‘Latterly. Perhaps.’
He remembers the days, when the cardinal was still alive, when Anne needed no ornament but her eyes. She had dwindled away in those last months, her face pinched. When she landed at the Tower, and slipped from his grasp and fell at his feet on the cobbles, he had lifted her and she weighed nothing; it was like holding air.
‘So,’ Chapuys says. ‘While your king is in this merry mood, press him to name the Princess Mary as his heir.’
‘Pending, of course, his son by his new wife.’
Chapuys bows.
‘Press your master to speak to the Pope,’ he tells the ambassador. ‘There is a bull of excommunication hovering over my master. No king can live like that, threatened in his own realm.’
‘All Europe is keen to heal the breach. Let the king approach Rome in a spirit of penitence, and undo the legislation that has separated your country from the universal church. As soon as that is done, His Holiness will be pleased to welcome his lost sheep, and accept the restitution of his revenues from England.’
‘With interest paid, I suppose, on the missing years?’
‘I imagine the normal banking rules will apply. And also –’
‘There is more?’
‘King Henry should withdraw his delegates to the Lutheran princes. We know you are holding talks. We want you to break them off.’
He nods. In sum, Chapuys is asking him to destroy the work of four years. To take England back to Rome. To recognise Henry’s first marriage as valid, and the daughter of that marriage as his heir. To break off diplomacy with the German states. To forswear the gospel, embrace the Pope, and bow the knee to idols.
‘So what shall I do,’ he asks, ‘in these brave new days? I mean, me personally? Thomas Cromwell?’
‘Back to the smithy?’
‘I think I’ve lost the blacksmith’s art. I’ll have to take to the road as I did as a boy. Cross the sea and offer myself as a footsoldier to the King of France. Do you think he’d be pleased to see me?’
‘That is one course,’ Chapuys says. ‘On the other hand, you could stay in post, and accept a generous retainer from the Emperor. He understands the labour involved in returning your country to the status quo ante.’ The ambassador smiles at him; then swivels on his heel, his arms held out in greeting. ‘Cara-vey!’
That plush frontage, that deep chest emblazoned with gold: who can it be, but Sir Nicholas Carew? The grandee, in a lilting tone, corrects the ambassador’s pronunciation: ‘Car-ew.’ He waits for it to be repeated.
Chapuys signals regret. ‘It is beyond me, sir.’
Carew will let it pass. He fixes his attention on Master Secretary. ‘We should meet.’
‘That would honour me, Sir Nicholas.’
‘We must arrange an escort to bring the Princess Mary back to court. Come out to my house at Beddington.’
‘Come to me. I’m busy.’
Sir Nicholas is annoyed. ‘My friends expect –’
‘You can bring your friends.’
Now Sir Nicholas heaves closer. ‘We made a bargain with you, Cromwell. We expect it to be honoured.’
He doesn’t answer Carew, merely adjusts him so that his path is clear. Passing him, he touches his hand to his heart. It looks like the gesture of a man suddenly anxious. But that’s not what it is, and that’s not what he’s doing.
At once his boys are beside him.
Richard asks, ‘What did Carew want?’
‘His bargain honoured.’
It is true what Wriothesley says: there was a bargain. In Carew’s version: we, friends of the Princess Mary, will help you remove Anne Boleyn, and afterwards, if you grovel to us and serve us, we will refrain from ruining you. Master Secretary’s version is different. You help me remove Anne, and … and nothing.
Richard says, ‘Do you know that the king had Carew’s wife in his bed? Before Carew married her, and after?’
‘No!’ Gregory says. ‘Am I old enough to know? Does everybody know? Does Carew know they know?’
Richard grins. ‘He knows we know.’
It’s better than gossip. It’s power: it’s news from the court’s inner economy, from the counting house where the units of obligation are fixed and the coins of shame are weighed. Richard says, ‘I could like her myself, Eliza Carew. If a man were not a married man …’
‘Out of our sphere,’ he says.
‘When has that stopped you? It’s only a fortnight since you and the Earl of Worcester’s wife were shut in a room together.’
Getting evidence.
‘And she came out smiling,’ Richard says.
Because I paid her debts.
Gregory says, ‘And she’s big with child. Which people do talk about.’
‘Let’s go,’ Richard says, ‘before Carve-Away comes back. We might laugh at him.’
But their names are called: Rafe, whisking around a corner. He has come from the king, and his expression – if you could parse it – is a compound of reverence, wariness and incredulity. ‘He wants you, sir.’
He nods. ‘You boys go home.’ Then a thought strikes him. ‘But Richard –’
His nephew turns. He whispers. ‘Do you attend Sir William Fitzwilliam. See if he will stand my ally in the king’s council. He knows Henry’s mind. He knows him as well as any man.’
It was Fitzwilliam who came to him, last March, to spell out to him how the Boleyns were detested, and how this detestation might unite natural foes, give them a common interest. It was Fitzwilliam who hinted at the king’s own need for a change: who did it with the calm authority of a man who had known Henry since his youth.
Richard says, ‘I think he will follow your star, sir.’
‘Find out his hopes,’ he says. ‘And raise them.’
‘Sir –’ Rafe prompts.
He takes Rafe’s arm. A knot of gentlemen turn their faces, and watch them pass. Rafe looks over his shoulder as the gentlemen fall behind, arranged as if waiting for Hans to paint them: silken hose, silken beards, their daggers in scabbards of black velvet, crimson velvet books in their hands. They are all Howards, or Howard kin, and one is the Duke of Norfolk’s young half-brother, who shares his name: Thomas Howard the Lesser. No danger of confusing the two. The Lesser is the worst poet at court. The Greater never rhymed in his life.
Rafe says, ‘The king is not as sanguine as he appears. He is not sure now of what he believed yesterday. He says, is justice served? He does not doubt Anne’s guilt, but he says, what about the gentlemen? You remember, sir, what ado we had to get him to sign the warrants? How we stood over him? Now he has fallen into doubts again. “Harry Norris was my old friend,” he says. “How is it possible he betrayed me with my wife? And Mark – a lute player, a boy like that – is it likely she would sin with him?”’
Time was a king lived under the eye of his court. He ate in the great hall, spoke out all his thoughts, shat behind a scant curtain and copulated behind one too. Now rulers enjoy solitude: soft-slippered servants guard them, and in their recessed apartments noise is hushed. As the minister heads for the inner rooms, hat in hand, he institutes an inner process whereby he becomes pliable, infinitely patient. Usually, in cases of disturbance to the king’s peace of mind, he would call on the archbishop. But not in this matter. Since the former queen was indicted, Cranmer has had no peace of mind to spare.
At the door of the privy chamber he is ushered through. In the old days – that’s to say, a month ago – the king’s gentlemen would be vigilant to intercept him. You would expect Harry Norris, sliding out: I regret, Master Secretary, his Majesty is at prayer. And how long will he be praying, Harry? Oh, the whole morning, I don’t doubt … Norris fading away, with a charming smile of apology; while from behind a closing door he would hear a giggle from that little ape Francis Weston.
The courtiers ask, is it possi
ble, really, that the queen was bedding such a grinning pup as Weston?
What can you do but shrug?
The king is seated, slumped, elbows on knees. In the hour since he left the public gaze his verdant sheen has greyed. Charles Brandon is with him, standing over him like a sentinel.
He makes his reverence: ‘Majesty.’ And a polite murmur, as he rises: ‘My lord Suffolk.’
The duke gives him a wary nod. Henry says, ‘Crumb, have you heard this story about Katherine’s tomb?’
Suffolk says, ‘It’s in every tavern and marketplace. At the very instant Anne’s head leapt from her body, the candles on Katherine’s tomb ignited – without touch of living hand.’ The duke looks anxious to have it right. ‘You need not believe it, Cromwell. I don’t.’
Henry is irritable. ‘Of course not. It is a story. Where did it start, Crumb?’
‘Dover.’
‘Oh.’ Henry had not expected an answer. ‘She is buried in Peterborough. What do they know of it in Dover?’
‘Nothing, Majesty.’
He’s going to plod like this, till Henry sends Brandon out.
‘Well, then,’ Brandon says. ‘If the tale began in Dover, you may be sure it came from France.’
‘You defame the French,’ Henry says, ‘and yet you take their money, Charles.’
The duke looks mortified. ‘But you know I do.’
‘Of course, Majesty,’ he says, ‘my lord Suffolk takes certain sums from the Emperor too. So it all balances out.’
‘I know the arrangements,’ Henry says. ‘God knows, Charles, if my councillors did not take retainers and pensions, I would have to pay them myself, and Crumb here would have to find the money.’
‘Sir,’ he says, ‘what is to happen to Thomas Boleyn? I see no need to disturb him in his earldom.’
‘Boleyn was not a rich man, before I raised him,’ Henry says. ‘But he did some service to the state.’
‘And he is heartily ashamed, sir, of the crimes of his daughter and son.’
Henry nods. ‘Very well. But as long as he does not employ that stupid title, Monseigneur. And as long as he stays away from me. He should go to his own country, where I don’t have to look at him. So should the Duke of Norfolk. I don’t want to see Boleyn faces or Howard faces or any of their kin.’
He means, not unless the French or the Emperor take it in their heads to invade; or if the Scots come over the border. If war breaks out, Howards are the people you send for.
‘Then Boleyn remains Earl of Wiltshire,’ he says. ‘But his office as Keeper of the Privy Seal –’
‘You can do that, Crumb.’
He bows. ‘And if it pleases your Majesty, I shall continue as Secretary.’
Stephen Gardiner was Master Secretary, until – as Mr Wriothesley points out – he was displaced. He doesn’t want Stephen erupting into the king’s mind, spilling his putrid flatteries in the hope of recall. The way to prevent that is to offer to do all the jobs himself.
But Henry is not listening. On the table before him is a stack of three small books bound in scarlet leather and tied with green ribbons. Beside them, lying open, his walnut writing box: a relic from Katherine’s day, it is ornamented with her initial, and with the emblem of the pomegranate. Henry says, ‘My daughter Mary has sent a letter. I do not recall I gave her permission to write to me. Did you?’
‘I would not presume.’ He wishes he could get the letter out of the box.
‘She seems to entertain expectations about her future as my heir. As if she believes Jane will fail in giving me a son.’
‘She won’t fail, sir.’
‘That is easy to say, but the other one made promises she could not keep. Our marriage is clean, she said: God will reward you. But last night in a dream –’
Ah, he thinks, you see her too: Ana Bolena with her collar of blood.
Henry says: ‘Did I do right?’
Right? The magnitude of the question checks him, like a hand on his arm. Was I just? No. Was I prudent? No. Did I do the best thing for my country? Yes.
‘It’s done,’ he says.
‘But how can you say, “It’s done”? As if there were no sin? As if there were no repentance?’
‘Go forward, sir. It’s the one direction God permits. The queen will give you a son. Your treasury is filling. Your laws are observed. All Europe sees and admires the stand you have taken against the pretended authority of Rome.’
‘They see it,’ Henry says. ‘They don’t admire it.’
True. They think England is low-hanging fruit. Exhausted game. A trophy for princes and their huntsmen. ‘Our walls are building,’ he says. ‘Forts. They will not dare.’
‘If the Pope excommunicates me, France and the Emperor will get a blessing for invading us. Or so the Pope will tell them.’
‘They will not go to war for a blessing, sir. Think how often they say, “We will crusade against the Turk.” But they never do it.’
‘Those who conquer England will get their sins remitted. Which amount to a great heap.’
‘They will be adding new sins all the time.’ He stands over Henry: time to remind him what the bloodletting has been for. ‘I am talking to the Emperor’s man every day. You know his master is ready to make an alliance. While Anne Boleyn was alive he felt obliged to keep up a quarrel with you. But now you have removed the cause of that quarrel. With the Emperor at our side, we need not fear King François.’ (Though, he thinks, I am talking to him, too: I am talking hard.) ‘And should the Emperor fail us, there are friends to be had among the princes of Germany.’
‘Heretics,’ Charles Brandon says. ‘What next, Crumb? A pact with the devil?’
He is impatient. ‘My lord, the German princes are not heretics – they are like our prince – they give a lead to the people of their territories, and refuse to hand them body and soul to Rome.’
Henry says, ‘My lord Suffolk, will you leave us?’
Charles looks mutinous. ‘As it pleases you. But remember what I say, and lift your chin, Harry. I got a fine son on my wife last year, and I am older than you.’
He strides out. The king looks after him: wistful, as if the duke were going on a journey. ‘Harry,’ he repeats. His own name is tender in his mouth. ‘Suffolk forgets himself. But I will always be a boy to him. I cannot persuade him that neither of us is young any more.’ His hand steals out, furtive, and caresses the books, their soft scarlet covers. ‘Do you know that Jane has no books of her own? None except a girdle book with a jewel, and that is of little worth. I am giving her these.’
‘That will give her much pleasure, sir.’
‘They were Katherine’s. They are devotional in nature. Jane prays a great deal.’ The king is restless; he looks as if prayers are his best hope. ‘Crumb, what if some accident befalls? I could die tomorrow. I cannot leave my kingdom to my daughters, the one truculent and half-Spanish, the other an infant – and neither of them born in wedlock. My next heir would be the Queen of Scotland’s daughter, but my sister being what she is,’ he sighs, ‘we cannot be wholly sure Meg was born in wedlock either. And I ask you – a woman, weak in body, weak in will – can she rule, with all the frailty of her sex? No matter if she is blest with firmness, with nimble wit – still the day comes when she must marry, and bring in a foreigner to share her throne – or else exalt a subject, and who can she trust? A woman ruler, it is only storing up trouble – you may stave it off for ten years, twenty, but trouble will come. There is only one way. We will have to bring young Richmond forward as my heir. So I put it to you – how will Parliament take it?’
Very ill, he thinks. ‘I believe they will urge your Majesty to trust in God and use your best endeavours to get a son of your marriage. In the interim, we can make an instrument that allows your Majesty to name a successor at your pleasure. And you need not reveal your choice. Any such person
might be too much emboldened.’
Henry appears to be only half-listening; which means he is listening hard. ‘I had her library inventoried.’ The late Anne, he means. ‘There was seditious matter, and much that bordered on heresy. And in her brother’s books, too.’
Those fine French volumes: the names of George and Anne set side by side, with the Rochfords’ sable lion and the falcon crowned: his traces darkly inked, This book is mine, George Rochford. He waits. The king is quieting his conscience: he is assuring himself that the Boleyns and their friends were enemies of God. He doubts any book of theirs would be objectionable to him; or to Henry either, if his mind were more resolute. The king picks up one of the scarlet volumes. He glances into it, while he broaches his real concern: ‘The Commons will say to me, the crown is not yours to dispose of.’ A small hiccupping laugh: ‘They will put me in my place, Crumb.’
‘True.’ He smiles. ‘They may even call you Harry. But I have ways around them, sir.’
‘Who is Mr Speaker this session?’
‘Richard Riche.’
‘I see,’ Henry says. ‘Do you sleep at nights, Crumb?’
The question is not barbed: the king means no more than he says. ‘Only,’ Henry adds, ‘the Privy Seal is a great office of state, and as you are my deputy in church affairs, and the bishops meet soon in Convocation – and if you remain Master Secretary, as I am pleased you should – it is a burden of work no man has carried before. But then, you are like the cardinal, you can do the work of ten. I often wonder where you come from.’
The Mirror and the Light: 2020’s highly anticipated conclusion to the best selling, award winning Wolf Hall series (The Wolf Hall Trilogy, Book 3) Page 5
