Her hands are plunged into the pocket of her apron. She shifts
them, as if she were holding something; he sees that one of her
hands is clutching the other. ‘So you suppose he is dead?’
‘It would be reasonable to think so. I have spoken with
the man who saw him go into the river. He seems a good
witness.’
‘So I could marry again. If anybody wanted me.’
Helen’s eyes rest on his face. She says nothing. Just stands. The
moment seems to last a long time. Then: ‘What happened to our
picture? The one with the man holding his heart shaped like a
book? Or do I mean his book shaped like a heart?’
‘I gave it to a Genovese.’
‘Why?’
‘I needed to pay for an archbishop.’
She moves, reluctant, slow. She drags her eyes from his face.
‘Hans is here. He has been waiting for you. He is angry. He says
time is money.’
‘I’ll make it up to him.’
Hans is taking time off from his preparations for the coronation. He is building a living model of Mount Parnassus on
Gracechurch Street, and today he has to put the Nine Muses
through their paces, so he doesn’t like being kept waiting by
Thomas Cromwell. He is banging around in the next room. It
seems he is moving the furniture.
They take Frith to the archbishop’s palace at Croydon, to be
examined by Cranmer. The new archbishop could have seen him
at Lambeth; but the way to Croydon is longer, and lies through
the woods. In the depth of these woods, they say to him, it
would be a bad day for us if you were to give us the slip. For see
how thick the trees are on the Wandsworth side. You could hide
an army in there. We could spend two days searching there, more
– and if you’d gone east, to Kent and the river, you’d be clear
away before we got around to that side. But Frith knows his road; he is going towards his death. They
stand on the path, whistling, talking about the weather. One
pisses, leisurely, against a tree. One follows the flight of a jay
through the branches. But when they turn back, Frith is waiting,
placid, for his journey to resume.
Four days. Fifty barges in procession, furnished by the city
livery companies; two hours from the city to Blackwall, their
rigging hung with bells and flags; a light but brisk breeze, as
ordered from God in his prayers. Reverse order, anchor at the
steps of Greenwich Palace, collect incoming queen in her own
barge – Katherine’s old one, rebadged, twenty-four oars: next her
women, her guard, all the ornaments of the king’s court, all those
proud and noble souls who swore they’d sabotage the event.
Boats packed with musicians; three hundred craft afloat, banners
and pennants flying, the music ringing bank to bank, and each
bank lined with Londoners. Downstream with the tide, led by an
aquatic dragon spitting fire, and accompanied by wild men
throwing fireworks. Sea-going ships discharge their ordnance in
salute.
By the time they reach the Tower the sun is out. It looks as if
the Thames is ablaze. Henry is waiting to greet Anne as she
lands. He kisses her without formality, scooping back her gown,
pinning it at her sides to show her belly to England.
Next, Henry makes knights: a shoal of Howards and Boleyns,
their friends and followers. Anne rests.
Uncle Norfolk is missing the show. Henry has sent him to
King Francis, to reaffirm the most cordial alliance between our
two kingdoms. He is Earl Marshal and should be in charge of the
coronation, but there is another Howard to step in as his deputy,
and besides he, Thomas Cromwell, is running everything,
including the weather.
He has conferred with Arthur Lord Lisle, who will preside at
the coronation banquet: Arthur Plantagenet, a gentle relic of a former age. He is to go to Calais, directly this is over, to replace
Lord Berners as Governor, and he, Cromwell, must brief him
before he goes. Lisle has a long bony Plantagenet face, and he is
tall like his father King Edward, who no doubt had many
bastards, but none so distinguished as this elderly man, bending
his creaky knee in obeisance before Boleyn’s daughter. His wife
Honor, his second wife, is twenty years his junior, small and delicate, a toy wife. She wears tawny silk, coral bracelets with gold
hearts, and an expression of vigilant dissatisfaction, bordering on
the peevish. She looks him up and down. ‘I suppose you are
Cromwell?’ If a man spoke to you in that tone, you’d invite him
to step outside and ask someone to hold your coat.
Day Two: bringing Anne to Westminster. He is up before first
light, watching from the battlements as thin clouds disperse over
the Bermondsey bank, and an early chill as clear as water is
replaced by a steady, golden heat.
Her procession is led by the retinue of the French ambassador.
The judges in scarlet follow, the Knights of the Bath in blueviolet of antique cut, then the bishops, Lord Chancellor Audley
and his retinue, the great lords in crimson velvet. Sixteen knights
carry Anne in a white litter hung with silver bells which ring at
each step, at each breath; the queen is in white, her body shimmering in its strange skin, her face held in a conscious solemn
smile, her hair loose beneath a circle of gems. After her, ladies on
palfreys trapped with white velvet; and ancient dowagers in their
chariots, their faces acidulated.
At every turn on the route there are pageants and living
statues, recitations of her virtue and gifts of gold from city
coffers, her white falcon emblem crowned and entwined with
roses, and blossom mashed and minced under the treading feet
of the stout sixteen, so scent rises like smoke. The route is hung
with tapestries and banners, and at his orders the ground
beneath the horses’ hooves is gravelled to prevent slipping, and
the crowds restrained behind rails in case of riots and crush; every law officer London can muster is among the crowd,
because he is determined that in time to come, when this is
remembered and told to those who were not here, no one is
going to say, oh, Queen Anne’s coronation, that was the day I
got my pocket picked. Fenchurch Street, Leadenhall, Cheap,
Paul’s Churchyard, Fleet, Temple Bar, Westminster Hall. So
many fountains flowing with wine that it’s hard to find one
flowing with water. And looking down on them, the other
Londoners, those monsters who live in the air, the city’s
uncounted population of stone men and women and beasts, and
things that are neither human nor beasts, fanged rabbits and
flying hares, four-legged birds and pinioned snakes, imps with
bulging eyes and ducks’ bills, men who are wreathed in leaves or
have the heads of goats or rams;: creatures with knotted coils
and leather wings, with hairy ears and cloven feet, horned and
roaring, feathered and scaled, some laughing, some singing,
some pulling back their lips to show their teeth; lions and friars,
donkeys and geese, devils with children crammed into their
maws, all chewed up except for their helpless paddling feet;
limestone or leaden, metalled or marbled, shrieking and sniggering above the populace, hooting and gurning and dry-heaving
from buttresses, walls and roofs.
That night, the king permitting, he goes back to Austin Friars.
He visits his neighbour Chapuys, who has secluded himself from
the events of the day, bolting his shutters and stuffing his ears
against the fanfares, the ceremonial cannon fire. He goes in a
small satirical procession led by Thurston, taking the ambassador sweetmeats to ease his sulks, and some fine Italian wine sent
to him by the Duke of Suffolk.
Chapuys greets him without a smile. ‘Well, you have
succeeded where the cardinal failed, Henry has what he wants at
last. I say to my master, who is capable of looking at these things
impartially, it is a pity from Henry’s point of view that he did not
take up Cromwell years ago. His affairs would have gone on much better.’ He is about to say, the cardinal taught me everything, but Chapuys talks over him. ‘When the cardinal came to a
closed door he would flatter it – oh beautiful yielding door! Then
he would try tricking it open. And you are just the same, just the
same.’ He pours himself some of the duke’s present. ‘But in the
last resort, you just kick it in.’
The wine is one of those big, noble wines that Brandon
favours, and Chapuys drinks appreciatively and says I don’t
understand it, nothing do I understand in this benighted country.
Is Cranmer Pope now? Or is Henry Pope? Perhaps you are
Pope? My men who were among the press today say they heard
few voices raised for the concubine, and plenty who called upon
God to bless Katherine, the rightful queen.
Did they? I don’t know what city they were in.
Chapuys sniffs: they may well wonder. These days it is
nothing but Frenchmen about the king, and she, Boleyn, she is
half-French herself, and wholly bought by them; her entire
family are in the pocket of Francis. But you, Thomas, you are not
taken in by these Frenchmen, are you?
He reassures him: my dear friend, not for one instant.
Chapuys weeps; it’s unlike him: all credit to the noble wine. ‘I
have failed my master the Emperor. I have failed Katherine.’
‘Never mind.’ He thinks, tomorrow is another battle, tomorrow is another world.
He is at the abbey by dawn. The procession is forming up by six.
Henry will watch the coronation from a box screened by a
lattice, sequestered in the painted stonework. When he puts his
head in about eight o’clock the king is already sitting expectantly
on a velvet cushion, and a kneeling servant is unpacking his
breakfast. ‘The French ambassador will be joining me,’ Henry
says; and he meets that gentleman as he is hurrying away.
‘One hears you have been painted, Maître Cremuel. I too have
been painted. You have seen the result? ‘Not yet. Hans is so occupied.’ Even on this fine morning,
here beneath fan vaulting the ambassador looks blue-tinged.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘it appears that with the coronation of this queen,
our two nations have reached a state of perfect amity. How to
improve on perfection? I ask you, monsieur.’
The ambassador bows. ‘Downhill from here?’
‘Let’s try, you know. To maintain a state of mutual usefulness.
When our sovereigns are once again snapping at each other.’
‘Another Calais meeting?’
‘Perhaps in a year.’
‘No sooner?’
‘I will not put my king on the high seas for no cause.’
‘We’ll talk, Cremuel.’ Flat-palmed, the ambassador taps him
on the chest, over the heart.
Anne’s procession forms up at nine. She is mantled in purple
velvet, edged in ermine. She has seven hundred yards to walk, on
the blue cloth that stretches to the altar, and her face is entranced.
Far behind her, the dowager duchess of Norfolk, supporting her
train; nearer, holding up the hem of her long robe, the Bishop of
Winchester at one side, the Bishop of London at the other. Both
of them, Gardiner and Stokesley, were king’s men in the matter
of the divorce; but now they look as if they wish they were far
distant from the living object of his remarriage, who has a fine
sheen of sweat on her high forehead, and whose compressed lips
– by the time she reaches the altar – seem to have vanished into
her face. Who says two bishops should hold up her hem? It’s all
written down in a great book, so old that one hardly dare touch
it, breathe on it; Lisle seems to know it by heart. Perhaps it
should be copied and printed, he thinks.
He makes a mental note, and then concentrates his will on
Anne: Anne not to stumble, as she folds herself towards the
ground to lie face-down in prayer before the altar, her attendants stepping forward to support her for the crucial twelve
inches before belly hits sacred pavement. He finds himself praying: this child, his half-formed heart now beating against
the stone floor, let him be sanctified by this moment, and let him
be like his father’s father, like his Tudor uncles; let him be hard,
alert, watchful of opportunity, wringing use from the smallest
turn of fortune. If Henry lives twenty years, Henry who is
Wolsey’s creation, and then leaves this child to succeed him, I
can build my own prince: to the glorification of God and the
commonwealth of England. Because I will not be too old. Look
at Norfolk, already he is sixty, his father was seventy when he
fought at Flodden. And I shall not be like Henry Wyatt and say,
now I am retiring from affairs. Because what is there, but
affairs?
Anne, shaky, is back on her feet. Cranmer, in a dense cloud of
incense, is pressing into her hand the sceptre, the rod of ivory,
and resting the crown of St Edward briefly on her head, before
changing for a lighter and more bearable crown: a prestidigitation, his hands as supple as if he’d been shuffling crowns all his
life. The prelate looks mildly excited, as if someone had offered
him a cup of warm milk.
Anointed, Anna withdraws, incense billowing around her,
swallowed into its murk: Anna Regina, to a bedchamber
provided for her, to prepare for the feast in Westminster Hall. He
pushes unceremoniously through the dignitaries – all you, all
you who said you would not be here – and catches sight of
Charles Brandon, Constable of England, mounted on his white
horse and ready to ride into the hall among them. He is a huge,
blazing presence, from which he withdraws his sight; Charles, he
thinks, will not outlive me either. Back into the dimness, towards
Henry. Only one thing checks him, the sight, whisking around a
corner, of the hem of a scarlet robe; no doubt it is one of the
judges, escaped from his procession.
The Venetian ambassador is blocking the entrance to Henry’s
box, but the king waves him aside, and says, ‘Cromwell, did not
my wife look well, did she not look beautiful? Will you go and see her, and give her …’ he looks around, for some likely present,
then wrenches a diamond from his knuckle, ‘will you give her
this?’ He kisses the ring. ‘And this too?’
‘I shall hope to convey the sentiment,’ he says, and sighs, as if
he were Cranmer.
The king laughs. His face is alight. ‘This is my best,’ he says.
‘This is my best day.’
‘Until the birth, Majesty,’ says the Venetian, bowing.
It is Mary Howard, Norfolk’s little daughter, who opens the
door to him.
‘No, you most certainly cannot come in,’ she says. ‘Utterly
not. The queen is undressed.’
Richmond is right, he thinks; she has no breasts at all. Still. For
fourteen. I’ll charm this small Howard, he thinks, so he stands
spinning words around her, complimenting her gown and her
jewels, till he hears a voice from within, muffled like a voice from
a tomb; and Mary Howard jumps and says, oh, all right, if she
says so you can see her.
The bedcurtains are drawn close. He pulls them back. Anne is
lying in her shift. She looks flat as a ghost, except for the shocking mound of her six-month child. In her ceremonial robes, her
condition had hardly showed, and only that sacred instant, as she
lay belly-down to stone, had connected him to her body, which
now lies stretched out like a sacrifice: her breasts puffy beneath
the linen, her swollen feet bare.
‘Mother of God,’ she says. ‘Can you not leave Howard
women alone? For an ugly man, you are very sure of yourself.
Let me look at you.’ She bobs her head up. ‘Is that crimson? It’s
a very black crimson. Did you go against my orders?’
‘Your cousin Francis Bryan says I look like a travelling bruise.’
‘A contusion on the body politic.’ Jane Rochford laughs.
‘Can you do this?’ he asks: almost doubting, almost tender.
‘You are exhausted. Oh, I think she will bear up.’ There is no sisterly pride in
Mary’s voice. ‘She was born for this, was she not?’
Jane Seymour: ‘Is the king watching?’
‘He is proud of her.’ He speaks to Anne, stretched out on her
catafalque. ‘He says you have never looked more beautiful. He
sends you this.’
Anne makes a little sound, a moan, poised between gratitude
and boredom: oh, what, another diamond?
‘And a kiss, which I said he had better bring in person.’
She shows no sign of taking the ring from him. It is almost
irresistible, to place it on her belly and walk away. Instead he
hands it to her sister. He says, ‘The feast will wait for you, Highness. Come only when you feel ready.’
She levers herself upright, with a gasp. ‘I am coming now.’ Mary
Howard leans forward and rubs her lower back, with an unpractised hand, a fluttering virginal motion as if she were stroking a
bird. ‘Oh, get away,’ the anointed queen snaps. She looks sick.
‘Where were you last evening? I wanted you. The streets cheered
for me. I heard them. They say the people love Katherine, but
really, it is just the women, they pity her. We will show them something better. They will love me, when this creature is out of me.’
Jane Rochford: ‘Oh, but madam, they love Katherine because
she is the daughter of two anointed sovereigns. Make your mind
up to it, madam – they will never love you, any more than they
love … Cromwell here. It is nothing to do with your merits. It is
a point of fact. There is no use trying to evade it.’
‘Perhaps enough,’ Jane Seymour says. He turns to her and sees
something surprising; she has grown up.
‘Lady Carey,’ Jane Rochford says, ‘we must get your sister on
her feet now and back in her robes, so see Master Cromwell out
and enjoy your usual confabulation. This is not a day to break
with tradition.’
At the door: ‘Mary?’ he says. Notices the dark stains under
her eyes. Yes?’ She speaks in a tone of ‘yes, and what is it now?’
‘I am sorry the marriage with my nephew did not come off.’
‘Not that I was ever asked, of course.’ She smiles tightly. ‘I
shall never see your house. And one hears so much of it.’
‘What do you hear?’
‘Oh … of chests bursting with gold pieces.’
‘We would never allow that. We would get bigger chests.’
‘They say it is the king’s money.’
‘It’s all the king’s money. His image is on it. Mary, look,’ he
takes her hand, ‘I could not dissuade him from his liking for you.
He –’
‘How hard did you try?’
‘I wish you were safe with us. Though of course it was not the
great match you might expect, as the queen’s sister.’
‘I doubt there are many sisters who expect what I receive,
nightly.’
She will get another child by Henry, he thinks. Anne will have
it strangled in the cradle. ‘Your friend William Stafford is at
court. At least, I think he is still your friend?’
‘Imagine how he likes my situation. Still, at least I get a kind
word from my father. Monseigneur finds he needs me again. God
forbid the king should ride a mare from any other stable.’
‘This will end. He will free you. He will give you a settlement.
A pension. I’ll speak for you.’
‘Does a dirty dishcloth get a pension?’ Mary sways on the
spot; she seems dazed with misery and fatigue; great tears swell
in her eyes. He stands catching them, dabbing them away, whispering to her and soothing her, and wanting to be elsewhere.
When he breaks free he gives her a backward glance, as she stands
in the doorway, desolate. Something must be done for her, he
thinks. She’s losing her looks.
Henry watches from a gallery, high above Westminster Hall, as
his queen takes her seat in the place of honour, her ladies around her, the flower of the court and the nobility of England. The king
has fortified himself earlier, and is picking at a spice plate,
dipping thin slices of apple into cinnamon. In the gallery with
him, encore les ambassadeurs, Jean de Dinteville furred against
the June chill, and his friend the Bishop of Lavaur, wrapped in a
fine brocade gown.
‘This has all been most impressive, Cremuel,’ de Selve says;
astute brown eyes study him, taking everything in. He takes in
everything too: stitching and padding, studding and dyeing; he
admires the deep mulberry of the bishop’s brocade. They say
these two Frenchmen favour the gospel, but favour at François’s
court extends no further than a small circle of scholars that the
king, for his own vanity, wishes to patronise; he has never quite
been able to grow his own Thomas More, his own Erasmus,
which naturally piques his pride.
‘Look at my wife the queen.’ Henry leans over the gallery. He
might as well be down there. ‘She is worth the show, is she not?’
‘I have had all the windows reglazed,’ he says. ‘The better to
see her.’
‘Fiat lux,’ de Selve murmurs.
‘She has done very well,’ de Dinteville says. ‘She must have
been six hours on her feet today. One must congratulate Your
Majesty on obtaining a queen who is as strong as a peasant
woman. I mean no disrespect, of course.’
In Paris they are burning Lutherans. He would like to take it
up with the envoys, but he cannot while the odour of roast swan
and peacock drifts up from below.
‘Messieurs,’ he asks (music rising around them like a shallow
tide, silver ripples of sound), ‘do you know of the man Guido
Camillo? I hear he is at your master’s court.’
De Selve and his friend exchange glances. This has thrown
them. ‘The man who builds the wooden box,’ Jean murmurs.
‘Oh yes.’
‘It is a theatre,’ he says. De Selve nods. ‘In which you yourself are the play.’
‘Erasmus has written to us about it,’ Henry says, over his
shoulder. ‘He is having the cabinetmakers create him little
wooden shelves and drawers, one inside another. It is a memory
system for the speeches of Cicero.’
‘With your permission, he intends it as more than that. It is a
theatre on the ancient Vitruvian plan. But it is not to put on
plays. As my lord the bishop says, you as the owner of the
theatre are to stand in the centre of it, and look up. Around you
there is arrayed a system of human knowledge. Like a library, but
as if – can you imagine a library in which each book contains
another book, and a smaller book inside that? Yet it is more than
that.’
The king slips into his mouth an aniseed comfit, and snaps
down on it. ‘Already there are too many books in the world.
There are more every day. One man cannot hope to read them
all.’
‘I do not see how you understand so much about it,’ de Selve
says. ‘All credit to you, Maître Cremuel. Guido will only speak
his own Italian dialect, and even in that he stammers.’
‘If it pleases your master to spend his money,’ Henry says. ‘He
is not a sorcerer, is he, this Guido? I should not like Francis to
fall into the hands of a sorcerer. By the way, Cromwell, I am
sending Stephen back to France.’
Stephen Gardiner. So the French do not like doing business
with Norferk. Not surprising. ‘His mission will be of some duration?’
De Selve catches his eye. ‘But who will do Master Secretary’s
job?’
‘Oh, Cromwell will do it. Won’t you?’ Henry smiles.
He is hardly down into the body of the hall before Master Wriothesley intercepts him. This is a big day for the heralds and their
officers, their children and their friends; fat fees coming their way. He says so, and Call-Me says, fat fees coming your way. He
edges back against the screens, voice low; one could foresee this,
he says, because Henry is tired of it, Winchester’s grinding opposition to him every step of the way. He is tired of arguing; now he
is a married man he looks for a little more douceur. With Anne?
he says and Call-Me laughs: you know her better than me, if as
they say she is a lady with a sharp tongue, then all the more he
needs ministers who are kind to him. So devote yourself to
keeping Stephen abroad, and in time he will confirm you in the
post.
Christophe, dressed up for the afternoon, is hovering nearby
and making signals to him. You will excuse me, he says, but
Wriothesley touches his gown of crimson, as if for luck, and
says, you are the master of the house and the master of the
revels, you are the origin of the king’s happiness, you have done
what the cardinal could not, and much more besides. Even this –
he gestures around him, to where the nobility of England,
having already eaten their words, are working through twentythree dishes – even this feast has been superbly managed. No
one need call for anything, it is all at his hand before he thinks of
it.
He inclines his head, Wriothesley walks away, and he beckons
the boy. Christophe says, one tells me to impart nothing of confidence in the hearing of Call-Me, as Rafe says he go trit-trot to
Gardineur with anything he can get. Now sir, I have a message,
you must go quick to the archbishop. When the feast is done. He
glances up to the dais where the archbishop sits beside Anne,
under her canopy of state. Neither of them is eating, though
Anne is pretending to, both of them are scanning the hall.
‘I go trit-trot,’ he says. He is taken with the phrase. ‘Where?’
‘His old lodging which he says you know. He wishes you to
be secret. He says not to bring any person.’
‘Well, you can come, Christophe. You’re not a person.’
The boy grins.