Richmond says, ‘I did not know when I was a child that Wolsey was of low birth. He seemed to me a very splendid man. Well, his end was miserable. He was fortunate not to die by the axe. They tell me that his heart broke on the road, and that is what killed him.’
There is that possibility. Those who think a heart cannot break have led blessed and sheltered lives. The boy shifts in his chair. ‘Do you think Jane the queen will bear a son?’
‘All England knows, my lord, she comes from fertile stock.’
‘Yes, but if it is true what was claimed in court, that the king cannot please a woman or serve her as he ought –’
‘I recommend, sir – I earnestly recommend – drop this matter.’
But Richmond is a king’s son, and he sails on. ‘My brother Surrey tells me –’ he means his brother-in-law – ‘my brother Surrey says the Parliament has done ill, in framing the new bill of succession. They have left the king to choose his own heir, when they should have named me foremost.’
Thank God the boy had the sense to send Riche out of the room. If Riche heard that, he would be straight to Henry with the tale.
‘I want to be king,’ Richmond says. ‘I am fitted for it. Surrey says my father should recognise that. If he should die now, I am not afraid of the whelp Eliza, for she is only the concubine’s child – unless, as they say, she was a foundling picked up in the street. There is not a man in the nation who will lift a finger for her claim.’
He nods; this much is true.
‘As for the Lady Mary, if I am a bastard, so is she, and I am true English and she is half-Spanish, and I am a man. Besides, they say she will not swear to my father’s titles as head of the church. And if she will not, she is a plain traitor.’
‘Mary will swear,’ he says.
‘She may say the words. She may sign a paper, if you force her. But my lord father will see through her. Mary should not thrive, nor she will not.’
When he last spoke to Richmond, the boy was content with his situation. So who can be behind this surge of unholy ambition? His father-in-law Norfolk? Norfolk might scheme, but he does it silently. No, this is Norfolk’s son, that foolish, headstrong boy, pushing his friend towards a throne that is not empty. He says, ‘Did my lord Surrey suggest to you –’
‘I am my own man.’ The boy cuts him off. ‘Surrey is my friend and he gives me good counsel, but no man will dictate my actions when I am king, nor cozen me in the way my father is cozened. I will not have women lead me.’
He inclines his head. ‘My lord, I cannot remake the succession. The new arrangement reflects the king’s will. I do not see what I can do for you.’
‘You will find a way. Every man says you are master of the Parliament. When I am king I shall reward you.’
When you are king? ‘I shall hardly live so long.’
‘I think you will,’ Richmond says. ‘My father’s leg is sore, since he took his fall in January. I am advised an old wound has reopened and there is a channel in his flesh that lies open to the bone.’
‘If that is true, then he bears the pain with great fortitude.’
‘If that is true, it cannot remain clean. It will putrefy and he will die.’
With every breath he commits treason, and does not hear it. He sees the will stirring, inside the body becoming a man’s. The strand of hair that escapes from his cap is red, the Plantagenet colour. His great-grandfather Edward would own him; the house of York would claim him; King Edward’s disappeared sons, if they had lived, would have looked like this, the gleam in the eye like light on the blade of a sword; the fine skin, where the colour comes and goes, betraying every passion. Richmond says, ‘If my lord cardinal were still alive, he would have made me king. He advised that I should be King of Ireland, did he not? In this pass, he would have wanted me to be King of England too.’
He turns away. ‘You should rest, my lord, and let your indisposition pass.’
He thinks, lions sometimes eat their cubs. Is it any wonder?
The boy calls after him, ‘Do it, Cromwell.’
He is in a state of dull astonishment, like a man dealt a blow from out of the air. God help me, what are princes? They think on murder all day long. A patricide, now: as if the season does not hold enough surprises.
Riche is leaning against the wall, gossiping with Francis Bryan. They straighten up when they see him. Bryan’s jewelled eye-patch gives a knowing wink. ‘Greetings from France. Bishop Gardiner sends you his special love, kiss-kiss. I’m only back till the turn of the tide. Collect dispatches. Whisper in the king’s ear. Check up on you. Gardiner doesn’t believe it, that you’re to be a baron. He says your luck can’t last.’
‘Does he? Kiss him back for me.’
‘Oh, I will,’ Francis says. ‘He wonders why you are so fond of Katherine’s whelp. He claims you are protecting Mary, and it will undo you. He says – mark this – “For Henry’s daughter to deny he is head of the church is as great a treason as to deny he is king.” He says, “Believe me, Francis, Cromwell will go too far, this affair will bring him down.”’
‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘You are a great aid to me, Francis.’
Riche looks uneasy. Is Master Secretary ironical? Riche can’t tell. He asks, ‘What did Fitzroy want, sir? I suppose he is in debt?’
‘How much?’ A veteran spendthrift, Bryan takes an interest in a promising youngster.
‘He spoke of the cardinal. He is in a fit of melancholy, I believe.’
Riche says, ‘If you are uneasy about his health, should we tell the king?’
‘He has the best advice. And the king will not go near him, you know how he is about any illness.’
‘But the king came to see you, sir, when you had a fever.’
‘Only when I was over it. And besides, it was a special Italian fever.’
A true, bone-shaking tertian: not like the little bouts of sweating and shivering that afflict those who’ve never been south of the Kent marshes.
‘It was a signal favour.’ Riche sounds envious.
The fever will come back, he thinks. And very likely, Henry will come back too. He does not believe the king is going to die soon – though a man may as well be dead, if his only son turns against him. The father loves the son, but not the son the father. The son wishes him gone. He wants to take his place. That is the way it is. Of course. It must be that way.
He thinks of the cardinal on the day of his arrest, Harry Percy’s men thundering in to where he lodged: the hand he laid to his ribs. ‘I have a pain,’ he said. ‘A pain as cold as a whetstone.’ If his heart broke, who broke it? No one but the king himself.
‘Shall I order the men back to work?’ Riche asks.
Francis says, ‘I’m told that one of Katherine’s carved pomegranates is still dangling in the roof timbers at Hampton Court. I can’t see it myself. The surgeons say that when you lose an eye, the sight of the other starts to fail. I shall be a blind man begging alms on the high road, and kind Bishop Gardiner will lead me.’
Rafe Sadler and Thomas Wriothesley return from Mary at Hunsdon, without a paper in hand, without her oath. Wriothesley says, ‘Why did you send us, sir? You must have known we could not succeed.’
‘How did she look?’
‘Ill,’ Rafe says.
‘The king is incensed against her advisers,’ he says.
‘In all honesty,’ Rafe says, ‘I don’t think it’s her advisers. It’s her own stubborn pride.’
‘Whichever.’ He is indifferent.
Wriothesley says, ‘Sir, never send me there again.’ Vehement, he flushes. ‘If Master Sadler will not tell you how it was, then I will tell you. The house was full of Nicholas Carew’s people, and servants of the Courtenay family, and others in Lord Montague’s livery. They did not have your licence to be there, and they boasted, it doesn’t matter now, Cromwell is naught – Mary i
s returning to court, and the Pope will be restored, and the world put to rights again.’
‘They gave her the title of “Princess”, Rafe says, ‘and they did not mind who heard.’
‘We greeted her as Lady Mary,’ Call-Me says. ‘She looked enraged. She expected the title of Princess, and she expected us to kneel to her. Then as we delivered your compliments she broke out, “Tell me how she died.” All she wanted was to curse Anne Boleyn. We said, she died calmly, and Rafe said –’
‘“An example of Christian resignation.”’ Rafe looks away, astonished by his own phrase: he was not even there.
‘But she did not want to hear that. She called Anne “the creature” and said she should have been burned alive. She asked what prayers she said, was she pale, did she tremble … I did not think a young girl could be so cruel, or one person of the female sex so hate another. I could have spewed, so help me. She has a black heart, and she showed it.’
Rafe is watching Call-Me. ‘Hush,’ he says. ‘It is hard, but it is done now. And besides, sir, Mary is not as strong in her resolve as her people think. She asked us, “What, Master Secretary does not come himself?” It’s almost as if she is waiting for you. So she can take the oath and it be no blame to her. She will tell the world you have threatened her, enforced her. Rome and all Europe will believe it.’
‘I had rather she obeys from free choice. Whatever the world says.’
‘Obeys?’ Wriothesley says. ‘I never saw any person less likely to yield or obey. What does she think about, abed at night? Does she lie awake devising torments? Sir, you know I do not flinch. I know what manner of things are done. I was at the Tower, when you hung the friar up by his hands –’
‘I didn’t –’ he says.
‘– and I did not demur. I understood his cries were those of a treacherous knave who could still see his duty and save himself –’
‘I didn’t,’ he says. ‘Rafe? Tell him.’
‘You misremember,’ Rafe says gently. ‘There was talk of hanging him up. But it only happened in your imagination.’
‘It happened in the friar’s imagination,’ he says. ‘That was the point. I set his fantasy to work.’
‘Then set Mary’s to work,’ Call-Me says. ‘See if her fantasy will sicken her, as she sickened me. She thinks her cousin the Emperor will crest the sea on a white horse and sweep her away across his saddle. Tell her that no one will rescue her, and that no one will speak for her, but her father will hurt her and bend her to his will.’
June: the Duke of Richmond walks in procession with the House of Lords. How like his father he is, onlookers say: heavy muscle already under the hot drag of the Parliament robes. His handsome face is flushed with portent, as if he feels his future in a warm breeze.
The king seems to enjoy Richard Riche’s speech of welcome. He is not averse to the comparisons: King Solomon, King David. And he has forgotten that Absalom said, ‘I have no son to keep my name in remembrance.’
It’s not only the folk at Hunsdon who believe that with the change of queen, the tide will turn, and England go back to Rome. As sufficient answer, he – Lord Cromwell – brings in a measure: An Act Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome. The title is a guide to its content.
As Parliament meets, so too bishops meet in Convocation. They rustle and grumble, censure and debate – old bishops, new bishops – my bishops, as Anne used to call them. They wrangle dawn till dusk about the sacraments of the church, their nature and number; which ceremonies are laudable, which idolatrous; who should be allowed to read the gospel, and in what language. He, Lord Cromwell, is enthroned among them as Henry’s deputy, Vicegerent of the church under God and the king; where once, in Archbishop Morton’s day, he was the littlest and the lowest of the boys who scrubbed vegetables in the kitchen at Lambeth Palace. Gregory exclaims, ‘To think my father is over all the bishops!’
‘I am not over them, I am only –’ He stops. ‘True. I am over them.’
Since the week of the lady’s death, his archbishop has been elusive. Now, trapped in a side room, Cranmer makes himself busy, pulls out a bundle of writing. The papers are inked with amendments. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘where Bishop Tunstall has written all over me. So now,’ he picks up a quill, ‘I am going to write all over Bishop Tunstall.’
‘You do that,’ Hugh Latimer pats his archbishop’s shoulder. ‘Cromwell, how is it that Richard Sampson has been made a bishop? He has so papist a flavour I think I am chewing the Bishop of Rome himself.’
Cranmer says, ‘He made speed with the king’s annulment, that is why, it is his reward. Though I wish the king … I wish he had elected a period of reflection, between the two …’ his voice fades, ‘… before the new …’ He puts the papers down. He rubs the corners of his eyes. ‘I cannot bear it,’ he says.
‘Anne was our good lady,’ Hugh says. ‘So we thought. We were much misled.’
‘I heard her last confession,’ Cranmer says.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And?’
‘Cromwell, you do not expect me to tell you what she said?’
‘No. But I thought your face might tell me.’
Cranmer turns away.
Latimer says, ‘Confession is not a sacrament. Show me where Christ ordained it.’
Cranmer says, ‘You will not get the king to agree.’
Henry likes to utter his sin and be forgiven. He is sincerely sorry, he will not do it again. And in this case perhaps he will not. The temptation to cut off your wife’s head does not arise every year.
‘Thomas …’ the archbishop says. He pauses. His face mirrors an inner struggle. ‘Thomas … about the manor at Wimbledon …’
Hugh stares at him. Whatever he thought Cranmer was going to say, it wasn’t that.
‘Since it pertains to your new title,’ Cranmer says, ‘you will want it, I suppose. At present it belongs to me – to the archdiocese, I should say.’
‘And the house at Mortlake,’ he says. ‘If you would. The king will compensate you.’
Hugh Latimer says, ‘You can hardly demur, Cranmer. You owe Cromwell money.’
The bishops mean to beat out some statement of common faith, which will stand against the malice of ill-wishers and the misconstructions of fools; which will please the German divines, with whom they wish to come into concord, but will also assuage the fears of the king, who distrusts novelty, and German novelty above all. They mean to issue a statement, if it takes them till next Easter to do it. Considering the differences they have to reconcile, and the parties they wish to please, you would be surprised if they could contrive it before the sun goes out and the earth grows cold.
We need the counsel of dead men, Hugh Latimer says. Father Thomas Bilney should be here with us. He taught us the way and the truth. He opened our insensate hearts. But Little Bilney was burned in a ditch in Norwich, and his bones thrown to dogs: and whenever you think about it, you can hear Thomas More, chuckling.
It is Latimer, as Bishop of Worcester, whose sermon opens the session. ‘Define me first these three things: what prudence is; what is the world; what light; and who be the children of the world, who of the light.’
Latimer smells of burning too. The air sparks around him as he walks.
The king, bearing in mind his daughter’s care for her status, orders the Duke of Norfolk to visit her at Hunsdon and get her compliance; Norfolk, after young Richmond, ranks highest in the land.
Norfolk calls him in, to complain of a fool’s errand. But the duke is, he points out, lucky to have any errand at all. In the days after his niece’s death, as Norfolk admits, he did not know which way to run; except that he did good service at her trial, he thinks that Henry would have banished him and taken his title away. Now, fuming with impatience, he rattles as he paces. About his neck is a heavy gold chain, where the emblems of the Howards alternate with the Tudor rose. Under his shirt, in a
filigree case, he wears the relics of saints, faded hairs and splinters of bone; on his sword hand, a stout gold band, set with a greyish diamond like a chipped tooth. ‘I told Henry,’ he says, ‘look here, I have no parlour manners, I am no man for sweet-talk with some little coquette. If Mary were mine – but no use to think of it.’ As if restraining an impulse, the duke folds one fist into the other.
The Duchess of Norfolk had once told him that when Thomas Howard wanted to marry her – she having a sweetheart already – he had stormed into her father’s house and threatened to break the place up; and so she had given way to him, to her rapid regret. Perhaps Mary will do the same? The duke’s voice runs on, anticipating knock-backs: ‘… so the girl will say … then I say … I declare the whole realm considers her obstinate, disobedient, worthy of exemplary punishment – but the king, out of his gracious and divine nature – is that right, Cromwell, do I say divine?’
‘Try “fatherly”. It gives the same idea, without hyperbole.’
‘Right,’ the duke says, uncertainly. ‘Gracious and fatherly, et cetera and so forth – the king considers that as a woman, frail and inconstant, she is easily led – but she must name them, those who are feeding her obstinacy – and she must say if she will or will not recognise his full authority and submit to his laws – which frankly, it seems to me, Cromwell, is the least a king should require of a subject. Then she, et cetera and so forth, must forswear all attempts to seek remedy from Rome – is that correct?’
He nods: all quarrels are to be pursued in English and here at home.
A young man is at his elbow, bowing. It is Thomas Howard the Lesser. Ah, he thinks, I dreamed of your verses: flip/snip, lip/pip, love/dove.
The Greater is not pleased to see his half-brother. ‘What brings you out, boy, crawling from under some trull’s skirt?’
‘Sir – my lord –’
‘An idle generation.’ Norfolk sucks his lip. ‘Naught but riddles and games.’
The Mirror and the Light: 2020’s highly anticipated conclusion to the best selling, award winning Wolf Hall series (The Wolf Hall Trilogy, Book 3) Page 11