‘So how can we get Anne Askew released?’ I ask Nan and Catherine Brandon. ‘The king released George Blagge for love of him. Clearly, we are rising high again. How quickly can we set her free?’
‘Do you think you are strong enough to act?’ Nan queries.
‘George’s return shows that the king has gone as far as he wants with the old churchmen. Now we return to favour.’ I am certain. ‘And anyway, we have to take a risk for Anne. She can’t stay in Newgate. It’s at the very heart of disease and the plague. We have to get her out of there.’
‘I can send one of my men to see that she is housed well, and well fed,’ Catherine says. ‘We can bribe the guards to let her have some comforts. We can get her into a clean cell and get her books as well as food and warm clothes.’
‘Do that,’ I nod. ‘But how can we get her released?’
‘What about our cousin Nicholas Throckmorton? He can go and speak with her,’ Nan suggests. ‘He knows the law, and he is a good Christian of the reform faith. He must have listened to her speak in your rooms a dozen times. He should go and see what can be done and we can speak to Joan, Anthony Denny’s wife. Anthony is in constant attendance on the king these days – he will know if the Privy Council mean to go ahead against her. It is he that will take the arraignment for her trial into the king for signature, or dry-stamp it himself. He’ll take the king’s letter to the jury if he means to dictate the verdict. Sir Anthony knows everything, and he will tell Joan what is planned.’
‘Are you sure he’s on our side?’ I query. ‘Are you sure he is faithful to the side of reform?’
Nan makes a little gesture with both hands, like a woman weighing one purse against another. ‘His heart is with reform, I am sure of it,’ she says. ‘But like all of us, he wants to keep the king’s favour. He’s not going to take a single step that might turn the king against him. Before anything else he is a powerless subject at the court of . . .’
‘A tyrant,’ Catherine whispers defiantly.
‘A king,’ Nan corrects her.
‘But a king who favours us,’ I remind them.
With a new confidence I go to the king’s rooms before dinner and when I find him and his gentlemen talking of religion I give my opinion. I take good care not to be bold or proud of my learning. That’s not hard: the more that I learn, the more sure I am that I have very much to learn; but I can at least join in a conversation with those men who have taken up reformation as others take up archery – to please the king and to give themselves something to do.
‘So Tom Seymour has no wife,’ the king remarks in the middle of one of our conversations. ‘Who’d have thought it?’
It is like a physical blow to hear his name. ‘Your Majesty?’
‘I said, Tom Seymour has no wife,’ he says, raising his voice as if I am going deaf. ‘Though I gave my blessing for the marriage and the Howards told me it would go ahead at once.’
I cannot think what to say. Behind the king I see the impassive face of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, father of Mary, who should have been Thomas’s bride.
‘Was there an obstacle?’ I ask quietly as if I am moderately surprised.
‘The lady’s preference, apparently.’ The king turns to the duke. ‘Did she refuse? I’m surprised you allow a daughter such freedoms.’ The duke bows, smiling. ‘I am afraid to say that she is not an admirer of Thomas Seymour,’ he says. I grit my teeth in irritation at his sneering tone. ‘I think she is not confident of his beliefs.’
This is to imply he is a heretic. ‘Your Majesty . . .’ I start.
The duke dares to speak over me. I break off as I realise that he thinks he can interrupt me – the Queen of England – and that no-one has challenged him.
‘The Seymours are all famously in favour of reforming the church,’ Norfolk says, hissing the ‘s’ through his missing front tooth like the snake that he is. ‘From Lady Anne in the queen’s rooms, to his lordship Edward. They’re all very intent on their scholarship and their reading. They think they can instruct us all. I’m sure we should be grateful, but my daughter is more traditional. She likes to worship in the church that Your Majesty has established. She seeks no change except as you command.’ He pauses. His dark eyes flicker downwards as if he might manage to squeeze out a tear in memory of his son-in-law. ‘And she loved Henry Fitzroy with a true heart – we all did. She cannot bear another man in his place.’
The mention of his bastard son trips the king into sentimental memory. ‘Ah, don’t speak of him,’ he says. ‘I can’t bear to think of my loss. The most beautiful boy!’
‘I can’t see Thomas Seymour taking our beloved Fitzroy’s place,’ the duke says scathingly. ‘It would be a mockery.’
With mounting rage I hear the old man insult Thomas, and I see that no-one says a word to defend him.
‘No, he’s not the man our boy would have been,’ the king agrees. ‘Nobody could be.’
Nicholas Throckmorton, my cousin, comes back from Newgate with good news of Anne Askew. She has many supporters in the City of London, and warm clothes, books and money have been arriving hourly to her little room. She is certain to be released. The importance of her late father and the wealth of her husband count in her favour. She has preached before some of the greatest citizens of London and the City fathers, and she herself has done nothing worse than say what thousands of other people think. There is a general belief that the king has acted only to frighten the more vocal supporters of reform into silence, and that they will all, like Tom Howard, like George Blagge, be quietly released over the next few days.
‘Can you talk to the king?’ Nicholas asks me. ‘Ask for a pardon for her?’
‘He’s in a difficult mood,’ I confess. ‘And the churchmen are always with him.’
‘But he has definitely turned to our side?’
‘All his recent decisions are in favour of reform but he is equally irritable with everyone.’
‘Can you not advise him as you used to do?’
‘I will try,’ I promise. ‘But the conversation in his rooms is not easy as it used to be. Sometimes when I speak I feel that he is impatient with me, and sometimes he is clearly not listening.’
‘You have to keep reform in his mind,’ he says anxiously. ‘You are the only one at court now. Doctor Butts is dead, God keep him. Edward Seymour is away, Thomas, his brother, at sea, Cranmer at his palace. You are the only one left at court who can remind the king of what he passionately believed only a few months ago. I know he is changeable; but our view is his, and you are the only one who can keep him constant. It is a burden, but you are the only one at court who will defend reform. We are all looking to you.’
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1546
It is midsummer, too hot for being in London. We should be on progress, going down the long green valley of the Thames, staying in the beautiful riverside palaces, or heading to the south coast, perhaps going to Portsmouth, where I might see Thomas. But this year the king does not fear the plague, does not fear the heat in the city. This year he fears that death is stalking him by another route, coming closer and closer like a constant companion.
He is too tired to go far, even in flight from disease. Poor old man, he can no longer ride, he can no longer walk. He is ashamed to be seen by the people who used to line the roadsides and doff their caps and cheer as he went by. He used to be the most handsome prince in Christendom. Now he knows that nobody can look at him without feeling pity for the wreck that he has made of his bloated body, and for the moon-like face.