‘Aye, that they did,’ Brandon says. ‘Otherwise we would not have put our hands to the marriage treaty, would we? But,’ he says gently, ‘I think it is done now, you know.’
‘We can hold off a day,’ Fitz says. ‘Cromwell thinks so. Though I do not see the point.’
‘I am not well-handled,’ Henry says. ‘You may as well rise, gentlemen, I see no point in sitting here with you. Cromwell, walk with me.’
‘Well, you have seen her now,’ Henry says. ‘Is it not as I have told you?’
He says, ‘She is a very gentle lady, all agree. And it seems to me her manner is queenly.’
The king snorts. ‘It is for me to know what is queenly.’ He checks himself. ‘I was wrong about her mouth, perhaps.’
Sweet as a berry. Naturally red. He decides not to say so. It is a hopeful sign, if Henry will admit he has misjudged her in the smallest particular.
The other councillors have fallen behind, but the king’s guard keeps pace, obliged to close their ears. He says, cautiously, ‘You do not think she is like her picture, sir?’
‘I do not fault Hans. He drew her as well as he could considering all the –’ the king dashes a hand against his jacket ‘– the armour. She is so tall and stiff.’
‘Her height lends her distinction.’
‘Have you inspected her shoes?’ the king demands. ‘I think she must wear raised soles. Tell her women, there is no ordure on the floor of our houses. I don’t know what she is used to.’
It can all be altered, he says, clothes, shoes, and the king says, ‘So you keep telling me. But if I had known before what I know now, she would not have come a foot into the realm. It is a matter of …’ The king shakes his head. He pats his garments, as if he is feeling for his heart.
Monday, 5 January: two of Anne’s people, Olisleger and Hochsteden, come to his own chamber on the north side of the palace, where they take a solemn oath that Anne is free to marry, and commit to search out all relevant documents within three months. Their offer to remain in England, Henry has waved away, adding that Anne’s entourage is bloated and that they should feel free to take some of their countrymen with them when they go. Each principal gentleman in her train is to have a reward of a hundred pounds to speed him on his journey.
An agreement is drawn up and they sign for England: Cranmer, Audley, himself, Fitzwilliam, Bishop Tunstall.
Cranmer, his face harrowed, heads to the queen’s room, a great Bible following him in the hands of an interpreter. Inside the Bible, if you looked, you would see a picture of the king handing the scriptures to the people, who mill at the bottom of the page, where they cry ‘Vivat Rex!’ or ‘God Save the King!’ – the lower orders preferring English.
The king glowers at his councillors, and retires into his inner rooms. Musicians come and set up their instruments and play.
In a short time Cranmer returns. Anna has taken an oath without hesitation, he says, to state that she is perfectly free from any marital tie. ‘She said she was glad to do it. She was by God’s grace most prompt and certain. She almost had the book out of my hands, so eager is she to please your Majesty. She wishes to be married without delay.’
He thinks, she is afraid of her family. What they will say, if she is sent back.
Henry groans. ‘Is there no help for it? Must I must put my neck into the yoke?’
He was right to think that when she came from the sea the bride would be rebaptised. She left the ship as Anna. Now she is landlocked as plain Anne, as if the king and all his treasury has not a syllable to spare.
Tuesday morning, raining, the councillors convene at seven. Usually he begins his working day by six, but he has put off all other petitioners, asking only for any dispatches from abroad to be treated as urgent.
Mr Wriothesley is perched on a table, watching him get into his wedding outfit. ‘What dispatches are you expecting, sir?’
Christophe drops his shirt over his head. ‘I bear in mind that the Emperor is a widower.’ His head emerges from the linen. ‘I would not put it past him to choose this week to announce his marriage to a Frenchwoman.’
If he did, he thinks, that would sharpen Henry’s appetite for his own bride.
‘God forbid!’ Call-Me says. ‘Wyatt is with the Emperor, he would have to prevent it.’
‘He would abduct the lady,’ Christophe offers. ‘Declaim a sonnet. Biff-boff with her in some roadside inn. Return to Emperor in used condition.’
In the king’s apartments, the councillors are talking in low voices, as if in the presence of someone dying. William Kingston: ‘My lord, this cannot be true? That the king has taken against the lady?’
He puts a finger to his lips. He has just endowed Anna with the first of many grants that will guarantee her income as queen. Her household is set up, a mirror of the king’s. The Earl of Rutland is her chamberlain. She has priests and pages, washerwomen and pastry cooks, cupbearers and ushers, footmen and grooms, auditors, receivers and surveyors. When the Cleves delegation arrives, he means to dwell on these details to reassure them – because yesterday’s ill-will, the tension in every look and gesture of the English, has escaped no one. His hope is that he can prevent them translating the tension into any sort of insult, which they will relay back to our allies.
Fitz comes in. He says abruptly, ‘I suppose we still need, what was it, alum?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And friends, we need friends as we never have before.’
Back in autumn he told the councillors, alum is very hard to extract. You must cut to the marrow of the mountains and prop your workings as you go. Now he enlarges on it to Fitz: you need heavy hammers and steel pikes and wedges. It is quickest to employ explosive devices. ‘The miners call them Pater Nosters – because when they go off, you jump out of your skin and shout, God Our Father Almighty!’
But Fitz is not listening. His head is cocked to sounds of dissatisfaction coming from the inner room. When the king himself comes out he is already dressed in his gown of cloth of gold strewn with silver flowers. ‘Where is my lord Essex? He is supposed to escort the bride. He is late, what will she think?’
‘May I offer?’ Fitz says, unwilling.
The king says, ‘It has to be an unmarried man, some custom they have in her native land – pointless, but she will want it to be observed.’ Henry’s eye falls on him. ‘You fetch her, my lord Privy Seal.’
‘I am not worthy,’ he says.
Henry says, ‘You are, my lord, if I say you are.’
The door is flung open. Henry Bouchier – old Essex – limps in. ‘What?’ he says, looking around.
‘LATE!’ the courtiers roar.
‘Ah, well, dark mornings,’ Essex says. ‘Fires low, boys half-asleep. Ice on the path, what would you? Needless to imperil oneself. What’s the hurry?’
‘We want her before she is beyond the age of childbearing,’ Mr Wriothesley breathes. ‘Ideally, in the next decade.’
Essex looks around. ‘Is Cromwell going for her? Won’t she be insulted, Majesty? She must know he was once a common shearsman, does she not?’
‘Barely that,’ he says. ‘I drove geese to market, my lord, and plucked them for the warm feather beds of earls.’
‘Oh, get on,’ Henry says. ‘Get on, Cromwell, make haste, what matter who does it?’
The gentlemen of the privy chamber look at him, shocked.
‘Sir,’ William Kingston says, ‘everything matters. Of this sort.’
Someone with presence of mind holds the door open, and Essex limps through. The king turns to him, his voice low and vehement: ‘I tell you, my lord, if it were not for fear of making a ruffle in the world, and driving her brother into the arms of the Emperor, I would not do what I must do this day, for none earthly thing.’ He lifts his head. ‘Gentlemen, let’s go.’
They keep a stately pace to the queen’s side, to allow the bride to arrive first: that is how royal people do it, a king waits for no one. In the queen’s closet Cranmer stands ready, his book in his hands, his stole about his neck. ‘Where is she?’