Dr Butts is back, a urine flask in hand. ‘Majesty, you must not think of transacting business today.’
‘No?’ Henry says. ‘Then who will rule, Dr Butts?’
It sounds like a civil enquiry. But it makes the doctor step back.
‘We are talking of my fall at Greenwich,’ Henry says. ‘Reminiscing.’ He spits the word out.
Butts says, ‘God protect your Majesty.’
‘He did,’ Henry says. ‘I heard every man in that tent believed I was dead, except Cromwell. He stood over me and felt the beating of my heart, when others had given me up.’
He thinks, I could not allow you to be dead. Who had we for sovereign? Mary, a papist, who would have killed all your ministers? Eliza, still in the cradle? The unborn child in Anne’s womb? And how is it better now? I still have no plan, I have no route out, I have no affinity, I have no backers, I have no troops, no right, no claim. He thinks, Henry should give me the regency, give it me now. Set it down and seal it: multiple copies.
The king says, ‘I suppose now the embassies will be spreading it to the world that I am dead again.’
‘If you will spare me, I will go back to Westminster. I will visit the ambassadors in person and assure them I have seen you alive with my own eyes.’
‘Oh, and they’ll believe you,’ the king says. A fit of coughing shakes him. Butts says, ‘My lord Privy Seal, enough for now.’
‘The poisoned vapours from the wound rose right up to my brain,’ Henry says. ‘But tell them – I don’t know – tell them I had a megrim. A fall. A fright. Tell them I will be back in the saddle within days.’
Henry raises a hand to dismiss him. Versions multiply as soon as a tale is told. He knows his own story: at Greenwich the royal heart fluttering, faint as a god’s breath in a glass bubble. He recalls himself praying, but others recall him doubling his fist and pounding the king’s chest hard enough to split his ribcage. And Christophe, who was at his side all that wretched hour, claims he bounced the king’s person up and down by the shoulders; that he seized him by the ears and bellowed into his face: ‘Breathe, you fucker, breathe!’
May comes, and the king is planning a dynasty. ‘If I could get Madame de Longueville, I am sure she would give me a house full of sons, which would be a great comfort to England, if anything but good came to Edward. Our first son together would be Duke of York. The next would be Duke of Gloucester. Our third, I think, Duke of Somerset.’
Fitzwilliam says, ‘Have you forgotten she is pledged to Scotland?’
Henry never forgets anything. But sometimes he believes a king’s caprice can alter reality.
The King of France, it is said, is proceeding to Nice, where he will meet the Emperor. It seems the only way to break their amity is for Henry to choose a bride from one party, thereby insulting the other.
His councillors caution, ‘No haste, Majesty. As soon as you choose, you forfeit advantage. You can marry only once.’
‘Can he?’ Fitzwilliam mutters. ‘This is Henry we’re talking about.’
Henry says, ‘Cromwell, I want you to entertain Ambassador Castillon. You were too brisk, threatening to knock him down. Now you must mend the damage. I want you to use emollient words. Feast him. If you want anything from my larder or pantry, just say the word.’
Lately he has been tormenting Thurston with a design for a spit driven by a system of gears and pulleys, which uses the fire’s draught to turn the meat at a steady speed. ‘Voilà,’ he says, impaling a chicken. But Thurston turns down his mouth: there are plenty of boys, so wherefore a machine?
Boys produce burnt bits, he says. Or some parts cooked, some raw. This way, you have a regulated action. Stoke up the fire, and the faster it goes, the faster the spit turns. Bank down the fire, and –
Try again, master, Thurston says. The machinery is so much bigger than yon pitiful pullet.
When Castillon and the king’s councillors arrive, they sit down to turbot, baked guinea fowl, and a cress salad dressed with vinegar and oil. The salmon is roasted with orange zest, and young fowl deboned and baked into what the English call Lombard pasties, though he never met a Lombard who knew aught of them.
Once they are alone, the ambassador drops his napkin, like someone discarding a flag of truce. ‘The leg will not heal, you know. Next time he will not be so lucky, nor will you.’
He does not answer. It seems his silence leads to a certain overconfidence on Castillon’s part. When next in the king’s presence he comports himself like a tavern companion, recommending Madame Louise, the sister of Madame de Longueville. ‘Take her, Majesty, she is better-looking than her sister. Besides, the elder is a widow, the younger a maid. You will be the first to go there. You can shape the passage to your measure.’
Henry guffaws. He slaps the ambassador on the back. He swings away, his back to the Frenchman, the smile wiped from his face. ‘I cannot abide bawdy talk,’ he whispers. He calls over his shoulder, ‘Excuse me, ambassador, if I leave you. My chaplains attend me to Mass.’
A day or two later the king is away again with a hunting party. Rafe is with him, and Richard Cromwell rides between, back and forth with letters and messages better not trusted to paper. When Richard arrives at Waltham, he is told the French ambassador is there before him, and that he must wait; then that various councillors have been summoned to see the king; then that he must stay overnight.
Rafe, covered in apologies, takes Richard’s letters in, saying he will put them in the king’s hand himself. Richard says, ‘Don’t apologise for him, Rafe. It is no fault of yours. What does he think he is about?’
Richard is incredulous. It is without precedent, for Cromwell business to be deferred.
Next day Richard rides back with his letters answered. ‘But I don’t like it, sir,’ he says. ‘Norfolk was there by the king’s side, strutting like a player king; for two pins I would have wrung his neck. Surrey with him, the pricklet. Both of them giving out how the king was displeased with you, finding you favour the Emperor. Norfolk was linking arms with the Frenchman. They only wanted a fiddler and they could have danced.’
What’s Henry up to? I may belittle you, he said. I may reprove you. But do not be misled. My trust is in you.
He takes out The Book Called Henry. (He keeps it under lock and key.) He wonders if he has any advice for himself. But all he sees is how much white space there is, blank pages uninscribed.
At Father Forrest’s burning are present, besides himself and Thomas Cranmer, the Lord Mayor of London; Audley the Lord Chancellor; Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk; Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk; Edward Seymour, in his dignity as Earl of Hertford; Bishop Stokesley, of course. They are at Smithfield for eight in the morning. Forrest is brought from Newgate, drawn on a hurdle, wearing his Franciscan habit. He is set on a platform to hear Hugh Latimer’s sermon.
Hugh talks for an hour but he might as well be pissing in the wind. Forrest has the strength to cast his words back at him, saying he has been a monk since he was seventeen years old, and a Catholic since he was baptised, and that he, Latimer, is no Catholic, for only those who obey the Pope are members of God’s universal family: at which the crowd groan. The rest of what he says cannot well be heard, but at a signal the officers pull him from the platform and carry him to the stake, his feet off the ground. He hangs limp, mouthing prayers.