‘That would cheer us up,’ Jane Rochford says. ‘She is famous for her japes.’
The women hide their smiles. He says, ‘I think Lady Mary’s health would improve with gentle company.’
‘Do you?’ Rochford says. ‘I suppose it were pity if she went on praying till she wore out her knees. In the country one loses any looks one has.’
‘Lady Rochford speaks from experience,’ says Edward Seymour’s wife.
Rochford says, ‘If Mary is here with us, the rebels cannot take her. Nor she, for that matter, resort to them.’
‘She would never do so,’ he says. ‘I have her pledge.’
Rochford folds her hands, smiling.
Jane the queen says, ‘I would like her company, myself. I could ask the king. But he is displeased with me. Because I am not, yet.’
‘With child,’ Jane Rochford supplies.
The queen says, ‘I hear agates are helpful. You lay them next the skin.’
‘No doubt the Wardrobe will have some,’ Rafe says. ‘If not, we will get them. In Cornwall you can practically pick them up in the street.’
The queen looks surprised. ‘In Cornwall? Do they have a street?’
Call-Me steps forward. ‘If I may suggest, my lord Privy Seal? We might rehearse her Highness in a pretty speech? We might approach his Majesty by first praising him.’
Sound, he thinks. Let’s try it. ‘“Sir,”’ he begins, ‘“you have raised me to a sphere apart.”’
‘He has,’ Jane says. ‘And I heartily congratulate you, Lord Cromwell.’
‘No, your Highness,’ Jane Rochford explains. ‘That is not what Cromwell says, that is what you say. “Sir, you have been pleased to set me above all other Englishwomen.”’
‘“I all unworthy,”’ Wriothesley offers.
‘“I unworthy,”’ he says, ‘that’s very good – “exalting me into a sphere apart. With whom then can I be at ease? There is no lady of my rank with whom I can share a confidence.”’
‘Then continue,’ Rafe suggests, ‘“Sir, out of your liberality and generous, fatherly heart, please to let the Lady Mary come to court, so that I may have comfort in her society, and be merry.”’
‘Let me try it,’ Jane says. She takes a breath. ‘Sir, out of your liberality … Is it his liberality, or his something else?’
‘Liberality has a fine ring to it,’ Rafe urges.
‘Then we’ll proceed with liberality,’ Jane says, ‘and see where it gets us. But Lord Cromwell, I must raise a matter with you –’ She nods to the ladies. They exchange glances and withdraw. Rafe, Wriothesley, both fall back. For a moment, unspeaking, the queen watches her court recede. Then she detaches from her girdle a small flask for rosewater. ‘It is of great antiquity,’ she says. ‘The king gave it me. He says it is Roman.’
The glass in his hand is darkened, fragile as air. ‘It’s possible.’
‘Once it contained a sacred relic. He did not say of which saint.’ As if anticipating his question she says, ‘I don’t ask. I wait to be told.’
‘I do the same.’
‘The king tells me his dreams.’ He wonders at the expression of dread on her face. ‘He talks about when he was a child.’
‘Women want to know about a man’s childhood.’ It had not struck him before, but he has never known a woman shun an anecdote, however mendacious.
‘It is because they wish to love them,’ Jane says. ‘They cannot always love the man, but they think they could love the child he was.’
He feels unease. The glass is only a diversion – but from what? ‘The king was a very handsome child,’ he says. ‘So it is reported.’
‘Lady Rochford,’ the queen says, ‘could you stand off, please? No – further off. With the other ladies. Thank you.’ She turns her face to him, her expression opening like a flower. ‘He talks about his brother Arthur. He thinks he killed him.’
He is startled into simplicity. ‘He didn’t kill him. He just died.’
‘He killed him with envy – with wishing against him. Even when he was very young, when he was Duke of York, he wished to be a king himself, even if not King of England. It was his intention, he says, to reconquer France, then Arthur would give it him as a reward.’
‘Highness, wishes do not kill people.’
‘Nor prayers?’ Jane says. ‘It is wicked to pray for our advantage at the expense of another. But we cannot always help what comes into our head.’
He says, ‘There must be a mechanism. Like a gun or a knife or a disease.’
‘But then, Henry says, he imagined all the misfortunes that might overtake his French war. Such as flux, mud, penury.’
‘That was sage, in one so young.’
‘But he thought, I should like to be a king anyway. And God read his heart. And so Arthur died, and Henry inherited all his brother’s dignities and titles, and married Katherine his wife.’
‘Or tried to marry her,’ he says. He feels tired. ‘It was not a real marriage, of course, that is established.’
‘And Arthur never came home,’ Jane says, ‘but lies in a tomb at Worcester cathedral, where they left him at dead of winter. And Henry never goes to see him.’
After a moment she says, ‘My lord? You are going to stand there and not speak?’
He says, ‘Why now?’ Cranmer and I believed we had vanquished that spectre: in one winter’s night of persuasion and prayer, refined Arthur into thin air. But it seems Henry withheld something. We took him for the helpless victim of a spirit, rudely appearing. We did not know his shame fetched it.
He says, ‘If the king raises the matter I shall say it was a child’s fantasy, and he should dwell on it no more.’
‘Thank you. I tried my brother, Lord Hertford, in this matter. But he said, “Tush, sister, superstition.”’
‘Did he?’ He smiles.
‘You may go,’ the queen says. ‘If anyone asks what we spoke of, tell them I wanted to show you the glass and know about the Romans. I do not believe everything the king tells me.’
Rafe and Call-Me follow him out. They are twitching with curiosity. Call-Me says, ‘Do you think she will make bold and ask? About Mary?’
Rafe says, ‘I hope she will, because if Mary is here, no misunderstandings can arise, about who she meets or writes to.’
‘You see?’ Lady Rochford is behind them. ‘Even your own people do not trust Mary. But she will come with all speed. I hear she pines for you, Lord Cromwell.’
He takes her arm and steers her away. She is his ally, like it or not. She snaps, ‘I have deserved gentler treatment at your hands. And at the queen’s, I may say.’
He lets go. She rubs her arm, as if he had injured her. He thinks, if wishes were death, I would be superfluous to the state. Henry hated both his wives at divers times, but they spitefully lived on, until God put an end to one, the French executioner to the other. Henry could not wish them away, for all his power. Only I could do that. It is I who tell him who he can marry and unmarry and who he can marry next, and who and how to kill.
But perhaps it will not matter, he thinks. Perhaps the Yorkshiremen will come and slay us all.
The queen makes her request before Henry in sight of the court. Note his alert face, the modest inclination of her head. ‘Sir,’ she begins, ‘out of my unworthiness, you have been – what? – liberal. I am in a sphere. Please to bring the Lady Mary to court. I may have comfort in her society, and share a confidence.’
Henry looks at her in tender bewilderment. ‘Are you lonely, sweetheart? Of course we will have her, if it will make you merry.’
‘Merry. That was the word I forgot.’ Jane does not smile. She sinks low to the ground, collapsed inside a stiff tent of brocade and satin. ‘Will you hear me?’
What now? He tries to catch Rochford’s eye, but the whole assembly is staring at the queen. ‘M
y heart is moved, sir, by the divisions that arise between your subjects and your most sacred self.’
There is a rustle of consternation. This is not Jane’s own language, surely?
Henry gazes at her. ‘I take these words as they are meant. A queen has a double duty. As a wife, she feels for her husband when he is troubled. As a queen, she feels as a subject to her lord.’
‘I am only a woman,’ Jane says. ‘I do not presume to be wiser than your Grace. But my heart misgives when honourable and devout customs are left off, sanctified by usage since the world began. We must cherish them, as a son or daughter will cherish an aged father.’
Henry frowns. ‘What customs?’
‘Nan!’ he says to Edward’s wife. ‘Nan, quick.’
Lady Seymour steps forward, ‘Madam –’
Jane says, ‘Your people want the Pope of Rome. They want the statues they have known all their lives, and blessed candles, and holy days.’
Nan Seymour is urgent: ‘Madam –’
‘Let her be,’ Henry says. ‘She should be instructed, and who but I should do it? How is it, that for all the preachers who set forth the king’s supremacy, for all that has been said and written, there are still those who do not grasp that the Bishop of Rome is merely a foreign prince, out to conquer if he can? Madam, I will have no alien interfere with my rule, and I will allow no traitor to shelter behind the cross of Christ.’
Jane says, ‘They think you will take their silver crosses and turn them into coin.’
Henry says, ‘The simple people may believe it, but who leads them to do so? What manner of pastors are they, the priests and abbots who break their oath to me, and are first in the fray, swords in their hands?’
‘They would still pray for the king,’ Jane says, as if bargaining, ‘if they could pray for the Pope too.’
He thinks, I must end this if the king will not. ‘Madam, there can be no double jurisdiction. Either the king rules, or Rome.’
‘And it is not a question,’ Wriothesley warns.
Henry says, ‘Her Grace will withdraw.’
Jane is shaking. ‘They are too much burdened with taxes.’
The king leans forward. ‘The burdens of tax do not rest on the shoulders of labourers, or small husbandmen. Dives, the rich man, knows and has always known how to pass off his interests as the interests of Lazarus, the beggar.’
Jane stares at him. ‘Yes. Possibly. I do not understand the subsidy or the revenue. But my lord – take care of your thoughts as well as your deeds. What you say by night haunts you by day, and what you refuse by day will return by night.’
Nan Seymour takes one arm, Jane Rochford takes the other; they lift her to her feet. The king says, ‘Jane, understand this – I dispose for my subjects, body and soul. A prince answers before the strait court of Heaven for his proceedings, and when he dies will be judged by standards of which ordinary men are quit. God gives him graces: God gives him wisdom, policy and prudence, and these virtues are his to exercise, by methods of which he is the only arbiter. I am the earthly shepherd of God’s sheep. It is a prince’s part to provide not only for noble families but for obscure ones, and not only for scholars and magistrates but for the untutored and the poor, for the whole commonwealth of his people – both for their corporeal welfare, and their spiritual good.’ He adds, benign, ‘The duty is laid on me, and the world shall see me discharge it.’
‘Amen to that,’ Mr Wriothesley says. The courtiers clasp their hands together – they would applaud, if the king gave the nod. The Lord Chancellor murmurs, ‘Eloquence, sir.’ There is a rumble of appreciation from Sampson, Bishop of Chichester; the Earl of Oxford, who is Lord Chamberlain, sighs like a farm-girl in a feather bed.
The king says, ‘We are willing to consider all lawful petitions. Willing to spare any ceremony or image, if it is not baneful. However.’ He lifts his eyes, and positions his gaze deliberately above the head of his wife. ‘When you are fruitful, that will be the time we give ear to your complaint.’
As the women draw Jane away, ‘Follow,’ he says curtly, to Rafe, to Call-Me. He wants this crowd dispersed. It is like when a cart overturns in the street. ‘Pass along,’ the constables shout. ‘Nothing to see, pass on.’
Wriothesley catches his arm. ‘Has Carew been with her? Or the Courtenays?’
‘Perhaps,’ he says, ‘it proceeds from her own misled and gentle heart. She lacks good companions. I wish her sister Bess Oughtred might be got from the north.’
Rafe slaps his arm to alert him: Lady Rochford at sword’s length. She says, ‘I hope you don’t blame me.’
He says, ‘It hadn’t occurred to me. But now that you mention it …’
He thinks, you have destroyed one queen, is one enough?
Richard Cromwell writes from the town of Lincoln, which has now been seized back for the king. The gentlemen are disappointed that the foe has melted away. They went out to shed blood, not to parlay. Richard feels cheated himself, it is clear. The work he does, doorkeeper to his uncle, is not warlike enough for his nature.
Charles Brandon, to pin Lincolnshire down, will need to reserve a force and keep it in the field for the duration. ‘What is Charles doing?’ the king says. ‘I hope he is not too lenient. He should make an example of these beasts. Their women will creep to him, I suppose, and sue for pardon. Charles cannot abide to see a woman weep.’
‘We are none of us indifferent to it,’ he says. Henry stares at him.
It has never been possible to count the king’s subjects – not with certainty. Only the angels know how many are baptised and how many buried. We have the muster rolls of years past to see what each district can marshal: what archers, pikemen, how many horse and foot; how many helmets and coats of mail, what spears, war hammers, poll axes, swords; what gentlemen they have to lead them, whether novices or veterans. But we do not have windows into hearts, to say who is true. There is no single enemy, there is no one place he is; when one head is cut off then, Hydra-like, he grows another. They are rising in Cumberland and Westmorland and as far south as Derbyshire. In the towns of north Yorkshire they gather ten thousand strong. From Durham they descend with the banner of St Cuthbert, streaming silks of crimson and white. In Cumberland, four captains go in procession with relics before them. They have trumpeters, and heralds crying out their names: Captains Pity and Charity, Poverty and Faith.
He has their true names: Rob Mounsey and Tom Burbeck, Gilbert Whelpdale, John Beck. Captain Cobbler, the great traitor of Louth, is a shoemaker by trade, as his name may well attest: under his real name, Nicholas Melton, he will answer when the day comes. Meanwhile we can guess, from reports reliable and unreliable, that in the north fifty thousand men are in the field. There is no army the king can command or deploy that can meet, outmanoeuvre or halt such a force.
So: talking must hold the rebels back. But by now the king hardly wants to talk. He does not ask if the rebels’ demands are reasonable. He says he is their sovereign and they have no right to make any demands at all.
At his palace in Kenninghall, the Duke of Norfolk chafes and fumes, igniting himself like one of the rebel beacons, firing off several letters a day. He burns to fight: release him to go north; he will go tonight, by God, he will not be stayed! He will even serve under Brandon, he pleads. In Windsor young men pass the duke’s letters around, smirking: they are all Lord Cromwell’s servants, his discepoli, flocked after him from London. They see out the day with him, eating and drinking and talking of God and man till the candles burn down; and they see it in with him, keen as little dogs that scratch your door at first light.
The weather is not fit to hunt, so the grooms who keep the king’s outer apartments do not stir much before six. They rise by custom, by regulation, for unless he is sick or at the chase the king’s mornings are the same. The grooms rouse the esquires of the body, who take up their pallets, wash and dress themselves and car
ry in the king’s under-linen. It is they who hear the king’s first words each day, his first prayers, and report any special requests he has, so Lord Cromwell may see them on their way to fulfilment. One day Henry says, his voice sleepy, ‘Could you fetch Norris?’
They gape at each other. Each man struck dumb. The king pushes back the coverlet, as if impatient.
‘Sir,’ one ventures, ‘Norris is dead.’
The king yawns. ‘What?’ He spoke out of his dream, and as his feet hit the floor, he has forgotten it.
But the grooms stumble out, babbling: ‘My lord Cromwell …’
‘He must have been half-asleep. But tell me if he asks for Norris again.’
Mr Wriothesley laughs. ‘Why, are you going to supply him?’
Riche says, ‘You cannot raise the dead.’
‘No? That’s not my experience.’
He nods to the esquires: they bow in their turn, and go in to Henry with their perfumes and linen cloths. It is their honour to rub down the king’s person till his skin is tender and pink, then raise the lids of cedar chests and shake out his shirts, soft as April air. All those garments are gone long since, that Katherine embroidered with Spanish blackwork, and now they are stitched by paid and proficient hands, with lions and laurel crowns.
Hovering beyond the door, inventories in hand, is the Yeoman of the Wardrobe. A page bears a box of jewellery so the king can make choice; but first the king sits on his velvet stool for his barber. While his beard is trimmed and his hair combed his physicians come in, and gather in a black knot with their basins and urine flasks. They smell his breath, and enquire into his sleep and dreams.
The poor labourer owns his sleep and his stool, and can sell his piss to the fuller, whereas the king’s piss and stool is the property of all England, and every fantasy that disturbs his night hours is recorded somewhere in a book of dreams, which is written in the clouds massing over the fields and forests of his realm: every stir of lust, every frightful waking. Should he be costive, he is ordered a potion; should his bowel be loose, its product is taken away in a bowl under an embroidered cloth. They can only judge what is within him, by what comes out: a pity he is not made of glass.
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 37