Free Lamentation (The Shardlake Series Book 6) by C. J. Sansom Page B

playing cards at a table in a large window-bay, and we bowed to them. All were expensively made-up, their faces white with ceruse, red spots on their cheeks. All wore silken farthingales, the fronts open to show the brightly embroidered foreparts and huge detachable sleeves, richly embroidered in contrasting colours. Each gown would have cost hundreds of pounds in labour and material, and I considered how uncomfortable such attire must be on a hot summer’s day. A spaniel wandered around, hoping for scraps from the dishes of sweetmeats on tables beside them as they conversed. I sensed tension in the air.
    ‘Sir Thomas Seymour was at Whitehall the other day,’ one of the ladies said. ‘He looks more handsome than ever.’
    ‘Did you hear how he routed those pirates in the Channel in May?’ another asked.
    A small, pretty woman in her thirties tapped the table to gain the dog’s attention. ‘Heel, Gardiner,’ she called. It trotted over, panting at her expectantly. She looked at the other women and smiled roguishly. ‘Now, little Gardiner, nothing for you today. Lie down and be quiet.’ The dog was named for Bishop Gardiner, I realized; an act of mockery. The other women did not laugh, but rather looked anxious. One, older than the others, shook her head. ‘Duchess Frances, is it meet to mock a man of the cloth so?’
    ‘If he deserves it, Lady Carew.’ I looked at the older woman. This must be the wife of Admiral Carew, who had died with so many others on the Mary Rose . She had seen the ship go down while standing on shore with the King.
    ‘But is it safe?’ I saw the speaker was the Queen’s cousin, Lady Lane, whom Cecil had pointed out to me in the courtyard.
    ‘Well asked, daughter,’ Lord Parr said brusquely.
    One of the other ladies gave me a haughty look. She turned to Lord Parr. ‘Is the Queen to have her own hunchback fool now, like his majesty? I thought she was content with Jane. Is this why we ladies have been sent out of the Privy Chamber?’
    ‘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