‘That creak-kneed saint,’ Henry says. ‘She had me in terror when I was a child.’
‘Still, we must carry through her ordinances, sir. Ladies do not like any change.’
His new daughter Bess keeps him informed of all that passes in the queen’s chambers. Gregory does not like to be parted from his bride, but these are no ordinary days, and besides, he has already done to her all a groom hopes to do. Edward Seymour becomes more taut-featured by the day, as expectation works on him. He goes down to Wolf Hall to hunt. The game is excellent this year, he writes: my dear friend Cromwell, I wish you were here.
It has been a dangerous summer. For fear of plague the queen keeps a reduced household. The king lives separate at Esher, also with small state. A messenger called Bolde, who goes daily between Rafe and the Cromwells, is taken with an unknown distemper and must be isolated till he improves or dies. Rafe has often instructed Bolde face to face, and so the king suggests he avoid the court; but then Henry forgets and asks irritably, ‘Where’s young Sadler?’
For God’s sake, Rafe writes, do not let the king forget me, or some rival steal into my place. From my years of discretion you have nourished, brought me up and admired me. Do not let me slip and slide now.
The king does not want to be without Cromwell, as the mornings grow misty and the first chill lies on the air. Come and be near me, he says. Spend your days with me. Maybe just, to keep to the rules, sleep under another roof at night. He obeys. He makes sure to talk every day about young Sadler, how he misses the light of the king’s countenance. He writes to Edward that his visit to Wolf Hall will have to wait. The king calls him Tom Cromwell. He calls him Crumb. He walks through the garden at Esher, his arm about his councillor’s neck, and says, ‘I have hopes of this child. If I could have three wishes, like a man in a tale, I would wish for a prince, bonny and well-doing, and I would wish for myself to live long enough to guide him to man’s estate. Do you think you will make old bones, Crumb?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says frankly. ‘I have a fever I brought home from Italy. They say it weakens the heart.’
‘And you work too hard,’ Henry says: as if he were not the cause of the work. ‘If I die before my time, Crumb, you must …’
Do it, he thinks. Draw up a paper. Make me regent.
‘You must –’ Henry breaks off: he breathes in the green air. ‘So soft an evening,’ he says. ‘I wish summer might last for ever.’
He thinks, write it now. I will go back in the house and get paper. We can lean against a tree and make a draft.
‘Sir?’ he prompts him. ‘I must …?’
We can seal it later, he thinks.
Henry turns and gazes at him. ‘You must pray for me.’
They ride and hunt: Sunninghill, Easthampstead, Guildford. The king’s leg is better. He can make fifteen miles a day. In the mornings he hears Mass before he rides. In the evenings he tunes his lute and sings. He sends love tokens to his wife. Sometimes he talks about when he was young, about his brothers who have died. Then his spirits rally and he laughs and jokes like a good fellow among his friends. He sings a ditty Walter Cromwell used to sing: O peace, ye make me spill my ale …
Where did he hear that? No women are assaulted in the king’s version, and the words are cleaner.
On 16 September Jane takes to her chamber to rest and wait. Dr Butts is waiting too, but he and the other doctors will keep their distance till her pains begin. What usages the women have among themselves, we dare not enquire. As our preachers make it clear, we do not prohibit statues of our Lord’s mother, nor prayers directed through her. She is our intercessor, our mediatrix at the court of Heaven. Only remember she is not a goddess but human, a woman who scours pots and peels roots and brings the cattle in: surprised by the angel, she is weighed down by her gravid state, and exhausted by the journey before her, the nights with no certain shelter.
From behind the papist virgin with her silver shoes there creeps another woman, poor, her feet bare and calloused, her swarthy face plastered with the dust of the road. Her belly is heavy with salvation and the weight drags and makes her back ache. When night comes she draws warmth not from ermine or sable but from the hide and hair of farm animals, as she squats among them in the straw; she suffers the first pangs of labour on a night of cutting cold, under a sky pierced by white stars.
Two of our best men, Dr Wilson and Mr Heath, are sent to Brussels to the renegade Pole: experienced negotiators, they are to convey to him that the king’s offer holds – if he will return to England and live as an honest subject, he can be pardoned yet. He, the Lord Privy Seal, is unsure how long the king’s offer will last, and whether it is an efflux of generosity or an arrant deception. But he instructs the envoys as he himself is instructed, counselling them to give the traitor no title but ‘Mr Pole’.
He says to Wolsey, ‘How do you like it, this upstart calling himself the Cardinal of England?’ But his dead master has no opinion.
The queen is two days and three nights in labour. On the second day, a solemn procession of city worthies wends to Paul’s to pray for her, and the people join them, standing in the street with their beads, some kneeling, some crying out for pardon for the king for denying our Holy Father in Rome; some saying he is the Mouldwarp, and will see no offspring, and others proclaiming that Lady Mary is his heir, because she is the child of a true princess. The city officers move among them, taking some into custody. But most are let go before curfew, their ignorance pardoned. This is not a week for whipping, or cutting off ears.
Some doubt the efficacy of prayer at such times. Why should God spare one woman and not another? But by the time forty-eight hours have passed, what is there but prayer? If the king’s child is lost, nothing will persuade him that it is mischance. Kings are subject to fate, not luck. Accidents don’t happen: dooms overtake them. Gregory says, if the king does not like the outcome he will quarrel with God again. He may tear up his own ordinances, and the gospels now in press may never see the light of day.
If the Lord Privy Seal were on Jane’s threshold, he could catechise her doctors as they pass in and out. But the messenger Bolde has died, and he dare not go to court lest he carry infection.
He occupies himself with monastic pensions, and with writing to Tom Wyatt, now with the Emperor. Wyatt has been found out in a careless error. He has failed to present to Charles the letters sent by the Lady Mary, in which she describes her present state of unhindered bliss, and stresses she is and always will be her father’s servant. It’s strange, Wriothesley says, because Wyatt doesn’t make mistakes, does he? Or not simple ones.
It is hard to explain. But he and Wriothesley have covered for Wyatt, so Henry knows nothing about it. We do not want Wyatt’s embassy to fail. Wyatt above any man can feel out the Emperor’s intentions. This peace that Charles and François are supposed to be making: do they not need a mediator, arbitrator? Better they should ask England, than turn to the Pope. We need, somehow, to force our way into the process.
Anyway, treaty or no, Emperor and France will fight no more this year. Winter will soon be here. Nor will the north country rise.
Though the Hydra was never a fair opponent. It lurked in caves, and could only be killed in daylight.
Jane gives birth on 12 October, at two in the morning. The courier makes good time and they wake him with the news. ‘Man or maid?’ he asks, and they tell him. By eight o’clock all London knows it. At nine o’clock they sing Te Deum at Paul’s. It is St Edward’s Eve, and the child will be named for the saint. Rafe has been ordered back to court. The queen’s official letter goes out in his hand, phrased as if she had gripped the quill and scrawled it herself: grace of Almighty … a prince, conceived in most lawful matrimony … joyous and glad tidings … universal wealth, quiet and tranquillity of this whole realm …