by Hilary Mante
A confidant of Henry's who was standing by – it was Nicholas Carew – had remarked, His Majesty's ring fits you without adjustment. He said, so it does.
He hesitates, his quill hovering. He writes, ‘This realm of England is an Empire.’ This realm of England is an Empire, and so has been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme Head and King …
At eleven o'clock, when the day has brightened as much as it will, he eats dinner with Cranmer in his lodging at Cannon Row, where he is living till his new dignity is conferred and he can move into Lambeth Palace. He has been practising his new signature, Thomas Elect of Canterbury. Soon he will dine in state, but today, like a threadbare scholar, he shoves his papers aside while some table linen is laid and they bring in the salt fish, over which he signs a grace.
‘That won't improve it,’ he says. ‘Who's cooking for you? I'll send someone over.’
‘So, is the marriage made?’ It is like Cranmer to wait to be told: to work six hours in silent patience, head down over his books.
‘Yes, Rowland was up to his office. He didn't wed her to Norris, or the king to her sister.’ He shakes out his napkin. ‘I know a thing. But you must coax it from me.’
He is hoping that Cranmer, by way of coaxing, will impart the secret he promised in his letter, the secret written down the side of the page. But it must have been some minor indiscretion, now forgotten. And because Canterbury Elect is occupied in poking uncertainly at scales and skin, he says, ‘She, Anne, she is already having a child.’
Cranmer glances up. ‘If you tell it in that tone, people will think you take the credit yourself.’
‘Are you not astonished? Are you not pleased?’
‘I wonder what fish this purports to be?’ Cranmer says with mild interest. ‘Naturally I am delighted. But I knew it, you see, because this marriage is clean – why would not God bless it with offspring? And with an heir?’
‘Of course, with an heir. Look.’ He takes out the papers he has been working on. Cranmer washes his fishy fingers and hunches towards the candle flame. ‘So after Easter,’ he says, reading, ‘it will be against the law and the king's prerogative to make an appeal in any matter to the Pope. So there is Katherine's suit dead and buried. And I, Canterbury, can decide the king's cause in our own courts. Well, this has been long enough coming.’
He laughs. ‘You were long enough coming.’ Cranmer was in Mantua when he heard of the honour the king intended for him. He began his journey circuitously: Stephen Vaughan met him at Lyons, and hustled him over the winter roads and through the snowdrifts of Picardy to the boat. ‘Why did you delay? Doesn't every boy want to be an archbishop? Though not me, if I think back. What I wanted was my own bear.’
Cranmer looks at him, his expression speculative. ‘I'm sure that could be arranged for you.’
Gregory has asked him, how will we know when Dr Cranmer is making a joke? He has told him, you won't, they are as rare as apple blossom in January. And now, for some weeks, he will be half-fearful that a bear will turn up at his door. As they part that day, Cranmer glances up from the table and says, ‘Of course, I don't officially know.’
‘About the child?’
‘About the marriage. As I am to be judge in the matter of the king's old marriage, it would not be proper for me to hear that his new one has already taken place.’
‘Right,’ he says. ‘What Rowland gets up to in the early hours of the morning is a matter for himself alone.’ He leaves Cranmer with head bowed over the remains of their meal, as if studying to reassemble the fish.
As our severance from the Vatican is not yet complete, we cannot have a new archbishop unless the Pope appoints him. Delegates in Rome are empowered to say anything, promise anything, pro tem, to get Clement to agree. The king says, aghast, ‘Do you know how much the papal bulls cost, for Canterbury? And that I shall have to pay for them? And you know how much it costs to install him?’ He adds, ‘It must be done properly, of course, nothing omitted, nothing scanted.’
‘It will be the last money Your Majesty sends to Rome, if it rests with me.’
‘And do you know,’ the king says, as if he has discovered something astonishing, ‘that Cranmer has not a penny of his own? He can contribute nothing.’
He borrows the money, on the Crown's behalf, from a rich Genovese he knows called Salvago. To persuade him into the loan, he sends around to his house an engraving which he knows Sebastian covets. It shows a young man standing in a garden, his eyes turned upwards to an empty window, at which it is to be hoped very soon a lady will appear; her scent hangs already in the air, and birds on the boughs look enquiringly into the vacancy, ready to sing. In his two hands the young man holds a book; it is a book shaped like a heart.
Cranmer sits on committees every day, in back rooms at Westminster. He is writing a paper for the king, to show that even if his brother's marriage to Katherine was not consummated, it does not affect the case for the annulment, for certainly they intended to be married, and that intention creates affinity; also, in the nights they spent together, it must have been their intention to make children, even if they did not go about it the right way. In order not to make a liar out of Henry or Katherine, one or the other, the committee men think up circumstances in which the match may have been partly consummated, or somewhat consummated, and to do this they have to imagine every disaster and shame that can occur between a man and a woman alone in a room in the dark. Do you like the work, he enquires; looking at their hunched and dusty persons, he judges them to have the experience they need. Cranmer in his writing keeps calling the queen ‘the most serene Katherine', as if to separate her untroubled face, framed by a linen pillow, from the indignities being forced on her lower body: the boy's fumbling and scrabbling, the pawing at her thighs.
Meanwhile Anne, the hidden Queen of England, breaks free from her gentleman companions as she walks through a gallery at Whitehall; she laughs as she breaks into a trot, almost a skip, and they reach out to contain her, as if she is dangerous, but she flings their hands away from her, laughing. ‘Do you know, I have a great longing to eat apples? The king says it means I am having a baby, but I tell him no, no, it can't be that …’ She whirls around, around again. She flushes, tears bounce out of her eyes and seem to fly away from her like the waters of an unregulated fountain.
Thomas Wyatt pushes through the crowd. ‘Anne …’ He snatches at her hands, he pulls her towards him. ‘Anne, hush, sweetheart … hush …’ She collapses into hiccupping sobs, folding herself against his shoulder. Wyatt holds her fast; his eyes travel around, as if he had found himself naked in the road, and is looking for some traveller to come along with a garment to cover his shame. Among the bystanders is Chapuys; the ambassador makes a rapid, purposeful exit, his little legs working, a sneer stamped on his face.
So that's the news sped to the Emperor. It would have been good if the old marriage were out, the new marriage in, confirmed to Europe before Anne's happy state were announced. But then, life is never perfect for the servant of a prince; as Thomas More used to say, we should not look to go to Heaven on feather beds.
Two days later he is alone with Anne; she is tucked into a window embrasure, eyes closed, basking like a cat in a scarce shaft of winter sun. She stretches out her hand to him, hardly knowing who he is; any man will do? He takes her fingertips. Her black eyes snap open. It's like a shop when the shutters are taken down: good morning, Master Cromwell, what can we sell each other today?
‘I am tired of Mary,’ she says. ‘And I would like to be rid of her.’
Does she mean Katherine's daughter, the princess? ‘She should be married,’ she says, ‘and out of my way. I never want to have to see her. I don't want to have to think about her. I have long imagined her married to some obscure person.’
He waits, still wondering.
‘I don't suppose she would be a bad wife, for somebody who was prepared to keep her chained to the wall.’
‘Ah. Mary your sister.’
/> ‘What did you think? Oh,’ she laughs, ‘you thought I meant Mary the king's bastard. Well, now you put it in my mind, she should be married too. What age is she?’
‘Seventeen this year.’
‘And still a dwarf?’ Anne doesn't wait for an answer. ‘I shall find some old gentleman for her, some very honourable feeble old gentleman, who will get no children on her and whom I will pay to stay away from court. But as for Lady Carey, what is to be done? She cannot marry you. We tease her that you are her choice. Some ladies have a secret preference for common men. We say, Mary, oh, how you long to repose in the arms of the blacksmith … even at the thought, you are growing hot.’
‘Are you happy?’ he asks her.
‘Yes.’ She drops her eyes, and her small hands rest on her ribcage. ‘Yes, because of this. You see,’ she says slowly, ‘I was always desired. But now I am valued. And that is a different thing, I find.’
He pauses, to let her think her own thoughts: which he sees are precious to her. ‘So,’ she says, ‘you have a nephew Richard, a Tudor of sorts, though I am sure I cannot understand how that came about.’
‘I can draw out for you the tree of descent.’
She shakes her head, smiling. ‘I wouldn't give you the trouble. Since this,’ her fingers slip downwards, ‘I wake up in the morning and I scarcely remember my name. I always wondered why women were foolish, and now I know.’
‘You mentioned my nephew.’
‘I have seen him with you. He looks a determined boy. He might do for her. What she wants are furs and jewels. You can give her those, can't you? And a child in the cradle every other year. As for who fathers it, you can make your own household arrangements about that.’
‘I thought,’ he says, ‘that your sister had an attachment?’
He doesn't want revenge: just clarification.
‘Does she? Oh well, Mary's attachments … usually passing and sometimes very odd – as you know, don't you.’ It's not a question. ‘Bring them to court, your children. Let's see them.’
He leaves her, eyes closing again, edging into marginal warmth, the small sort of sunbeam that is all February offers.
The king has given him lodgings within the old palace at Westminster, for when he works too late to get home. This being so, he has to walk mentally through his rooms at Austin Friars, picking up his memory images from where he has left them on windowsills and under stools and in the woollen petals of the flowers strewn in the tapestry at Anselma's feet. At the end of a long day he takes supper with Cranmer and with Rowland Lee, who stamps between the various working parties, urging them along. Sometimes Audley joins them, the Lord Chancellor, but they keep no state, just sit down like a bunch of inky students, and talk till it's Cranmer's bedtime. He wants to work them out, these people, test how far he can rely on them, and find out their weaknesses. Audley is a prudent lawyer who can sift a sentence like a cook sifting a sack of rice for grit. An eloquent speaker, he is tenacious of a point, and devoted to his career; now that he's Chancellor he aims to make an income to go with the office. As for what he believes, it's up for negotiation; he believes in Parliament, in the king's power exercised in Parliament, and in matters of faith … let's say his convictions are flexible. As for Lee, he wonders if he believes in God at all – though it doesn't stop him having a bishopric in his sights. He says, ‘Rowland, will you take Gregory into your household? I think Cambridge has done all that it can for him. And I admit that Gregory has done nothing for Cambridge.’
‘I'll take him up the country with me,’ Rowland says, ‘when I go to have a row with the northern bishops. He is a good boy, Gregory. Not the most forward, but I can understand that. We'll make him useful yet.’
‘You don't intend him for the church?’ Cranmer asks.
‘I said,’ growls Rowland, ‘we'll make him useful.’
At Westminster his clerks are in and out, with news and gossip and paperwork, and he keeps Christophe with him, supposedly to look after his clothes, but really to make him laugh. He misses the music they have nightly at Austin Friars, and the women's voices, heard from other rooms.
He is at the Tower most days of the week, persuading the foremen to keep their men working through frost and rain; checking the paymaster's accounts, and making a new inventory of the king's jewels and plate. He calls on the Wardens of the Mint, and suggests a spot check on the weight of the king's coinage. ‘What I should like to do,’ he says, ‘is make our English coins so sound that the merchants over the sea won't even bother weighing them.’
‘Do you have authority for this?’
‘Why, what are you hiding?’
He has written a memorandum for the king, setting out the sources of his yearly revenues, and detailing through which government offices they pass. It is remarkably concise. The king reads it and reads it again. He turns the paper over to see if anything convoluted and inexplicable is written on the back. But there is nothing more than meets his eye.
‘It's not news,’ he says, half-apologetic. ‘The late cardinal carried it in his head. I shall keep calling at the Mint. If Your Majesty pleases.’
At the Tower he calls on a prisoner, John Frith. At his request, which does not count for nothing, the prisoner is cleanly kept above ground, with warm bedding, sufficient food, a supply of wine, paper, ink; though he has advised him to put away his writings if he hears the key in his lock. He stands by while the turnkey admits him, his eyes on the ground, not liking what he is going to see; but John Frith rises from his table, a gentle, slender young boy, a scholar in Greek, and says, Master Cromwell, I knew you would come.
When he takes Frith's hands he finds them all bones, cold and dry and with tell-tale traces of ink. He thinks, he cannot be so delicate, if he has lived so long. He was one of the scholars shut in the cellar at Wolsey's college, where the Bible men were held because there was no other secure place. When the summer plague struck underground, Frith lay in the dark with the corpses, till someone remembered to let him out.
‘Master Frith,’ he says, ‘if I had been in London when you were taken –’
‘But while you were in Calais, Thomas More was at work.’
‘What made you come back into England? No, don't tell me. If you were going about Tyndale's work, I had better not know it. They say you have taken a wife, is that correct? In Antwerp? The one thing the king cannot abide – no, many things he cannot abide – but he hates married priests. And he hates Luther, and you have translated Luther into English.’
‘You put the case so well, for my prosecution.’
‘You must help me to help you. If I could get you an audience with the king … you would have to be prepared, he is a most astute theologian … do you think you could soften your answers, to accommodate him?’
The fire is built up but the room is still cold. You cannot get away from the mists and exhalations of the Thames. Frith says, his voice barely audible, ‘Thomas More still has some credit with the king. And he has written him a letter, saying,’ he manages to smile, ‘that I am Wycliffe, Luther and Zwingli rolled together and tied up in string – one reformer stuffed inside another, as for a feast you might parcel a pheasant inside a chicken inside a goose. More means to dine on me, so do not injure your credit by asking for mercy. As for softening my answers … I believe, and I will say before any tribunal –’
‘Do not, John.’
‘I will say before any tribunal what I will say before my last judge – the Eucharist is but bread, of penance we have no need, Purgatory is an invention ungrounded in scripture –’
‘If some men come to you and say, come with us, Frith, you go with them. They will be my men.’
‘You think you can take me out of the Tower?’
Tyndale's Bible says, with God shall nothing be unpossible. ‘If not out of the Tower, then when you are taken to be questioned, that will be your chance. Be ready to take it.’
‘But to what purpose?’ Frith speaks kindly, as if speaking to a young pupil. ‘Yo
u think you can keep me at your house and wait for the king to change his mind? I should have to break out of there, and walk to Paul's Cross, and say before the Londoners what I have already said.’
‘Your witness cannot wait?’
‘Not on Henry. I might wait till I was old.’
‘They will burn you.’
‘And you think I cannot bear the pain. You are right, I cannot. But they will give me no choice. As More says, it hardly makes a man a hero, to agree to stand and burn once he is chained to a stake. I have written books and I cannot unwrite them. I cannot unbelieve what I believe. I cannot unlive my life.’
He leaves him. Four o'clock: the river traffic sparse, a fine and penetrative vapour creeping between air and water.
Next day, a day of crisp blue cold, the king comes down in the royal barge to see the progress of the work, with the new French envoy; they are confidential, the king walking with a hand on de Dinteville's shoulder, or rather on his padding; the Frenchman is wearing so many layers that he seems broader than the doorways, but he is still shivering. ‘Our friend here must get some sport to warm his blood,’ the king says, ‘and he is a bungler with the bow – when we went into the butts last, he shook so much I thought he would shoot himself in the foot. He complains we are not serious falconers, so I have said he should go out with you, Cromwell.’
Is this a promise of time off? The king strolls away and leaves them. ‘Not if it's cold like this,’ the envoy says. ‘I'm not standing in a field with the wind whistling, it will be the death of me. When shall we see the sun again?’
‘Oh, about June. But the falcons will be moulting by then. I aim to have mine flying again in August, so nil desperandum, monsieur, we shall have some sport.’
