He feels enquiry ripple through the body of the Thing of the Signet; every fibre of Mr Wriothesley is alert. Such advice could breed consequences. For as Henry now says, ‘The nature of his illness may not have shown itself. If it should prove contagious –’
‘God forbid,’ Mr Wriothesley says.
Henry is looking down at the gift, cupped in his palm. ‘I like this so well, I think I shall give it to my daughter myself. You can find something else, can’t you?’
He bows. What choice has he? The king nods as they leave, his blue eyes mild. The emerald in his turban gleams, the eye of a false god, and his big pink feet in their velvet slippers look like pigs walking to market.
The ladies exiled from court must have been waiting with their clothes packed, because they are back in no time, and he is calling on them to welcome them. Mary Shelton reminds him of one of those virgins of Nikolaus Gerhaert’s carving: pink and white and dimpled, but with shrewd eyes. Though she is not a virgin, of course.
When Shelton had charge of the manuscripts that circulated among the dead queen’s slaves and admirers, she collated the riddles, jests and profane prayers, copying them and sometimes annotating them and deciding who could respond, with a verse or another riddle. Her editor’s hand was light, or she would have crossed out Tom Truth and all his work. He agrees with the dead queen: only Wyatt can do it.
He tells her, ‘I am sure your cousin the queen knew all about Meg and Tom Truth. So was she pleased, when she knew another of her Howard kin was rising in the world?’
‘No. But she was entertained.’
‘She didn’t think to give Lady Meg a warning?’
‘Why would she?’
He concedes that. Why would one woman help another? Mary Shelton says, ‘It is all my cousin Anne’s fault, I agree. It was she who taught us to be selfish, and to reach for our desires. Amor omnia vincit, she said.’
‘Perhaps for a season it did.’
‘Love conquers all?’ Poor gentle creature, she bends her head. ‘With respect, my lord, love couldn’t conquer a gosling. It couldn’t knock a cripple down. It couldn’t beat an egg.’
Shelton was going to be married to Harry Norris; at least, she thought so, until Anne told her, ‘If the king dies, Norris will marry me.’ She had built a little house for love, and it was flattened by one remark: now she lives in the wreckage. He asks, ‘What about Norfolk’s daughter? I know she was the lookout for Meg. She does not live with Richmond as his wife, does she? She has never been permitted. So does she not have a lover of her own?’
Shelton shakes her head. ‘Too frightened of her father. Wouldn’t you be?’
‘Insofar as I can think myself into her place,’ he says, laughing, ‘yes, I would. Where was Jane Rochford in all this?’
‘She’s on her way, isn’t she? Ask her yourself.’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘I will not say she was in the room on Meg’s wedding night. But I will say that she brought fresh linen.’
He holds up a hand. ‘No talk of linen. Meg Douglas is a maid. Intact, like Norfolk’s daughter. Clean as from her mother’s womb.’
‘I see,’ Mary Shelton says. ‘Be sure to apprise Jane Rochford. Tell her to rinse her memory clean.’
He thinks, why must you bed on white linen? God gives you a whole realm for your pleasures: you would be safer in the park against a tree.
Ahead of her return to court, the relict of George Boleyn has stated her demands. She specifies which rooms she would like, asks for stabling for two horses, and bed and board for herself, two maids, and a manservant. He sends a message to the royal household: give Lady Rochford what she wants. But as soon as she arrives, send her to me.
‘What do you hear from Beth Worcester?’ she says, settling herself to conversation as if the last weeks had never been. There is a gleam in her eye. ‘Beth must be in her seventh month now. I wonder if the earl has decided whose child it is?’
‘The king wants to know about Meg Douglas,’ he says.
‘No, he doesn’t. Why would he want to know his niece is ruined? What he wants is to show that all her friends have been questioned, so he can claim he has pursued every road to the truth. One must pity him. He will think he is held of little account these days – his friends cuckolding him, his daughter defying him, his niece contracting herself in marriage. And you yourself, using him so roughly.’
‘How, roughly?’
‘“Set me free,” Henry said. And so you did. He meant, free like a prince – not free like a beggar. You knocked down his palace of dreams and left him stark in the ruins. You showed him his wife was false, that his friendships were feigned. Of course, the treachery of a wife, it is only what you men expect; it is the sin of Eve, you say, betrayal is her nature. But the treachery of Norris – of Weston, whom he nursed in his bosom –’
‘I gave the king what he asked for.’ He thinks, she agrees with Chapuys: she believes Henry will never forgive me for it.
‘But did he know how he would be laughed at?’ Lady Rochford asks. ‘His clothes, his verses, his manhood? He must live with his shame now, and you must live with him. You will have to build him up again, as you can. You and the Seymours.’
‘Build him up? He is King of England.’
‘But is he a man?’ She laughs. ‘I suppose he can do the deed with pasty Jane. She will not expect too much of him. I do not envy her, these nights. Anne said it was like being slobbered over by a mastiff pup.’
He closes his eyes.
‘I hear the coronation is postponed,’ she says.
‘Get the hot weather over. Michaelmas, perhaps.’
He thinks, I hope for notice: time to paint out the dark-eyed goddesses I ordered for Anne, and replace them with Englishwomen dancing in a bower, with rounded bellies and rosy uplifted arms. Lady Rochford says, ‘I think he will not crown Jane till she can satisfy him she has an heir inside her.’
‘Satisfy him? You think she might lie about it?’
‘It has been known.’
We’ll let that pass, he thinks; she wants to draw him where he will not go, into the thickets of the past.
‘Seymour will know how to play her hand,’ she says. ‘Because Seymour has watched and waited. And God knows she has no conscience. I have been in the country and had to endure the prating of my neighbours – “Our lord king will be happy now, England is happy, this is a blessed marriage.” But how can it be blessed? A wedding dress made from a shroud?’
‘Who sewed it, my lady?’
‘Well, there is a question. You, or me, or Master Wyatt – who took the greater share in the work? I think it was you. We pricked out our little pattern, but you cut the cloth.’
‘In May, I counselled you, think before you speak. I warned you, if you give evidence against your husband, you will be shunned. You will be held in odium. You will be alone.’
‘How little you know of our lives,’ she says. ‘The lives of women, I mean. I have been alone for years.’
‘You must forget those days. No one speaks of Anne Boleyn. No one thinks of her. You must be jocund and pleasant and adapt yourself to the new queen, or you will be sent away again, and I shall not speak for you.’
‘Jane Seymour will not send me away. I know what she is. I know a thing about her.’
Inside his chest, a horrible slither and flip of the heart: Chapuys had asked, how could she be at your court so long, and still a virgin? He thinks, some wretch has dishonoured her. A wash of rage, like a current in the sea, almost knocks him off his feet.
Jane Rochford smirks. ‘It is not what you think. No one wanted Jane in their bed, she was too cold a fish. It is another thing, that I know – I know her method. I witnessed everything that she worked against Anne, maid against mistress. You will remember a day when Anne took fright because she found a paper in her bed? A drawing of a man c
rowned, and beside him a woman without a head?’
Dr Cranmer was there, and had reached across him to snatch it from Anne’s hand and tear it up. But Anne pulled away and read aloud: Anne Sans Tête. Anne had said, it is Katherine’s people, they did this, they watch me. Cremuel, she had clutched his arm, I am not safe. How can they come at me, in my own chamber?
He says, ‘Jane did not do it, she does not speak the French tongue.’
‘Everybody speaks that much.’ She laughs at him. ‘Do you know, I believe all these years you have been thinking it was me?’
‘It would have been a natural thought. There was no love lost between you and Anne.’
She says, ‘I have suffered since I was a girl from these people – the Howards, the Boleyns. George Boleyn talked to me as if I were a girl who carries coals for a living, or scrubs shirts. My family was as good as his. Why should Anne Boleyn be uplifted, and not me?’
She is like a starved child, he thinks. Offer her a morsel of attention and she feeds till she is sickened. He had seen Anne Boleyn in fear that day, but he had also heard her scorn. Let them do their worst. I will be queen, though hereafter I burn.
‘At least that was spared,’ he says. ‘Burning.’
Jane raises an eyebrow. ‘In this world, perhaps. I am sure the devil knows his business.’
He picks up his papers: though they have not completed their own business, indeed they have not begun it.
‘So, I am dismissed?’ Lady Rochford stands. ‘I thank you for my return to court. With what I have from my settlement from the Boleyns, and with my allowance for waiting on Jane, I shall be able to keep myself as a gentlewoman, if I am careful. And I dare say you will help me out if I am not.’
‘My obligations are not unlimited.’
‘At least you do not say, “My coffers are not bottomless.” Now that would make me laugh.’ She turns at the door. ‘About Meg Douglas,’ she says. ‘You will be asking yourself, could I have mistaken the meaning of what I saw last spring – the coming and going by night, the hasty flitting, those swift glances, those burning sighs …’
‘My lady, if you knew of this intrigue, why did you not come to me? It would have prevented much mischief. It would have helped me –’
‘How would it have helped you? You never supposed for one moment those men to be guilty of all you charged them with. You said, let us throw mud, and see what will stick. But for all that, you may be easy in your mind. Do not think a mistake has been made, nor an injustice done. You were not wrong about Anne Boleyn.’
‘I trust your word,’ he says, lying.
‘She was false to the core. False in her heart. Whatever our deeds, it is the heart that God sees. Is that not so, Master Secretary?’
He says, ‘You must learn to use my new title, madam.’
As he walks into Austin Friars he meets Richard Cromwell. ‘My doorkeeper,’ he says. ‘Never let a woman in here. I never want to see or speak to one.’
‘What, never?’ Gregory says. ‘Will you join a monastery? But then I hear they are full of women, and women of the worst sort too. What if the queen sends for you – what excuse shall we make?’
‘Tell her she can write me a letter. I’ll write her one back. But I will never read another verse in praise of love. I will read stanzas in praise of military victories. Metrical translations of the psalms. But women’s matters – no.’
Gregory says, ‘It is only the other week you were speaking warmly of the Lady Mary, and saying she ought to have presents.’
His nephew says, ‘Richard Riche is here. And Call-Me.’
‘And Rafe,’ Gregory says. ‘They look grave. We sent them into the garden.’
‘Rafe is here? Why did you not say so?’
He hurries out. It has rained within the hour, and the air is warm and grass-scented. Even the stocks that support his young trees seem to quiver with their own green life. The young men stand on a path of damp beaten earth, their sleeves brushing tangled roses, their hems stuck with briars. They are speaking in low voices, and as he approaches they break off and look at him, shifty, almost guilty.
Rafe says, ‘I cannot think how this has happened. It seems someone has taken letters of yours, or memoranda. It would not have occurred when I oversaw your desk.’
‘I assure you, Sadler,’ Richard Cromwell says, ‘there is nothing leaves this house that should not. Nor word, nor paper.’
‘Every household has traitors,’ Call-Me says.
Richard Riche says, ‘We would not for the world any baseless rumour traduce your reputation. Or set up a misunderstanding between you and our royal master.’
Mr Wriothesley says, ‘Your friends have often begged you to remarry.’
‘For God’s sake!’ he says. ‘What has happened?’
‘Chapuys seems to have some information, or has drawn some inference. He says that the king has promised the Lady Mary in marriage. To you.’
He is silent. ‘By the bones,’ he says. ‘I gave that lady a jewel to wear. Or at least, I attempted it.’
‘The rumour is everywhere by now,’ Call-Me says. ‘It swam to Flanders, rolled through France, scaled the mountains and flew back to us from Portugal.’
‘And does the king know?’
‘If he does not, he is the strange exception,’ Riche says.
Wriothesley says, ‘Sundry letters between you and his daughter were warm in tone. Someone has stolen them.’
‘Not necessarily,’ he says. Freely he had shown the ambassador letters from Mary; she in turn had shown the ambassador letters from him. ‘We cannot say they were stolen. We may say that they have been misread, on purpose to make a ruffle in the world.’
‘Your friends warned you,’ Call-Me says. ‘We warned you in the garden at Sadler’s house. You gave her mother a promise, you said. Now it comes home to you.’
He sees Henry’s face, as it broods over the gift in the palm of his hand. I’ll give it her, he said, you find her something else. Has the king saved him from himself? He says, ‘The king has not, he could not make any such proposition, as to marry his daughter to his councillor. And if he did, then I would refuse. He cannot believe I would seek such a match.’
‘Not for now,’ Gregory looks shocked. ‘But if he chose to believe it …’
Riche says, ‘It is a potent weapon, sir, for your enemies to turn against you. For many believe that the husband of the Lady Mary, whoever he be, will be king one day. And any man who offers himself to wed her, stands in treasonable light.’
‘Yes,’ Richard Cromwell says. ‘You need not go on spelling it out and spelling it out, Riche. This is my uncle’s reward for his goodness. He saved her, and now they say he did it to serve himself.’
He thinks, when fire breaks out you run to the rescue with a bucket. But it’s not the smoke and flames that kill you, it’s the bricks and timbers that fly out when the chimney blows up.
Gregory says, ‘Here is what to do, sir. Nothing will counter the rumour unless you can say, “I am married already.” Go out into the street and offer yourself to the first woman you see.’
‘I concur,’ his nephew says. ‘Old or young. Whatever her condition or degree.’
‘If she is already wed?’
‘Leave that to us,’ Richard says. ‘I am sure we can see off a husband. What do you think, Riche?’
The ghost of a smile: ‘We will dispose of him. Most of us do wrong, if we know it or not. Enquire into any man’s conduct, and I am sure some charge will lie.’
‘Or we can just knife the fellow and toss him on a dungheap,’ Richard says. ‘It’s what they think we do, anyway.’
‘I’ll knife the ambassador,’ he says, ‘when I see him.’
He finds Chapuys in his garden, sitting beneath a tree, a book on his knees. He proffers it: A Dialogue between Law and Conscience.
He takes the book and turns it over in his hands. John Rastell’s printing. ‘I can lend you the second part. But it’s in English.’
‘It continues?’ The ambassador is surprised. ‘I thought all was said. Matters of conscience do not fall outside the law. Therefore, what need of special laws made by churchmen?’ He takes the book back. ‘Soon, some Englishman will ask, what need of churchmen? Why not every man his own minister? The Germans are saying it already.’
He says, ‘I believe I am to be married.’
At least Chapuys has the grace not to lie. He does not deny knowledge of the rumour; he simply waves a hand and denies he is its source. ‘My dear Thomas, do you believe I would say such a thing of you? It would lead to your murder by the noble lords of England, and then I should have to deal with the Duke of Norferk as chief minister. And – I swear by the Mass – the mere thought of it and I am withered by ennui.’
‘I think you are trying to ruin me,’ he says.
‘Please,’ the ambassador signals to his people, ‘a glass of this excellent Rhenish?’
‘Put it on a sponge,’ he says. ‘I’ll have it when I’m nailed above London.’
‘You blaspheme,’ Chapuys says pleasantly. He hands a goblet. ‘I have only reported what I have heard from honourable and good men – that the king means to bestow his daughter on an Englishman, and has chosen you. But I have said to the Emperor, I believe Cromwell will decline the honour. He admits he is a blacksmith’s son, and is not lost to all sense.’
‘I could hardly deny my father.’ He thinks of Walter plunging his head in a water butt at the end of the day: coming up spitting, and spluttering for air. Why did he do it? He was no less filthy afterwards.
‘Of course, if the king did make the offer, face to face,’ Chapuys says, ‘how could you refuse him?’
‘He has not. He will not. He could not. He would rather see Mary dead. His pride would not allow such a match.’
‘Ah yes,’ the ambassador says, ‘his pride. I know from my own observation that the Lady Mary blushes when your name is mentioned.’
‘She blushes with rage,’ he says. ‘She is thinking how she will kill me when she has the power. Crucifixion would be a mercy.’ He downs the Rhenish. ‘She will hate me worse now. By the way, I like your cap badge. That is ingenious work.’
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 24