PART FIVE

I
Anna Regina
1533

The two children sit on a bench in the hall of Austin Friars. They
are so small that their legs stick straight out in front of them, and
as they are still in smocks one cannot tell their sex. Under their
caps, their dimpled faces beam. That they look so fat and
contented is a credit to the young woman, Helen Barre, who
now unwinds the thread of her tale: daughter of a bankrupt small
merchant out of Essex, wife of one Matthew Barre who beat her
and deserted her, ‘leaving me,’ she says, indicating, ‘with that one
in my belly.’
The neighbours are always coming at him with parish problems. Unsafe cellar doors. A noisome goose house. A husband and
wife who shout and bang pans all night, so the next house can’t get
to sleep. He tries not to fret if these things cut into his time, and he
minds Helen less than a goose house. Mentally, he takes her out of
cheap shrunken wool and re-dresses her in some figured velvet he
saw yesterday, six shillings the yard. Her hands, he sees, are
skinned and swollen from rough work; he supplies kid gloves.
‘Though when I say he deserted me, it may be that he is dead.
He was a great drinker and a brawler. A man who knew him told
me he came off worst in a fight, and I should seek him at the
bottom of the river. But someone else saw him on the quays at
Tilbury, with a travelling bag. So which am I – wife or widow?’ ‘I will look into it. Though I think you would rather I didn’t
find him. How have you lived?’
‘When he went first I was stitching for a sailmaker. Since I
came up to London to search, I’ve been hiring out by the day. I
have been in the laundry at a convent near Paul’s, helping at the
yearly wash of their bed linen. They find me a good worker, they
say they will give me a pallet in the attics, but they won’t take the
children.’
Another instance of the church’s charity. He runs up against
them all the time. ‘We cannot have you a slave to a set of
hypocrite women. You must come here. I am sure you will be
useful. The house is filling up all the time, and I am building, as
you see.’ She must be a good girl, he thinks, to turn her back on
making a living in the obvious way; if she walked along the
street, she wouldn’t be short of offers. ‘They tell me you would
like to learn to read, so you can read the gospel.’
‘Some women I met took me to what they call a night school. It
was in a cellar at Broadgate. Before that, I knew Noah, the Three
Kings, and father Abraham, but St Paul I had never heard of. At
home on our farm we had pucks who used to turn the milk and
blow up thunderstorms, but I am told they are not Christians. I
wish we had stayed farming, for all that. My father was no hand at
town life.’ Her eyes, anxious, follow the children. They have
launched themselves off the bench and toddled across the flagstones to see the picture that is growing on the wall, and their every
step causes her to hold her breath. The workman is a German, a
young boy Hans recommended for a simple job, and he turns
around – he speaks no English – to explain to the children what he
is doing. A rose. Three lions, see them jump. Two black birds.
‘Red,’ the elder child cries.
‘She knows colours,’ Helen says, pink with pride. ‘She is also
beginning on one-two-three.’
The space where the arms of Wolsey used to be is being
repainted with his own newly granted arms: azure, on a fess between three lions rampant or, a rose gules, barbed vert,
between two Cornish choughs proper. ‘You see, Helen,’ he says,
‘those black birds were Wolsey’s emblem.’ He laughs. ‘There are
people who hoped they would never see them again.’
‘There are other people, of our sort, who do not understand
it.’
‘You mean night school people?’
‘They say, how can a man who loves the gospel, have loved
such a man as that?’
‘I never liked his haughty manners, you know, and his processions every day, the state he kept. And yet there was never a man
more active in the service of England since England began. And
also,’ he says sadly, ‘when you came into his confidence, he was a
man of such grace and ease … Helen, can you come here today?’
He is thinking of those nuns and the yearly wash of their bed
linen. He is imagining the cardinal’s appalled face. Laundry
women followed his train as whores follow an army, hot from
their hour-by-hour exertions. At York Place he had a bath made,
deep enough for a man to stand up in it, the room heated by a stove
such as you find in the Low Countries, and many a time he had
negotiated business with the cardinal’s bobbing, boiled-looking
head. Henry has taken it over now, and splashes about in it with
favoured gentlemen, who submit to being ducked under the water
and half-drowned by their lord, if his mood takes him that way.
The painter offers the brush to the elder child. Helen glows.
‘Careful, darling,’ she says. A blob of blue is applied. You are a
little adept, the painter says. Gefällt es Ihnen, Herr Cromwell,
sind Sie stolz darauf?’
He says to Helen, he asks if I am pleased and proud. She says,
if you are not, your friends will be proud for you.
I am always translating, he thinks: if not language to language,
then person to person. Anne to Henry. Henry to Anne. Those
days when he wants soothing, and she is as prickly as a holly
bush. Those times – they do occur – when his gaze strays after another woman, and she follows it, and storms off to her own
apartments. He, Cromwell, goes about like some public poet,
carrying assurances of desire, each to each.
It is hardly three o’clock, and already the room is half-dark.
He picks up the younger child, who flops against his shoulder
and falls asleep with the speed at which someone pushed falls off
a wall. ‘Helen,’ he says, ‘this household is full of pert young men,
and they will all put themselves forward in teaching you to read,
bringing you presents and trying to sweeten your days. Do learn,
and take the presents, and be happy here with us, but if anyone is
too forward, you must tell me, or tell Rafe Sadler. He is the boy
with the little red beard. Though I should not say boy.’ It will be
twenty years, soon, since he brought Rafe in from his father’s
house, a lowering, dark day like this, rain bucketing from the
heavens, the child slumped against his shoulder as he carried him
into his hall at Fenchurch Street.
The storms had kept them in Calais for ten days. Ships out of
Boulogne were wrecked, Antwerp flooded, much of the countryside put under water. He would like to get messages to his
friends, enquiring after their lives and property, but the roads are
impassable, Calais itself a floating island upon which a happy
monarch reigns. He goes to the king’s lodgings to ask for an
audience – business doesn’t stop in bad weather – but he is told,
‘The king cannot see you this morning. He and Lady Anne are
composing some music for the harp.’
Rafe catches his eye and they walk away. ‘Let us hope in time
they have a little song to show for it.’
Thomas Wyatt and Henry Norris get drunk together in a low
tavern. They swear eternal friendship. But their followers have a
fight in the inn yard and roll each other in mud.
He never sets eyes on Mary Boleyn. Presumably she and
Stafford have found some bolt-hole where they can compose
together. By candlelight, at noon, Lord Berners shows him his library,
limping energetically from desk to desk, handling with care the old
folios from which he has made his scholarly translations. Here is a
romance of King Arthur: ‘When I started reading it I almost gave
up the project. It was clear to me it was too fantastical to be true.
But little by little, as I read, you know, it appeared to me that there
was a moral in this tale.’ He does not say what it is. ‘And here is
Froissart done into English, which His Majesty himself bade me
undertake. I could not do other, for he had just lent me five
hundred pounds. Would you like to see my translations from the
Italian? They are private ones, I have not sent them to the printer.’
He spends an afternoon with the manuscripts, and they
discuss them at supper. Lord Berners holds a position, chancellor
of the exchequer, which Henry has given him for life, but
because he is not in London and attending to it, it does not bring
him in much money, or the influence it should. ‘I know you are
a good man for business. Might you in confidence look over my
accounts? They’re not what you’d call in order.’
Lord Berners leaves him alone with the dog’s breakfast that he
calls his ledgers. An hour passes: the wind whistles across the
rooftops, the candle flames tremble, hail batters the glass. He
hears the scrape of his host’s bad foot: an anxious face peers
around the door. ‘What joy?’
All he can find is money owing. This is what you get for
devoting yourself to scholarship and serving the king across the
sea, when you could be at court with sharp teeth and eyes and
elbows, ready to seize your advantage. ‘I wish you’d called on
me earlier. There are always things that can be done.’
‘Ah, but who knew you, Master Cromwell?’ the old man says.
‘One exchanged letters, yes. Wolsey’s business, king’s business.
But I never knew you. It did not seem at all likely I should know
you, until now.’
On the day they are finally ready to embark, the boy from the
alchemists’ inn turns up. ‘You at last! What have you got for me?’ The boy displays his empty hands, and launches into English,
of a sort. ‘On dit those magi have retoured to Paris.’
‘Then I am disappointed.’
‘You are hard to find, monsieur. I go to the place where le roi
Henri and the Grande Putain are lodged, “je cherche milord
Cremuel,” and the persons there laughed at me and beat me.’
‘That is because I am not a milord.’
‘In that case, I do not know what a milord in your country
looks like.’ He offers the boy a coin for his efforts, and another
for the beating, but he shakes his head. ‘I thought to take
service with you, monsieur. I have made up my mind to go travelling.’
‘Your name is?’
‘Christophe.’
‘You have a family name?’
‘Ça ne fait rien.’
‘You have parents?’
A shrug.
‘Your age?’
‘What age would you say?’
‘I know you can read. Can you fight?’
‘There is much fighting chez vous?’
Christophe has his own squat build; he needs feeding up, but
a year or two from now he will be hard to knock over. He puts
him at fifteen, no more. ‘You are in trouble with the law?’
‘In France,’ he says, disparagingly: as one might say, in far
Cathay.
‘You are a thief?’
The boy makes a jabbing motion, invisible knife in his fist.
‘You left someone dead?’
‘He didn’t look well.’
He grins. ‘You’re sure you want Christophe for your name?
You can change it now, but not later.’
‘You understand me, monsieur.’ Christ, of course I do. You could be my son. Then he looks
at him closely, to make sure that he isn’t; that he isn’t one of
these brawling children the cardinal spoke of, whom he has left
by the Thames, and not impossibly by other rivers, in other
climes. But Christophe’s eyes are a wide, untroubled blue. ‘You
are not afraid of the sea voyage?’ he asks. ‘In my house in
London there are many French speakers. You’ll soon be one of
us.’
Now at Austin Friars, Christophe pursues him with questions. Those magi, what is it they have? Is it a carte of buried
treasure? Is it – he flaps his arms – the instructions for one to
make a flying machine? Is it a machine to faire great explosions,
or a military dragon, breathes out fire?
He says, ‘Have you ever heard of Cicero?’
‘No. But I am prepared to hear of him. Till today I have never
heard of Bishop Gardineur. On dit you have stole his strawberry
beds and give them to the king’s mistress, and now he intends …’
the boy breaks off, and again gives his impression of a military
dragon, ‘to ruin you utterly and pursue you unto death.’
‘And well beyond, if I know my man.’
There have been worse accounts of his situation. He wants to
say, she is not a mistress, not any more, but the secret – though it
must soon be an open secret – is not his to tell.
Twenty-fifth of January 1533, dawn, a chapel at Whitehall, his
friend Rowland Lee as priest, Anne and Henry take their vows,
confirm the contract they made in Calais: almost in secret, with
no celebration, just a huddle of witnesses, the married pair both
speechless except for the small admissions of intent forced out of
them by the ceremony. Henry Norris is pale and sober: was it
kind to make him witness it twice over, Anne being given to
another man?
William Brereton is a witness, as he is in attendance in the
king’s privy chamber. ‘Are you truly here?’ he asks him. ‘Or are you somewhere else? You gentlemen tell me you can bilocate,
like great saints.’
Brereton glares. ‘You’ve been writing letters up to Chester.’
‘The king’s business. How not?’
They must do this in a mutter, as Rowland joins the hands of
bride and groom. ‘I’ll tell you just once. Keep away from my
family’s affairs. Or you’ll come off worse, Master Cromwell,
than you can imagine.’
Anne is attended by only one lady, her sister. As they leave –
the king towing his wife, hand on her upper arm, towards a little
harp music – Mary turns and gives him a sumptuous smile. She
holds up her hand, thumb and finger an inch apart.
She had always said, I will be the first to know. It will be me
who lets out her bodices.
He calls William Brereton back, politely; he says, you have
made a mistake in threatening me.
He goes back to his office in Westminster. He wonders, does
the king know yet? Probably not.
He sits down to his drafting. They bring in candles. He sees
the shadow of his own hand moving across the paper, his own
unconcealable fist unmasked by velvet glove. He wants nothing
between himself and the weave of the paper, the black running
line of ink, so he takes off his rings, Wolsey’s turquoise and
Francis’s ruby – at New Year, the king slid it from his own
finger and gave it back to him, in the setting the Calais goldsmith had made, and said, as rulers do, in a rush of confidence,
now that will be a sign between us, Cromwell, send a paper
with this and I shall know it comes from your hand even if you
lack your seal.
A confidant of Henry’s who was standing by – it was Nicholas
Carew – had remarked, His Majesty’s ring fits you without
adjustment. He said, so it does.
He hesitates, his quill hovering. He writes, ‘This realm of
England is an Empire.’ This realm of England is an Empire, and so has been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme
Head and King …
At eleven o’clock, when the day has brightened as much as it
will, he eats dinner with Cranmer in his lodging at Cannon Row,
where he is living till his new dignity is conferred and he can
move into Lambeth Palace. He has been practising his new signature, Thomas Elect of Canterbury. Soon he will dine in state, but
today, like a threadbare scholar, he shoves his papers aside while
some table linen is laid and they bring in the salt fish, over which
he signs a grace.
‘That won’t improve it,’ he says. ‘Who’s cooking for you? I’ll
send someone over.’
‘So, is the marriage made?’ It is like Cranmer to wait to be told:
to work six hours in silent patience, head down over his books.
‘Yes, Rowland was up to his office. He didn’t wed her to
Norris, or the king to her sister.’ He shakes out his napkin. ‘I
know a thing. But you must coax it from me.’
He is hoping that Cranmer, by way of coaxing, will impart the
secret he promised in his letter, the secret written down the side
of the page. But it must have been some minor indiscretion, now
forgotten. And because Canterbury Elect is occupied in poking
uncertainly at scales and skin, he says, ‘She, Anne, she is already
having a child.’
Cranmer glances up. ‘If you tell it in that tone, people will
think you take the credit yourself.’
‘Are you not astonished? Are you not pleased?’
‘I wonder what fish this purports to be?’ Cranmer says with
mild interest. ‘Naturally I am delighted. But I knew it, you see,
because this marriage is clean – why would not God bless it with
offspring? And with an heir?’
‘Of course, with an heir. Look.’ He takes out the papers he has
been working on. Cranmer washes his fishy fingers and hunches
towards the candle flame. ‘So after Easter,’ he says, reading, ‘it
will be against the law and the king’s prerogative to make an appeal in any matter to the Pope. So there is Katherine’s suit dead
and buried. And I, Canterbury, can decide the king’s cause in our
own courts. Well, this has been long enough coming.’
He laughs. ‘You were long enough coming.’ Cranmer was in
Mantua when he heard of the honour the king intended for him.
He began his journey circuitously: Stephen Vaughan met him at
Lyons, and hustled him over the winter roads and through the
snowdrifts of Picardy to the boat. ‘Why did you delay? Doesn’t
every boy want to be an archbishop? Though not me, if I think
back. What I wanted was my own bear.’
Cranmer looks at him, his expression speculative. ‘I’m sure
that could be arranged for you.’
Gregory has asked him, how will we know when Dr Cranmer
is making a joke? He has told him, you won’t, they are as rare as
apple blossom in January. And now, for some weeks, he will be
half-fearful that a bear will turn up at his door. As they part that
day, Cranmer glances up from the table and says, ‘Of course, I
don’t officially know.’
‘About the child?’
‘About the marriage. As I am to be judge in the matter of the
king’s old marriage, it would not be proper for me to hear that
his new one has already taken place.’
‘Right,’ he says. ‘What Rowland gets up to in the early hours
of the morning is a matter for himself alone.’ He leaves Cranmer
with head bowed over the remains of their meal, as if studying to
reassemble the fish.
As our severance from the Vatican is not yet complete, we
cannot have a new archbishop unless the Pope appoints him.
Delegates in Rome are empowered to say anything, promise
anything, pro tem, to get Clement to agree. The king says, aghast,
‘Do you know how much the papal bulls cost, for Canterbury?
And that I shall have to pay for them? And you know how much
it costs to install him?’ He adds, ‘It must be done properly, of
course, nothing omitted, nothing scanted.’ ‘It will be the last money Your Majesty sends to Rome, if it
rests with me.’
‘And do you know,’ the king says, as if he has discovered
something astonishing, ‘that Cranmer has not a penny of his
own? He can contribute nothing.’
He borrows the money, on the Crown’s behalf, from a rich
Genovese he knows called Salvago. To persuade him into the
loan, he sends around to his house an engraving which he knows
Sebastian covets. It shows a young man standing in a garden, his
eyes turned upwards to an empty window, at which it is to be
hoped very soon a lady will appear; her scent hangs already in the
air, and birds on the boughs look enquiringly into the vacancy,
ready to sing. In his two hands the young man holds a book; it is
a book shaped like a heart.
Cranmer sits on committees every day, in back rooms at Westminster. He is writing a paper for the king, to show that even if his
brother’s marriage to Katherine was not consummated, it does not
affect the case for the annulment, for certainly they intended to be
married, and that intention creates affinity; also, in the nights they
spent together, it must have been their intention to make children,
even if they did not go about it the right way. In order not to make
a liar out of Henry or Katherine, one or the other, the committee
men think up circumstances in which the match may have been
partly consummated, or somewhat consummated, and to do this
they have to imagine every disaster and shame that can occur
between a man and a woman alone in a room in the dark. Do you
like the work, he enquires; looking at their hunched and dusty
persons, he judges them to have the experience they need.
Cranmer in his writing keeps calling the queen ‘the most serene
Katherine’, as if to separate her untroubled face, framed by a linen
pillow, from the indignities being forced on her lower body: the
boy’s fumbling and scrabbling, the pawing at her thighs.
Meanwhile Anne, the hidden Queen of England, breaks free
from her gentleman companions as she walks through a gallery at Whitehall; she laughs as she breaks into a trot, almost a skip, and
they reach out to contain her, as if she is dangerous, but she flings
their hands away from her, laughing. ‘Do you know, I have a
great longing to eat apples? The king says it means I am having a
baby, but I tell him no, no, it can’t be that …’ She whirls around,
around again. She flushes, tears bounce out of her eyes and seem
to fly away from her like the waters of an unregulated fountain.
Thomas Wyatt pushes through the crowd. ‘Anne …’ He
snatches at her hands, he pulls her towards him. ‘Anne, hush,
sweetheart … hush …’ She collapses into hiccupping sobs,
folding herself against his shoulder. Wyatt holds her fast; his eyes
travel around, as if he had found himself naked in the road, and is
looking for some traveller to come along with a garment to cover
his shame. Among the bystanders is Chapuys; the ambassador
makes a rapid, purposeful exit, his little legs working, a sneer
stamped on his face.
So that’s the news sped to the Emperor. It would have been
good if the old marriage were out, the new marriage in,
confirmed to Europe before Anne’s happy state were
announced. But then, life is never perfect for the servant of a
prince; as Thomas More used to say, we should not look to go to
Heaven on feather beds.
Two days later he is alone with Anne; she is tucked into a
window embrasure, eyes closed, basking like a cat in a scarce
shaft of winter sun. She stretches out her hand to him, hardly
knowing who he is; any man will do? He takes her fingertips.
Her black eyes snap open. It’s like a shop when the shutters are
taken down: good morning, Master Cromwell, what can we sell
each other today?
‘I am tired of Mary,’ she says. ‘And I would like to be rid of her.’
Does she mean Katherine’s daughter, the princess? ‘She should
be married,’ she says, ‘and out of my way. I never want to have to
see her. I don’t want to have to think about her. I have long imagined her married to some obscure person.