Not even his most prolonged, his most subtle interrogations
had frightened her. To get Katherine pulled into it, he had tried
every trick he knew: with no result. He says, ‘You are fed properly, are you?’
‘Oh yes. And my laundry done. But I miss it, when I used to
go to Lambeth, see the archbishop, I liked that. Seeing the river.
All the people bustling along, and the boats unloading. Do you
know if I shall be burned? Lord Audley said I would be burned.’
She speaks as if Audley were an old friend.
‘I hope you can be spared that. It is for the king to say.’
‘I go to Hell these nights,’ she says. ‘Master Lucifer shows me
a chair. It is carved of human bones and padded with cushions of
flame.’
‘Is it for me?’
‘Bless you, no. For the king.’
‘Any sightings of Wolsey?’
‘The cardinal’s where I left him.’ Seated among the unborn.
She pauses; a long drifting pause. ‘They say it can take an hour
for the body to burn. Mother Mary will exalt me. I shall bathe in
the flames, as one bathes in a fountain. To me, they will be cool.’
She looks into his face but at his expression she turns away.
‘Sometimes they pack gunpowder in the wood, don’t they?
Makes it quick then. How many will be going with me?’
Six. He names them. ‘It could have been sixty. Do you know
that? Your vanity brought them here.’
As he says it he thinks, it is also true that their vanity brought
her: and he sees that she would have preferred sixty to die, to see
Exeter and the Pole family pulled down to disgrace; it would
have sealed her fame. That being so, why would she not name
Katherine as party to the plot? What a triumph that would be for
a prophet, to ruin a queen. There, he thinks, I shouldn’t have
been so subtle after all; I should have played on her greed to be
infamous. ‘Shall I not see you again?’ she says. ‘Or will you be
there, when I suffer?’ ‘This throne,’ he says. ‘This chair of bones. It would be as well
to keep it to yourself. Not to let the king hear of it.’
‘I think he ought. He should have warning of what is waiting
for him after death. And what can he do to me, worse than he
already plans?’
‘You don’t want to plead your belly?’
She blushes. ‘I’m not with child. You’re laughing at me.’
‘I would advise anyone to get a few more weeks of life, by any
means they can. Say you have been ill-used on the road. Say your
guards have dishonoured you.’
‘But then I would have to say who did it, and they would be
taken before a judge.’
He shakes his head, pitying her. ‘When a guard despoils a prisoner, he doesn’t leave her his name.’
Anyway, she doesn’t like his idea, that’s plain. He leaves her.
The Tower is like a small town and its morning routine clatters
on around him, the guards and the men from the Mint greet him,
and the keeper of the king’s beasts trots up to say it’s dinner time
– they eat early, the beasts – and does he want to see them fed? I
take it very kindly, he says, waiving the pleasure; unbreakfasted
himself, slightly nauseous, he can smell stale blood and from the
direction of their cages hear their truffling grunts and smothered
roars. High up on the walls above the river, out of sight, a man is
whistling an old tune, and at the refrain breaks into song; he is a
jolly forester, he sings. Which is most certainly untrue.
He looks around for his boatmen. He wonders whether the
Maid is ill, and whether she will live to be killed. She was never
harmed in his custody, only harassed; kept awake a night or two,
but no longer than the king’s business keeps him awake, and you
don’t, he thinks, find me confessing to anything. It’s nine
o’clock; by ten o’clock dinner, he has to be with Norfolk and
Audley, who he hopes will not scream and smell, like the beasts.
There is a tentative, icy sun; loops of vapour coil across the river,
a scribble of mist. At Westminster, the duke chases out the servants. ‘If I want a
drink I’ll get it for myself. Go on, out, out you go. And shut the
door! Any lurking at the keyhole, I’ll skin you alive and salt
you!’ He turns, swearing under his breath, and takes his chair
with a grunt. ‘What if I begged him?’ he says. ‘What if I went
down on my knees, said, Henry for the Lord’s sake, take Thomas
More out of the attainder?’
‘What if we all begged him,’ Audley says, ‘on our knees?’
‘Oh, and Cranmer too,’ he says. ‘We’ll have him in. He’s not
to escape this delectable interlude.’
‘The king swears,’ Audley says, ‘that if the bill is opposed, he will
come before Parliament himself, both houses if need be, and insist.’
‘He may have a fall,’ the duke says. ‘And in public. For God’s
sake, Cromwell, don’t let him do it. He knew More was against
him and he let him creep off to Chelsea to coddle his conscience.
But it’s my niece, I suppose, who wants him brought to book.
She takes it personally. Women do.’
‘I think the king takes it personally.’
‘Which is weak,’ Norfolk says, ‘in my view. Why should he
care how More judges him?’
Audley smiles uncertainly. ‘You call the king weak?’
‘Call the king weak?’ The duke lurches forward and squawks
into Audley’s face, as if he were a talking magpie. ‘What’s this,
Lord Chancellor, speaking up for yourself? You do usually wait
till Cromwell speaks, and then it’s chirrup-chirrup, yes-sir-nosir, whatever you say, Tom Cromwell.’
The door opens and Call-Me-Risley appears, in part. ‘By
God,’ says the duke, ‘if I had a crossbow, I’d shoot your very
head off. I said nobody was to come in here.’
‘Will Roper is here. He has letters from his father-in-law.
More wants to know what you will do for him, sir, as you have
admitted that in law he has no case to answer.’
‘Tell Will we are just now rehearsing how to beg the king to
take More’s name out of the bill. The duke knocks back his drink, the one he has poured
himself. He bounces his goblet back on the table. ‘Your cardinal
used to say, Henry will give half his realm rather than be baulked,
he will not be cheated of any part of his will.’
‘But I reason … do not you, Lord Chancellor …’
‘Oh, he does,’ the duke says. ‘Whatever you reason, Tom, he
reasons. Squawk, squawk.’
Wriothesley looks startled. ‘Could I bring Will in?’
‘So we are united? On our knees to beg?’
‘I won’t do it unless Cranmer will,’ the duke says. ‘Why
should a layman wear out his joints?’
‘Shall we send for my lord Suffolk too?’ Audley suggests.
‘No. His boy is dying. His heir.’ The duke scrubs his hand
across his mouth. ‘He wants just a month of his eighteenth birthday.’ His fingers fidget for his holy medals, his relics. ‘Brandon’s
got the one boy. So have I. So have you, Cromwell. And Thomas
More. Just the one boy. God help Charles, he’ll have to start
breeding again with his new wife; that’ll be a hardship to him,
I’m sure.’ He gives a bark of laughter. ‘If I could pension my lady
wife off, I could get a juicy fifteen-year-old too. But she won’t
go.’
It is too much for Audley. His face flushes. ‘My lord, you have
been married, and well married, these twenty years.’
‘Do I not know it? It’s like placing your person in a grizzled
leather bag.’ The duke’s bony hand descends; he squeezes his
shoulder. ‘Get me a divorce, Cromwell, will you? You and my
lord archbishop, come up with some grounds. I promise there’ll
be no murder done over it.’
‘Where is murder done?’ Wriothesley says.
‘We’re preparing to murder Thomas More, aren’t we? Old
Fisher, we’re whetting the knife for him, eh?’
‘God forbid.’ The Lord Chancellor rises, sweeping his gown
around him. ‘These are not capital charges. More and the Bishop
of Rochester, they are only accessories.’ ‘Which,’ Wriothesley says, ‘in all conscience is grave enough.’
Norfolk shrugs. ‘Kill them now or later. More won’t take
your oath. Fisher won’t.’
‘I am quite sure they will,’ Audley says. ‘We shall use efficacious persuasions. No reasonable man will refuse to swear to the
succession, for the safety of this realm.’
‘So is Katherine to be sworn,’ the duke says, ‘to uphold the
succession of my niece’s infant? What about Mary – is she to be
sworn? And if they will not, what do you propose? Draw them
to Tyburn on a hurdle and hang them up kicking, for their relative the Emperor to see?’
He and Audley exchange a glance. Audley says, ‘My lord, you
shouldn’t drink so much wine before noon.’
‘Oh, tweet, tweet,’ the duke says.
A week ago he had been up to Hatfield, to see the two royal
ladies: the princess Elizabeth, and Lady Mary the king’s daughter. ‘Make sure you get the titles right,’ he had said to Gregory as
they rode.
Gregory had said, ‘Already you are wishing you had brought
Richard.’
He had not wanted to leave London during such a busy parliament, but the king persuaded him: two days and you can be back,
I want your eye on things. The route out of the city was running
with thaw water, and in copses shielded from the sun the standing
pools were still iced. A weak sun blinked at them as they crossed
into Hertfordshire, and here and there a ragged blackthorn blossomed, waving at him a petition against the length of winter.
‘I used to come here years ago. It was Cardinal Morton’s place,
you know, and he would leave town when the law term was over
and the weather was getting warm, and when I was nine or ten
my uncle John used to pack me in a provisions cart with the best
cheeses and the pies, in case anybody tried to steal them when we
stopped. ‘Did you not have guards?’
‘It was the guards he was afraid of.’
‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’
‘Me, evidently.’
‘What would you have done?’
‘I don’t know. Bitten them?’
The mellow brick frontage is smaller than he remembers, but
that is what memory does. These pages and gentlemen running
out, these grooms to lead away the horses, the warmed wine that
awaits them, the noise and the fuss, it is a different sort of arrival
from those of long ago. The portage of wood and water, the
firing up the ranges, these tasks were beyond the strength or skill
of a child, but he was unwilling to concede them, and worked
alongside the men, grubby and hungry, till someone saw that he
was about to fall over: or until he actually did.
Sir John Shelton is head of this strange household, but he has
chosen a time when Sir John is from home; talk to the women,
is his idea, rather than listen to Shelton after supper on the
subjects of horses, dogs and his youthful exploits. But on the
threshold, he almost changes his mind; coming downstairs at a
rapid, creaking scuttle is Lady Bryan, mother of one-eyed
Francis, who is in charge of the tiny princess. She is a woman of
nearly seventy, well bedded into grand-maternity, and he can
see her mouth moving before she is within range of his hearing:
Her Grace slept till eleven, squalled till midnight, exhausted
herself, poor little chicken! fell asleep an hour, woke up grizzling, cheeks scarlet, suspicion of fever, Lady Shelton woken,
physician aroused, teething already, a treacherous time! soothing draught, settled by sun-up, woke at nine, took a feed …
‘Oh, Master Cromwell,’ Lady Bryan says, ‘this is never your
son! Bless him! What a lovely tall young man! What a pretty
face he has, he must get it from his mother. What age would he
be now?’
‘Of an age to talk, I believe.’ Lady Bryan turns to Gregory, her face aglow as if at the
prospect of sharing a nursery rhyme with him. Lady Shelton
sweeps in. ‘Give you good day, masters.’ A small hesitation: does
the queen’s aunt bow to the Master of the Jewel House? On the
whole she thinks not. ‘I expect Lady Bryan has given you a full
account of her charge?’
‘Indeed, and perhaps we could have an account of yours?’
‘You will not see Lady Mary for yourself?’
‘Yes, but forewarned …’
‘Indeed. I do not go armed, though my niece the queen recommends I use my fists on her.’ Her eyes sweep over him, assessing;
the air crackles with tension. How do women do that? One
could learn it, perhaps; he feels, rather than sees, his son back off,
till his regress is checked by the cupboard displaying the princess
Elizabeth’s already extensive collection of gold and silver plate.
Lady Shelton says, ‘I am charged that, if the Lady Mary does not
obey me, I should, and here I quote you my niece’s words, beat
her and buffet her like the bastard she is.’
‘Oh, Mother of God!’ Lady Bryan moans. ‘I was Mary’s nurse
too, and she was stubborn as an infant, so she’ll not change now,
buffet her as you may. You’d like to see the baby first, would you
not? Come with me …’ She takes Gregory into custody, hand
squeezing his elbow. On she rattles: you see, with a child of that
age, a fever could be anything. It could be the start of the measles,
God forbid. It could be the start of the smallpox. With a child of
six months, you don’t know what it could be the start of … A
pulse is beating in Lady Bryan’s throat. As she chatters she licks
her dry lips, and swallows.
He understands now why Henry wanted him here. The things
that are happening cannot be put in a letter. He says to Lady
Shelton, ‘Do you mean the queen has written to you about Lady
Mary, using these terms?’
‘No. She has passed on a verbal instruction.’ She sweeps ahead
of him. ‘Do you think I should implement it? ‘We will perhaps speak in private,’ he murmurs.
‘Yes, why not?’ she says: a turn of her head, a little murmur
back.
The child Elizabeth is wrapped tightly in layers, her fists
hidden: just as well, she looks as if she would strike you. Ginger
bristles poke from beneath her cap, and her eyes are vigilant; he
has never seen an infant in the crib look so ready to take offence.
Lady Bryan says, ‘Do you think she looks like the king?’
He hesitates, trying to be fair to both parties. ‘As much as a
little maid ought.’
‘Let us hope she doesn’t share his girth,’ Lady Shelton says.
‘He fleshes out, does he not?’
‘Only George Rochford says not.’ Lady Bryan leans over the
cradle. ‘He says, she’s every bit a Boleyn.’
‘We know my niece lived some thirty years in chastity,’ Lady
Shelton says, ‘but not even Anne could manage a virgin birth.’
‘But the hair!’ he says.
‘I know,’ Lady Bryan sighs. ‘Saving Her Grace’s dignity, and
with all respect to His Majesty, you could show her at a fair as a
pig-baby.’ She pinches up the child’s cap at the hairline, and her
fingers work busily, trying to stuff the bristles out of sight. The
child screws up her face and hiccups in protest.
Gregory frowns down at her: ‘She could be anybody’s.’
Lady Shelton raises a hand to hide her smile. ‘You mean to say,
Gregory, all babies look the same. Come, Master Cromwell.’
She takes him by the sleeve to lead him away. Lady Bryan is
left reknotting the princess, who seems to have become loose in
some particular. Over his shoulder, he says, ‘For God’s sake,
Gregory.’ People have gone to the Tower for saying less. He says
to Lady Shelton, ‘I don’t see how Mary can be a bastard. Her
parents were in good faith when they got her.’
She stops, an eyebrow raised. ‘Would you say that to my niece
the queen? To her face, I mean?’
‘I already have.’ ‘And how did she take it?’
‘Well, I tell you, Lady Shelton, if she had had an axe to hand,
she would have essayed to cut off my head.’
‘I tell you something in return, and you can carry it to my
niece if you will. If Mary were indeed a bastard, and the bastard
of the poorest landless gentleman that is in England, she should
receive nothing but gentle treatment at my hands, for she is a
good young woman, and you would need a heart of stone not to
pity her situation.’
She is walking fast, her train sweeping over stone floors, into
the body of the house. Mary’s old servants are about, faces he has
seen before; there are clean patches on their jackets where Mary’s
livery badge has been unpicked and replaced by the king’s badge.
He looks about and recognises everything. He stops at the foot
of the great staircase. Never was he allowed to run up it; there
was a back staircase for boys like him, carrying wood or coals.
Once he broke the rules; and when he reached the top, a fist came
out of the darkness and punched the side of his head. Cardinal
Morton himself, lurking?
He touches the stone, cold as a tomb: vine leaves intertwined
with some nameless flower. Lady Shelton looks at him smiling,
quizzical: why does he hesitate? ‘Perhaps we should change out
of our riding clothes before we meet Lady Mary. She might feel
slighted …’
‘So she might if you delay. She will make something of it, in
either case. I say I pity her, but oh, she is not easy! She graces
neither our dinner table nor supper table, because she will not sit
below the little princess. And my niece the queen has laid down
that food must not be carried to her own room, except the little
bread for breakfast we all take.’
She has led him to a closed door. ‘Do they still call this the blue
chamber?’
‘Ah, your father has been here before,’ she says to Gregory.
‘He’s been everywhere,’ Gregory says. She turns. ‘See how you get on, gentlemen. By the way, she
will not answer to “Lady Mary”.’
It is a long room, it is almost empty of furniture, and the chill,
like a ghost’s ambassador, meets them on the threshold. The blue
tapestries have been taken down and the plaster walls are naked.
By an almost dead fire, Mary is sitting: huddled, tiny and pitifully young. Gregory whispers, ‘She looks like Malekin.’
Poor Malekin, she is a spirit girl; she eats at night, lives on
crumbs and apple peel. Sometimes, if you come down early and
are quiet on the stairs, you find her sitting in the ashes.
Mary glances up; surprisingly, her little face brightens. ‘Master
Cromwell.’ She gets to her feet, takes a step towards him and
almost stumbles, her feet entangled in the hem of her dress.
‘How long is it since I saw you at Windsor?’
‘I hardly know,’ he says gravely. ‘The years have been good to
you, madam.’
She giggles; she is now eighteen. She casts around her as if
bewildered for the stool on which she was sitting. ‘Gregory,’ he
says, and his son dives to catch the ex-princess, before she sits
down on empty air. Gregory does it as if it were a dance step; he
has his uses.
‘I am sorry to keep you standing. You might,’ she waves
vaguely, ‘sit down on that chest.’
‘I think we are strong enough to stand. Though I do not think
you are.’ He sees Gregory glance at him, as if he has never heard
this softened tone. ‘They do not make you sit alone, and by this
miserable fire, surely?’
‘The man who brings the wood will not give me my title of
princess.’
‘Do you have to speak to him?’
‘No. But it would be an evasion if I did not.’
That’s right, he thinks: make life as hard as possible for yourself. ‘Lady Shelton has told me about the difficulty in … the
dinner difficulty. Suppose I were to send you a physician?