Wolf Hall tct-1

by Hilary Mante

  A jug of something vinegary comes. He lets the old men drink deeply before he asks, ‘Which of you is Maître Camillo?’

  They exchange glances. It takes them as long as it takes the Graiae to pass their single shared eye.

  ‘Maître Camillo has gone to Venice.’

  ‘Why?’

  Some coughing. ‘For consultations.’

  ‘But he does mean to return to France?’

  ‘Quite likely.’

  ‘The thing you have, I want it for my master.’

  A silence. How would it be, he thought, if I take the wine away till they say something useful? But one pre-empts him, snatching up the jug; his hand shakes, and the wine washes over the table. The others bleat with irritation.

  ‘I thought you might bring drawings,’ he says.

  They look at each other. ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘But there are drawings?’

  ‘Not as such.’

  The spilt wine begins to soak into the splintered wood. They sit in miserable silence and watch this happen. One of them occupies himself in working his finger through a moth hole in his sleeve.

  He shouts to the boy for a second jug. ‘We do not wish to disoblige you,’ the spokesman says. ‘You must understand that Maître Camillo is, for now, under the protection of King Francis.’

  ‘He intends to make a model for him?’

  ‘That is possible.’

  ‘A working model?’

  ‘Any model would be, by its nature, a working model.’

  ‘Should he find the terms of his employment in the least unsatisfactory, my master Henry would be happy to welcome him in England.’

  There is another pause, till the jug is fetched and the boy has gone. This time, he does the pouring himself. The old men exchange glances again, and one says, ‘The magister believes he would dislike the English climate. The fogs. And also, the whole island is covered with witches.’

  The interview has been unsatisfactory. But one must begin somewhere. As he leaves he says to the boy, ‘You might go and swab the table.’

  ‘I may as well wait till they've upset the second jug, monsieur.’

  ‘True. Take them in some food. What do you have?’

  ‘Pottage. I wouldn't recommend it. It looks like what's left when a whore's washed her shift.’

  ‘I never knew the Calais girls to wash anything. Can you read?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Write?’

  ‘No, monsieur.’

  ‘You should learn. Meanwhile use your eyes. If anyone else comes to talk to them, if they bring out any drawings, parchments, scrolls, anything of that kind, I want to know.’

  The boy says, ‘What is it, monsieur? What are they selling?’

  He almost tells him. What harm could it do? But then in the end he can't think of the right words.

  Part-way through the talks in Boulogne, he has a message that Francis would like to see him. Henry deliberates before giving him permission; face-to-face, monarchs should deal only with fellow monarchs, and lords and churchmen of high rank. Since they landed, Brandon and Howard, who were friendly enough on board ship, have been distant with him, as if to make it quite clear to the French that they accord him no status; he is some whim of Henry's, they pretend, a novelty councillor who will soon vanish in favour of a viscount, baron or bishop.

  The French messenger tells him, ‘This is not an audience.’

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘I understand. Nothing of that sort.’

  Francis sits waiting, attended only by a handful of courtiers, for what is not an audience. He is a beanpole of a man, his elbows and knees jutting at the air, his big bony feet restless inside vast padded slippers. ‘Cremuel,’ he says. ‘Now, let me understand you. You are a Welshman.’

  ‘No, Your Highness.’

  Sorrowful dog eyes; they look him over, they look him over again. ‘Not a Welshman.’

  He sees the French king's difficulty. How has he got his passport to the court, if he is not from some family of humble Tudor retainers? ‘It was the late cardinal who induced me into the king's business.’

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ Francis says, ‘but I think to myself there is something else going on here.’

  ‘That may be, Highness,’ he says crisply, ‘but it's certainly not being Welsh.’

  Francis touches the tip of his pendulous nose, bending it further towards his chin. Choose your prince: you wouldn't like to look at this one every day. Henry is so wholesome, in his fleshy, scrubbed pink-and-whiteness. Francis says, his glance drifting away, ‘They say you once fought for the honour of France.’

  Garigliano: for a moment he lowers his eyes, as if he's remembering a very bad accident in the street: some mashing and irretrievable mangling of limbs. ‘On a most unfortunate day.’

  ‘Still … these things pass. Who now remembers Agincourt?’

  He almost laughs. ‘It is true,’ he says. ‘A generation or two, or three … four … and these things are nothing.’

  Francis says, ‘They say you are in very good standing with That Lady.’ He sucks his lip. ‘Tell me, I am curious, what does my brother king think? Does he think she is a maid? Myself, I never tried her. When she was here at court she was young, and as flat as a board. Her sister, however –’

  He would like to stop him but you can't stop a king. His voice runs over naked Mary, chin to toes, and then flips her over like a griddle cake and does the other side, nape to heels. An attendant hands him a square of fine linen, and as he finishes he dabs the corner of his mouth: and hands the kerchief back.

  ‘Well, enough,’ Francis says. ‘I see you will not admit to being Welsh, so that is the end of my theories.’ The corners of his mouth turn up; his elbows work a little; his knees twitch; the not-audience is over. ‘Monsieur Cremuel,’ he says, ‘we may not meet again. Your sudden fortunes may not last. So, come, give me your hand, like a soldier of France. And put me in your prayers.’

  He bows. ‘Your beadsman, sir.’

  As he leaves, one of the courtiers steps forward, and murmuring, ‘A gift from His Highness,’ hands him a pair of embroidered gloves.

  * * *

  Another man, he supposes, would be pleased, and try them on. For his part, he pinches the fingers, and finds what he is looking for. Gently, he shakes the glove, his hand cupped.

  He goes straight to Henry. He finds him in the sunshine, playing a game of bowls with some French lords. Henry can make a game of bowls as noisy as a tournament: whooping, groaning, shouting of odds, wails, oaths. The king looks up at him, his eyes saying, ‘Well?’ His eyes say, ‘Alone,’ the king's say, ‘Later,’ and not a word is spoken, but all the time the king keeps up his joking and backslapping, and he straightens up, watching his wood glide over the shorn grass, and points in his direction. ‘You see this councillor of mine? I warn you, never play any game with him. For he will not respect your ancestry. He has no coat of arms and no name, but he believes he is bred to win.’

  One of the French lords says, ‘To lose gracefully is an art that every gentleman cultivates.’

  ‘I hope to cultivate it too,’ he says. ‘If you see an example I might follow, please point it out.’

  For they are all, he notices, intent on winning this game, on taking a piece of gold from the King of England. Gambling is not a vice, if you can afford to do it. Perhaps I could issue him with gaming tokens, he thinks, redeemable only if presented in person at some office in Westminster: with tortuous paperwork attached, and fees to clerks, and a special seal to be affixed. That would save us some money.

  But the king's wood moves smoothly towards the marker ball. Henry is winning the game anyway. From the French, a spatter of polite applause.

  When he and the king are alone, he says, ‘Here's something you will like.’

  Henry likes surprises. With a thick forefinger, his pink clean English nail, he nudges the ruby about on the back of his hand. ‘It is a good stone,’ he says. ‘I am a judge of these things.’ A pause. ‘Wh
o is the principal goldsmith here? Ask him to wait on me. It is a dark stone, Francis will know it again; I will wear it on my own finger before our meetings are done. France shall see how I am served.’ He is in high good humour. ‘However, I shall give you the value.’ He nods, to dismiss him. ‘Of course, you will compound with the goldsmith to put a higher valuation on it, and arrange to split the profit with him … but I shall be liberal in the matter.’

  Arrange your face.

  The king laughs. ‘Why would I trust a man with my business, if he could not manage his own? One day Francis will offer you a pension. You must take it. By the way, what did he ask you?’

  ‘He asked if I were Welsh. It seemed a great question with him, I was sorry to be so disappointing.’

  ‘Oh, you are not disappointing,’ Henry says. ‘But the moment you are, I will let you know.’

  Two hours. Two kings. What do you know, Walter? He stands in the salty air, talking to his dead father.

  When Francis comes back with his brother king to Calais, it is Anne who leads him out to dance after the evening's great feast. There is colour in her cheeks, and her eyes sparkle behind her gilded mask. When she lowers the mask and looks at the King of France, she wears a strange half-smile, not quite human, as if behind the mask were another mask. You can see his jaw drop; you can see him begin to drool. She entwines her fingers with his, and leads him to a window seat. They speak in French for an hour, whispering, his sleek dark head leaning towards her; sometimes they laugh, looking into each other's eyes. No doubt they are discussing the new alliance; he seems to think she has another treaty tucked down her bodice. Once Francis lifts her hand. She pulls back, half-resisting, and for one moment it seems he intends to lay her little fingers upon his unspeakable codpiece. Everyone knows that Francis has recently taken the mercury cure. But no one knows if it has worked.

  Henry is dancing with the wives of Calais notables: gigue, saltarello. Charles Brandon, his sick wife forgotten, is making his partners scream by throwing them in the air so that their skirts fly up. But Henry's glance keeps straying down the hall to Anne, to Francis. His spine is stiff with his personal terror. His face expresses smiling agony.

  Finally, he thinks, I must end this: can it be true, he wonders, that as a subject should, I really love my king?

  He ferrets Norfolk out of the dark corner where he is hiding, for fear that he should be commanded to partner the Governor's wife. ‘My lord, fetch your niece away. She has done enough diplomacy. Our king is jealous.’

  ‘What? What the devil is his complaint now?’ Yet Norfolk sees at a glance what is happening. He swears, and crosses the room – through the dancers, not round them. He takes Anne by her wrist, bending it back as if to snap it. ‘By your leave, Highness. My lady, we shall dance.’ He jerks her to her feet. Dance they do, though it bears no relation to any dance seen in any hall before this. On the duke's part, a thundering with demon hooves; on her part, a blanched caper, one arm held like a broken wing.

  He looks across at Henry. The king's face expresses a sober, righteous satisfaction. Anne should be punished, and by whom except her kin? The French lords huddle together, sniggering. Francis looks on with narrowed eyes.

  That night the king withdraws from company early, dismissing even the gentlemen of his privy chamber; only Henry Norris is in and out, trailed by an underling carrying wine, fruit, a large quilt, then a pan of coals; it has turned chilly. The women, in their turn, have become brisk and snappish. Anne's raised voice has been heard. Doors slam. As he is talking to Thomas Wyatt, Mistress Shelton comes careering towards him. ‘My lady wants a Bible!’

  ‘Master Cromwell can recite the whole New Testament,’ Wyatt says helpfully.

  The girl looks agonised. ‘I think she wants it to swear on.’

  ‘In that case I'm no use to her.’

  Wyatt catches her hands. ‘Who's going to keep you warm tonight, young Shelton?’ She pulls away from him, shoots off in pursuit of the scriptures. ‘I'll tell you who. Henry Norris.’

  He looks after the girl. ‘She draws lots?’

  ‘I have been lucky.’

  ‘The king?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Recently?’

  ‘Anne would pull out their hearts and roast them.’

  He feels he should not go far, in case Henry calls for him. He finds a corner for a game of chess with Edward Seymour. Between moves, ‘Your sister Jane …’ he says.

  ‘Odd little creature, isn't she?’

  ‘What age would she be?’

  ‘I don't know … twenty or so? She walked around at Wolf Hall saying, “These are Thomas Cromwell's sleeves,” and nobody knew what she was talking about.’ He laughs. ‘Very pleased with herself.’

  ‘Has your father made a match for her?’

  ‘There was some talk of –’ He looks up. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just distracting you.’

  Tom Seymour bursts through the door. ‘Good e'en, grandfer,’ he shouts at his brother. He knocks his cap off and ruffles his hair. ‘There are women waiting for us.’

  ‘My friend here advises not.’ Edward dusts his cap. ‘He says they're just the same as Englishwomen but dirtier.’

  ‘Voice of experience?’ Tom says.

  Edward resettles his cap primly. ‘How old would our sister Jane be?’

  ‘Twenty-one, twenty-two. Why?’

  Edward looks down at the board, reaches for his queen. He sees how he's trapped. He glances up in appreciation. ‘How did you manage that?’

  Later, he sits with a blank piece of paper before him. He means to write a letter to Cranmer and cast it to the four winds, send it searching through Europe. He picks up his pen but does not write. He revisits in his mind his conversation with Henry, about the ruby. His king imagines he would take part in a backstairs deceit, the kind that might have entertained him in the days when he antiqued cupids and sold them to cardinals. But to defend yourself against such accusations makes you seem guilty. If Henry does not fully trust him, is it surprising? A prince is alone: in his council chamber, in his bedchamber, and finally in Hell's antechamber, stripped – as Harry Percy said – for Judgment.

  This visit has compacted the court's quarrels and intrigues, trapped them in the small space within the town's walls. The travellers have become as intimate with each other as cards in a pack: contiguous, but their paper eyes blind. He wonders where Tom Wyatt is, and in what sort of trouble. He doesn't think he can sleep: though not because he's worried about Wyatt. He goes to the window. The moon, as if disgraced, trails rags of black cloud.

  In the gardens, torches burn in wall brackets, but he walks away from the light. The faint push and pull of the ocean is steady and insistent as his own heartbeat. He knows he shares this darkness, and within a moment there is a footstep, a rustle of skirts, a faint breathy gulp, a hand sliding on his arm. ‘You,’ Mary says.

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Do you know they unbolted the door between them?’ She laughs, a merciless giggle. ‘She is in his arms, naked as she was born. She can't change her mind now.’

  ‘Tonight I thought they would quarrel.’

  ‘They did. They like quarrelling. She claims Norfolk has broken her arm. Henry called her a Magdalene and some other names I forget, I think they were Roman ladies. Not Lucrece.’

  ‘No. At least, I hope not. What did she want the Bible for?’

  ‘To swear him. Before witnesses. Me. Norris. He made a binding promise. They are married in God's sight. And he swears he will marry her again in England and crown her queen when spring comes.’

  He thinks of the nun, at Canterbury: if you enter into a form of marriage with this unworthy woman, you will not reign seven months.

  ‘So now,’ Mary says, ‘it is just a question of whether he will find he is able to do the deed.’

  ‘Mary.’ He takes her hand. ‘Don't frighten me.’

  ‘Henry is timid. He thinks you expect a kingly performance. But if he is shy, Anne w
ill know how to help.’ She adds, carefully, ‘I mean to say, I have advised her.’ She slides her hand on to his shoulder. ‘So now, what about us? It has been a weary struggle to bring them here. I think we have earned our recreation.’

  No answer. ‘You're not still frightened of my uncle Norfolk?’

  ‘Mary, I am terrified of your uncle Norfolk.’

  Still, that's not the reason, not the reason why he hesitates, not quite pulling away. Her lips brush his. She asks, ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I was thinking that if I were not the king's most dutiful servant, it would be possible to be on the next boat out.’

  ‘Where would we go?’

  He doesn't remember inviting a friend. ‘East. Though I grant this would not be a good starting point.’ East of the Boleyns, he thinks. East of everybody. He is thinking of the Middle Sea, not these northern waters; and one night especially, a warm midnight in a house in Larnaca: Venetian lights spilling out on to the dangerous waterfront, the slap of slave feet on tiles, a perfume of incense and coriander. He puts an arm around Mary, encountering something soft, totally unexpected: fox fur. ‘Clever of you,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, we brought everything. Every stitch. In case we are here till winter.’

  A glow of light on flesh. Her throat very white, very soft. All things seem possible, if the duke stays indoors. His fingertip teases out the fur till fur meets flesh. Her shoulder is warm, scented and a little damp. He can feel the bounce of her pulse.

  A sound behind him. He turns, dagger in hand. Mary screams, pulls at his arm. The point of the weapon comes to rest against a man's doublet, under the breastbone. ‘All right, all right,’ says a sober, irritated English voice. ‘Put that away.’

  ‘Heavens,’ Mary says. ‘You almost murdered William Stafford.’

  He backs the stranger into the light. When he sees his face, not till then, he draws back the blade. He doesn't know who Stafford is: somebody's horse-keeper? ‘William, I thought you weren't coming,’ Mary says.

  ‘If I didn't, it seems you had a reserve.’

  ‘You don't know what a woman's life is! You think you've fixed something with a man, and you haven't. He says he'll meet you, and he doesn't turn up.’