‘The season will be easier this year,’ he says. ‘We can have eggs. Cheese. The king allows it.’
‘Naught but yellow and white,’ Thurston says.
The French and the Emperor are fighting by land and sea. Their war makes fish scarce, and that’s the only reason the king makes a concession. Cranmer complains that at the royal court even the minor feasts of the church are held with all the old superstitious ceremonies. How then can he convince the simple people to labour on saints’ days, instead of drinking ale under a hedge: to till and sow, instead of playing skittles?
‘There are willing butchers enough,’ Thurston says. ‘A man can purchase flesh even on Good Friday, if he has a shilling and a good wit.’
He holds up a palm. ‘If I knew the names of willing butchers, I’d have to close them down.’
‘Our master is second to God,’ Mathew says, chewing. ‘First comes the king, God’s deputy, and then comes our master, deputy to the king.’ He licks his fingers. ‘Sir, they are saying the French have given you a big present. I mean, not a lion or a fighting horse. A present of money.’
He relishes the last fragment of bread, sacramentally: pepper, grass: Chapuys sent the oil. ‘The king’s not averse to us getting our living,’ he tells Mathew. ‘It’s how it’s always been. We frighten the French, and they give us money. The king himself has a pension from them, from old King Edward’s time. Not that they’re good payers.’
Mathew’s brow clears. ‘As long as it’s true. If it were a slander, we’d have to wallop them.’ He sniffs and goes out, with a speculative slap of fist into palm.
‘I’ve no strength to beat anybody,’ Thurston says. ‘An egg won’t do it for me. I want a rib of beef. I could kill Christ for a taste of bacon. I reckon that was Eve’s sin – she never erred for an apple, she went wrong for a fat rasher.’
‘Oh, stop it,’ he says. ‘You’ll make me weep.’
And yet, you wonder who thought of this arrangement: the blind haul from Christ’s birthday, through freeze and sleet to Candlemas, and then weeks of penance, raw meatless days till Easter. Mid-March the trees will leaf and the birds sing, but you can’t eat beauty. Thurston says, ‘It’s all right for His Holy Majesty, I avow he stuffs himself with sugar. He calls for mead and malmsey, and drinks the cellars dry.’
In the blink of an eye, in the space of an Ave, he is somewhere else: he is at Launde Abbey, on the cardinal’s business: on a day of buzzing heat, a young fellow laughing with the monks in a garden. This abbey, where he ate honey scented with thyme, stands in the heart of England, far from the dangers of salt water. It basks in woods and fields, and summer or winter the air is sweet. When he visited for the cardinal he looked at figures as he was bidden, but he found it so blessed a spot that he could not see it through the grid or lattice of an account book. Now he thinks: I’ll have Launde for myself, when its surrender comes. I’ll build a house, and live there when I’m old, far from the court and council. It’s time I had something I want.
He thinks, I need to go back to the Charterhouse, the London Charterhouse, to lock myself once more in argument with those monks: men unused to speech, hermit-like, but eloquent in their dislike of what they call the king’s pretensions to rule their spiritual lives. Henry is only a man, they say: but he says, what else is the Bishop of Rome but a man, and not a fine example either?
He has pleaded with the king to keep the Charterhouse open. There is no abuse and no slackness there, and they never eat meat, not once in the year, but subsist on the fruit and herbs they grow for themselves. I will turn them to us, he has said, a little and a little. But that doesn’t seem to be happening. When he thinks of the blindness of these earnest men, he wants to weep. When he thinks of Farnese, the present Pope – Cardinal Cunt, as the Romans used to call him – he wants to cross the seas and mountains and grab him by the throat.
The third week in February, the court attends the christening of Edward Seymour’s daughter. She is his first child with his present wife, and she is to be called Jane, after the ornament of the family; the queen stands her godmother. Tradition keeps the king from such an occasion, though he looks forlorn. ‘Bring my jewel back safe, my lord.’
You wonder about these traditions, that shut out a king from occasions of common rejoicing. What law puts him, at a queen’s coronation, at a dizzying height above the action in a prayer closet? As his subjects roar gloria in excelsis, he watches through a squint.
Henry kisses the queen heartily before she descends the water stair, a pale doll wrapped in sables. Lady Mary is the other godmother; the godfather, the Lord Privy Seal. Under the canopy of the queen’s barge, he makes small talk with the ladies. Audley makes efforts at an impromptu council meeting, but he ignores him; he can talk to the Lord Chancellor any time.
They are no sooner on the queen’s barge than they disembark at the pier of Chester Place. No notice of the event has been given to the Londoners. All the same a crowd gathers, and cheers for Lady Mary as she is handed to dry land. As for Jane, they look on with indifference, giving their voices neither for nor against. They know she’s not Anne Boleyn. Nor is she the dead woman they still call Queen Katherine. But he has given money to women in the crowd, and when they shout ‘God bless Queen Jane,’ there is a chorus in support. People will shout anything, he thinks, once you start it up. That’s how it must have been in Lincolnshire, when the tumult began. Some rustic bleats ‘Follow the crosses!’ and the whole county is up.
The crowd recognise him. They call out: ‘Cold enough for you, Tom?’ He is a stout godfather, wrapped in black lamb and lynx fur. You cannot say the Londoners like him, but they know he has done good work in defending the city, and that he has vowed to buy and store arms himself for their defence. No doubt they prefer him to a Yorkshire looter. A stray voice pipes, ‘Cromwell, king of London!’
His stomach lurches. His head turns. ‘Friend, if you love me, sing some other tune.’
A consort of musicians meets them, piping them indoors. Garlands of painted roses lead them into the gallery. The christening party inspect the Seymour ancestors, painted on the wall. Today’s bundle of linen must be added into the picture – perhaps down at her parents’ feet, her red crinkled face like a flower on the forest floor.
Mary has been silent on the short journey. Her face looks wan under her gable hood. When she sheds her cloak, he sees she has fixed to her gown the pendant Hans cast: a ring, after all, was not practicable. At the font she touches it, as they stand side by side: ‘You see I am wearing your verses, in praise of obedience. Though my father gave them me, I know their origin.’
He inclines his head. ‘Madam.’
‘And thank you for my Valentine’s gift. You use me beyond my deserts.’
‘You look very well today,’ he lies. ‘Crimson is your favourite colour, I think?’
She murmurs, ‘Do not make light of what you did for me.’
Why would I, he thinks, when it nearly killed me?
‘You saved me, my lord, when I was drowning in folly. When I was almost past recovery.’ Her voice runs on, rehearsing her gratitude. But she won’t look at him, he notices. Her eyes are everywhere, but never on him.
Chester Place belongs to the ancient bishopric, and Seymour is even now wrangling over the lease. A shame if he has to move now he has had the ancestors painted, and the chapel reglazed at his own expense. Winter light filters through the plumage of the Seymour phoenix; the slumbering fire beneath the feathers is so deep a red you want to warm your hands at the glow. Glass angels coo and flutter: they hold tabors and shawms, scourges and crowns of thorns. Some hold hammer and nails, to nail God to the cross: Easter will arrive, and the Man of Sorrows must bleed.
Little Mistress Jane cries heartily at the font. It is a sign, the ladies claim, that the devil is departing. ‘Women are fanciful,’ Edward Seymour says, his tone fond. His wife Nan holds court from her great bed
, where they go to kiss her and give her presents. They give money to the wet nurse, and to the midwife for seeing Nan safe, and then they take wine and wafers.
All the talk is of heirs and new-borns. Sir Richard Riche has been augmented, after the birth of many daughters, by a son at last. With stout independence, in a year when all the boys are Henry, he has called his baby Robert, and talks of him excitedly, as a sturdy child and likely to live. Any increase in Riche’s benevolence is of public interest. The treason of certain northern abbots makes it sure that their houses will be pulled down, and Sir Richard will be pleasantly placed to hand out the assets. Meanwhile the news from Calais is that Lady Lisle is pregnant, her child expected late spring, early summer. It seems like a miracle, the couple have been without offspring so long. Lisle is an ageing man, of course, but Honor had seven children with her first husband, though she married him when he was fifty-three already.
The Seymours show no pleasure at the news. They have old law suits with the Lisles, so they don’t care for additions to the family. But noble dames write doting letters to Honor, looking forward to welcoming a little Plantagenet into the world. Arthur Lisle may be a bastard, but he is still old King Edward’s blood.
He spies Lord Lisle’s man of business, bobbing on the edge of the gathering: ‘Spying, Husee?’
‘I bring a christening gift, sir. From my lord and my lady over the sea.’
He has some fellow-feeling for John Husee. Lady Lisle runs him ragged with her shopping lists, and she never wants to pay for anything, so he is constantly begging for credit: and he remembers his own early days, when the Marchioness of Dorset used to send him out for orient pearls, with only the price of oysters in his purse.
The Lord Chancellor heaves in view: ‘Ho, Husee! I hear in Calais there is nothing but singing all the day. And Lisle dancing as if he never knew what gout was.’
Husee makes a reverence. ‘I am explaining to my lord Privy Seal, sir – I have to list everything my lady Beauchamp has, for her lying-in, so my lady can get the same.’
‘Oh, I see that,’ Audley says. ‘She would not want any less for herself, in terms of her hangings, her gold plate, and so forth.’
‘My lady wondered,’ Husee says, ‘if she should come over for her confinement, so the child can be born on English soil.’
He, Lord Cromwell, rolls his eyes. ‘Calais is English soil. As the Lord Deputy’s wife, I hope she grasps that.’
Husee turns to him. ‘But if she’s to be confined there, she wants the silver font sent from Canterbury. Can you put in a word, sir?’
‘I’d send the archbishop to carry it, if Lisle would bestir himself. I hear of two priests preaching treason through the streets, and the governor turns his head and does naught. Tell him to truss them up and put them on a boat, addressed to me at the Tower.’
He thinks, if Cranmer turned up, font or no, Honor would bar the door. She would sprinkle holy water on the threshold, and throw blessed salt in his eyes.
‘I hear Lady Beauchamp has ermine caps,’ Husee says. ‘And if I could get the embroidery pattern for her nightgowns, my lady would be well pleased with me.’
Clearly we can expect no business to be done in Calais this year. Arthur Lisle defers to his wife, and he will never cross her while she is in pup. He says, ‘I mean it, Husee, you tell your master – either he catches me those priests, or he must come himself to answer for them. I am not patient for ever. Perhaps your lady mistress encourages him to slack his duty, but tell him I am watching him. I will have him out of his post and at the gallows’ foot, if he tries to play me for a fool.’
Husee sucks his lip. ‘I’ll tell him.’
‘Look out,’ Audley says. ‘The queen.’ He steps back, clutching his bonnet to his chest, as if Jane were a runaway horse. ‘Madam – we are speaking of Lady Lisle. Her great hopes of an heir.’
‘Marvellous, isn’t it?’ Jane sounds bored.
‘May God in His own good time make your Highness a happy mother too. Your sister-in-law sets a glad example.’
‘Does she?’ Jane is puzzled. ‘I shall hardly be a happy mother, if I have a girl. I should think I will be sent back to Wolf Hall in a basket, like a fowl unsold on market day. What do you think, Lord Audley?’
She turns away. Audley’s jaw drops.
He looks around. ‘My lady Rochford, spare me a moment?’
Nothing urgent in his tone. Can he have mistaken Jane’s meaning? A pregnant woman will not usually stand godmother to another woman’s child, as she deems her future too precarious. He steers Lady Rochford aside. ‘It is true her courses have not come,’ she murmurs. Like Mary, Jane Rochford won’t look at him – her eyes are on the guests. ‘Her titties are swollen. She won’t speak till she’s sure. Let’s hope it’s stuck fast, eh?’
He stares at the queen. ‘Let me know when she decides to tell Henry.’
‘Yes,’ Jane Rochford says, ‘make sure you are at hand. He will be in a humour to hand out favours. He might give you … whatever it is you lack. Though that’s not much, is it, my lord Privy Seal?’
Five minutes, and the whisper has spread. Edward Seymour has his sister by the elbow: ‘I believe you have hope. Your Highness.’
‘We all have hope,’ Jane says sweetly.
Edward looks as if he would slap her: playing games, at a time like this! ‘We have waited long enough, sister.’
‘Oh, Edward.’ She sighs. ‘You are so eager for promotion.’
‘When are you safe to speak?’
He, Cromwell, says, ‘Highness, why delay?’
‘Because …’ The queen contemplates her reasons. ‘Because once the king has hope of a son, what will there be, to make him say his prayers?’
He and Edward exchange glances. She’s right. Whenever one of his queens has been with child, Henry has always been sure it is a male. Once he has an heir in the womb, once he can say again, ‘God is pleased with me,’ what will there be to refrain Henry from every desire? He might free all the prisoners in the Tower. Or he might go to war on a whim. King François is in the field himself, reports say: laying sieges, ordering up the big guns. Henry grunts and colours when he speaks of it. His leg is sore, and Thurston is right: the more miserable he is, the more sugar he requires.
He puts his hand on Edward’s arm. ‘Listen to your lady sister. Say nothing yet.’
In idle moments he has been planning a cake he could give the king for Easter: a huge marzipan one, gilded balls on top. Perhaps he will keep it for when the news comes out.
Jane’s eyes are like deep ponds on a still day.
As the short afternoon darkens, he is back at the Rolls House, writing letters to Flanders. They say Pole has spent all his money, and the Pope has given him none: but still Reginald struts, with his title of papal legate, trying to sell the idea of an invasion of England. Lord Darcy, and no doubt some other of the rebel lords, have sent him letters; we do not need to read them, to know the rebels take Pole for their king in exile.
Now he has learned through back channels that Pole is asking to talk to him: Reginald wants him to cross over to Calais, then meet on Imperial territory, both parties with safe-conduct. He, Lord Cromwell, has thought it wise to bring the matter into daylight: so he loses his temper in the council chamber, shouting that if he should find himself in a room with the traitor Pole, only one can emerge alive.
The king had watched him, head tilted, as if sceptical about his sudden passion. To reinforce it the Lord Privy Seal had shaken his fist in the direction of Dover. Richard Riche had gaped at him, and the Lord Chancellor dropped his penknife in shock.
He sands his papers. The prospect of an heir, he thinks, will strike Pole a blow to the heart. Though if Jane is in a happy condition, it changes our plans. The king will want to stay by her side this summer. He will never go north. There will be no coronation in York.
Christop
he comes in. ‘That Mathew, sneezing,’ he says. ‘If he has a disease, you will not be able to go to court.’
At any time, the king is always afraid of contagion. And now, of course, every precaution will be necessary.
Christophe says, ‘Call-Me is here for his supper.’
He thinks, Mary looks at me as if she doesn’t know who I am.
Supper is pike, with rosemary and fried onions. Call-Me says, ‘I hear when Rafe is done in Scotland he will go to France.’
‘I shall try to get him home first. Helen says she is sick for the sight of him. She is expecting a child in the autumn.’
‘I suppose by now she knows the signs,’ Call-Me says. ‘It seems they took a liking to Rafe, the Scots?’
‘Who would not like Rafe? He goes to France now with messages to King James. James lingers there, does he not?’
‘Rafe will meet Bishop Gardiner while he is in Paris. He cannot avoid it. Gardiner is asking for his recall.’
He pokes his fish around the plate. ‘God forgive me, but I wonder why He ever made pike?’
Mr Wriothesley extracts a bone. ‘I imagine the bishop’s return would be as welcome to your lordship as hemlock in a salad.’
He sighs. ‘It will be a while before we taste salad. I hear from France there will be no cherries till July.’
Christophe brings almonds and dried fruit. Mr Wriothesley says, ‘I perceive how the Lady Mary is continually applying to you for money and favours. Lady Rochford says,’ he smiles, ‘that Mary avoids looking at you, only for the great love she bears you. You are too dazzling a sight for her maiden eyes.’
‘We have to be gracious to Lady Rochford,’ he says. ‘Without her, the king and queen might not be married. Anne Boleyn would still be queen.’
And our heir unconceived. It appears that despite his sharp ears, Call-Me has not caught on to the day’s most important news, because he only wants to talk about Calais. ‘Lisle is careless. You do well to warn him, sir. It is not only papists he is harbouring. It is sectaries, they say. Sacramentaries.’
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 49