by Hilary Mante
‘How else can I know how to move next? My lord cannot know, he cannot understand, what it's like here now.’
Cranmer says gently, ‘Should you not go to him? Your presence would dispel any doubt.’
‘There is no time. The snare is set for him and I dare not move.’
There is a chill in the air; the summer birds have flown, and black-winged lawyers are gathering for the new term in the fields of Lincoln's Inn and Gray's. The hunting season – or at least, the season when the king hunts every day – will soon be over. Whatever is happening elsewhere, whatever deceits and frustrations, you can forget them in the field. The hunter is among the most innocent of men; living in the moment makes him feel pure. When he returns in the evening, his body aches, his mind is full of pictures of leaves and sky; he does not want to read documents. His miseries, his perplexities have receded, and they will stay away, provided – after food and wine, laughter and exchange of stories – he gets up at dawn to do it all over again.
But the winter king, less occupied, will begin to think about his conscience. He will begin to think about his pride. He will begin to prepare the prizes for those who can deliver him results.
It is an autumn day, whitish sun flitting behind the loosening, flickering leaves. They go into the butts. The king likes to do more than one thing at once: talk, direct arrows at a target. ‘Here we will be alone,’ he says, ‘and I will be free to open my mind to you.’
In fact, the population of a small village – as it might be, Aslockton – is circulating around them. The king does not know what ‘alone’ means. Is he ever by himself, even in his dreams? ‘Alone’ means without Norfolk clattering after him. ‘Alone’ means without Charles Brandon, who in a summer fit of fury the king advised to make himself scarce and not come within fifty miles of the court. ‘Alone’ means just with my yeoman of the bow and his menials, alone with my gentlemen of the privy chamber, who are my select and private friends. Two of these gentlemen, unless he is with the queen, sleep at the foot of his bed; so they have been on duty for some years now.
When he sees Henry draw his bow, he thinks, I see now he is royal. At home or abroad, in wartime or peacetime, happy or aggrieved, the king likes to practise several times in the week, as an Englishman should; using his height, the beautiful trained muscles of his arms, shoulders and chest, he sends his arrows snapping straight to the eye of the target. Then he holds out his arm, for someone to unstrap and restrap the royal armguard; for someone to change his bow, and bring him a choice. A cringing slave hands a napkin, to mop his forehead, and picks it up from where the king has dropped it; and then, exasperated, one shot or two falling wide, the King of England snaps his fingers, for God to change the wind.
The king shouts, ‘From various quarters I receive the advice that I should consider my marriage dissolved in the eyes of Christian Europe, and may remarry as I please. And soon.’
He doesn't shout back.
‘But others say …’ The breeze blows, his words are carried off, towards Europe.
‘I am one of the others.’
‘Dear Jesus,’ Henry says. ‘I will be unmanned by it. How long do you suppose my patience lasts?’
He hesitates to say, you are still living with your wife. You share a roof, a court, wherever you move together, she on the queen's side, you on the king's; you told the cardinal she was your sister not your wife, but if today you do not shoot well, if the breeze is not in your favour or you find your eyes blurred by sudden tears, it is only sister Katherine whom you can tell; you can admit no weakness or failure to Anne Boleyn.
He has studied Henry through his practice round. He has taken up a bow at his invitation, which causes some consternation in the ranks of the gentlemen who stud the grass and lean against trees, wearing their fallen-fruit silks of mulberry, gold and plum. Though Henry shoots well, he has not the action of a born archer; the born archer lays his whole body into the bow.
Compare him with Richard Williams, Richard Cromwell as he is now. His grandfather ap Evan was an artist with the bow. He never saw him, but you can bet he had muscles like cords and every one in use from the heels up. Studying the king, he is satisfied that his great-grandfather was not the archer Blaybourne, as the story says, but Richard, Duke of York. His grandfather was royal; his mother was royal; he shoots like a gentleman amateur, and he is king through and through.
The king says, you have a good arm, a good eye. He says disparagingly, oh, at this distance. We have a match every Sunday, he says, my household. We go to Paul's for the sermon and then out to Moorfields, we meet up with our fellow guilds-men and destroy the butchers and the grocers, and then we have a dinner together. We have grudge matches with the vintners …
Henry turns to him, impulsive: what if I came with you one week? If I came in disguise? The commons would like it, would they not? I could shoot for you. A king should show himself, sometimes, don't you feel? It would be amusing, yes?
Not very, he thinks. He cannot swear to it, but he thinks there are tears in Henry's eyes. ‘For sure we would win,’ he says. It is what you would say to a child. ‘The vintners would be roaring like bears.’
It begins to drizzle, and as they walk towards a sheltering clump of trees, a pattern of leaves shadows the king's face. He says, Nan threatens to leave me. She says that there are other men and she is wasting her youth.
Norfolk, panicking, that last week of October 1530: ‘Listen. This fellow here,’ he jerks his thumb, rudely, at Brandon – who is back at court, of course he is back – ‘this fellow here, a few years ago, he charged at the king in the lists, and nearly killed him. Henry had not put his visor down, God alone knows why – but these things happen. My lord here ran his lance – bam! – into the king's headpiece, and the lance shattered – an inch, one inch, from his eye.’
Norfolk has hurt his right hand, by the force of his demonstration. Wincing, but furious, earnest, he presses on. ‘One year later, Henry is following his hawk – it's that cut-up sort of country, flat, deceptive, you know it – he comes to a ditch, he drives in a pole to help him cross, the infernal instrument breaks, God rot it, and there's His Majesty face down and stunned in a foot of water and mud, and if some servant hadn't clawed him out, well, gentlemen, I shudder to think.’
He thinks, that's one question answered. In case of peril, you may pick him up. Fish him out. Whatever.
‘Suppose he dies?’ Norfolk demands. ‘Supposing a fever carries him away or he comes off his horse and breaks his neck? Then what? His bastard, Richmond? I've nothing against him, he's a fine boy, and Anne says I should get him married to my daughter Mary, Anne's no fool, let's put a Howard everywhere, she says, everywhere the king looks. Now I have no quarrel with Richmond, except he was born out of wedlock. Can he reign? Ask yourselves this. How did the Tudors get the crown? By title? No. By force? Exactly. By God's grace they won the battle. The old king, he had such a fist as you will go many a mile to meet, he had great books into which he entered his grudges and he forgave, when? Never! That's how one rules, masters.’ He turns to his audience, to the councillors waiting and watching and to the gentlemen of the court and the bedchamber; to Henry Norris, to his friend William Brereton, to Master Secretary Gardiner; to, incidentally, as it happens, Thomas Cromwell, who is increasingly where he shouldn't be. He says, ‘The old king bred, and by the help of Heaven he bred sons. But when Arthur died, there were swords sharpened in Europe, and they were sharpened to carve up this kingdom. Henry that is now, he was a child, nine years old. If the old king had not staggered on a few more years, the wars would have been to fight all over again. A child cannot hold England. And a bastard child? God give me strength! And it's November again!’
It's hard to fault what the duke says. He understands it all; even that last cry, wrung from the duke's heart. It's November, and a year has passed since Howard and Brandon walked into York Place and demanded the cardinal's chain of office, and turned him out of his house.
There is a silenc
e. Then someone coughs, someone sighs. Someone – probably Henry Norris – laughs. It is he who speaks. ‘The king has one child born in wedlock.’
Norfolk turns. He flushes, a deep mottled purple. ‘Mary?’ he says. ‘That talking shrimp?’
‘She will grow up.’
‘We are all waiting,’ Suffolk says. ‘She has now reached fourteen, has she not?’
‘But her face,’ Norfolk says, ‘is the size of my thumbnail.’ The duke shows off his digit to the company. ‘A woman on the English throne, it flies in the face of nature.’
‘Her grandmother was Queen of Castile.’
‘She cannot lead an army.’
‘Isabella did.’
Says the duke, ‘Cromwell, why are you here? Listening to the talk of gentlemen?’
‘My lord, when you shout, the beggars on the street can hear you. In Calais.’
Gardiner has turned to him; he is interested. ‘So you think Mary can rule?’
He shrugs. ‘It depends who advises her. It depends who she marries.’
Norfolk says, ‘We have to act soon. Katherine has half the lawyers of Europe pushing paper for her. This dispensation. That dispensation. The other dispensation with the different bloody wording that they say they've got in Spain. It doesn't matter. This has gone beyond paper.’
‘Why?’ Suffolk says. ‘Is your niece in foal?’
‘No! More's the pity. Because if she were, he'd have to do something.’
‘What?’ Suffolk says.
‘I don't know. Grant his own divorce?’
There is a shuffle, a grunt, a sigh. Some look at the duke; some look at their shoes. There's no man in the room who doesn't want Henry to have what he wants. Their lives and fortunes depend on it. He sees the path ahead: a tortuous path through a flat terrain, the horizon deceptively clear, the country intersected by ditches, and the present Tudor, a certain amount of mud bespattering his person and his face, fished gasping into clear air. He says, ‘That good man who pulled the king out of the ditch, what was his name?’
Norfolk says, drily, ‘Master Cromwell likes to hear of the deeds of those of low birth.’
He doesn't suppose any of them will know. But Norris says, ‘I know. His name was Edmund Mody.’
Muddy, more like, Suffolk says. He yells with laughter. They stare at him.
It is All Souls' Day: as Norfolk puts it, November again. Alice and Jo have come to speak to him. They are leading Bella – the Bella that is now – on a ribbon of pink silk. He looks up: may I be of service to you two ladies?
Alice says, ‘Master, it is more than two years since my aunt Elizabeth died, your lady wife. Will you write to the cardinal, and ask him to ask the Pope to let her out of Purgatory?’
He says, ‘What about your aunt Kat? And your little cousins, my daughters?’
The children exchange glances. ‘We don't think they have been there so long. Anne Cromwell was proud of her working of numbers and boasted that she was learning Greek. Grace was vain of her hair and used to state that she had wings, this was a lie.
We think perhaps they must suffer more. But the cardinal could try.’
Don't ask, don't get, he thinks.
Alice says, encouragingly, ‘You have been so active in the cardinal's business that he would not refuse. And although the king does not favour the cardinal any more, surely the Pope favours him?’
‘And I expect,’ says Jo, ‘that the cardinal writes to the Pope every day. Though I do not know who sews his letters. And I suppose the cardinal might send him a present for his trouble. Some money, I mean. Our aunt Mercy says that the Pope does nothing except on cash terms.’
‘Come with me,’ he says. They exchange glances. He sweeps them along before him. Bella's small legs race. Jo drops her lead, but still Bella runs behind.
Mercy and the elder Johane are sitting together. The silence is not companionable. Mercy is reading, murmuring the words to herself. Johane is staring at the wall, sewing in her lap. Mercy marks her place. ‘What's this, an embassy?’
‘Tell her,’ he says. ‘Jo, tell your mother what you have been asking me.’
Jo starts to cry. It is Alice who speaks up and puts their case. ‘We want our aunt Liz to come out of Purgatory.’
‘What have you been teaching them?’ he asks.
Johane shrugs. ‘Many grown persons believe what they believe.’
‘Dear God, what is going on under this roof? These children believe the Pope can go down to the underworld with a bunch of keys. Whereas Richard denies the sacrament –’
‘What?’ Johane's mouth falls open. ‘He does what?’
Mercy says, ‘Richard is right. When the good Lord said, this is my body, he meant, this signifies my body. He did not license priests to be conjurers.’
‘But he said, it is. He did not say, this is like my body, he said, it is. Can God lie? No. He is incapable of it.’
‘God can do anything,’ Alice says.
Johane stares at her. ‘You little minx.’
‘If my mother were here, she would slap you for that.’
‘No fighting,’ he says. ‘Please?’ The Austin Friars is like the world in little. These few years it's been more like a battlefield than a household; or like one of the tented encampments in which the survivors look in despair at their shattered limbs and spoiled expectations. But they are his to direct, these last hardened troops; if they are not to be flattened in the next charge it is he who must teach them the defensive art of facing both ways, faith and works, Pope and new brethren, Katherine and Anne. He looks at Mercy, who is smirking. He looks at Johane, a high colour in her cheeks. He turns away from Johane and his thoughts, which are not precisely theological. He says to the children, ‘You have done nothing wrong.’ But their faces are stricken, and he coaxes them: ‘I shall give you a present, Jo, for sewing the cardinal's letters; and I shall give you a present, Alice, I am sure that we do not need a reason. I shall give you marmosets.’
They look at each other. Jo is tempted. ‘Do you know where to get them?’
‘I think so. I have been to the Lord Chancellor's house, and his wife has such a creature, and it sits on her knee and attends to everything she says.’
Alice says, ‘They are not the fashion now.’
‘Though we thank you,’ says Mercy.
‘Though we thank you,’ Alice repeats. ‘But marmosets are not seen at court since Lady Anne came up. To be fashionable, we should like Bella's puppies.’
‘In time,’ he says. ‘Perhaps.’ The room is full of undercurrents, some of which he does not understand. He picks up his dog, tucks her under his arm and goes off to see how to provide some more money for brother George Rochford. He sits Bella on his desk, to take a nap among his papers. She has been sucking the end of her ribbon, and attempting subtly to undo the knot at her throat.
On 1 November 1530, a commission for the cardinal's arrest is given to Harry Percy, the young Earl of Northumberland. The earl arrives at Cawood to arrest him, forty-eight hours before his planned arrival in York for his investiture. He is taken to Pontefract Castle under guard, from there to Doncaster, and from there to Sheffield Park, the home of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Here at Talbot's house he falls ill. On 26 November the Constable of the Tower arrives, with twenty-four men at arms, to escort him south. From there he travels to Leicester Abbey. Three days later he dies.
What was England, before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold.
George Cavendish comes to Austin Friars. He cries as he talks. Sometimes he dries his tears and moralises. But mostly he cries. ‘We had not even finished our dinner,’ he says. ‘My lord was taking his dessert when young Harry Percy walked in. He was spattered with mud from the road, and he had the keys in his hands, he had taken them from the porter already, and set sentries on the stairs. My lord rose to his feet, he said, Harry, if I'd known, I'd have waited dinner for you. I fear we've almost finished the fish. Shall I pray for a miracle?
‘I whispered
to him, my lord, do not blaspheme. Then Harry Percy came forward: my lord, I arrest you for high treason.’
Cavendish waits. He waits for him to erupt in fury? But he puts his fingers together, joined as if he were praying. He thinks, Anne arranged this, and it must have given her an intense and secret pleasure; vengeance deferred, for herself, for her old lover, once berated by the cardinal and sent packing from the court. He says, ‘How did he look? Harry Percy?’
‘He was shaking from head to foot.’
‘And my lord?’
‘Demanded his warrant, his commission. Percy said, there are items in my instructions you may not see. So, said my lord, if you will not show it, I shall not surrender to you, so here's a pretty state of affairs, Harry. Come, George, my lord said to me, we will go into my rooms, and have some conference. They followed him on his heels, the earl's party, so I stood in the door and I barred the way. My lord cardinal walked into his chamber, mastering himself, and when he turned he said, Cavendish, look at my face: I am not afraid of any man alive.’
He, Cromwell, walks away so that he does not have to see the man's distress. He looks at the wall, at the panelling, at his new linenfold panelling, and runs his index finger across its grooves. ‘When they took him from the house, the townspeople were assembled outside. They knelt in the road and wept. They asked God to send vengeance on Harry Percy.’
God need not trouble, he thinks: I shall take it in hand.
‘We were riding south. The weather was closing in. At Doncaster it was late when we arrived. In the street the townsfolk were packed shoulder to shoulder, and each person holding up a candle against the dark. We thought they would disperse, but they stood all night in the road. And their candles burned down. And it was daylight, of a sort.’
‘It must have put heart into him. Seeing the crowds.’
‘Yes, but by then – I did not say, I should have told you – he had gone a week without eating.’
‘Why? Why did he do that?’
‘Some say he meant to destroy himself. I cannot believe it, a Christian soul … I ordered him a dish of warden pears, roasted with spices – did I do right?’
