by Hilary Mante
‘What is she, to be kind or not kind? I shall survive Anne Shelton, believe me. And her niece. And anyone else who sets themselves up against my title. Let them do their worst. I am young. I will wait them out.’
He takes his leave. Gregory follows him, his fascinated gaze trailing back to the girl who resumes her seat by the almost dead fire: who folds her hands, and begins the waiting, her expression set.
‘All that rabbit fur she is bundled up in,’ Gregory says. ‘It looks as if it has been nibbled.’
‘She's Henry's daughter for sure.’
‘Why, does someone say she is not?’
He laughs. ‘I didn't mean that. Imagine … if the old queen had been persuaded into adultery, it would have been easy to be rid of her, but how do you fault a woman who has never known but the one man?’ He checks himself: it is hard even for the king's closest supporters to remember that Katherine is supposed to have been Prince Arthur's wife. ‘Known two men, I should say.’ He sweeps his eyes over his son. ‘Mary never looked at you, Gregory.’
‘Did you think she would?’
‘Lady Bryan thinks you such a darling. Wouldn't it be in a young woman's nature?’
‘I don't think she has a nature.’
‘Get somebody to mend the fire. I'll order the supper. The king can't mean her to starve.’
‘She likes you,’ Gregory says. ‘That's strange.’
He sees that his son is in earnest. ‘Is it impossible? My daughters liked me, I think. Poor little Grace, I am never sure if she knew who I was.’
‘She liked you when you made her the angel's wings. She said she was always going to keep them.’ His son turns away; speaks as if he is afraid of him. ‘Rafe says you will be the second man in the kingdom soon. He says you already are, except in title. He says the king will put you over the Lord Chancellor, and everybody. Over Norfolk, even.’
‘Rafe is running ahead of himself. Listen, son, don't talk about Mary to anyone. Not even to Rafe.’
‘Did I hear more than I should?’
‘What do you think would happen if the king died tomorrow?’
‘We should all be very sorry.’
‘But who would rule?’
Gregory nods towards Lady Bryan, towards the infant in her cradle. ‘Parliament says so. Or the queen's child that is not born yet.’
‘But would that happen? In practice? An unborn child? Or a daughter not a year old? Anne as regent? It would suit the Boleyns, I grant you.’
‘Then Fitzroy.’
‘There is a Tudor who is better placed.’
Gregory's eyes turn back towards Lady Mary. ‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘And look, Gregory, it's all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it's no good at all if you don't have a plan for tomorrow.’
After supper he sits talking to Lady Shelton. Lady Bryan has gone to bed, then come down again to chivvy them along. ‘You'll be tired in the morning!’
‘Yes,’ Anne Shelton agrees, waving her away. ‘In the morning there'll be no doing anything with us. We'll throw our breakfasts on the floor.’
They sit till the servants yawn off to another room, and the candles burn down, and they retreat into the house, to smaller and warmer rooms, to talk some more. You have given Mary good advice, she says, I hope she heeds it, I fear there are hard times ahead for her. She talks about her brother Thomas Boleyn, the most selfish man I ever knew, it is no wonder Anne is so grasping, all she has ever heard from him is talk of money, and how to gain a mean advantage over people, he would have sold those girls naked at a Barbary slave market if he had thought he would get a good price.
He imagines himself surrounded by his scimitared retainers, placing a bid for Mary Boleyn; he smiles, and returns his attention to her aunt. She tells him Boleyn secrets; he tells her no secrets, though she thinks he has.
Gregory is asleep when he comes in, but he turns over and says, ‘Dear father, where have you been, to bed with Lady Shelton?’
These things happen: but not with Boleyns. ‘What strange dreams you must have. Lady Shelton has been thirty years married.’
‘I thought I could have sat with Mary after supper,’ Gregory murmurs. ‘If I didn't say the wrong thing. But then she is so sneery. I couldn't sit with such a sneery girl.’ He flounces over in the feather bed, and falls asleep again.
When Fisher comes to his senses and asks pardon, the old bishop begs the king to consider that he is ill and infirm. The king indicates that the bill of attainder must take its course: but it is his habit, he says, to grant mercy to those who admit their fault.
The Maid is to be hanged. He says nothing of the chair of human bones. He tells Henry she has stopped prophesying, and hopes that at Tyburn, with the noose around her neck, she will not make a liar out of him.
When his councillors kneel before the king, and beg that Thomas More's name be taken out of the bill, Henry yields the point. Perhaps he has been waiting for this: to be persuaded. Anne is not present, or it might have gone otherwise.
They get up and go out, dusting themselves. He thinks he hears the cardinal laughing at them, from some invisible part of the room. Audley's dignity has not suffered, but the duke looks agitated; when he tried to get up, elderly knees had failed him, and he and Audley had lifted him by the elbows and set him on his feet. ‘I thought I might be fixed there another hour,’ he says. ‘Entreating and entreating him.’
‘The joke is,’ he says to Audley, ‘More's still being paid a pension from the treasury. I suppose that had better stop.’
‘He has a breathing space now. I pray to God he'll see sense. Has he arranged his affairs?’
‘Made over what he can to the children. So Roper tells me.’
‘Oh, you lawyers!’ the duke says. ‘On the day I go down, who will look after me?’
Norfolk is sweating; he eases his pace, and Audley checks too, so they are dawdling along, and Cranmer comes behind like an afterthought. He turns back and takes his arm. He has been at every sitting of Parliament: the bench of bishops, otherwise, conspicuously underpopulated.
The Pope chooses this month, while he is rolling his great bills through Parliament, to give his judgment at last on Queen Katherine's marriage – a judgment so long delayed that he thought Clement meant to die in his indecision. The original dispensations, Clements finds, are sound; therefore the marriage is sound. The supporters of the Emperor let off fireworks in the streets of Rome. Henry is contemptuous, sardonic. He expresses these feelings by dancing. Anne can dance still, though her belly shows; she must take the summer quietly. He remembers the king's hand on Lizzie Seymour's waist. Nothing came of that, the young woman is no fool. Now it is little Mary Shelton he is whirling around, lifting her off her feet and tickling her and squeezing her and making her breathless with compliments. These things mean nothing; he sees Anne lift up her chin and avert her gaze and lean back in her chair, making some murmured comment, her expression arch; her veil brushing, for the briefest moment, against the jacket of that grinning cur Francis Weston. It is clear Anne thinks Mary Shelton must be tolerated, kept sweet even. It's safest to keep the king among cousins, if no sister is on hand. Where is Mary Boleyn? Down in the country, perhaps longing like him for warmer weather.
And the summer arrives, with no intermission for spring, promptly on a Monday morning, like a new servant with a shining face: 13 April. They are at Lambeth – Audley, himself, the archbishop – the sun shining strongly through the windows. He stands looking down at the palace gardens. This is how the book Utopia begins: friends, talking in a garden. On the paths below, Hugh Latimer and some of the king's chaplains are play-fighting, pulling each other around like schoolboys, Hugh hanging around the necks of two of his clerical fellows so his feet swing off the floor. All they need is a football to make a proper holiday of it. ‘Master More,’ he says, ‘why don't you go out and enjoy the sunshine? And we'll call for you again in half an hour, and put the oath to you again: and you'll give us
a different answer, yes?’
He hears More's joints snap as he stands. ‘Thomas Howard went on his knees for you!’ he says. That seems like weeks ago. Late-night sittings and a fresh row every day have tired him, but sharpened his senses too, so he is aware that in the room behind him Cranmer is working himself into a terrible anxiety, and he wants More out of the room before the dam breaks.
‘I don't know what you think a half-hour will do for me,’ More says. His tone is easy, bantering. ‘Of course, it might do something for you.’
More had asked to see a copy of the Act of Succession. Now Audley unrolls it; pointedly, he bends his head and begins reading, though he has read it a dozen times. ‘Very well,’ More says. ‘But I trust I have made myself clear. I cannot swear, but I will not speak against your oath, and I will not try to dissuade anyone else from it.’
‘That is not enough. And you know it is not.’
More nods. He meanders towards the door, careering first into the corner of the table, making Cranmer flinch, his arm darting out to steady the ink. The door closes after him.
‘So?’
Audley rolls up the statute. Gently he taps it on the table, looking at the place where More had stood. Cranmer says, ‘Look, this is my idea. What if we let him swear in secret? He swears, but we offer not to tell anybody? Or if he cannot take this oath, we ask him what oath he can take?’
He laughs.
‘That would hardly meet the king's purpose,’ Audley sighs. Tap, tap, tap. ‘After all we did for him, and for Fisher. His name taken out of the attainder, Fisher fined instead of locked up for life, what more could they ask for? Our efforts flung back at us.’
‘Oh well. Blessed are the peacemakers,’ he says. He wants to strangle somebody.
Cranmer says, ‘We will try again with More. At least, if he refuses, he should give his reasons.’
He swears under his breath, turns from the window. ‘We know his reasons. All Europe knows them. He is against the divorce. He does not believe the king can be head of the church. But will he say that? Not he. I know him. Do you know what I hate? I hate to be part of this play, which is entirely devised by him. I hate the time it will take that could be better spent, I hate it that minds could be better employed, I hate to see our lives going by, because depend upon it, we will all be feeling our age before this pageant is played out. And what I hate most of all is that Master More sits in the audience and sniggers when I trip over my lines, for he has written all the parts. And written them these many years.’
Cranmer, like a waiting-boy, pours him a cup of wine, edges towards him. ‘Here.’
In the archbishop's hand, the cup cannot help a sacramental character: not watered wine, but some equivocal mixture, this is my blood, this is like my blood, this is more or less somewhat like my blood, do this in commemoration of me. He hands the cup back. The north Germans make a strong liquor, aquavitae: a shot of that would be more use. ‘Get More back,’ he says.
A moment, and More stands in the doorway, sneezing gently. ‘Come now,’ Audley says, smiling, ‘that's not how a hero arrives.’
‘I assure you, I intend in no wise to be a hero,’ More says. ‘They have been cutting the grass.’ He pinches his nose on another sneeze, and shambles towards them, hitching his gown on to his shoulder; he takes the chair placed for him. Before, he had refused to sit down.
‘That's better,’ Audley says. ‘I knew the air would do you good.’ He glances up, in invitation; but he, Cromwell, signals he will stay where he is, leaning by the window. ‘I don't know,’ Audley says, good-humoured. ‘First one won't sit. Then t'other won't sit. Look,’ he pushes a piece of paper towards More, ‘these are the names of the priests we have seen today, who have sworn to the act, and set you an example. And you know all the members of Parliament are conformable. So why not you?’
More glances up, from under his eyebrows. ‘This is not a comfortable place for any of us.’
‘More comfortable than where you're going,’ he says.
‘Not Hell,’ More says, smiling. ‘I trust not.’
‘So if taking the oath would damn you, what about all these?’ He launches himself forward from the wall. He snatches the list of names from Audley, rolls it up and slaps it on to More's shoulder. ‘Are they all damned?’
‘I cannot speak for their consciences, only for my own. I know that, if I took your oath, I should be damned.’
‘There are those who would envy your insight,’ he says, ‘into the workings of grace. But then, you and God have always been on familiar terms, not so? I wonder how you dare. You talk about your maker as if he were some neighbour you went fishing with on a Sunday afternoon.’
Audley leans forward. ‘Let us be clear. You will not take the oath because your conscience advises you against it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you be a little more comprehensive in your answers?’
‘No.’
‘You object but you won't say why?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it the matter of the statute you object to, or the form of the oath, or the business of oath-taking in itself?’
‘I would rather not say.’
Cranmer ventures, ‘Where it is a question of conscience, there must always be some doubt …’
‘Oh, but this is no whim. I have made long and diligent consultation with myself. And in this matter I hear the voice of my conscience clearly.’ He puts his head on one side, smiling. ‘It is not so with you, my lord?’
‘None the less, there must be some perplexity? For you must ask yourself, as you are a scholar and accustomed to controversy, to debate, how can so many learned men think on the one side, and I on the other? But one thing is certain, and it is that you owe a natural obedience to your king, as every subject does. Also, when you entered the king's council, long ago, you took a most particular oath, to obey him. So will not you do so?’ Cranmer blinks. ‘Set your doubts against that certainty, and swear.’
Audley sits back in his chair. Eyes closed. As if to say, we're not going to do better than that.
More says, ‘When you were consecrated archbishop, appointed by the Pope, you swore your oath to Rome, but all day in your fist, they say, all through the ceremonies, you kept a little paper folded up, saying that you took the oath under protest. Is that not true? They say the paper was written by Master Cromwell here.’
Audley's eyes snap open: he thinks More has shown himself the way out. But More's face, smiling, is a mask of malice. ‘I would not be such a juggler,’ he says softly. ‘I would not treat the Lord my God to such a puppet show, let alone the faithful of England. You say you have the majority. I say I have it. You say Parliament is behind you, and I say all the angels and saints are behind me, and all the company of the Christian dead, for as many generations as there have been since the church of Christ was founded, one body, undivided –’
‘Oh, for Christ's sake!’ he says. ‘A lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old. Your undivided church has liked nothing better than persecuting its own members, burning them and hacking them apart when they stood by their own conscience, slashing their bellies open and feeding their guts to dogs. You call history to your aid, but what is history to you? It is a mirror that flatters Thomas More. But I have another mirror, I hold it up and it shows a vain and dangerous man, and when I turn it about it shows a killer, for you will drag down with you God knows how many, who will only have the suffering, and not your martyr's gratification. You are not a simple soul, so don't try to make this simple. You know I have respected you? You know I have respected you since I was a child? I would rather see my only son dead, I would rather see them cut off his head, than see you refuse this oath, and give comfort to every enemy of England.’
More looks up. For a fraction of a second, he meets his gaze, then turns away, coy. His low, amused murmur: he could kill him for that alone. ‘Gregory is a goodly young man. Don't wish him away. If he has done badly, he will do better. I say the sa
me of my own boy. What's the use of him? But he is worth more than a debating point.’
Cranmer, distressed, shakes his head. ‘This is no debating point.’
‘You speak of your son,’ he says. ‘What will happen to him? To your daughters?’
‘I shall advise them to take the oath. I do not suppose them to share my scruples.’
‘That is not what I mean, and you know it. It is the next generation you are betraying. You want the Emperor's foot on their neck? You are no Englishman.’
‘You are barely that yourself,’ More says. ‘Fight for the French, eh, bank for the Italians? You were scarcely grown up in this realm before your boyhood transgressions drove you out of it, you ran away to escape gaol or a noose. No, I tell you what you are, Cromwell, you are an Italian through and through, and you have all their vices, all their passions.’ He sits back in his chair: one mirthless grunt of laughter. ‘This relentless bonhomie of yours. I knew it would wear out in the end. It is a coin that has changed hands so often. And now the small silver is worn out, and we see the base metal.’
Audley smirks. ‘You seem not to have noted Master Cromwell's efforts at the Mint. His coinage is sound, or it is nothing.’
The Chancellor cannot help it, that he is a smirking sort of man; someone must keep calm. Cranmer is pale and sweating, and he can see the pulse galloping at More's temple. He says, ‘We cannot let you go home. Still, it seems to me that you are not yourself today, so rather than commit you to the Tower, we could perhaps place you in the custody of the Abbot of Westminster … Would that seem suitable to you, my lord of Canterbury?’
Cranmer nods. More says, ‘Master Cromwell, I should not mock you, should I? You have shown yourself my most especial and tender friend.’
Audley nods to the guard at the door. More rises smoothly, as if the thought of custody has put a spring in his step; the effect is spoiled only by his usual grab at his garments, the scuffle as he shrugs himself together; and even then he seems to step backwards, and tread on his own feet. He thinks of Mary at Hatfield, rising from her stool and forgetting where she'd left it. After some fashion, More is bundled out of the room. ‘Now he's got exactly what he wants,’ he says.
