by David Field
‘At last!’ Henry bellowed as Cromwell bowed into the presence. ‘Where in fuck’s name have you been?’
‘In Wiltshire, Sire, as you commanded.’
‘Ah yes, I recall that now. What of the Lady Jane?’
‘She has no suitor, Sire, and no prior engagement of the heart.’
‘Is she still a maid?’
‘I believe so, Sire, but it would take the skills of a physician to deliver certainty on that point.’
‘Hmm, it may come to that. You have heard the news of the Queen’s misfortune?’
‘Indeed, Sire, and may I express my...’
‘Fuck that, Thomas. Just get me out of this mess. I begin to think that your former master knew more than he was telling when he stood in the way of the annulment from Katherine.’
‘It was not the Cardinal who delayed, Sire, but the Pope.’
‘Perhaps it was, but I paid them both out. I have lately thought that perhaps I misjudged Thomas Wolsey.’
‘In fairness to yourself, Sire, you were grievously misled by others.’
‘You refer to the Queen?’
‘Not her alone, Sire. Her uncle, Norfolk, and her father, George Boleyn.’
‘But her hand was in it more than those two. Had she not bewitched me, her family would have had no means by which to ingratiate themselves into my favour.’
‘Perhaps “bewitched” is too strong a condemnation, Sire.’
‘How else to explain how she led a king from the path he trod to secure the nation’s peaceful future? I shall be into my forty-fifth year come June, and still no royal heir.’
‘The royal daughters, Sire?’
‘Do not talk such shit, Thomas. England will never accept a woman on the throne, and in any case Mary is bastardised, while Elizabeth still totters on child legs. Perhaps I should bastardise her, too, but what am I to do with her mother?’
‘Sire?’
‘Do not dissemble, Thomas, I am not in the mood. I am in sore need of the guile that you learned in the service of the Cardinal. He would have known the best way forward.’
‘Forward to what exactly, Sire?’
‘God’s prick, Thomas! If you do not cease this pretence I shall have you carted through the city streets with a sign upon your back inviting pisspots to be emptied on your head! You know of what I speak!’
‘The future of the Queen?’
‘Of course the future of the Queen! I must be rid of her, Thomas, and I care not how. I must be free to marry again, this time to a douce maid who loves me for myself, who does not set her cunny at me in order to win a throne, and who may bear me sons.’
‘The Lady Jane?’
‘Who else? There is no other who so fills my thoughts of late. Who smiles so serenely in my face while Anne spits venom in my ear. The lovely, graceful and swanlike Jane, whose sweet face puts me in mind of summer days spent by cool fountains.’
‘How shall we bring this about, Sire?’
‘If I knew that, I would not be seeking your counsel, Thomas. You have grown wealthy through my preferment, and while I ignore the murmurings of others who seek to persuade me that you rob me right and left, you must realise that your continued prosperity depends upon your value to me at times such as these.’
‘I think we are at one in realising that Norfolk is not to be trusted, Sire. He helped bring down the Cardinal, and he has ever after sought to lay me alongside him in the same tomb in Leicester. In the matter of his niece Anne, he would be even less worthy of trust.’
‘I do not need your counsel on that point, Thomas, and you will know that your final day has come when you find armed men at your door, led by Norfolk.’
Cromwell suppressed a shudder as he recalled that dreadful day when he arrived for work at York Palace to find Norfolk screaming for the return of the Cardinal’s seal of office as Chancellor of England, and the pile of furniture, hangings and plate in the centre of the Great Hall that the Cardinal’s servants had been obliged to bring out ahead of their return to Henry. No, indeed, he had no wish to be thus visited by Norfolk, and the time for diplomatic evasion was over. Cromwell’s cause had become Henry’s cause and wanted only the veneer of justification.
‘With your leave, Sire, I shall meet with Archbishop Cranmer and Lord Chancellor Audley, to determine the best way of securing the lawful justification for another divorce.’
‘Do that, Thomas. Do it quickly, and do not return until you have the answer to hand.’
Cromwell bowed out but kept the smirk from his face until he was back in the hallway. He left his horse where it was and took the barge downstream to Austin Friars. In the Great Hall he found Richard Ashton arm-wrestling with his son Gregory. Although only sixteen years old, Gregory Cromwell was an energetic and combative youth, much given to fighting with the younger sons of neighbours, who he normally defeated. He and Richard had become natural rivals in almost everything, and although Gregory had the greater justification, given the way in which his father had slipped Richard into the household like an older son, Richard found Gregory’s assumption that he would inherit his father’s wealth and position irritating, and rarely missed an opportunity to remind him that in order to make best use of those advantages, he would require more ability than he currently demonstrated.
‘Off the table, you two,’ Cromwell ordered. ‘It must be set for an early supper, and we shall have important visitors. I meet this night with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor.’
‘You have delayed the Pope until dinner tomorrow?’ Gregory asked cheekily.
Cromwell frowned. ‘Guard your tongue and respect your elders, young Gregory. Richard here knows the value of a sheathed tongue on certain occasions.’
‘Mainly because he does not know how to employ it properly when unsheathed,’ Gregory retorted, ducking to avoid a swipe to the side of the head from Richard.
‘Enough!’ Cromwell ordered them both. ‘Since you must needs be separated as usual, if only to preserve the furnishings, come with me to my upstairs study, Richard, and bring me the most recent news from Court. Have John bring us wine, Gregory.’
‘Well?’ Cromwell demanded as they sat on adjacent chairs in front of Cromwell’s document-strewn table.
Richard shrugged. ‘Since the misfortune of the Queen’s miscarriage there is little to report, since we do not always gather daily, as we were disposed to do previously.’
‘They have accepted you as one of their company?’
‘Indeed,’ Richard said proudly. ‘I think that may have been assisted by Jane Rochford, who is forever drawing me into their conversation.’
‘How go things between you?’
Richard blushed. ‘I feel like a virgin under siege by a randy suitor. She makes hints that perhaps we should be better acquainted, and there is almost daily reference to her duties in the ante-chamber to Anne’s bed chamber.’
‘She is still occupying that side chamber?’
‘So she is at pains to establish, on pretence of making the other Ladies jealous, but always with an eye in my direction. If you wish me to “poke her hearth”, as you put it, I cannot delay much longer. Nor, I must own, do I wish to. She is quite comely in that way of mature matrons.’
‘You shall shortly have the opportunity to unleash your cock in that direction,’ Cromwell reassured him, ‘but I must know of ought else that has transpired, and of conversations that have passed.’
‘The Queen was most anxious to learn why you had journeyed to Wiltshire, and I was fortunately able to dissemble on that point, assuring Her Majesty that I was simply your Senior Clerk, and not your Steward.’
‘Was she convinced, think you?’
‘I would have said yes to that, were it not for Anne’s rude behaviour towards Mistress Seymour.’
‘More, please.’
‘Well, we sat one afternoon as usual, with Harry Norris and Francis Weston making up a group in the corner with Jane Seymour and Lady Worcester. Jane had a locket on a chain around her neck,
which was one of those that often contain love tokens or miniatures. Jane was ever opening and closing it, admiring its contents, and eventually Anne bid her come and sit by her. Then she demanded that Jane lean forward and display the inside of the locket, which Jane seemed reluctant to do. Eventually Anne commanded her, as her Queen, to do her bidding, and Jane did as commanded. Anne opened the locket, looked inside, then gave out a loud scream and ripped the locket from Jane’s neck, hurling it into a corner.’
‘Did you see what was in the locket?’
‘No, but Jane Rochford has let it be believed that inside it was a lock of Henry’s hair. She even alluded that it might not have come from his head.’
‘Did ought transpire after Anne treated Jane thus?’
‘Jane Seymour rose swiftly from her chair and rushed, in floods of tears, to the corner of the room where Mark Seaton sat playing his lute. He ceased playing, and was in the act of giving Jane such comfort as he could when Harry Norris chided him for giving solace to someone who had angered the Queen. When Mark sought to protest that he was only acting out of gentle kindness to a lady in distress, Norris rose angrily from where he was seated and rushed across the chamber, knocking poor Mark, and his instrument, clean off his chair.’
Cromwell chuckled. ‘I would wish to have been there to witness that. But is there more?’
‘Not of that nature. It was but the following day when the Queen rushed from the chamber, calling Jane Rochford out with her, and the next we heard she had miscarried of her child. We have only lately resumed our afternoon meetings, and even then not every day.’
‘The Queen is fully restored to her former self?’
‘As far as can be judged from a distance. She is obviously much distressed by her recent loss, and her brother is said to be lodging elsewhere in the Palace, having travelled from his estate for the purpose of bringing her comfort. If he conjoins nightly with Lady Jane in the ante-chamber, I fear that my opportunity may have been lost.’
‘Be of good cheer, Richard. If rumour be truth, there will be no husbandly queue for Jane Rochford’s open legs. But what of Jane Seymour?’
‘She has pleaded illness for the past few days, and I have seen nothing of her in the Queen’s company. It is even rumoured that she may have returned to Wiltshire.’
‘This is to the good, Richard. You must now make your assignation with Jane Rochford in the side chamber, but be certain to advise me when it is to occur.’
‘You wish to watch?’ Richard asked with a smirk.
‘God forbid. I doubt which I wish to see less of — your tackle or Jane’s greying quim. But I will be there, in another guise. Now leave me to make inroads into this tedious pile of Chancery writs.’
Two hours later, Cromwell pushed aside his platter of fish and looked at each of Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Audley.
‘You will have surmised that I have hosted this humble meal with a purpose in mind?’
‘It is said that an invitation to Austin Friars augers that Thomas Cromwell wants something,’ Audley said, while Cranmer looked uncomfortable.
‘Not to dissemble, gentlemen, Henry wants a divorce, and it is down to us to devise the grounds.’
Cranmer all but choked on a fish bone, spat it out, and fingered the jewelled cross around his neck. ‘I have barely squared my account with God in respect of the last one,’ he protested.
‘I certainly look forward to hearing you explaining to Council how you were sorely mistaken in your belief that the marriage between Henry and Katherine had been unlawful, that Henry was free to marry, and that his betrothal to Anne was legitimate,’ Cromwell replied with a smile. ‘Although considering that by that stage she was preceded everywhere she went by a distended belly containing the Princess Elizabeth, it was perhaps a wise pronouncement. And one that justified your elevation to your current office.’
‘He cannot plead consanguinity this time,’ Cranmer moaned.
‘There was the matter of Mary Boleyn,’ Audley pointed out. ‘Henry had her long before Anne, and they are sisters.’
‘The Bible condemns only brothers’ wives, if read literally,’ Cranmer explained. ‘That fitted the case regarding Katherine and Prince Arthur, but would hardly suffice here. In any case, Henry married Anne in full knowledge that he had previously had knowledge of her sister, thereby condoning any sin that might flow from it.’
‘So you can find nothing in your scripture that makes the marriage between Henry and Anne illicit?’
‘No. Unwise, certainly. Appalling, certainly. Lustful, no doubt. Tasteless and with unseemly haste, without question. But forbidden in the eyes of God, most certainly not.’
‘And of course,’ Audley commented sourly, ‘God has grown more tolerant since He became an Englishman, has he not?’
‘Please, Thomas,’ Cromwell intervened, ‘this is no time to be provoking his Grace. Perhaps you would be better employed coming up with some ground upon which the Queen may be impeached in law.’
‘She is said to be a witch,’ Audley offered, then withered under Cromwell’s glare.
‘She is also said to go to it with ten men and a goat on a nightly basis, if one is to believe the broadsheets in circulation around the city taverns,’ Cromwell reminded him. ‘We need more than scurrilous rumour that owes much to overheated imagination and little to fact.’
‘If it were true, it might be adjudged treason,’ Audley suggested. ‘It is believed in our courts that for a queen to commit adultery is an act of treason against her husband the King. Of course, there are no precedents on the point, as yet.’
‘I always thought that it was only treason to attempt the life of a king,’ Cranmer chimed in.
‘Then it is perhaps best that you are Archbishop of Canterbury, while I am Lord Chancellor of England. The two positions clearly call for different talents.’
‘They were once combined,’ Cromwell reminded them sadly, ‘most recently in the hands of Thomas Wolsey, as Archbishop of York. But if you are correct, Thomas, then we need show only one act of adultery and Anne will be minus her head.’
‘The punishment for treason by a woman is burning at the stake,’ Audley told them, as Cranmer shuddered, ‘but you are correct. Do we have evidence of such?’
‘Not yet. You may leave that to me.’
‘Is that not a matter for the Attorney-General?’ Audley queried. ‘It is no business of the Master of the Rolls to be procuring witnesses in a common law court.’
‘It is for this Master of the Rolls,’ Cromwell replied with a smile. ‘Now, would either of you wish to sample one of my cook’s excellent jellies? We recently acquired a mould of Windsor Castle, and the crenulations have been sculpted in marchpane.’
IX
Two evenings later, as the guards in the corridor were completing their midnight duty changes, Richard Ashton stood contemplating the somewhat overdone depiction of St Anthony being ripped apart by devouring demons that hid from view the secret door to the side room occupied by Jane Rochford, in official night attendance on the Queen.
A hand came from behind the tapestry, followed by the smiling eager face of Jane Rochford. Needing no further invitation, Richard slipped through the door, which Jane closed gently behind them as she took Richard by the hand, and led him inside the bedchamber, where they eagerly got down to what each of them had been anticipating for some time.
Meanwhile, Cromwell was at work. Satisfied that Richard was about his long-awaited joyful business, he had approached the guards outside the Queen’s bedchamber and sent them in search of an intruder he believed he had seen lurking near the door to the Audience Chamber that led, via a Withdrawing Chamber, to the bed chamber itself.
‘Go no further than the Withdrawing Chamber,’ he instructed them, ‘and I will wait by the door you were guarding. I have my dagger, and will acquit myself accordingly should anyone be flushed out by your actions.’
Once the guards disappeared around the corner, Cromwell raced to the grace and favour chambe
r granted to Mark Smeaton a few yards in the other direction. It was little regarded by other courtiers, due to the constant noise from the adjacent staircase, but it was deemed good enough for a mere Palace servant, and Cromwell rushed in without knocking, to find Mark dressed only in his shirt and hose.
‘Come quickly!’ Cromwell urged him. ‘There is another fire in the Queen’s bedchamber, and we need many hands to extinguish it. Waste no time getting dressed — the Queen is in danger!’
The unsophisticated boy with his imperfect grasp of English fell for the ruse without demure, and raced down the hallway half dressed.
‘This way!’ Cromwell urged him, as he threw open the unguarded door to the Queen’s bedchamber, and Mark raced in without hesitation. Then Cromwell pulled the door shut and held the handle firmly in his grip as he heard the screams of Queen Anne and her demands for an explanation for Mark’s intrusion dressed as if for seduction. Then he prayed hard for the return of the guards.
It seemed an eternity before one of them returned, red-faced and breathless.
‘We have the man trapped inside the Queen’s bedchamber!’ he told Cromwell as he brushed past him and threw open the door.
The sight that greeted them might have been comical in another context. Mark was on his knees in his hose and shirt, and Anne was hurling bedding at him, calling him a filthy intruder and a pathetic wretch with no respect for her royal dignity and privacy.
Cromwell grinned and slipped back outside, in time to see Richard’s retreating figure halfway down the hall. His grin deepened as he reached behind the hanging and quietly closed the door that Richard had left open in his eagerness to depart the scene.
The Tower guard unlocked the door, then stood respectfully to one side as Cromwell took a deep breath in precaution against whatever smells of fear and worse he might encounter, then stepped through the open doorway into the gloom of the first-floor cell in the Bell Tower.
Mark Smeaton lay curled in a foetal position in the far corner, and flinched as he looked up and saw Cromwell standing over him. Then he began to cry, and plead in his broken English. ‘You are here to be torturing me?’