If you would defend England, and he would – for he would take the field himself, his sword in his hand – you must know what England is. In the August heat, he has stood bare-headed by the carved tombs of ancestors, men armoured cap à pie in plate and chain links, their gauntleted hands joined and perched stiffly on their surcoats, their mailed feet resting on stone lions, griffins, greyhounds: stone men, steel men, their soft wives encased beside them like snails in their shells. We think time cannot touch the dead, but it touches their monuments, leaving them snub-nosed and stub-fingered from the accidents and attrition of time. A tiny dismembered foot (as of a kneeling cherub) emerges from a swathe of drapery; the tip of a severed thumb lies on a carved cushion. ‘We must get our forefathers mended next year,’ the lords of the western counties say: but their shields and supporters, their achievements and bearings, are kept always paint-fresh, and in talk they embellish the deeds of their ancestors, who they were and what they held: the arms my forefather bore at Agincourt, the cup my forefather was given by John of Gaunt his own hand. If in the late wars of York and Lancaster, their fathers and grandfathers picked the wrong side, they keep quiet about it. A generation on, lapses must be forgiven, reputations remade; otherwise England cannot go forward, she will keep spiralling backwards into the dirty past.
He has no ancestors, of course: not the kind you’d boast about. There was once a noble family called Cromwell, and when he came up in the king’s service the heralds had urged him for the sake of appearances to adopt their coat of arms; but I am none of theirs, he had said politely, and I do not want their achievements. He had run away from his father’s fists when he was no older than fifteen; crossed the Channel, taken service in the French king’s army. He had been fighting since he could walk; and if you’re going to fight, why not be paid for it? There are more lucrative trades than soldiering, and he found them. So he decided not to hurry home.
And now, when his titled hosts want advice on the placement of a fountain, or a group of the Three Graces dancing, the king tells them, Cromwell here is your man; Cromwell, he has seen how they do things in Italy, and what will do for them will do for Wiltshire. Sometimes the king departs a place with just his riding household, the queen left behind with her ladies and musicians, as Henry and his favoured few hunt hard across the country. And that is how they come to Wolf Hall, where old Sir John Seymour is waiting to welcome them, in the midst of his flourishing family.
‘I don’t know, Cromwell,’ old Sir John says. He takes his arm, genial. ‘All these falcons named for dead women…don’t they dishearten you?’
‘I’m never disheartened, Sir John. The world is too good to me.’
‘You should marry again, and have another family. Perhaps you will find a bride while you are with us. In the forest of Savernake there are many fresh young women.’
I still have Gregory, he says, looking back over his shoulder for his son; he is always somehow anxious about Gregory. ‘Ah,’ Seymour says, ‘boys are very well, but a man needs daughters too, daughters are a consolation. Look at Jane. Such a good girl.’
He looks at Jane Seymour, as her father directs him. He knows her well from the court, as she was lady-in-waiting to Katherine, the former queen, and to Anne, the queen that is now; she is a plain young woman with a silvery pallor, a habit of silence, and a trick of looking at men as if they represent an unpleasant surprise. She is wearing pearls, and white brocade embroidered with stiff little sprigs of carnations. He recognises considerable expenditure; leave the pearls aside, you couldn’t turn her out like that for much under thirty pounds. No wonder she moves with gingerly concern, like a child who’s been told not to spill something on herself.
The king says, ‘Jane, now we see you at home with your people, are you less shy?’ He takes her mouse-paw in his vast hand. ‘At court we never get a word from her.’
Jane is looking up at him, blushing from her neck to her hairline. ‘Did you ever see such a blush?’ Henry asks. ‘Never unless with a little maid of twelve.’
‘I cannot claim to be twelve,’ Jane says.
At supper the king sits next to Lady Margery, his hostess. She was a beauty in her day, and by the king’s exquisite attention you would think she was one still; she has had ten children, and six of them are living, and three are in this room. Edward Seymour, the heir, has a long head, a serious expression, a clean fierce profile: a handsome man. He is well-read if not scholarly, applies himself wisely to any office he is given; he has been to war, and while he is waiting to fight again he acquits himself well in the hunting field and tilt yard. The cardinal, in his day, marked him out as better than the usual run of Seymours; and he himself, Thomas Cromwell, has sounded him out and found him in every respect the king’s man. Tom Seymour, Edward’s younger brother, is noisy and boisterous and more of interest to women; when he comes into the room, virgins giggle, and young matrons dip their heads and examine him from under their lashes.
Old Sir John is a man of notorious family feeling. Two, three years back, the gossip at court was all of how he had tupped his son’s wife, not once in the heat of passion but repeatedly since she was a bride. The queen and her confidantes had spread the story about the court. ‘We’ve worked it out at 120 times,’ Anne had sniggered. ‘Well, Thomas Cromwell has, and he’s quick with figures. We suppose they abstained on a Sunday for shame’s sake, and eased off in Lent.’ The traitor wife gave birth to two boys, and when her conduct came to light Edward said he would not have them for his heirs, as he could not be sure if they were his sons or his half-brothers. The adulteress was locked up in a convent, and soon obliged him by dying; now he has a new wife, who cultivates a forbidding manner and keeps a bodkin in her pocket in case her father-in-law gets too close.
But it is forgiven, it is forgiven. The flesh is frail. This royal visit seals the old fellow’s pardon. John Seymour has 1,300 acres including his deer park, most of the rest under sheep and worth two shilling per acre per year, bringing him in a clear twenty-five per cent on what the same acreage would make under the plough. The sheep are little black-faced animals interbred with Welsh mountain stock, gristly mutton but good enough wool. When at their arrival, the king (he is in bucolic vein) says, ‘Cromwell, what would that beast weigh?’ he says, without picking it up, ‘Thirty pounds, sir.’ Francis Weston, a young courtier, says with a sneer, ‘Master Cromwell used to be a shearsman. He wouldn’t be wrong.’
The king says, ‘We would be a poor country without our wool trade. That Master Cromwell knows the business is not to his discredit.’
But Francis Weston smirks behind his hand.
Tomorrow Jane Seymour is to hunt with the king. ‘I thought it was gentlemen only,’ he hears Weston whisper. ‘The queen would be angry if she knew.’ He murmurs, make sure she doesn’t know then, there’s a good boy.
‘At Wolf Hall we are all great hunters,’ Sir John boasts, ‘my daughters too, you think Jane is timid but put her in the saddle and I assure you, sirs, she is the goddess Diana. I never troubled my girls in the schoolroom, you know. Sir James here taught them all they needed.’
The priest at the foot of the table nods, beaming: an old fool with a white poll, a bleared eye. He, Cromwell, turns to him: ‘And was it you taught them to dance, Sir James? All praise to you. I have seen Jane’s sister Elizabeth at court, partnered with the king.’
‘Ah, they had a master for that,’ old Seymour chuckles. ‘Master for dancing, master for music, that’s enough for them. They don’t want foreign tongues. They’re not going anywhere.’
‘I think otherwise, sir,’ he says. ‘I had my daughters taught equal with my son.’
Sometimes he likes to talk about them, Anne and Grace: gone seven years now. Tom Seymour laughs. ‘What, you had them in the tilt yard with Gregory and young Master Sadler?’
He smiles. ‘Except for that.’
Edward Seymour says, ‘It is not uncommon for the daughters of a city household to learn their letters and a little beyond. You m
ight have wanted them in the counting house. One hears of it. It would help them get good husbands, a merchant family would be glad of their training.’
‘Imagine Master Cromwell’s daughters,’ Weston says. ‘I dare not. I doubt a counting house could contain them. They would be a shrewd hand with a poleaxe, you would think. One look at them and a man’s legs would go from under him. And I do not mean he would be stricken with love.’
Gregory stirs himself. He is such a dreamer you hardly think he has been following the conversation, but his tone is rippling with hurt. ‘You insult my sisters and their memory, sir, and you never knew them. My sister Grace…’
He sees Jane Seymour put out her little hand and touch Gregory’s wrist: to save him, she will risk drawing the company’s attention. ‘I have lately,’ she says, ‘got some skill of the French tongue.’
‘Have you, Jane?’ Tom Seymour is smiling.
Jane dips her head. ‘Mary Shelton is teaching me.’
‘Mary Shelton is a kindly young woman,’ the king says; and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Weston elbow his neighbour; they say Shelton has been kind to the king in bed.
‘So you see,’ Jane says to her brothers, ‘we ladies, we do not spend all our time in idle calumny and scandal. Though God he knows, we have gossip enough to occupy a whole town of women.’
‘Have you?’ he says.
‘We talk about who is in love with the queen. Who writes her verses.’ She drops her eyes. ‘I mean to say, who is in love with us all. This gentleman or that. We know all our suitors and we make inventory head to toe, they would blush if they knew. We say their acreage and how much they have a year, and then we decide if we will let them write us a sonnet. If we do not think they will keep us in fine style, we scorn their rhymes. It is cruel, I can tell you.’
He says, a little uneasy, it is no harm to write verses to ladies, even married ones, at court it is usual. Weston says, thank you for that kind word, Master Cromwell, we thought you might try and make us stop.
Tom Seymour leans forward, laughing. ‘And who are your suitors, Jane?’
‘If you want to know that, you must put on a gown, and take up your needlework, and come and join us.’
‘Like Achilles among the women,’ the king says. ‘You must shave your fine beard, Seymour, and go and find out their lewd little secrets.’ He is laughing, but he is not happy. ‘Unless we find someone more maidenly for the task. Gregory, you are a pretty fellow, but I fear your great hands will give you away.’
‘The blacksmith’s grandson,’ Weston says.
‘That child Mark,’ the king says. ‘The musician, you know him? There is a smooth girlish countenance.’
‘Oh,’ Jane says, ‘Mark’s with us anyway. He’s always loitering. We barely count him a man. If you want to know our secrets, ask Mark.’
The conversation canters off in some other direction; he thinks, I have never known Jane have anything to say for herself; he thinks, Weston is goading me, he knows that in Henry’s presence I will not give him a check; he imagines what form the check may take, when he delivers it. Rafe Sadler looks at him out of the tail of his eye.
‘So,’ the king says to him, ‘how will tomorrow be better than today?’ To the supper table he explains, ‘Master Cromwell cannot sleep unless he is amending something.’
‘I will reform the conduct of Your Majesty’s hat. And those clouds, before noon –’
‘We wanted the shower. The rain cooled us.’
‘God send Your Majesty no worse a drenching,’ says Edward Seymour.
Henry rubs his stripe of sunburn. ‘The cardinal, he reckoned he could change the weather. A good enough morning, he would say, but by ten it will be brighter. And it was.’
Henry does this sometimes; drops Wolsey’s name into conversation, as if it were not he, but some other monarch, who had hounded the cardinal to death.
‘Some men have a weather eye,’ Tom Seymour says. ‘That’s all it is, sir. It’s not special to cardinals.’
Henry nods, smiling. ‘That’s true, Tom. I should never have stood in awe of him, should I?’
‘He was too proud, for a subject,’ old Sir John says.
The king looks down the table at him, Thomas Cromwell. He loved the cardinal. Everyone here knows it. His expression is as carefully blank as a freshly painted wall.
After supper, old Sir John tells the story of Edgar the Peaceable. He was the ruler in these parts, many hundreds of years ago, before kings had numbers: when all maids were fair maids and all knights were gallant and life was simple and violent and usually brief. Edgar had in mind a bride for himself, and sent one of his earls to appraise her. The earl, who was both false and cunning, sent back word that her beauty had been much exaggerated by poets and painters; seen in real life, he said, she had a limp and a squint. His aim was to have the tender damsel for himself, and so he seduced and married her. Upon discovering the earl’s treachery Edgar ambushed him, in a grove not far from here, and rammed a javelin into him, killing him with one blow.
‘What a false knave he was, that earl!’ says the king. ‘He was paid out.’
‘Call him rather a churl than an earl,’ Tom Seymour says.
His brother sighs, as if distancing himself from the remark.
‘And what did the lady say?’ he asks; he, Cromwell. ‘When she found the earl skewered?’
‘The damsel married Edgar,’ Sir John says. ‘They married in the greenwood, and lived happily ever after.’
‘I suppose she had no choice,’ Lady Margery sighs. ‘Women have to adapt themselves.’
‘And the country folk say,’ Sir John adds, ‘that the false earl walks the woods still, groaning, and trying to pull the lance out of his belly.’
‘Just imagine,’ Jane Seymour says. ‘Any night there is a moon, one might look out of the window and see him, tugging away and complaining all the while. Fortunately I do not believe in ghosts.’
‘More fool you, sister,’ Tom Seymour says. ‘They’ll creep up on you, my lass.’
‘Still,’ Henry says. He mimes a javelin throw: though in the restrained way one must, at a supper table. ‘One clean blow. He must have had a good throwing arm, King Edgar.’
He says – he, Cromwell: ‘I should like to know if this tale is written down, and if so, by whom, and was he on oath.’
The king says, ‘Cromwell would have had the earl before a judge and jury.’
‘Bless Your Majesty,’ Sir John chuckles, ‘I don’t think they had them in those days.’
‘Cromwell would have found one out.’ Young Weston leans forward to make his point. ‘He would dig out a jury, he would grub one from a mushroom patch. Then it would be all up with the earl, they would try him and march him out and hack off his head. They say that at Thomas More’s trial, Master Secretary here followed the jury to their deliberations, and when they were seated he closed the door behind him and he laid down the law. “Let me put you out of doubt,” he said to the jurymen. “Your task is to find Sir Thomas guilty, and you will have no dinner till you have done it.” Then out he went and shut the door again and stood outside it with a hatchet in his hand, in case they broke out in search of a boiled pudding; and being Londoners, they care about their bellies above all things, and as soon as they felt them rumbling they cried, “Guilty! He is as guilty as guilty can be!”’
Eyes focus on him, Cromwell. Rafe Sadler, by his side, is tense with displeasure. ‘It is a pretty tale,’ Rafe tells Weston, ‘but I ask you in turn, where is it written down? I think you will find my master is always correct in his dealings with a court of law.’
‘You weren’t there,’ Francis Weston says. ‘I heard it from one of those same jurymen. They cried, “Away with him, take out the traitor and bring us in a leg of mutton.” And Thomas More was led to his death.’
‘You sound as if you regret it,’ Rafe says.
‘Not I.’ Weston holds up his hands. ‘Anne the queen says, let More’s death be a warning to all su
ch traitors. Be their credit never so great, their treason never so veiled, Thomas Cromwell will find them out.’
There is a murmur of assent; for a moment, he thinks the company will turn to him and applaud. Then Lady Margery touches a finger to her lips, and nods towards the king. Seated at the head of the table, he has begun to incline to the right; his closed eyelids flutter, and his breathing is easeful and deep.
The company exchange smiles. ‘Drunk with fresh air,’ Tom Seymour whispers.