. He had impressed her with his gentle words and his smile, handsome looks, stylish clothes and golden eyes, seeming to radiate sunshine. For the past two months, she had allowed him to court her, Italian-style, with his poetry, stolen kisses and flattery. He was passionate, certainly, perhaps too much so at times, making for moments of awkwardness between them. Yet there was something else, she knew not what, that made her hold back her feelings, unwilling to commit.
“I will have to knit you some woollen stockings and undergarments, otherwise how will you survive?” She smiled. “Yes, I’m still waiting.”
“She is coming from Chelsea?”
“She is, but the tide has turned now, so it will be hard going against the current.”
“She cannot come soon enough. It will gladden the queen’s heart to have her daughter by her side, I think. She has been too withdrawn of late, hardly her former self.”
Thomasin could not deny it. Spending each day in Catherine’s company, she had also noticed that her mistress smiled less, spoke less, and no longer called for her musicians. She had takenheart at the recent arrival of Cardinal Campeggio, sent by the Pope to examine the legitimacy of her marriage, but the weight of her situation was casting a cloud over the unhappy woman.
Although she took great pains to appear regal and composed in public, the queen now spent many of her days in prayer, and her nights weeping into the darkness. Since King Henry had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, a heart-breaking struggle between husband and wife had developed, as Henry sought ways to free himself from his wife of nineteen years in order to marry his paramour. The more he turned away, the tighter Catherine clung to him, determined to fulfil her duty. The arrival of her young daughter, the twelve-year-old Princess Mary, could be the thing to lift her spirits.
Thomasin turned to her companion. “What brings you out here?”
“My master is expecting letters. More letters —” Nico rolled his eyes — “always letters, that I must copy, copy and copy again.”
“Is the work that tedious?”
“Not always. And I am grateful for it. I only wish that he would trust me with some research, or financial matters, for a little variety, to use my brain. It seems that he is still a little suspicious of me as a foreigner.”
Thomasin nodded. Thomas Cromwell was a shrewd and careful man, well-known for his hard work and devious methods. He had long been trying to influence Thomasin’s father, Sir Richard Marwood, to support the king’s cause against the queen, but so far Richard had resisted. Cromwell was not a man who liked to relinquish control, though.
“It surprises me,” Nico continued, “because he sometimes speaks of his youth, when he was out of England for many years, in the Low Countries, and in France, even in Italy, I believe.”
“Was he?” Thomasin looked at her friend with interest. Cromwell’s past was often a matter of gossip and speculationat court, given his humble origins. As the son of an inn-keeper from Putney, as his detractors loved repeating, he hadn’t the breeding or upbringing of most at court, or even the advantages that Thomasin had enjoyed in her parents’ large country house. Yet he was a figure of fascination for many, impossible to ignore. Challenging, provoking.
“Does he talk much about his past?”
“Very little. On occasion, I do see correspondence from his connections made during that time. He seems to have worked for the Frescobaldi family, powerful bankers in Florence.”
