‘The better to rule. Surely you see it? She is lucky with Elizabeth, the child is like her. But suppose she gets a boy and it has Weston’s long face? Or it looks like Will Brereton, what might the king say to that? But they cannot call it a bastard if it looks like a Boleyn.’
Brereton too. He makes a note. He remembers how Brereton once joked with him he could be in two places at once: a chilly joke, a hostile joke, and now, he thinks, now at last, I laugh. Lady Rochford says, ‘Why do you smile?’
‘I have heard that in the queen’s rooms, among her lovers, there was talk of the king’s death. Did George ever join in with it?’
‘It would kill Henry if he knew how they laugh at him. How his member is discussed.’
‘I want you to think hard,’ he says. ‘Be sure of what you are doing. If you give evidence against your husband, in a court of law or to the council, you may find yourself a lonely woman in the years to come.’
Her face says, am I now so rich in friends? ‘I will not bear the blame,’ she says. ‘You will, Master Secretary. I am thought a woman of no great wit or penetration. And you are what you are, a man of resource who spares no one. It will be thought that you drew the truth out of me, whether I was willing or no.’
It seems to him little more need be said. ‘In order to sustain that notion, it will be necessary for you to contain your pleasure and feign distress. Once George is arrested, you must petition for mercy for him.’
‘I can do that.’ Jane Rochford puts out the tip of her tongue, as if the moment were sugared and she can taste it. ‘I am safe, for the king will take no notice, I can guarantee.’
‘Be advised by me. Talk to no one.’
‘Be advised by me. Talk to Mark Smeaton.’
He tells her, ‘I am going to my house at Stepney. I have asked Mark for supper.’
‘Why not entertain him here?’
‘There has been disturbance enough, don’t you think?’
‘Disturbance? Oh, I see,’ she says.
He watches her out. The door does not close before Rafe and Call-Me-Risley are in the room with him. Pale and set, both of them steady: from which he knows they have not been eavesdropping. ‘The king wishes inquiries to begin,’ Wriothesley says. ‘Utmost discretion, but all possible speed. He can no longer ignore the talk, after the incident. The quarrel. He has not approached Norris.’
‘No,’ Rafe says. ‘They think, the gentlemen in the privy chamber, that it has all blown over. The queen has calmed herself, by all accounts. Tomorrow’s jousts are to go ahead as usual.’
‘I wonder,’ he says, ‘would you go to Richard Sampson, Rafe, and tell him that, entre nous, matters are out of our hands? It may not be necessary to sue for nullity after all. Or at least, I think the queen will be disposed to give way to anything the king requires of her. She has not much of a negotiating position left. I think we have Henry Norris within bow shot. Weston. Oh, and Brereton too.’
Rafe Sadler raises his eyebrows. ‘I would have said the queen hardly knew him.’
‘It seems he has the habit of walking in at the wrong moment.’
‘You seem very calm, sir,’ Call-Me says.
‘Yes. Learn from it.’
‘What does Lady Rochford say?’
He frowns. ‘Rafe, before you go to Sampson, do you sit down there, at the head of the table. Pretend you are the king’s council, meeting in privy session.’
‘All of them, sir?’
‘Norfolk and Fitzwilliam and all. Now, Call-Me. You are a lady of the queen’s bedchamber. On your feet. May we have a curtsey? Thank you. Now, I am a page who fetches you a stool. And a cushion on it. Sit down and give the councillors a smile.’
‘If you will,’ Rafe says uncertainly. But then the spirit of the thing seizes him. He reaches forward and tickles Call-Me under the chin. ‘What have you to tell us, delicate madam? Pray, divulge, and part your ruby lips.’
‘This beautiful lady alleges,’ he says – he, Cromwell, with a wave of his hand – ‘that the queen is of light conditions. That her conduct gives rise to suspicion of evil-doing, of flouting of the laws of God, even if no one has witnessed actions contrary to statute.’
Rafe clears his throat. ‘Some might say, madam, why did you not speak of this before?’
‘Because it was treason to speak against the queen.’ Mr Wriothesley is a ready man, and maidenly excuses flow from him. ‘We had no choice but to shield her. What could we do, but reason with her, and persuade her to give up her light ways? And yet we could not. She kept us in awe. She is jealous of anyone who has an admirer. She wants to take him from her. She does not scruple to threaten anyone she thinks has erred, whether matron or maid, and she can ruin a woman that way, look at Elizabeth Worcester.’
‘So now you can no longer forbear to speak out?’ Rafe says.
‘Now burst into tears, Wriothesley,’ he instructs.
‘Consider it done.’ Call-Me dabs his cheek.
‘What a play it makes.’ He sighs. ‘I wish now we could all take off our disguises and go home.’
He is thinking, Sion Madoc, a boatman on the river at Windsor: ‘She goes to it with her brother.’
Thurston, his cook: ‘They are standing in a line frigging their members.’
He remembers what Thomas Wyatt told him: ‘That is Anne’s tactic, she says yes, yes, yes, then she says no…the worst of it is her hinting to me, her boasting almost, that she says no to me, but yes to others.’
He had asked Wyatt, how many lovers do you think she has had? And Wyatt had answered, ‘A dozen? Or none? Or a hundred?’
He himself thought Anne cold, a woman who took her maidenhead to market and sold it for the best price. But this coldness – that was before she was wed. Before Henry heaved himself on top of her, and off again, and she was left, after he had stumbled back to his own apartments, with the bobbing circles of candlelight on the ceiling, the murmurs of her women, the basin of warm water and the cloth: and Lady Rochford’s voice as she scrubs herself, ‘Careful, madam, do not wash away a Prince of Wales.’ Soon she is alone in the dark, with the scent of masculine sweat on the linen, and perhaps one useless maidservant turning and snuffling on a pallet: she is alone with the small sounds of river and palace. And she speaks, and no one answers, except the girl who mutters in her sleep: she prays, and no one answers; and she rolls on to her side, and smooths her hands over her thighs, and touches her own breasts.
So what if, one day, it’s yes, yes, yes, yes, yes? To whoever happens to be standing by when the thread of her virtue snaps? Even if it’s her brother?
He says to Rafe, to Call-Me, ‘I have heard such matter today as I never thought to hear in a Christian country.’
They wait, the young gentlemen: their eyes on his face. Call-Me says, ‘Am I still a lady, or shall I take my seat and pick up my pen?’
He thinks, what we do here in England, we send our children into other households when they are young, and so it is not rare for a brother and sister to meet, when they are grown, as if for the first time. Think how it must be then: this fascinating stranger whom you know, this mirror of you. You fall in love, just a little: for an hour, an afternoon. And then you make a joke of it; the residual drag of tenderness remains. It is a feeling that civilises men, and makes them behave better, to dependent women, than otherwise they might. But to go further, to trespass on forbidden flesh, to leap the great gap from a fleeting thought to action…Priests tell you that temptation slides into sin and you cannot put a hair between. But surely that is not true. You kiss the woman’s cheek, very well; then you bite her neck? You say, ‘Sweet sister,’ and then next minute you flip her back and cant her skirts up? Surely not. There is a room to be crossed and buttons to be undone. You don’t sleepwalk into it. You don’t fornicate inadvertently. You don’t fail to see the other party, who she is. She doesn’t hide her face.
But then, it may be that Jane Rochford is lying. She has cause.
‘I am not often perplexed,’ he say
s, ‘about how to proceed, but I find I have to deal with a matter I hardly dare speak of. I can only partly describe it, so I do not know how to draw up a charge sheet. I feel like one of those men who shows a freak at a fair.’
At a fair the drunken churls throw down their money, and then they disdain what you offer. ‘Call that a freak? That’s nothing to my wife’s mother!’
And all their fellows slap them on the back and chortle.
But then you say to them, well, neighbours, I showed you that only to test your mettle. Part with a penny more, and I shall show you what I have here in the back of the tent. It is a sight to make hardened men quail. And I guarantee that you have never seen devil’s work like it.
And then they look. And then they throw up on their boots. And then you count the money. And lock it in your strongbox.
Mark at Stepney. ‘He has brought his instrument,’ Richard says. ‘His lute.’
‘Tell him to leave it without.’
If Mark was blithe before, he is suspicious now, tentative. On the threshold, ‘I thought, sir, I was to entertain you?’
‘Make no doubt of it.’
‘I had thought there would be a great company, sir.’
‘You know my nephew, Master Richard Cromwell?’
‘Still, I am happy to play for you. Perhaps you want me to hear your singing children?’
‘Not today. In the circumstances you might be tempted to overpraise them. But will you sit down, and take a cup of wine with us?’
‘It would be a charity if you could put us in the way of a rebec player,’ Richard says. ‘We have but the one, and he is always running off to Farnham to see his family.’
‘Poor boy,’ he says in Flemish, ‘I think he is homesick.’
Mark looks up. ‘I did not know you spoke my language.’
‘I know you did not. Or you would not have used it to be so disrespectful of me.’
‘I am sure, sir, I never meant any harm.’ Mark can’t remember, what he’s said or not said about his host. But his face shows he recalls the general tenor of it.
‘You forecast I should be hanged.’ He spreads his arms. ‘Yet I live and breathe. But I am in a difficulty, and although you do not like me, I have no choice but to come to you. So I ask your charity.’
Mark sits, his lips slightly parted, his back rigid, and one foot pointing to the door, showing he would very much like to be out of it.
‘You see.’ He puts his palms together: as if Mark were a saint on a plinth. ‘My master the king and my mistress the queen are at odds. Everybody knows it. Now, my dearest wish is to reconcile them. For the comfort of the whole realm.’
Give the boy this: he is not without spirit. ‘But, Master Secretary, the word about the court is, you are keeping company with the queen’s enemies.’
‘For the better to find out their practices,’ he says.
‘If I could believe that.’
He sees Richard shift on his stool, impatient.
‘These are bitter days,’ he says. ‘I do not remember such a time of tension and misery, not since the cardinal came down. In truth I do not blame you, Mark, if you find it hard to trust me, there is such ill-feeling at court that no one trusts anyone else. But I come to you because you are close to the queen, and the other gentlemen will not help me. I have the power to reward you, and will make sure you have everything you deserve, if only you can give me some window into the queen’s desires. I need to know why she is so unhappy, and what I can do to remedy it. For it is unlikely she will conceive an heir, while her mind is unquiet. And if she could do that: ah, then all our tears would be dried.’
Mark looks up. ‘Why, it is no wonder she is unhappy,’ he says. ‘She is in love.’
‘With whom?’
‘With me.’
He, Cromwell, leans forward, elbows on the table: then puts a hand up to cover his face.
‘You are amazed,’ Mark suggests.
That is only part of what he feels. I thought, he says to himself, that this would be difficult. But it is like picking flowers. He lowers his hand and beams at the boy. ‘Not so amazed as you might think. For I have watched you, and I have seen her gestures, her eloquent looks, her many indications of favour. And if these are shown in public, then what in private? And of course it is no surprise any woman would be drawn to you. You are a very handsome young man.’
‘Though we thought you were a sodomite,’ Richard says.
‘Not I, sir!’ Mark turns pink. ‘I am as good a man as any of them.’
‘So the queen would give a good account of you?’ he asks, smiling. ‘She has tried you and found you to her liking?’
The boy’s glance slides away, like a piece of silk over glass. ‘I cannot discuss it.’
‘Of course not. But we must draw our own conclusions. She is not an inexperienced woman, I think, she would not be interested in a less than masterly performance.’
‘We poor men,’ Mark says, ‘poor men born, are in no wise inferior in that way.’
‘True,’ he says. ‘Though gentlemen keep that fact from ladies, if they can.’
‘Otherwise,’ Richard says, ‘every duchess would be frolicking in a copse with a woodcutter.’
He cannot help laugh. ‘Only there are so few duchesses and so many woodcutters. There must be competition between them, you would think.’
Mark looks at him as if he is profaning a sacred mystery. ‘If you mean she has other lovers, I have never asked her, I would not ask her, but I know they are jealous of me.’
‘Perhaps she has tried them and found them a disappointment,’ Richard says. ‘And Mark here takes the prize. I congratulate you, Mark.’ With what open Cromwellian simplicity he leans forward and asks, ‘How often?’
‘It cannot be easy to steal the opportunity,’ he suggests. ‘Even though her ladies are complicit.’
‘They are not my friends either,’ Mark says. ‘They would even deny what I have told you. They are friends of Weston, Norris, those lords. I am nothing to them, they ruffle my hair and call me waiting boy.’
‘The queen is your only friend,’ he says. ‘But such a friend!’ He pauses. ‘At some point, it will be necessary for you to say who the others are. You have given us two names.’ Mark looks up, shocked, at the change of tone. ‘Now name them all. And answer Master Richard. How often?’
The boy has frozen under his gaze. But at least he enjoyed his moment in the sun. At least he can say he took Master Secretary by surprise: which few men can say, who are now living.
He waits for Mark. ‘Well, perhaps you are right not to speak. Best to get it down in writing, no? I must say, Mark, my clerks will be as astonished as I am. Their fingers will tremble and they will blot the page. So will the council be astonished, when they hear of your successes. There will be many lords who envy you. You cannot expect their sympathy. “Smeaton, what is your secret?” they will demand. You will blush and say, ah, gentlemen, I cannot impart. But you will impart all, Mark, for they will make you. And you will do it freely, or do it enforced.’
He turns away from the boy, as Mark’s face falls open in dismay, as his body begins to shake: five rash minutes of boasting, in one ungratified life and, like nervous tradesmen, the gods at once send in their account. Mark has lived in a story of his own devising, where the beautiful princess in her tower hears beyond her casement music of unearthly sweetness. She looks out and sees by moonlight the humble musician with his lute. But unless the musician turns out to be a prince in disguise, this story cannot end well. The doors open and ordinary faces crowd in, the surface of the dream is shattered: you are in Stepney on a warm night at the beginning of spring, the last birdsong is fading into the hush of twilight, somewhere a bolt rattles, a stool is scraped across the floor, a dog barks below the window and Thomas Cromwell says to you, ‘We all want our supper, let’s get on, here is the paper and the ink. Here is Master Wriothesley, he will write for us.’
‘I can give no names,’ the boy says.
> ‘You mean, the queen has no lovers but you? So she tells you. But I think, Mark, she has been deceiving you. Which she could easily do, you must admit, if she has been deceiving the king.’
‘No.’ The poor boy shakes his head. ‘I think she is chaste. I do not know how I came to say what I said.’
‘Nor do I. No one had hurt you, had they? Or coerced you, or tricked you? You spoke freely. Master Richard is my witness.’
‘I take it back.’
‘I don’t think so.’
There is a pause, while the room repositions itself, figures dispose themselves in the landscape of the evening. Master Secretary says, ‘It’s chilly, we should have a fire lit.’
Just an ordinary household request, and yet Mark thinks they mean to burn him. He jumps off his stool and makes for the door; perhaps the first bit of sense he’s shown, but Christophe is there, broad and amiable, to head him off. ‘Seat yourself, pretty boy,’ Christophe says.
The wood is laid already. Such a long time it takes, to fan the spark. A little, welcome crackle, and the servant withdraws, wiping his hands on his apron, and Mark watches the door close after him, with a lost expression that may be envy, because he would rather be a kitchen hand now or a boy that scours privy pits. ‘Oh, Mark,’ Master Secretary says. ‘Ambition is a sin. So I am told. Though I have never seen how it is different from using your talents, which the Bible commands we do. So here you are, and here I am, and both of us servants of the cardinal at one time. And if he could see us sitting here tonight, do you know, I don’t think he would be the least surprised? Now, to business. Who did you displace in the queen’s bed, was it Norris? Or perhaps you have a rota, like the queen’s chamber servants?’
‘I don’t know. I take it back. I can give you no names.’
‘It is a shame you should suffer alone, if others are culpable. And of course, they are more culpable than you, as they are gentlemen who the king has personally rewarded and made great, and all of them educated men, and some of them of mature years: whereas you are simple and young, and as much to be pitied as punished, I would say. Tell us now about your adultery with the queen and what you know of her dealings with other men, and then if your confession is prompt and full, clear and unsparing, it is possible that the king will show mercy.’