Montacute House, Tudor gangsters and Miss Knollys 

I have always had a fascination with Tudor politics - the faction fighting, the cruel strategies of courtiers, the treason trials - they remind me of Game of Thrones, the Yezhovshchina -

I always think of Thomas Phelippes, inking a tiny gallows in the margin of the letter sent by Mary, Queen of Scots -

Recently, I strolled down the Long Gallery of Montacute House - outside the grand house, it was very cold - I huddled up like a zek within my blue coat - my fingers were numb -

The high ceilinged gallery was the length of two tennis courts - there were paintings hung in the shadowy rooms leading off this space -

I looked at the likenesses of Tudor royalty, politicians, soldiers, courtiers - there was Sir Walter Raleigh, with his son, both of them, fearless, clear eyed, doomed -

James I sported a velvet beaver - he looked raffish and clever - Prince Henry looked, I thought, a little spindly and whey faced -

William Cecil, clad in gloomy velvet, had a nervy clever face - he looked exhausted -

They looked like gangsters, I thought, wary Mafiosi, these men of power -

But I liked the look of Nicholas Throckmorton - he held a pair of supple gloves in his right hand - he glanced, sideways, at me - his face was alert, full of a quick intelligence -

Then I found, in a chamber below the gallery, the portrait of a young woman - I fell in love with her immediately - I stared shamelessly at her pale, beautiful, face - the likeness was one of Miss Knollys, painted in 1577 -

I thought of the pedant, Spiridion Trepka, and of his love for Medea da Carpi -