Portrait of an Unknown Woman (70 page)

 
          
It’s different with John. John had his wild side once, but he’s suppressed it to make himself the man for you. Even if it still comes out sometimes. You’ve seen it. I’ve felt it.” And ruefully he stroked the jawbone John had hit. “But the point is that his passion is you—it always has been.

 
          
Losing you would destroy him.

 
          
There’s as much lasting good in the way John Clement has remade himself for you as there is in genius. You could find true happiness with him if you learned to make the same sacrifice, with yourself, for him.

 
          
There’d be a beauty and nobility in rebuilding your life together. And if you found the courage for it, it would transform and reward you as well as him.”

 
          
It wasn’t just reflections of the rain on his cheeks; he was crying.

 
          
“It’s only one part of the truth to say that you’ll always be more essential to John than you ever could be to Holbein,” he said softly, looking down at me. I didn’t think he’d noticed his own tears. “What’s equally important is that you’ll be more yourself too if you stay in your marriage.

 
          
John will always enjoy your pleasure in your medicine and your children and your family. He won’t swallow you up. He’ll let you breathe. You won’t be choosing second best.”

 
          
I could still feel the heat of Hans Holbein on my body; the scratches, the bristle, the saliva; but the memory was already beginning to seem like a feverish dream.

 
          
Father wrapped his other arm round me, and we stood, perfectly still, listening to each other’s breath. “It wouldn’t be so hard for you as it was for Elizabeth,” he whispered, not seeming to realize I didn’t need convincing anymore. “All you’d have to do would be to forgive John. Forgive yourself. Go back to your life. Learn how to love someone who’s learned not to fight like you do.”

 
          
“Yes,” I whispered back, “I will,” and now I felt his tears come faster and a great sigh come from deep within him. He put a hand to his face, over my shoulder, and dashed the tears away. “The wine of angels,” he muttered, with the faintest of smiles, a phrase from my childhood that made me smile. “I’m being a fool. But it was time for us to be honest, or be lost. Thank you.”

 
          
It seemed a long time later that I said quietly, into the sounds of the rain, “Can’t you give up the other things, Father? Your campaigning, your writing? Your fight? Can’t you just be with us and be happy?”

 
          
But when he raised his wet eyes to mine I saw I’d hoped for too much.

 
          
He never would. There was nothing to do but accept it.

 
          
“We may not have much more time together,” he said gently, wiping away the wetness on my cheeks. “Let’s try to be happy with what we have.”

 
          
Holbein waited all morning in his room, fiddling with details of his painting, in a worsening agony of suspense. He startled every time he heard a tap at the window, but Meg’s face was never there when he rushed toward the light. All he could see were vine stems broken by the fury of last night’s storm.

 
          
He’d never lost his appetite before, but he couldn’t face food now.

 
          
However, at noon he slunk out into the open and braved the family gathering for dinner. It was worth it just to see her, even if he had to brazen out a sighting of the treacherous Elizabeth and more excruciatingly enigmatic observations from Sir Thomas. But Elizabeth wasn’t there. More wasn’t there. And Meg wasn’t there.

 
          
“You’re not eating anything, Master Hans,” Margaret Roper said worriedly. “And you’ve always done our food such splendid justice before. Don’t you like chitterlings? Can I get you something else?”

 
          
He retreated to his room like a wounded animal and sat staring out of the window into the cold afternoon. When the children came visiting, quieter than on the previous day but just as eager to be tickled and carried and given piggybacks and to stick their fingers into his paints, he tried to get his spirits up enough to play with them. He even gave one Tommy a weary piggyback. But they knew something was wrong. Gradually their manic giggles died down and they began to look uncertainly at one another. He could see they were relieved when they heard the quiet clip-clop of a horse riding into the courtyard.

 
          
“It’s Daddy!” the Tommy he’d been giving a ride to screeched in sudden ecstasy, and the children all shrieked and poured out and away.

           
Holbein followed them as far as the doorway to the yard. John Clement’s tired, dark, eagle profile flashed in front of him as an athletic body swung off a horse. And then, at last, there was Meg.

 
          
But there was nothing in her of the reluctant, dutiful wife he’d expected to see, all downcast eyes and anxiously hunched shoulders. She was walking fast out of the main door into the courtyard on her father’s arm, looking radiantly happy in a way Holbein had never imagined her.

 
          
“John,” she cried, and, letting go of More, ran forward to throw herself into her husband’s arms. Clement looked surprised by her enthusiasm for a moment, but then he folded his arms around her and kissed the top of her head, and an almost worshipful expression wiped the fatigue from his handsome face.

 
          
Holbein knew the look of love when he saw it. But he couldn’t bear to see any more. He rushed away from them, into the garden, half running down the path he’d walked in a different life with Meg to the sodden clump of elders. It was only after he’d flung himself down to the ground under them and seen the pale gleam of a seed pearl that must have been torn off her cap that morning that his chest began to heave.

 
          
He clutched his head in his arms and curled up and gave way to his grief.

 
          
He didn’t know how long it was before the soft little hand patted his shoulder. For a split second he dared to hope, but when he looked up it was only Elizabeth’s lovely, pointed, melancholy face he saw staring down at him. The wrong face. He groaned again and hid his face in his hands.

 
          
“Are you in pain, Master Hans?” she asked, with unexpected sympathy. “Is there anything I can do?”

 
          
Holbein tried to master himself. He had no idea what was happening.

 
          
But he was a man who trusted his instincts, and what they were telling him was that he was staring complete defeat in the face.

           
“No . . . no,” he grunted, desperately holding back his heaving breath. “A touch of stomach cramp . . . nothing to worry about.”

 
          
She put a gentle hand to his hot forehead. “I’ve been out for a walk,” she murmured. “I could hear you from way back there.”

 
          
“It’s nothing,” he grunted again, desperate to be alone. But there was nothing he could do to stop. The sobs kept on convulsing him.

 
          
After another long pause she leaned forward and kissed his forehead.

 
          
“Well, I’m sorry for your pain, whatever it is,” she said. “But you’re a survivor, Master Hans. I know you are. I am too. You helped me see that, long ago. I’ll pray for you.”

 
          
He looked up, startled out of himself for a second by that promise, and saw that the lovely dark eyes staring back at his were no strangers to sadness.

 
          
“And I for you,” he mumbled as her footsteps retreated.

 
          
More watched Meg and John Clement come together out of the painting parlor. He stood stock-still in the deepening shadows of the stairwell.

 
          
“Can you ever forgive me?” John Clement asked his wife, and he took her very tenderly in his arms.

 
          
“Can
you
ever forgive
me
?” she whispered back, clinging to him.

 
          
The former lord chancellor of England waited a few more seconds before nodding and tiptoeing away. The kissing couple didn’t hear him go.

 
          
Margaret Roper looked puzzled when she put her head round the family parlor door. “I can’t find Master Hans anywhere, and it’s nearly supper-time,” she said. “I can’t think where he can have got to.”

 
          
“He’s gone,” her father said, turning round from his place at the window. His eyes were as red as if he’d been weeping, but he sounded cheerful enough. “He had to get back to London.”

 
          
“But he’s left all his things in his room!” she cried, astonished. “And he hasn’t even shown us his painting!”

 
          
“He was in a hurry,” More replied laconically, turning back to the window.

 
          
He wanted to watch the small figure hunched on its horse until it disappeared at a slow clop over the brow of the hill. He was saying good-bye: not just to Hans Holbein, a man he’d trusted and respected and wouldn’t see again in this life, but to the whole world of the mind that he’d once shared with that fast-vanishing generation of men of genius.

 
          
He pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers and impatiently dashed away the wetness he found there. He had no need of the wine of angels now. He’d done what was best for his daughter.

 
          
Hans Holbein stopped his horse at the crest of the hill and looked back at the glade in which Well Hall was built. He was riding toward the setting sun. The sky behind him, above the house, was already nearly dark and prickling with faint stars.

 
          
He was very cold, full of a quiet stillness unlike any of the tumults that so often raged through him. He couldn’t imagine ever getting warm again.

 
          
This felt like the death of his heart.

 
          
At least it was easier riding without any of the packs he’d been weighted down with as he left London. His only luggage now was the large bag of coins he’d found in his room an hour ago, with a note from Thomas More tucked inside. He’d read:

 
          
 
My dear Holbein,

 
          
 
It was far too generous of you to try to make us a gift of your painting.

 
          
 
Please accept this small sum in payment. And please remember me to
 
Erasmus.

           
You know the regard in which I hold him.

 
          
Affectionate as it was, he’d recognized it at once as a letter of dismissal.

 
          
He’d stumbled over to the painting and stared at it through swollen eyes.

 
          
It was finished. It had come out the way he’d wanted. Then he’d gone to the stable and, ignoring the groom’s surprised look, got his horse saddled up to ride away.

 
          
Now he took a last look back, wondering briefly when they’d notice he’d gone.

 
          
Then he pointed the horse’s head forward toward the fading light and London, and spurred it on.

 
          
As he clip-clopped dispiritedly down into the next gentle Essex valley, Hans Holbein was already beginning to think about the shape of Thomas Cromwell’s narrow eyes and square red face. He was wondering how best to place them in the painted setting he was about to create.

 
          
So he never saw the bloodred orb deepen in the night sky behind him, above the rooftops he was leaving behind, or the long tail flaming ominously against the stars.