by David Field
Henry smiled. ‘Indeed not, you are too wily for that, Thomas. But why should I condemn Norfolk’s actions in having Ashton removed to a place where he can be of no further danger?’
‘In this, Sire. Ashton was offered the opportunity to claim the throne as the figurehead of an uprising being planned by Margaret Pole and her family. But not only did he refuse, he escaped at the first opportunity, and at considerable risk to his own life he revealed the plot to his then host, Sir Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset, at Bradgate. Dorset, in turn, advised Suffolk, and Suffolk advised me.’
‘So Charles Brandon knew of it as well?’
‘Indeed, Sire, but on my counsel he remained silent, in the hope that the entire nest of conspirators could be emptied all at the one time. But one of them — the real leader — remains not only at large, but as close to the throne as I am.’
‘Whom do you accuse?’
‘Norfolk, Sire.’
Henry’s jaw dropped, then he burst out laughing. ‘It is well known that you and Norfolk have no love for each other, but surely this takes your feverish fantasies too far? Norfolk has ever been a loyal subject, and I shall shortly be marrying his niece.’
Cromwell swallowed hard. ‘Please forgive me, Sire, but I am bound to remind you of your previous misfortune in marrying a former niece of Norfolk.’
Henry turned bright crimson, and gripped the arm of the chair in which he was seated. Then he took several deep breaths and looked back at Cromwell as his natural colour returned. ‘By God, Thomas, you took a grave risk in reminding me of my own folly in bedding that witch! This matter must be of considerable importance to you, that you were prepared to hazard your neck in that fashion.’
‘I have ever served you loyally, Sire, and if England is to be saved at the expense of my neck, so be it. But I also wish to preserve the neck of an innocent man who has risked his own life this past year by holding into himself his knowledge of Norfolk’s true treachery. And that is why Norfolk has had Ashton consigned to the Tower — he knows too much.’
Henry sat deep in thought, during which Cromwell held his breath and prayed, searching the King’s face for any sign of how his thoughts might be inclining. Eventually Henry looked up with a pained smile.
‘Take yourself off to the Tower, Thomas, and convey my personal command that no harm is to befall Ashton, but that he must be kept under constant guard. In the meantime I will summon Suffolk, and perhaps also Dorset. If they confirm your story, Ashton will be transferred, under close arrest, back to Bradgate under the personal guard of Henry Grey. If he removes himself from there, I shall know the truth of it, and both of you will pay with your heads. Now leave me, and send word to Lady Catherine to re-join me here.’
A week later, Richard looked up with a pang of fear as the door to his cell opened, and his jailor Bedingfield stuck his grimy head round the door.
‘Yer free ter go, yer miserable shit. Yer can thank Master Secretary fer that, but afore yer goes ter thank ’im, I suggest yer ’as a good wash.’
Three days before Grace’s first birthday Richard was delivered back to Bradgate under an armed escort led by Henry Grey. As Richard dismounted by the stable door, he heard the urgent scurrying of light feet behind him, and turned in time to see Kate Calthorpe standing, and visibly trembling, her face dripping tears of joy. Their eyes met, and as they walked instinctively towards each other Kate was the first to speak, in a voice shaking with emotion.
‘Thank God! I have prayed three times daily for your safe return. You may wish to go into the house and embrace your daughter. But before you do that, in God’s mercy embrace me as well!’
XXXIV
For the second time in a month, Cromwell presented himself at the lodgings of the Constable of the Tower, Sir William Kingston, but this time he asked to speak personally to Amos Bedingfield, the most senior of Kingston’s staff, and the most experienced in the administration of ‘the question’, as various appalling forms of torture were euphemistically described. Bedingfield presented himself with an apprehensive look on his face, and Cromwell blanched as he stared, transfixed, at the leather apron around the man’s ample gut, signifying that he had been summoned part way through a process involving hot irons. Cromwell handed him a jingling bag of coins, and man’s face relaxed in a sooty smile.
‘What d’yer want ter know, Master Secretary?’
‘You racked a prisoner called Geoffrey Pole some time ago?’
‘Yeah, but ’e weren’t no fun. Give in after only one turn.’
‘What did he tell you?’
‘What I wanted to ’ear, same as they all does, why?’
‘He gave you names?’
‘Sure did — never fails.’
‘Did you suggest any names to him in advance?’
Bedingfield’s face fell. ‘Only the one I were asked ter get.’
‘Richard Ashton?’
‘Yeah, that were ’im.’
‘And who asked you to secure that name?’
‘Norfolk.’
‘Presumably he paid you for that little service?’
‘O’ course — just like you just did.’
‘Quite. But what I just paid you for was any other name that Pole might have mentioned in his enthusiasm to stop the cogs turning.’
‘Only Norfolk ’isself, but by then ’e were singing art all sorts o’ names — mostly folk what ’e were related ter.’
‘He definitely named The Duke of Norfolk when asked who had been at that meeting in Bisham?’
‘I were only told ter ask fer names, not places. But ’e definitely mentioned Norfolk — that were just afore ’e shit ’isself.’
‘Thank you very much, Master Bedingfield,’ Cromwell replied, ‘you’ve been most helpful. And of considerable service to England.’
Cromwell walked back across Tower Green with a broad smile and wondered whether to disclose what he knew before or after the royal wedding to which he had been invited.
‘What do you want this time?’ Jane demanded as ‘Uncle Norfolk’ was announced. ‘And when may I be reunited with my daughter?’
‘All in good time,’ Norfolk smiled unpleasantly. ‘I may see my way to having her brought down here, since I am advised that Queens’ Ladies may accommodate their own families here in Whitehall. Unfortunately your boy lover is under house arrest at Bradgate, by order of the King, but even that might be modified should you agree to my proposal.’
‘Just get to the point.’
‘The Queen Anne, whom you formerly served, spoke with you regarding her doings with the King in bed?’
‘She did, but in confidence, as I always understood.’
‘The time for confidences is over, I regret. The matter of the annulment is to be debated in Council, and I wish to be able to present it with a testimonial from you that confirms Anne’s own words to you that she and Henry were never, shall we say, “carnally coupled”?’
‘If you mean did Henry fuck her, then the answer is no,’ Jane said bluntly.
‘Excellent,’ Norfolk replied, ‘although we might express that in terms more suited to the royal bed.’
‘A fuck is a fuck, whoever is engaging in it,’ Jane retorted. ‘Perhaps someone should have instructed your late nephew that it is normally conducted between two adults.’
‘Quite, but you have since increased your own experience of such matters with that snivelling little clerk of Cromwell’s, have you not?’
‘If you mean Sir Richard, I am proud to admit that I have,’ Jane said sarcastically, ‘and I burn to do so again. So once again I ask — when may I leave the Queen’s service?’
‘That rather depends upon which Queen you have in mind,’ Norfolk replied. ‘You will of course be aware that my niece Catherine will soon become your next mistress?’
‘Indeed, and by all accounts she knows more about fucking than her cousin George ever did,’ Jane replied tartly. ‘What hold do you have over me, now that Richard and Grace are officially under the
protection of Dorset?’
‘Test my patience just once more, and you will have that question answered, to your considerable cost,’ Norfolk replied threateningly. ‘Your next task will be to serve Queen Catherine, and keep her from her more dangerous inclinations. She is given to carnal lapses with quite the wrong people, which has at least given her the skills to keep Henry’s cock pointing in her direction, and in a rigid state. If she steps from the path of marital virtue just once, she will take us all down with her.’
‘You alone, surely?’ Jane suggested, to which Norfolk replied with a wry grin.
‘Trust me, niece, when the Howards go down, you go down with them.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Kate sobbed as she lay across Richard’s naked chest in his bedchamber, her long blonde hair spread across it like ripening wheat in an autumn stack. ‘I have never behaved like that before, and should you choose to dismiss me from your service, I will of course leave without whimper or accusation. It was pure lust, I imagine, for which I will penance myself horribly, but nothing could be a worse penance than being dismissed from the presence of you and the child I adore equally.’
‘Hush,’ Richard comforted her as he stroked her head and regained his breath from the most devastating experience of his life. ‘It takes two to behave like that, and if I am honest I have often dreamed of how it might be with you. But the experience was more beautiful than even the fantasy of it.’
‘What of my mistress?’
‘We are not married, as you know, and have only ever been drawn together for the convenient quenching of those natural lusts that build up after some time of abstinence. But with you it was like — oh, I just don’t know how to describe it. You love Grace as well?’
‘With all my heart, but that is perhaps because she has come partly from you. If I fall into motherhood as the result of what we have done today, I’ll be even happier — if that’s possible. But you have to think of Jane Rochford.’
‘How can I, after this? And, in any case, she is lost to me, while she is at Court, and I am imprisoned here at Bradgate. For all I know she’s already found another lover — she cannot survive too long without going to it, as I discovered. I was just another one that she made use of — as I did of her, of course.’
‘So — no love either way?’
‘Not on my part, anyway. Just lust, but nothing like that will satisfy me ever again after what we just did. I must have you forever, dearest Kate. Will you consent to marry me?’
He was a little concerned when he felt her entire body shaking, and realised that his chest was beginning to soak from her tears. She replied in a choking whisper, and he gently lifted her head to gaze at her red, tear-drenched cheeks.
‘Was that a yes?’ he asked nervously, and she nodded vigorously, then collapsed back onto his chest with what sounded like groans and shrieks of sheer joy.
XXXV
Cromwell looked down the Council table in surprise as he breezed in late as usual and noticed the absence of Henry in his usual seat at the head, and several gaps still existing further down. There was usually a mad scramble for seats around the table itself, and Cromwell, often one of the last to arrive, had spent many a Council meeting with one arse cheek perched on a window ledge. He sat down and arranged his papers, then realised that there was not the usual distracting chatter among Council members.
‘What has happened to Norfolk?’ he asked. ‘Did he indicate his intended absence? And where is His Majesty?’
It fell ominously silent, until Suffolk took pity on him and told him, ‘You’ll see Norfolk soon enough.’
Cromwell looked across enquiringly at Cranmer, and his blood froze when his customary ally could not look him in the eye, but dropped his glance to the table as the colour drained from his face. Then the door burst open, and Norfolk stormed in, accompanied by four men at arms in the Tudor livery. He strode purposefully towards Cromwell, who rose to meet him, and with a gleeful smirk Norfolk reached out and ripped the medallion of St George from the ribbon on which it had been suspended around Cromwell’s neck.
Cromwell’s mind flashed back to a similar scene when Norfolk had snatched the Lord Chancellor’s seal from the Cardinal, and with a sinking feeling of history repeating itself he dimly heard the words, ‘You are under arrest on a charge of high treason, and my orders are to convey you to the Tower.’
There were no gasps of surprise around the Council table, and suddenly the earlier uneasy silence was explained.
Cromwell glared back at Norfolk defiantly. ‘Where is your evidence?’
‘It lies in an alleyway off Thames Street, where an officer of the Tower was hacked to death last night, as he left a low whorehouse. The men responsible were said to be wearing Cromwell livery, and Sir William Kingston testifies that you visited the man yesterday and gave him money.’
‘Bedingfield?’ Cromwell demanded disbelievingly, as he remembered how the last witness he had found to an act of treachery by Norfolk — on that occasion the man who had forged the papers that led to the Cardinal’s final ruin — had ended his days face down in the Thames.
Norfolk sneered as he looked round triumphantly at the remaining members of Council who had also heard Cromwell identify the victim. ‘You see? He can name the man. The man he had silenced because he could reveal more regarding his plot to seize the crown using his young dupe Ashton.’
‘Bedingfield had just given me your name as the person behind that plot!’ Cromwell yelled back at him. ‘Kingston was present when he did so!’
‘Kingston has already been closely questioned, and claims only that Bedingfield named you. Take him away!’
Hours later, confined in the same cell within the Bell Tower that he had once visited in order to take advantage of the terrified and naive Mark Smeaton, Cromwell realised the full extent of his isolation. Kingston had presumably been bribed or threatened out of telling the truth, Bedingfield had been assassinated on Norfolk’s order, and King Henry was refusing all Cromwell’s pleas for an audience in which he might clear his name.
When, a week later, Cromwell learned that he was under a bill of attainder that avoided any possibility of a trial, he also surmised that the latest royal fancy, Catherine Howard, must have prevailed upon Henry in the same way that a former queen had brought Wolsey low. History was indeed repeating itself, but this time the victim was the man who had sought vengeance against the Boleyn whore, and would now pay the price for his skills in deviousness and betrayal.
Cromwell knelt in his cell and prayed to God that the end would be merciful, at the same time seeking His absolution for any offence he may have committed in His eyes by removing the Pope, and all that he represented, from English religious life.
XXXVI
Jane Rochford gently combed Catherine Howard’s hair into the specially designed wedding veil.
‘Do you miss your daughter?’ Catherine asked.
Jane nodded. ‘Indeed I do, my lady, and perhaps you might give leave for her to be brought to Court once you are Queen?’
‘It shall be my pleasure,’ Catherine cooed back reassuringly, then looked down reflectively. ‘It is strange, is it not, how some women either crave motherhood, or take to it lovingly once a child is born? For myself, I have always feared that I would fall into motherhood before I was able to complete my progress through the Court.’
Jane looked down in embarrassment, but Catherine seemed determined to revel in the details of her promiscuous past.
‘Do not be shocked, dearest Jane — you must know how it is for women like ourselves, who burn for a man inside us. I hope that Henry proves a robust and eager lover, as he has thus far promised to be.’
At almost exactly the same time, on the same day, a noisy baying crowd cheered the humble procession onto Tower Hill and gathered as closely as the guards would allow to the block stained with years of dried aristocratic blood.
Cromwell made the customary short speech commending King Henry to his subjects — the price of no
t being hanged, drawn and quartered — said his final prayer, then lay his head sideways on the evil smelling block, whose ominous brown stains probably commemorated the memories of men he had sent there. Innocent men, like Mark Smeaton, Harry Norris and Francis Weston.
His last thought was of the Cardinal, as the executioner grunted with the effort of lifting the axe he had sharpened only that morning. The blade flashed, the crowd roared their appreciation, and Cromwell’s campaign for his perception of justice was at an end.
The news was brought to Henry as he sat with the other guests at the wedding banquet at Baynards Castle, which brought back memories, for him, of playing the child host at the wedding of his fifteen-year-old brother Arthur to the Infanta Katarina. He nodded at the news and remembered his regret when the tidings had been brought to him of the death of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, and how angry Thomas Cromwell had been when conveying them. For a brief moment he wondered if he would ever regret ordering Cromwell’s execution, then became diverted when his new bride leaned to one side and kissed his cheek.
‘Will I be allowed my own household, as you promised, my sweet?’ she asked seductively, and on that day of all days Henry would have granted her anything.
And so before very long it became obvious to Jane that her main function was to act as a decoy, guide, messenger and liar for her new Queen, as night after night Catherine played host to former and current lovers after slipping from Henry’s side, following another failed attempt at coitus. He was probably now too fat, but he seemed also to have no bone left in his shaft, and he would roll off her with a grunted apology and a request that she complete with her hand what he was unable to achieve in her cunny. But there was no shortage of reserves, and she took care to always be back by Henry’s side when he awoke and made his usual noisy progress across the bedchamber to his close stool.
