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The body, the earthly remains of Charles Brandon, had been disembowelled and soaked in spices for ten days. Then it had been put in a cerecloth, and that wrapped in lead, and that laid in a coffin, and that simple coffin enclosed in another. Around that were arranged garlands and ribbons. I never saw Brandon himself, only the formal outer festoonings of what had once been a man.

Would I have wished to see him, to see his flesh white, his lips set, his great chest sunken?

He had been, after Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the highest-ranking noble in the realm. I had made him so; taken the mud-spattered orphan and raised him up. I had done well to do so, as he was worthy of his rank.

My sister Mary had loved him.

Now he had another wife who would mourn him. But would she, truly? The truth is, I had loved him more.

Brandon lay dead.

The insistent chorus was coming more often to me now. Feeling had crept back, and was only waiting behind a barricade to burst out.

The Order of the Garter customarily held ceremonies in the Chapel of St. George in Windsor. Brandon was to be buried in the choir of the chapel, only a few yards from Queen Jane. All twenty-five Knights of the Garter were called upon to be present, even though they represented the foremost defence of the realm. For this one day we must be undefended, and pray that God would stand watch whilst we did honour to Brandon.

I had moved to Windsor—even though I disliked the quarters there, as too closely associated with my grief after Jane’s death—to oversee this funeral. I wished to make some sort of personal memorial there, to say something. I attempted to write an elegy, but my verse did not come. I tried to compose a prayer, but it sounded pompous. There were words I wished to say. I knew I had almost heard them before, but they slipped from me. The fruitful ground, the quiet mind ...

Yes. I had read them. They were Henry Howard’s, part of a poem. I sent for him.

It was the night before the funeral, and all Windsor was in mourning. My apartments were hung in black, and there was no music. In the Chapel of St. George, Brandon’s coffin lay on a catafalque, tapers flickering all around it. I would go down later, would keep vigil as a Knight of the Garter should do. But now there was still the poem to be attended to.

Howard came upon the stroke of nine. He was dressed all in black: I had ordered the court into full mourning.

“Did you bring your poems?” I asked him.

He held out a portfolio of papers. “All I had,” he said. “As you requested.and exhaustion have, I fear, routed my Muse. Yet I found a phrase echoing through my mind, and I think it to be yours. It is ‘The fruitful ground, the quiet mind....’ ”

“Aye. ’Tis mine,” he said quickly. He must have been pleased, but like all artists he disdained to show it. “Here is the entire poem.” He plucked out a sheet and laid it down next to my candle.

Yes! It was exactly what I wished to say. It expressed my own inner feelings.

“It is—my own words,” I said, amazed.

Now he blushed. “The highest award one can give a poet. We sit in our little rooms, composing for ourselves, but believing that all men must feel the same. We are alone, but united with every human being—if we are good. If we are bad, we are united with nothing, and no one. The frightening thing is that, sitting in the little room, one does not know to which category one belongs. One must sit there in faith.”

“Yes, yes.” I did not wish to flatter him overmuch. “I dislike to use borrowed trappings, but I have no choice. My own words will not come, and yours are already there.”

“They are to be used by others. I hope that in years to come, when I am no longer here to give permission, they may continue to serve man’s inner needs.”

I looked at him. I believed his words to be true and heartfelt. As an artist he was noble. But as a man he was petty, unstable, and rancourous. How did the two intertwine?

“I have reports of your difficulties in Boulogne,” I said at length, hating to break the spell—the spell