Wolf Hall tct-1

by Hilary Mante

  He is at the abbey by dawn. The procession is forming up by six. Henry will watch the coronation from a box screened by a lattice, sequestered in the painted stonework. When he puts his head in about eight o'clock the king is already sitting expectantly on a velvet cushion, and a kneeling servant is unpacking his breakfast. ‘The French ambassador will be joining me,’ Henry says; and he meets that gentleman as he is hurrying away.

  ‘One hears you have been painted, Maître Cremuel. I too have been painted. You have seen the result?’

  ‘Not yet. Hans is so occupied.’ Even on this fine morning, here beneath fan vaulting the ambassador looks blue-tinged. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘it appears that with the coronation of this queen, our two nations have reached a state of perfect amity. How to improve on perfection? I ask you, monsieur.’

  The ambassador bows. ‘Downhill from here?’

  ‘Let's try, you know. To maintain a state of mutual usefulness. When our sovereigns are once again snapping at each other.’

  ‘Another Calais meeting?’

  ‘Perhaps in a year.’

  ‘No sooner?’

  ‘I will not put my king on the high seas for no cause.’

  ‘We'll talk, Cremuel.’ Flat-palmed, the ambassador taps him on the chest, over the heart.

  Anne's procession forms up at nine. She is mantled in purple velvet, edged in ermine. She has seven hundred yards to walk, on the blue cloth that stretches to the altar, and her face is entranced. Far behind her, the dowager duchess of Norfolk, supporting her train; nearer, holding up the hem of her long robe, the Bishop of Winchester at one side, the Bishop of London at the other. Both of them, Gardiner and Stokesley, were king's men in the matter of the divorce; but now they look as if they wish they were far distant from the living object of his remarriage, who has a fine sheen of sweat on her high forehead, and whose compressed lips – by the time she reaches the altar – seem to have vanished into her face. Who says two bishops should hold up her hem? It's all written down in a great book, so old that one hardly dare touch it, breathe on it; Lisle seems to know it by heart. Perhaps it should be copied and printed, he thinks.

  He makes a mental note, and then concentrates his will on Anne: Anne not to stumble, as she folds herself towards the ground to lie face-down in prayer before the altar, her attendants stepping forward to support her for the crucial twelve inches before belly hits sacred pavement. He finds himself praying: this child, his half-formed heart now beating against the stone floor, let him be sanctified by this moment, and let him be like his father's father, like his Tudor uncles; let him be hard, alert, watchful of opportunity, wringing use from the smallest turn of fortune. If Henry lives twenty years, Henry who is Wolsey's creation, and then leaves this child to succeed him, I can build my own prince: to the glorification of God and the commonwealth of England. Because I will not be too old. Look at Norfolk, already he is sixty, his father was seventy when he fought at Flodden. And I shall not be like Henry Wyatt and say, now I am retiring from affairs. Because what is there, but affairs?

  Anne, shaky, is back on her feet. Cranmer, in a dense cloud of incense, is pressing into her hand the sceptre, the rod of ivory, and resting the crown of St Edward briefly on her head, before changing for a lighter and more bearable crown: a prestidigitation, his hands as supple as if he'd been shuffling crowns all his life. The prelate looks mildly excited, as if someone had offered him a cup of warm milk.

  Anointed, Anna withdraws, incense billowing around her, swallowed into its murk: Anna Regina, to a bedchamber provided for her, to prepare for the feast in Westminster Hall. He pushes unceremoniously through the dignitaries – all you, all you who said you would not be here – and catches sight of Charles Brandon, Constable of England, mounted on his white horse and ready to ride into the hall among them. He is a huge, blazing presence, from which he withdraws his sight; Charles, he thinks, will not outlive me either. Back into the dimness, towards Henry. Only one thing checks him, the sight, whisking around a corner, of the hem of a scarlet robe; no doubt it is one of the judges, escaped from his procession.

  The Venetian ambassador is blocking the entrance to Henry's box, but the king waves him aside, and says, ‘Cromwell, did not my wife look well, did she not look beautiful? Will you go and see her, and give her …’ he looks around, for some likely present, then wrenches a diamond from his knuckle, ‘will you give her this?’ He kisses the ring. ‘And this too?’

  ‘I shall hope to convey the sentiment,’ he says, and sighs, as if he were Cranmer.

  The king laughs. His face is alight. ‘This is my best,’ he says. ‘This is my best day.’

  ‘Until the birth, Majesty,’ says the Venetian, bowing.

  It is Mary Howard, Norfolk's little daughter, who opens the door to him.

  ‘No, you most certainly cannot come in,’ she says. ‘Utterly not. The queen is undressed.’

  Richmond is right, he thinks; she has no breasts at all. Still. For fourteen. I'll charm this small Howard, he thinks, so he stands spinning words around her, complimenting her gown and her jewels, till he hears a voice from within, muffled like a voice from a tomb; and Mary Howard jumps and says, oh, all right, if she says so you can see her.

  The bedcurtains are drawn close. He pulls them back. Anne is lying in her shift. She looks flat as a ghost, except for the shocking mound of her six-month child. In her ceremonial robes, her condition had hardly showed, and only that sacred instant, as she lay belly-down to stone, had connected him to her body, which now lies stretched out like a sacrifice: her breasts puffy beneath the linen, her swollen feet bare.

  ‘Mother of God,’ she says. ‘Can you not leave Howard women alone? For an ugly man, you are very sure of yourself. Let me look at you.’ She bobs her head up. ‘Is that crimson? It's a very black crimson. Did you go against my orders?’

  ‘Your cousin Francis Bryan says I look like a travelling bruise.’

  ‘A contusion on the body politic.’ Jane Rochford laughs.

  ‘Can you do this?’ he asks: almost doubting, almost tender. ‘You are exhausted.’

  ‘Oh, I think she will bear up.’ There is no sisterly pride in Mary's voice. ‘She was born for this, was she not?’

  Jane Seymour: ‘Is the king watching?’

  ‘He is proud of her.’ He speaks to Anne, stretched out on her catafalque. ‘He says you have never looked more beautiful. He sends you this.’

  Anne makes a little sound, a moan, poised between gratitude and boredom: oh, what, another diamond?

  ‘And a kiss, which I said he had better bring in person.’

  She shows no sign of taking the ring from him. It is almost irresistible, to place it on her belly and walk away. Instead he hands it to her sister. He says, ‘The feast will wait for you, Highness. Come only when you feel ready.’

  She levers herself upright, with a gasp. ‘I am coming now.’ Mary Howard leans forward and rubs her lower back, with an unpractised hand, a fluttering virginal motion as if she were stroking a bird. ‘Oh, get away,’ the anointed queen snaps. She looks sick. ‘Where were you last evening? I wanted you. The streets cheered for me. I heard them. They say the people love Katherine, but really, it is just the women, they pity her. We will show them something better. They will love me, when this creature is out of me.’

  Jane Rochford: ‘Oh, but madam, they love Katherine because she is the daughter of two anointed sovereigns. Make your mind up to it, madam – they will never love you, any more than they love … Cromwell here. It is nothing to do with your merits. It is a point of fact. There is no use trying to evade it.’

  ‘Perhaps enough,’ Jane Seymour says. He turns to her and sees something surprising; she has grown up.

  ‘Lady Carey,’ Jane Rochford says, ‘we must get your sister on her feet now and back in her robes, so see Master Cromwell out and enjoy your usual confabulation. This is not a day to break with tradition.’

  At the door: ‘Mary?’ he says. Notices the dark stains under her eyes.
>
  ‘Yes?’ She speaks in a tone of ‘yes, and what is it now?’

  ‘I am sorry the marriage with my nephew did not come off.’

  ‘Not that I was ever asked, of course.’ She smiles tightly. ‘I shall never see your house. And one hears so much of it.’

  ‘What do you hear?’

  ‘Oh … of chests bursting with gold pieces.’

  ‘We would never allow that. We would get bigger chests.’

  ‘They say it is the king's money.’

  ‘It's all the king's money. His image is on it. Mary, look,’ he takes her hand, ‘I could not dissuade him from his liking for you. He –’

  ‘How hard did you try?’

  ‘I wish you were safe with us. Though of course it was not the great match you might expect, as the queen's sister.’

  ‘I doubt there are many sisters who expect what I receive, nightly.’

  She will get another child by Henry, he thinks. Anne will have it strangled in the cradle. ‘Your friend William Stafford is at court. At least, I think he is still your friend?’

  ‘Imagine how he likes my situation. Still, at least I get a kind word from my father. Monseigneur finds he needs me again. God forbid the king should ride a mare from any other stable.’

  ‘This will end. He will free you. He will give you a settlement. A pension. I'll speak for you.’

  ‘Does a dirty dishcloth get a pension?’ Mary sways on the spot; she seems dazed with misery and fatigue; great tears swell in her eyes. He stands catching them, dabbing them away, whispering to her and soothing her, and wanting to be elsewhere. When he breaks free he gives her a backward glance, as she stands in the doorway, desolate. Something must be done for her, he thinks. She's losing her looks.

  Henry watches from a gallery, high above Westminster Hall, as his queen takes her seat in the place of honour, her ladies around her, the flower of the court and the nobility of England. The king has fortified himself earlier, and is picking at a spice plate, dipping thin slices of apple into cinnamon. In the gallery with him, encore les ambassadeurs, Jean de Dinteville furred against the June chill, and his friend the Bishop of Lavaur, wrapped in a fine brocade gown.

  ‘This has all been most impressive, Cremuel,’ de Selve says; astute brown eyes study him, taking everything in. He takes in everything too: stitching and padding, studding and dyeing; he admires the deep mulberry of the bishop's brocade. They say these two Frenchmen favour the gospel, but favour at François's court extends no further than a small circle of scholars that the king, for his own vanity, wishes to patronise; he has never quite been able to grow his own Thomas More, his own Erasmus, which naturally piques his pride.

  ‘Look at my wife the queen.’ Henry leans over the gallery. He might as well be down there. ‘She is worth the show, is she not?’

  ‘I have had all the windows reglazed,’ he says. ‘The better to see her.’

  ‘Fiat lux,’ de Selve murmurs.

  ‘She has done very well,’ de Dinteville says. ‘She must have been six hours on her feet today. One must congratulate Your Majesty on obtaining a queen who is as strong as a peasant woman. I mean no disrespect, of course.’

  In Paris they are burning Lutherans. He would like to take it up with the envoys, but he cannot while the odour of roast swan and peacock drifts up from below.

  ‘Messieurs,’ he asks (music rising around them like a shallow tide, silver ripples of sound), ‘do you know of the man Guido Camillo? I hear he is at your master's court.’

  De Selve and his friend exchange glances. This has thrown them. ‘The man who builds the wooden box,’ Jean murmurs. ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘It is a theatre,’ he says.

  De Selve nods. ‘In which you yourself are the play.’

  ‘Erasmus has written to us about it,’ Henry says, over his shoulder. ‘He is having the cabinetmakers create him little wooden shelves and drawers, one inside another. It is a memory system for the speeches of Cicero.’

  ‘With your permission, he intends it as more than that. It is a theatre on the ancient Vitruvian plan. But it is not to put on plays. As my lord the bishop says, you as the owner of the theatre are to stand in the centre of it, and look up. Around you there is arrayed a system of human knowledge. Like a library, but as if – can you imagine a library in which each book contains another book, and a smaller book inside that? Yet it is more than that.’

  The king slips into his mouth an aniseed comfit, and snaps down on it. ‘Already there are too many books in the world. There are more every day. One man cannot hope to read them all.’

  ‘I do not see how you understand so much about it,’ de Selve says. ‘All credit to you, Maître Cremuel. Guido will only speak his own Italian dialect, and even in that he stammers.’

  ‘If it pleases your master to spend his money,’ Henry says. ‘He is not a sorcerer, is he, this Guido? I should not like Francis to fall into the hands of a sorcerer. By the way, Cromwell, I am sending Stephen back to France.’

  Stephen Gardiner. So the French do not like doing business with Norferk. Not surprising. ‘His mission will be of some duration?’

  De Selve catches his eye. ‘But who will do Master Secretary's job?’

  ‘Oh, Cromwell will do it. Won't you?’ Henry smiles.

  He is hardly down into the body of the hall before Master Wriothesley intercepts him. This is a big day for the heralds and their officers, their children and their friends; fat fees coming their way. He says so, and Call-Me says, fat fees coming your way. He edges back against the screens, voice low; one could foresee this, he says, because Henry is tired of it, Winchester's grinding opposition to him every step of the way. He is tired of arguing; now he is a married man he looks for a little more douceur. With Anne? he says and Call-Me laughs: you know her better than me, if as they say she is a lady with a sharp tongue, then all the more he needs ministers who are kind to him. So devote yourself to keeping Stephen abroad, and in time he will confirm you in the post.

  Christophe, dressed up for the afternoon, is hovering nearby and making signals to him. You will excuse me, he says, but Wriothesley touches his gown of crimson, as if for luck, and says, you are the master of the house and the master of the revels, you are the origin of the king's happiness, you have done what the cardinal could not, and much more besides. Even this – he gestures around him, to where the nobility of England, having already eaten their words, are working through twenty-three dishes – even this feast has been superbly managed. No one need call for anything, it is all at his hand before he thinks of it.

  He inclines his head, Wriothesley walks away, and he beckons the boy. Christophe says, one tells me to impart nothing of confidence in the hearing of Call-Me, as Rafe says he go trit-trot to Gardineur with anything he can get. Now sir, I have a message, you must go quick to the archbishop. When the feast is done. He glances up to the dais where the archbishop sits beside Anne, under her canopy of state. Neither of them is eating, though Anne is pretending to, both of them are scanning the hall.

  ‘I go trit-trot,’ he says. He is taken with the phrase. ‘Where?’

  ‘His old lodging which he says you know. He wishes you to be secret. He says not to bring any person.’

  ‘Well, you can come, Christophe. You're not a person.’

  The boy grins.

  He is apprehensive; does not quite like the thought of the abbey precincts, the drunken crowds at dusk, without somebody to watch his back. Unfortunately, a man cannot have two fronts.

  They have almost reached Cranmer's lodging when fatigue enwraps his shoulders, an iron cloak. ‘Pause for a moment,’ he says to Christophe. He has hardly slept these last nights. He takes a breath, in shadow; here it is cold, and as he passes into the cloisters he is dipped in night. The rooms around are shuttered, empty, no sound from within. From behind him, an inchoate shouting from the Westminster streets, like the cries of those lost after a battle.

  Cranmer looks up; he is already at his desk. ‘These are days w
e will never forget,’ he says. ‘No one who has missed it would believe it. The king spoke warm words in your praise today. I think it was intended I should convey them.’

  ‘I wonder why I ever gave any thought to the cost of brick-making for the Tower. It seems such a small item now. And tomorrow the jousts. Will you be there? My boy Richard is listed for the bouts on foot, fighting in single combat.’

  ‘He will prevail,’ Christophe declares. ‘Biff, and one is flat, never to rise again.’

  ‘Hush,’ Cranmer says. ‘You are not here, child. Cromwell, please.’

  He opens a low door at the back of the chamber. He dips his head, and framed by the doorway in the half light he sees a table, a stool, and on the stool a woman sitting, young, tranquil, her head bowed over a book. She looks up. ‘Ich bitte Sie, ich brauch' eine Kerze.’

  ‘Christophe, a candle for her.’

  The book before her he recognises; it is a tract of Luther's. ‘May I?’ he says, and picks it up.

  He finds himself reading. His mind leaps along the lines. Is she some fugitive Cranmer is sheltering? Does he know the cost if she is taken? He has time to read half a page, before the archbishop trickles in, like a late apology. ‘This woman is …?’

  Cranmer says, ‘Margarete. My wife.’

  ‘Dear God.’ He slams Luther down on the table. ‘What have you done? Where did you find her? Germany, evidently. This is why you were slow to return. I see it now. Why?’

  Cranmer says meekly, ‘I could not help it.’

  ‘Do you know what the king will do to you when he finds you out? The master executioner of Paris has devised a machine, with a counterweighted beam – shall I draw it for you? – which when a heretic is burned dips him into the fire and lifts him out again, so that the people can see the stages of his agony. Now Henry will be wanting one. Or he will get some device to tease your head off your shoulders, over a period of forty days.’

  The young woman looks up. ‘Mein Onkel –’

  ‘Who is that?’

  She names a theologian, Andreas Osiander: a Nuremberger, a Lutheran. Her uncle and his friends, she says, and the learned men of her town, they believe –