In the convivial days between Christmas and New Year, while
the court is feasting and Charles Brandon is in the fens shouting
at a door, he is rereading Marsiglio of Padua. In the year 1324
Marsiglio put to us forty-two propositions. When the feast of the
Epiphany is past, he ambles along to put a few of them to Henry.
Some of these propositions the king knows, some are strange
to him. Some are congenial, in his present situation; some have
been denounced to him as heresy. It’s a morning of brilliant,
bone-chilling cold, the wind off the river like a knife in the face.
We are breezing in to push our luck.
Marsiglio tells us that when Christ came into this world he
came not as a ruler or a judge, but as a subject: subject to the state
as he found it. He did not seek to rule, nor pass on to his disciples a mission to rule. He did not give power to one of his
followers more than another; if you think he did, read again
those verses about Peter. Christ did not make Popes. He did not
give his followers the power to make laws or levy taxes, both of
which churchmen have claimed as their right.
Henry says, ‘I never remember the cardinal spoke of this.’
‘Would you, if you were a cardinal?’
Since Christ did not induce his followers into earthly power,
how can it be maintained that the princes of today derive their power from the Pope? In fact, all priests are subjects, as Christ
left them. It is for the prince to govern the bodies of his citizens,
to say who is married and who can marry, who is a bastard and
who legitimate.
Where does the prince get this power, and his power to
enforce the law? He gets it through a legislative body, which acts
on behalf of the citizens. It is from the will of the people,
expressed in Parliament, that a king derives his kingship.
When he says this, Henry seems to be straining his ears, as if
he might catch the sound of the people coming down the road to
turn him out of his palace. He reassures him on the point:
Marsiglio gives no legitimacy to rebels. Citizens may indeed
band together to overthrow a despot, but he, Henry, is not a
despot; he is a monarch who rules within the law. Henry likes the
people to cheer him as he rides through London, but the wise
prince is not always the most popular prince; he knows this.
He has other propositions to put to him. Christ did not
bestow on his followers grants of land, or monopolies, offices,
promotions. All these things are the business of the secular
power. A man who has taken vows of poverty, how can he have
property rights? How can monks be landlords?
The king says, ‘Cromwell, with your facility for large
numbers …’ He stares into the distance. His fingers pick at the
silver lacing of his cuff.
‘The legislative body,’ he says, ‘should provide for the maintenance of priests and bishops. After that, it should be able to use
the church’s wealth for the public good.’
‘But how to free it,’ Henry says. ‘I suppose shrines can be
broken.’ Gem-studded himself, he thinks of the kind of wealth
you can weigh. ‘If there were any who dared.’
It is a characteristic of Henry, to run before you to where you
were not quite going. He had meant to gentle him towards an
intricate legal process of dispossession, repossession: the assertion of ancient sovereign rights, the taking back of what was always yours. He will remember that it was Henry who first
suggested picking up a chisel and gouging the sapphire eyes out
of saints. But he is willing to follow the king’s thought. ‘Christ
taught us how to remember him. He left us bread and wine, body
and blood. What more do we need? I cannot see where he asked
for shrines to be set up, or instituted a trade in body parts, in hair
and nails, or asked us to make plaster images and worship them.’
‘Would you be able to estimate,’ Henry says, ‘even … no, I
suppose you wouldn’t.’ He gets to his feet. ‘Well, the sun shines,
so …’
Better make hay. He sweeps the day’s papers together. ‘I can
finish up.’ Henry goes off to get into his double-padded riding
coat. He thinks, we don’t want our king to be the poor man of
Europe. Spain and Portugal have treasure flowing in every year
from the Americas. Where is our treasure?
Look around you.
His guess is, the clergy own a third of England. One day soon,
Henry will ask him how the Crown can own it instead. It’s like
dealing with a child; one day you bring in a box, and the child
asks, what is in there? Then it goes to sleep and forgets, but next
day, it asks again. It doesn’t rest until the box is open and the
treats given out.
Parliament is about to reconvene. He says to the king, no parliament in history has worked as hard as I mean to work this one.
Henry says, ‘Do what you have to do. I will back you.’
It’s like hearing words you’ve waited all your life to hear. It’s
like hearing a perfect line of poetry, in a language you knew
before you were born.
He goes home happy, but the cardinal is waiting for him in a
corner. He is plump as a cushion in his scarlet robes and his face
wears a martial and mutinous expression. Wolsey says, you
know he will take the credit for your good ideas, and you the
blame for his bad ones? When fortune turns against you, you
will feel her lash: you always, he never. He says, my dear Wolsey. (For now that cardinals are finished
in this realm, he addresses him as a colleague, not a master.) My
dear Wolsey, not entirely so – he didn’t blame Charles Brandon
for splintering a lance inside his helmet, he blamed himself for
not putting his visor down.
The cardinal says, do you think this is a tilting ground? Do
you think there are rules, protocols, judges to see fair play? One
day, when you are still adjusting your harness, you will look up
and see him thundering at you downhill.
The cardinal vanishes, with a chortle.
Even before the Commons convenes, his opponents meet to
work out their tactics. Their meetings are not secret. Servants go
in and out, and his method with the Pole conclaves bears repeating: there are young men in the Cromwell household not too
proud to put on an apron and bring in a platter of halibut or a
joint of beef. The gentlemen of England apply for places in his
household now, for their sons and nephews and wards, thinking
they will learn statecraft with him, how to write a secretary’s
hand and deal with translation from abroad, and what books one
ought to read to be a courtier. He takes it seriously, the trust
placed in him; he takes gently from the hands of these noisy
young persons their daggers, their pens, and he talks to them,
finding out behind the passion and pride of young men of fifteen
or twenty what they are really worth, what they value and would
value under duress. You learn nothing about men by snubbing
them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they
can do in this world, that they alone can do.
The boys are astonished by the question, their souls pour out.
Perhaps no one has talked to them before. Certainly not their
fathers.
You introduce these boys, violent or unscholarly as they are,
to humble occupations. They learn the psalms. They learn the
use of a filleting blade and a paring knife; only then, for selfdefence and in no formal lesson, they learn the estoc, the killing jerk under the ribs, the simple twist of the wrist that makes you
sure. Christophe offers himself as instructor. These messieurs, he
says, be sure they are dainty. They are cutting off the head of the
stag or the tail of the rat, I know not what, to send home to their
dear papa. Only you and me, master, and Richard Cremuel, we
know how to stop some little fuckeur in his tracks, so that’s the
end of him, and he doesn’t even squeak.
Before spring comes, some of the poor men who stand at his
gate find their way inside it. The eyes and ears of the unlettered
are as sharp as those of the gentry, and you need not be a scholar
to have a good wit. Horseboys and kennelmen overhear the
confidences of earls. A boy with kindling and bellows hears the
sleepy secrets of early morning, when he goes in to light a fire.
On a day of strong sunlight, sudden and deceptive warmth,
Call-Me-Risley strides into Austin Friars. He barks, ‘Give you
good morning, sir,’ throws off his jacket, sits down to his desk
and scrapes forward his stool. He picks up his quill and looks at
the tip of it. ‘Right, what do you have for me?’ His eyes are glittering and the tips of his ears are pink.
‘I think Gardiner must be back,’ he says.
‘How did you know?’ Call-Me throws down his pen. He
jumps up. He strides about. ‘Why is he like he is? All this wrangling and jangling and throwing out questions when he doesn’t
care about the answers?’
‘You liked it well enough when you were at Cambridge.’
‘Oh, then,’ Wriothesley says, with contempt for his young
self. ‘It’s supposed to train our minds. I don’t know.’
‘My son claims it wore him out, the practice of scholarly
disputation. He calls it the practice of futile argument.’
‘Perhaps Gregory’s not completely stupid.’
‘I would be glad to think not.’
Call-Me blushes a deep red. ‘I mean no offence, sir. You know
Gregory’s not like us. As the world goes, he is too good. But you
don’t have to be like Gardiner, either. ‘When the cardinal’s advisers met, we would propose plans,
there would perhaps be some dispute, but we would talk it
through; then we would refine our plans, and implement them.
The king’s council doesn’t work like that.’
‘How could it? Norfolk? Charles Brandon? They’ll fight you
because of who you are. Even if they agree with you, they’ll fight
you. Even if they know you’re right.’
‘I suppose Gardiner has been threatening you.’
‘With ruin.’ He folds one fist into the other. ‘I don’t regard
it.’
‘But you should. Winchester is a powerful man and if he says
he will ruin you that is what he means to do.’
‘He calls me disloyal. He says while I was abroad I should
have minded his interests, instead of yours.’
‘My understanding is, you serve Master Secretary, whoever is
acting in that capacity. If I,’ he hesitates, ‘if – Wriothesley, I make
you this offer, if I am confirmed in the post, I will put you in
charge at the Signet.’
‘I will be chief clerk?’ He sees Call-Me adding up the fees.
‘So now, go to Gardiner, apologise, and get him to make you a
better offer. Hedge your bets.’
His face alarmed, Call-Me hovers. ‘Run, boy.’ He scoops up
his jacket and thrusts it at him. ‘He’s still Secretary. He can have
his seals back. Only tell him, he has to come here and collect
them in person.’
Call-Me laughs. He rubs his forehead, dazed, as if he’s been in
a fight. He throws on his coat. ‘We’re hopeless, aren’t we?’
Inveterate scrappers. Wolves snapping over a carcase. Lions
fighting over Christians.
The king calls him in, with Gardiner, to look through the bill he
proposes to put into Parliament to secure the succession of
Anne’s children. The queen is with them; many private gentlemen see less of their wives, he thinks, than the king does. He rides, Anne rides. He hunts, Anne hunts. She takes his friends,
and makes them into hers.
She has a habit of reading over Henry’s shoulder; she does it
now, her exploring hand sliding across his silky bulk, through
the layers of his clothing, so that a tiny fingernail hooks itself
beneath the embroidered collar of his shirt, and she raises the
fabric just a breath, just a fraction, from pale royal skin; Henry’s
vast hand reaches to caress hers, an absent, dreamy motion, as if
they were alone. The draft refers, time and again, and correctly it
would seem, to ‘your most dear and entirely beloved wife Queen
Anne’.
The Bishop of Winchester is gaping. As a man, he cannot
unglue himself from the spectacle, yet as a bishop, it makes him
clear his throat. Anne takes no notice; she carries on doing what
she’s doing, and reading out the bill, until she looks up, shocked:
it mentions my death! ‘If it should happen your said dear and
entirely beloved wife Queen Anne to decease …’
‘I can’t exclude the event,’ he says. ‘Parliament can do
anything, madam, except what is against nature.’
She flushes. ‘I shall not die of the child. I am strong.’
He doesn’t remember that Liz lost her wits when she was
carrying a child. If anything, she was ever more sober and frugal,
and spent time making store-cupboard inventories. Anne the
queen takes the draft out of Henry’s hand. She shakes it in a
passion. She is angry with the paper, jealous of the ink. She says,
‘This bill provides that if I die, say I die now, say I die of a fever
and I die undelivered, then he can put another queen in my
place.’
‘Sweetheart,’ the king says, ‘I cannot imagine another in your
place. It is only notional. He must make provision for it.’
‘Madam,’ Gardiner says, ‘if I may defend Cromwell, he envisages only the customary situation. You would not condemn His
Majesty to a life as perpetual widower? And we know not the
hour, do we? Anne takes no notice, it’s as if Winchester had not spoken.
‘And if she has a son, it says, that son will inherit. It says, heirs
male lawfully begotten. Then what happens to my daughter and
her claim?’
‘Well,’ Henry says, ‘she is still a princess of England. If you
look further down the paper, it says that …’ He closes his eyes.
God give me strength.
Gardiner springs to supply some: ‘If the king never had a son,
not in lawful matrimony with any woman, then your daughter
would be queen. That is what Cromwell proposes.’
‘But why must it be written like this? And where does it say
that Spanish Mary is a bastard?’
‘Lady Mary is out of the line of succession,’ he says, ‘so the
inference is clear. We don’t need to say more. You must forgive
any coldness of expression. We try to write laws sparingly. And
so that they are not personal.’
‘By God,’ Gardiner says with relish, ‘if this isn’t personal,
what is?’
The king seems to have invited Stephen to this conference in
order to snub him. Tomorrow, of course, it could go the other
way; he could arrive to see Henry arm in arm with Winchester
and strolling among the snowdrops. He says, ‘We mean to seal
this act with an oath. His Majesty’s subjects to swear to uphold
the succession to the throne, as laid out in this paper and ratified
by Parliament.’
‘An oath?’ Gardiner says. ‘What sort of legislation needs to be
confirmed by an oath?’
‘You will always find those who will say a parliament is
misled, or bought, or in some way incapable of representing the
commonwealth. Again, you will find those who will deny Parliament’s competence to legislate in certain matters, saying they
must be left to some other jurisdiction – to Rome, in effect. But I
think that is a mistake. Rome has no legitimate voice in England.
In my bill I mean to state a position. It is a modest one. I draft it, it may please Parliament to pass it, it may please the king to sign
it. I shall then ask the country to endorse it.’
‘So what will you do?’ Stephen says, jeering. ‘Have your
boys from Austin Friars up and down the land, swearing every
man Jack you dig out of an alehouse? Every man Jack and every
Jill?’
‘Why should I not swear them? Do you think because they are
not bishops they are brutes? One Christian’s oath is as good as
another’s. Look at any part of this kingdom, my lord bishop, and
you will find dereliction, destitution. There are men and women
on the roads. The sheep farmers are grown so great that the little
man is knocked off his acres and the ploughboy is out of house
and home. In a generation these people can learn to read. The
ploughman can take up a book. Believe me, Gardiner, England
can be otherwise.’
‘I have made you angry,’ Gardiner observes. ‘Provoked, you
mistake the question. I asked you not if their word is good, but
how many of them you propose to swear. But of course, in the
Commons you have brought in a bill against sheep –’
‘Against the runners of sheep,’ he says, smiling.
The king says, ‘Gardiner, it is to help the common people – no
grazier to run more than two thousand animals –’
The bishop cuts his king off as if he were a child. ‘Two thousand, yes, so while your commissioners are rampaging through
the shires counting sheep, perhaps they can swear the shepherds
at the same time, eh? And these ploughboys of yours, in their
preliterate condition? And any drabs they find in a ditch?’
He has to laugh. The bishop is so vehement. ‘My lord, I will
swear whoever is necessary to make the succession safe, and
unite the country behind us. The king has his officers, his justices
of the peace – and the lords of the council will be put on their
honour to make this work, or I will know why.’
Henry says, ‘The bishops will take the oath. I hope they will
be conformable.’ ‘We want some new bishops,’ Anne says. She names her friend
Hugh Latimer. His friend, Rowland Lee. It seems after all she
does have a list, which she carries in her head. Liz made
preserves. Anne makes pastors.
‘Latimer?’ Stephen shakes his head, but he cannot accuse the
queen, to her face, of loving heretics. ‘Rowland Lee, to my
certain knowledge, has never stood in a pulpit in his life. Some
men come into the religious life only for ambition.’
‘And have barely the grace to disguise it,’ he says.
‘I make the best of my road,’ Stephen says. ‘I was set upon it.
By God, Cromwell, I walk it.’
He looks up at Anne. Her eyes sparkle with glee. Not a word
is lost on her.
Henry says, ‘My lord Winchester, you have been out of the
country a great while, on your embassy.’
‘I hope Your Majesty thinks it has been to his profit.’
‘Indeed, but you have not been able to avoid neglecting your
diocese.’
‘As a pastor, you should mind your flock,’ Anne says. ‘Count
them, perhaps.’
He bows. ‘My flock is safe in fold.’
Short of kicking the bishop downstairs himself, or having him
hauled out by the guards, the king can’t do much more. ‘All the
same, feel free to attend to it,’ Henry murmurs.
There is a feral stink that rises from the hide of a dog about to
fight. It rises now into the room, and he sees Anne turn aside,
fastidious, and Stephen put his hand to his chest, as if to ruffle up
his fur, to warn of his size before he bares his teeth. ‘I shall be
back with Your Majesty within a week,’ he says. His dulcet sentiment comes out as a snarl from the depth of his guts.
Henry bursts into laughter. ‘Meanwhile we like Cromwell.
Cromwell treats us very well.’
Once Winchester has gone, Anne hangs over the king again;
her eyes flick sideways, as if she were drawing him into conspir acy. Anne’s bodice is still tight-laced, only a slight fullness of her
breasts indicating her condition. There has been no announcement; announcements are never made, women’s bodies are
uncertain things and mistakes can occur. But the whole court is
sure she is carrying the heir, and she says so herself; apples are
not mentioned this time, and all the foods she craved when she
was carrying the princess revolt her, so the signs are good it will
be a boy. This bill he will bring into the Commons is not, as she
thinks, some anticipation of disaster, but a confirmation of her
place in the world. She must be thirty-three this year. For how
many years did he laugh at her flat chest and yellow skin? Even
he can see her beauty, now she is queen. Her face seems sculpted
in the purity of its lines, her skull small like a cat’s; her throat has
a mineral glitter, as if it were powdered with fool’s gold.
Henry says, ‘Stephen is a resolute ambassador, no doubt, but I
cannot keep him near me. I have trusted him with my innermost
councils, and now he turns.’ He shakes his head. ‘I hate ingratitude. I hate disloyalty. That is why I value a man like you. You
were good to your old master in his trouble. Nothing could
commend you more to me, than that.’ He speaks as if he, personally, hadn’t caused the trouble; as if Wolsey’s fall were caused by
a thunderbolt. ‘Another who has disappointed me is Thomas
More.’
Anne says, ‘When you write your bill against the false
prophetess Barton, put More in it, beside Fisher.’
He shakes his head. ‘It won’t run. Parliament won’t have it.
There is plenty of evidence against Fisher, and the Commons
don’t like him, he talks to them as if they were Turks. But More
came to me even before Barton was arrested and showed me how
he was clear in the matter.’
‘But it will frighten him,’ Anne says. ‘I want him frightened.
Fright may unmake a man. I have seen it occur. Three in the afternoon: candles brought in. He consults
Richard’s day-book: John Fisher is waiting. It is time to be
enraged. He tries thinking about Gardiner, but he keeps laughing. ‘Arrange your face,’ Richard says.
‘You’d never imagine that Stephen owed me money. I paid for
his installation at Winchester.’
‘Call it in, sir.’
‘But I have already taken his house for the queen. He is still
grieving. I had better not drive him to an extremity. I ought to
leave him a way back.’
Bishop Fisher is seated, his skeletal hands resting on an ebony
cane. ‘Good evening, my lord,’ he says. ‘Why are you so
gullible?’
The bishop seems surprised that they are not to start off with
a prayer. Nevertheless, he murmurs a blessing.
‘You had better ask the king’s pardon. Beg the favour of it.
Plead with him to consider your age and infirmities.’
‘I do not know my offence. And, whatever you think, I am not
in my second childhood.’
‘But I believe you are. How else would you have given
credence to this woman Barton? If you came across a puppet
show in the street, would you not stand there cheering, and
shout, “Look at their little wooden legs walking, look how they
wave their arms? Hear them blow their trumpets”. Would you
not?’
‘I don’t think I ever saw a puppet show,’ Fisher says sadly. ‘At
least, not one of the kind of which you speak.’
‘But you’re in one, my lord bishop! Look around you. It’s all
one great puppet show.’
‘And yet so many did believe in her,’ Fisher says mildly.
‘Warham himself, Canterbury that was. A score, a hundred
of devout and learned men. They attested her miracles. And
why should she not voice her knowledge, being inspired? We
know that before the Lord goes to work, he gives warning of himself through his servants, for it is stated by the prophet
Amos …’
‘Don’t prophet Amos me, man. She threatened the king.
Foresaw his death.’
‘Foreseeing it is not the same as desiring it, still less plotting it.’
‘Ah, but she never foresaw anything that she didn’t hope
would happen. She sat down with the king’s enemies and told
them how it would be.’
‘If you mean Lord Exeter,’ the bishop says, ‘he is already
pardoned, of course, and so is Lady Gertrude. If they were
guilty, the king would have proceeded.’
‘That does not follow. Henry wishes for reconciliation. He
finds it in him to be merciful. As he may be to you even yet, but
you must admit your faults. Exeter has not been writing against
the king, but you have.’
‘Where? Show me.’
‘Your hand is disguised, my lord, but not from me. Now you
will publish no more.’ Fisher’s glance shoots upwards. Delicately, his bones move beneath his skin; his fist grips his cane, the
handle of which is a gilded dolphin. ‘Your printers abroad are
working for me now. My friend Stephen Vaughan has offered
them a better rate.’
‘It is about the divorce you are hounding me,’ Fisher says. ‘It
is not about Elizabeth Barton. It is because Queen Katherine
asked my counsel and I gave it.’
‘You say I am hounding you, when I ask you to keep within
the law? Do not try to lead me away from your prophetess, or I
will lead you where she is and lock you up next door to her.
Would you have been so keen to believe her, if in one of her
visions she had seen Anne crowned queen a year before it
occurred, and Heaven smiling down on the event? In that case, I
put it to you, you would have called her a witch.’
Fisher shakes his head; he retreats into bafflement. ‘I always
wondered, you know, it has puzzled me many a year, if in the gospels Mary Magdalene was the same Mary who was Martha’s
sister. Elizabeth Barton told me for a certainty she was. In the
whole matter, she didn’t hesitate.’
He laughs. ‘Oh, she’s familiar with these people. She’s in and
out of their houses. She’s shared a bowl of pottage many a time
with our Blessed Lady. Look now, my lord, holy simplicity was
well enough in its day, but its day is over. We’re at war. Just
because the Emperor’s soldiers aren’t running down the street,
don’t deceive yourself – this is a war and you are in the enemy
camp.’
The bishop is silent. He sways a little on his stool. Sniffs. ‘I see
why Wolsey retained you. You are a ruffian and so was he. I have
been a priest forty years, and I have never seen such ungodly men
as those who flourish today. Such evil councillors.’
‘Fall ill,’ he says. ‘Take to your bed. That’s what I recommend.’
The bill of attainder against the Maid and her allies is laid before
the House of Lords on a Saturday morning, 21 February. Fisher’s
name is in it and so, at Henry’s command, is More’s. He goes to
the Tower to see the woman Barton, to see if she has anything
else to get off her conscience before her death is scheduled.
She has survived the winter, trailed across country to her
outdoor confessions, standing exposed on scaffolds in the
cutting wind. He brings a candle in with him, and finds her
slumped on her stool like a badly tied bundle of rags; the air is
both cold and stale. She looks up and says, as if they were resuming a conversation, ‘Mary Magdalene told me I should die.’
Perhaps, he thinks, she has been talking to me in her head.
‘Did she give you a date?’
‘You’d find that helpful?’ she asks. He wonders if she knows
that Parliament, indignant over More’s inclusion, could delay the
bill against her till spring. ‘I’m glad you’ve come, Master
Cromwell. Nothing happens here.