by David Field
‘And he failed?’ Richard asked.
‘No, he did not,’ Cromwell insisted vehemently. ‘The Pope failed. Henry sought to have Katherine put aside on the ground that she had previously been bedded by Henry’s older brother Arthur, who was heir to the throne until he died, leaving Henry to pick up both his crown and his bride. This was obviously a religious point, and since Wolsey was by then one of the Pope’s two Legates in this country, the question was passed to them by Henry, who believed that he had my master firmly in his tunic pocket. But when Wolsey was obliged to refer the matter back to the Pope, the time was inauspicious. His Holiness was by then in thrall to the Emperor Charles of Spain, and in all but name was his prisoner. Charles was Katherine’s nephew, and the Pope was easily persuaded to play for time in the matter. Time that the Cardinal did not have.’
‘It was spoken abroad at the time that Wolsey was a friend to Katherine himself,’ Margaret reminded him.
‘Sympathetic, certainly,’ Cromwell confirmed, ‘since under his robes of office beat a heart that retained common humanity. But Norfolk and his faction let it be popularly believed that Wolsey was against any annulment of the royal marriage, and used the now Queen Anne as the worm in the bud. She persuaded Henry that my master was deliberately delaying the matter, and furthermore that he was in league with Charles, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor, on the promise that he would become the next Pope. Norfolk had papers forged to support that wicked slander, and my master fell rapidly from grace.’
‘It is said that he died of a broken heart,’ Margaret mused out loud.
‘He died of a canker, in great agony,’ Cromwell told her, ‘and to my eternal shame I assisted him to a merciful end by his own hand. But his heart was broken, certainly, and in my grief I rashly made a solemn vow to be revenged on Anne Boleyn, who of course became Queen shortly thereafter, when Henry turned the Church upside down, with himself at its head, and perfectly positioned to grant himself his own annulment of his marriage to Katherine.’
‘For which he will roast in the fires of Hell,’ Margaret hissed.
Richard remained puzzled. ‘You seek only to bring down the Queen? Not the King?’
‘That may be your ambition, after what I have this day disclosed to you of your own family history, but I am sworn simply to bring down his queen.’
‘And I may assist in that?’ Richard asked, still puzzled. ‘Why should I, since she has done me no ill?’
‘She has a womb,’ Cromwell reminded him, ‘and one, moreover, that may yet yield a male heir that will perpetuate the House of Tudor that has usurped the throne from your own House of York. Is that not motive enough?’
‘Surely my grievance lies directly with the King himself?’
‘His father, perhaps, but not Henry himself. In the same way that you had no command over who your grandfather was, and what he did, how might King Henry be held to account for the deviousness and treachery of his grandmother?’
‘But why should I aid you in the matter of the Queen alone?’ Richard persisted.
Cromwell shook his head in exasperation. ‘Think, boy! I have already demonstrated how the absence of any womb to generate further Tudors will have grave consequences for the line. Further to that, will you not be bringing the King great heaviness of heart when his queen is removed? If you play chess, you must realise the seriousness of losing a queen.’
‘The King will surely marry again?’ Margaret argued. ‘The whore has only thus far given him a girl — who is to say she cannot bear a boy? Perhaps the child currently inside her? And if she does not deliver herself of a boy, and Henry puts Anne aside for another, how long before that results in the birth of a boy? And you forget the bastard Fitzroy. You are surely blinded by your passion for revenge against the Boleyn woman.’
‘And Norfolk, by your own words,’ Richard added.
Cromwell’s face twisted in anger. ‘Oh yes — and Norfolk too, the double-dyed son of Satan! He will fall by my hand, just as Thomas Wolsey fell by his.’
‘And why should I join my head to all this, which could easily end on the scaffold?’ Richard persisted.
Cromwell regained his composure, and his wily smile returned. ‘If the reasons I have already given are not sufficient, here are two more. You have the opportunity to rise from your unhappy existence on an obscure estate in Berkshire, where you were described, in my hearing, as the resident idiot. I offer you a place in my service, where you may rise to prominence as I once rose through the patronage of the Cardinal. In that service you will attend Court, where your undoubted good looks will render you many a roll between the sheets of a fine lady, one of whom may take your lusty cock to be her lawful wedded husband.’
Margaret coughed her embarrassment, but Cromwell was unmoved.
‘We deal with realities here, madam. Let us not obscure the raw truth of life at Court with the tattered veil of propriety. The nation is driven by diverse forms of lust, and that which occurs between the sheets is one of them. Do you think King Henry sought to take Anne to his bed in order that they might converse on the constellation of the stars in the firmament?’
‘Be that as it may,’ Margaret countered, ‘it is not seemly to discuss such matters so openly. Nor, I am emboldened to say, so crudely.’
‘This is nothing compared with what the lad will hear in the Queen’s Chamber, even from the Queen herself, who speaks the language of the whorehouse as fluently as her ladies. She was raised in France, remember, where they fuck on the staircases.’
Margaret tutted, but remained silent. However, Richard had not finished.
‘And what if I choose not to leave my country estate and join in this uncertain enterprise? What if I report your treasonous words?’
Cromwell’s smile became more of a threat as he supplied the answer. ‘You speak to the Master of the Rolls, remember. A man whose word would be preferred to that of a young idiot from an estate so impoverished that its head deems it a great reward to be allowed to expand it with a mere twelve hides of land from a local monastery. And even were the matter to come to court, there would be no-one to support your story, and once I revealed your own sickness of mind that causes you to believe that you are the rightful heir to the throne of England, where would lie your case?’
‘I would have the evidence of this lady,’ Richard argued, pointing at Margaret, who shook her head vigorously.
‘See, you are wrong even in that,’ Cromwell gloated. ‘And why do you speak of “evidence”? Of what use is that in our courts? Take it from this experienced and weary common lawyer that what rules the day in our courts is not evidence, but expediency. The King would not wish to lose the services of his loyal, efficient bringer-in of wealth from the dissolved monasteries on the word of an adjudged idiot.’
‘I would seem to have little choice,’ Richard conceded, ‘but I fail to see what role this “idiot” can play in your angry schemes.’
‘Once you are suitably prepared for Court, you will go where I once went,’ Cromwell told him. ‘Namely, into the presence of the Queen and her ladies. You will join all those other popinjays who sniff around the cunnies of the Queen’s Ladies and you will bring back word to me of how things sit. Who is enamoured of who, who intrigues with who, who is in the royal favour, and who not. Unless I miss my mark, there is scandal enough there to remove a queen from her throne, and an eager womb from the royal bed.’
‘And how will I prepare myself to play the peacock, and from whence will come my fine feathers?’ Richard asked.
‘You see how your tongue becomes more filed even after an hour in my company? Leave the fine words for me to pour into your ear when you join my household at Austin Friars. As for Courtly manners, and I suspect less coarseness of language, I leave you in the willing hands of this good lady, to whom you have not formally been introduced. She is, as you will have deduced for yourself, distantly related to you and is best thought of as an elderly aunt. She is the Countess of Salisbury in her own right, and she ca
n be your guiding light as to how gentlemen behave in the presence of the King. You may leave it to me to advise you on how to behave in the Queen’s presence. I shall return a month from now to collect my new Senior Clerk.’
IV
‘Welcome back to Court, Thomas,’ King Henry smiled benevolently. ‘Do you bring me more monasteries in your saddlebags?’
Cromwell had only been required to walk up one floor to the King’s Audience Chamber from his apartments of convenience on the ground floor of Whitehall Palace. It had previously been occupied by the Cardinal, in his role as Archbishop of York, before it had been seized by Henry on Wolsey’s downfall. Henry now resided here with his queen, while extensions to the old Palace were under construction.
Cromwell adopted a doleful look for his reply. ‘I thought I had witnessed all the depravity and blasphemy that the Church of Rome had hitherto tolerated in these houses of idle iniquity, but still I encounter more. I have confiscated enough pieces of the alleged “True Cross” to account for half the forests in Germany, and enough teeth of Saint Anthony to fill the mouths of your entire royal bodyguard. In Glastonbury I was offered part of Christ’s burial shroud, which is alleged to ooze with blood each Passion Sunday. It is a simple trick with a vegetable dye that reacts to strong sunlight.’
‘A matter of considerable regret, clearly,’ Henry replied, ‘but how much have we generated in our passion to restore order to these unholy houses?’
‘Abingdon will bring in several thousand, Your Majesty. And even now there is a caravan of wagons under armed escort returning from parts of Wiltshire and Dorset loaded with false idols, gold plate, damask altar cloths and alleged holy relics that will fetch a fine price among the gullible across the sea in Ireland. I estimate another twenty thousand, in all.’
‘This is good,’ Henry acknowledged as he waved Cromwell to a seat. ‘Speaking of Passion Sunday, you presumably heard what the Queen ordered her almoner to preach at us?’
Cromwell was confident that the man would either be burned as a heretic or demoted to the position of parish priest somewhere in darkest Northumbria. ‘Indeed, Highness. He claimed that the revenues from the dissolved so-called holy houses should be distributed among the poor. I am surprised that he still retains his bollocks, if either Norfolk or Suffolk were in attendance.’
Henry laughed. ‘Norfolk was all for throwing him from a window, and had his hand on his collar before the man threatened him with excommunication. I ordered Norfolk to back away, under promise that the man should attend before Council and show cause why he should not be either hung drawn and quartered for treason, or burned for heresy. The Queen was not pleased.’
‘She will be pleased, however, with what Parliament achieved in my absence, in the matter of the succession?’
Henry nodded with some sadness. ‘Indeed, the Lady Mary is now out of contention, and is officially a bastard. It goes hard on a father to do that to his own daughter, but we must think of Elizabeth.’
‘I trust she thrives?’
‘So her nurse advises me.’
‘And you, Majesty?’ Cromwell enquired solicitously, nodding at the ominous bulge formed by the tight bandaging beneath Henry’s hose just above thigh level, and only partly hidden by the loose jerkin.
Henry sighed. ‘The poison will not retreat, despite the many leechings and other dreadful ministrations of those horse doctors who pose as royal physicians. Anne insists that I never joust again, and that is perhaps as well, given that I might be unhorsed for once if I did. But I can no longer dance properly either — not that the Queen forbids that, although her condition is such that she will only sit and watch while I attempt to cavort around with her ladies.’
‘Some of whom are probably glad to be led gently,’ Cromwell grinned.
‘There is one in particular who has caught my eye,’ Henry told him confidentially, with a facial expression that Cromwell had not seen since the heady days of Hever Castle, and Henry’s ardent pursuit of ‘the Lady Anne’, as she been then. ‘Little Jane Seymour, daughter of old Sir John, of Wulfhall in Wiltshire,’ Henry continued to ramble. ‘She was lady-in-waiting to the Lady Katherine in the days when she was Queen, and she has remained to serve Anne. We were down there some months ago, during the progress, and although she was then in residence, she was seen only behind her book, or bent over her needlework, in which she excels.’
‘I cannot bring her to mind,’ Cromwell lied in an effort to sniff the wind.
Henry was only too eager to oblige. ‘She is no great beauty, yet such a sweet docility flows from her countenance, like spring sunshine. She does not strut and flounce, like so many of the Queen’s Ladies, nor does she have an edge to her tongue, like the bites I so often seem to receive from Anne these days. She has no suitors, of whom I am aware anyway, but you might like to make enquiry on that matter, Thomas, since such a sweet creature must be betrothed to the gentlest of men, that her fragile grace be not flattened beneath coarse flesh. See to it, Thomas.’
‘Without delay, Majesty.’
‘Pray God she is not already spoken for to some ruffian with more breeding than manners.’
‘So it is to be hoped, your Highness. The papers containing a full account of the latest holy houses we have ordered closed will be brought to you by a new Senior Clerk I have engaged. Name of Ashton. Richard Ashton.’
‘Whatever,’ Henry responded with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘To Wiltshire, Thomas.’
‘Without delay, Majesty, as I promised,’ Cromwell replied as he bowed from the presence.
V
Richard Ashton took a deep breath and walked up to the two guards who stood with crossed halberds at the entrance doors to the Audience Chamber on the first floor, clutching the two copies of the list he had been handed minutes earlier by his new employer Thomas Cromwell. He was conscious of the richness of his dark brown velvet doublet with matching hose and shoes, with a bonnet of light green perched on his neatly shorn golden-red locks.
‘Is the King in there?’ Richard asked timorously.
The guards sniggered, and the one on the left answered for them both.
‘No, boy — we always stand here of an afternoon.’
‘We like ter look alert, in case there are ladies passin’, then we slips our cocks out when they draw level,’ the other replied, and they both burst out laughing.
Richard sighed and began to walk away, before one of them called him back.
‘Is it important, lad?’
‘I have no idea. Master Cromwell asked me to deliver a list to His Majesty.’
‘Master Secretary Cromwell?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why the fuck didn’t yer say so ter begin with? In yer go, lad, and sorry for the cheek.’
The two guards uncrossed their halberds, leaving Richard with a full view of the closed doors. He stepped forward and knocked as hard as he could. When there was no response he knocked again, even harder.
‘Stand back, boy,’ one of the guards ordered him as he rammed one of the closed doors hard with the butt of his halberd. There was a brief silence, then the doors were opened from inside, and the face of an usher in full Tudor livery came into view.
‘You are?’ Richard was asked.
‘Master Richard Ashton, Senior Clerk to Master Secretary Cromwell, with some papers for His Majesty.’
‘Wait there,’ Richard was instructed, and the door was closed in his face.
‘Master Secretary normally just barges in without waiting fer an invitation,’ Richard was advised by one of the guards as he waited.
‘I saw ’im kick the door open, one time,’ the other added, just as the doors opened again and the usher reappeared, this time with a smile.
‘Come in,’ Richard was instructed, and with another deep breath he walked through the open doors and into the presence.
King Henry was studying some parchment or other, his head bent over the vellum as he sat resting his left leg on a footstool to one side of the
padded chair that Richard took to be the throne. He looked up as Richard approached, made a sweeping bow and went down on one knee.
‘I wish I could still do that,’ Henry muttered with a smile. ‘Take my advice, boy, and stay away from the tiltyard.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ Richard replied dutifully.
Henry held out his hand. ‘You are Cromwell’s man?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘And the paper you have in your hand is the list of monastic resumptions that he promised me?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘Very well, young man. Without saying “Yes, Your Majesty” yet again, hand me the list.’
Richard kept his lips tightly gripped together as he leaned forward and handed the list across the few feet between them, Henry grunting with the effort of having to double over to take them. Then Henry looked more intently at what remained in Richard’s hand.
‘What are those other papers? Are they for me?’
‘No, Your ... no, Sire. They are for the Queen.’
‘And what are they?’
‘A copy of the list that I just handed to you, according to my master.’
‘Anne requires a list of those monasteries we are closing down?’
‘So I am instructed, Your Majesty. I have no idea why she requires such a list, merely that I am to deliver it once you have your copy.’
‘Very well, you’ll find her down the hallway in her own Audience Chamber, surrounded by her twittering coven. If you emerge with your tackle intact, send me a message to that effect. It will be the first such event.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ Richard replied, then cursed inwardly as he remembered the earlier instruction. He began to bow from the presence, until Henry raised his hand for him to remain for a moment.
‘You are new to the Court?’
‘I am, Sire.’
‘Two things. The first is that I was jesting regarding your likely fate among the Queen’s Ladies. They only go to it in private, and your tackle will remain safe as long as you only ever approach them in a group, and in daylight. The second — tell that cretin on the door not to attack it with his halberd in future. Cedar is expensive these days.’