Portrait of an Unknown Woman. Vanora Bennett

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      But Dame Alice had recovered from her shock and got the measure of the situation by now, at least enough to talk properly to her surprise guest.

      ‘Well, now, Master John,’ she said playfully, stepping in front of me to give his cheek an affectionate tweak. ‘What are you doing fondling all our daughters as if they were Southwark Queens? And what are you doing here anyway, turning up like a bad penny after all these years away without so much as a word to any of us? Not that it matters why – we’re just all very pleased indeed to see you. No – stop – don’t tell us anything here. Come up to the house at once, and tell us around the fire instead. We can’t stand around gossiping on the riverbank. It’s January, for mercy’s sake. Whatever can have possessed us all to come out and hang around in the cold in the first place?’ And she rolled her eyes comically and guided him away with a firm arm, still talking, with Grandfather and the rest of them streaming along behind, screeching like ravens. ‘As if it were spring!’ I heard her say from way in front.

      Which left me alone, in the river breeze that suddenly seemed to have a touch of ice in it, on the jetty. Alone, that is, except for the boatman, now pulling boxes and bags out of the boat, and his squat passenger, who was looking as crestfallen as I felt as the crowd on the jetty disappeared.

      The fair-haired man caught my eye. ‘If it please you, mistress,’ he said in halting English, fumbling in pockets and pouches. ‘I am to put up at Sir Thomas More’s house at Chelsea. Am I here?’ And he pulled out a much-folded letter, which I could see even from a distance was covered in Erasmus’ dear, cramped scrawl, and gave me a mute, pleading look from his spaniel eyes.

      ‘Oh heavens above,’ I said, struck with remorse. One of the items piled on the boards came into sudden focus for me – a long wooden frame tightly wrapped in woollen cloth: painter’s tools. The poor man was shivering in his rough cloak. And everyone else had gone without him. ‘You’re Hans Holbein, aren’t you?’

      After a few minutes it stopped seeming such a messy encounter. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ I was muttering, full of confusion and excruciating embarrassment, but the big man beside me just burst out laughing. He had a big laugh that came up from his belly; he didn’t look a man to be bothered by embarrassment. He just looked capable and friendly, with big thick hands and fat spatula fingers, the muscular sort of hands you need to grind up powders with a mortar and pestle and mix them together. I didn’t know much about painting, then, but I could already sense he would be good at his craft.

      So I could feel the sunshine again as I walked up from the jetty to the house where I knew I’d find my family fussing happily around John Clement and where, sooner or later, the two of us would have a chance to talk again. I had Hans Holbein trotting beside me, trying to make his massive frame small in the manner of humble men, and the skinny boatman trotting behind, weighed down with bags and squawking, ‘Thought it was the right thing to put them in together if they both wanted to come down here. Save them a few pennies, I thought, missis.’

      With Master Hans beside me, with his easel balanced on his shoulder as if it weighed nothing, drinking in the vista unfolding before us, I saw it again myself as if for the first time. And it became beautiful to walk onto our land through the wicket gate (ignoring the gatehouse with the dark secrets whose windows I can’t bear to look through), and up through the lawns and beds, which suddenly seemed full not just of withered trees and shrunken shrubs, but of tomorrow’s berries and buttercups and lilies and gillyflowers and sweet cabbage roses, and up the steps towards the dignified redbrick frontage Father had chosen for us all – a porch, two bays, and two sets of casement windows on each side. There were jasmine and honeysuckle stalks already growing over the porch. We planted them last year, when we moved into the new house, built to show Father’s ever-rising status, and left our old London life behind. And one day soon we’d be seeing cascades of sweet-smelling colour coming from them.

      ‘My English is not good, and I am sorry,’ Master Hans was saying, slowly, so you had to concentrate on what he was saying, but I liked watching his sensible, no-nonsense face and the hearty voice, so that was all right. ‘But this is a very beautiful house. Peaceful. So I congratulate you. You must be happy living here.’

      Talking to him was like dipping into a great vat of warming soup. Chunky broth with savoury vegetables and a meaty aroma – not the grandest of food, but more wholesome and comforting than the most elaborate dish of honeyed peacocks’ tongues. Cheerfulness was spreading through me now, as I pushed open the door. ‘Yes,’ I said, feeling more certain than I had for a long time. ‘Yes, we are happy.’

      ‘Give me your cloak, leave your things here and come straight to the table – you must be cold and hungry,’ I went on, smelling the food being laid on the table behind the wooden screens and hearing the murmur of voices. He paused. Suddenly he did look embarrassed. ‘Mistress, excuse me, I have one question before we sit with your other guest. Tell me, what is his name?’

      In what I thought was a reassuring manner, I laughed. ‘Oh, he’s an old family friend. He’s called – John – Clement,’ I said, pronouncing the words so clearly that even a foreigner could copy them, happy to have the chance to say the name. I began to nudge the German towards the hall, but Holbein didn’t seem to want to move. He chewed on the thought, looking puzzled.

      ‘John Clement,’ he repeated. ‘That is the name I remembered. I drew a picture once of a John Clement. A young boy who would be our age now. It was my first commission from Master Erasmus. Would he be the son of this gentleman?’

      I laughed again. ‘Oh no,’ I said, shaking my head firmly. ‘This John Clement hasn’t got a son of our age. He’s not married. It must be someone else, or maybe you mistook the name. Anyway, do come in properly, Master Hans. You might not believe it, but my family is very eager to meet you. And I can smell dinner on the table.’

      ‘Yes,’ he said, and met my eye, and laughed again. ‘I must have made a mistake.’ He let me guide him forward at last, and Dame Alice sent him to wash his hands and settled him at the table with a barrage of explanations and good-humoured apologies and expostulations and platters of steaming roasted food, and there was a lot of bowing and loud talk for foreigners, in clear, over-enunciated voices, and the kind of slightly forced good humour that you get among strangers meeting for the first time. I watched her dash off a note to Father telling him the guest we’d been expecting had arrived – and a second unexpected guest into the bargain – and took it to find a boy who could go to town to deliver it. Everyone had packed in, among them Nicholas Kratzer, the astronomer, who had not yet managed to start talking German to his compatriot. By the time I sat down to eat, there was only one chair left – on the same side of the table as John Clement but at the other end. I could hardly see him, let alone talk to him. He had Elizabeth and Margaret on either side, and all I could really see was Elizabeth chattering excitedly enough for all three of them, with pink in her cheeks again. I didn’t hear him say a single word through the meal – but there was plenty of chatter all around, and I couldn’t really catch the drift of what they were talking about. My own vis-à-vis was Master Holbein, on the other side of the table. The German was a restful companion, wolfing down vast quantities of food in silence. But I also caught him doing something other than wiping up sauces at speed with great wedges of bread. Once or twice I looked up and saw him chewing on his bread, thoughtfully, like a cow on its cud, and giving John Clement long, slow, considering looks. Whatever the odd thought was that he’d had as we walked in through the door, he was still clearly turning it over in his head now.

       2

      After dinner – after the settling and snuggling of the midday nap had begun, after the merciful silence that descended on the house whenever Dame Alice fell asleep – I slipped downstairs and found my cloak and boots.

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