‘And bring it before the whole council. Or it would be unsafe to go any further.’
‘Unsafe?’ Henry stares at him. He seems to be disputing his choice of word.
‘Unwise,’ Gardiner concedes.
‘In any event,’ he says, ‘though the king prefers Lady Anna, as being the elder and of meeter age, if there did prove to be an impediment, there is nothing against the Lady Amelia. And – here is good news – they are able to provide likenesses.’
Gardiner says, ‘I wonder where they found those, all of a sudden. I thought Cranach was ill.’
‘Perhaps he has powers of recovery,’ he says, ‘like me.’
‘How old are they?’
‘The princesses?’
‘The portraits,’ Gardiner says.
‘Recent, I am assured.’
‘But if our envoys have not seen either lady, how shall they swear to the likeness?’
‘They have in fact seen them,’ he says. ‘But they were somewhat cloaked and veiled.’
‘I wonder why?’
Henry says, ‘You see! Would not this delight the Emperor? Division among my councillors? Contention and strife?’
He and Gardiner face each other. The bishop is not there to discuss the king’s marriage. He’s there on God’s business, or so he would claim. The king wishes to make an act of Parliament to abolish diversity in opinion: by which he means, the expression of opinion. Gardiner has come to push him on six articles of faith laid before Convocation: to persuade the king to the Roman line, body and blood.
There is no doubt, his sickness has set back the cause of the gospel – his brothers too afraid and too disunited, without him, to present a firm front. Norfolk has placed a sycophant in the Commons as Mr Speaker. In the Lords, the duke himself crusades, bringing to the table these six articles and wrangling about them with every confidence – though he knows as much theology as a gatepost. Gardiner has whipped in the bishops who stick by ancient doctrine, and they conspire together from breakfast to supper, talking like rank papists and raising their glasses to toast old times. While the Lord Privy Seal is sweating in his sickbed, while he is writing letters all over Europe searching out allies and friends, while he is occupied in finding nearly fifteen hundred pounds a day to pay and victual the mariners who man the ships at Portsmouth – his enemies have stolen past him, and by the end of the Parliament, they will have six articles passed into law.
The king says, ‘My lord Cromwell, if that is all –?’
He bows himself out. Culpeper is attending; the boy slides up to him: ‘You need a seat, my lord? A cup of wine?’
He needs to hit somebody. He waves the boy back. When he gets home he is shaking with fatigue. He has forgotten how much bruising energy it takes to confront Stephen Gardiner. He throws his papers down. ‘Ask the German guests to come and see me. We will plan a feast. Send Thurston up.’
He talks as if his illness is behind him, but he knows it has not run its course. He prays the fever will weaken itself through successive bouts. It is vital that this summer he is by the king’s side, so he must be fit for long days of hunting. Every absent day he loses advantage. If kings do not see you they forget you. Even though nothing in the realm is done without you, kings think they do it all themselves.
Stilclass="underline" I am Vicegerent, he tells himself. I, not Stephen, am Chief Secretary and Lord Privy Seal. I am first in the king’s council and first in his estimation, and I am well able to wimble holes in the bottom of papist boats. Every day now is Ascension Day. However much Thomas Howard mislikes the scriptures, there will soon be Bibles enough for every parish: and I standing at the king’s side, handing them out. As for Gardiner, what does he truly understand, of the king’s mind and temper? What does he know of the revenue? What does he know of the defence of the realm?
On a fine day in May, assembling at dawn, the armed might of London passes before the king at Whitehall. There are some sixteen thousand men in array, and of them he has furnished fully one-tenth himself. He had intended to ride at their head, but weakness confines him to St James’s, where he watches from the back gate: but to bear him company the king sends John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain. Gregory and Richard on their white horses ride together: faces intent, armour blazing, the Cromwell flag rippling.
In Italy, he thinks, when I was a soldier, I picked up a snake for a bet. My comrades counted slowly, one to twenty, while I tightened my grip. The snake twisted in my hand and sank its venom deep into my wrist. But I gripped the noxious beast till I pleased to let it go. I took the poison and I never died. The witnesses stuffed my pockets with their money. And God damn the man who says I didn’t earn it.
When the days are fine, and the air sweet after Evensong, the king cruises up and down the river in the royal barge and shows himself to the people, his gold pilot’s whistle around his neck, on his face a beaming smile; his musicians follow in a second barge, playing drums and fifes. The people line the bank and cheer. Whit Sunday is observed with great ceremony, as in papist days. Richard Riche spends the holiday drawing up a huge list of the king’s debts.
News comes from Spain that the Empress is dead, with her new baby. The king orders full court mourning. St Paul’s is hung with black drapes and the banners of the Holy Roman Empire. The dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk lead the ceremonies. He stands as far from Norfolk as he can, without losing sight of him, or losing precedence.
Ten bishops attend, and Stokesley leads the requiem. Stokesley looks ill, he thinks: though since he is an old crony of More’s, he should have felt invigorated by those six pernicious articles in the bill. Every parish in London tolls its bells for the Empress, the unknown lady who has never set foot here. Far into the night they clang. Bats and demons whirl in the air.
Wyatt writes from Toledo that his bags are packed, and the Inquisitors, though reluctant, will part with him. But the Emperor has gone into seclusion in a monastery, to mourn his wife, so he must wait – he means to take formal leave, not scuttle away like some churl in debt. ‘Though he probably is,’ Rafe says. ‘In debt.’
Bess Darrell writes from Allington: Cromwell, where is Wyatt? Each hour seems like a year to me.
From Italy come reports of two comets seen on one day. Suppose one comet stands for the end of the Empress: what else does He have up his sleeve, the creator of the moon and stars?
Cranmer comes to see him. ‘I am clean amazed,’ he says, ‘I am perplexed, that Parliament could set back the cause of good religion. God’s ways are very strange, to have stricken you down just at this time.’
‘You can’t fault Gardiner’s timing,’ he says. ‘Or Thomas Howard’s.’
‘I am not sure …’ Cranmer struggles. ‘That is … one cannot wholly blame …’
‘You’re not going to blame the king, are you?’
Better blame Norfolk, and bishops Gardiner, Stokesley and Sampson, than wonder aloud whether Henry is weak or duplicitous or incapable of seeing his own interest.
‘Our friends from Germany are appalled,’ Cranmer says. ‘I have to defend our master to them.’
‘How do you do that?’ he asks, interested.
‘Where was Lord Audley in this? Opening and shutting his mouth like one of those wooden idols worked by strings. And Fitzwilliam – I thought he stood your friend.’
He no longer trusts Lord Chancellor Audley. He no longer trusts Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam. Count up the bishops and perhaps ten of them are sound. This is how the king has been able to put through a bill that, among other measures, requires married priests to abandon their wives, on pain of hanging. The measure is deferred a week or two, to allow farewells.
‘What will you and Grete do?’ he asks.
‘Part. What else can we do?’
‘And your daughter?’
‘Grete will take her back to Germany.’
It would be thought a sin, in other circumstances, to put a family asunder. Cranmer says, ‘We begged the king, put the question to the universities – we begged him to search the scriptures, and find where it is forbidden, for a man to have a life companion. I cannot understand him. It is he who insists, marriage is a very high sacrament, in existence since the world began. Then why does he deny it to so many of us? Does he think we are not men, as he is a man? And also, once the bill is passed, none of us will preach on the Blessed Sacrament, its nature. We dare not. We would not know what it is safe to say, without being tripped by the law and cited for heresy.’