Fitz says, ‘I beg you, do not lightly shed ancient blood.’
‘Ancient blood?’ The king laughs. ‘Was there not a Howard who was a lawyer at Lynn?’
‘Majesty, that is true.’ It was some 250 years back, and what is that but the blink of an eye, in a land where the heads of giants emerge from the treetops?
He thinks of them: Bolster, Grip and Wade. He watches Henry. He is about to yield, he thinks, and spare the boy; but Surrey should be aware. The king is like the shrike or butcher bird, who sings in imitation of a harmless seed-eater to lure his prey, then impales it on a thorn and digests it at his leisure. He says, ‘Saving your Majesty, I believe if you go back far enough we were all lawyers. At Lynn or some other place.’
‘And not long before that, we were all beasts.’ Henry smiles, but his smile fades. ‘Send the boy to Windsor. He must stay within the bounds. He may take his exercise in the park, but tell him he will be watched. When we come there ourselves, he need not approach us till we give him leave.’ He stares into space. ‘My lord Cromwell, it is blessed work, to reconcile great families. But you do not imagine Norfolk will ever be your friend, do you?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘And it is not to please him that I ask for mercy.’
‘I see. It is not to please him. Yet I hear you are talking to him about the great priory at Lewes? Howard territory, and yours too I think?’
The king has been in a huddle with Richard Riche: asking what gentleman wants which abbey, and why. Lisle, for instance, has tried to get Beaulieu, Southwick and Waverley, before settling for a modest Devon property. He, Cromwell, has been buying up land in the county of Sussex: terrain where he means to push the Howards, to nudge up against them, run his borders with theirs. ‘I thought that when Lewes comes down, if your Majesty is not averse, the prior’s lodging might be rebuilt to make a house for my son.’
The king’s anger has drained away. He has remembered to be the Well-Beloved. ‘Gregory and his wife should expect every kindness at my hand. Only, my lord, such a great church as there is at Lewes, will it not take many months to pull it down?’
‘I’m not going to pull it down. I’m going to blow it up.’
‘Really?’ The king looks respectful.
‘I know an Italian. He is confident it can be done.’
‘Come to me after supper,’ Henry says. ‘Bring drawings.’ He looks as excited as a child.
When the chapter of the Order of the Garter is held in the king’s closet at Windsor, the king runs his eye along the list and says what everybody is primed to hear: ‘One place we will keep for the prince who will soon be born to us, by God’s grace. The other is for the Lord Privy Seal.’
A muffled – what? The gentlemen rustle in acknowledgement but cannot bring themselves, for a moment, to applaud. They knew it was going to happen. But they are still shocked. A brewer’s son: it takes time to get used to it.
He kneels before the king and makes an eloquent thanks. Henry lowers over his head his Garter collar, a thirty-ounce chain of gold knots and enamelled roses. Affixed to it is the Garter badge, with the image of St George, a golden saint astride a golden horse. ‘Stand up, my lord,’ the king whispers.
Only the dragon is missing: not killed, he thinks but sated, lolling, curled up in the hot sun. His sister Kat used to tell him about a dragon that ate seven women every Saturday, not sparing them even in Lent.
Henry says, ‘You are entered into a sacred brotherhood now. All you need to know of the rites to come, my lord Exeter here will tell you. Or Nicholas Carew, or any of these most noble confreres of mine. I hold them all next my heart, as I do you, my dear Thomas. I hope you will live many years to enjoy your new state.’
There is a sort of groaning, a heavy banging, which signifies the knights’ assent. Henry Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter, is laggard in joining in. The ceremony is to come: late August. In Europe the peace holds. The king says the gospel may be given to the people, this new translation is fit: and the bishops sign off on their deliberations, and send both of them to the printer.
The night before the Garter ceremony, he rides to Windsor, where the canons receive him kindly. But they are hesitant, he perceives, afraid of offending the recruit. My lord, one advises gently, tonight you should think on your failures and derelictions, and make confession if you will: tomorrow you must be perfect, for tomorrow you enter into this order where, if all the knights happened to gather, you would be joined in procession with the kings of France and Scotland, and Charles the Holy Roman Emperor himself.
Do you know, a man from the Wardrobe asks him, the king still has young Richmond’s Garter robes stored here? They are hanging up. If he came down from Heaven, he could step right into them.
In one of the canons’ houses, painted foliage grows over the wall: Tudor roses with giant pomegranates. These are the only licit paintings of such fruits, the canon tells him, and why are they so? Because there, you see, above the door, is the image of Arthur, Prince of Wales, portrayed as he was when he took his Spanish bride: and there she is herself, indicated by the image of the wheel, on which St Catherine was martyred. And we have always said, we canons, the paintings are very clean and fine and we can keep them without penalty or fear, because though our king has denied he was married to the Princess of Aragon, he has never denied she was married to his brother.
‘But all that is a long time ago,’ he says.
‘Really,’ the canon says, ‘you think so? It does not seem so very long ago to me.’
In the precincts there has been a song school, for as long as anyone can remember. As he searches out the old queen’s image above him, he can hear the children learning a motet, and the sound leads him out into the splash of sunlight, under ancient walls. He has seen them in their schoolroom, a nest of chirping birds, little bodies huddled together, their voices soaring above their circumstances: when their voices break, who will they be, will they live meanly? They will be music masters and teach the virginals to oafish boys with thick fingers, to simpering girls who toss their heads and try to see their reflections in the window. They will sing in church on a Sunday: verses of the new gospel, perhaps. He has such children in his own household, though they are not so polished as the king’s performers. In the song school the notes are painted on the wall so the whole group can learn at once. When they are well learned, the notes are whitewashed over. But none of the songs vanish. They sink deep, receding through the plaster, abiding in the wall.
Tomorrow there must be no mishaps, so they walk him through: Lord Exeter, Carew, William Fitzwilliam an encouraging presence at his shoulder. Everything is laid at hand: his cerulean mantle, his feathered hat. He has billed the king for eighteen yards of crimson velvet and nine yards of white sarcenet. Everything is ready to furnish his stall: his helm, cushion, banner, all as prescribed in the statutes. The knights will process to St George’s Chapel, then in the chapter house they will take away his cloak and he will put on his surcoat, and receive his sword. Then he will walk to the quire, head bare, supporters at each side, and there place his hand on the gospel and take the oath. Then, they say, you may ascend to your appointed stall, and Garter Herald – who will be standing just there, please note – he will hand your mantle to your supporters and they will place it on your shoulders. Then they will take your collar and – be ready – they will put it over your head. Then the blessing is read, beseeching St George that he will guide you through the prosperities and adversities of this world.
That’s what we want, he thinks: help in prosperity. We can brace ourselves for the seven lean years. But when the fat years come, are we prepared? We never know how to take it when our life begins to be charmed.
I failed with Jenneke, he thinks. I had her and I let her go, I was handed a precious vessel and I dropped it in shock. I was not prepared for the past to yield such sweet fruit: I was busy painting it out, whitewashing my wall for what was to come.
The Marquis of Exeter says sharply, ‘Have I your attention, my lord? When the blessing is read, you take the book of statutes in your hand. Then put on your cap. Bow to the altar. Bow to the king’s stall. Then take your place, among the illustrious knights.’
Those present, those absent. Those quick and those dead.
It is hard for Exeter to call him ‘my lord’. It sticks in the Courtenay craw. Four years back, he thinks, I salvaged you and Gertrude your wife, and now the king suspects me of too much forbearance; he thinks I am trying to make friends of you people. You and Lord Montague, you are sprinting to the end of your silken rope. One more step, then see if I favour you.
That night he prays and goes to bed early. I am not ill, he says to Christophe, do not fret. He needs a space in which he can watch the future shaping itself, as dusk steals over the river and the park, smudges the forms of ancient trees: there are nightingales in the copses, but we will not hear them again this year. Tomorrow, all eyes will turn, not to the Garter stall he fills, but to the vacancy, where a prince as yet unborn reaches for the statute book, and bows his blind head in its caul. Why does the future feel so much like the past, the uncanny clammy touch of it, the rustle of bridal sheet or shroud, the crackle of fire in a shuttered room? Like breath misting glass, like the nightingale’s trace on the air, like a wreath of incense, like vapour, like water, like scampering feet and laughter in the dark … furiously, he wills himself into sleep. But he is tired of trying to wake up different. In stories there are folk who, observed at dawn or dusk in some open, watery space, are seen to flit and twist in the air like spirits, or fledge leather wings through their flesh. Yet he is no such wizard. He is not a snake who can slip his skin. He is what the mirror makes, when it assembles him each day: Jolly Tom from Putney. Unless you have a better idea?
The morning of his installation he is awake early. He should lie rigid, he thinks, like an effigy on a tomb, waiting for the ritual to commence. But instead he climbs out of bed. He needs a candle, till he doesn’t; when he lowers the shutter a wan light filters through. A knight of the Garter begins his day as any other man – pissing, stretching, rubbing his blue chin. If you are alert to the workings of the household it is hard to go back to sleep after dawn. The noise only ceases in the darkest hours; hemmed in by the town below, the castle is supplied by wagons that rumble constantly over the cobbles and in at the great gate. And as you make your way about those precincts, point to point, the ages joust and clash: as if armoured monarchs were colliding, a wall built by a Henry driving into a wall built by an Edward who is long ago dust. All these holy kings gone to their rest: time is battering their works like siege engines, and when you descend a step you are walking on another layer of the past.
He wants a walk, perhaps to exchange a good morning with some fellow creature who will dissipate his dreams. The kitchens, the larder, are stirring, ready for goods inward. Men rub their eyes and sleepwalk past each other as if swimming in a grey sea: no one speaks, they merely blink and swerve him as if they were skimming through his dreams, or he through theirs. When he hears footsteps, purposive, descending, he follows them. Down and down, to a stone-floored room, where a deep gutter runs with brown water, burbling like a running stream.
When he was a child at Lambeth he saw the coupage, as the dead animals were carried in, beef and sheep and pig. He learned to stand still as blades sang in the air and whistled past his ears. He grew to relish the company of men who feel a cleaver fit their hands, who plunge skewers into shy flesh, who split and spit and haul great joints with flesh-hooks. He saw beasts disassembled, becoming dinner; witnessed the household officers shovel up their perquisites and portions, neck and scrag-end, forelegs, feet, trotters and tripes, the calf’s head, the sheep’s heart. He learned to sweep out the sawdust clogged with blood and swab down the slabs where lung and liver clump, to chase the jelly particles stained with gore. He learned to do it all without a contraction of the gut: to do it calmly, to do it without feeling. Twilight coupage or dawn, the light is the same, grey-streaked, wine-dark: the butchers pass without seeing him, eyes front, their burdens hoisted on their shoulders.
Get out of their way: he moves back against the wall. They ignore him, in the dimness taking him perhaps for some inventory clerk. Still they tread, with their cadavers the size of men, eyes on their feet, their heads bent and hooded, silent, undeterred, squishing the gore from their bloody boots, around the winding stair and, guided by the sound of rushing waters, down into the dark.
III
Broken on the Body
London, Autumn 1537
What is a woman’s life? Do not think, because she is not a man, she does not fight. The bedchamber is her tilting ground, where she shows her colours, and her theatre of war is the sealed room where she gives birth.
She knows she may not come alive out of that bloody chamber. Before her lying-in, if she is prudent, she settles her affairs. If she dies, she will be lamented and forgotten. If the child dies, she will be blamed. If she lives, she must hide her wounds. Her injuries are secret, and her sisters talk about them behind the hand. It is Eve’s sin, the long continuing punishment it incurred, that tears at her from the inside and shreds her. Whereas we bless an old soldier and give him alms, pitying his blind or limbless state, we do not make heroes of women mangled in the struggle to give birth. If she seems so injured that she can have no more children, we commiserate with her husband.
In the long summer days, before her seclusion begins, Jane walks in the queen’s privy garden. All traces of Anne Boleyn, who occupied her rooms before her, have been erased, and a new gallery, with a view of the river, built to connect Jane’s rooms to the royal nursery. Her condition can in no wise be compared to Lady Lisle’s. The creature inside her is alive and kicking. It stirs and flutters, you can almost hear it complain: here I am stifled beneath my dam’s skirts, while the trees are in full leaf and the living stroll across the lawns.
As her time of delivery approaches, a woman will lay out a fortune for a thread of Mary’s girdle. In labour she will pin prayers to her smock, prayers tested by her foremothers. When the smock is bloodied, the midwife will plaster the parchment against the skin of her domed belly, or tie it to her wrist. The perspiring woman will sip water from a jug over which her friends have recited the litany of the saints. The Mother of God will help her, when the midwives cannot. Eve undid us, but Mary by her joys and sorrows helps us to salvation: the pearl without price, the rose without a thorn.
When Mary gave birth to her Saviour and ours, did she suffer as other mothers do? The divines have sundry opinions, but women think she did. They think she shared their queasy, trembling hours, even though she was a virgin when she conceived, a virgin when she carried: even a virgin when redemption burst out of her, in an unholy gush of fluids. Afterwards, Mary was sealed up again, caulked tight against man’s incursions. And yet she became the fountain from which the whole world drinks. She protects against plague, and teaches the hard-hearted how to feel, the dry-eyed to drop a tear. She pities the sailor tossed on the salt wave, and saves even thieves and fornicators from punishment. She comes to us when we have only an hour to live, to warn us to say our prayers.
But all over England virgins are crumbling. Our Lady of Ipswich must go down. Our Lady of Walsingham, which we call Falsingham, must be taken away in a cart. Our Lady of Worcester is stripped of her coat and her silver shoes. The vessels containing her breast-milk are smashed, and found to contain chalk. And where her eyes move, and weep tears of blood, we know now that the blood is animal blood and her eyes are worked on wires.
There is a great book that tells you what to do when a royal birth is pending. It is in a clerk’s hand but the marginal notes were made by Margaret Beaufort, the old king’s mother. Having been at court in the reign of King Edward, and witnessing the birth of his ten children, she was clear that the Tudors should adopt the same protocol.
‘That creak-kneed saint,’ Henry says. ‘She had me in terror when I was a child.’
‘Still, we must carry through her ordinances, sir. Ladies do not like any change.’
His new daughter Bess keeps him informed of all that passes in the queen’s chambers. Gregory does not like to be parted from his bride, but these are no ordinary days, and besides, he has already done to her all a groom hopes to do. Edward Seymour becomes more taut-featured by the day, as expectation works on him. He goes down to Wolf Hall to hunt. The game is excellent this year, he writes: my dear friend Cromwell, I wish you were here.
It has been a dangerous summer. For fear of plague the queen keeps a reduced household. The king lives separate at Esher, also with small state. A messenger called Bolde, who goes daily between Rafe and the Cromwells, is taken with an unknown distemper and must be isolated till he improves or dies. Rafe has often instructed Bolde face to face, and so the king suggests he avoid the court; but then Henry forgets and asks irritably, ‘Where’s young Sadler?’
For God’s sake, Rafe writes, do not let the king forget me, or some rival steal into my place. From my years of discretion you have nourished, brought me up and admired me. Do not let me slip and slide now.
The king does not want to be without Cromwell, as the mornings grow misty and the first chill lies on the air. Come and be near me, he says. Spend your days with me. Maybe just, to keep to the rules, sleep under another roof at night. He obeys. He makes sure to talk every day about young Sadler, how he misses the light of the king’s countenance. He writes to Edward that his visit to Wolf Hall will have to wait. The king calls him Tom Cromwell. He calls him Crumb. He walks through the garden at Esher, his arm about his councillor’s neck, and says, ‘I have hopes of this child. If I could have three wishes, like a man in a tale, I would wish for a prince, bonny and well-doing, and I would wish for myself to live long enough to guide him to man’s estate. Do you think you will make old bones, Crumb?’
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 56