He is apprehensive; does not quite like the thought of the
abbey precincts, the drunken crowds at dusk, without somebody
to watch his back. Unfortunately, a man cannot have two fronts.
They have almost reached Cranmer’s lodging when fatigue
enwraps his shoulders, an iron cloak. ‘Pause for a moment,’ he
says to Christophe. He has hardly slept these last nights. He
takes a breath, in shadow; here it is cold, and as he passes into the
cloisters he is dipped in night. The rooms around are shuttered,
empty, no sound from within. From behind him, an inchoate
shouting from the Westminster streets, like the cries of those lost
after a battle.
Cranmer looks up; he is already at his desk. ‘These are days we
will never forget,’ he says. ‘No one who has missed it would
believe it. The king spoke warm words in your praise today. I
think it was intended I should convey them.’
‘I wonder why I ever gave any thought to the cost of brickmaking for the Tower. It seems such a small item now. And
tomorrow the jousts. Will you be there? My boy Richard is listed
for the bouts on foot, fighting in single combat.’
‘He will prevail,’ Christophe declares. ‘Biff, and one is flat,
never to rise again.’
‘Hush,’ Cranmer says. ‘You are not here, child. Cromwell,
please.’
He opens a low door at the back of the chamber. He dips his
head, and framed by the doorway in the half light he sees a table,
a stool, and on the stool a woman sitting, young, tranquil, her
head bowed over a book. She looks up. ‘Ich bitte Sie, ich brauch’
eine Kerze.’
‘Christophe, a candle for her.’
The book before her he recognises; it is a tract of Luther’s.
‘May I?’ he says, and picks it up.
He finds himself reading. His mind leaps along the lines. Is she
some fugitive Cranmer is sheltering? Does he know the cost if she is taken? He has time to read half a page, before the archbishop trickles in, like a late apology. ‘This woman is …?’
Cranmer says, ‘Margarete. My wife.’
‘Dear God.’ He slams Luther down on the table. ‘What have
you done? Where did you find her? Germany, evidently. This is
why you were slow to return. I see it now. Why?’
Cranmer says meekly, ‘I could not help it.’
‘Do you know what the king will do to you when he finds you
out? The master executioner of Paris has devised a machine, with
a counterweighted beam – shall I draw it for you? – which when
a heretic is burned dips him into the fire and lifts him out again,
so that the people can see the stages of his agony. Now Henry
will be wanting one. Or he will get some device to tease your
head off your shoulders, over a period of forty days.’
The young woman looks up. ‘Mein Onkel –’
‘Who is that?’
She names a theologian, Andreas Osiander: a Nuremberger, a
Lutheran. Her uncle and his friends, she says, and the learned
men of her town, they believe –
‘It may be the belief in your country, madam, that a pastor
should have a wife, but not here. Did Dr Cranmer not warn you
of this?’
‘Please,’ Cranmer begs, ‘tell me what she is saying. Does she
blame me? Is she wishing herself at home?’
‘No. No, she says you are kind. What took hold of you, man?’
‘I told you I had a secret.’
So you did. Down the side of the page. ‘But to keep her here,
under the king’s nose?’
‘I have kept her in the country. But I could not refuse her wish
to see the celebrations.’
‘She has been out on the streets?’
‘Why not? No one knows her.’
True. The protection of the stranger in the city; one young
woman in a cheerful cap and gown, one pair of eyes among the thousands of eyes: you can hide a tree in a forest. Cranmer
approaches him. He holds out his hands, so lately smeared with
the sacred oil; fine hands, long fingers, the pale rectangles of his
palms crossed and recrossed by news of sea voyages and
alliances. ‘I asked you here as my friend. For I count you my
chief friend, Cromwell, in this world.’
So there is nothing to do, in friendship, but to take these bony
digits in his own. ‘Very well. We will find a way. We will keep
your lady secret. I only wonder that you did not leave her with
her own family, till we can turn the king our way.’
Margarete is watching them, blue eyes flitting from face to face.
She stands up. She pushes the table away from her; he watches her
do it, and his heart lurches. Because he has seen a woman do this
before, his own wife, and he has seen how she puts her palms
down on the surface, to haul herself up. Margarete is tall, and the
bulge of her belly juts above the table top.
‘Jesus,’ he says.
‘I hope for a daughter,’ the archbishop says.
‘About when?’ he asks Margarete.
Instead of answering, she takes his hand. She places it on her
belly, pressing it down with her own. At one with the celebrations, the child is dancing: spanoletta, Estampie Royal. This is a
perhaps a foot; this is a fist. ‘You need a friend,’ he says. ‘A
woman with you.’
Cranmer follows him as he pounds out of the room. ‘About
John Frith …’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Since he was brought to Croydon, I have seen him three times
in private conversation. A worthy young man, a most gentle
creature. I have spent hours, I regret not a second of it, but I
cannot turn him from his path.’
‘He should have run into the woods. That was his path.’
‘We do not all …’ Cranmer drops his gaze. ‘Forgive me, but
we do not all see as many paths as you.’ ‘So you must hand him to Stokesley now, because he was
taken in Stokesley’s diocese.’
‘I never thought, when the king gave me this dignity, when he
insisted I occupy this seat, that among my first actions would be
to come against a young man like John Frith, and to try to argue
him out of his faith.’
Welcome to this world below. ‘I cannot much longer delay,’
Cranmer says.
‘Nor can your wife.’
The streets around Austin Friars are almost deserted. Bonfires
are starting up across the city, and the stars are obscured by
smoke. His guards are on the gate: sober, he is pleased to note.
He stops for a word; there is an art to being in a hurry but not
showing it. Then he walks in and says, ‘I want Mistress Barre.’
Most of his household have gone to see the bonfires, and they
will be out till midnight, dancing. They have permission to do
this; who should celebrate the new queen, if they do not? John
Page comes out: something want doing, sir? William Brabazon,
pen in hand, one of Wolsey’s old crew: the king’s business never
stops. Thomas Avery, fresh from his accounts: there’s always
money flowing in, money flowing out. When Wolsey fell, his
household deserted him, but Thomas Cromwell’s servants
stayed to see him through.
A door bangs overhead. Rafe comes down, boots clattering,
hair sticking up. He looks flushed and confused. ‘Sir?’
‘I don’t want you. Is Helen here, do you know?’
‘Why?’
At that moment Helen appears. She is fastening up her
hair under a clean cap. ‘I need you to pack a bag and come with
me.’
‘For how long, sir?’
‘I cannot say.’
‘To go out of London?’ He thinks, I’ll make some arrangement, the wives and daughters of men in the city, discreet women, they will find her
servants, and a midwife, some competent woman who will put
Cranmer’s child into his hands. ‘Perhaps for a short time.’
‘The children –’
‘We will take care of your children.’
She nods. Speeds away. You wish you had men in your service
as swift as she. Rafe calls after her. ‘Helen …’ He looks irate.
‘Where is she going, sir? You can’t just drag her off into the
night.’
‘Oh, I can,’ he says mildly.
‘I need to know.’
‘Believe me, you don’t.’ He relents. ‘Or if you do, this is not
the time – Rafe, I’m tired. I’m not going to argue.’
He could perhaps leave it to Christophe, and some of the more
unquestioning members of his household, to take Helen from
the warmth of Austin Friars to the chill of the abbey precincts; or
he could leave it till the morning. But his mind is alive to the
loneliness of Cranmer’s wife, the strangeness of the city en fête,
the deserted aspect of Cannon Row, where even in the shadow of
the abbey robbers are bound to lurk. Even in the time of King
Richard the district was home to gangs of thieves, who issued out
by night at their pleasure, and when the dawn came swarmed
back to claim the privilege of sanctuary, and no doubt to share
the spoils with the clergy. I shall clean out that lot, he thinks. My
men will be after them like ferrets down a hole.
Midnight: stone exhales a mossy breath, flagstones are slippery with the city’s exhalations. Helen puts her hand into his. A
servant admits them, eyes downcast; he slips him a coin to raise
his eyes no higher. No sign of the archbishop: good. A lamp is lit.
A door pushed ajar. Cranmer’s wife is lying in a little cot. He says
to Helen, ‘Here is a lady who needs your compassion. You see
her situation. She does not speak English. In any case, you need
not ask her name.’ ‘Here is Helen,’ he says. ‘She has two children of her own. She
will help you.’
Mistress Cranmer, her eyes closed, merely nods and smiles.
But when Helen places a gentle hand on her, she reaches out and
strokes it.
‘Where is your husband?’
‘Er betet.’
‘I hope he is praying for me.’
The day of Frith’s burning he is hunting with the king over the
country outside Guildford. It is raining before dawn, a gusty,
tugging wind bending the treetops: raining all over England,
soaking the crops in the fields. Henry’s mood is not to be dented.
He sits down to write to Anne, left back at Windsor. After he has
twirled his quill in his fingers, turned his paper about and about,
he loses the will: you write it for me, Cromwell. I’ll tell you what
to put.
A tailor’s apprentice is going to the stake with Frith: Andrew
Hewitt.
Katherine used to have relics brought to her, Henry says, for
when she was in labour with her children. A girdle of the Blessed
Virgin. I hired it.
I don’t think the queen will want that.
And special prayers to St Margaret. These are women’s things.
Best left to them, sir.
Later he will hear that Frith and the boy suffered, the wind
blowing the flames away from them repeatedly. Death is a
japester; call him and he will not come. He is a joker and he lurks
in the dark, a black cloth over his face.
There are cases of the sweat in London. The king, who
embodies all his people, has all the symptoms every day.
Now Henry stares at the rain falling. Cheering himself up, he
says, it may abate, Jupiter is rising. Now, tell her, tell the queen …
He waits, his pen poised. No, that’s enough. Give it to me, Thomas, I will sign it.
He waits to see if the king will draw a heart. But the frivolities
of courtship are over. Marriage is a serious business. Henricus
Rex.
I think I have a stomach cramp, the king says. I think I have a
headache. I feel queasy, and there are black spots before my eyes,
that’s a sign, isn’t it?
If Your Majesty will rest a little, he says. And take courage.
You know what they say about the sweat. Merry at breakfast,
dead by dinner. But do you know it can kill you in two hours?
He says, I have heard that some people die of fear.
By afternoon the sun is struggling out. Henry, laughing, spurs
away his hunter under the dripping trees. At Smithfield Frith is
being shovelled up, his youth, his grace, his learning and his
beauty: a compaction of mud, grease, charred bone.
The king has two bodies. The first exists within the limits of
his physical being; you can measure it, and often Henry does, his
waist, his calf, his other parts. The second is his princely double,
free-floating, untethered, weightless, which may be in more than
one place at a time. Henry may be hunting in the forest, while his
princely double makes laws. One fights, one prays for peace.
One is wreathed in the mystery of his kingship: one is eating a
duckling with sweet green peas.
The Pope now says his marriage to Anne is void. He will
excommunicate him if he does not return to Katherine. Christendom will slough him off, body and soul, and his subjects will rise
up and eject him, into ignominy, exile; no Christian hearth will
shelter him, and when he dies his corpse will be dug with animal
bones into a common pit.
He has taught Henry to call the Pope ‘The Bishop of Rome’.
To laugh when his name is mentioned. If it is uncertain laughter,
it is better than his former genuflection.
Cranmer has invited the prophetess, Elizabeth Barton, to a
meeting at his house in Kent. She has seen a vision of Mary, the former princess, as queen? Yes. Of Gertrude, Lady Exeter, as
queen? Yes. He says gently, both cannot be true. The Maid says,
I only report what I see. He writes that she is bouncing and full
of confidence; she is used to dealing with archbishops, and she
takes him for another Warham, hanging on her every word.
She is a mouse under the cat’s paw.
Queen Katherine is on the move, her household much
reduced, to the Bishop of Lincoln’s palace at Buckden, an old
red-brick house with a great hall and gardens that run out into
copses and fields and so into the fenland landscape. September
will bring her the first fruits of autumn, as October will bring the
mists.
The king demands that Katherine give up for his coming child
the robes in which the child Mary was christened. When he hears
Katherine’s answer, he, Thomas Cromwell, laughs. Nature
wronged Katherine, he says, in not making her a man; she would
have surpassed all the heroes of antiquity. A paper is put before
her, in which she is addressed as ‘Princess Dowager’; shocked,
they show him how her pen has ripped through it, as she scores
out the new title.
Rumours crop in the short summer nights. Dawn finds them
like mushrooms in the damp grass. Members of Thomas
Cromwell’s household have been seeking a midwife in the small
hours of the morning. He is hiding a woman at some country
house of his, a foreign woman who has given him a daughter.
Whatever you do, he says to Rafe, don’t defend my honour. I
have women like that all over the place.
They will believe it, Rafe says. The word in the city is that
Thomas Cromwell has a prodigious …
Memory, he says. I have a very large ledger. A huge filing
system, in which are recorded (under their name, and also under
their offence) the details of people who have cut across me.
All the astrologers say that the king will have a son. But you
are better not to deal with these people. A man came to him, months ago, offering to make the king a philosopher’s stone, and
when he was told to make himself scarce he turned rude and
contrary, as these alchemists do, and now gives it out that the
king will die this year. Waiting in Saxony, he says, is the eldest
son of the late King Edward. You thought him a rattling skeleton
beneath the pavements of the Tower, only his murderers know
where: you are deceived, for he is a man grown, and ready to
claim his kingdom.
He counts it up: King Edward V, were he living, would be sixtyfour this November coming. He’s a bit late to the fight, he says.
He puts the alchemist in the Tower, to rethink his position.
No more from Paris. Whatever Maître Guido’s up to, he’s
very quiet about it.
Hans Holbein says, Thomas, I’ve got your hands done but I
haven’t paid much attention to your face. I promise this autumn
I’ll finish you off.
Suppose within every book there is another book, and within
every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding;
but these volumes take no space on the desk. Suppose knowledge
could be reduced to a quintessence, held within a picture, a sign,
held within a place which is no place. Suppose the human skull
were to become capacious, spaces opening inside it, humming
chambers like beehives.
Lord Mountjoy, Katherine’s Chamberlain, has sent him a list
of all the necessities for the confinement of a Queen of England.
It amuses him, the smooth and civil handover; the court and its
ceremonies roll on, whoever the personnel, but it is clear Lord
Mountjoy takes him as the man in charge of everything now.
He goes down to Greenwich and refurbishes the apartments,
ready for Anne. Proclamations (undated) are prepared, to go out
to the people of England and the rulers of Europe, announcing
the birth of a prince. Just leave a little gap, he suggests, at the end
of ‘prince’, so if need be you can squash in … But they look at
him as if he’s a traitor, so he leaves off. When a woman withdraws to give birth the sun may be
shining but the shutters of her room are closed so she can make
her own weather. She is kept in the dark so she can dream. Her
dreams drift her far away, from terra firma to a marshy tract of
land, to a landing stage, to a river where a mist closes over the
further bank, and earth and sky are inseparate; there she must
embark towards life and death, a muffled figure in the stern
directing the oars. In this vessel prayers are said that men never
hear. Bargains are struck between a woman and her God. The
river is tidal, and between one feather-stroke and the next, her
tide may turn.
On 26 August 1533, a procession escorts the queen to her
sealed rooms at Greenwich. Her husband kisses her, adieu and
bon voyage, and she neither smiles nor speaks. She is very pale,
very grand, a tiny jewelled head balanced on the swaying tent of
her body, her steps small and circumspect, a prayer book in her
hands. On the quay she turns her head: one lingering glance. She
sees him; she sees the archbishop. One last look and then, her
women steadying her elbows, she puts her foot into the boat.