Portrait of an Unknown Woman (65 page)

 
         
How else to tell his story? He added books. He put Boethius’s
Consolation
of Philosophy
on the cupboard near Meg. And finally, with heavy irony, he painted the title of Seneca’s
Epistulae Morales
on the spine of the book under Elizabeth Dauncey’s deceitful arm.

 
         
He stopped and scratched his head, wondering what to do next. He felt flat when he realized that he’d probably finished. Wearily, he poured out water and oil and began the slow job of cleaning his tools. He didn’t want to eat, or drink, or think anymore. He didn’t even want to sleep. He just wanted Meg to arrive.

 
          
The last little cavalcade of horses and ponies of the day arrived as the sun set.

           
Young John, his wife, Anne, and their three children in front; Meg and her little Tommy bringing up the rear.

 
          
Holbein was waiting for them in the garden, standing under the mulberry tree Margaret Roper had planted in her father’s honor, patiently watching the shadows lengthen.

 
          
The rest of the family came pouring out of the house to greet the newcomers when they heard hooves and snorting and the creak of saddle leather in the courtyard.

           
But Holbein made sure he got to Meg first, so that it was his chest her tired arms in their simple brown wool sleeves could cling to as she slithered gratefully to the ground. If there’d been no other reward for being there but the shy smile she flashed him now, from 
under her lashes, as he stood in front of her, forgetting to take his hands off her waist in the sheer joy of seeing her face again, he thought it would be enough.

           
Then she laughed and stepped back, deftly freeing herself from him. “I’m glad to see you,” she murmured, before turning to her sleepy child with John Clement’s aquiline nose, who was slumped on the pony beside her—“Come on, Tommy”—and putting out her arms to help him down too.

 
          
There was a new timidity between him and Meg, he thought, trotting proprietorially indoors behind mother and child. But there was also a new radiance in the way she looked at him—as if he could offer a hope of salvation she hadn’t dreamed might come her way—that filled him with a great hope he didn’t dare put words to.

 
          
Holbein wouldn’t have had the nerve to try to separate Meg from her family until all the greetings and huggings and welcomings and settlings-in were finished. He hung back from the family, drinking in the sight of her, enjoying the way his heart had swollen so inside his chest that he was breathless with his feelings, trying to keep a look of fatuous adoration off his face.

 
          
Finally she stepped back from her last embrace and came over to where he was standing in the shadows. Her face was lit up with happiness.

 
          
“This is just like the old days, isn’t it?” she said. And then, with a more searching look at him: “You’re very quiet over here in the corner, Master Hans.”

 
          
He didn’t know what to say. He was still breathless. But it hardly seemed to matter, now that he was basking in the joy of her presence.

 
          
“Oh,” he said awkwardly, watching her hands because he didn’t dare go on staring into her eyes. “I’ve been working. You know how it is. I suppose I’m tired.” But he felt as though he could stay awake forever.

 
          
“Margaret says you’ve started again, from scratch?” she said, still gazing into his face. “I’m so looking forward to seeing.”

 
          
Perhaps, he thought, with a wild burst of hope, he could take her off now and show it to her. Be alone with her. But he dismissed the thought almost as soon as it came to him. She wouldn’t want that. She was being reunited with her family.

 
          
“I’ve done a lot already,” he said hesitantly. “And I was thinking . . . it would be good to take tomorrow morning off. Have a break. Now that you’re here . . .”

 
          
Or was that invitation too forward? He felt her eyes drop. Sneaked a look at her face, fearing he’d see it close against him. But all he saw was a faint flush making her cheeks even more beautiful, and a slight, repeated movement of the chin. He could hardly believe it, but she was nodding.

 
          
“There’s a bumper crop of apples,” she said in a quiet rush, and her voice was light. “Will says. And Cecily says you haven’t been out of your room since she got here. You probably need a bit of fresh air, don’t you?

 
          
We could go first thing. Be back before dinner. Get baskets from Margaret. I’ll ask her now.”

 
          
She grinned, meeting his eyes for a moment, and flitted off to talk to her sisters. Holbein went to his bed full of anticipation. Tomorrow he’d have hours and hours with her, sitting on a branch in the orchard, admiring the innocent wisps of dry grass on her skirt and the golden sunlight in her hair. He fell asleep imagining the drunken buzzing of wasps and the cidery promise of fallen apples, with laughter in his heart.

           
I woke up as happy as a country child. There was innocent dawn light coming through my window and someone whistling outside. When I peeped out of my window, Master Hans was sitting under the mulberry tree. He had the baskets. He must already have seen the picnic of bread and cheese and the bottles of ale I’d asked Margaret to put inside. We could stay out all day if we liked.

 
          
“I’m on my way!” I cried, and watched joy flush his upturned face, and half skipped, half ran down the stairs to meet him. Things were so simple with Master Hans, and so clear. All I wanted was to be alone with my friend, talking over whatever in the world came into our heads.

           
The day seemed to last forever. It was as hot as August. There wasn’t a breath of wind, just that sleepy buzzing and birdsong.

 
          
While the shadows were still long, and they were still shy, they walked through the dewy grass, picking up windfalls. Mostly they were too far gone, with fizzy undersides and wormholes.

           
Hans Holbein began taking the apple boughs in his big strong hands and shaking the ripe fruit down himself. He could feel her watching him. He grunted with extra effort as the fruit dropped around him.

           
“It’s raining apples,” she called, more adorably childlike and whimsical than he remembered her; then, indignantly, “Ow!” as one fell on her. He stopped, laughing, out of breath, absurdly happy watching her rub her head.

 
          
She squatted down, took off her boots, hitched up her skirts, and scrabbled into another tree. She braced her bare feet on the lowest branch, and bounced. It was his turn to shelter his head while apples rained on him. “Now you know what it feels like,” he heard her say playfully as he ran to catch them.

 
          
He could have gone on all day, but they filled the baskets in an hour, before the sun was near its peak. He looked doubtfully at her. Was she going to say they should go back now? But she only grinned. “Shall we eat?” she said.

 
          
While she cut cheese into slices and gave him beer to swig from the bottle and smiled at him in the scented air, he told her about the Protestants taking over Basel. “A useless bunch of bigots they turned out to be,” he said, munching. “And we’d expected so much of them too.” He guffawed at his own past foolishness and fell cheerfully silent.

 
          
He caught her watching him again from under her eyelashes as he wolfed down his third massive shelf of bread loaded with cheese.

           
“You make everything seem so easy, Master Hans,” she said, and he wondered if she was laughing at him. Suddenly embarrassed, he lowered his meal to the grass. Had he been greedy?

 
          
“Don’t be shy,” she said gently, curling herself up, arms around knees, bare toes peeping out from under her skirts. “I mean it. You make people feel happy. Look at Father. He gets quite . . .”—she looked down as she searched for the right word, and wiggled her toes in the grass—“playful when you’re about. He seems younger. He’s not at all like that with the rest of us, you know. I think you two must have the same kind of minds.”

 
          
He felt his face burning. Inside he was surging with bashful pride.

 
          
“Oh, happiness . . .” he muttered. She looked so pretty and happy herself, in the rush of birdsong, with that halo of cow parsley waving behind her. He hugged his arms round his own knees, hardly aware of the bread behind him on the grass as he shuffled closer to her.

 
          
“I like your little boy,” he said awkwardly, fishing as cautiously as he knew how for information about what her life had become as John Clement’s wife. “Tommy. I can see you must know about happiness.”

 
          
“Mmm . . .” she said, and looked down, as if tussling with difficult thoughts. “You were right, all that time ago. Children definitely are the best thing that ever happens to you.” Then she laughed. A forced sort of laugh. “Marriage is harder than I thought, though. Once you’re into the happily-ever-after bit.”

 
          
He hardly knew how to breathe next, let alone what to say. So he just went on looking at her, feeling the golden honey of the light ooze down on them.

           
“But we all get by,” she added, as if regretting what she’d said. After that she didn’t seem to want to say any more. As if changing the subject, she unclasped her knees and lay back on the sweet crushed grass and looked up at the blue sky.

 
          
“So hot,” she said slowly, “a beautiful day.” And she sighed, as if she might want to doze in the sun, and stretched her beautiful long limbs out, and folded her arms under her head, and shut her eyes.

           
Hans Holbein could hardly restrain himself from throwing himself down beside her and raining kisses on her, like apples. But he knew himself well enough by now to know not to trust his baser instincts. So he sat on, bewildered by the sheer beauty of her, and when he was reasonably sure she must be asleep he got up and left her sleeping among the trees, and tiptoed off to the hedgerow to empty his bladder.

 
          
I woke up and he was still sitting there, watching me with the gentlest look imaginable on his big face. He stopped as soon as he realized my eyes were open. I could see from the shadows that it was getting late. He’d tidied up the picnic while I was asleep. And when I sat up and started looking for my boots, I saw he’d picked a whole armful of wildflowers and left them lying next to me.

 
          
“They’re lovely . . . ,” I said, spellbound, so touched that I almost got up and put my arms around him. “Thank you. I’m sorry I went to sleep. But sometimes . . . sometimes it’s good to be so at ease with a person that you don’t have to say anything. I’ve missed that. I don’t know many people this well, anywhere.”

 
          
Something about those words seemed familiar as they came out of my mouth. I wondered, as we walked in languid silence back to the house, where I could have heard them before.

           
Holbein saw Thomas More first. He was standing under the mulberry tree, watching the sun sink. He looked as tanned and relaxed as a countryman. “Lovely evening,” he said warmly, turning to face the returning apple-pickers and looking into the baskets. “Though they say there’ll be a storm tonight. You’ve got a good crop there.”

 
          
Holbein saw the attentive look Meg fixed on her father, so different from the sullen, worried glances he remembered from the garden in Chelsea, when none of them could yet understand the changes just beginning in the world.

           
More smiled down at her. “I wonder, Meg. Has Master Hans shown you the new version of his picture?” he asked, and suddenly Holbein realized the other man might not have simply been enjoying the afternoon light, but be waiting for them. “I think he’d love you to see it before everyone else does,” More went on. And, with a hand guiding his surprised-looking ward’s waist, he determinedly propelled her—with Holbein in their wake, feeling astonished now that he hadn’t remembered even to mention the picture in that whole long day of happiness, and a tremor of unease that he didn’t know how to explain, even to himself—into the house and the painting parlor.