Portrait of an Unknown Woman

4

The hall was crowded with new arrivals. But one head stood out among the rest – that great dark lion’s head, with the square jaw and long nose and the piercing eyes that could see the secrets in your soul, the head of the man with the glorious glow about him that fixed every other pair of eyes on him wherever he went. When Father threw back his head and laughed – as he often did – he always transported whatever roomful of watchers he’d gathered around him into a quite unexpected state of pure, joyful merriment. He wasn’t exactly laughing now, as I slipped into the room behind John Clement. He and Dame Alice were sitting on two high-backed chairs, surrounded by a standing crowd of soft-faced admirers with stars in their eyes, and the pair of them were struggling to make their disobedient lutes obey them (he’s always been tone deaf, but he loves the idea of playing duets with his wife). But there was a smile playing on his wide mouth as he tried to force his fingers to be nimble on their strings. He knew his limitations. He was ready to see the lute duets, like so much else, as the beginning of a joke about human frailty.

His magic worked as powerfully on me as it did on everyone else. Glancing around past all the usual family faces and the stolid features of Master Hans, I saw he’d brought the Rastells and the Heywoods home with him, and John Harris, his bow-backed confidential clerk, and Henry Pattinson, his fool, fat and shambling behind them, and in the shadows John a Wood, his personal servant, who was probably tutting adoringly in his corner over the state of the master’s muddy old shoes, sticking out beneath his robe, and plotting one of the sartorial improvements that Father loves to resist. The sight of Father emptied my mind of all my rebellious thoughts. With him here, the household was complete. The dusky room was lit up with more than candles. The warmth came from more than just the fire blazing in the grate. Like everyone else, I was ready to forget everything and just revel in the effortless happiness that came from enjoying watching him enjoying himself.

Until, that is, I sensed a shiver run down the back of the man in front of me. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see John’s expression. But, with sudden protective anxiety, I became aware of Father glancing up from the frets under his left hand and, for the first time, taking in the bearded face of his uninvited guest.

Father didn’t miss a beat. With his hand still moving on the fingerboard, he held John’s gaze for a moment, inclined his head in the merest sketch of a courtly bow, and murmured, in his softest voice, ‘John.’ The smile stayed on his lips.

Then he turned his eyes down, back to his difficult music.

It had been no more than a greeting. But I felt John flinch as if it had been a whiplash. He was shifting uneasily on his feet now, glancing back at the door, clearly longing to be off.

After the music finally dissolved into applause, Father got up with the lute still in his hand. I was certain he was about to make his way towards us. I stepped aside, stealing a glance up at John’s face and reading the pale signs of guilt on it.

Yet Father didn’t part the crowd of acolytes to approach John. He had too much of a sense of occasion. He was turning now to the delighted Master Hans, and apologising for the poor musical entertainment – ‘But I assure you something better will follow,’ he was saying, and John Rastell, my uncle the printer, and his son-in-law John Heywood, were visibly quivering with secret knowledge of what that would be – and within minutes we were being organised into the impromptu performance of a play, and transported back into the carefree atmosphere of a family evening in the old days.

‘Let’s do The Play called the four PP!’ young John More, excited and puppyish, was calling out. John Heywood’s play, written long after John Clement went away, had been a family favourite for years – a satire on the trade in false relics by mendacious travelling monks. Young John was waving his goblet of Canary wine, and his grin was almost splitting the child’s face, which now seemed far too small for his ever-growing body. ‘We could use this as the wedding cup of Adam and Eve! … And this’, he picked up a trinket box, loving the joke, ‘as the great toe of the Trinity!’ But the older Johns shushed him. They’d clearly agreed in advance what we’d be acting – and opted for no religion – because it was only a matter of moments before everyone was dressing up instead for The Twelve Merry Jests of Widow Edith, with Dame Alice assigned, with her usual good-tempered resignation, to play the starring role of the bawdy old fraud who debauches our family servants. ‘If this is a punishment for all my shrewishness,’ she said, and twinkled, ‘I should learn to keep quiet in future,’; then, twinkling even harder and tapping Father on the shoulder in the middle of his mock-henpecked look: ‘Just my little joke, husband.’

It was only when the shuffling and scene-setting was in full swing, and all the other Johns were fully occupied elsewhere, that Father finally approached my John. Who was still standing, looking ill at ease, while everyone else bumped busily past him.

‘John,’ Father said, opening his arms, dazzling the taller man with his smile. ‘What a surprise to see you here. Welcome to our poor new home,’ and he embraced his bewildered protégé before slowly moving back, patting him gently on the back, to include me in his smile.

‘John Clement,’ he said to me, with a hint of mockery in his voice as he pronounced that name, ‘has always been a man of surprises. Ever since the time we first met. Do you remember our first meeting, John?’

And a current of something I couldn’t define ran between them – what seemed a sense of threat masked by smiles – though perhaps I imagined it. John was smiling back, but I sensed he was hanging intently on Father’s every word. So was I. I knew so little about John’s past that any new light Father could shed on who my enigmatic intended had been before he came to live with us would be well worth having.

‘It was in Archbishop Morton’s house, Meg, when I was just a boy – maybe twelve years old. You’ve heard all about Archbishop Morton, I know: my first master, and one of the greatest men it’s ever been my privilege to serve. A man whose great experience of the world made him both politic and wise. God rest his soul.’ I was being drawn closer, into the magic circle. His voice – the mellifluous tool of his lawyer’s trade – was dropping now, drawing us into his story.

Father, a pageboy in hose and fur-trimmed doublet, turning back the sheets and fluffing up the pillows late at night for the Archbishop, who’d also been Lord Chancellor to the old King, in his sanctum in the redbrick western tower of Lambeth Palace. Father was a boy tired after the daytime rituals of the house school, and the evening rituals of serving at table in the great hall, and already longing to join the other pageboys snuffling on their straw mattresses in the dormitory. But he was mindful too of the lessons of the books of courtesy and nurture, so he was also remembering not to lean against the wall, or cough, or spit, and to bow when he was spoken to, and to answer softly and cheerfully. (The boy More was so naturally skilled at all these arts of gentility that he’d become a favourite with his canny master, who’d taken to boasting publicly at table that ‘This boy waiting on you now, whoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man.’) So when the Archbishop told him to take the tray of wine and meat and bread he’d brought up from the kitchens into the audience chamber next door – a public room of polished oak, never used at this hour – he stifled his fatigue and obeyed with the best grace he could.

And there in the audience room were two young men – coltish youths only slightly older than young More, with long limbs and travel-stained clothes, and swords propped against their boxes, drooping tiredly on the polished benches. With something watchful about the way they looked at him as he entered with the tray. And something angry about the way they looked at each other.

Try as he might, young More couldn’t imagine who these surprise guests were. He’d never seen them at the school. He’d never seen them among the pages serving in the great hall. Besides, they were too old to be pageboys. They already had the close-cropped hair of adulthood. And former pageboys didn’t suddenly show up to pay their respects in the middle of the night. In any case, their manners seemed too high-handed to have been learned in the Archbishop’s courtly home. ‘Wine,’ the older youth, who must have been seventeen or eighteen, said imperiously. Young More bowed and poured out the wine. ‘Wine,’ said the younger boy, who was black-haired with fierce eyes, clearly annoyed that there was only one goblet and pointing towards his own feet as though young More were a dog to be brought to heel.

But the boy More was not afraid of these headstrong youths. He just laughed politely.

‘Two drinkers, but only one vessel,’ he said, keeping his countenance as the books taught. ‘A problem I can quickly solve by running back to the kitchens for another goblet.’

And then an interruption – a great gale of laughter from the candlelit doorway, where they’d all forgotten that Morton, in his long linen nightshirt, was still watching them.

‘Bravo, young Thomas,’ he said richly. ‘Your poise puts everyone else here to shame. This one,’ and he pointed at the younger youth, who was now looking ashamed at being caught out in the uncouth business of bullying a child, ‘has clearly forgotten to live up to his name.’

And the black-haired wild boy stared awkwardly at his feet.

‘Tell the child your name, John,’ Morton said. ‘Let him in on the joke.’

‘Johannes,’ the youth said. He hesitated, in the manner of someone who might not really speak Latin. ‘Johannes Clemens.’

Johnny the Kind. Archbishop Morton catching young More’s eye, giving him permission to laugh. The small More joining in his master’s unkind mirth at the difference between the tall black-haired boy’s lovely name and unlovely behaviour. The older youth also beginning to guffaw. And, finally, John Clement himself – somewhat to More’s surprise – losing his sullen look, clapping the young More on the back, and, with more grace than the pageboy would have expected, joining in the laughter at his own expense.

‘… I liked that in him. We’ve been the best of friends since,’ Father ended, superbly relaxed. He was talking to me rather than to John, but I felt John also gradually relax as the story drew to its close, in a way that made me wonder if he’d perhaps been dreading a different ending – one that might discredit him in some way. ‘But I see you’re still a man of impulse, John. Turning up without warning.’ Father winked affably at me, encouraging me to laugh a little at the embarrassed figure between us. ‘Still reserving your right to surprise.’

‘So where had you come from that night?’ I asked the mute John, curious to see further into this glimpse of his past. ‘And where were you going?’

‘Oh,’ Father said smoothly, answering for John. ‘Well, that was so soon after the wars that things everywhere were still in confusion. John and his brother had been brought up by family friends after their own father died. But it was time for John to go to university. So he was stopping in London on his way abroad, to Louvain, where he was about to become the man of learning – the kindhearted man of learning’ – he chuckled again – ‘that everyone in our family has always loved so dearly.’

And now Elizabeth was joining our circle, breaking the conversation. ‘Won’t you play one of the servants, John?’ she was asking sweetly, and, before the pink-faced John could answer, wrapping him gently in a rough servant’s cloak and shepherding him away to join in the revels. He looked back at Father, as if asking a question; and Father, as if answering, nodded what might be permission for him to stay and play.

Left alone with me, Father turned a kindly gaze on my face. ‘You see how it is, Meg,’ he said. ‘I made a promise to the Archbishop long ago to keep an eye on John Clement. And I always will. I may always need to. He’s someone who’s endured a lot of losses in his life; and sometimes suffering leaves its mark on a man’s soul. With a man like that you have to take things slowly and carefully – and make sure there are no hidden depths you haven’t plumbed. But you’re a wise young woman. I’m sure you understand that …’

He held my gaze a moment longer than necessary. I didn’t know exactly what he meant, though the gentleness on his face now reminded me of the gentleness with which he’d treated Will Roper’s heresy. But I thought Father might be giving me a warning.

‘We had a good talk this afternoon,’ I said, masking my resentment behind a diplomatic smile of my own. Father was a fine one to talk about hidden depths, if he’d been secretly negotiating with John Clement for years about the conditions under which John might marry me, without ever giving me a hint of what was on his mind. ‘I was glad to see him after so long. I was glad to find out everything he told me.’

And I was pleased to see Father look more closely still at me, carefully now, with what seemed to be a question in his eyes. I held his gaze. It was he who turned his eyes away. ‘Good,’ he said, but without certainty; and he moved off into the crowd to attend to his guests.

And so the rest of the entertainment, with all its applause and rumbustious punch lines and flamboyance and laughter, was reduced for me to a watchfulness of eyes. John Clement’s eyes, avoiding mine and Elizabeth’s and Father’s alike. Elizabeth’s eyes, searching my face and John Clement’s with something I couldn’t read in her expression. Father’s eyes, coming thoughtfully to rest every now and then on John Clement. And, of course, Master Hans’s eyes, giving us all the same long, careful, considering looks I’d seen him direct John Clement’s way over dinner. A gaze that mapped the line of the back and the line of the heart at the same time. Which made me uncomfortable when I caught him staring for a slow moment at my hands moving in my lap. But which I then realised, with relief, probably signified nothing more than his artist’s pre-occupation with how best to paint us.

John Clement didn’t stay late. I saw him slip up to Father as soon as the play was over, while the costumes were still going back into their chests and the servants were setting out the supper, ready to make his excuses and go. I moved closer, wanting to hear but not to interrupt. But Father gestured me into the circle.

‘John tells me he has to leave now,’ Father said, with equal measures of warmth and splendid finality. ‘It’s been a joy that he’s found the time to let us welcome him here so soon after his return to London. And we’ll look forward to seeing him again here very soon, won’t we, Meg?’ He paused, and gave John another glance I didn’t understand, before adding: ‘As soon as he has had time to find his feet again in this country, after so long away. As soon as he wins election to the College of Physicians.’

I took John out to the doorway to help him into his cloak. Out in the half-darkness, with none of the other eyes on us any more, was the first time I dared look up and meet his eyes at last. And he looked straight back at me for the first time in what seemed like hours, with all the sweetness and love on his face that I could have hoped for, and with a hint of what looked like relief too.

‘You see, Meg,’ he said reassuringly, with one hand on the doorknob. ‘It’s as I said. We just have to wait a while. Doctor Butts promises that I’ll be put up for election this spring – it seems a long time, but it won’t be forever – and then everything will come right for us.’ And I felt his other arm move round my waist in farewell. ‘I’ll write,’ he murmured, opening the door and letting in the night wind. ‘I’ll be back. Soon. I promise you.’

And then he was nothing but a black figure on the black of the garden, flapping away down the path towards the water, leaving me confused but as hopeful as the silliest of serving girls that I was about to live happily ever after.

Elizabeth sidled up and looked sideways at me as soon as I slipped back in.

‘Master Hans has been making sheep’s eyes at you all evening,’ she said, with one of her brittle little laughs. ‘I think you’ve made a conquest.’