‘Let them never come again.’
‘Amen.’ The fool points to the guests. ‘Let these not come
again either.’
There are people in London who say that John Howard,
grandfather of the Norfolk that is now, was more than a little
concerned in the disappearance of the children who went into the
Tower and never came out again. The Londoners say – and he
reckons the Londoners know – that it was on Howard’s watch
that the princes were last seen; though Thomas More thinks it
was Constable Brakenbury who handed the keys to the killers.
Brakenbury died at Bosworth; he can’t come out of his grave and
complain.
The fact is, Thomas More is thick with the Norfolk that is
now, and keen to deny that his ancestor helped disappear
anyone, let alone two children of royal blood. In his mind’s eye
he frames the present duke: in one dripping, sinewy hand he
holds a small golden-haired corpse, and in the other hand the
kind of little knife a man brings to table to cut his meat.
He comes back to himself: Gardiner, jabbing the air, is pressing the Lord Chancellor on his evidence. Presently the fool’s
grumbling and groaning become unbearable. ‘Father,’ Margaret
says, ‘please send Henry out.’ More rises to scold him, take him
by the arm. All eyes follow him. But Gardiner takes advantage of
the lull. He leans in, speaks English in an undertone. ‘About
Master Wriothesley. Remind me. Is he working for me, or for
you?’
‘For you, I would have thought, now he is made a Clerk of the
Signet. They assist Master Secretary, do they not?’
‘Why is he always at your house?’
‘He’s not a bound apprentice. He may come and go.’
‘I suppose he’s tired of churchmen. He wants to know what he
can learn from … whatever it is you call yourself, these days.’
‘A person,’ he says placidly. ‘The Duke of Norfolk says I’m a
person.’ ‘Master Wriothesley has his eye on his advantage.’
‘I hope we all have that. Or why did God give us eyes?’
‘He thinks of making his fortune. We all know that money
sticks to your hands.’
Like the aphids to More’s roses. ‘No,’ he sighs. ‘It passes
through them, alas. You know, Stephen, how I love luxury. Show
me a carpet, and I’ll walk on it.’
The fool scolded and ejected, More rejoins them. ‘Alice, I have
told you about drinking wine. Your nose is glowing.’ Alice’s face
grows stiff, with dislike and a kind of fear. The younger women,
who understand all that is said, bow their heads and examine
their hands, fiddling with their rings and turning them to catch
the light. Then something lands on the table with a thud, and
Anne Cresacre, provoked into her native tongue, cries, ‘Henry,
stop that!’ There is a gallery above with oriel windows; the fool,
leaning through one of them, is peppering them with broken
crusts. ‘Don’t flinch, masters,’ he shouts. ‘I am pelting you with
God.’
He scores a hit on the old man, who wakes with a start. Sir
John looks about him; with his napkin, he wipes dribble from his
chin. ‘Now, Henry,’ More calls up. ‘You have wakened my
father. And you are blaspheming. And wasting bread.’
‘Dear Lord, he should be whipped,’ Alice snaps.
He looks around him; he feels something which he identifies
as pity, a heavy stirring beneath the breastbone. He believes Alice
has a good heart; continues to believe it even when, taking his
leave, permitted to thank her in English, she raps out, ‘Thomas
Cromwell, why don’t you marry again?’
‘No one will have me, Lady Alice.’
‘Nonsense. Your master may be down but you’re not poor,
are you? Got your money abroad, that’s what I’m told. Got a
good house, haven’t you? Got the king’s ear, my husband says.
And from what my sisters in the city say, got everything in good
working order.’ ‘Alice!’ More says. Smiling, he takes her wrist, shakes her a
little. Gardiner laughs: his deep bass chuckle, like laughter
through a crack in the earth.
When they go out to Master Secretary’s barge, the scent of the
gardens is heavy in the air. ‘More goes to bed at nine o’clock,’
Stephen says.
‘With Alice?’
‘People say not.’
‘You have spies in the house?’
Stephen doesn’t answer.
It is dusk; lights bob in the river. ‘Dear God, I am hungry,’
Master Secretary complains. ‘I wish I had kept back one of the
fool’s crusts. I wish I had laid hands on the white rabbit; I’d eat it
raw.’
He says, ‘You know, he daren’t make himself plain.’
‘Indeed he dare not,’ Gardiner says. Beneath the canopy, he
sits hunched into himself, as if he were cold. ‘But we all know his
opinions, which I think are fixed and impervious to argument.
When he took office, he said he would not meddle with the
divorce, and the king accepted that, but I wonder how long he
will accept it.’
‘I didn’t mean, make himself plain to the king. I meant, to Alice.’
Gardiner laughs. ‘True, if she understood what he said about
her she’d send him down to the kitchens and have him plucked
and roasted.’
‘Suppose she died? He’d be sorry then.’
‘He’d have another wife in the house before she was cold.
Someone even uglier.’
He broods: foresees, vaguely, an opportunity for placing bets.
‘That young woman,’ he says. ‘Anne Cresacre. She is an heiress,
you know? An orphan?’
‘There was some scandal, was there not?’
‘After her father died her neighbours stole her, for their son to
marry. The boy raped her. She was thirteen. This was in York shire … that’s how they go on there. My lord cardinal was
furious when he heard of it. It was he who got her away. He put
her under More’s roof because he thought she’d be safe.’
‘So she is.’
Not from humiliation. ‘Since More’s son married her, he lives
off her lands. She has a hundred a year. You’d think she could
have a string of pearls.’
‘Do you think More is disappointed in his boy? He shows no
talent for affairs. Still, I hear you have a boy like that. You’ll be
looking for an heiress for him soon.’ He doesn’t reply. It’s true;
John More, Gregory Cromwell, what have we done to our sons?
Made them into idle young gentlemen – but who can blame us
for wanting for them the ease we didn’t have? One thing about
More, he’s never idled for an hour, he’s passed his life reading,
writing, talking towards what he believes is the good of the
Christian commonwealth. Stephen says, ‘Of course you may
have other sons. Aren’t you looking forward to the wife Alice
will find you? She is warm in your praises.’
He feels afraid. It is like Mark, the lute player: people imagining what they cannot know. He is sure he and Johane have been
secret. He says, ‘Don’t you ever think of marrying?’
A chill spreads over the waters. ‘I am in holy orders.’
‘Oh, come on, Stephen. You must have women. Don’t you?’
The pause is so long, so silent, that he can hear the oars as they
dip into the Thames, the little splash as they rise; he can hear the
ripples in their wake. He can hear a dog barking, from the southern shore. The Secretary asks, ‘What kind of Putney enquiry is
that?’
The silence lasts till Westminster. But on the whole, not too
bad a trip. As he mentions, disembarking, neither of them has
thrown the other in the river. ‘I’m waiting till the water’s colder,’
Gardiner says. ‘And till I can tie weights to you. You have a trick
of resurfacing, don’t you? By the way, why am I bringing you to
Westminster? ‘I am going to see Lady Anne.’
Gardiner is affronted. ‘You didn’t say so.’
‘Should I report all my plans to you?’
He knows that is what Gardiner would prefer. The word is
that the king is losing patience with his council. He shouts at
them, ‘The cardinal was a better man than any of you, for managing matters.’ He thinks, if my lord cardinal comes back – which
by a caprice of the king’s he may, any time now – then you’re all
dead, Norfolk, Gardiner, More. Wolsey is a merciful man, but
surely: only up to a point.
Mary Shelton is in attendance; she looks up, simpers. Anne is
sumptuous in her nightgown of dark silk. Her hair is down, her
delicate feet bare inside kidskin slippers. She is slumped in a
chair, as if the day has beaten the spirit out of her. But still, as
she looks up, her eyes are sparkling, hostile. ‘Where’ve you
been?’
‘Utopia.’
‘Oh.’ She is interested. ‘What passed?’
‘Dame Alice has a little monkey that sits on her knee at table.’
‘I hate them.’
‘I know you do.’
He walks about. Anne lets him treat her fairly normally,
except when she has a sudden, savage seizure of I-who-will-beQueen, and slaps him down. She examines the toe of her slipper.
‘They say that Thomas More is in love with his own daughter.’
‘I think they may be right.’
Anne’s sniggering laugh. ‘Is she a pretty girl?’
‘No. Learned though.’
‘Did they talk about me?’
‘They never mention you in that house.’ He thinks, I should
like to hear Alice’s verdict.
‘Then what was the talk?’
‘The vices and follies of women. ‘I suppose you joined it? It’s true, anyway. Most women are
foolish. And vicious. I have seen it. I have lived among the
women too long.’
He says, ‘Norfolk and my lord your father are very busy
seeing ambassadors. France, Venice, the Emperor’s man – just in
these last two days.’
He thinks, they are working to entrap my cardinal. I know it.
‘I did not think you could afford such good information.
Though they say you have spent a thousand pounds on the cardinal.’
‘I expect to get it back. From here and there.’
‘I suppose people are grateful to you. If they have received
grants out of the cardinal’s lands.’
He thinks, your brother George, Lord Rochford, your father
Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, haven’t they got rich from the cardinal’s fall? Look at what George is wearing these days, look at the
money he spends on horses and girls; but I don’t see much sign
of gratitude from the Boleyns. He says, ‘I just take my
conveyancer’s fee.’
She laughs. ‘You look well on it.’
‘Do you know, there are ways and ways … Sometimes people
just tell me things.’
It is an invitation. Anne drops her head. She is on the verge of
becoming one of those people. But perhaps not tonight. ‘My
father says, one can never be sure of that person, one can never
tell who he’s working for. I should have thought – but then I am
only a woman – that it is perfectly obvious that you’re working
for yourself.’
That makes us alike, he thinks: but does not quite say.
Anne yawns, a little catlike yawn. ‘You’re tired,’ he says. ‘I
shall go. By the way, why did you send for me?’
‘We like to know where you are.’
‘So why does your lord father not send for me, or your
brother?’ She looks up. It may be late, but not too late for Anne’s
knowing smile. ‘They do not think you would come.’
August: the cardinal writes to the king, a letter full of complaint,
saying that he is being hounded by his creditors, ‘wrapped in
misery and dread’ – but the stories that come back are different.
He is holding dinners, and inviting all the local gentry. He is
dispensing charity on his old princely scale, settling lawsuits, and
sweet-talking estranged husbands and wives into sharing a roof
again.
Call-Me-Risley was up in Southwell in June, with William
Brereton of the king’s privy chamber: getting the cardinal’s
signature on a petition Henry is circulating, which he means to
send to the Pope. It’s Norfolk’s idea, to get the peers and bishops
to sign up to this letter asking Clement to let the king have his
freedom. It contains certain murky, unspecific threats, but
Clement’s used to being threatened – no one’s better at spinning
a question out, setting one party against the other, playing ends
against the middle.
The cardinal looks well, according to Wriothesley. And his
building work, it seems, has gone beyond repairs and a few renovations. He has been scouring the country for glaziers, joiners,
and for plumbers; it is ominous when my lord decides to
improve the sanitation. He never had a parish church but he built
the tower higher; never lodged anywhere where he did not draw
up drainage plans. Soon there will be earthworks, culverts and
pipes laid. Next he will be installing fountains. Wherever he goes
he is cheered by the people.
‘The people?’ Norfolk says. ‘They’d cheer a Barbary ape.
Who cares what they cheer? Hang ’em all.’
‘But then who will you tax?’ he says, and Norfolk looks at
him fearfully, unsure if he’s made a joke.
Rumours of the cardinal’s popularity don’t make him glad,
they make him afraid. The king has given Wolsey a pardon, but if he was offended once, he can be offended again. If they could
think up forty-four charges, then – if fantasy is unconstrained by
truth – they can think up forty-four more.
He sees Norfolk and Gardiner with their heads together. They
look up at him; they glare and don’t speak.
Wriothesley stays with him, in his shadow and footsteps,
writes his most confidential letters, those to the cardinal and the
king. He never says, I am too tired. He never says, it is late. He
remembers all that he is required to remember. Even Rafe is not
more perfect.
It is time to bring the girls into the family business. Johane
complains of her daughter’s poor sewing, and it seems that,
transferring the needle surreptitiously into her wrong hand, the
child has devised an awkward little backstitch which you would
be hard-pushed to imitate. She gets the job of sewing up his
dispatches for the north.
September 1530: the cardinal leaves Southwell, travelling by easy
stages to York. The next part of his progress becomes a triumphal
procession. People from all over the countryside flock to him,
ambushing him at wayside crosses so that he can lay his magical
hands on their children; they call it ‘confirmation’, but it seems
to be some older sacrament. They pour in by the thousand, to
gape at him; and he prays for them all.
‘The council has the cardinal under observation,’ Gardiner
says, swishing past him. ‘They have had the ports closed.’
Norfolk says, ‘Tell him if I ever see him again, I will chew him
up, bones, flesh and gristle.’ He writes it down just so and sends
it up-country: ‘bones, flesh and gristle.’ He can hear the crunch
and snap of the duke’s teeth.
On 2 October the cardinal reaches his palace at Cawood, ten
miles from York. His enthronement is planned for 7 November.
News comes that he has called a convocation of the northern
church; it is to meet at York the day after his enthronement. It is a signal of his independence; some may think it is a signal of
revolt. He has not informed the king, he has not informed old
Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury; he can hear the cardinal’s
voice, soft and amused, saying, now, Thomas, why do they need
to know?
Norfolk calls him in. His face is crimson and he froths a little
at the mouth as he starts to shout. He has been seeing his
armourer for a fitting, and is still wearing sundry parts – his
cuirass, his garde-reins – so that he looks like an iron pot
wobbling to the boil. ‘Does he think he can dig in up there and
carve himself a kingdom? Cardinal’s hat not enough for him,
only a crown will do for Thomas bloody Wolsey the bleeding
butcher’s boy, and I tell you, I tell you …’
He drops his gaze in case the duke should stop to read his
thoughts. He thinks, my lord would have made such an excellent
king; so benign, so sure and suave in his dealings, so equitable, so
swift and so discerning. His rule would have been the best rule,
his servants the best servants; and how he would have enjoyed
his state.
His glance follows the duke as he bobs and froths; but to his
surprise, when the duke turns, he smites his own metalled thigh,
and a tear – at the pain, or something else – bubbles into his eye.
‘Ah, you think me a hard man, Cromwell. I am not such a hard
man that I don’t see how you are left. Do you know what I say?
I say I don’t know one man in England who would have done
what you have done, for a man disgraced and fallen. The king
says so. Even him, Chapuys, the Emperor’s man, he says, you
cannot fault what’s-he-called. I say, it’s a pity you ever saw
Wolsey. It’s a pity you don’t work for me.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘we all want the same thing. For your niece to
be queen. Can we not work together?’
Norfolk grunts. There is something amiss, in his view, with
that word ‘together’, but he cannot articulate what it is. ‘Do not
forget your place.’ He bows. ‘I am mindful of your lordship’s continuing favour.’
‘Look here, Cromwell, I wish you would come down and see
me at home at Kenninghall, and talk to my lady wife. She’s a
woman of monstrous demands. She thinks I shouldn’t keep a
woman in the house, for my pleasant usage, you know? I say,
where else should she be? Do you want me to disturb myself on
a winter’s night and venture out on the icy roads? I don’t seem to
be able to express myself correctly to her; do you think you
could come down and put my case?’ He says, hastily, ‘Not now,
of course. No. More urgent … see my niece …’
‘How is she?’
‘In my view,’ Norfolk says, ‘Anne’s out for bloody murder.
She wants the cardinal’s guts in a dish to feed her spaniels, and his
limbs nailed over the city gates of York.’
It is a dark morning and your eyes naturally turn towards Anne,
but something shadowy is bobbing about, on the fringes of the
circle of light. Anne says, ‘Dr Cranmer is just back from Rome.
He brings us no good news, of course.’
They know each other; Cranmer has worked from time to
time for the cardinal, as indeed who has not? Now he is active in
the king’s case. They embrace cautiously: Cambridge scholar,
person from Putney.
He says, ‘Master, why would you not come to our college? To
Cardinal College, I mean? His Grace was very sorry you would
not. We would have made you comfortable.’
‘I think he wanted more permanence,’ Anne says, sneering.
‘But with respect, Lady Anne, the king has almost said to me
that he will take over the Oxford foundation himself.’ He smiles.
‘Perhaps it can be called after you?’
This morning Anne wears a crucifix on a gold chain. Sometimes her fingers pull at it impatiently, and then she tucks her
hands back in her sleeves. It is so much a habit with her that
people say she has something to hide, a deformity; but he thinks she is a woman who doesn’t like to show her hand. ‘My uncle
Norfolk says Wolsey goes about with eight hundred armed men
at his back. They say he has letters from Katherine – is that true?
They say Rome will issue a decree telling the king to separate
from me.’
‘That would be a clear mistake on Rome’s part,’ Cranmer says.
‘Yes it would. Because he won’t be told. Is he some parish
clerk, the King of England? Or some child? This would not
happen in France; their king keeps his churchmen under his
hand. Master Tyndale says, “One king, one law, is God’s ordinance in every realm.” I have read his book, The Obedience of a
Christian Man. I myself have shown it to the king and marked
the passages that touch on his authority. The subject must obey
his king as he would his God; do I have the sense of it? The Pope
will learn his place.’
Cranmer looks at her with a half-smile; she’s like a child who
you’re teaching to read, who dazzles you by sudden aptitude.
‘Wait,’ she says, ‘I have something to show you.’ She darts a
look. ‘Lady Carey …’
‘Oh, please,’ Mary says. ‘Do not give it currency.’
Anne snaps her fingers. Mary Boleyn moves forward into the
light, a flash of blonde hair. ‘Give it,’ Anne says. It is a paper,
which she unfolds. ‘I found this in my bed, would you believe?
As it happened, it was a night when that sickly milk-faced
creeper had turned down the sheet, and of course I could not get
any sense out of her, she cries if you look at her sideways. So I
cannot know who put it there.’
She unfolds a drawing. There are three figures. The central
figure is the king. He is large and handsome, and to make sure
you don’t miss him he is wearing a crown. On either side of him
is a woman; the one on the left has no head. ‘That’s the queen,’
she says, ‘Katherine. And that’s me.’ She laughs. ‘Anne sans tête.’
Dr Cranmer holds out his hand for the paper. ‘Give it to me,
I’ll destroy it. She crumples it in her fist. ‘I can destroy it myself. There is a
prophecy that a queen of England will be burned. But a
prophecy does not frighten me, and even if it is true, I will run
the risk.’
Mary stands, like a statue, in the position where Anne left her;
her hands are joined, as if the paper were still between them. Oh,
Christ, he thinks, to see her out of here; to take her to somewhere
she could forget she is a Boleyn. She asked me once. I failed her.
If she asked me again, I would fail her again.
Anne turns against the light. Her cheeks are hollow – how thin
she is now – her eyes are alight. ‘Ainsi sera,’ she says. ‘Never
mind who grudges it, it will happen. I mean to have him.’
On their way out, he and Dr Cranmer do not speak, till they
see the little pale girl coming towards them, the sickly milk-faced
creeper, carrying folded linen.
‘I think this is the one who cries,’ he says. ‘So do not look at
her sideways.’
‘Master Cromwell,’ she says, ‘this may be a long winter. Send
us some more of your orange tarts.’
‘I haven’t seen you for so long … What have you been doing,
where have you been?’
‘Sewing mostly.’ She considers each question separately.
‘Where I’m sent.’
‘And spying, I think.’
She nods. ‘I’m not very good at it.’
‘I don’t know. You’re very small and unnoticeable.’
He means it as a compliment; she blinks, in acknowledgement.
‘I don’t speak French. So don’t you, if you please. It gives me
nothing to report.’
‘Who are you spying for?’
‘My brothers.’
‘Do you know Dr Cranmer?’
‘No,’ she says; she thinks it’s a real question.
‘Now,’ he instructs her, ‘you must say who you are.’ ‘Oh. I see. I’m John Seymour’s daughter. From Wolf Hall.’
He is surprised. ‘I thought his daughters were with Queen
Katherine.’
‘Yes. Sometimes. Not now. I told you. I go where I’m sent.’
‘But not where you are appreciated.’
‘I am, in the one way. You see, Lady Anne will not refuse any
of the queen’s ladies who want to spend time with her.’ She raises
her eyes, a pale momentary brightness. ‘Very few do.’
Every rising family needs information. With the king considering himself a bachelor, any little girl can hold the key to the
future, and not all his money is on Anne. ‘Well, good luck,’ he
says. ‘I’ll try to keep it in English.’
‘I would be obliged.’ She bows. ‘Dr Cranmer.’
He turns to watch her as she patters off in the direction of
Anne Boleyn. A small suspicion enters his mind, about the paper
in the bed. But no, he thinks. That is not possible.
Dr Cranmer says, smiling, ‘You have a wide acquaintance
among the court ladies.’
‘Not very wide. I still don’t know which daughter that was,
there are three at least. And I suppose Seymour’s sons are ambitious.’
‘I hardly know them.’
‘The cardinal brought Edward up. He’s sharp. And Tom
Seymour is not such a fool as he pretends.’
‘The father?’
‘Stays in Wiltshire. We never see him.’
‘One could envy him,’ Dr Cranmer murmurs.
Country life. Rural felicity. A temptation he has never known.
‘How long were you at Cambridge, before the king called you up?’
Cranmer smiles. ‘Twenty-six years.’
They are both dressed for riding. ‘You are going back to
Cambridge today?’
‘Not to stay. The family’ – the Boleyns, he means – ‘want to
have me at hand. And you, Master Cromwell?