‘Thank you for that,’ the Lord Chancellor says, flatly. ‘My lord Wiltshire.’
The king says, ‘My lords, the subject is my daughter. I am sorry to have to recall you. Though I am far from sure she should be discussed in council.’
‘Myself,’ Norfolk says, ‘I would go up-country to Mary and make her swear the oath, I would plant her hand on the gospel and hold it there flat, and if she would not take her oath to the king and to my niece’s child, I would beat her head against the wall till it were as soft as a baked apple.’
‘And thank you again,’ Audley says. ‘My lord Norfolk.’
‘Anyway,’ the king says sadly. ‘We have not so many children that we can well afford to lose one out of the kingdom. I would rather not part with her. One day she will be a good daughter to me.’
The Boleyns sit back, smiling, hearing the king say he seeks no great foreign match for Mary, she is of no importance, a bastard whom one considers only out of charity. They are well content with the triumph afforded them yesterday by the Imperial ambassador; and they are showing their good taste by not boasting about it.
As soon as the meeting ends, he, Cromwell, is mobbed by the councillors: except for the Boleyns, who waft off in the other direction. The meeting has gone well; he has got everything he wants; Henry is back on course for a treaty with the Emperor: why then does he feel so restless, stifled? He elbows his colleagues aside, though in a mannerly fashion. He wants air. Henry passes him, he stops, he turns, he says, ‘Master Secretary. Will you walk along with me?’
They walk. In silence. It is for the prince, not the minister, to introduce a topic.
He can wait.
Henry says, ‘You know, I wish we would go down to the weald one day, as we have said, to talk to the ironmasters.’
He waits.
‘I have had various drawings, mathematical drawings, and advices concerning how our ordnance can be improved, but to be truthful, I cannot make as much of it as you would.’
More humble, he thinks. A little more humble yet.
Henry says, ‘You have been in the forest and met charcoal burners. I remember you said to me once, they be very poor men.’
He waits. Henry says, ‘One must know the process from the beginning, I think, whether one is making armour or ordnance. It is no use demanding of a metal that it has certain properties, a certain temper, unless you know how it is made, and the difficulties your craftsman may encounter. Now, I have never been too proud to sit down for an hour with the gauntlet maker, who armours my right hand. We must study, I think, every pin, every rivet.’
And? Yes?
He leaves the king to stumble on.
‘And, well. And, so. You are my right hand, sir.’
He nods. Sir. How touching.
Henry says, ‘So, to Kent, to the weald: will we go? Shall I choose a week? Two, three days should do it.’
He smiles. ‘Not this summer, sir. You will be engaged otherwise. Besides, the ironmasters are like all of us. They must have a holiday. They must lie in the sun. They must pick apples.’
Henry looks at him, mild, beseeching, from the tail of his blue eye: give me a happy summer. He says, ‘I cannot live as I have lived, Cromwell.’
He is here to take instructions. Get me Jane: Jane, so kind, who sighs across the palate like sweet butter. Deliver me from bitterness, from gall.
‘I think I might go home,’ he says. ‘If you will permit. I have much to do if I am to set this affair in train, and I feel…’ His English deserts him. This sometimes happens. ‘Un peu…’ But his French deserts him too.
‘But you are not ill? You will be back soon?’
‘I shall seek a consultation with the canon lawyers,’ he says. ‘It may take some days, you know what they are. It will go no slower than I can help. I shall speak to the archbishop.’
‘And perhaps to Harry Percy,’ Henry says. ‘You know how she…the betrothal, the whatever, the relationship between them…well, I think they were as good as married, were they not? And if that won’t run…’ He rubs his beard. ‘You know that I was, before I was with the queen, I was, on occasion, with her sister, her sister Mary, which –’
‘Oh yes, sir. I remember Mary Boleyn.’
‘– and it will be seen that, having been linked with kin so near to Anne, I could not make a valid marriage to her…however, you will only use that if you have to, I do not want unnecessary…’
He nods. You don’t want history to make a liar of you. In public before your courtiers you had me state that you had never had to do with Mary Boleyn, while you sat there and nodded. You removed all impediments: Mary Boleyn, Harry Percy, you swept them aside. But now our requirements have changed, and the facts have changed behind us.
‘So fare you well,’ Henry says. ‘Be very secret. I trust in your discretion, and your skill.’
How necessary, but how sad, to hear Henry apologise. He has developed a perverse respect for Norfolk, with his grunt of ‘All right, lad?’
In an antechamber Mr Wriothesley is waiting for him. ‘So do you have instructions, sir?’
‘Well, I have hints.’
‘Do you know when they might take form?’
He smiles. Call-Me says, ‘I hear that in council the king declared he will seek to marry Lady Mary to a subject.’
Surely that’s not what the meeting concluded? In a moment, he feels like himself again: hears himself laughing and saying, ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Call-Me. Who told you that? Sometimes,’ he says, ‘I think it would save time and work if all the interested parties came to the council, including foreign ambassadors. The proceedings leak out anyway, and to save them mishearing and misconstruing they might as well hear everything at first hand.’
‘I’ve got it wrong, then?’ Wriothesley says. ‘Because I thought, marrying her to a subject, to some low man, that was a plan thought up by the queen that is now?’
He shrugs. The young man gives him a glassy look. It will be some years before he understands why.
Edward Seymour seeks an interview with him. There is no doubt in his mind that the Seymours will come to his table, even if they have to sit under it and catch the crumbs.
Edward is tense, hurried, nervous. ‘Master Secretary, taking the long view –’
‘In this matter, a day would be a long view. Get your girl out of it, let Carew take her to his house down in Surrey.’
‘Do not think I wish to know your secrets,’ Edward says, picking his words. ‘Do not think I wish to pry into matters that are not for me. But for my sister’s sake I would like to have some indication –’
‘Oh, I see, you want to know if she should order her wedding clothes?’ Edward gives him an imploring look. He says soberly, ‘We are going to seek an annulment. Just now I do not know on what grounds.’
‘But they will fight,’ Edward says. ‘The Boleyns if they go down will take us with them. I have heard of serpents that, though they are dying, exude poison through their skins.’
‘Did you ever pick up a snake?’ he asks. ‘I did once, in Italy.’ He holds out his palms. ‘I am unmarked.’
‘Then we must be very secret,’ Edward says. ‘Anne must not know.’
‘Well,’ he says wryly, ‘I do not think we can keep it from her for ever.’
But she will know all the sooner, if his new friends do not stop trapping him in anterooms, blocking his path and bowing to him; if they do not stop this whispering and eyebrow raising and digging each other with their elbows.
He says to Edward, I must go home and shut the door and consult with myself. The queen is plotting something, I know not what, something devious, something dark, perhaps so dark that she herself does not know what it is, and as yet is only dreaming of it: but I must be quick, I must dream it for her, I shall dream it into being.
According to Lady Rochford, Anne complains that since she rose from childbed Henry is always watching her; and not in the way he used to.
For a long time he has notice
d Harry Norris watching the queen; and from some eminence, perched like a carved falcon over a doorway, he has seen himself watching Harry Norris.
For now, Anne seems oblivious to the wings that hover over her, to the eye that studies her path as she jinks and swerves. She chatters about her child Elizabeth, holding up on her fingers a tiny cap, a pretty ribboned cap, just come from the embroiderer.
Henry looks at her flatly as if to say, why are you showing me this, what is it to me?
Anne strokes the scrap of silk. He feels a needle point of pity, an instant of compunction. He studies the fine silk braid that edges the queen’s sleeve. Some woman with the skills of his dead wife made that braid. He is looking very closely at the queen, he feels he knows her as a mother knows her child, or a child its mother. He knows every stitch in her bodice. He notes the rise and fall of her every breath. What is in your heart, madam? That is the last door to be opened. Now he stands on the threshold and the key is in his hand and he is almost afraid to fit it into the lock. Because what if it doesn’t, what if it doesn’t fit and he has to fumble there, with Henry’s eyes on him, hear the impatient click of the royal tongue, as surely his master Wolsey once heard it?
Well, then. There was an occasion – in Bruges, was it? – when he had broken down a door. He wasn’t in the habit of breaking doors, but he had a client who wanted results and wanted them today. Locks can be picked, but that’s for the adept with time to spare. You don’t need skill and you don’t need time if you’ve got a shoulder and a boot. He thinks, I wasn’t thirty then. I was a youth. Absently his right hand rubs his left shoulder, his forearm, as if remembering the bruises. He imagines himself entering Anne, not as a lover but as a lawyer, and rolled in his fist his papers, his writs; he imagines himself entering the heart of the queen. In its chambers he hears the click of his own boot heels.
At home, he takes from his chest the Book of Hours that belonged to his wife. It was given to her by her first husband Tom Williams, who was a good enough fellow, but not a man of substance like himself. Whenever he thinks of Tom Williams now it is as a blank, a faceless waiting man dressed in the Cromwell livery, holding his coat or perhaps his horse. Now that he can handle, at his whim, the finest texts in the king’s library, the prayer book seems a poor thing; where is the gold leaf? Yet the essence of Elizabeth is in this book, his poor wife with her white cap, her blunt manner, her sideways smile and busy crafts-woman’s fingers. Once he had watched Liz making a silk braid. One end was pinned to the wall and on each finger of her raised hands she was spinning loops of thread, her fingers flying so fast he couldn’t see how it worked. ‘Slow down,’ he said, ‘so I can see how you do it,’ but she’d laughed and said, ‘I can’t slow down, if I stopped to think how I was doing it I couldn’t do it at all.’
II
Master of Phantoms
LONDON, APRIL–MAY 1536
‘Come and sit with me a while.’
‘Why?’ Lady Worcester is wary.
‘Because I have cakes.’
She smiles. ‘I am greedy.’
‘I even have a waiter to serve them.’
She eyes Christophe. ‘This boy is a waiter?’
‘Christophe, first Lady Worcester requires a cushion.’
The cushion is plump with down and embroidered with a pattern of hawks and flowers. She takes it in her two hands, strokes it absently, then positions it behind her and leans back. ‘Oh, that’s better,’ she smiles. Pregnant, she rests a composed hand on her belly, like a Madonna in a painting. In this small room, its window open to mild spring air, he is holding a court of inquiry. He does not mind who comes in to see him, who is noticed as they come and go. Who would not pass the time with a man who has cakes? And Master Secretary is always pleasant and useful. ‘Christophe, hand my lady a napkin, and go and sit in the sun for ten minutes. Close the door behind you.’
Lady Worcester – Elizabeth – watches the door close; then she leans forward and whispers, ‘Master Secretary, I am in such trouble.’
‘And this,’ he indicates her person, ‘cannot be easy. Is the queen jealous of your condition?’
‘Well, she keeps me close to her, and she need not. She asks me each day how I do. I could not have a fonder mistress.’ But her face shows doubt. ‘In some ways it would be better if I were to go home to the country. As it is, kept before the court, I am pointed at by all.’
‘Do you think then it is the queen herself who began the murmurs against you?’
‘Who else?’
A rumour is going about the court that Lady Worcester’s baby is not the earl’s child. Perhaps it was spread out of malice; perhaps as someone’s idea of a joke: perhaps because someone was bored. Her gentle brother, the courtier Anthony Browne, has stormed into her rooms to take her to task: ‘I told him,’ she says, ‘don’t pick on me. Why me?’ As if sharing her indignation, the curd tart on her palm quakes in its pastry shell.
He frowns. ‘Let me take you back a step. Is your family blaming you because people are talking about you, or because there is truth in what they say?’
Lady Worcester dabs her lips. ‘You think I will confess, just for cakes?’
‘Let me smooth this over for you. I should like to help you if I can. Has your husband reason to be angry?’
‘Oh, men,’ she says. ‘They are always angry. They are so angry they can’t count on their fingers.’
‘So it could be the earl’s?’
‘If it is a strong boy I dare say he will own it.’ The cakes are distracting her: ‘That white one, is that almond cream?’
Lady Worcester’s brother, Anthony Browne, is Fitzwilliam’s half-brother. (All these people are related to each other. Luckily, the cardinal left him a chart, which he updates whenever there is a wedding.) Fitzwilliam and Browne and the aggrieved earl have been conferring in corners. And Fitzwilliam has said to him, can you find out, Crumb, for I am sure I cannot, what the devil is going on among the queen’s waiting-women?
‘And then there’s the debts,’ he says to her. ‘You are in a sad place, my lady. You have borrowed from everyone. What did you buy? I know there are sweet young men about the king, witty young men too, always amorous and ready to write a lady a letter. Do you pay to be flattered?’
‘No. To be complimented.’
‘You should get that free.’
‘I believe that is a gallant speech.’ She licks her fingers. ‘But you are a man of the world, Master Secretary, and you know that if you yourself wrote a woman a poem you would enclose a bill.’
He laughs. ‘True. I know the value of my time. But I did not think your admirers were so miserly.’
‘But they have so much to do, these boys!’ She selects a candied violet, nibbles it. ‘I do not know why we speak of idle youths. They are busy day and night, making their careers. They wouldn’t send their account in. But you must buy them a jewel for their cap. Or some gilt buttons for a sleeve. Fee their tailor, perhaps.’
He thinks of Mark Smeaton, in his finery. ‘Does the queen pay out in this way?’
‘We call it patronage. We don’t call it paying out.’
‘I accept your correction.’ Jesus, he thinks, a man could use a whore, and call it ‘patronage’. Lady Worcester has dropped some raisins on the table and he feels the urge to pick them up and feed them to her; probably that would be all right with her. ‘So when the queen is a patron, does she ever, does she ever patronise in private?’
‘In private? How could I know?’
He nods. It’s tennis, he thinks. That shot was too good for me. ‘What does she wear, to patronise?’
‘I have not myself seen her naked.’
‘So you think, these flatterers, you don’t think she goes to it with them?’
‘Not in my sight or hearing.’
‘But behind a closed door?’
‘Doors are often closed. It is a common thing.’
‘If I were to ask you to bear witness, would you repeat that on oath?’
She flicks a speck of cream away. ‘That doors are often closed? I could go so far.’
‘And what would be your fee for that?’ He is smiling; his eyes rest on her face.
‘I am a little afraid of my husband. Because I have borrowed money. He does not know, so please…hush.’
‘Point your creditors in my direction. And for the future, if you need a compliment, draw on the bank of Cromwell. We look after our customers and our terms are generous. We are known for it.’
She puts down her napkin; picks a last primrose petal from the last cheese cake. She turns at the door. A thought has struck her. Her hand bunches her skirts. ‘The king wants a reason to put her aside, yes? And the closed door will be enough? I would not wish her harm.’
She grasps the situation, at least partly. Caesar’s wife must be above reproach. Suspicion would ruin the queen, a crumb or a sliver of truth would ruin her faster; you wouldn’t need a bed sheet with a snail-trail left by Francis Weston or some other sonneteer. ‘Put her aside,’ he says. ‘Yes, possibly. Unless these rumours prove to be misunderstandings. As I’m sure they will in your case. I am sure your husband will be contented when the child is born.’
Her face clears. ‘So you will speak to him? But not about the debt? And speak to my brother? And William Fitzwilliam? You will persuade them to leave me alone, please? There is nothing I have done, that other ladies have not.’
‘Mistress Shelton?’ he says.
‘That would be no news.’
‘Mistress Seymour.’
‘That would be news indeed.’
‘Lady Rochford?’
She hesitates. ‘Jane Rochford does not like the sport.’
‘Why, is my lord Rochford inept?’