London - Edward Rutherfurd [294]
Dan Dogget waited and tried to look calm; but it was not easy, under the circumstances.
It was a cloudy September day; a sharp wind was passing across the waterfront at Greenwich and the grey-green Thames waters were choppy.
Nothing had altered in the last few weeks. Margaret and the children had settled in well enough at Hampton Court, but he still hadn’t found a berth for his truculent old father.
It was six weeks since he had first rowed Meredith, with two of his family, from Hampton Court one August evening; but straight away he had judged he was a coming man. At journey’s end, he had offered his services again, and before long had become Meredith’s regular boatman, picking him up whenever required. He had even put a fresh coat of paint on the boat and made sure he was cleanly turned out on each occasion; and the young man seemed to like the arrangement. In doing this, the waterman had no definite plan, but as his father would say: “Get on the right side of a gentleman and he may do you some good.” A week ago, an opening had come. Meredith had casually remarked that he was surprised such a fine-looking fellow was not working on one of the smarter barges. During the trip, from Chelsea to the city, Dan had explained his predicament. Meredith had said nothing, but two days later, on his way to Westminster from Greenwich he had remarked: “And if I could help you, good fellow, how would you serve me?”
“Why sir,” Dan had eagerly replied, “I’d do whatever you ask. But I think,” he added regretfully, “that you cannot help me get a barge.”
The young courtier had smiled. “My master,” he said quietly, “is Secretary Cromwell.” Square-jawed, surly-eyed, a man so compact he was like a boulder: everyone knew that, since the fall of Wolsey, it was Thomas Cromwell who ruled England for the king. Dan had not realized how well connected the young man was.
So when, just as he left him that morning, Meredith had casually remarked “I may have news for you today”, he had left the waterman in an agitated state.
When Dan Dogget considered the two great Tudor palaces on the Thames between which he plied his trade, they always seemed like two different worlds. Hampton, nearly twenty miles away upstream, amidst its lush meadows and woods, felt as though it was deep inland. But as soon as he passed the Tower, and entered the river’s great eastern loop, his heart began to beat with a different pulse. He would take a deep breath, and think he smelt a salty breeze; the sky seemed somehow wider; he was on his way to the open sea where everything was possible.
The palace of Greenwich shared this bracing air. Beside the old hamlet, its brown brick walls and turrets stretched right along the waterfront. It had a great tiltyard – for though, since the Wars of the Roses, improved firearms had made heavy armour out of date, Henry loved the dangerous sport and pageantry of the joust, in which he took an active part himself. There was a huge armoury on the eastern side of the palace, and a short distance upstream lay the Tudors’ new dockyard of Deptford, where seagoing vessels were fitted out and the air was redolent of tar.
Dan Dogget had always loved the place. He wondered if it would be lucky for him today.
Thomas Meredith’s career was progressing well. Thanks to a friendship recently formed with the new and still youthful Archbishop Cranmer, he had been allowed a privileged place at the christening of the new royal baby in the chapel in Greenwich Palace today. The baby had been wrapped in a purple mantle with an ermine train. With several other courtiers, Thomas had stood with a towel to receive the baby naked from the font. Cranmer had been godfather. They had given the baby a resounding and royal name: Elizabeth.
The birth of the eagerly awaited heir had turned out to be an unpleasant surprise: it was a girl. Queen Anne Boleyn was embarrassed; the court, considering all the king had been through, was shocked; Henry himself put the best face on it he could. The baby was healthy. There would be others.