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Cromwell chortled. He looked quite like a jolly uncle when he did so. “A masterful touch, as the Pilgrims demanded his removal from power. After me, of course. They despised us.”

I looked up from the table to glimpse the cold, promising March sky outside. This time last year I had been hawking with Crum, and had given him the fearsome commission....

“It is all over now,” I said in wonder. It was all over, and peace had come again.

“I beg your pardon?” Crum looked at me, alert.

“I was only thinking how quiet it is in the land.”

“All your enemies are dead, Your Grace.”

LXXIX

The day the abbot and monks of Sawley Abbey were hanged, I found Jane crying in her chamber.

I had made arrangements to spend the morning with her looking over the plans for the Queen’s New Lodgings, now being constructed at Hampton Court. I had thought my Janey—for so I called her, between the two of us—would relish being able to choose the wood, the artisans to carve it, and all the rest to make the royal quarters a reflection of herself.

Spread out all around her were drawings and samples of colours and materials. But she did not even seem aware of any of them. They surrounded her like dropped petals from an overblown rose, but she did not regard them.

“Well, Janey,” I said, stepping into the chamber, “have you decided? You spoke of purple, once—”

My spirits drooped as soon as I beheld her. No, I could not stand another source of sadness today! I could not comfort; I had no comfort to give. I wanted the monks blanked out of my mind.

“Have you not decided, then?” I chided her gently.

“I—they all looked suitable.”

“Have you no preference, then?” I fought to keep the little saw-edge of irritation out of my voice. “These new lodgings are to be the equal of—”

“Anything in France,” she finished for me. “But I am no Madame de Heilly.”

“Francis’s mistress has no taste,” I said. “And these lodgings are for you, Janey. For you. Can you not understand how I wish for you to have a place of your own, not inherited from Wolsey or ... the others?”

“Yes, yes.” It was then that I realized the apartments were for me, not for her. I needed to see her in surroundings that had no echoes.

“Choose something, Janey. It will mean a great deal to me,” I begged her.

“Very well.” She bent forwarhe anut, dark green is always suitable.”

“No, I’ll not have that. ’Tis too—expected. I’ll have scarlet instead.” She pointed at a smear of colour.

“The Westminster red.” I recognized it. “Most noble.”

She smiled. “You will pin down my desires and preferences, in spite of myself.”

“I wish to see you captured by them, so that in your absence I can still see you.” I hesitated. Should I tell her of what I had seen? “Is the choice really that difficult, that you must cry over it?”

She quickly hid her face.

“There should be no secrets between us,” I said, as gently as I could. “Nothing to be ashamed of.” She knew me, knew all of me. And I was glad of it.

“It is not I who am ashamed! It is you—or should be!” she cried. “The monks—”

Not this again.

“—that you are having hanged this very moment—”

The arrogant rebels of Sawley, then.

“—in a mocking fashion—”

“The punishment must fit the crime! And should serve as a deterrent for possible converts. These particular monks were arrant traitors.”

“It is not the monks,” she wept. “It is you!”

Now I was completely confused and bewildered. “I do not understand,” I finally said.

“What does it do to you to order such things done?” she said. “It changes you, forever.”

Poor innocent. Perhaps she did not know me, after all. I was changed that way when I had had to order my first executions after my Coronation, those of Empson and Dudley. After the first they are all the same.

“I hope not,” I assured her, reluctant to reveal my true feelings. She would find them ugly. And possibly unacceptable.

“What sort of a world will my children inherit? A world without monks and nuns, a world where abbots hang out of steeples—”

Children.

“Janey, are you