Wolf Hall tct-1

by Hilary Mante

  He watches him melt into the crowd of home-going aldermen. He thinks, More is too proud to retreat from his position. He is afraid to lose his credibility with the scholars in Europe. We must find some way for him to do it, that doesn't depend on abjection. The sky has cleared now, to a flawless lapis blue. The London gardens are bright with berries. There is an obdurate winter ahead. But he feels a force ready to break, as spring breaks from the dead tree. As the word of God spreads, the people's eyes are opened to new truths. Until now, like Helen Barre, they knew Noah and the Flood, but not St Paul. They could count over the sorrows of our Blessed Mother, and say how the damned are carried down to Hell. But they did not know the manifold miracles and sayings of Christ, nor the words and deeds of the apostles, simple men who, like the poor of London, pursued simple wordless trades. The story is much bigger than they ever thought it was. He says to his nephew Richard, you cannot tell people just part of the tale and then stop, or just tell them the parts you choose. They have seen their religion painted on the walls of churches, or carved in stone, but now God's pen is poised, and he is ready to write his words in the books of their hearts.

  But in these same streets Chapuys sees the stirrings of sedition, a city ready to open its gates to the Emperor. He was not at the sack of Rome but there are nights when he dreams of it as if he had been there: the black guts spilled on antique pavements, the half-dead draped in the fountains, the chiming of bells through the marsh fog, and the flames of arsonists' torches leaping along the walls. Rome has fallen and everything within it; it was not invaders but Pope Julius himself who knocked down old St Peter's, which had stood for twelve hundred years, the site where the Emperor Constantine himself had dug the first trench, twelve scoops of soil, one for each of the apostles; where the Christian martyrs, sewn into the skins of wild beasts, had been torn apart by dogs. Twenty-five feet he dug down to lay his new foundations, through a necropolis, through twelve centuries of fishbones and ash, his workmen's shovels powdering the skulls of saints. In the place where martyrs had bled, ghost-white boulders stood: marble, waiting for Michelangelo.

  In the street he sees a priest carrying the host, no doubt to a dying Londoner; the passers-by uncover their heads and kneel, but a boy leans out of an upper window and jeers, ‘Show us your Christ-is-Risen. Show us your Jack-in-the-Box.’ He glances up; the boy's face, before it vanishes, is vivid with rage.

  He says to Cranmer, these people want a good authority, one they can properly obey. For centuries Rome has asked them to believe what only children could believe. Surely they will find it more natural to obey an English king, who will exercise his powers under Parliament and under God.

  Two days after he sees More shivering at the sermon, he conveys a pardon to Lady Exeter. It comes with some blistering words from the king, directed to her husband. It is St Catherine's Day: in honour of the saint who was threatened with martyrdom on a wheel, we all walk in circles to our destination. At least, that's the theory. He has never seen anyone over the age of twelve actually doing it.

  There's a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing.

  Next day, at Hampton Court, the king's son the Duke of Richmond marries Norfolk's daughter Mary. Anne has arranged this marriage for the glorification of the Howards; also, to stop Henry marrying his bastard, to the boy's advantage, to some princess abroad. She has persuaded the king to waive the magnificent dower payment he would have expected and, triumphant in all her designs, she joins the dancing, her thin face flushed, her shining hair braided with dagger-tips of diamonds. Henry cannot take his eyes off her, and nor can he.

  Richmond draws to him all other eyes, gambolling like a colt, showing off his wedding finery, turning, leaping, bouncing and strutting. Look at him, the older ladies say, and you will see how his father was once: that perfect glow, skin as thin as a girl's. ‘Master Cromwell,’ he demands, ‘tell the king my father that I want to live with my wife. He says that I am to go back to my household and Mary is to stay with the queen.’

  ‘He has a care for your health, my lord.’

  ‘I am fifteen next.’

  ‘It wants half a year till your birthday.’

  The boy's blithe expression vanishes; a stony look takes over his face. ‘Half a year is nothing. A man of fifteen is competent.’

  ‘So we hear,’ Lady Rochford says, standing idly by. ‘The king your father brought witnesses to court to say his brother could do the deed at fifteen, and more than once a night.’

  ‘It is also your bride's health that we need to think of.’

  ‘Brandon's wife is younger than mine, and he has her.’

  ‘Every time he sees her,’ Lady Rochford says, ‘if I judge by the startled expression on her face.’

  Richmond is digging himself in for a long argument, entrenching himself behind precedent: it is his father's way of arguing. ‘Did not my great-grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, give birth at thirteen years, to the prince who would be Henry Tudor?’

  Bosworth, the tattered standards, the bloody field; the stained sheet of maternity. Where do we all come from, he thinks, but this same hole and corner dealing: sweetheart, yield to me. ‘I never heard it improved her health,’ he says, ‘or her temper. She had no children after.’ Suddenly he is tired of the argument; he cuts it short, his voice tired and flat. ‘Be reasonable, my lord. Once you've done it, you'll want to do it all the time. For about three years. That's the way it goes. And your father has other work in mind for you. He may send you to hold court in Dublin.’

  Jane Rochford says, ‘Be easy, my lamb. There are ways that can be contrived. A man may always meet a woman, if she is willing.’

  ‘May I speak as your friend, Lady Rochford? You risk the king's displeasure if you meddle in this.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says easily, ‘Henry will forgive anything to a pretty woman. They only seek to do what is natural.’

  The boy says, ‘Why should I live like a monk?’

  ‘A monk? They go to it like goats. Master Cromwell here will tell you.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Richmond says, ‘it is madam the queen who wants to keep us apart. She doesn't mean the king to have a grandson in the cradle, before he has a son of his own.’

  ‘But do you not know?’ Jane Rochford turns to him. ‘Has it not reached your ears that La Ana is enceinte?’

  She gives her the name Chapuys gives her. He sees the boy's face open in blank dismay. Jane says, ‘I fear by summer you will have lost your place, sweetheart. Once he has a son born in wedlock, you may tup to your heart's content. You will never reign, and your offspring will never inherit.’

  It isn't often that you see a princeling's hopes destroyed, in the instant it takes to pinch out a candle flame: and with the same calculated movement, as if born of the neatness of habit. She has not even licked her fingers.

  Richmond says, his face crumpling, ‘It may be another girl.’

  ‘It is almost treason to hope so,’ Lady Rochford says. ‘And if it is, she will have a third child, and a fourth. I thought she would not conceive again but I was wrong, Master Cromwell. She has proved herself now.’

  Cranmer is in Canterbury, walking on a path of sand barefoot to his enthronement as primate of England. The ceremony done, he is sweeping out the priory of Christ Church, whose members gave so much encouragement to the false prophetess. It could be a long job, interviewing each monk, picking their stories apart. Rowland Lee storms into town to put some brawn into the business, and Gregory is in his train; so he sits in London reading a letter from his son, no longer nor more informative than his schoolboy letters: And now no more for lack of time.

  He writes to Cranmer, be merciful to the community there, as nothing worse than misled. Spare the monk who gilded the Magdalene's letter. I suggest the
y give a present in cash to the king, three hundred pounds will please him. Clean out Christ Church and the whole diocese; Warham was archbishop for thirty years, his family are entrenched, his bastard son is archdeacon, take a new broom to them. Put in people from home: your sad east Midlands clerks, formed under sober skies.

  There is something beneath his desk, under his foot, the nature of which he has avoided thinking about. He pushes his chair back; it is half a shrew, a gift from Marlinspike. He picks it up and thinks of Henry Wyatt, eating vermin in his cell. He thinks of the cardinal, resplendent at Cardinal College. He throws the shrew on the fire. The corpse fizzes and shrivels, bones gone with an empty little pop. He picks up his pen and writes to Cranmer, shake out those Oxford men from your diocese, and put in Cambridge men we know.

  He writes to his son, come home and spend the new year with us.

  December: in her frozen angularity, a blue light behind her cast up from the snow, Margaret Pole looks as if she has stepped from a church window, slivers of glass shaking from her gown; in fact, those splinters are diamonds. He has made her come to him, the countess, and now she looks at him from beneath her heavy lids, she looks at him down her long Plantagenet nose, and her greeting, ice-bright, flies out into the room. ‘Cromwell.’ Just that.

  She comes to business. ‘The Princess Mary. Why must she quit the house in Essex?’

  ‘My lord Rochford wants it for his use. It's good hunting country, you see. Mary is to join her royal sister's household, at Hatfield. She will not need her own attendants there.’

  ‘I offer to support my place in her household at my own expense. You cannot prevent me from serving her.’

  Try me. ‘I am only the minister of the king's wishes, and you, I suppose, are as anxious as I am to carry them out.’

  ‘These are the wishes of the concubine. We do not believe, the princess and I, that they are the king's own wishes.’

  ‘You must stretch your credulity, madam.’

  She looks down at him from her plinth: she is Clarence's daughter, old King Edward's niece. In her time, men like him knelt down to speak to women like her. ‘I was in Katherine the queen's suite on the day she was married. To the princess, I stand as a second mother.’

  ‘Blood of Christ, madam, you think she needs a second? The one she has will kill her.’

  They stare at each other, across an abyss. ‘Lady Margaret, if I may advise you … your family's loyalty is suspect.’

  ‘So you say. This is why you are parting me from Mary, as punishment. If you have matter enough to indict me, then send me to the Tower with Elizabeth Barton.’

  ‘That would be much against the king's wishes. He reveres you, madam. Your ancestry, your great age.’

  ‘He has no evidence.’

  ‘In June last year, just after the queen was crowned, your son Lord Montague and your son Geoffrey Pole dined with Lady Mary. Then a scant two weeks later, Montague dined with her again. I wonder what they discussed?’

  ‘Do you really?’

  ‘No,’ he says, smiling. ‘The boy who carried in the dish of asparagus, that was my boy. The boy who sliced the apricots was mine too. They talked about the Emperor, about the invasion, how he might be brought to it. So you see, Lady Margaret, all your family owes much to my forbearance. I trust they will repay the king with future loyalty.’

  He does not say, I mean to use your sons against their trouble-making brother abroad. He does not say, I have your son Geoffrey on my payroll. Geoffrey Pole is a violent, unstable man. You do not know how he will turn. He has paid him forty pounds this year to turn the Cromwell way.

  The countess curls her lip. ‘The princess will not leave her home quietly.’

  ‘My lord of Norfolk intends to ride to Beaulieu, to tell her of the change in her circumstances. She may defy him, of course.’

  He had advised the king, leave Mary in possession of her style as princess, do not diminish anything. Do not give her cousin the Emperor a reason to make war.

  Henry had shouted, ‘Will you go to the queen, and suggest to her that Mary keep her title? For I tell you, Master Cromwell, I am not going to do it. And if you put her in a great passion, as you will, and she falls ill and miscarries her child, you will be responsible! And I shall not incline to mercy!’

  Outside the door of the presence chamber, he leans on the wall. He rolls his eyes and says to Rafe, ‘God in Heaven, no wonder the cardinal was old before his time. If he thinks her pique will dislodge it, it cannot be stuck very fast. Last week I was his brother-in-arms, this week he is threatening me with a bloody end.’

  Rafe says, ‘It is a good thing you are not like the cardinal.’

  Indeed. The cardinal expected the gratitude of his prince, in which matter he was bound to be disappointed. For all his capacities he was a man whose emotions would master him and wear him out. He, Cromwell, is no longer subject to vagaries of temperament, and he is almost never tired. Obstacles will be removed, tempers will be soothed, knots unknotted. Here at the close of the year 1533, his spirit is sturdy, his will strong, his front imperturbable. The courtiers see that he can shape events, mould them. He can contain the fears of other men, and give them a sense of solidity in a quaking world: this people, this dynasty, this miserable rainy island at the edge of the world.

  By way of recreation at the end of the day, he is looking into Katherine's land holdings and judging what he can redistribute. Sir Nicholas Carew, who does not like him and does not like Anne, is amazed to receive from him a package of grants, including two fat Surrey manors to adjoin his existing holdings in the county. He seeks an interview to express his thanks; he has to ask Richard, who keeps the Cromwell diary now, and Richard fits him in after two days. As the cardinal used to say, deference means making people wait.

  When Carew comes in he is arranging his face. Chilly, self-absorbed, the complete courtier, he works at turning up the corners of his mouth. The result is a maidenly simper, incongruous above a luxuriant beard.

  ‘Oh, I am sure you are deserving,’ he says, shrugging it off. ‘You are a boyhood friend of His Majesty and nothing gives him greater pleasure than to reward his old friends. Your wife is in touch with the Lady Mary, is she not? They are close? Ask her,’ he says gently, ‘to give the young woman good advice. Warn her to be conformable to the king in all things. His temper is short these days and I cannot answer for the consequences of defiance.’

  Deuteronomy tells us, gifts blind the eyes of the wise. Carew is not particularly wise, in his opinion, but the principle holds good; and if not exactly blinded, at least he looks dazed. ‘Call it an early Christmas present,’ he tells him, smiling. He pushes the papers across his desk.

  At Austin Friars they are cleaning out store rooms and building strong rooms. They will keep the feast at Stepney. The angel's wings are moved there; he wants to keep them, till there is another child in the house of the right size. He sees them going, shivering in their shroud of fine linen, and watches the Christmas star loaded on to a cart. Christophe asks, ‘How would one work it, that savage machine that is all over points?’

  He draws off one of the canvas sleeves, shows him the gilding. ‘Jesus Maria,’ the boy says. ‘The star that guides us to Bethlehem. I thought it was an engine for torture.’

  Norfolk goes down to Beaulieu to tell Lady Mary she must move to the manor at Hatfield, and be an attendant to the little princess, and live under the governance of Lady Anne Shelton, aunt to the queen. What ensues, he reports back in aggrieved tones.

  ‘Aunt to the queen?’ says Mary. ‘There is but one queen, and that is my mother.’

  ‘Lady Mary …’ Norfolk says, and the words make her burst into tears, and run to her room and lock herself in.

  Suffolk goes up the country to Buckden, to convince Katherine to move to another house. She has heard that they mean to send her somewhere even damper than Buckden, and she says the damp will kill her, so she too shuts herself up, rattling the bolts into place and shouting at Suffolk in
three languages to go away. She will go nowhere, she says, unless he is prepared to break down the door and bind her with ropes and carry her. Which Charles thinks is a little extreme.

  Brandon sounds so sorry for himself when he writes back to London for instructions: a man with a bride of fourteen awaiting his attentions, to spend the holiday like this! When his letter is read out to the council, he, Cromwell, bursts out laughing. The sheer joy of it carries him into the new year.

  There is a young woman walking the roads of the kingdom, saying she is the princess Mary, and that her father has turned her out to beg. She has been seen as far north as York and as far east as Lincoln, and simple people in these shires are lodging and feeding her and giving her money to see her on her way. He has people keeping an eye out for her, but they haven't caught her yet. He doesn't know what he would do with her if he did catch her. It is punishment enough, to take on the burden of a prophecy, and to be out unprotected on the winter roads. He pictures her, a dun-coloured, dwindling figure, tramping away towards the horizon over the flat muddy fields.

  Chapter III.

  A Painter's Eye.

  1534

  When Hans brings the finished portrait to Austin Friars he feels shy of it. He remembers when Walter would say, look me in the face, boy, when you tell me a lie.

  He looks at the picture's lower edge, and allows his gaze to creep upwards. A quill, scissors, papers, his seal in a little bag, and a heavy volume, bound in blackish green: the leather tooled in gold, the pages gilt-edged. Hans had asked to see his Bible, rejected it as too plain, too thumbed. He had scoured the house and found the finest volume he owned on the desk of Thomas Avery. It is the monk Pacioli's work, the book on how to keep your books, sent to him by his kind friends in Venice.

  He sees his painted hand, resting on the desk before him, holding a paper in a loose fist. It is uncanny, as if he had been pulled apart, to look at himself in sections, digit by digit. Hans has made his skin smooth as the skin of a courtesan, but the motion he has captured, that folding of the fingers, is as sure as that of a slaughterman's when he picks up the killing knife. He is wearing the cardinal's turquoise.