Portrait of an Unknown Woman Read Online Free PDF Page A

course—she was always so brisk. But that moist glimmer I must have imagined did remind me how she and John Clement used to huddle together to discuss how best to handle the younger me. She never knew I was listening from the gallery; he probably didn’t either, though I stopped being sure of that. I remembered feeling reassured that this forthright, no-nonsense woman worried over my nightmares and studied quietness back then; reassured too at how she trusted our first teacher, and at how carefully she’d listen to his slow, thoughtful responses. They were old friends.
                 “Clement!” old Sir John barked, looking astonished—the closest that the old authoritarian could get to being excited. And he began shuffling vaguely forward.
                 John Clement bowed low to Dame Alice (in his quiet way, he’d always had elaborate manners). He bowed lower still to Grandfather. But then his formality gave way and he put those long arms around both of their backs at the same time. I thought he was only a breath away from whirling them off the ground too. There was a sudden babble of welcome. Voices testing their strength. Cheeks and hands and arms proffered in greeting. And all those insincere phrases people say. “You haven’t changed a bit!” “You look younger than ever!”
                 But it stopped as quickly as it started. He was looking around, as if he hadn’t seen everyone he was looking for. And then he caught sight of me, and I saw his face light up.
                 “Meg—I’ve come on Thursday,” he began. And this time his arms         hung awkwardly, and he didn’t try and swing me round like a little girl. Feeling the happiness inside me surging out toward him, I stepped forward.
                 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. 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’s dear, cramped scrawl.
                 “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 woolen 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