I know now, sirs, that thosesaints were not real. Not in the way you are real.’Something has broken inside her, and he wonders what thatthing is.She says, ‘Is there any chance I could go home again to Kent?’‘I’ll see what can be arranged.’Hugh Latimer is sitting with them, and he gives him a hard look,as if he’s making false promises. No, really, he says. Leave it with me.Cranmer tells her gently, ‘Before you can go anywhere, it willbe necessary for you to make public acknowledgement of yourimposture. Public confession.’ She’s not shy of crowds, are you?’ These many years she’sbeen on the road, a travelling show, and will be again, thoughnow the nature of the show has changed; he means to display her,repentant, at Paul’s Cross, and perhaps outside London too. Hefeels that she will take to the role of fraud, with the same relishwith which she took to her role as saint.He says to Riche, Niccolò tells us unarmed prophets alwaysfail. He smiles and says, I mention this, Ricardo, because I knowyou like to have it by the book.Cranmer leans forward and says to the Maid, these men aboutyou, Edward Bocking and the rest, which of them were yourlovers?She is shocked: perhaps because the question has come fromhim, the sweetest of her interrogators. She just stares at him, as ifone of them were stupid.He says, murmuring, she may think lovers is not the word.Enough. To Audley, to Latimer, to Riche, he says, ‘I shallbegin bringing in her followers, and her leaders. She has ruinedmany, if we care to press for their ruin. Fisher certainly, MargaretPole perhaps, Gertrude and her husband for sure. Lady Mary theking’s daughter, quite possibly. Thomas More no, Katherine no,but a fat haul of Franciscans.’The court rises, if court is what you call it. Jo stands up. Shehas been sewing – or rather, unsewing, teasing out the pomegranate border from a crewel-work panel – these remnants of Katherine, of the dusty kingdom of Granada, linger in England still. Shefolds her work, dropping her scissors into her pocket, pinchingup her sleeve and feeding her needle into the fabric for later use.She walks up to the prisoner and puts a hand on her arm. ‘Wemust say adieu.’‘William Hawkhurst,’ the girl says, ‘I remember the namenow. The monk who gilded the letter from Mary Magdalene.’Richard Riche makes a note.‘Do not say any more today,’ Jo advises. ‘Will you come with me, mistress? Where I am going?’‘Nobody will come with you,’ Jo says. ‘I do not think youhave the sense of it, Dame Eliza. You are going to the Tower, andI am going home to my dinner.’This summer of 1533 has been a summer of cloudless days, ofstrawberry feasts in London gardens, the drone of fumblingbees, warm evenings to stroll under rose arbours and hear fromthe allées the sound of young gentlemen quarrelling over theirbowls. The grain harvest is abundant even in the north. The treesare bowed under the weight of ripening fruit. As if he hasdecreed that the heat must continue, the king’s court burnsbright through the autumn. Monseigneur the queen’s fathershines like the sun, and around him spins a smaller but stillblazing noonday planet, his son George Rochford. But it isBrandon who leads the dancing, galloping through the hallstowing his new bride, whose age is fourteen. She is an heiress,and was betrothed to his son, but Charles thought an experienced man like him could turn her to better use.The Seymours have put their family scandal behind them, andtheir fortunes are mending. Jane Seymour says to him, looking ather feet, ‘Master Cromwell, my brother Edward smiled lastweek.’‘That was rash of him, what made him do so?’‘He heard his wife is sick. The wife he used to have. The onethat my father, you know.’‘Is she likely to die?’‘Oh, very likely. Then he will get a new one. But he will keepher at his house in Elvetham, and never let her come within amile of Wolf Hall. And when my father visits Elvetham, she willbe locked in the linen room till he has gone again.’Jane’s sister Lizzie is at court with her husband, the Governorof Jersey, who is some connection of the new queen’s. Lizziecomes packaged into her velvet and lace, her outlines as firm as her sister’s are indefinite and blurred, her eyes bold and hazel andeloquent. Jane whispers in her wake; her eyes are the colour ofwater, where her thoughts slip past, like gilded fishes too smallfor hook or net.It is Jane Rochford – whose mind, in his view, is underoccupied – who sees him watching the sisters. ‘Lizzie Seymour musthave a lover,’ she says, ‘it cannot be her husband who puts thatglow in her cheeks, he is an old man. He was old when he was inthe Scots wars.’ The two sisters are just a little alike, she pointsout; they have the same habit of dipping their head and drawingin their underlip. ‘Otherwise,’ she says, smirking, ‘you wouldthink their mother had been up to the same tricks as her husband.She was a beauty in her day, you know, Margery Wentworth.And nobody knows what goes on down in Wiltshire.’‘I’m surprised you don’t, Lady Rochford. You seem to knoweveryone’s business.’‘You and me, we keep our eyes open.’ She lowers her head,and says, as if directing the words inward, to her own body, ‘Icould keep my eyes open, if you like, in places you cannot go.’Dear God, what does she want? It can’t be money, surely? Thequestion comes out colder than he means: ‘Upon what possibleinducement?’She lifts her eyes to his. ‘I should like your friendship.’‘No conditions attach to that.’‘I thought I might help you. Because your ally Lady Carey hasgone down to Hever now to see her daughter. She is no longerwanted since Anne is back on duty in the bedchamber. PoorMary.’ She laughs. ‘God dealt her a good enough hand but shenever knew how to play it. Tell me, what will you do if the queendoes not have another child?’‘There is no reason to fear it. Her mother had a child a year.Boleyn used to complain it kept him poor.’‘Have you ever observed that when a man gets a son he takesall the credit, and when he gets a daughter he blames his wife? And if they do not breed at all, we say it is because her womb isbarren. We do not say it is because his seed is bad.’‘It’s the same in the gospels. The stony ground gets the blame.’The stony places, the thorny unprofitable waste. JaneRochford is childless after seven years of marriage. ‘I believe myhusband wishes I would die.’ She says it lightly. He does notknow how to answer. He has not asked for her confidence. ‘If Ido die,’ she says, in the same bright tone, ‘have my body opened.I ask you this in friendship. I am afraid of poison. My husbandand his sister are closeted together for hours, and Anne knows allmanner of poisons. She has boasted that she will give Mary abreakfast she will not recover from.’ He waits. ‘Mary the king’sdaughter, I mean. Though I am sure if it pleased Anne she wouldnot scruple to make away with her own sister.’ She glances upagain. ‘In your heart, if you are honest, you would like to knowthe things I know.’She is lonely, he thinks, and breeding a savage heart, like Leontina in her cage. She imagines everything is about her, everyglance or secret conversation. She is afraid the other women pityher, and she hates to be pitied. He says, ‘What do you know ofmy heart?’‘I know where you have disposed it.’‘It is more than I know myself.’‘That is not uncommon among men. I can tell you who youlove. Why do you not ask for her, if you want her? TheSeymours are not rich. They will sell you Jane, and be glad of thebargain.’‘You are mistaken in the nature of my interest. I have younggentlemen in my house, I have wards, their marriages are mybusiness.’‘Oh, fal la la,’ she says. ‘Sing another song. Tell it to infants inthe nursery. Tell it to the House of Commons, you do mostusually lie to them. But do not think you can deceive me.’‘For a lady who offers friendship, you have rough manners.’ ‘Get used to them, if you want my information. You go intoAnne’s rooms now, and what do you see? The queen at her priedieu. The queen sewing a smock for a beggar woman, wearingpearls the size of chickpeas.’It is hard not to smile. The portrait is exact. Anne has Cranmerentranced. He thinks her the pattern of pious womanhood.‘So do you imagine that is what is really going on? Do youimagine she has given up communing with nimble young gentlemen? Riddles and verses and songs in praise of her, do yousuppose she has given them up?’‘She has the king to praise her.’‘Not a good word will she hear from that quarter till her bellyis big again.’‘And what will hinder that?’‘Nothing. If he is up to it.’‘Be careful.’ He smiles.‘I never knew it was treason to say what passes in a prince’sbed. All Europe talked about Katherine, what body part was putwhere, was she penetrated, and if she was did she know?’ Shesniggers. ‘Harry’s leg pains him at night. He is afraid the queenwill kick him in the throes of her passion.’ She puts her handbefore her mouth, but the words creep out, narrow between herfingers. ‘But if she lies still under him he says, what, madam, areyou so little interested in making my heir?’‘I do not see what she is to do.’‘She says she gets no pleasure with him. And he – as he foughtseven years to get her, he can hardly admit it has staled so soon.It was stale before they came from Calais, that is what I think.’It’s possible; maybe they were battle-weary, exhausted. Yet hegives her such magnificent presents. And they quarrel so much.Would they quarrel so much, if they were indifferent?‘So,’ she goes on, ‘between the kicking and the sore leg, and hislack of prowess, and her lack of desire, it will be a wonder if weever have a Prince of Wales. Oh, he is good man enough, if he had a new woman each week. If he craves novelty, who is to say shedoes not? Her own brother is in her service.’He turns to look at her. ‘God help you, Lady Rochford,’ hesays.‘To fetch his friends her way, I mean. What did you think Imeant?’ A little, grating laugh.‘Do you know what you mean yourself? You have been atcourt long enough, you know what games are played. It is nomatter if any lady receives verses and compliments, even thoughshe is married. She knows her husband writes verses elsewhere.’‘Oh, she knows that. At least, I know. There is not a minxwithin thirty miles who has not had a set of Rochford’s verses.But if you think the gallantry stops at the bedchamber’s door,you are more innocent than I took you for. You may be in lovewith Seymour’s daughter, but you need not emulate her in havingthe wit of a sheep.’He smiles. ‘Sheep are maligned in that way. Shepherds saythey can recognise each other. They answer to their names. Theymake friends for life.’‘And I will tell you who is in and out of everyone’s bedchamber, it is that sneaking little boy Mark. He is the go-between forthem all. My husband pays him in pearl buttons and comfitboxes and feathers for his hat.’‘Why, is Lord Rochford short of ready money?’‘You see an opportunity for usury?’‘How not?’ At least, he thinks, there is one point on which weconcur: pointless dislike of Mark. In Wolsey’s house he hadduties, teaching the choir children. Here he does nothing butstand about, wherever the court is, in greater or lesser proximityto the queen’s apartments. ‘Well, I can see no harm in the boy,’ hesays.‘He sticks like a burr to his betters. He does not know hisplace. He is a jumped-up nobody, taking his chance because thetimes are disordered.’ ‘I suppose you could say the same of me, Lady Rochford. And
I am sure you do.’
Thomas Wyatt brings him baskets of cobnuts and filberts,
bushels of Kentish apples, jolting up himself to Austin Friars
on the carrier’s cart. ‘The venison follows,’ he says, jumping
down. ‘I come with the fresh fruit, not the carcases.’ His hair
smells of apples, his clothes are dusty from the road. ‘Now you
will have words with me,’ he says, ‘for risking a doublet worth
–’
‘The carrier’s yearly earnings.’
Wyatt looks chastened. ‘I forget you are my father.’
‘I have rebuked you, so now we can fall to idle boyish talk.’
Standing in a wash of chary autumn sun, he holds an apple in his
hand. He pares it with a thin blade, and the peel whispers away
from the flesh and lies among his papers, like the shadow of an
apple, green on white paper and black ink. ‘Did you see Lady
Carey when you were in the country?’
‘Mary Boleyn in the country. What dew-fresh pleasures spring
to mind. I expect she’s rutting in some hayloft.’
‘Just that I want to keep hold of her, for the next time her sister
is hors de combat.’
Wyatt sits down amid the files, an apple in his hand.
‘Cromwell, suppose you’d been away from England for seven
years? If you’d been like a knight in a story, lying under an
enchantment? You would look around you and wonder, who are
they, these people?’
This summer, Wyatt vowed, he would stay down in Kent. He
would read and write on wet days, hunt when it is fine. But the
fall comes, and the nights deepen, and Anne draws him back and
back. His heart is true, he believes: and if she is false, it is difficult
to pick where the falsehood lies. You cannot joke with Anne
these days. You cannot laugh. You must think her perfect, or she
will find some way to punish you. ‘My old father talks about King Edward’s days. He says, you
see now why it’s not good for the king to marry a subject, an
Englishwoman?’
The trouble is, though Anne has remade the court, there are
still people who knew her before, in the days when she came
from France, when she set herself to seduce Harry Percy. They
compete to tell stories of how she is not worthy. Or not human.
How she is a snake. Or a swan. Una candida cerva. One single
white doe, concealed in leaves of silver-grey; shivering, she hides
in the trees, waiting for the lover who will turn her back from
animal to goddess. ‘Send me back to Italy,’ Wyatt says. Her dark,
her lustrous, her slanting eyes: she haunts me. She comes to me in
my solitary bed at night.
‘Solitary? I don’t think so.’
Wyatt laughs. ‘You’re right. I take it where I can.’
‘You drink too much. Water your wine.’
‘It could have been different.’
‘Everything could.’
‘You never think about the past.’
‘I never talk about it.’
Wyatt pleads, ‘Send me away somewhere.’
‘I will. When the king needs an ambassador.’
‘Is it true that the Medici have offered for the Princess Mary’s
hand?’
‘Not Princess Mary, you mean the Lady Mary. I have asked
the king to think about it. But they are not grand enough for him.
You know, if Gregory showed any interest in banking, I would
look for a bride for him in Florence. It would be pleasant to have
an Italian girl in the house.’
‘Send me back there. Deploy me where I can be useful, to you
or the king, as here I am useless and worse than useless to myself,
and necessary to no one’s pleasure.’
He says, ‘Oh, by the bleached bones of Becket. Stop feeling
sorry for yourself.’ Norfolk has his own view of the queen’s friends. He rattles a
little while he expresses it, his relics clinking, his grey disordered eyebrows working over wide-open eyes. These men, he
says, these men who hang around with women! Norris, I
thought better of him! And Henry Wyatt’s son! Writing verse.
Singing. Talk-talk-talking. ‘What’s the use of talking to
women?’ he asks earnestly. ‘Cromwell, you don’t talk to
women, do you? I mean, what would be the topic? What would
you find to say?’
I’ll speak to Norfolk, he decides when he comes back from
France; ask him to incline Anne to caution. The French are
meeting the Pope in Marseilles, and in default of his own attendance Henry must be represented by his most senior peer.
Gardiner is already there. For me every day is like a holiday, he
says to Tom Wyatt, when those two are away.
Wyatt says, ‘I think Henry may have a new interest by then.’
In the days following he follows Henry’s eyes, as they rest on
various ladies of the court. Nothing in them, perhaps, except the
speculative interest of any man; it’s only Cranmer who thinks
that if you look twice at a woman you have to marry her. He
watches the king dancing with Lizzie Seymour, his hand lingering on her waist. He sees Anne watching, her expression cold,
pinched.
Next day, he lends Edward Seymour some money on very
favourable terms.
In the damp autumn mornings, when it is still half-light, his
household are out early, in the damp and dripping woods. You
don’t get torta di funghi unless you pick the raw ingredients.
Richard Riche arrives at eight o’clock, his face astonished and
alarmed. ‘They stopped me at your gate, sir, and said, where’s
your bag of mushrooms? No one comes in here without mushrooms.’ Riche’s dignity is affronted. ‘I don’t think they would
have asked the Lord Chancellor for mushrooms.’