You were never pre-contracted,’ he says. ‘Any silly promises
you made had no effect in law. Whatever understanding you
think you had, you didn’t have it. And there is another matter,
my lord. If ever you say one more word about Lady Anne’s
freedom’ – he packs into one word a volume of disgust – ‘then
you will answer to me and the Howards and the Boleyns, and
George Rochford will have no tender care of your person, and
my lord Wiltshire will humble your pride, and as for the Duke of
Norfolk, if he hears the slightest imputation against his niece’s
honour he will drag you out of whatever hole you are cowering
in and bite your bollocks off. Now,’ he says, resuming his former
amiability, ‘is that clear, my lord?’ He crosses the room and
opens the serving hatch again. ‘You can peer in again now.’ Faces
appear; or, to be truthful, just bobbing foreheads, and eyes. In the
doorway he pauses and turns back to the earl. ‘And I will tell you
this, for the avoidance of doubt. If you think Lady Anne loves
you, you could not be more mistaken. She hates you. The only
service you can do her now, short of dying, is to unsay what you
said to your poor wife, and take any oath that is required of you,
to clear her path to become Queen of England.’
On the way out he says to Wriothesley, ‘I feel sorry for him
really.’ Call-Me laughs so hard he has to lean against the wall.
Next day he is early for the meeting of the king’s council. The
Duke of Norfolk takes his place at the head of the table, then
shifts out of it when word comes that the king himself will
preside. ‘And Warham is here,’ someone says: the door opens,
nothing happens, then slowly very slowly the ancient prelate
shuffles in. He takes his seat. His hands tremble as they rest on
the cloth before him. His head trembles on his neck. His skin is
parchment-coloured, like the drawing that Hans made of him.
He looks around the table with a slow lizard blink.
He crosses the room and stands across the table from Warham,
enquiring after his health, by way of a formality; it is clear he is dying. He says, ‘This prophetess you harbour in your diocese.
Eliza Barton. How is she getting on?’
Warham barely looks up. ‘What is it you want, Cromwell? My
commission found nothing against the girl. You know that.’
‘I hear she is telling her followers that if the king marries Lady
Anne he has only a year to reign.’
‘I could not swear to that. I have not heard it with my own ears.’
‘I understand Bishop Fisher has been to see her.’
‘Well … or she to see him. One or the other. Why should he
not? She is a blessed young woman.’
‘Who is controlling her?’
Warham’s head looks as if it will wobble off his shoulders. ‘She
may be unwise. She may be misled. After all, she is a simple
country girl. But she has a gift, I am sure of it. When people come
into her company, she can tell them at once what is troubling
them. What sins are weighing on their conscience.’
‘Indeed? I must go and see her. I wonder if she would know
what’s troubling me?’
‘Peace,’ Thomas Boleyn says. ‘Harry Percy is here.’
The earl comes in between two of his minders. His eyes are
red, and a whiff of stale vomit suggests he has resisted the efforts
of his people to scrub him down. The king comes in. It is a warm
day and he wears pale silks. Rubies cluster on his knuckles like
bubbles of blood. He takes his seat. He rests his flat blue eye on
Harry Percy.
Thomas Audley – standing in as Lord Chancellor – leads the
earl through his denials. Pre-contracted? No. Promises of any
kind? No carnal – I so regret to mention – knowledge? Upon my
honour, no, no and no.
‘Sad to say, we shall need more than your word of honour,’ the
king says. ‘Matters have gone so far, my lord.’
Harry Percy looks panic-stricken. ‘Then what more must I do?’
He says softly, ‘Approach His Grace of Canterbury, my lord.
He is holding out the Book. This, anyway, is what the old man is trying to do.
Monseigneur tries to assist him, and Warham bats his hands
away. Gripping the table, making the cloth slide, he hauls himself
to his feet. ‘Harry Percy, you have chopped and changed in this
matter, you have asserted it, denied it, asserted it, now you are
brought here to deny it again, but this time not only in the sight
of men. Now … will you put your hand on this Bible, and swear
before me and in the presence of the king and his council that
you are free from unlawful knowledge of Lady Anne, and free
from any marriage contract with her?’
Harry Percy rubs his eyes. He extends his hand. His voice
shakes. ‘I swear.’
‘All done,’ the Duke of Norfolk says. ‘You’d wonder how the
whole thing got about in the first place, wouldn’t you?’ He walks
up to Harry Percy and grips him by the elbow. ‘We shall hear no
more of this, boy?’
The king says, ‘Howard, you have heard him take his oath,
cease to trouble him now. Some of you assist the archbishop, you
see he is not well.’ His mood softened, he smiles around at his
councillors. ‘Gentlemen, we will go to my private chapel, and see
Harry Percy take Holy Communion to seal his oath. Then Lady
Anne and I will spend the afternoon in reflection and prayer. I
shall not want to be disturbed.’
Warham shuffles up to the king. ‘Winchester is robing to say
Mass for you. I am going home to my diocese.’ With a murmur,
Henry leans to kiss his ring. ‘Henry,’ the archbishop says, ‘I have
seen you promote within your own court and council persons
whose principles and morals will hardly bear scrutiny. I have
seen you deify your own will and appetite, to the sorrow and
scandal of Christian people. I have been loyal to you, to the point
of violation of my own conscience. I have done much for you,
but now I have done the last thing I will ever do. At Austin Friars, Rafe is waiting for him. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘So now?’
‘Now Harry Percy can borrow more money, and edge himself
nearer his ruin. A progress which I shall be pleased to facilitate.’
He sits down. ‘I think one day I will have that earldom off him.’
‘How would you do that, sir?’ He shrugs: don’t know. ‘You
would not want the Howards to have more sway in the borders
than they do already.’
‘No. No, possibly not.’ He broods. ‘Can you look out the
papers about Warham’s prophetess?’
While he waits, he opens the window and looks down into the
garden. The pink of the roses in his arbours has been bleached
out by the sun. I am sorry for Mary Talbot, he thinks; her life will
not be easier after this. For a few days, a few days only, she
instead of Anne was the talk of the king’s court. He thinks of
Harry Percy, walking in to arrest the cardinal, keys in his hand:
the guard he set, around the dying man’s bed.
He leans out of the window. I wonder if peach trees would be
possible? Rafe brings in the bundle.
He cuts the tape and straightens out the letters and memoranda. This unsavoury business all started six years ago, at a
broken-down chapel on the edge of Kentish marshland, when a
statue of the Virgin began to attract pilgrims, and a young
woman by name Elizabeth Barton started to put on shows for
them. What did the statue do in the first place, to get attention?
Move, probably: or weep blood. The girl is an orphan, brought
up in the household of one of Warham’s land agents. She has a
sister, no other family. He says to Rafe, ‘Nobody took any
notice of her till she was twenty or so, and then she had some
kind of illness, and when she got better she started to have
visions, and speak in alien voices. She says she’s seen St Peter at
the gates of Heaven with his keys. She’s seen St Michael weighing souls. If you ask her where your dead relatives are, she can tell you. If it’s Heaven, she speaks in a high voice. If it’s Hell, in
a deep voice.’
‘The effect could be comic,’ Rafe says.
‘Do you think so? What irreverent children I have brought
up.’ He reads, then looks up. ‘She sometimes goes without food
for nine days. Sometimes she falls suddenly to the ground. Not
surprising, is it? She suffers spasms, torsions and trances. It
sounds most displeasant. She was interviewed by my lord
cardinal, but …’ his hand sifts the papers, ‘nothing here, no
record of the meeting. I wonder what happened. Probably he
tried to get her to eat her dinner, she wouldn’t have liked that.
By this …’ he reads, ‘… she is in a convent in Canterbury. The
broken-down chapel has got a new roof and money is rolling in
to the local clergy. There are cures. The lame walk, the blind see.
Candles light by themselves. The pilgrims are thick upon the
roads. Why do I feel I have heard this story before? She has a
flock of monks and priests about her, who direct the people’s
eyes heavenwards whilst picking their pockets. And we can
presume it is these same monks and priests who have instructed
her to hawk around her opinion on the subject of the king’s
marriage.’
‘Thomas More has met her. As well as Fisher.’
‘Yes, I keep that in mind. Oh, and … look here … Mary
Magdalene has sent her a letter, illuminated in gold.’
‘Can she read it?’
‘Yes, it seems she can.’ He looks up. ‘What do you think? The
king will endure being called names, if it is by a holy virgin. I
suppose he is used to it. Anne berates him often enough.’
‘Possibly he is afraid.’
Rafe has been to court with him; evidently, he understands
Henry better than some people who have known him all his life.
‘Indeed he is. He believes in simple maids who can talk to saints.
He is disposed to believe in prophecies, whereas I … I think we
let it run for a time. See who visits her. Who makes offerings. Certain noble ladies have been in touch with her, wanting their
fortunes told and their mothers prayed out of Purgatory.’
‘My lady Exeter,’ Rafe says.
Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, is the king’s nearest
male relative, being a grandson of old King Edward; hence,
useful to the Emperor, when he comes with his troops to boot
out Henry and put a new king on the throne. ‘If I were Exeter, I
wouldn’t let my wife dance attendance on some addle-witted girl
who is feeding her fantasies that one day she will be queen.’ He
begins to refold the papers. ‘This girl, you know, she claims she
can raise the dead.’
At John Petyt’s funeral, while the women are upstairs sitting
with Lucy, he convenes an impromptu meeting downstairs at
Lion’s Quay, to talk to his fellow merchants about disorder in
the city. Antonio Bonvisi, More’s friend, excuses himself and
says he will go home; ‘The Trinity bless and prosper you,’ he
says, withdrawing and taking with him the mobile island of chill
which has followed him since his unexpected arrival. ‘You
know,’ he says, turning at the door, ‘if there is a question of help
for Mistress Petyt, I shall be glad –’
‘No need. She is left wealthy.’
‘But will the city let her take the business on?’
He cuts him off: ‘I have that in hand.’
Bonvisi nods and goes out. ‘Surprising he should show his
face.’ John Parnell, of the Drapers’ Company, has a history of
clashes with More. ‘Master Cromwell, if you are taking charge of
this, does it mean – do you have it in mind to speak to Lucy?’
‘Me? No.’
Humphrey Monmouth says, ‘Shall we have our meeting first,
and broker marriages later? We are concerned, Master
Cromwell, as you must be, as the king must be … we are all, I
think,’ he looks around, ‘we are all, now Bonvisi has left us,
friendly to the cause for which our late brother Petyt was, in effect, a martyr, but it is for us to keep the peace, to disassociate
ourselves from outbreaks of blasphemy …’
In one city parish last Sunday, at the sacred moment of the
elevation of the host, and just as the priest pronounced, ‘hoc est
enim corpus meum,’ there was an outbreak of chanting, ‘hoc est
corpus, hocus pocus.’ And in an adjacent parish, at the commemoration of the saints, where the priest requires us to remember
our fellowship with the holy martyrs, ‘cum Joanne, Stephano,
Mathia, Barnaba, Ignatio, Alexandro, Marcellino, Petro …’
some person had shouted out, ‘and don’t forget me and my
cousin Kate, and Dick with his cockle-barrel on Leadenhall, and
his sister Susan and her little dog Posset.’
He puts his hand over his mouth. ‘If Posset needs a lawyer,
you know where I am.’
‘Master Cromwell,’ says a crabbed elder from the Skinners’
Company, ‘you convened this gathering. Set us an example in
gravity.’
‘There are ballads made,’ Monmouth says, ‘about Lady Anne
– the words are not repeatable in this company. Thomas Boleyn’s
servants complain they are called names on the street. Ordure
thrown on their livery. Masters must keep a hand on their
apprentices. Disloyal talk should be reported.’
‘To whom?’
He says, ‘Try me.’
He finds Johane at Austin Friars. She has made some excuse to
stay at home: a summer cold. ‘Ask me what secret I know,’ he
says.
For appearances’ sake, she polishes the tip of her nose. ‘Let me
see. You know to a shilling what the king has in his treasury?’
‘I know to the farthing. Not that. Ask me. Sweet sister.’
When she has guessed enough, he tells her, ‘John Parnell is
going to marry Luce.’
‘What? And John Petyt not cold?’ She turns away, to get over
whatever she is feeling. ‘Your brethren stick together. Parnell’s household is not clean from sectaries. He has a servant in Bishop
Stokesley’s prison, so I hear.’
Richard Cromwell puts his head around the door. ‘Master.
The Tower. Bricks. Five shilling the thousand.’
‘No.’
‘Right.’
‘You’d think she’d marry a safer sort of man.’
He goes to the door. ‘Richard, come back.’ Turns to Johane. ‘I
don’t think she knows any.’
‘Sir?’
‘Get it down by sixpence, and check every batch. What you
should do is choose a few in every load, and take a close interest
in them.’
Johane in the room behind him: ‘Anyway, you did the wise
thing.’
‘For instance, measure them … Johane, did you think I’d get
married out of some sort of inadvertence? By accident?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Richard says.
‘Because if you keep measuring them, it throws brickmakers
into a panic, and you’ll see by their faces if they’re trying any
tricks.’
‘I expect you have some lady in view. At court. The king has
given you a new office –’
‘Clerk of the Hanaper. Yes. A post in the chancery finances …
It hardly signs the flowery trail to a love affair.’ Richard has gone,
clattering downstairs. ‘Do you know what I think?’
‘You think you should wait. Till she, that woman, is queen.’
‘I think it’s the transport that pushes the cost up. Even by
barge. I should have cleared some ground and built my own
kilns.’
Sunday, 1 September, at Windsor: Anne kneels before the king to
receive the title of Marquess of Pembroke. The Garter knights in
their stalls watch her, the noble ladies of England flank her, and (the duchess having refused, and spat out an oath at the suggestion) Norfolk’s daughter Mary bears her coronet on a cushion;
the Howards and the Boleyns are en fête. Monseigneur caresses
his beard, nods and smiles as he receives murmured congratulations from the French ambassador. Bishop Gardiner reads out
Anne’s new title. She is vivid in red velvet and ermine, and her
black hair falls, virgin-style, in snaky locks to her waist. He,
Cromwell, has organised the income from fifteen manors to
support her dignity.
A Te Deum is sung. A sermon is preached. When the ceremony is over, and the women stoop to pick up her train, he sees
a flash of blue, like a kingfisher, and glances up to see John
Seymour’s little daughter among the Howard ladies. A warhorse
raises his head at the sound of trumpets, and great ladies look up
and smile; but as the musicians play a flourish, and the procession leaves St George’s Chapel, she keeps her pale face downturned, her eyes on her toes as if she fears tripping.
At the feast Anne sits beside Henry on the dais, and when she
turns to speak to him her black lashes brush her cheeks. She is
almost there now, almost there, her body taut like a bowstring,
her skin dusted with gold, with tints of apricot and honey; when
she smiles, which she does often, she shows small teeth, white
and sharp. She is planning to commandeer Katherine’s royal
barge, she tells him, and have the device ‘H&K’ burned away, all
Katherine’s badges obliterated. The king has sent for Katherine’s
jewels, so she can wear them on the projected trip to France. He
has spent an afternoon with her, two afternoons, three, in the fine
September weather, with the king’s goldsmith beside her making
drawings, and he as master of the jewels adding suggestions;
Anne wants new settings made. At first Katherine had refused to
give up the jewels. She had said she could not part with the property of the Queen of England and put it into the hands of the
disgrace of Christendom. It had taken a royal command to make
her hand over the loot. Anne refers everything to him; she says, laughing,
‘Cromwell, you are my man.’ The wind is set fair and the tide is
running for him. He can feel the tug of it under his feet. His
friend Audley must surely be confirmed as Chancellor; the king
is getting used to him. Old courtiers have resigned, rather than
serve Anne; the new comptroller of the household is Sir
William Paulet, a friend of his from Wolsey days. So many of
the new courtiers are his friends from Wolsey days. And the
cardinal didn’t employ fools.
After the Mass and Anne’s installation, he attends the Bishop
of Winchester as he disrobes, gets out of his canonicals into gear
more suitable for secular celebrations. ‘Are you going to dance?’
he asks him. He sits on a stone window ledge, half-attentive to
what is going on in the courts below, the musicians carrying in
pipes and lutes, harps and rebecs, hautboys, viols and drums.
‘You could cut a good figure. Or don’t you dance now you’re a
bishop?’
Stephen’s conversation is on a track of its own. ‘You’d think it
would be enough for any woman, wouldn’t you, to be made a
marquess in her own right? She’ll give way to him now. Heir in
the belly, please God, before Christmas.’
‘Oh, you wish her success?’
‘I wish his temper soothed. And some result out of this. Not
to do it all for nothing.’
‘Do you know what Chapuys is saying about you? That you
keep two women in your household, dressed up as boys.’
‘Do I?’ He frowns. ‘Better, I suppose, than two boys dressed
up as women. Now that would be opprobrious.’ Stephen gives a
bark of laughter. They stroll together towards the feast. Trollylolly, the musicians sing. ‘Pastime with good company, I love and
shall until I die.’ The soul is musical by nature, the philosophers
say. The king calls up Thomas Wyatt to sing with him, and the
musician Mark. ‘Alas, what shall I do for love? For love, alas,
what shall I do?’ ‘Anything he can think of,’ Gardiner says. ‘There is no limit,
that I can see.’
He says, ‘The king is good to those who think him good.’ He
floats it to the bishop, below the music.
‘Well,’ Gardiner says, ‘if your mind is infinitely flexible. As
yours, I see, would have to be.’
He speaks to Mistress Seymour. ‘Look,’ she says. She holds up
her sleeves. The bright blue with which she has edged them, that
kingfisher flash, is cut from the silk in which he wrapped her
present of needlework patterns. How do matters stand now at
Wolf Hall, he asks, as tactfully as he can: how do you ask after a
family, in the wake of incest? She says in her clear little voice, ‘Sir
John is very well. But then Sir John is always very well.’
‘And the rest of you?’
‘Edward angry, Tom restless, my lady mother grinding her
teeth and banging the doors. The harvest coming in, the apples
on the bough, the maids in the dairy, our chaplain at his prayers,
the hens laying, the lutes in tune, and Sir John … Sir John as
always is very well. Why don’t you make some business in Wiltshire and ride down to inspect us? Oh, and if the king gets a new
wife, she will need matrons to attend her, and my sister Liz is
coming to court. Her husband is the Governor of Jersey, you
know him, Anthony Oughtred? I would rather go up-country to
the queen, myself. But they say she is moving again, and her
household is being reduced.’
‘If I were your father … no …’ he rephrases it, ‘if I were to
advise you, it would be to serve Lady Anne.’
‘The marquess,’ she says. ‘Of course, it is good to be humble.
She makes sure we are.’
‘Just now it is difficult for her. I think she will soften, when she
has her heart’s desire.’ Even as he says it, he knows it is not true.
Jane lowers her head, looks up at him from under her eyelids.
‘That is my humble face. Do you think it will serve?’
He laughs. ‘It would take you anywhere.’ When the dancers are resting, fanning themselves, from the
galliards, pavanes and almanes, he and Wyatt sing the little
soldiers’ air: Scaramella to the war has gone, with his shield, his
lance. It is melancholy, as songs are, whatever the words, when
the light is failing and the human voice, unaccompanied, fades in
the shadows of the room. Charles Brandon asks him, ‘What is it
about, that song, is it about a lady?’
‘No, it is just about a boy who goes off to war.’
‘What are his fortunes?’
Scaramella fa la gala. ‘It’s all one big holiday to him.’
‘Those were better days,’ the duke says. ‘Soldiering.’
The king sings to the lute, his voice strong, true, plangent: ‘As
I Walked the Woods So Wild.’ Some women weep, a little the
worse for strong Italian wines.
At Canterbury, Archbishop Warham lies cold on a slab; coins
of the realm are laid on his eyelids, as if to seal into his brain for
eternity the image of his king. He is waiting to go down under
the pavement of the cathedral, in the dank charnel vacancy by
Becket’s bones. Anne sits still as a statue, her eyes on her lover.
Only her restless fingers move; she clutches on her lap one of her
little dogs, and her hands run over and over its fur, twisting its
curls. As the last note dies, candles are brought in.
October, and we are going to Calais – a train two thousand
strong, stretched from Windsor to Greenwich, from Greenwich
across the green fields of Kent to Canterbury: to a duke an
entourage of forty, to a marquess thirty-five, to an earl twentyfour, while a viscount must scrape by with twenty, and he with
Rafe and any clerks he can pack into the ships’ rat-holes. The
king is to meet his brother France, who intends to oblige him by
speaking to the Pope in favour of his new marriage. François has
offered to marry one of his three sons – his three sons, how God
must love him – to the Pope’s niece, Catherine de’ Medici; he
says he will make it a precondition of the match that Queen Katherine is refused leave to appeal her case to Rome, and that
his brother England is allowed to settle his marital affairs in his
own jurisdiction, using his own bishops.
These two potent monarchs will see each other for the first
time since the meeting called the Field of the Cloth of Gold,
which the cardinal arranged. The king says the trip must cost less
than that occasion, but when he is questioned on specifics he
wants more of that and two of those – everything bigger, plusher,
more lavish, and with more gilding. He is taking his own cooks
and his own bed, his ministers and musicians, his horses, dogs and
falcons, and his new marquess, whom Europe calls his concubine.
He is taking the possible claimants to the throne, including the
Yorkist Lord Montague, and the Lancastrian Nevilles, to show
how tame they are and how secure are the Tudors. He is taking his
gold plate, his linen, his pastry chefs and poultry-pickers and
poison-taster, and he is even taking his own wine: which you
might think is superfluous, but what do you know?
Rafe, helping him pack his papers: ‘I understand that King
Francis will speak to Rome for the king’s cause. But I am not sure
what he gets out of this treaty.’
‘Wolsey always said that the making of a treaty is the treaty. It
doesn’t matter what the terms are, just that there are terms. It’s
the goodwill that matters. When that runs out, the treaty is
broken, whatever the terms say.’
It is the processions that matter, the exchange of gifts, the
royal games of bowls, the tilts, jousts and masques: these are not
preliminaries to the process, they are the process itself. Anne,
accustomed to the French court and French etiquette, sets out
the difficulties in store. ‘If the Pope were to visit him, then
France could advance towards him, perhaps meeting him in a
courtyard. But two monarchs meeting, once they are in sight,
should take the same number of steps towards each other. And
this works, unless one monarch – hélas – were to take very small
steps, forcing the other to cover the ground.