II
Devil’s Spit
Autumn and winter 1533

It is magnificent. At the moment of impact, the king’s eyes are
open, his body braced for the atteint; he takes the blow perfectly,
its force absorbed by a body securely armoured, moving in the
right direction, moving at the right speed. His colour does not
alter. His voice does not shake.
‘Healthy?’ he says. ‘Then I thank God for his favour to us. As
I thank you, my lords, for this comfortable intelligence.’
He thinks, Henry has been rehearsing. I suppose we all
have.
The king walks away towards his own rooms. Says over his
shoulder, ‘Call her Elizabeth. Cancel the jousts.’
A bleat from a Boleyn: ‘The other ceremonies as planned?’
No reply. Cranmer says, all as planned, till we hear different. I
am to stand godfather to the … the princess. He falters. He can
hardly believe it. For himself, he ordered a daughter, and he got a
daughter. His eyes follow Henry’s retreating back. ‘He did not
ask after the queen. He did not ask how she does.’
‘It hardly matters, does it?’ Edward Seymour, saying brutally
what everyone is thinking.
Then Henry, on his long solitary walk, stops, turns back. ‘My
lord archbishop. Cromwell. But you only.’
In Henry’s closet: ‘Had you imagined this? Some would smile. He does not. The king drops into a chair.
The urge arises to put a hand on his shoulder, as one does for any
inconsolable being. He resists it; simply folds his fingers, protectively, into the fist which holds the king’s heart. ‘One day we will
make a great marriage for her.’
‘Poor scrap. Her own mother will wish her away.’
‘Your Majesty is young enough,’ Cranmer says. ‘The queen is
strong and her family are fertile. You can get another child soon.
And perhaps God intends some peculiar blessing by this
princess.’
‘My dear friend, I am sure you are right.’ Henry sounds
dubious, but he looks around to take strength from his
surroundings, as if God might have left some friendly message
written on the wall: though there is only precedent for the hostile
kind. He takes a breath and stands up and shakes out his sleeves.
He smiles: and one can catch in flight, as if it were a bird with a
strong-beating heart, the act of will that transforms a desolate
wretch into the beacon of his nation.
He whispers to Cranmer later, ‘It was like watching Lazarus
get up.’
Soon Henry is striding about the palace at Greenwich, putting
the celebrations under way. We are young enough, he says, and
next time it will be a boy. One day we will make a great marriage
for her. Believe me, God intends some peculiar blessing by this
princess.
Boleyn faces brighten. It’s Sunday, four in the afternoon. He
goes and laughs a bit at the clerks who have ‘prince’ written on
their proclamations, and who now have to squeeze extra letters
in, then he goes back to working out the expenses for the new
princess’s household. He has advised that Gertrude, Lady Exeter,
be among the child’s godparents. Why should only the Maid
have a vision of her? It will do her good to be seen by the whole
court, smiling a forced smile and holding Anne’s baby at the font. The Maid herself, brought to London, is kept in a private house,
where the beds are soft and the voices around her, the voices of
Cromwell women, hardly disturb her prayers; where the key is
turned in the oiled lock with a click as small as the snap of a bird’s
bone. ‘Does she eat?’ he asks Mercy, and she says, she eats as
heartily as you: well, no, Thomas, perhaps not quite so heartily
as you.
‘I wonder what happened to her project of living on the
Communion host?’
‘They can’t see her dining now, can they? Those priests and
monks who set her on this course.’
Away from their scrutiny, the nun has started to act like an
ordinary woman, acknowledging the simple claims of her body,
like anyone who wants to live; but it may be too late. He likes it
that Mercy doesn’t say, ahh, the poor harmless soul. That she is
not harmless by nature is clear when they have her over to
Lambeth Palace to question her. You would think Lord Chancellor Audley, his chain of office hung about his splendid
person, would be enough to subdue any country girl. Throw in
the Archbishop of Canterbury, and you would imagine a young
nun might feel some awe. Not a bit of it. The Maid treats
Cranmer with condescension – as if he were a novice in the religious life. When he challenges her on any point and says, ‘How
do you know that?’ she smiles pityingly and says, ‘An angel told
me.’
Audley brings Richard Riche with him to their second session,
to take notes for them, and put any points that occur to him. He
is Sir Richard now, knighted and promoted to Solicitor General.
In his student days he was known for a sharp slanderous tongue,
for irreverence to his seniors, for drinking and gaming for high
stakes. But who would hold up his head, if people judged us by
what we were like at twenty? Riche turns out to have a talent for
drafting legislation which is second only to his own. His
features, beneath his soft fair hair, are pinched with concentra tion; the boys call him Sir Purse. You’d never think, to see him
precisely laying out his papers, that he was once the great
disgrace of the Inner Temple. He says so, in an undertone,
teasing him, while they wait for the girl to be brought in. Well,
Master Cromwell! Riche says; what about you and that abbess in
Halifax?
He knows better than to deny it: or any of those stories the
cardinal told about him. ‘Oh, that,’ he says. ‘It was nothing –
they expect it in Yorkshire.’
He is afraid the girl may have caught the tail end of the
exchange, because today, as she takes the chair they have placed
for her, she gives him a particularly hard stare. She arranges her
skirts, folds her arms and waits for them to entertain her. His
niece Alice Wellyfed sits on a stool by the door: just there in case
of fainting, or other upset. Though a glance at the Maid tells you
she is no more likely to faint than Audley is.
‘Shall I?’ Riche says. ‘Start?’
‘Oh, why not?’ Audley says. ‘You are young and hearty.’
‘These prophecies of yours – you are always changing the
timing of the disaster you foresee, but I understood you said that
the king would not reign one month after he married Lady Anne.
Well, the months have passed, Lady Anne is crowned queen, and
has given the king a fine daughter. So what do you say now?’
‘I say in the eyes of the world he seems to be king. But in the
eyes of God,’ she shrugs, ‘not any more. He is no more the real
king than he,’ she nods towards Cranmer, ‘is really archbishop.’
Riche is not to be sidetracked. ‘So it would be justified to raise
rebellion against him? To depose him? To assassinate him? To
put another in his place?’
‘Well, what do you think?’
‘And among the claimants your choice has fallen on the
Courtenay family, not the Poles. Henry, Marquis of Exeter. Not
Henry, Lord Montague.’
‘Or,’ he says sympathetically, ‘do you get them mixed up?’ ‘Of course not.’ She flushes. ‘I have met both those gentlemen.’
Riche makes a note.
Audley says, ‘Now Courtenay, that is Lord Exeter, descends
from a daughter of King Edward. Lord Montague descends from
King Edward’s brother, the Duke of Clarence. How do you
weigh their claims? Because if we are talking of true kings and
false kings, some say Edward was a bastard his mother got by an
archer. I wonder if you can cast any light?’
‘Why would she?’ Riche says.
Audley rolls his eyes. ‘Because she talks to the saints on high.
They’d know.’
He looks at Riche and it is as if he can read his thoughts:
Niccolò’s book says, the wise prince exterminates the envious,
and if I, Riche, were king, those claimants and their families
would be dead. The girl is braced for the next question: how is
it she has seen two queens in her vision? ‘I suppose it will sort
itself out,’ he says, ‘in the fighting? It’s good to have a few kings
and queens in reserve, if you’re going to start a war in a
country.’
‘It is not necessary to have a war,’ the nun says. Oh? Sir Purse
sits up: this is new. ‘God is sending a plague on England instead.
Henry will be dead in six months. So will she, Thomas Boleyn’s
daughter.’
‘And me?’
‘You too.’
‘And all in this room? Except you, of course? All including
Alice Wellyfed, who never did you harm?’
‘All the women of your house are heretics, and the plague will
rot them body and soul.’
‘And what about the princess Elizabeth?’
She turns in her seat, to aim her words at Cranmer. ‘They say
when you christened her you warmed the water to spare her a
shock. You should have poured it boiling. Oh, Christ in Heaven, Riche says. He throws his pen down.
He is a tender young father, with a daughter in the cradle.
He drops a consoling hand on his, the Solicitor General’s. You
would think Alice would need consoling; but when the Maid
condemned her to death, he had looked down the room at his
niece to note that her face was the perfect picture of derision. He
says to Riche, ‘She didn’t think it up herself, the boiling water. It
is a thing they are saying on the streets.’
Cranmer huddles into himself; the Maid has bruised him, she
has scored a point. He, Cromwell, says, ‘I saw the princess
yesterday. She is thriving, in spite of her ill-wishers.’ His voice
suggests calm: we must get the archbishop back in the saddle. He
turns to the Maid: ‘Tell me: did you locate the cardinal?’
‘What?’ Audley says.
‘Dame Elizabeth said she would look out for my old master,
on one of her excursions to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, and I
offered to pay her travelling expenses on the occasion. I gave her
people a down-payment – I hope we see some progress?’
‘Wolsey would have had another fifteen years of life,’ the girl
says. He nods: he has said the same himself. ‘But then God
cut him off, as an example. I have seen devils disputing for his
soul.’
‘You know the result?’ he asks.
‘There is no result. I searched for him all over. I thought God
had extinguished him. Then one night I saw him.’ A long, tactical hesitation. ‘I saw his soul seated among the unborn.’
There is a silence. Cranmer shrinks in his seat. Riche gently
nibbles the end of his pen. Audley twists a button on his sleeve,
round and round till the thread tightens.
‘If you like I can pray for him,’ the Maid says. ‘God usually
answers my requests.’
‘Formerly, when you had your advisers about you, Father
Bocking and Father Gold and Father Risby and the rest, you
would start bargaining at this point. I would propose a further sum for your goodwill, and your spiritual directors would drive
it up.’
‘Wait.’ Cranmer lays a hand over his ribcage. ‘Can we go
back? Lord Chancellor?’
‘We can go in any direction you choose, my lord archbishop.
Three times round the mulberry bush …’
‘You see devils?’
She nods.
‘They appear how?’
‘Birds.’
‘A relief,’ Audley says drily.
‘No, sir. Lucifer stinks. His claws are deformed. He comes as
a cockerel smeared in blood and shit.’
He looks up at Alice. He is ready to send her out. He thinks,
what has been done to this woman?
Cranmer says, ‘That must be disagreeable for you. But it is a
characteristic of devils, I understand, to show themselves in more
than one way.’
‘Yes. They do it to deceive you. He comes as a young man.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Once he brought a woman. To my cell at night.’ She pauses.
‘Pawing her.’
Riche: ‘He is known to have no shame.’
‘No more than you.’
‘And what then, Dame Elizabeth? After the pawing?’
‘Pulled up her skirts.’
‘And she didn’t resist?’ Riche says. ‘You surprise me.’
Audley says, ‘Prince Lucifer, I don’t doubt he has a way with him.’
‘Before my eyes, he had to do with her, on my bed.’
Riche makes a note. ‘This woman, did you know her?’ No
answer. ‘And the devil did not try the same with you? You can
speak freely. It will not be held against you.’
‘He came to sweet-talk me. Swaggering in his blue silk coat,
it’s the best he has. And new hose with diamonds down his legs.’ ‘Diamonds down his legs,’ he says. ‘Now that must have been
a temptation?’
She shakes her head.
‘But you are a fine young woman – good enough for any man,
I’d say.’
She looks up; a flicker of a smile. ‘I am not for Master Lucifer.’
‘What did he say when you refused him?’
‘He asked me to marry him.’ Audley puts his head in his
hands. ‘I said I was vowed to chastity.’
‘Was he not angry when you would not consent?’
‘Oh yes. He spat in my face.’
‘I would expect no better of him,’ Riche says.
‘I wiped his spit off with a napkin. It’s black. It has the stench
of Hell.’
‘What is that like?’
‘Like something rotting.’
‘Where is it now, the napkin? I suppose you didn’t send it to
the laundry?’
‘Dom Edward has it.’
‘Does he show it to people? For money?’
‘For offerings.’
‘For money.’
Cranmer takes his face from his hands. ‘Shall we pause?’
‘A quarter hour?’ Riche says.
Audley: ‘I told you he was young and hearty.’
‘Perhaps we will meet tomorrow,’ Cranmer says. ‘I need to
pray. And a quarter of an hour will not do it.’
‘But tomorrow is Sunday,’ the nun says. ‘There was a man
who went out hunting on a Sunday and he fell down a bottomless pit into Hell. Imagine that.’
‘How was it bottomless,’ Riche asks, ‘if Hell was there to
receive him?’
‘I wish I were going hunting,’ Audley says. ‘Christ knows, I’d
take a chance on it.