Mark Smeaton
A young musician
The story so far…
Week 5: Make or Mar / Three-Card Trick
A Flemish musician who was a chorister at York Place. Wolsey thinks of sending him to Anne as a gift. Clearly, Smeaton doesn’t know that Cromwell speaks Flemish, or maybe he would be more careful when whispering about Anne’s lovers. But no hard facts. Nothing Cromwell can use.
Week 6: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 1)
The musician is at York Place with Anne Boleyn. He is happy and doesn’t miss the cardinal. Cromwell thinks: I think of you, Mark. You called me a felon and a murderer.
Week 9: Arrange Your Face (Part 2)
When visiting Anne, Cromwell flicks a finger against Mark’s head. “Cheer it up, can’t you?” Mark is playing something doleful on his lute. Anne doesn’t seem to know his name.
Later, Harry Norris says Francis Weston “is jealous of a boy she brings in to sing for us some nights.” Is that Mark?
Week 10: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 1)
The goggle-eyed lute-player is still with Anne Boleyn. “He’s a sweet boy,” says Mary Boleyn.
Week 14: Devil’s Spit / A Painter’s Eye
Cromwell and Lady Rochford share a “pointless dislike of Mark.”
‘He sticks like a burr to his betters. He does not know his place. He is a jumped-up nobody, taking his chances because the times are disordered.’
So says Lady Rochford. She sees him act as go-between for George and Anne, as the queen seeks novelty away from the king’s “stale” bed. Smeaton is paid in “pearl buttons and comfit boxes and feathers for his hat.”
Looking at the painting of himself, Cromwell says: “I fear Mark was right… I once heard him say I looked like a murderer.”
Gregory Cromwell says: “Did you not know?”
Week 18: Falcons
What man could find out what women talk about? Mark, dressed as a woman?
‘Oh,’ Jane says, ‘Mark’s with us anyway. He’s always loitering. We barely count him a man. If you want to know our secrets, ask Mark.
Week 20: Crows (Part 2)
Mark outside the queen’s chambers.
What brings Mark here? He is without musical instruments as an excuse, and he is got up as gorgeously as any of the young lords who wait on Anne. Is there justice? he wonders. Mark does naught and gets more bonny each time I see him, and I do evverything and get more grey and paunchy by the day.
Smeaton seems less proud and asks Cromwell for work, calling himself and Cromwell, ‘we lesser men.’
Week 24: The Black Book (Part 3)
Mark has been promoted among the grooms. Cromwell remembers when he turned up at the cardinal’s door, ‘in patched boots and a canvas doublet that had belonged to a bigger man.’ He now ‘goes in damask, perched on a fine gelding with a saddle of Spanish leather, the reins clutched in gold-fringed gloves.’
Rafe says all the money comes from Anne. ‘Anne is recklessly generous.’
Week 25: The Book of Phantoms (Part 1/5)
Mary Shelton tells Cromwell about Anne teasing and being cruel to Mark. The incident led to a fight between her and Lady Rochford and then Harry Norris.
Lady Rochford advises Cromwell to speak to Mark Smeaton. He says he has already asked Smeaton to supper.
Week 26: The Book of Phantoms (Part 2/5)
Mark Smeaton comes to Cromwell’s house at Stepney. He brings his lute, but he does not play. ‘Five rash minutes of boasting’ is all it takes to undo him. He admits to sleeping with the queen. He, Master Secretary, wants a written confession and a list of names. When Smeaton falters, he threatens him with five minutes with Christophe, and more besides.
Christophe locks Mark in with Christmas, so the star in its sleeves can torture him. Grace’s angel wings can frighten him. He, Cromwell, does not sleep that night. And in the morning, names tumble from the musician: Norris, Weston, Brereton, Wyatt. ‘No, not Wyatt,’ Cromwell says. Call-Me queries why he protects Wyatt. He thinks Wriothesley would not understand. Smeaton is taken to the Tower.
Week 28: Master of Phantoms (Part 4/5)
The order goes to the Tower, ‘Bring up the bodies.’
Weston, Brereton, Smeaton and Norris are tried to together in Westminster Hall on 12 May. The three gentlemen try to keep apart from Mark, but this brings them too close together for their liking. They know their fate now, and all express contrition, ‘thought none but Mark has said for what.’
Week 29: The Book of Phantoms (Part 5/5) / Spoils
He is executed on 17 May 1536 at Tower Hill. With the others, he said he was a sinner and deserved to die. Afterwards, his body is stripped, and the headless bodies become anonymous corpses. This creates a problem when it comes to burying Rochford in the chapel.