Still, Christophe says, they say le roi Henri is groaning as if he
were in pain himself: oh, where is Cremuel?
A message is brought. Henry has said, I am coming to visit.
It’s an Italian fever, so I am sure not to take it.
He can hardly believe it. Henry ran away from Anne when she
had the sweat: even at the height of his love for her.
He says, send Thurston up. They have been keeping him on a
low diet, invalid food like turkey. Now, he says, we are going to
plan – what? – a piglet, stuffed and roasted in the way I once saw
it done at a papal banquet. You will need chopped chicken, lardo,
and a goat’s liver, minced fine. You will need fennel seeds, marjoram, mint, ginger, butter, sugar, walnuts, hen’s eggs and some
saffron. Some people put in cheese but we don’t make the right
kind here in London, besides I myself think it is unnecessary. If
you’re in trouble about any of this send out to Bonvisi’s cook,
he’ll see you right.
He says, ‘Send next door to prior George, tell him to keep his
friars off the streets when the king comes, lest he reform them
too soon.’ It’s his feeling that the whole process should go
slowly, slowly, so people will see the justice of it; no need to spill
the religious out on to the streets. The friars who live at his gates
are a disgrace to their order, but they are good neighbours to
him. They have given up their refectory, and from their chamber
windows at night drifts the sound of merry supper parties. Any
day you can join a crowd of them drinking at the Well with Two
Buckets just outside his gates. The abbey church is more like a
market, and a fleshmarket too. The district is full of young bachelors from the Italian merchant houses, who are serving their
London year; he often entertains them, and when they leave his
table (drained of market information) he knows they make a
dash for the friars’ precincts, where enterprising London girls are
sheltering from the rain and waiting to make amiable terms. It is 17 April when the king makes his visit. At dawn there are
showers. By ten o’clock the air is mild as buttermilk. He is up and
in a chair, from which he rises. My dear Cromwell: Henry kisses
him firmly on both cheeks, takes him by the arms and (in case he
thinks he is the only strong man in the kingdom) he sits him back,
decisively, in his chair. ‘You sit and give me no argument,’ Henry
says. ‘Give me no argument for once, Master Secretary.’
The ladies of the house, Mercy and his sister-in-law Johane,
are decked out like Walsingham madonnas on a feast day. They
curtsey low, and Henry sways above them, informally attired,
jacket of silver brocade, vast gold chain across his chest, his fists
flashing with Indian emeralds. He has not wholly mastered the
family relationships, for which no one can blame him. ‘Master
Secretary’s sister?’ he says to Johane. ‘No, forgive me. I remember now that you lost your sister Bet at the same time my own
lovely sister died.’
It is such a simple, human sentence, coming from a king; at the
mention of their most recent loss, tears well into the eyes of the
two women, and Henry, turning to one, then the other, with a
careful forefinger dots them from their cheeks, and makes them
smile. The little brides Alice and Jo he whirls up into the air as if
they were butterflies, and kisses them on the mouth, saying he
wishes he had known them when he was a boy. The sad truth is,
do you not notice, Master Secretary, the older one gets, the lovelier the girls?
Then eighty will have its advantages, he says: every drab will
be a pearl. Mercy says to the king, as if talking to a neighbour,
give over, sir: you’re no age. Henry stretches out his arms and
displays himself before the company: ‘Forty-five in July.’
He notes the incredulous hush. It does the job. Henry is gratified.
Henry walks around and looks at all his paintings and asks
who the people are. He looks at Anselma, the Queen of Sheba,
on the wall. He makes them laugh by picking up Bella and talking to her in Honor Lisle’s atrocious French. ‘Lady Lisle sent
the queen a little creature even smaller. He tips his head to one
side and his ears prick up, as if to say, why are you speaking to
me? So she calls him Pourquoi.’ When he speaks of Anne his
voice drips uxorious sentiment: like clear honey. The women
smile, pleased to see their king set such an example. ‘You know
him, Cromwell, you have seen him on her arm. She takes him
everywhere. Sometimes,’ and now he nods judiciously, ‘I think
she loves him better than me. Yes, I am second to the dog.’
He sits smiling, no appetite, watching as Henry eats from the
silver dishes Hans has designed.
Henry speaks kindly to Richard, calling him cousin. He
signals for him to stand by while he talks to his councillor, and
for others to retreat a little way. What if King Francis this and
Francis that, should I cross the sea myself to patch together some
sort of deal, would you cross over yourself when you are on
your feet again? What if the Irish, what if the Scots, what if it all
gets out of hand and we have wars like in Germany and peasants
crowning themselves, what if these false prophets, what if
Charles overruns me and Katherine takes the field, she is of
mettlesome temper and the people love her, God knows why for
I do not.
If that happens, he says, I will be out of this chair and take the
field, my own sword in my hand.
When the king has enjoyed his dinner he sits by him and talks
softly about himself. The April day, fresh and showery, puts him
in mind of the day his father died. He talks of his childhood: I
lived at the palace at Eltham, I had a fool called Goose. When I
was seven the Cornish rebels came up, led by a giant, do you
remember that? My father sent me to the Tower to keep me safe.
I said, let me out, I want to fight! I wasn’t frightened of a giant
from the west, but I was frightened of my grandmother Margaret
Beaufort, because her face was like a death’s head, and her grip on
my wrist was like a skeleton’s grip. When we were young, he says, we were always told, your
grandmother gave birth to your lord father the king when she
was a little creature of thirteen years. Her past was like a sword
she held over us. What, Harry, are you laughing in Lent? When
I, at little more years than you, gave birth to the Tudor? What,
Harry, are you dancing, what, Harry, are you playing at ball?
Her life was all duty. She kept twelve paupers in her house at
Woking and once she made me kneel down with a basin and
wash their yellow feet, she’s lucky I didn’t throw up on them.
She used to start praying every morning at five. When she knelt
down at her prie-dieu she cried out from the pain in her knees.
And whenever there was a celebration, a wedding or a birth, a
pastime or an occasion of mirth, do you know what she did?
Every time? Without failing? She wept.
And with her, it was all Prince Arthur. Her shining light and
her creeping saint. ‘When I became king instead, she lay down
and died out of spite. And on her deathbed, do you know what
she told me?’ Henry snorts. ‘Obey Bishop Fisher in all things!
Pity she didn’t tell Fisher to obey me!’
When the king has left with his gentlemen, Johane comes to sit
with him. They talk quietly; though everything they say is fit to
be overheard. ‘Well, it came off sweetly.’
‘We must give the kitchen a present.’
‘The whole household did well. I am glad to have seen him.’
‘Is he what you hoped?’
‘I had not thought him so tender. I see why Katherine has
fought so hard for him. I mean, not just to be queen, which she
thinks is her right, but to have him for a husband. I would say he
is a man very apt to be loved.’
Alice bursts in. ‘Forty-five! I thought he was past that.’
‘You would have bedded him for a handful of garnets,’ Jo
sneers. ‘You said so.’
‘Well, you for export licences!’
‘Stop!’ he says. ‘You girls! If your husbands should hear you.’ ‘Our husbands know what we are,’ Jo says. ‘We are full of
ourselves, aren’t we? You don’t come to Austin Friars to look for
shy little maids. I wonder our uncle doesn’t arm us.’
‘Custom constrains me. Or I’d send you to Ireland.’
Johane watches them rampage away. When they are out of
earshot, she checks over her shoulder and murmurs, you will not
credit what I am going to say next.
‘Try me.’
‘Henry is frightened of you.’
He shakes his head. Who frightens the Lion of England?
‘Yes, I swear to you. You should have seen his face, when you
said you would take your sword in your hand.’
The Duke of Norfolk comes to visit him, clattering up from the
yard where his servants hold his plumed horse. ‘Liver, is it? My
liver’s shot to pieces. And these five years my muscles have been
wasting. Look at that!’ He sticks out a claw. ‘I’ve tried every
physician in the realm, but they don’t know what ails me. Yet
they never fail to send in their accounts.’
Norfolk, he knows it for a fact, would never pay anything so
mere as a doctor’s bill.
‘And the colics and the gripes,’ the duke says, ‘they make my
mortal life a Purgatory. Sometimes I’m at stool all night.’
‘Your Grace should take life more easily,’ Rafe says. Not bolt
your food, he means. Not race about in a lather like a post
horse.
‘I intend to, believe me. My niece makes it clear she wants
none of my company and none of my counsel. I’m for my house
at Kenninghall, and Henry can find me there if he wants me. God
restore you, Master Secretary. St Walter is good, I hear, if a job’s
getting too much for you. And St Ubald against the headache, he
does the trick for me.’ He gropes inside his jacket. ‘Brought you
a medal. Pope blessed it. Bishop of Rome, sorry.’ He drops it on
the table. ‘Thought you might not have one. He is out of the door. Rafe picks up the medal. ‘It’s probably
cursed.’
On the stairs they can hear the duke, his voice raised, plaintive: ‘I thought he was nearly dead! They told me he was nearly
dead …’
He says to Rafe, ‘Seen him off.’
Rafe grins. ‘Suffolk too.’
Henry has never remitted the fine of thirty thousand pounds
he imposed when Suffolk married his sister. From time to time he
remembers it, and this is one of those times; Brandon has had to
give up his lands in Oxfordshire and Berkshire to pay his debts,
and now he keeps small state down in the country.
He closes his eyes. It is bliss to think of: two dukes on the run
from him.
His neighbour Chapuys comes in. ‘I told my master in
dispatches that the king has visited you. My master is amazed
that the king would go to a private house, to one not even a lord.
But I told him, you should see the work he gets out of
Cromwell.’
‘He should have such a servant,’ he says. ‘But Eustache, you
are an old hypocrite, you know. You would dance on my grave.’
‘My dear Thomas, you are always the only opponent.’
Thomas Avery smuggles in to him Luca Pacioli’s book of chess
puzzles. He has soon done all the puzzles, and drawn out some
of his own on blank pages at the back. His letters are brought and
he reviews the latest round of disasters. They say that the tailor at
Münster, the King of Jerusalem with sixteen wives, has had a row
with one of them and cut her head off in the marketplace.
He re-emerges into the world. Knock him down and he will
get up. Death has called to inspect him, she has measured him,
breathed into his face: walked away again. He is a little leaner, his
clothes tell him; for a while he feels light, no longer grounded in
the world, each day buoyant with possibilities. The Boleyns
congratulate him heartily on his return to health, and so they should, for without him how would they be what they are now?
Cranmer, when they meet, keeps leaning forward to pat his
shoulder and squeeze his hand.
While he has been recovering, the king has cropped his hair.
He has done this to disguise his increasing baldness, though it
doesn’t, not at all. His loyal councillors have done the same, and
soon it becomes a mark of fellowship between them. ‘By God,
sir,’ Master Wriothesley says, ‘if I wasn’t frightened of you
before, I would be now.’
‘But Call-Me,’ he says, ‘you were frightened of me before.’
There is no change in Richard’s aspect; committed to the
tilting ground, he keeps his hair cropped to fit under a helmet.
The shorn Master Wriothesley looks more intelligent, if that
were possible, and Rafe more determined and alert. Richard
Riche has lost the vestiges of the boy he was. Suffolk’s huge face
has acquired a strange innocence. Monseigneur looks deceptively
ascetic. As for Norfolk, no one notices the change. ‘What sort of
hair did he have before?’ Rafe asks. Strips of iron-grey fortify his
scalp, as if laid out by a military engineer.
The fashion spreads into the country. When Rowland Lee next
pitches into the Rolls House, he thinks a cannonball is coming at
him. His son’s eyes look large and calm, a still golden colour.
Your mother would have wept over your baby curls, he says,
rubbing his head affectionately. Gregory says, ‘Would she? I
hardly remember her.’
As April goes out, four treacherous monks are put on trial. The
oath has been offered them repeatedly, and refused. It is a year
since the Maid was put to death. The king showed mercy to her
followers; he is not now so disposed. It is the Charterhouse of
London where the mischief originates, that austere house of men
who sleep on straw; it is where Thomas More tried his vocation,
before it was revealed to him that the world needed his talents.
He, Cromwell, has visited the house, as he has visited the recalci trant community at Syon. He has spoken gently, he has spoken
bluntly, he has threatened and cajoled; he has sent enlightened
clerics to argue the king’s case, and he has interviewed the disaffected members of the community and set them to work against
their brethren. It is all to no avail. Their response is, go away, go
away and leave me to my sanctified death.
If they think that they will maintain to the end the equanimity
of their prayer-lives, they are wrong, because the law demands
the full traitor’s penalty, the short spin in the wind and the
conscious public disembowelling, a brazier alight for human
entrails. It is the most horrible of all deaths, pain and rage and
humiliation swallowed to the dregs, the fear so great that the
strongest rebel is unmanned before the executioner with his
knife can do the job; before each one dies he watches his fellows
and, cut down from the rope, he crawls like an animal round and
round on the bloody boards.
Wiltshire and George Boleyn are to represent the king at the
spectacle, and Norfolk, who, grumbling, has been dragged up
from the country and told to prepare for an embassy to France.
Henry thinks of going himself to see the monks die, for the court
will wear masks, edging on their high-stepping horses among the
city officials and the ragged populace, who turn out by the
hundred to see any such show. But the king’s build makes it difficult to disguise him, and he fears there may be demonstrations in
favour of Katherine, still a favourite with the more verminous
portion of every crowd. Young Richmond shall stand in for me,
his father decides; one day he may have to defend, in battle, his
half-sister’s title, so it becomes him to learn the sights and sounds
of slaughter.
The boy comes to him at night, as the deaths are scheduled
next day: ‘Good Master Secretary, take my place.’
‘Will you take mine, at my morning meeting with the king?
Think of it like this,’ he says, firm and pleasant. ‘If you plead
sickness, or fall off your horse tomorrow or vomit in front of your father-in-law, he’ll never let you forget it. If you want him
to let you into your bride’s bed, prove yourself a man. Keep your
eyes on the duke, and pattern your conduct on his.’
But Norfolk himself comes to him, when it is over, and says,
Cromwell, I swear upon my life that one of the monks spoke
when his heart was out. Jesus, he called, Jesus save us, poor
Englishmen.
‘No, my lord. It is not possible he should do so.’
‘Do you know that for a fact?’
‘I know it from experience.’
The duke quails. Let him think it, that his past deeds have
included the pulling out of hearts. ‘I dare say you’re right.’
Norfolk crosses himself. ‘It must have been a voice from the
crowd.’
The night before the monks met their end, he had signed a pass
for Margaret Roper, the first in months. Surely, he thinks, for
Meg to be with her father when traitors are being led out to their
deaths; surely she will turn from her resolve, she will say to her
father, come now, the king is in his killing vein, you must take the
oath as I have done. Make a mental reservation, cross your
fingers behind your back; only ask for Cromwell or any officer
of the king, say the words, come home.
But his tactic fails. She and her father stood dry-eyed at a
window as the traitors were brought out, still in their habits, and
launched on their journey to Tyburn. I always forget, he thinks,
how More neither pities himself nor takes pity on others.
Because I would have protected my own girls from such a sight,
I think he would too. But he uses Meg to harden his resolve. If
she will not give way, he cannot; and she will not give way.
The following day he goes in to see More himself. The rain
splashes and hisses from the stones underfoot; walls and water
are indistinguishable, and around small corners a wind moans
like a winter wind. When he has struggled out of his wet outer layers he stands chatting to the turnkey Martin, getting the news
of his wife and new baby. How shall I find him, he asks at last
and Martin says, have you ever noticed how he has one shoulder
up and the other down?
It comes from overmuch writing, he says. One elbow on the
desk, the other shoulder dropped. Well, whatever, Martin says:
he looks like a little carved hunchback on a bench end.
More has grown his beard; he looks as one imagines the
prophets of Münster to look, though he would abhor the
comparison. ‘Master Secretary, how does the king take the news
from abroad? They say the Emperor’s troops are on the move.’
‘Yes, but to Tunis, I think.’ He casts a glance at the rain. ‘If you
were the Emperor, wouldn’t you pick Tunis, rather than
London? Look, I haven’t come to quarrel with you. Just to see if
you are comfortable.’
More says, ‘I hear you have sworn my fool, Henry Pattinson.’
He laughs.
‘Whereas the men who died yesterday had followed your
example, and refused to swear.’
‘Let me be clear. I am no example. I am just myself, alone. I say
nothing against the act. I say nothing against the men that made it.
I say nothing against the oath, or against any man that swears it.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he sits down on the chest where More keeps his
possessions, ‘but all this saying nothing, it won’t do for a jury,
you know. Should it come to a jury.’
‘You have come to threaten me.’
‘The Emperor’s feats of arms shorten the king’s temper. He
means to send you a commission, who will want a straight
answer as to his title.’
‘Oh I’m sure your friends will be too good for me. Lord
Audley? And Richard Riche? Listen. Ever since I came here I
have been preparing for my death, at your hands – yes, yours –
or at the hands of nature. All I require is peace and silence for my
prayers.’