fight for status, and try to get their brats induced somehow intothe line of succession. The son Henry acknowledges is known asHenry Fitzroy; he is a handsome blond child made in the king’sown image. His father has created him Duke of Somerset andDuke of Richmond; he is not yet ten years old, and the seniornobleman in England.Queen Katherine, whose boys have all died, takes it patiently:that is to say, she suffers.When he leaves the cardinal, he is miserably angry. When hethinks back to his earlier life – that boy half-dead on the cobblesin Putney – he feels no tenderness for him, just a faint impatience: why doesn’t he get up? For his later self – still prone togetting into fights, or at least being in the place where a fightmight occur – he feels something like contempt, washed with aqueasy anxiety. That was the way of the world: a knife in thedark, a movement on the edge of vision, a series of warningswhich have worked themselves into flesh. He has given the cardinal a shock, which is not his job; his job, as he has defined it atthis time, is to feed the cardinal information and soothe histemper and understand him and embellish his jokes. What wentwrong was an accident of timing only. If the cardinal had notmoved so fast; if he had not been so edgy, not knowing how hecould signal to him to be less despotic to Boleyn. The troublewith England, he thinks, is that it’s so poor in gesture. We shallhave to develop a hand signal for ‘Back off, our prince isfucking this man’s daughter.’ He is surprised that the Italianshave not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just nevercaught on.In the year 1529, my lord cardinal newly disgraced, he will thinkback to that evening.He is at Esher; it is the lightless, fireless night, when the greatman has gone to his (possibly damp) bed, and there is only George Cavendish to keep his spirits alive. What happened next,he asked George, with Harry Percy and Anne Boleyn?He knew the story only in the cardinal’s chilly and dismissiverendition. But George said, ‘I shall tell you how it was. Now.Stand up, Master Cromwell.’ He does it. ‘A little to the left.Now, which would you like to be? My lord cardinal, or theyoung heir?’‘Oh, I see, is it a play? You be the cardinal. I don’t feel equal to it.’Cavendish adjusts his position, turning him imperceptiblyfrom the window, where night and bare trees are their audience.His gaze rests on the air, as if he were seeing the past: shadowybodies, moving in this lightless room. ‘Can you look troubled?’George asks. ‘As if you were brooding upon mutinous speech,and yet dare not speak? No, no, not like that. You are youthful,gangling, your head drooping, you are blushing.’ Cavendishsighs. ‘I believe you never blushed in your life, MasterCromwell. Look.’ Cavendish sets his hands, gently, on his upperarms. ‘Let us change roles. Sit here. You be the cardinal.’At once he sees Cavendish transformed. George twitches, hefumbles, he all but weeps; he becomes the quaking Harry Percy,a young man in love. ‘Why should I not match with her?’ hecries. ‘Though she be but a simple maid –’‘Simple?’ he says. ‘Maid?’George glares at him. ‘The cardinal never said that!’‘Not at the time, I agree.’‘Now I am Harry Percy again. “Though she be but a simplemaid, her father a mere knight, yet her lineage is good –”’‘She’s some sort of cousin of the king’s, isn’t she?’‘Some sort of cousin?’ Cavendish again breaks up his role,indignant. ‘My lord cardinal would have their descent unfoldedbefore him, all drawn up by the heralds.’‘So what shall I do?’‘Just pretend! Now: her forebears are not without merit,young Percy argues. But the stronger the boy argues, the more my lord cardinal waxes into a temper. The boy says, we havemade a contract of matrimony, which is as good as a truemarriage …’‘Does he? I mean, did he?’‘Yes, that was the sense of it. Good as a true marriage.’‘And what did my lord cardinal do there?’‘He said, good God, boy, what are you telling me? If you haveinvolved yourself in any such false proceeding, the king musthear of it. I shall send for your father, and between us we willcontrive to annul this folly of yours.’‘And Harry Percy said?’‘Not much. He hung his head.’‘I wonder the girl had any respect for him.’‘She didn’t. She liked his title.’‘I see.’‘So then his father came down from the north – will you be theearl, or will you be the boy?’‘The boy. I know how to do it now.’He jumps to his feet and imitates penitence. It seems they hada long talk in a long gallery, the earl and the cardinal; then theyhad a glass of wine. Something strong, it must have been. The earlstamped the length of the gallery, then sat down, Cavendish said,on a bench where the waiting-boys used to rest between orders.He called his heir to stand before him, and took him apart infront of the servants.‘“Sir,”’ says Cavendish, ‘“thou hast always been a proud,presumptuous, disdainful and very unthrift waster.” So that wasa good start, wasn’t it?’‘I like,’ he says, ‘the way you remember the exact words. Didyou write them down at the time? Or do you use some licence?’Cavendish looks sly. ‘No one exceeds your own powers ofmemory,’ he says. ‘My lord cardinal asks for an accounting ofsomething or other, and you have all the figures at your fingertips. ‘Perhaps I invent them.’‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ Cavendish is shocked. ‘You couldn’t dothat for long.’‘It is a method of remembering. I learned it in Italy.’‘There are people, in this household and elsewhere, whowould give much to know the whole of what you learned inItaly.’He nods. Of course they would. ‘But now, where were we?Harry Percy, who is as good as married, you say, to Lady AnneBoleyn, is standing before his father, and the father says …?’‘That if he comes into the title, he would be the death of hisnoble house – he would be the last earl of Northumberland thereever was. And “Praise be to God,” he says, “I have more choiceof boys …” And he stamped off. And the boy was left crying. Hehad his heart set on Lady Anne. But the cardinal married him toMary Talbot, and now they’re as miserable as dawn on AshWednesday. And the Lady Anne said – well, we all laughed at thetime – she said that if she could work my lord cardinal anydispleasure, she would do it. Can you think how we laughed?Some sallow chit, forgive me, a knight’s daughter, to menace mylord cardinal! Her nose out of joint because she could not havean earl! But we could not know how she would rise and rise.’He smiles.‘So tell me,’ Cavendish says, ‘what did we do wrong? I’ll tellyou. All along, we were misled, the cardinal, young Harry Percy,his father, you, me – because when the king said, Mistress Anneis not to marry into Northumberland, I think, I think, the kinghad his eye cast on her, all that long time ago.’‘While he was close with Mary, he was thinking about sisterAnne?’‘Yes, yes!’‘I wonder,’ he says, ‘how it can be that, though all these peoplethink they know the king’s pleasure, the king finds himself atevery turn impeded.’ At every turn, thwarted: maddened and baffled. The Lady Anne, whom he has chosen to amuse him,while the old wife is cast off and the new wife brought in, refusesto accommodate him at all. How can she refuse? Nobody knows.Cavendish looks downcast because they have not continuedthe play. ‘You must be tired,’ he says.‘No, I’m just thinking. How has my lord cardinal …’ Missed atrick, he wants to say. But that is not a respectful way to speak ofa cardinal. He looks up. ‘Go on. What happened next?’In May 1527, feeling embattled and bad-tempered, the cardinalopens a court of inquiry at York Place, to look into the validityof the king’s marriage. It’s a secret court; the queen is notrequired to appear, or even be represented; she’s not evensupposed to know, but all Europe knows. It is Henry who isordered to appear, and produce the dispensation that allowedhim to marry his brother’s widow. He does so, and he is confident that the court will find the document defective in some way.Wolsey is prepared to say that the marriage is open to doubt. Buthe does not know, he tells Henry, what the legatine court can dofor him, beyond this preparatory step; since Katherine, surely, isbound to appeal to Rome.Six times (to the world’s knowledge) Katherine and the kinghave lived in hope of an heir. ‘I remember the winter child,’Wolsey says. ‘I suppose, Thomas, you would not be back inEngland then. The queen was taken unexpectedly with pains andthe prince was born early, just at the turn of the year. When hewas less than an hour old I held him in my arms, the sleet fallingoutside the windows, the chamber alive with firelight, the darkcoming down by three o’clock, and the tracks of birds and beastscovered that night by the snow, every mark of the old worldwiped out, and all our pain abolished. We called him the NewYear’s prince. We said he would be the richest, the most beautiful, the most devoted. The whole of London was lit up in celebration … He breathed fifty-two days, and I counted every one of them. I think that if he had lived, our king might have been – Ido not say a better king, for that could hardly be – but a morecontented Christian.’The next child was a boy who died within an hour. In the year1516 a daughter was born, the Princess Mary, small but vigorous.The year following, the queen miscarried a male child. Anothersmall princess lived only a few days; her name would have beenElizabeth, after the king’s own mother.Sometimes, says the cardinal, the king speaks of his mother,Elizabeth Plantagenet, and tears stand in his eyes. She was, youknow, a lady of great beauty and calm, so meek under the misfortunes God sent her. She and the old king were blessed with manychildren, and some of them died. But, says the king, my brotherArthur was born to my mother and father within a year of theirmarriage, and followed, in not too long a time, by anothergoodly son, which was me. So why have I been left, after twentyyears, with one frail daughter whom any vagrant wind maydestroy?By now they are, this long-married couple, dragged down bythe bewildered consciousness of sin. Perhaps, some people say, itwould be a kindness to set them free? ‘I doubt Katherine willthink so,’ the cardinal says. ‘If the queen has a sin laid on herconscience, believe me, she will shrive it. If it takes the nexttwenty years.’What have I done? Henry demands of the cardinal. What haveI done, what has she done, what have we done together? There isno answer the cardinal can make, even though his heart bleedsfor his most benevolent prince; there is no answer he can make,and he detects something not entirely sincere in the question; hethinks, though he will not say so, except in a small room alonewith his man of business, that no rational man could worship aGod so simply vengeful, and he believes the king is a rationalman. ‘Look at the examples before us,’ he says. ‘Dean Colet, thatgreat scholar. Now he was one of twenty-two children, and the only one to live past infancy. Some would suggest that to invitesuch attrition from above, Sir Henry Colet and his wife musthave been monsters of iniquity, infamous through Christendom.But in fact, Sir Henry was Lord Mayor of London –’‘Twice.’‘– and made a very large fortune, so in no way was he slightedby the Almighty, I would say; but rather received every mark ofdivine favour.’It’s not the hand of God kills our children. It’s disease andhunger and war, rat-bites and bad air and the miasma fromplague pits; it’s bad harvests like the harvest this year and lastyear; it’s careless nurses. He says to Wolsey, ‘What age is thequeen now?’‘She will be forty-two, I suppose.’‘And the king says she can have no more children? My motherwas fifty-two when I was born.’The cardinal stares at him. ‘Are you sure?’ he says: and then helaughs, a merry, easy laugh that makes you think, it’s good to bea prince of the church.‘Well, about that, anyway. Over fifty.’ They were hazy aboutthese things in the Cromwell family.‘And did she survive the ordeal? She did? I congratulate bothof you. But don’t tell people, will you?’The living result of the queen’s labours is the diminutive Mary– not really a whole princess, perhaps two-thirds of one. He hasseen her when he has been at court with the cardinal, and thoughtshe was about the size of his daughter Anne, who is two or threeyears younger.Anne Cromwell is a tough little girl. She could eat a princessfor breakfast. Like St Paul’s God, she is no respecter of persons,and her eyes, small and steady as her father’s, fall coldly on thosewho cross her; the family joke is, what London will be like whenour Anne becomes Lord Mayor. Mary Tudor is a pale, clever dollwith fox-coloured hair, who speaks with more gravity than the average bishop. She was barely ten years old when her father senther to Ludlow to hold court as Princess of Wales. It was whereKatherine had been taken as a bride; where her husband Arthurdied; where she herself almost died in that year’s epidemic, andlay bereft, weakened and forgotten, till the old king’s wife paidout of her private purse to have her brought back to London, dayby painful day, in a litter. Katherine had hidden – she hides somuch – any grief at the parting with her daughter. She herself isdaughter of a reigning queen. Why should Mary not ruleEngland? She had taken it as a sign that the king was content.But now she knows different.As soon as the secret hearing is convened, Katherine’s stored-upgrievances come pouring out. According to her, the whole business is the fault of the cardinal. ‘I told you,’ Wolsey said. ‘I toldyou it would be. Look for the hand of the king in it? Look for thewill of the king? No, she cannot do that. For the king, in hereyes, is immaculate.’Ever since Wolsey rose in the king’s service, the queen claims,he has been working to push her out of her rightful place asHenry’s confidante and adviser. He has used every means he can,she says, to drive me from the king’s side, so that I know nothingof his projects, and so that he, the cardinal, should have the direction of all.