The Cardinal's Angels (Red Ned Tudor Mysteries)

by Gregory House

  So why should he be worried this night? What was the arrogant braying of a minor cleric to him? A gadfly bite, no more. However, as the yapping of a mastiff gave warning of the sneak thief, this open insult presaged dark moves by those who were jealous of the King’s favour and was not just the least insult, but rather the latest. Last week the King’s good friend and close brother–in–law, the Duke of Suffolk, stood up at the Blackfriars Court and swore before all the assembly, “that it was never merry in England whilst we had Cardinals amongst us”. The Court had cheered this vile insult.

  He could have trumped that smear from Sir Charles Brandon with a flick of his hand, easily bringing the snarling cur to heel. Brandon was hot headed and vain, and without Wolsey’s intercession the strutting jousting companion to the King wouldn’t have survived his secret marriage to the King’s sister. Henry was touchy about his royal honour and that action had strayed too close to treason. That being so, after the cheers from the rabble, the Court had settled down. His Sovereign Majesty had sat on his throne watching, and said nothing.

  How could this be? A few months ago Brandon was all smiles and scraping bows for his beloved patron. Now he displayed all the ingratitude of a treacherous heart. This betrayal wounded deeply, but of more concern was why? For all his bluff and swagger, Brandon was as cunning as a rat in sniffing the political winds of the Court. That one so formerly loyal should turn was an ominous portent and the King had watched, and said nothing. Nothing!

  Cardinal Wolsey wearily rubbed his heavy jowls and considered the latest problem, his latest burden, that damned commission on the annulment of His Sovereign’s marriage to Queen Katherine. He snorted in provoked anger at the memory. Why couldn’t the Spanish harpy just leave it be? As well wish for the moon. That stiff necked woman hadn’t budged an inch and he’d even humbled himself on bended knee pleading for her to yield, promising lands and status as befitted her station. All that effort wasted! Even his personal solemn oath that she’d gain untold sympathy and guarantee a later return when His Majesty’s need for Imperial aid was stronger hadn’t altered her stubbornness. Finally during the commission her scheming and tricks had ruined the open hearing at Blackfriars. It was going so well, smoothly and rehearsed, and then the queen burst in, all tears and entreaties to her ‘loving husband’ and in a single act demolished years of work. The plan was too cunning to be Katherine’s work. He suspected Father Juan Luis Vives. It had taken but a few well placed and judicious threats to scare that learned scholar back to Spain. And what of that recent arrival, Don Alva? The Spaniard was young, clever and ambitious, a dangerous combination.

  It was revenge, pure and simple, delivered with all the vicious calculation of a spurned wife. Wolsey had turned pale at the scene. Henry Tudor, his lord and master, did not forgive humiliation. Still it could have been saved and the royal ire deflected, if it wasn’t for the actions of one of his own, an English bishop even, that damned sanctimonious interfering fool, Fisher! Ignoring the hints of royal disfavour and legatine reward, he defended Queen Katherine. Of course the baleful glare of his outraged monarch alighted upon his most loyal chancellor and long–time solver of church problems, and the King said nothing! That was the culminating ruin of the commission.

  Wolsey was almost tempted into profanity at the recollection. A muttered prayer pushed him past the sinfulness of anger into a moment’s blessed peace. It was all too brief. He turned to the work at hand, and putting quill to parchment, wrote out the salutations to Thomas Boleyn, Lord Rochford, and father of Anne, the new beloved of His Sovereign and the reason for his mounting calamities. After decades in royal service he knew how the play of power functioned. He’d expected the manoeuvrings of Rochford and the Boleyn faction. That was just the common practice at Court, as was so much of his business recently. It was another in a long succession of ‘gifts’, the coin of patronage. This one, by the King’s command, was a patent assigning the rents of the vacant see of Durham, worth two thousand four hundred pounds per annum, to Lord Rochford. One more favour drawn from his suddenly waning stock. At the memory of loss, Wolsey’s thoughts once more spiralled back to the last hour of the Blackfriars Court, and His Majesty’s ominous silence. Even now his requests for an audience were refused and His Majesty was not ten miles away!

  Damn that feckless Abbot! Wolsey frowned as one wrong dredged up another. His servant, Cromwell, had determined that dissolving Wigmore monastery brought him enough to fund his work through to next spring. The man was a veritable hound for sniffing out disposable abbeys. It was not as if they were doing anything—gaining the remittance of sin for a smattering of rural yokels didn’t compare in any way to his two glorious colleges at Ipswich and Oxford. The quill trembled in his spasmed hand and punched through the stiff parchment. It had been several days, and His Majesty was still silent!

  Wolsey thumped the table with his ringed hand and pushed up from his labours. He’d handled His Sovereign’s amours and problems before—Mary Blout and Mary Boleyn were the two most prominent. Henry was a lusty man, full of all the vigour expected of a monarch, but to cuddle his paramour before all, and treat Anne Boleyn as if she was already Queen—that was just too much to endure. This whole situation with the disaster of the annulment was the fault of that meddling Frenchified punk! It didn’t take a university scholar to see that My Lady Anne Boleyn was the drafter of all his problems, scheming, conspiring and plotting to pull him down as the King’s trusted servant. It was her hand behind that affair with secretary Knight last year and the ‘secret mission’ to the Pope. Damn, that had been close. A day’s delay in messages from his intelligencers would have seen the decretals wing their way straight into the King’s hands without ‘careful appraisal and editing’. That little surprise had the stiff necked Boleyns and their snarling pack deflated, taking the wind right out of their sails.

  Until now, and the King’s silence and distance continued to grow.

  Wolsey flexed his fingers and cracked his sore knuckles in irritation. Which problem first? Should he play down or use the Royal indiscretions? Imperial eyes watched every loving caress and mark of favour. It was a deliberate provocation on her part. The woman was so sure—may as well call her Queen Anne for the bitch was that in all but name! Why couldn’t His Majesty have asked for a French princess as Wolsey had been working towards? The prestige of the Christian world would have been his, not to mention the benefits of a firm French alliance against the shifting factions of Europe. This infatuation with that Boleyn temptress had thrown the complex game of crowns and lands into confusion. Wolsey clenched his left hand in frustration. Now to favour Henry’s passion, the path to a French crown receded, and England risked the wrath of Emperor Charles V for slighting his Aunt Katherine, and for no gain. And his hold on power, now not nearly so firm, cracked and crumbled away like old plaster.

  And it wasn’t just the Boleyn curs baying. Now the court jackals scented blood as well, snarling and snapping away at his ankles. Brandon’s insult and Wigmore’s insolence were merely the first signs. And like any rebellious pack of hounds, they needed a firm hand on the whip to bring them to heel. Wolsey frowned and pinched the bridge of his nose. Damn them all to the nethermost regions of Hell! He’d seen the warnings but due to the demands of the Legatine Commission for His Majesty, it had been left to slip for too long. Only last month he’d received a report from his agent secreted amongst the French Ambassador’s retainers, full to the brim with open conspiracy.

  "These Lords intend, after he is dead or ruined, to impeach the State of the Church, and take all its goods; which it is hardly needful for me to write in cipher, for they proclaim it openly. I expect they will do fine miracles as well, I expect the priests will never have the great seal again; and that in this Parliament they will have terrible fright."

  Of all the ambassadors in residence, Du Bellay was the cleverest. If this was in his report to Francis, then Wolsey’s enemies had already sounded out foreign allies. What unnatural arrogance! The casual e
xpectation of his fall was an insult. What, was he already dead and buried? Had they sung the last rites over him? Wolsey hadn’t gained this hold over the Kingdom and been the right hand of the monarch all these years just to have foreigners and strutting nobles dismiss him so readily. No! There had to be a way out of this thicket, a way to regain Henry’s approval and to banish that distancing silence.

  He pushed himself painfully up from the table, and stood before the fire. His gentleman usher, Cavendish, stepped forward and offered a goblet of Rhenish wine. With a brief nod of acknowledgement, he took a hefty draught and stared into the crackling logs.

  He’d tried getting rid of the Boleyn girl—it hadn’t worked. She was much cannier than her older sister, Mary, and so Henry had set his mind to marriage, legal and lawful, to Anne. So had begun the round of offer, bargain and threat between London and Rome. The bitch had even survived a bout of the sweats so she was unlikely to succumb to a sniffle. It was time he lacked now. Three years this had played out as he swatted off the petty intrigues of the Boleyns. And now he was out of time. Damn Clement for the weak fool that he was!

  He’d solved the problems of Henry’s two sisters—a divorce for the Queen of Scotland and removal of the bigamy charges for the ungrateful Suffolk, thus elevating his stature as the papal expert. Now … now was different. After the letter from Master Casale in Rome, three days ago, any hopes of an annulment from the Apostolic See were dust. The only remaining army on the Italian peninsula were beaten, and as a result, that master of equivocation, Pope Clement, had finally decided to commit himself once and for all to Charles V and the Imperial faction by recalling the annulment case to a Papal court. A disaster—it was a complete disaster. Why did Clement have to pick now to stick irrevocably to a decision? By reputation, former Cardinal Giuliano Medici never resolved to one course of action for longer than it took to eat a capon. It was often quoted as a wry joke within the Apostolic chambers that His Holiness could agree to several opposing suggestions between one sip of wine and another. This last reported rumour from his agents in Rome, hinted at the cause for his unaccustomed consistency—an illegitimate Hapsburg daughter was to wed a papal nephew.

  Wolsey passed back the empty goblet and slapped one meaty hand into the other. This too public failure could break him! That damned harpy would be at her royal paramour every day, whispering and pouting, flashing those dark eyes, every word dripping with venom. ‘Our Lord Chancellor promised so much …’ Damn her and damn Clement!

  As this thought brought on yet another surge of bile, his ire acquired a more Romewards direction. Clement, that Florentine ditherer, it was all his fault. He had even fowled up the appointment of Cardinal Campeggio to the Annulment Commission. Lorenzo Campeggio was supposed to be England’s agent in the Holy See, a cleric bought and paid for by English gold. The Italian received the income from a bishopric and hefty annual gifts and yet now, despite all this generosity, he was hedging and wavering just like his master. As slowly as was possible, Campeggio had travelled all the way from Rome—two weeks even to get from Dover to London. A blind, crippled snail on crutches could have managed a faster journey! Almost daily he was advised to either halt and wait, or to speed up as the inconstant Papal mind wandered along its meandering path. Finally, after months wasted on the journey, Campeggio arrived, and in his very first conversation with the King, revealed that within his luggage was a Papal decretal granting the divorce. A much prayed for solution to this bitter, bitter problem.

  Ahh, but of course, it was not that simple. Unless Katherine agreed to go into a nunnery, it was to be neither published or displayed. This sly surprise gave Lady Anne all the ammunition to further undermine his standing. And then despite his best efforts, Katherine managed to smuggle out a letter to her nephew, Charles V, imploring his assistance. This had only magnified his problems, and since then he had kept his intelligencers and spies working at full pitch, both in England and across the Channel. Right now most of these were concentrated on the city of Cambri, watching that intricate dance between the Houses of Hapsburg and Valois over the culmination of their long wars. All his long–honed instincts told his that he must be there before the ink dried on any treaty. For Wolsey to prosper, then he must be seen with the powers of Europe. Instead Henry had chosen to send that preening ingrate, Suffolk, as well as the simpering would–be philosopher, Sir Thomas More. And what use were they? Neither had the reputation or weight of experience needed to gain for England a place at the bargaining table. How could either hope to get anything more than mere crumbs as a reward for His Majesty’s great efforts. How could they know of such subtle nuances as Margaret of Austria’s distinctive cough just before she yielded a point? How would they conduct those quiet but oh so useful talks at feast or hunt with important lords and princes? Yes, he’d seen it all before, Royal Ambassadors, puffed up in velvet and cloth of gold, and too blinded by huberous and glittering promises to see the traps clearly laid in their paths. For two men, supposedly so beholden to him for their titles and advancement, and previously so garrulous in his praise, he had received little regarding their embassy, scarcely a word or a letter in report. And as with His Royal Master’s, this infectious silence sounded a dread knock upon his heart. England would rue the day he was not present.

  Frustratingly he was shut out, relying on minions, as the powerful made their own arrangements without him, reduced to the pitiful expedient of agents in the curtain shadows. And the King said nothing, refusing his requests.

  His exclusion was a public slight and who knew what secret deals were being hatched, maybe even a compact bringing both the Valois and Hapsburgs against an isolated England? In an attempt to stem the stampede, he’d penned a missive to His Majesty as a reminder of his diplomatic expertise and in return received a curtly dismissive letter from Gardiner, his former secretary, asking him, the Chancellor of the Kingdom, to be more specific as to his inquiry. Gardiner! He had raised that ingrate to the position he now held. Bishop Gardiner owed him everything. It didn’t need an astrologer to interpret that sign. The King was drifting away, his ear full of the whispers and innuendoes of those at Court eager to gain preferment and wealth. The Duke of Norfolk was one rival already much too close to Henry and, as uncle of Lady Anne, he would relish any chance to gain the chancellor’s title. Thomas Howard already held the reputation as a man more devious than a serpent and twice as dangerous. And this situation was steering towards the perilous. Wolsey knew from du Bellay’s letter and other’s since that he wasn’t the only one at risk—the English Church was also in the butts as a target. Previously he had played up its vulnerability as a useful goad to Campeggio, and satisfyingly, the Italian’s letters to the Apostolic See had proved the worth of that tactic. He recalled one part with particular satisfaction:

  “The Cardinal alone stood between the Church and its subjection. It was owing to Wolsey's vigilance and solicitude that the Holy See retained its rank and dignity. His ruin would drag down the Church!”

  True, very true. How could Pope Clement ignore the crisis? He snorted at the memory. That would be easy—the Florentine was quick enough to favour needed allies, though afterwards he had a discriminating tendency for selective ‘forgetfulness’. One prime example that still rankled was the English gift of ten thousand ducats. In desperation the Holy Father had begged for assistance, a petition to his faithful servant, the King of England and his valued loving friend, Cardinal Wolsey. Clement had pleaded that without it, the papal armies would wither away before the Imperials. That was not a happy recollection. The subsidy had come close to ruining him. The Commons in Parliament had almost revolted over openly shipping that much gold out the Kingdom. And of course later Clement had ‘forgotten’ his English friends—typical!

  Then the deceitful Italian had pulled his culminating cony catcher’s trick. While Clement knew full well the Annulment Commission was in session, His Holiness sent several letters via Imperial messengers, withdrawing its validity and recalling the case back t
o Rome! Wolsey wasn’t a fool. He’d tried to misdirect the missives and his agents had stalked every route in Europe to forestall their posting. God’s blood, all to no avail! Why was it that his dealings with this Pope were so cursed by an ill star?

  That thought didn’t solve his problems and concentrating on it only brought on a pounding headache. If only His Holiness had succumbed to that illness earlier this year. That would have left his apostolic legate free to declare judgement on the whole case sede vacante before they’d elected a new pope. As he’d found before, the vacant period between pontiffs always brought up a host of possibilities and removed a legion of obstacles. If only Clement had died! Wolsey instinctively crossed himself at that remembered wish.

  In normal circumstances such an evil thought would be roundly banished to the nether most parts of the soul, chastised and discarded. Suddenly an edge of frantic desperation gripped him and held the thought up to the light of speculation. Perhaps?

  Hmmm Perhaps?

  Perhaps, it wasn’t so…evil?

  Wolsey’s eyes narrowed and his fingers rubbed at the seal ring on his right hand. Was it a temptation from the arch fiend? Or an angelically inspired revelation?

  In the past, priests who had brought the throne of St Peter into disrespect had been opportunely removed by the provident hand of God. So, what if the Almighty chose to work through the agency of rebellious lords, conniving cardinals or convenient illnesses?

  Sin or saviour? As of this instant, it was well lodged in his thoughts. Not even a barrel of Gonne powder could dislodge it, as its suppleness, justice and symmetry beguiled him. He mused on the interminable failings of Pope Clement. It was a very long list that started with the Sack of Rome and Babylonian captivity of the Pontiff by the Imperial army, then descended through the pervasive spiritual spinelessness and calumny of political debacles. While no man could be perfect, that status belonging only to the Son of God, this Pope had taken the Patrimony of St Peter to a state lower in esteem than a harlot’s chastity. Clement had failed in his duty! He’d done little to reassure a distraught and desperate flock, made vulnerable and confused by the religious conflict between that heretic Luther and the Church. More importantly, he had shown niggardly regard for the true friends of the Holy See. Wolsey tapped his fingers on the heavy beam of the over mantle, almost a Te Duem in rhythm. It was a grievous sin to encompass the death of another. Dare he act on the impulse?