Wolf Hall tct-1

by Hilary Mante

  Outside it is sleeting. Dark flakes fall into the waters of the Thames. England stretches away from him, low red sun on fields of snow.

  He thinks back to the day York Place was wrecked. He and George Cavendish stood by as the chests were opened and the cardinal's vestments taken out. The copes were sewn in gold and silver thread, with patterns of golden stars, with birds, fishes, harts, lions, angels, flowers and Catherine wheels. When they were repacked and nailed into their travelling chests, the king's men delved into the boxes that held the albs and cottas, each folded, by an expert touch, into fine pleats. Passed hand to hand, weightless as resting angels, they glowed softly in the light; loose one, a man said, let us see the quality of it. Fingers tugged at the linen bands; here, let me, George Cavendish said. Freed, the cloth drifted against the air, dazzling white, fine as a moth's wing. When the lids of the vestments chests were raised there was the smell of cedar and spices, sombre, distant, desert-dry. But the floating angels had been packed away in lavender; London rain washed against the glass, and the scent of summer flooded the dim afternoon.

  PART FOUR

  Chapter I.

  Arrange Your Face.

  1531

  Whether it is through pain or fear, or some defect of nature; whether because of the summer heat, or the sound of hunting horns winding into the distance, or the spinning of sparkling dust in empty rooms; or whether it is that the child has lost sleep, while from dawn onwards her father's decamping household was packed up around her; for whatever reason, she is shrunken into herself, and her eyes are the colour of ditchwater. Once, as he is going through the preliminary Latin politenesses, he sees her grip tighten on the back of her mother's chair. ‘Madam, your daughter should sit.’ In case a contest of wills should ensue, he picks up a stool and places it, with a decisive thud, by Katherine's skirts.

  The queen leans back, rigid inside her boned bodice, to whisper to her daughter. The ladies of Italy, seemingly carefree, wore constructions of iron beneath their silks. It took infinite patience, not just in negotiation, to get them out of their clothes.

  Mary drops her head to whisper back; she hints, in Castilian, that it is her woman's disorder. Two pairs of eyes rise to meet his. The girl's glance is almost unfocused; she sees him, he supposes, as a bulky mass of shadow, in a space welling with distress. Stand up straight, Katherine murmurs: like a princess of England. Braced against the chair back, Mary takes a deep breath. She turns to him her plain pinched face: hard as Norfolk's thumbnail.

  It is early afternoon, very hot. The sun casts against the wall shifting squares of lilac and gold. The shrivelled fields of Windsor are laid out below them. The Thames shrinks from its banks.

  The queen speaks in English. ‘Do you know who this is? This is Master Cromwell. Who now writes all the laws.’

  Caught awkwardly between languages, he says, ‘Madam, shall we go on in English, or Latin?’

  ‘Your cardinal would ask the same question. As if I were a stranger here. I will say to you, as I said to him, that I was first addressed as Princess of Wales when I was three years old. I was sixteen when I came here to marry my lord Arthur. I was a virgin and seventeen when he died. I was twenty-four years old when I became Queen of England, and I will say for the avoidance of doubt that I am at present aged forty-six, and still queen, and by now, I believe, a sort of Englishwoman. But I shall not repeat to you everything that I told the cardinal. I imagine he left you notes of these things.’

  He feels he should bow. The queen says, ‘Since the year began they have brought certain bills into Parliament. Until now Master Cromwell's talent was for moneylending, but now he finds he has a talent for legislation too – if you want a new law, just ask him. I hear that at night you take the drafts to your house in – where is your house?’ She makes it sound like ‘your dog-hole’.

  Mary says, ‘These laws are written against the church. I wonder that our lords allow it.’

  ‘You know,’ the queen says, ‘that the Cardinal of York was accused under the praemunire laws of usurping your lord father's jurisdiction as ruler of England. Now Master Cromwell and his friends find all the clergy complicit in that crime, and ask them to pay a fine of more than one hundred thousand pounds.’

  ‘Not a fine. We call it a benevolence.’

  ‘I call it extortion.’ She turns to her daughter. ‘If you ask why the church is not defended, I can only tell you that there are noblemen in this land’ – Suffolk, she means, Norfolk – ‘who have been heard to say they will pull the power of the church down, that never again will they suffer – they use the word – a churchman to grow so great as our late legate. That we need no new Wolsey, I concur. With the attacks on the bishops, I do not concur. Wolsey was to me an enemy. That does not alter my feelings towards our Holy Mother the church.’

  He thinks, Wolsey was to me a father and a friend. That does not alter my feelings towards our Holy Mother the church.

  ‘You and Speaker Audley, you put your heads together by candlelight.’ The queen mentions the Speaker's name as if she were saying ‘your kitchen boy’. ‘And when the morning comes you induce the king to describe himself as head of the church in England.’

  ‘Whereas,’ the child says, ‘the Pope is head of the church everywhere, and from the throne of St Peter flows the lawfulness of all government. From no other source.’

  ‘Lady Mary,’ he says, ‘will you not sit?’ He catches her just as she folds at the knees, and eases her down on to the stool. ‘It is just the heat,’ he says, so she will not be ashamed. She turns up her eyes, shallow and grey, with a look of simple gratitude; and as soon as she is seated the look is replaced by an expression as stony as the wall of a town under siege.

  ‘You say “induce”,’ he tells Katherine. ‘But Your Highness, above anyone, knows that the king cannot be led.’

  ‘But he may be enticed.’ She turns to Mary, whose arms have crept over her belly. ‘So your father the king is named head of the church, and to soothe the conscience of the bishops, they have caused this formula to be inserted: “as far as the law of Christ allows”.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Mary says. ‘It means nothing.’

  ‘Your Highness, it means everything.’

  ‘Yes. It is very clever.’

  ‘I beg you,’ he says, ‘to consider it in this way, that the king has merely defined a position previously held, one that ancient precedents –’

  ‘– invented these last months –’

  ‘– show as his right.’

  Under her clumsy gable hood, Mary's forehead is slick with sweat. She says, ‘What is defined can be redefined, yes?’

  ‘Indeed,’ her mother says. ‘And redefined in favour of the church – if only I fall in with their wishes, and put myself out of the estate of queen and wife.’

  The princess is right, he thinks. There is room for negotiation. ‘Nothing here is irrevocable.’

  ‘No, you wait to see what I will bring to your treaty table.’ Katherine holds out her hands – little, stubby, puffy hands – to show that they are empty. ‘Only Bishop Fisher defends me. Only he has been constant. Only he is able to tell the truth, which is that the House of Commons is full of heathens.’ She sighs, her hands fall at her sides. ‘And now under what persuasion has my husband ridden off without a farewell? He has not done so before. Never.’

  ‘He means to hunt out of Chertsey for a few days.’

  ‘With the woman,’ Mary says. ‘The person.’

  ‘Then he will ride by way of Guildford to visit Lord Sandys – he wants to see his handsome new gallery at the Vyne.’ His tone is easy, soothing, like the cardinal's; perhaps too much so? ‘From there, depending on the weather, and the game, he will go to William Paulet at Basing.’

  ‘I am to follow, when?’

  ‘He will return in a fortnight, God willing.’

  ‘A fortnight,’ Mary says. ‘Alone with the person.’

  ‘Before then, madam, you are to go to another palace – he
has chosen the More, in Hertfordshire, which you know is very comfortable.’

  ‘Being the cardinal's house,’ Mary says, ‘it would be lavish.’

  My own daughters, he thinks, would never have spoken so. ‘Princess,’ he says, ‘will you, of your charity, cease to speak ill of a man who never did you harm?’

  Mary blushes from neckline to hairline. ‘I did not mean to fail in charity.’

  ‘The late cardinal is your godfather. You owe him your prayers.’

  Her eyes flicker towards him; she looks cowed. ‘I pray to shorten his term in Purgatory …’

  Katherine interrupts her. ‘Send a box to Hertfordshire. Send a package. Do not seek to send me.’

  ‘You shall have your whole court. The household is ready for two hundred.’

  ‘I shall write to the king. You may carry the letter. My place is with him.’

  ‘My advice,’ he says, ‘take this gently. Or he may …’ He indicates the princess. His hands join and drift apart. Separate you.

  The child is fighting down pain. Her mother is fighting down grief and anger, and disgust and fear. ‘I expected this,’ she says, ‘but I did not expect he would send a man like you to tell me.’ He frowns: does she think it would come better from Norfolk? ‘They say you had a trade as a blacksmith; is that correct?’

  Now she will say, shoe a horse?

  ‘It was my father's trade.’

  ‘I begin to understand you.’ She nods. ‘The blacksmith makes his own tools.’

  Half a mile of chalk walls, a mirror for the glare, bounce at him a white heat. In the shadow of a gateway, Gregory and Rafe are jostling and pushing, insulting each other with culinary insults he has taught them: Sir, you are a fat Fleming, and spread butter on your bread. Sir, you are a Roman pauper, may your offspring eat snails. Master Wriothesley is leaning in the sun and watching them, with a lazy smile; butterflies garland his head.

  ‘Oh, it's you,’ he says. Wriothesley looks gratified. ‘You look fit to be painted, Master Wriothesley. A doublet of azure, and a shaft of light precisely placed.’

  ‘Sir? Katherine says?’

  ‘She says our precedents are fake.’

  Rafe: ‘Does she understand that you and Dr Cranmer sat up all night over them?’

  ‘Oh, wild times!’ Gregory says. ‘Seeing the dawn in, with Dr Cranmer!’

  He throws an arm around Rafe's bony little shoulders and squeezes him; it is a liberation to be away from Katherine, from the girl flinching like a whipped bitch. ‘Once I myself, with Giovannino – well, with some boys I knew –’ He stops: what is this? I don't tell stories about myself.

  ‘Please …’ Wriothesley says.

  ‘Well, we had a statue made, a smirking little god with wings, and then we beat it with hammers and chains to make it antique, and we hired a muleteer and drove it to Rome and sold it to a cardinal.’ Such a hot day, when they were ushered into his presence: hazy, thunder in the distance, and white dust from building sites hanging in the air. ‘I remember he had tears in his eyes when he paid us. “To think that on these charming little feet and these sweet pinions, the gaze of the Emperor Augustus may have rested.” When the Portinari boys set off for Florence they were staggering under the weight of their purses.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I took my cut and stayed on to sell the mules.’

  They head downhill through the inner courts. Emerging into the sun, he shades his eyes as if to see through the tangle of tree-tops that runs into the distance. ‘I told the queen, let Henry go in peace. Or he might not let the princess move with her up-country.’

  Wriothesley says, surprised, ‘But it is decided. They are to be separated. Mary is to go to Richmond.’

  He did not know. He hopes his hesitation is not perceptible. ‘Of course. But the queen had not been told, and it was worth a try, yes?’

  See how useful Master Wriothesley is. See how he brings us intelligence from Secretary Gardiner. Rafe says, ‘It is harsh. To use the little girl against her mother.’

  ‘Harsh, yes … but the question is, have you picked your prince? Because that is what you do, you choose him, and you know what he is. And then, when you have chosen, you say yes to him – yes, that is possible, yes, that can be done. If you don't like Henry, you can go abroad and find another prince, but I tell you – if this were Italy, Katherine would be cold in her tomb.’

  ‘But you swore,’ Gregory says, ‘that you respected the queen.’

  ‘So I do. And I would respect her corpse.’

  ‘You would not work her death, would you?’

  He halts. He takes his son's arm, turns him to look into his face. ‘Retrace our steps through this conversation.’ Gregory pulls away. ‘No, listen, Gregory. I said, you give way to the king's requests. You open the way to his desires. That is what a courtier does. Now, understand this: it is impossible that Henry should require me or any other person to harm the queen. What is he, a monster? Even now he has affection for her; how could he not? And he has a soul he hopes may be saved. He confesses every day to one or other of his chaplains. Do you think the Emperor does so much, or King Francis? Henry's heart, I assure you, is a heart full of feeling; and Henry's soul, I swear, is the most scrutinised soul in Christendom.’

  Wriothesley says, ‘Master Cromwell, he is your son, not an ambassador.’

  He lets Gregory go. ‘Shall we get on the river? There might be a breeze.’

  In the Lower Ward, six couples of hunting dogs stir and yelp in the cages on wheels which are going to carry them across country. Tails waving, they are clambering over each other, twisting ears and nipping, their yaps and howls adding to the sense of nearpanic that has taken over the castle. It's more like the evacuation of a fort than the start of a summer progress. Sweating porters are heaving the king's furnishings on to carts. Two men with a studded chest have got wedged in a doorway. He thinks of himself on the road, a bruised child, loading wagons to get a lift. He wanders over. ‘How did this happen, boys?’

  He steadies one corner of the chest and backs them off into the shadows; adjusts the degree of rotation with a flip of his hand; a moment's fumbling and slipping, and they burst into the light, shouting ‘Here she goes!’ as if they had thought of it themselves. Be packing for the queen next, he says, for the cardinal's palace at the More, and they say, surprised, is that so, master, and what if the queen won't go? He says, then we will roll her up in a carpet and put her on your cart. He hands out coins: ease up, it's too hot to work so hard. He saunters back to the boys. A man leads up horses ready for harnessing to the hounds' wagons, and as soon as they catch their scent the dogs set up an excited barking, which can still be heard as they get on the water.

  The river is brown, torpid; on the Eton bank, a group of listless swans glides in and out of the weeds. Their boat bobs beneath them; he says, ‘Is that not Sion Madoc?’

  ‘Never forget a face, eh?’

  ‘Not when it's ugly.’

  ‘Have you seen yourself, bach?’ The boatman has been eating an apple, core and all; fastidious, he flicks the pips over the side.

  ‘How's your dad?’

  ‘Dead.’ Sion spits the stalk out. ‘Any of these yours?’

  ‘Me,’ Gregory says.

  ‘That's mine.’ Sion nods to the opposite oar, a lump of a lad who reddens and looks away. ‘Your dad used to shut up shop in this weather. Put the fire out and go fishing.’

  ‘Lashing the water with his rod,’ he says, ‘and punching the lights out of the fish. Jump in and drag them gasping out of the green deep. Fingers through the gills: “What are you looking at, you scaly whoreson? Are you looking at me?”’

  ‘He not being one to sit and enjoy the sunshine,’ Madoc explains. ‘I could tell you stories, about Walter Cromwell.’

  Master Wriothesley's face is a study. He does not understand how much you can learn from boatmen, their argot blasphemous and rapid. At twelve he spoke it fluently, his mother tongue, and now it flows back into his mouth,
something natural, something dirty. There are tags of Greek he has mastered, which he exchanges with Thomas Cranmer, with Call-Me-Risley: early language, unblighted, like tender fruit. But never does a Greek scholar pin back your ears as Sion does now, with Putney's opinion of the fucking Bullens. Henry goes to it with the mother, good luck to him. He goes to it with the sister, what's a king for? But it's got to stop somewhere. We're not beasts of the field. Sion calls Anne an eel, he calls her a slippery dipper from the slime, and he remembers what the cardinal had called her: my serpentine enemy. Sion says, she goes to it with her brother; he says, what, her brother George?

  ‘Any brother she's got. Those kind keep it in the family. They do filthy French tricks, like –’

  ‘Can you keep your voice down?’ He looks around, as if spies might be swimming by the boat.

  ‘– and that's how she trusts herself she don't give in to Henry, because if she lets him do it and she gets a boy he's, thanks very much, now clear off, girl – so she's oh, Your Highness, I never could allow – because she knows that very night her brother's inside her, licking her up to the lungs, and then he's, excuse me, sister, what shall I do with this big package – she says, oh, don't distress yourself, my lord brother, shove it up the back entry, it'll come to no harm there.’

  Thanks, he says, I had no idea how they were managing.

  The boys have got about one word in three. Sion gets a tip. It's worth anything, to be reacquainted with the Putney imagination. He will cherish Sion's simper: very unlike the real Anne.

  Later, at home, Gregory says, ‘Ought people to speak like that? And be paid for it?’

  ‘He was speaking his mind.’ He shrugs. ‘So, if you want to know people's minds …’

  ‘Call-Me-Risley is frightened of you. He says that when you were coming from Chelsea with Master Secretary, you threatened to throw him out of his own barge and drown him.’