Shaking the Throne

by Caroline Angus Baker

  Cromwell looked at the silent body beneath him; her face so bashed her features were no longer visible. He stepped over Barton and blew out the lone candle in the room and banged on the door. They finished their work for another day, in the name of King Henry.

  C

  Chapter 4 – December 1533

  those gents did hold togyther with lyes

  Whitehall Palace, London

  Thomas Audley’s eyes lit up the moment he sipped his wine. The plump Lord Chancellor sat across from Cromwell at his desk in the private office of Cromwell Chambers, his wide shoulders laden in grey furs.

  ‘I love a warmed wine!’ Audley exclaimed. ‘And the flavour is one I have never tried!’

  ‘You can thank my master secretary,’ Cromwell replied and leaned back in his high-backed throne of a chair. Behind him, raindrops hit the windows, the Thames hidden in the darkness. ‘Tis an Italian recipe. Lemons and oranges soaked in wine with a mixture of spices and seeds sourced from Venice where the traders have returned from the east.’

  Audley sipped his spiced wine again and tried to look not at Cromwell’s healing knuckles. Cromwell hid his hand on his lap, beneath the desk’s edge. ‘But you did not come to discuss wine, Lord Chancellor.’

  ‘Indeed not.’ Audley set down the silver goblet and clasped his hands over his wide waist. ‘I came to discuss Ireland. They like none of the Reformation changes, Thomas. They talk about refusing the Act of Supremacy.’

  ‘The King rules the Church of England, and Ireland is part of Henry’s realm. There is nothing else to discuss,’ Cromwell shrugged.

  ‘They could revolt against His Majesty. I know not what to do.’

  Cromwell sighed. Why did no one in this government ever think ahead? This issue had been quietly on his mind for some time. They should have sent Fitzroy to rule Ireland, but now it was too late to let Henry’s bastard rule; the Irish would no longer accept him. ‘The Deputy of Ireland is the Earl of Kildare. He got himself injured with what was called a “gunshot” wound. He is to be recalled to England. I shall install one of his rivals, Sir William Skeffington to be a deputy. He is for the Reformation and the Act of Supremacy. Also, Kildare’s rival, Archbishop Allen in Dublin and the Butler family shall have greater authority at Dublin Castle. Then, one by one, we replace councillors in Dublin with favourites of mine.’

  ‘How does one become a favourite of yours?’

  ‘Bribes, of course.’ Cromwell threw Audley a crude smile and the Lord Chancellor nodded. ‘I can control Ireland from this very desk.’

  ‘And the northern lords? They too are powerful against the Supremacy.’

  ‘The Dacres and the Cliffords are feuding in the northwest. I shall lay charges of treason upon Baron Dacre and have Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, appointed warden in the northwest. That shall ease the tone. Dacre can be acquitted in time; but by then, he shall have lost all control. He has been talking with Scottish lords and that is treason.’

  ‘Shall you seek to rule the north of England and Ireland?’

  ‘If I must. Ireland shall be easy to rule on the King’s behalf. I shall send commissioners to Ireland to make sure the Reformation goes ahead; any person who does not wish to be searched for harbouring Catholic books and idols shall have to pay handsomely for the privilege.’

  ‘How do I gain such bribes?’ Audley laughed and sipped his wine again.

  ‘You stay as the pious and attentive Lord Chancellor, Thomas. Leave the rest to me.’

  ‘I fear there shall be little need for me to do anything in my role as Lord Chancellor if you are so busy,’ Audley sighed.

  Cromwell resisted the urge to smile. He wanted to be Lord Chancellor; he had cleared the path for himself, only to have Audley pulled from parliament to take the role, a move Cromwell still failed to understand. Still, as King’s Chief Minister, Cromwell could do as he pleased.

  Someone knocked on the door and Cromwell frowned; Nicòla was not in his chambers, unable to take care of his dealings. Why could the other lawyers and clerks not take care of messengers? But the door opened and there stood Sir Henry Norris, one of the King’s gentlemen.

  ‘Sir Henry,’ Audley said as he turned in his chair. ‘Have you come in search of Cromwell’s famous Italian wine?’

  ‘Perchance I should try it,’ Norris sighed. ‘Mr. Cromwell, it is the King. His temper has taken the most alarming turn. He received a message, sender unknown to me, and His Majesty has fallen into a most violent rage. The King is in his privy chamber and seeks to be alone.’

  ‘Then why come hither? Why not send for Queen Anne?’

  ‘Mayhap she is the source of the anger,’ Audley muttered. ‘This is the moment to retire.’

  Cromwell showed Audley and Sir Norris to the main doors of his chambers before rushing along his private hallway to the King’s rooms. He knocked gently on the door as he stood in the dark but heard nothing. With great care, he opened the door and peered in, to see no guards or gentleman-ushers there to receive visitors. But one carpet in the centre of the room had a large red bloodstain, smeared through its otherwise pale colours.

  ‘Your Majesty!’ Cromwell cried, his heart pumping in his throat at once.

  King Henry appeared around the corner of one of his bookcases with an angry red brow. He looked from Cromwell to where he stood by the matted carpet.

  ‘Tis wine, you fool!’ Henry said and tossed a book on the large dining table in the middle of the room. He quickly rounded the wooden edge to Cromwell and smacked his chief minister across the face.

  Cromwell fell to the ground in shock at the outburst. ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty.’ Cromwell muttered, one hand against his smacked cheek.

  ‘How dare you come into my rooms without permission? You are nothing but a knave!’

  ‘I worried for your safety, Your Majesty,’ Cromwell cautioned, and pondered; was it safe to stand?

  ‘I can care for myself!’ Henry burst towards him and hit him. Cromwell stayed on his knees to quell the King.

  Henry paced back and forth before Cromwell, rubbing his hand across his top lip, messing his short orange beard. Sweat came from his balding head and ran beside his ears to his ever-increasing neck, which pulsed with angry veins.

  ‘Why is there never good news?’ Henry asked and stopped right before Cromwell, his codpiece painfully close to Cromwell’s sore face.

  ‘There is much cheer at this time of year, Your Majesty. I shall quell Ireland. Elizabeth Barton and her confessors shall be attainted for high treason as soon as the House of Lords approves my new bill.’

  ‘Still not good enough!’

  ‘Bishop Fisher and Thomas More are both charged with misprision and shall have to answer for their crimes against your marriage.’

  Henry seemed to relax a little. He raised his eyebrows as he thought. Finally, something which calmed the King. But only for a moment.

  ‘I have had a disarming letter from the Emperor’s ambassador.’

  ‘Oh, Eustace Chapuys is the problem,’ Cromwell sighed. ‘That is most understandable, Your Majesty.’

  ‘He has been writing to my former wife, and my daughter!’ the King fumed.

  ‘This is unacceptable.’

  ‘Oh, get up off the floor, Thomas. If someone is to kneel before me, at least be it a woman!’

  Cromwell stood up and smoothed his black doublet and hose. He dared not to suggest he find a mistress to entertain Henry; it would only fuel his rage again. ‘Perchance I could talk to Chapuys on your behalf, Your Majesty. He and I have not spoken of late, however…’

  ‘Where is the Waif, Thomas? I hear Chapuys likes to spend time with the Waif.’

  ‘Frescobaldi is in the company of Her Majesty this evening.’ Nicòla was probably in the Queen’s apartments sipping wine and gathering gossip from Anne’s ladies while Wyatt and Smeaton both adored the Queen for her entertainment.

  ‘Chapuys likes to stir up trouble with Frescobaldi, Your Majesty. Chapuys questions Frescobaldi abou
t the Duchess of Florence,’ Cromwell sighed. ‘He vexes me as he vexes you.’

  ‘No one can question the Waif!’ the King spat. ‘If the world knew I let a woman dressed as a man to be an advisor to my chief minister, I would be mocked throughout my realm. Make sure your creature keeps her secrets hidden! Chapuys has written to me about Katherine. He discusses her placement at Buckden Palace. They say Katherine is most ill this winter and suffers a great deal.’

  Cromwell held his tongue. If Katherine were to die, perchance it would not be so bad, for it would calm many people who still held disdain for Queen Anne.

  ‘I did not leave Katherine to hear news about her. She is banished sixty miles north and yet if Anne knew I received news about Katherine…’

  ‘We shall make sure Her Majesty hears nothing,’ Cromwell tried to calm Henry again, lest be struck once more.

  ‘My daughter, the Lady Mary. I want her household dissolved; all her servants are to be dismissed at once.’

  ‘Even the Countess of Salisbury, Your Majesty? She has been at Lady Mary’s side most of her life.’

  ‘Margaret Pole would be wise to leave now while I give her the chance!’ Henry fumed of his distant cousin. The Pole cousins were some of the last remaining people alive with Plantagenet blood in their veins, a last remaining threat to Henry’s crown.

  ‘Lady Mary is to be sent to Hatfield. She is to wait upon Princess Elizabeth.’

  The former Princess Mary, daughter of the mighty Queen Katherine, was to be a servant to the infant Anne Boleyn bore the King? Surely even Henry would not do such a thing to Lady Mary.

  ‘Your Majesty…’

  ‘Enough! Anne wants Mary to be a servant to Princess Elizabeth at Hatfield and it shall be so!’

  ‘We could send Lady Mary to live with her mother…’

  ‘Her mother?’ Henry shrieked, and hit Cromwell across the face again, throwing him to the ground. ‘With Katherine and Mary together, they would raise an army and take my throne!’

  This time, Cromwell stood again and did not look the King in the eye. ‘I shall make sure Lady Mary’s household is dissolved before Christmas, and she is to reside at Hatfield in the service of Princess Elizabeth.’

  Cromwell bowed low to the King and turned to his private hallway. Damn the King’s temper; Cromwell had no desire to quell it tonight.

  Along the private hallway was the bedrooms set aside for those privileged enough to tarry in Cromwell Chambers. As Cromwell flew past his own door, he heard a noise. On inspection, he found Nicòla there, sitting on the bed with a tired expression.

  ‘I have never been happier to find you,’ he muttered as he closed the door and leaned upon it.

  ‘I found you not in your office,’ Nicòla replied. ‘I could take no more of the Queen’s ladies tonight. Why is your face so red? Is it the wine?’

  Cromwell knelt before Nicòla and rested his head on her warm lap. She stroked his hair and sore cheek. ‘The King struck me a few times.’

  ‘What?’ Nicòla cried and cradled Cromwell’s face in her small hands. ‘Why would a king seek to harm his most loyal subject?’

  ‘He is angered by a letter from Ambassador Chapuys and I got too close.’

  ‘I care not for what is to blame, only that you are safe.’

  ‘It is no more than I dispense to others. Perchance it is God, seeking to punish me.’

  ‘I know something that can bring you much cheer, Tomassito. Come with me.’

  The room being used was near to Cromwell Chambers, tucked away in a nearby building inside the palace walls. Nicòla subdued the heavy lock to the printing room and held the torch so Cromwell could see his latest creation. Inside the darkened room, all the servants gone for the night, sat his new German printing press. At seven feet long and three feet wide, its tall body sat in silence, paper still upon its bed, ready to be stamped with ink. Cromwell took the first pamphlet from a stack in the far corner, holding it to Nicòla’s torch.

  The Denunciation of Pope Clement VII

  ‘All is finished, and the pamphlets are ready to be sent across the country,’ Nicòla said with delight. ‘Just as you ordered; these booklets against the Pope and the Catholic faith will go out to all, so they can be educated in their churches, told how Protestant reform and the Act of Supremacy is the best choice for them. We will have them swearing oaths to the King in no time. They will forget Elizabeth Barton and her revelations, and the King will control his people and their religion, as sworn by the people themselves.’

  ‘And if people do not agree with our pamphlet, denouncing the Pope and the Church?’

  ‘We can imprison them.’

  ‘Or take their heads,’ Cromwell muttered.

  ‘I thought you did not want to mark your reformation with blood.’

  ‘If we take Elizabeth Barton’s head for high treason, then it shall be too late for that worry. Blood will flow like a river.’

  ‘Tis your choice, Tomassito,’ Nicòla said and placed the pamphlet back on the pile of printed parchments. Cromwell put his arms around her and kissed her forehead, keen for a moment’s peace.

  ‘You will soon have Ireland under your control and England must follow. Let us retire to Austin Friars tomorrow, to see Jane and Gregory. Let us celebrate the epiphany and then let us take heads.’

  ‘Do you ever feel as if creating a queen was the wrong decision?’

  ‘It was our only choice, as it was the King’s command,’ Cromwell shrugged.

  ‘Then why is the world darkening?’

  ‘Only God can say.’

  F

  Chapter 5 – December 1533

  everything they sayd is taynted, every day was a lye

  Greenwich Palace, outer London

  Nicòla tore through the hallways of the palace. People stared as she ran past them, wondering of the panic, but she cared not. News of Cromwell’s master secretary running through the palace would soon spread, more since Frescobaldi had been spending time with the Queen.

  The two guards posted outside the entrance to the Cromwell Chambers saw Nicòla coming, and opened the doors, forcing several petitioners to get pushed aside. Nicòla stopped for no one; she ran through the antechamber filled with clerks putting their careful handwriting to paper and came to a sudden halt in the double doorway of Cromwell’s private office. He sat in his throne of a seat, surrounded by six of his attendants, all listening as their master spoke.

  ‘Leave!’ Nicòla demanded.

  Cromwell looked up in fright, his golden gaze looking her up and down. ‘I am arranging papers for the House of Lords,’ he argued in a slow tone, half his mind worried for her, the other still deep in legislation.

  ‘La regina è incinta!’ Nicòla cried, waving her petite hands in the air. She knocked off her black cap with the motion, rose-gold hair sticking out at strange angles in the fuss.

  ‘No!’ Cromwell gasped and stood up in such a manner he knocked back several men standing about him. ‘Get out, all of you!’

  The second Nicòla closed the doors and locked them, Cromwell was before her, his eyes wide in panic. ‘The Queen is with child?’

  ‘I have come directly from her rooms. I know not if the King even knows,’ Nicòla said, her smile so wide it hurt her cheeks.

  Cromwell cried out with joy and picked Nicòla up at the waist and spun her around, the pair of them laughing with excitement. Queen Anne may have failed with Princess Elizabeth, but the chance had come again so soon.

  ‘The King must have climbed into her bed the moment she was out of confinement,’ Nicòla continued as Cromwell set her upon her feet. ‘Anne has only just missed her course; I heard talk among the ladies. Lady Wingfield and Lady Shelton gossiped that the Queen had the King into her bed nightly through November in desperation. Lady Stanhope called it unseemly to do such, with a baby fresh from the womb. Lady Seymour looked most unhappy.’

  ‘Lady Seymour? Jane or Elizabeth?’

  ‘Jane Seymour. She so loved her last mistre
ss, Queen Katherine, and she wishes dearly for the former Princess Mary to be restored to favour.’

  ‘Another Boleyn baby is just what we need,’ Cromwell said and rubbed his hands together with joy. ‘We must inform the King.’

  ‘I suspect Anne wishes to wait until she is sure.’

  ‘If the ladies are whispering, soon the news shall spread. I shall order more wine for the Christmas feast tomorrow. Once Henry hears of a son on the way, he shall be toasting everyone in London!’

  ‘Perchance all the worry over the birth of a girl can be put behind us.’ Nicòla watched the glowing smile on Cromwell’s face. Indeed, not many smiles graced his cheeks since the birth of Princess Elizabeth. Henry had become irate since the birth of his daughter, despite his love for the baby. The world seemed to lean towards angst, darkness and bad humours. Eight months from now the world could either rejoice at a new heir to the throne or be set on fire in horror with another princess in the cradle.

  ‘We shall celebrate,’ Cromwell said as he banged his fist against his desk with joy. ‘As soon as I have the papers for the House of Lords organised, we shall leave for Austin Friars.’

  Nicòla picked up her hat and smoothed her curls. ‘Never have I been more grateful to appear as a man,’ she sighed. ‘For to be surrounded by ladies-in-waiting would be a torment I could not bear.’

  ‘There are other men in the Queen’s chambers, surely. For she has 250 servants in her accounts.’

  ‘Yes, Henry Norris visits often, and Wyatt and Smeaton are in constant attention. There is a young man, Thomas Tallis, who is a composer, new to London. He is friends with Wyatt and the Queen has enjoyed his musical knowledge. But the ladies…. Tomassito…’

  ‘Should I be worried?’ Cromwell folded his arms.

  ‘I know the ladies are there to wait on Anne, but sometimes I fear they wait for her to fall from grace,’ Nicòla sighed again. ‘Bess Holland is there as a spy for Anne’s uncle, Norfolk. The Seymour girls support Queen Katherine, as does Margery Horsman. The Countess of Worcester is a difficult woman, that Elizabeth Somerset. I know not where her loyalties lie. Margaret Shelton is so dim, Bridget Wingfield is haughty, Jane Boleyn is a bore. Only Nan Bray, Lady Cobham, seems to care for the Queen, and that is only the ladies in attendance today. Tomassito, I cannot bear to spend time in the Queen’s chambers.’