He picks up his quill: the king could spend perhaps six days in Woking, where he, Lord Cromwell, could join him? Then to Guildford …
It is the night of the waning moon. He can smell the river, and the odour of the eel boy, who has beshitten himself. Eel boy slumps at his feet, too heavy to drag further. Thomas Craphead no longer knows what to do. A great and mortal weariness has overtaken him, a lassitude that trickles through him from brain to feet. So Craphead, clueless, had crawled home.
Walter and the boys went on drinking till his father fell snoring across a trestle table and at some dark hour woke and stumbled upstairs. You would expect he would lie snorting and sweating till noon. Perhaps Thomas Craphead counted on that and thought, while good folk are still abed, I will go out to the river and see if eel boy is alive or dead. See if he lies where I left him, or if someone has picked him up with the morning’s flotsam, returned him whence he came or fed him to swine.
But God knows what he thought. He woke hollow, shaking, empty of logic or plan. In the daylight he cleaned his knife again, but he left it down when he went into the brewery yard.
Never underestimate Walter, his violence and cunning. The first blow came from nowhere and stunned him. There was blood in his eyes and after that Walter could do what he liked. He did it with his feet and he did it with his fists, till he, Thomas, was a bleeding jelly on the cobblestones, and his father stood over him and roared, ‘So now get up!’
There is a stir in the air. My lord Privy Seal looks up from the king’s itinerary. Call-Me-Risley is here, flitting against the light in yellow. He throws himself into a chair and shouts for small ale. He fans himself with his hat. ‘Gardiner,’ he says. ‘Jesus! To accuse you of murder! Though if you did rid the world of a cardinal, what of it? It was in another jurisdiction, and a long time ago now.’
He says, ‘I’ll pull Stephen down. Just watch me.’
Call-Me eyes him. ‘Yes, I believe you.’
‘I’m doing these,’ he says. ‘Excuse me.’ He turns back to the paper. After Guildford, Farnham. Every town must be certified clear of plague before the king enters the neighbourhood. At the slightest suspicion, his route must be changed, so there must be extra hosts standing by, their silverware polished, their feather beds aired. ‘Farnham to Petworth? How far is that?’
‘Scant twenty miles cross-country,’ Call-Me says. ‘But more if it rains and you go round about.’
Twenty miles is what the king can ride, at present. ‘Do you know the king is planning a visit to Wolf Hall?’
Call-Me considers. ‘It is small, for his train.’
‘The Seymours will move out. Edward has it planned.’ He thinks of the shade of Jane, walking in the young lady’s garden; he thinks of her alive under the green trees, in her new carnation-coloured dress.
He frowns over the papers. ‘Suppose he rides from Petworth to Cowdray, to William Fitzwilliam? Then to Essex … Ah, here comes Mathew.’
Mathew carries in a bowl of plums and sets them down reverently. ‘The fruits of success,’ Wriothesley says, smiling. ‘I congratulate you, sir.’
He used to think that the plums in this country weren’t good enough, and so he has reformed them, grafting scion to rootstock. Now his houses have plums ripening from July to late October, fruits the size of a walnut or a baby’s heart, plums mottled and streaked, stippled and flecked, marbled and rayed, their skins lemon to mustard, russet to scarlet, azure to black, some smooth and some furred like little animals with lilac or white or ash; round amber fruits dotted with the grey of his livery, thin-skinned fruits like crimson eggs in a silver net, their flesh firm or melting, honeyed or vinous; his favoured kind the perdrigon, the palest having a yellow skin dotted white, sprinkled red where the sun touches it, its perfumed flesh ripe in late August; then the perdrigon violet and its black sister, favouring east-facing walls, yielding September fruits solid in the hand, their flesh yellow-green and rich, separating easily from the stone. You can preserve them whole to last all winter, eat them as dessert, or just sit looking at them in an idle moment: globes of gold in a pewter bowl, black fruit like shadows, spheres of cardinal red.
He says to Mathew, ‘You remember when we hunted at your old master’s house? The day the king lost his hat?’
Mathew grins. Who could forget the hunting party riding home, their faces baked like hams?
When the wind takes off a gentleman’s hat, his companions at once take off theirs. The courteous man says, put on your hats again, do not suffer for my sake. But the king, though he would not accept another man’s hat, never thought to tell them to cover; so they came home blistered and striped. He says, ‘You should have seen Rafe Sadler. His eyes were boiled in his head.’
Mathew says, ‘My friend Rob led a search after the king’s hat, but we found naught. He had St Hubert in his cap badge, and his eyes were real sapphires, so I doubt not we would have been rewarded had we found it.’
He picks up his pen. Returns to the royal summer. The king will go to Stansted, then Bishop’s Waltham, presently to Thruxton; then leaving Hampshire, he will ride west. In Savernake, Hubert squints down, entangled in branches. In high summer we will ride the same paths and he will see us as we are now: girth thickened, sins multiplied.
‘Mid-August,’ he writes. ‘Five days. Wolf Hall.’
II
Twelfth Night
Autumn 1539
In August Hans rolls up the bride, brings her home, and slaps her on a panel for the king’s inspection.
‘I had to be quick,’ Hans says, ‘make sure she was dry before I could take my leave. I brought Amelia too, the young one. But frankly, Amelia is not so much.’
‘Show me Anna first,’ he says. He steps back to admire her, a shining princess who is more metal than flesh. Her clothes mould her, like the armour of some goddess, and look as if they would stand up by themselves. You drag your eyes upwards from her gleaming breastplate to her face. It is a serene oval, vulnerable, bare. It is not so young and rosy as Christina’s, but shows a modest charm. She has tender eyes, veiled: the Holy Virgin, brooding over her unexpected turn of fortune. ‘Henry should like her,’ the painter says. ‘I would. You would. It is a good picture. You would not guess how I sweated over it.’
‘Show me Amelia,’ he says.
Should Duke Wilhelm die without heir, Anna as the elder stands to inherit more. Amelia would require extraordinary beauty, to make up for her lesser prospects.
He examines her. Darker. Face longer. Her brows defined. ‘She reminds me of the other one. Boleyn.’
Hans turns her to the wall.
Henry stands before the image of his bride and his eyes, like those of his councillors, travel from her middle upwards. Time passes: the sand running through the glass, the river flowing to the sea. Henry nods. ‘Very well. I shall hear more of her from our envoy Dr Wotton, shall I not?’ He hesitates, with a flicker of a smile. ‘Tell Master Hans, all good.’
Edward Seymour has written from Wolf Hall. He is flush with the success of the recent royal visit, reassured that his family will lose no pre-eminence with the king’s remarriage. He says, the king should take the Princess of Cleves, we need the alliance, and from all I hear she is a gracious lady and will give him more children; I do not think he can do better.
The Duke of Suffolk gives his voice in council: it is right and proper that our king should marry into a royal house. The Seymours are a good enough family, no doubt, says Charles: but the marriage brought the king no credit abroad. As for the house of Cleves – do they not travel down the Rhine in boats drawn by silver swans?
He, Cromwell, smiles. ‘Perhaps in former times, my lord Suffolk.’
The Emperor is reported to dislike the match very much. The French are disaffected, the Scots grizzling. Our king is hunting. Most days he keeps well. The physicians report a feverish cold and a worrying stoppage of the bowels, but ne
xt day he is back in the saddle, with Fitzwilliam and a party of ladies, and together they kill a dozen stags. His party travel from Grafton to Ampthill, to Dunstable, down through Bedfordshire, and the king is merry, easy company, as he has not been for many a year. He is Henry the Well-Beloved, with a wife in prospect and a feather in his cap.
And he, Cromwell, makes a survey of the king’s game, because he is chief justice and keeper of the forests, parks and chases that lie north of Trent. His survey begins in early June, in Sherwood Forest, and by September his people have counted 2,067 red deer and 6,352 fallow deer, clerks recording their lives in a parchment book of sixty-eight pages. They have scoured the greenwood and know the secrets of its undergrowth life; but they have not found Robin Hood, or the green men who shoot and feast with him.
Within a week or two Hans has painted the bride again, from memory and from his larger portrait: so that the king can carry her with him, he has confined her in an ivory miniature. ‘Look, my lord Norfolk,’ Henry says. ‘Is she not well and seemly?’
Norfolk grunts. His eyes travel sideways waiting for him, Cromwell, to speak.
Once they had recovered from the dinner of reconciliation, he and Norfolk had to learn to be in the same room again. He had abased himself with an apology. Norfolk had snorted. Fitzwilliam slapped their backs: ‘Shake hands like Christians.’
He touches the duke’s bony calloused palm: showing willing. Though he is not sure Norfolk is even a Christian. He worships his forebears. He has been as greedy for monks’ lands as any man in the realm, but says he will not let Thetford Priory go down, because his folk are buried there. Or rather, he will have it reformed into a college of priests, who will pray for the souls of his ancestors. The duke explains it, as he stamps alongside him: ‘They will pray for them, Cromwell, as long as this world endures.’
He says politely, ‘That’s a lot of prayers.’
Wotton’s report is in. As the king’s representative, he has seen Anna at home with her mother. The Duchess Maria – the dowager – is a sober Catholic matron who keeps her daughters close to her elbow, and has brought them up simply, narrowly, piously. It is not thought proper in Cleves for young ladies to be troubled with books or tutors. Accordingly, Anna speaks no language but her own.
‘Cromwell will be able to talk to her,’ Henry says. ‘He knows all modern tongues.’
‘I fear not,’ he says. ‘Master Sadler is a better man for German. I learned mine in Venice, and from the Nuremberg merchants mostly. It is not like the tongue the Lady Anna speaks. Nor am I equipped for conversation such as ladies like, knowing only the terms for buying and selling.’
‘If I am truthful,’ Norfolk says, ‘I never know what we are meant to talk to women about. They don’t like anything a man likes.’
He says, ‘My wife had no languages, but she knew everybody in the wool trade. She could keep books as well as any clerk, and when I came home from a journey she would have sent to Lombard Street and she would have the morning’s exchange rates jotted down in columns. She could always tell you how currency was moving.’
They make their progress past the king’s guards. ‘I think you like being low-born,’ Norfolk says. ‘I think you’re boasting of it, Cromwell. Being a tradesman.’
The king’s chamber servants meet them, bowing. Whatever roof shelters Henry, hunting lodge or palace, the etiquette is the same, a ring of protection sealed by familiar faces and expert hands: by a monogrammed close stool with a kidskin seat, by a stack of linen cloths for a sore royal backside; by a holy water stoup, by great blazing candles of wax at close of day, by the sanctuary of velvet bedcurtains. But now Henry smiles and blinks in the sunshine, a summer king.
The duke dives in. ‘Majesty! I think you might employ my son Surrey on a mission to Cleves. An envoy of noble blood would gain us credit, surely?’
He, Cromwell, frowns. ‘I don’t think we need credit. We are past that stage.’
‘It is true,’ Henry says blithely. ‘All Duke Wilhelm’s councillors are in accord. We need not disturb your boy. I know he is occupied with our defences in your own part of the world. It were a pity to divert him.’
Norfolk’s brow furrows. ‘What about the money? What will she fetch?’
He says, ‘Wilhelm will give a hundred thousand crowns with his sister. But it will remain on paper.’
‘What, not pay it?’ Norfolk is shocked. ‘Are they paupers?’
Henry says, ‘We are pleased to waive what is due. The duke is young and has great charges. You know he has entered into Guelders, which is his right. But he must be ready to defend it against the Emperor.’
He, the Lord Privy Seal, has told the Cleves delegation, ‘My king prefers virtue and friendship to hard cash.’ Relieved, the Germans exclaim, By God, what a very gallant gentleman he is! But we expected no less.
‘The arrangement must not leak out,’ Henry says. ‘Wilhelm would be shamed. Soon I shall call him my brother, so I would wish to spare him embarrassment.’
‘What about her journey?’ Norfolk says. ‘It costs, moving a princess.’
‘We have ships,’ Henry says.
The duke bristles. ‘Any impediment? Affinity? Are they kin?’
‘Anna is the king’s seventh cousin.’
‘Oh,’ Norfolk says, ‘I suppose that’s all right. We need no interference from the Pope, then. By Jesus, no!’
The king says, ‘I confess I was surprised we have no language in common, but our envoys say she has a good wit, and I am sure she will learn our tongue as soon as she puts her mind to it. Besides, everybody speaks a little French, even if they say not – do you not think so, my lord Cromwell?’
‘Duke Wilhelm’s advisers speak French,’ he says. ‘But the lady –’
The king interrupts him. ‘When Katherine came from Spain to marry my lord brother, she spoke neither English nor French, and he had no Spanish. The king my father had thought, no matter, she is said to be a good Latinist, they will get along that way – but as it proved, they did not understand each other’s Latin either.’ The king chuckles. ‘But they had goodwill towards each other, and were soon affectionate. And of course, we will be able to make music together. If she does not know the words to English songs, I am sure she will know them in other tongues.’
He says, ‘In Germany, I understand, great ladies do not have music masters. A lady there would lose her good name by singing or dancing.’
The king’s face falls. ‘Then what will we do after supper?’
‘Drink?’ Norfolk says. ‘They are great drinkers, Germans. They are known for it.’
‘They say the same of the English.’ He gives the duke a fierce look. ‘Lady Anna takes her wine well-watered. And they do not forbid music, not at all. The Duchess Maria listens to the harp. Duke Wilhelm travels with a consort of musicians.’
All this is true. But our men in Cleves have told him the duke’s court is sedate to the point of tedium. By nine at night every man has gone to his own chamber, not to issue out till daylight. You can’t get so much as a glass of wine without troubling some high official for the keys.
‘My wife and I will hunt,’ the king says. ‘We will enjoy the pleasures of the chase.’
‘I believe she can ride, Majesty.’
‘She must. She has to get about,’ Norfolk says.
‘But I am not sure if she shoots. She can learn.’
The king seems puzzled. ‘They don’t hunt either, the ladies? Do they sew all day?’
‘And pray,’ he says.
‘By God,’ Norfolk says, ‘she’ll be grateful to you, for taking her out of that place.’
‘Yes.’ Henry sees it in a new light. ‘Yes, her life must have been a trial, bless her. And no money of her own, I suppose. She will find our ideas quite different. But I trust –’ He breaks off. ‘Cromwell, you are quite sure she can read?’
; ‘And write, Majesty.’
‘Well, then. When she is married and here with us, she will find honest pastimes. And when all is said, it is a wife we want, not a learned doctor to instruct us.’
Henry draws him aside. He looks over his shoulder to see that Norfolk is out of earshot. ‘Well, my lord,’ he says, diffident. ‘It has been a long road to get here. I thought no one would have me.’ He laughs, to show it is a joke. Not have the King of England? ‘Only I regret the Duchess of Milan. I shall be angry if I hear she is promised to some other prince. And I am sorry I never saw her with my own eyes. I had inclined myself towards her.’
‘I regret it was not to be. But this way, you owe nothing to the Emperor.’
‘Kings cannot choose where to bestow their hearts,’ Henry says. ‘I see I must frame myself to love elsewhere. But you can tell Master Holbein I am pleased with his picture of the Duchess Christina. I think she is standing in the room, and about to speak to me. Tell Hans I shall not part with it. I shall keep it to look at.’
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Perhaps not in the new queen’s view, sir.’
The king says, ‘Give me some credit, my lord. I am not a barbarian.’
He goes to the Tower. He walks through the apartments where the queens of England sleep, the night before they are crowned; where Anne Boleyn spent her last days. Jane never lodged here, she never lived long enough to be crowned, there was always the plague or the rebels, or we were going to do it in York – but in the end we never did it at all. A tinker from Essex, drinking in the Bell not far from where he stands, has given scandal to the folk of Tower Hill by bawling in his cups that Jane was murdered by her own child. Edward will be a slaughterer, the wretch shouts, just like his father.
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 75