‘Show me Amelia,’ he says.
Should Duke Wilhelm die without heir, Anna as the elder stands to inherit more. Amelia would require extraordinary beauty, to make up for her lesser prospects.
He examines her. Darker. Face longer. Her brows defined. ‘She reminds me of the other one. Boleyn.’
Hans turns her to the wall.
Henry stands before the image of his bride and his eyes, like those of his councillors, travel from her middle upwards. Time passes: the sand running through the glass, the river flowing to the sea. Henry nods. ‘Very well. I shall hear more of her from our envoy Dr Wotton, shall I not?’ He hesitates, with a flicker of a smile. ‘Tell Master Hans, all good.’
Edward Seymour has written from Wolf Hall. He is flush with the success of the recent royal visit, reassured that his family will lose no pre-eminence with the king’s remarriage. He says, the king should take the Princess of Cleves, we need the alliance, and from all I hear she is a gracious lady and will give him more children; I do not think he can do better.
The Duke of Suffolk gives his voice in counciclass="underline" it is right and proper that our king should marry into a royal house. The Seymours are a good enough family, no doubt, says Charles: but the marriage brought the king no credit abroad. As for the house of Cleves – do they not travel down the Rhine in boats drawn by silver swans?
He, Cromwell, smiles. ‘Perhaps in former times, my lord Suffolk.’
The Emperor is reported to dislike the match very much. The French are disaffected, the Scots grizzling. Our king is hunting. Most days he keeps well. The physicians report a feverish cold and a worrying stoppage of the bowels, but next day he is back in the saddle, with Fitzwilliam and a party of ladies, and together they kill a dozen stags. His party travel from Grafton to Ampthill, to Dunstable, down through Bedfordshire, and the king is merry, easy company, as he has not been for many a year. He is Henry the Well-Beloved, with a wife in prospect and a feather in his cap.
And he, Cromwell, makes a survey of the king’s game, because he is chief justice and keeper of the forests, parks and chases that lie north of Trent. His survey begins in early June, in Sherwood Forest, and by September his people have counted 2,067 red deer and 6,352 fallow deer, clerks recording their lives in a parchment book of sixty-eight pages. They have scoured the greenwood and know the secrets of its undergrowth life; but they have not found Robin Hood, or the green men who shoot and feast with him.
Within a week or two Hans has painted the bride again, from memory and from his larger portrait: so that the king can carry her with him, he has confined her in an ivory miniature. ‘Look, my lord Norfolk,’ Henry says. ‘Is she not well and seemly?’
Norfolk grunts. His eyes travel sideways waiting for him, Cromwell, to speak.
Once they had recovered from the dinner of reconciliation, he and Norfolk had to learn to be in the same room again. He had abased himself with an apology. Norfolk had snorted. Fitzwilliam slapped their backs: ‘Shake hands like Christians.’
He touches the duke’s bony calloused palm: showing willing. Though he is not sure Norfolk is even a Christian. He worships his forebears. He has been as greedy for monks’ lands as any man in the realm, but says he will not let Thetford Priory go down, because his folk are buried there. Or rather, he will have it reformed into a college of priests, who will pray for the souls of his ancestors. The duke explains it, as he stamps alongside him: ‘They will pray for them, Cromwell, as long as this world endures.’
He says politely, ‘That’s a lot of prayers.’
Wotton’s report is in. As the king’s representative, he has seen Anna at home with her mother. The Duchess Maria – the dowager – is a sober Catholic matron who keeps her daughters close to her elbow, and has brought them up simply, narrowly, piously. It is not thought proper in Cleves for young ladies to be troubled with books or tutors. Accordingly, Anna speaks no language but her own.
‘Cromwell will be able to talk to her,’ Henry says. ‘He knows all modern tongues.’
‘I fear not,’ he says. ‘Master Sadler is a better man for German. I learned mine in Venice, and from the Nuremberg merchants mostly. It is not like the tongue the Lady Anna speaks. Nor am I equipped for conversation such as ladies like, knowing only the terms for buying and selling.’
‘If I am truthful,’ Norfolk says, ‘I never know what we are meant to talk to women about. They don’t like anything a man likes.’
He says, ‘My wife had no languages, but she knew everybody in the wool trade. She could keep books as well as any clerk, and when I came home from a journey she would have sent to Lombard Street and she would have the morning’s exchange rates jotted down in columns. She could always tell you how currency was moving.’
They make their progress past the king’s guards. ‘I think you like being low-born,’ Norfolk says. ‘I think you’re boasting of it, Cromwell. Being a tradesman.’
The king’s chamber servants meet them, bowing. Whatever roof shelters Henry, hunting lodge or palace, the etiquette is the same, a ring of protection sealed by familiar faces and expert hands: by a monogrammed close stool with a kidskin seat, by a stack of linen cloths for a sore royal backside; by a holy water stoup, by great blazing candles of wax at close of day, by the sanctuary of velvet bedcurtains. But now Henry smiles and blinks in the sunshine, a summer king.
The duke dives in. ‘Majesty! I think you might employ my son Surrey on a mission to Cleves. An envoy of noble blood would gain us credit, surely?’
He, Cromwell, frowns. ‘I don’t think we need credit. We are past that stage.’
‘It is true,’ Henry says blithely. ‘All Duke Wilhelm’s councillors are in accord. We need not disturb your boy. I know he is occupied with our defences in your own part of the world. It were a pity to divert him.’
Norfolk’s brow furrows. ‘What about the money? What will she fetch?’
He says, ‘Wilhelm will give a hundred thousand crowns with his sister. But it will remain on paper.’
‘What, not pay it?’ Norfolk is shocked. ‘Are they paupers?’
Henry says, ‘We are pleased to waive what is due. The duke is young and has great charges. You know he has entered into Guelders, which is his right. But he must be ready to defend it against the Emperor.’
He, the Lord Privy Seal, has told the Cleves delegation, ‘My king prefers virtue and friendship to hard cash.’ Relieved, the Germans exclaim, By God, what a very gallant gentleman he is! But we expected no less.
‘The arrangement must not leak out,’ Henry says. ‘Wilhelm would be shamed. Soon I shall call him my brother, so I would wish to spare him embarrassment.’
‘What about her journey?’ Norfolk says. ‘It costs, moving a princess.’
‘We have ships,’ Henry says.
The duke bristles. ‘Any impediment? Affinity? Are they kin?’
‘Anna is the king’s seventh cousin.’
‘Oh,’ Norfolk says, ‘I suppose that’s all right. We need no interference from the Pope, then. By Jesus, no!’
The king says, ‘I confess I was surprised we have no language in common, but our envoys say she has a good wit, and I am sure she will learn our tongue as soon as she puts her mind to it. Besides, everybody speaks a little French, even if they say not – do you not think so, my lord Cromwell?’
‘Duke Wilhelm’s advisers speak French,’ he says. ‘But the lady –’
The king interrupts him. ‘When Katherine came from Spain to marry my lord brother, she spoke neither English nor French, and he had no Spanish. The king my father had thought, no matter, she is said to be a good Latinist, they will get along that way – but as it proved, they did not understand each other’s Latin either.’ The king chuckles. ‘But they had goodwill towards each other, and were soon affectionate. And of course, we will be able to make music together. If she does not know the words to English songs, I am sure she will know them in other tongues.’