Wolf Hall tct-1

by Hilary Mante

  ‘Can't you just leave him there? Forget him?’

  ‘Of course. If the king allows.’

  He arranges for Meg Roper to visit. Father and daughter walk in the gardens, arm in arm. Sometimes he watches them from a window in the Lord Lieutenant's lodgings.

  By November, this policy has failed. Turned back, really, and bitten his hand, like a dog that out of kindness you pick up in the street. Meg says, ‘He has told me, and he has asked me to tell his friends, that he will have no more to do with oaths of any kind, and that if we hear he has sworn, we are to take it that he has been forced, by ill-usage and rough handling. And if a paper is shown to the council, with his signature on it, we are to understand it is not his hand.’

  More is now required to swear to the Act of Supremacy, an act which draws together all the powers and dignities assumed by the king in the last two years. It doesn't, as some say, make the king head of the church. It states that he is head of the church, and always has been. If people don't like new ideas, let them have old ones. If they want precedents, he has precedents. A second enactment, which will come into force in the new year, defines the scope of treason. It will be a treasonable offence to deny Henry's titles or jurisdiction, to speak or write maliciously against him, to call him a heretic or a schismatic. This law will catch the friars who spread panic and say the Spanish are landing with the next tide to seize the throne for the Lady Mary. It will catch the priests who in their sermons rant against the king's authority and say he is dragging his subjects after him to Hell. Is it much for a monarch to ask, that a subject keep a civil tongue in his head?

  This is new, people say to him, this treason by words, and he says, no, be assured, it is old. It casts into statute law what the judges in their wisdom have already defined as common law. It is a measure for clarification. I am all for clarity.

  Upon More's refusal of this second oath, a bill is brought in against him, forfeiting his goods to the Crown. He now has no hope of release; or rather, the hope lies in himself. It is his duty to visit him, tell him he will no longer be allowed visitors, or strolls in the gardens.

  ‘Nothing to see, this time of year.’ More casts a glance at the sky, a narrow strip of grey through the high window. ‘I can still have my books? Write letters?’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘And John Wood, he stays with me?’

  His servant. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘He brings me a little news from time to time. They say the sweating sickness has broken out among the king's troops in Ireland. So late in the year, too.’

  Plague has also broken out; he's not going to tell More that, or that the whole Irish campaign is a debacle and a money sink and that he wishes he had done as Richard said and gone out there himself.

  ‘The sweat takes off so many,’ More says, ‘and so swiftly, and in their prime too. And if you survive it, you are in no condition to fight the wild Irish, that's for sure. I remember when Meg took it, she nearly died. Have you had it? No, you're never ill, are you?’ He is chattering pointlessly, then he looks up. ‘Tell me, what do you hear from Antwerp? They say Tyndale is there. They say he lives straitly. He dare not stray beyond the English merchants' house. They say he is in prison, almost as I am.’

  It is true, or partly true. Tyndale has laboured in poverty and obscurity, and now his world has shrunk to a little room; while outside in the city, under the Emperor's laws, printers are branded and have their eyes put out, and brothers and sisters are killed for their faith, the men beheaded, the women buried alive. More has a sticky web in Europe still, a web made of money; it is his belief that his men have followed Tyndale these many months, but all his ingenuity, and Stephen Vaughan's on the spot, have not been able to find out which of the Englishmen who pass through that busy town are More's agents. ‘Tyndale would be safer in London,’ More says. ‘Under yourself, the protector of error. Now, look at Germany today. You see, Thomas, where heresy leads us. It leads us to Münster, does it not?’

  Sectaries, anabaptists, have taken over the city of Münster. Your worst nightmares – when you wake, paralysed, and think you have died – are bliss compared with this. The burgomasters have been ejected from the council, and thieves and lunatics have taken their places, proclaiming that the end times have come and all must be rebaptised. Citizens who dissent have been driven beyond the walls, naked, to perish in the snow. Now the city is under siege from its own prince-bishop, who intends to starve it out. The defenders, they say, are for the most part the women and children left behind; they are held in dread by a tailor called Bockelson, who has crowned himself King of Jerusalem. It is rumoured that Bockelson's friends have instituted polygamy, as recommended in the Old Testament, and that some of the women have been hanged or drowned rather than submit to rape under cover of Abraham's law. These prophets engage in daylight robbery, in the name of holding goods in common. It is said they have seized the houses of the rich, burned their letters, slashed their pictures, mopped the floors with fine embroidery, and shredded the records of who owns what, so former times can never come back.

  ‘Utopia,’ he says. ‘Is it not?’

  ‘I hear they are burning the books from the city libraries. Erasmus has gone into the flames. What kind of devils would burn the gentle Erasmus? But no doubt, no doubt,’ More nods, ‘Münster will be restored to order. Philip the prince of Hesse, Luther's friend, I have no doubt he will lend the good bishop his cannon and his cannoneers, and one heretic will put down another. The brethren fall to scrapping, do you see? Like rabid dogs drooling in the streets, who tear out each other's entrails when they meet.’

  ‘I tell you how Münster will end. Someone inside the city will surrender it.’

  ‘You think so? You look as if you would offer me odds. But there, I was never much of a gambler. And now the king has all my money.’

  ‘A man like that, a tailor, jumps up for a month or two –’

  ‘A wool merchant, a blacksmith's son, he jumps up for a year or two …’

  He stands, picks up his cape: black wool, lambskin lining. More's eyes gleam, ah, look, I have you on the run. Now he murmurs, as if it were a supper party, must you go? Stay a little, can't you? He lifts his chin. ‘So I shall not see Meg again?’

  The man's tone, the emptiness, the loss: it goes straight to his heart. He turns away, to keep his reply calm and trite. ‘You have to say some words. That's all.’

  ‘Ahh. Just words.’

  ‘And if you don't want to say them I can put them to you in writing. Sign your name and the king will be happy. I will send my barge to row you back to Chelsea, and tie up at the wharf at the end of your own garden – not much to see, as you say, at this time of year, but think of the warm welcome within. Dame Alice is waiting – Alice's cooking, well, that alone would restore you; she is standing by your side watching you chew and the minute you wipe your mouth she picks you up in her arms and kisses away the mutton fat, why husband I have missed you! She bears you off to her bedchamber, locks the door and drops the key in her pocket and pulls off your clothes till there you are in your shirt and nothing but your little white legs sticking out – well, admit it, the woman is within her rights. Then next day – think of it – you rise before dawn, shuffle to your familiar cell and flog yourself, call for your bread and water, and by eight o'clock back in your hair shirt, and over it your old woollen gown, that blood-coloured one with the rent in … feet up on a stool, and your only son bringing in your letters … snapping the seal on your darling Erasmus … Then when you have read your letters, you can hobble out – let's say it's a sunny day – and look at your caged birds, and your little fox in its pen, and you can say, I was a prisoner too, but no more, because Cromwell showed me I could be free … Don't you want it? Don't you want to come out of this place?’

  ‘You should write a play,’ More says wonderingly.

  He laughs. ‘Perhaps I shall.’

  ‘It's better than Chaucer. Words. Words. Just words.’

  He
turns. He stares at More. It's as if the light has changed. A window has opened on a strange country, where a cold wind from childhood blows. ‘That book … Was it a dictionary?’

  More frowns. ‘I'm sorry?’

  ‘I came up the stairs at Lambeth – give me a moment … I came running up the stairs, carrying your measure of small beer and your wheaten loaf, to keep you from being hungry if you woke in the night. It was seven in the evening. You were reading, and when you looked up you held your hands over the book,’ he makes the shape of wings, ‘as if you were protecting it. I asked you, Master More, what is in that great book? You said, words, words, just words.’

  More tilts his head. ‘This was when?’

  ‘I believe I was seven.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ More says genially. ‘I didn't know you when you were seven. Why, you were …’ he frowns, ‘you must have been … and I was …’

  ‘About to go to Oxford. You don't remember. But why would you?’ He shrugs. ‘I thought you were laughing at me.’

  ‘Oh, very probably I was,’ More says. ‘If indeed such a meeting took place. Now witness these present days, when you come here and laugh at me. Talking about Alice. And my little white legs.’

  ‘I think it must have been a dictionary. You are sure you don't remember? Well … my barge is waiting, and I don't want to keep the oars out in the cold.’

  ‘The days are very long in here,’ More says. ‘The nights are longer. My chest is bad. My breathing is tight.’

  ‘Back to Chelsea then, Dr Butts will visit, tut-tut Thomas More, what have you been doing to yourself? Hold your nose and drink off this foul mixture …’

  ‘Sometimes I think I shall not see morning.’

  He opens the door. ‘Martin?’

  Martin is thirty, wiry, his fair hair under his cap already sparse: pleasant face with a crinkly smile. His native town is Colchester, his father a tailor, and he learned to read on Wycliffe's gospel, which his father hid in their roof under the thatch. This is a new England; an England where Martin can dust the old text down, and show it to his neighbours. He has brothers, all of them Bible men. His wife is just now confined with her third child, ‘crawled into the straw,’ as he puts it. ‘Any news?’

  ‘Not yet. But will you stand godfather? Thomas if it's a boy, or if it's a girl you name her, sir.’

  A touch of palms and a smile. ‘Grace,’ he says. A money gift is understood; the child's start in life. He turns back to the sick man, who now slumps over his table. ‘Sir Thomas says at night his breath comes short. Bring him some bolsters, cushions, whatever you can find, prop him up to ease him. I want him to have every opportunity to live to rethink his position, show loyalty to our king, and go home. And now, bid you both good afternoon.’

  More looks up. ‘I want to write a letter.’

  ‘Of course. You shall have ink and paper.’

  ‘I want to write to Meg.’

  ‘Then send her a human word.’

  More's letters are beyond the human. They may be addressed to his daughter, but they are written for his friends in Europe to read.

  ‘Cromwell …?’ More's voice calls him back. ‘How is the queen?’

  More is always correct, not like those who slip up and say ‘Queen Katherine’. How is Anne? he means. But what could he tell him? He is on his way. He is out of the door. In the narrow window a blue dusk has replaced the grey.

  He had heard her voice, from the next room: low, relentless. Henry yelping in indignation. ‘Not me! Not me.’

  In the antechamber, Thomas Boleyn, Monseigneur, his narrow face rigid. Some Boleyn hangers-on, exchanging glances: Francis Weston, Francis Bryan. In a corner, trying to make himself inconspicuous, the lutenist Mark Smeaton; what's he doing here? Not quite a family conclave: George Boleyn is in Paris, holding talks. An idea has been floated that the infant Elizabeth should marry a son of France; the Boleyns really think this is going to happen.

  ‘Whatever can have occurred,’ he says, ‘to upset the queen?’ His tone is astonished: as if she were the most placid of women.

  Weston says, ‘It's Lady Carey, she is – that is to say she finds herself –’

  Bryan snorts. ‘With a bellyful of bastard.’

  ‘Ah. Didn't you know?’ The shock around him is gratifying. He shrugs. ‘I thought it a family matter.’

  Bryan's eyepatch winks at him, today a jaundiced yellow. ‘You must watch her very closely, Cromwell.’

  ‘A matter in which I have failed,’ Boleyn says. ‘Evidently. She claims the child's father is William Stafford, and she has married him. You know this Stafford, do you?’

  ‘Just about. Well,’ he says cheerfully, ‘shall we go in? Mark, we are not setting this affair to music, so take yourself off to where you can be useful.’

  Only Henry Norris is attending the king: Jane Rochford, the queen. Henry's big face is white. ‘You blame me, madam, for what I did before I even knew you.’

  They have crowded in behind him. Henry says, ‘My lord Wiltshire, can you not control either of your daughters?’

  ‘Cromwell knew,’ Bryan says. He snorts with laughter.

  Monseigneur begins to talk, stumbling – he, Thomas Boleyn, diplomat famed for his silver-tongued finesse. Anne cuts him off: ‘Why should she get a child by Stafford? I don't believe it's his. Why would he agree to marry her, unless for ambition – well, he has made a false move there, for he will never come to court again, nor will she. She can crawl on her knees to me. I care not. She can starve.’

  If Anne were my wife, he thinks, I'd go out for the afternoon. She looks haggard, and she cannot stay still; you wouldn't trust her near a sharp knife. ‘What to do?’ Norris whispers. Jane Rochford is standing back against the tapestries, where nymphs entwine themselves in trees; the hem of her skirt is dipped in some fabulous stream, and her veil brushes a cloud, from which a goddess peeps. She lifts her face; her look is one of sober triumph.

  I could have the archbishop fetched, he thinks. Anne wouldn't rage and stamp under his eyes. Now she has Norris by the sleeve; what is she doing? ‘My sister has done this to spite me. She thinks she will sail about the court with her great belly, and pity me and laugh at me, because I have lost my own child.’

  ‘I feel sure that, if the matter were to be viewed –’ her father begins.

  ‘Get out!’ she says. ‘Leave me, and tell her – Mistress Stafford – that she has forfeited any claim on my family. I don't know her. She is no longer a Boleyn.’

  ‘Wiltshire, go.’ Henry adds, in the tone in which a schoolboy is promised a whipping, ‘I shall speak to you later.’

  He says to the king, innocent, ‘Majesty, shall we do no business today?’ Henry laughs.

  Lady Rochford runs beside him. He does not slow his pace so she has to pick up her skirts. ‘Did you really know, Master Secretary? Or did you say that just to see their faces?’

  ‘You are too good for me. You see through all my ploys.’

  ‘Lucky I see through Lady Carey's.’

  ‘It was you who detected her?’ Who else, he thinks? With her husband George away she has no one to spy on.

  Mary's bed is strewn with silks – flame, orange, carnation – as if a fire has broken out in the mattress. Across stools and a window seat trail lawn smocks, entangled ribbons and unpaired gloves. Are those the same green stockings she once revealed to the knee, running full-tilt towards him on the day she proposed marriage?

  He stands in the doorway. ‘William Stafford, eh?’

  She straightens up, her cheeks flushed, a velvet slipper in her hand. Now the secret is out, she has loosened her bodice. Her eyes slide past him. ‘Good girl, Jane, bring that here.’

  ‘Excuse me, Master.’ It is Jane Seymour, tiptoeing past him with an armful of folded laundry. Then a boy after her, bumping a yellow leather chest. ‘Just here, Mark.’

  ‘Behold me, Master Secretary,’ Smeaton says. ‘I'm making myself useful.’

  Jane kneels before the chest and swings i
t opens. ‘Cambric to line it?’

  ‘Never mind cambric. Where's my other shoe?’

  ‘Best be gone,’ Lady Rochford warns. ‘If Uncle Norfolk sees you he'll take a stick to you. Your royal sister thinks the king has fathered your child. She says, why would it be William Stafford?’

  Mary snorts. ‘So much does she know. What would Anne know of taking a man for himself? You can tell her he loves me. You can tell her he cares for me and no one else does. No one else in this world.’

  He leans down and whispers, ‘Mistress Seymour, I did not think you were a friend of Lady Carey.’

  ‘No one else will help her.’ She keeps her head down; the nape of her neck flushes pink.

  ‘Those bed hangings are mine,’ Mary says. ‘Pull them down.’ Embroidered on them, he sees, are the arms of her husband Will Carey, dead what – seven years now? ‘I can unpick the badges.’ Of course: what use are a dead man and his devices? ‘Where's my gilt basin, Rochford, have you got it?’ She gives the yellow chest a kick; it is stamped all over with Anne's falcon badge. ‘If they see me with this, they'll take it off me and tip my stuff in the road.’

  ‘If you can wait an hour,’ he says, ‘I'll send someone with a chest for you.’

  ‘Will it be stamped Thomas Cromwell? God save me, I haven't an hour. I know what!’ She begins to haul the sheets off the bed. ‘Make bundles!’

  ‘For shame,’ Jane Rochford says. ‘And run off like a servant who's stolen the silver? Besides, you won't need these things down in Kent. Stafford has a farm or something, hasn't he? Some little manor? Still, you can sell them. You'll have to, I suppose.’

  ‘My sweet brother will help me when he returns from France. He will not see me cut off.’

  ‘I beg to differ. Lord Rochford will be sensible, as I am, that you have disgraced all your kin.’

  Mary turns on her, arm sweeping out like a cat flashing claws. ‘This is better than your wedding day, Rochford. It's like getting a houseful of presents. You can't love, you don't know what love is, and all you can do is envy those who do know, and rejoice in their troubles. You are a wretched unhappy woman whose husband loathes her, and I pity you, and I pity my sister Anne, I would not change places with her, I had rather be in the bed of an honest poor gentleman who cares only for me than be like the queen and only able to keep her man with old whore's tricks – yes, I know it is so, he has told Norris what she offers him, and it doesn't conduce to getting a child, I can tell you. And now she is afraid of every woman at court – have you looked at her, have you looked at her lately? Seven years she schemed to be queen, and God protect us from answered prayers. She thought it would be like her coronation every day.’ Mary, breathless, reaches into the mill of her possessions and throws Jane Seymour a pair of sleeves. ‘Take these, sweetheart, with my blessing. You have the only kind heart at court.’