The Last Kiss

The Last Kiss

12 June 1540

As spring turned to summer, there was a palpable shift in the Queen’s rooms. It was not merely that Anna of Cleves had been sent to Richmond. It was not merely that little Kitty Howard had begun to sport new jewelry and more luxurious fabrics. Susanna noticed that the ladies had slowly, relentlessly, turned against their queen. The whispers became cruel laughs that became sneers.

Anna had felt the shift, too, and turned less and less to Susanna, who had been her support for so long, for explanations. Even a newcomer could see that Anna’s fortunes had turned. Susanna felt helpless in the face of what she saw clearly as the King’s treachery. His cruelty to the woman he had wed, his casual embrace of this young girl, his inability to see the human being behind the face. Many days she wished that Hans – who knew them both so well – could be here to confirm her suspicions, to support both Susanna and Anna as the cruel women around them relished Anna’s descent. But what could he do? What could she have done?

Susanna stewed in her worries until word came to them in Richmond that Cromwell had been taken. Norfolk had accosted him in a meeting of the Privy Council at Westminster, ripping the Lord Privy Seal’s chain of office from his shoulders, spitting on him in his eagerness to see the man fall. Now Lord Cromwell was in the Tower. Susanna saw at once that this would crush Hans. That Hans Holbein, too, might be in danger. If Cromwell had been the architect of Anna’s crumbling marriage, Hans had been the draughtsman.

She made her excuses to the Queen and hastened to London. It was a stressful journey from Richmond into the city. She sat, fretting in the wherry boat trying to mask her anxiety and then running along the streets from the Steelyard stairs. She had not slept the night before, worrying about Hans. Worrying that the blunted hatred of Norfolk would be raised against this man that she loved. As it had been brought down on Cromwell, the man she despised.

She found Hans sitting in his darkened studio on Eastcheap, rubbing a card, the five of hearts back and forth against a porphyry stone. Beginning a miniature. His head was bowed, the movement of his hands machinelike. She saw that he was despondent, hiding himself in his work. He heard the sound of her step at the doorway and shot to his feet, panic lighting his eyes, his brow, his hands. When he saw it was Susanna, he threw back his head in relief.

He said, “Lord Cromwell. They have taken Cromwell.”

She said, simply. “I know.” And came to him, holding out her hands so that he grasped them rather than embracing her. She was not sure she was ready for the feel of his body against hers.

She had known that it was a risk to come to him. Hans might send her away. Back to her husband. After all, she had been cruel to him. She had denied him any access to Baby Harry, the joy of her life. She had turned a cold ear to his requests. She knew he would feel the pain of Anna’s humiliation, of little Kitty rise, of Cromwell’s fall. She saw it as clearly as she saw the beauty of his callused hands, now holding her own knobby fingers.

“Sweet Jesu, Susanna. He is in the Tower of London. They treat him like a traitor when he has been the King’s most ardent, most faithful man. They treat him like Anne Boleyn.”

“Like Mark,” she said softly.

“Yes. Like Mark,” he looked to her frantically. “After all Cromwell has done.”

“He has done a great deal, it is true,” Susanna tried to mask her own feelings for the man who had manipulated the women of court for years; who had inveigled them into spying for him; who had been the King’s pander, bringing all manner of women to the King’s bed; who had forced Hans to compromise his principles. She hated that man. But she loved this one. She could not bear to see him suffer.

Hans locked eyes with her. She saw that he understood what she had left unsaid. Then he looked back down at their hands, still grasping each other as if they had been tied together by one of Cromwell’s torturers. He said, “You hate him. I know. You think he is a monster, like the King. I know. I think often about what you said: He is not a gentle husband. How can you go out looking for more women for him to destroy? Why would you want a woman that you admire to be in this place with that monster? I have been sitting here, making a miniature of that little Howard girl and I see that I am his pawn. I am his creature. And I hate it. And yet, the world sees me as his tool, his instrument. They will blame me, I know.”

Susanna shook her head. “No Hans. They will not.”

Hans searched her eyes. “You know that Anna will fall, too. She is his creature as much as I.”

Susanna took a shuddering breath. “You may be right. But today, I am here for you. I will worry for her another day.”

And she could not resist any more, she wanted so badly to comfort him. She pulled her hands from his and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her head into his chest, where it had always fit so perfectly. She inhaled his smell – linseed oil, vellum, chalk dust. He was still hers. Together they breathed as one. His heart, beneath her cheek, began to slow.

She felt him kiss the top of her head and she leaned back, stood on her toes and reached for his lips with hers. He tasted just the same. She reached a hand up to stroke his stubbled cheek. With her other hand she massaged the taut muscles of his neck. There was a sob in his throat as he closed his eyes and consumed her.

She knew; he knew; it would be their last kiss.