You know the end of this story. The watch comes, and bears the tinker away. What is such a fellow fit for, but to be whipped at the cart’s arse or hanged? Lord Cromwell stands before the image of the late queen, painted on the wall by an uncertain hand. He sees a pale round face, a fall of yellow hair. He wonders, will it double for Anna? Or must I repaint? I should not like to obliterate such a good lady. Anne Boleyn is lurking within the plaster, her dark gaze burning through.
He thinks, I wish the court would call Anna by that name, not use Anne. But women are to be named and renamed, it is their nature, and they have no country of their own; they go where their husbands take them, where their father and brothers send them. A trip down the street for them can be as big as a voyage across the sea. Jane Rochford talked about it once. I was given like a hound pup, she said, though with less thought: I was handed over, my future gone. (And her father, Lord Morley, such a grave and patient scholar.)
While he is at the Tower he visits Margaret Pole. No prayer book at hand, no sewing in her lap, she is sitting idle in a shaft of sun, which lights her long Plantagenet face; she looks like one of her foremothers, set in a glass window. ‘My lady?’ he says. ‘I trust you are comfortable. You must prepare for a long residence.’
‘Better than the other thing,’ she says. ‘Or does the king hope this winter will kill me? I see that would be a way forward for you.’
‘If you have complaints of your treatment, put them in writing.’
‘I know why you keep me alive. You still believe my son Reynold will come and redeem me. You think he will hand himself over for love of me.’ She considers him. ‘Would you have done so much for your mother, Master Cromwell?’
He is stony. ‘If you require anything, put that in writing too.’
‘You will soon know better about Reynold. He would not cross the street to save a woman, though she were the woman who bore him.’
‘He cares more for a plaster statue,’ he suggests.
‘In truth he envies me my state. He thinks I have the chance to earn a martyr’s crown.’
‘By being churlish to me? You can say what you like to me, madam. I have heard it all before. You can call me plain Cromwell or call me a cur. It will not alter my policy.’
‘I have noticed,’ she says, ‘common men often love their mothers. Sometimes they even love their wives.’
In the first week of September a contract of marriage is signed in Düsseldorf. Wilhelm’s envoys are on the road that same day, to carry the papers to England. Everyone is happy except Archbishop Cranmer, who says, ‘I am afraid, my lord.’
He stifles the impulse to say, aren’t you always?
‘To lack a common language, it is not a trivial thing. Believe me, I know.’
‘I thought you were happy with Grete.’
‘And so I was. But I chose her for myself. We had spent time together. We could not talk except through others. But we felt that ease between us, that betokened a happy household.’
He says, mischievous, ‘My lord of Norfolk says, no point talking to women, you can do your husband’s part without it.’
‘Norfolk?’ Fitzwilliam is coming in with the other councillors. ‘All he knows is to fell a maid and jump on her.’
‘I believe it,’ Charles Brandon says. ‘No way with women.’
Cranmer says, ‘Very well, you are pleased to make sport of me. But I do not believe the king should let others choose his bride. Did he not say to the French, bring your ladies to Calais, so we may talk? Did he not say, I cannot be beholden to any man’s choice, the thing touches me too near?’
‘He wanted to marry Christina without seeing her,’ Charles Brandon says reasonably. ‘He trusted her picture, and he heard Mr Wriothesley say she had dimples.’
Fitzwilliam says, ‘He had his pick before. He picked Boleyn. She was his choice entirely. His unholy mistake, which we had to clear up.’
Cranmer opens his mouth to reply, but he, Cromwell, says, ‘I think you should be silent on the topic of matrimony. What has it to do with bishops?’
Cranmer looks cowed. He makes a sign as if to say, peace.
All summer the council runs after the king, up-country, following the slaughter of deer. Bishop Gardiner soon arranges to have himself kicked in a ditch. Those six articles that Parliament passed have made him over-confident. When the name of Robert Barnes is raised in council, Gardiner sniffs; then he shuffles his papers, unpleasantly; then he picks up his folio and slams it down again on the table, until he, Lord Cromwell, says, ‘What?’ and the king says, ‘Let us hear it, Winchester.’
‘Heretic,’ Gardiner says.
He says, ‘Dr Barnes is the king’s chaplain. He has been deployed for some months in winning friends for us, in Denmark and among the Germans.’
‘So I am told,’ Gardiner says. The bishop’s nose is a beak, his hooded eyes gleam; the suffering man on his pectoral cross scowls at the company. ‘I suggest we look at a man’s friends, to know who he is. If Barnes is not a heretic himself, he is black with heretic pitch. Defiled.’
‘But he is my accredited envoy,’ Henry says. ‘If I find him sound, so must you. I defy anyone to show how or where I have departed from holy and catholic doctrine, or show where in this realm heresy is entertained.’
‘I’ll tell you where,’ the bishop says. ‘In the houses of the Lord Privy Seal. At his very table.’
Audley says, ‘But I have heard Cromwell say he wished Luther were dead.’
Gardiner flushes. ‘But since those days, Luther has praised him.’
‘I did not solicit the praise.’
Gardiner turns in the king’s direction, sweeping his paw across the table as if sweeping off dice. ‘I do not claim he is a Lutheran. That is not my complaint.’
‘What is he, then?’ Brandon says.
Gardiner turns to him. ‘You mean, my lord Suffolk, what other heresies are available, to such a man? Lord Cromwell has friends in Switzerland – can he deny it? – and like Luther they write to laud him, he is their great hope. We know what they believe. The Holy Sacrament is not holy. Corpus Christi is a piece of bread and may be bought at any stall.’
‘I am no sectary,’ he says.
‘No?’
‘I am no sacramentary.’
Gardiner leans towards him. ‘Perhaps you would like to say what you are? Instead of what you are not?’
Lord Audley says, ‘These sectaries, Stephen – do they not hold their goods in common?’ He grins. ‘I should not like to be the knave who tries to hold Cromwell’s goods in common. By God, he would get a buffet!’
The king leans forward. His voice shakes. ‘Winchester, you may leave us.’
‘Leave? Why?’
The king’s beard bristles. He looks like a hog’s pudding about to burst its skin. He, Cromwell, advises, ‘My lord bishop, go before the guard comes in.’
Gardiner has the sense to lurch to his feet, but he cannot forbear to give his stool a kick. It is an exit from the royal presence only Stephen would dare, he tells Wriothesley later: rude, churlish, possibly final?
‘But now he will be plotting out of sight,’ Call-Me says. ‘I’m not sure it’s better.’
Call Me had stood outside the council chamber; heard the king scream his opinion of the bishop; been dashed against the wall by Gardiner, with a shove and a snarl of ‘Get out of my way, Wriothesley, you damned traitor.’
Audley comes out. ‘By the Mass, gentlemen, I think one of these outbursts will land Winchester in the Tower. He can’t read the king, can he?’
Wriothesley re-adjusts the hang of his short cloak, resettles his cap. ‘My lord, did you receive word of Bishop Stokesley? He is ill.’ They turn to look at him. ‘Not likely to last the night.’
‘God have mercy,’ he says, grave and pious.
The season looks better already. Stephen of
f the council, Stokesley twitching his last. Clear skies.
He rides into Kent. At Leeds Castle, standing under the great walls and down by the moat, he talks to his son Gregory, air and water encircling them, the scudding clouds reflected in the blue, the whole world fluid and flickering. ‘I am expecting couriers from Cleves. Once the contract is signed here, Anna can set out. I do not like a long sea journey for her, not at this time of year. If Duke Wilhelm can get her a safe-conduct, I am going to bring her overland to Calais. The moment she touches English soil, I want you to be there, paying reverence on my behalf.’
‘In Calais? Shall I cross?’ Gregory’s eyes widen, as if he is looking at the sea.
‘And your Bess will be amongst her ladies when she arrives. I want Anna to look to us for anything she needs – for company, for advice –’
‘For interpreters,’ Gregory says. ‘I hope my French will suffice, when I am across the sea.’
‘You will thank me for your Latin too, and that I kept you to your books.’
‘Oh, the books,’ Gregory says. ‘I was oppressed by them. I thought you meant to have every volume printed, and to force the content into my head.’
He turns his head to look at his son. The stiff breeze ruffles Gregory’s hair, and whips the water into ridges. He drops his eyes to the water’s edge, where a scum of stalks and dead leaves heaves against the stonework, solid as a serpent’s back. ‘You cannot know too much. I meant it for your comfort.’
‘I was afraid of you.’
But of course, he thinks, it is usual for a son to fear his father, it is the way the world is made. ‘I tried to be a tender father to you. I never once struck you.’
‘You were too busy to strike me.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I suppose I could have delegated it. Come in. The wind is getting up.’
To the left of him, through two tall pointed arches, willow trees and a scudding sky. They duck through a doorway, turn sharp right to climb the stairs into the great hall. From the chapel you can look down into the water, shifting blue to grey and back to blue; it is a mirror to every change in the weather. It was Henry Guildford, God rest him, who put in the upper floors here, the wide windows and great fireplaces – before Anne Boleyn rousted him out of his offices and he went home to fade and die. A few pomegranates are left from the old days – Gregory shows him – and carvings of castles which, he tells his son, represent the turrets of Castile. Six queens have lived here at Leeds, and now it shelters the blacksmith’s great-grandsons: little Henry now toddling in his smocks, the baby Edward swaddled in the cradle. ‘There is a Mass book here,’ Bess says, ‘which they say belonged to Queen Katherine.’ She fetches it from its locked chest. He turns the pages in search of inscriptions.
He rides into Huntingdonshire, to see nephew Richard. After all, he will have no holidays till this time next year. All summer Lord Lisle has been sending over from Calais a procession of evangelicals, men whom he says should be examined in London, as he cannot deal with them. Once they disembark, Gardiner sets about them with relish, bullying them into swearing to every pernicious article he has pushed into the statute book. Stephen may be off the council, but he is still a power. Where does he find his boundless malice? Servants he has planted tell him, ‘What Winchester wants to force out of the Calais men is a connection to you, Lord Cromwell. He tries to goad them into naming you, into claiming your protection. If they have ever been in the same church as you, ever stood through the same sermon, Gardiner looks to make something of it.’
So what to do? It is half his work to protect the friends of the gospel from themselves, to keep them circumspect and keep them out of custody. Fevered brethren will fall foul of Parliament’s new articles. Then it will be, ‘Good Lord Cromwell, deliver us from prison!’ What if he cannot? If he, Cromwell, speaks boldly for the Calais men, it will be worse for him, and no better for them; so he must act, if he can, secretly, dexterously, to mitigate the damage Gardiner and his friends will do.
He is happy to ride away from Westminster, where everybody is watching everyone else. Richard is building his new house at Hinchingbrooke. A little convent has been closed, that has been there time out of mind, its numbers dwindling. Workmen, breaking up an old floor, have come to him, mattocks in their hands, dismayed: ‘Mr Richard, see what we have turned up …’
He goes to see. The workmen kneel and pray while the bones are lifted. At first it is hard to tell how many of God’s creatures are jumbled here. Two sets of bones, as Richard thinks, but they are not two nuns, as you might expect: one of them has a huge jawbone and giant-killer’s shoulders. Already the builders are making up stories about them. They are a runaway lord and lady, absconding for love of each other, whose flight has been arrested by a jealous count, or earl, or petty king. Standing hand in hand, they have been slain by their pursuers. No one can stop them mingling their persons now.
‘The workmen take them to be very ancient,’ Richard says. ‘I suppose we will never know what their names were. But it did not seem right to put them down in the nuns’ graveyard.’
He imagines the bony virgins, shrinking from the presence of a man of heroic size. ‘And so?’
‘So I put them back where I found them,’ Richard says. ‘I can live with them under my floor, they are not likely to get up and walk about at night. I was obliged to allow prayers for their souls, the workmen would have downed tools if I had done other. But I will not let them alter my building plans.’
Already the neighbourhood believes that a drowned nun wails about the place, lamenting her sins and looking for the shameful babe she bore. Drip, drip, she comes at twilight, the sodden train of her habit slapping the stone floors. He says to Richard, perhaps she did not drown herself at all, but left a note and ran off to a new life, like Robert Barnes.
When the delegation from Germany arrives – Duke Wilhelm’s people, and envoys from Saxony – the king is still hunting. He sends word that he, Cromwell, should leave aside all other duties, and devote himself to them. By the third week in September the king is at Windsor and ready to receive them himself. His representatives are waiting to conclude the matter: the Duke of Suffolk, Cranmer, Audley, Fitzwilliam and Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham. It is a selection that should satisfy all parties, except for Norfolk and the Bishop of Winchester, who think they should have the rule of all. The Duke of Saxony, who is Wilhelm’s brother-in-law, is clear that he will not make a diplomatic alliance with England while the six articles are in force; he will not tolerate practices that have no warrant in scripture. ‘But we are sure, Lord Cromwell,’ the envoys say, ‘that you will be able to ease Henry to a better way of thinking, now that you are fit and well again. After all, if you had been on your feet and in your Parliament house, those articles had not passed. Once Lady Anna is here, the bridegroom will be mellow, persuadable, and you will press your advantage.’
Melanchthon himself, they say, is writing to the king to urge him to rescind the new laws. It is no shame in a prince, to have second thoughts.
When the king’s team enquires into the old contract that Cleves made with the Duke of Lorraine’s son – the one where the parties were still children – they are told the documents are still not to hand. He, Lord Cromwell, thinks they have probably lost them; it happens. ‘My bride can bring them when she comes,’ the king says. He does not want delay. The Emperor is in France – made welcome on the soil of his old enemy. He is riding to the Low Countries on a mission of revenge: the city of Ghent has revolted against him, and he means to get its submission in person. It would be easier for him to go by sea, but he is afraid of English waters. Our ships might sail out to intercept him. A storm, even, could drive him onto our shores.
‘That would be an ill wind,’ the Imperial ambassador says. He seeks safety in proverbs because he has nothing useful to offer. As for Marillac, you get nothing from him: ‘Oh, I wouldn’t know about that, my lord, I must refer
it upwards.’ Or, ‘This is beyond my remit – I say that without prejudice, of course.’ If Marillac could find a way to stop the wedding, he would exert himself, but meanwhile he dines with the Spaniard and boasts, ‘All Europe rejoices in the continued amity between our masters.’
‘I think we had better get Wyatt back in harness,’ he says to the king. ‘Send him to join the Emperor on his progress through France. If anyone can seed trouble, Wyatt can.’
Wyatt has had the summer at Allington with his mistress. He should be well-rested. His Italian intrigues have come to nothing, because the king will not back any scheme that puts English boots on foreign soil. Wyatt is disappointed, but the king says, ‘Your friend here, I mean Lord Cromwell, has always advised me that such ventures cost too much, and one never knows the final bill.’
On 5 October, early in the morning, the marriage articles are signed at Hampton Court. There is no need to read the banns because Cranmer has waived them. Now nothing is wanting but consummation. The king hands a ring to the Cleves delegation, though he demurs with a smile from putting it on any gentleman’s finger, as would have been the practice in former times. He says, ‘When my sister Mary married King Louis, God rest his soul and hers, the duc de Longueville came over as his proxy, and we were all witness in the great hall at Greenwich. They said their vows, and Longueville gave her a ring and kissed her, and they signed – then she was sent away to put on her nightgown’ – the king blushes faintly – ‘and they lay down on a bed together, and Longueville parted his gown – out came his hairy leg, naked, and touched her – truly, when I thought about it afterwards, there were young girls present, and I did not think it was necessary or seemly. But the French expected it.’
That is what the French are like, the Germans say. A coarse nation, always pushing for things to be done their way.
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 76