‘What?’ More said. ‘For correcting a child of the house? People will laugh at you, Master Cromwell. Anyway, the rascal has vanished. Fortunately he took only what he stood up in. Or charges would lie.’
‘I hear he took your blessing. You could see the marks.’
‘He’s probably run to your house,’ More said. ‘Where would he seek shelter, but a heretic roof?’
‘Beware an action for slander,’ he said: one lawyer to another.
‘Bring one,’ More said. ‘The facts would be aired. Your book trade connections. Your dubious associates. Antwerp, all that. No … you go home, you’ll find the wretch at your gate. Where else would he go?’
To the wharves, he thinks, to the docks. To take ship. To do what I did. He could do worse. Or then again perhaps he couldn’t.
Now he pays Dick Purser twelve pounds a year. He gets fourpence daily for the leopard’s keep.
He goes to see Lord Rutland, Chamberlain of the Queen’s Household. Their conversation is circumlocutory, but Lord Rutland is clear that he does not meddle in bedroom matters.
He will speak to his wife, he offers. Lady Rutland speaks to the senior lady among the Germans. Next day Anna leaves off her bonnet and appears in a French hood, the oval framing her face and showing off her pretty fair hair.
He says to Jane Rochford, ‘Is there a colour that would make her skin look fresher? The king keeps mentioning Jane.’
‘Jane was not fresh,’ Rochford says, ‘she was pallid. She looked as if she lived under an altar cloth. Not that she was so holy. She spent her time frightening Anne Boleyn.’
Mary Fitzroy says, ‘You cannot expect the queen to glow, my lord. She hears the king is unhappy, and the more English she learns, the more explanation she will require.’
‘Oh, I don’t think she will,’ the child Katherine Howard says. ‘She has heard that the king’s first wife was divorced because she kept asking God to pardon him, using a loud voice in Latin. And that he killed Anne Boleyn because she gossiped and shrieked. And that his third wife was beloved because she hardly talked at all. Therefore she aims to imitate Jane. Only not die.’
Rochford says, ‘Perhaps you’d like to come in yourself, my lord, and wash and dress her? We’ll stand her naked before you, and you can do the rest.’
He says, ‘If she confides in you, come to me.’
Through the interpreters he learns what Anna expects of marriage. Her parents did not marry for love, but love followed. They wrote poems for each other. She understands the king has written verses in his time, and wonders when he will write one for her.
The ambassadors of Cleves ask, ‘This long while past, when your king was without a wife, did he take mistresses?’
‘Our king is virtuous,’ he says.
‘We do not doubt it,’ the ambassadors say. ‘Though there could be other reasons.’
He says to Fitzwilliam, ‘Advise the king to make some public demonstration of his affection.’
‘You do it,’ Fitz says.
‘No, you.’
Fitz groans.
Later that day, before his assembled court and the Germans, Henry calls for the queen, takes her by the hand. ‘Come, dear madam.’ He looks around his councillors – their faces, willing him on.
He grapples her to him. Anna’s forehead rests against his gem-studded breast. As if she might struggle, the king holds her fast. As if she might escape, he tightens his grip.
Anna’s body is rigid, flattened. Her mouth is buried in his furs. She attempts to twist sideways, so she can breathe. Her hand, bunching up her skirts, contracts into a fist. Her head strains backwards. She emits a gasp. Then, her back to the witnesses, she is silent.
Gregory whispers, ‘Perhaps he has killed her?’
Wriothesley says, ‘Majesty … would it be best if …?’
‘What?’ Henry releases the queen. He steps back as if to say, there now – you all saw I tried.
Anna peels away from him. She seems unsteady. Her gaze flutters to Fitzwilliam, to Gregory, to the men she knows, and she moves stiffly towards them, a hand extended, limp as if the fingers were broken. Branded in her cheek is the imprint of the king’s gold chain.
By the end of January Wyatt has obeyed the orders that come from London by every messenger, carried on every tide. He has put in the tip of his knife to prise open a gap between the Emperor and François.
Wyatt has appeared before Charles, the occasion public and grand. Why, he asks the Emperor, do you not keep your promises? We have extradition treaties, and yet you allow English traitors free passage to join that monster, Pole. Are you so ungrateful for all my king has done for you?
‘Ungrateful? I?’ The first gentleman of Christendom flashes into rage. His councillors, in shock, pull back into a huddle and confer. One of them steps forward: ‘Perhaps we have misunderstood you, Monsieur Guiett? Or perhaps you misspoke? After all, French is not your first language.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my French,’ Wyatt says. ‘But I can repeat it in Latin if you like.’
Charles leans forward. How dare your master use that word, ungrateful? How can a charge of ingratitude be levelled against an Emperor, by the envoy of some poor little island full of heretics and sheep? An inferior person, a king, cannot expect gratitude. The Holy Roman Emperor is set above mere kings. Their natural position is at his feet.
Wyatt draws back. ‘All is said, sir.’ In seeking to insult Henry, the Emperor has insulted all princes, his French ally included.
When Wyatt’s letter arrives Mr Wriothesley reads it out. ‘It is like a play!’ William Kingston says. A tentative smile spreads over the faces of the councillors. There are matters that lie between François and Charles – old quarrels – always ready to spark. Once the fire takes hold and burns their treaties, Englishmen can sleep safe.
‘Then, Cromwell,’ Norfolk says to him, ‘we will not need your German friends, will we? Your friend Wyatt works contrary to your purpose.’ The duke enjoys the thought. ‘Should he succeed, what a fool you will look.’
At Valenciennes on the river Scheldt, Charles and François part company. The Emperor takes a power and moves east. ‘And Wyatt with him,’ he says to Henry. At his elbow to needle him.
For a day or two they are without news. Then it becomes clear that Charles is heading towards his rebel city of Ghent. The citizens know what to expect. Charles has already executed one of their leaders, a man of seventy-five, by putting him on a rack and pulling his body apart: having shaved him first, trunk and poll, so that he was bald as a new-born babe.
Henry says, ‘The Emperor loves warfare. When he leaves Ghent he will march on Guelders. And Duke Wilhelm will call on my aid, which I cannot well deny him. And if I were to be drawn into war, it would not be by my desire, my lord Cromwell, but – strangely – by yours.’
Richard Riche comes to consult him about the pensions list for Westminster Abbey. The abbot says he is dying, but perhaps this is a ploy to get a better pension? The abbey is to be a cathedral now, and (if he lives) the abbot will be its dean. Henry will not demolish the sacred place where kings are crowned. Nor will he disturb his mother and father, who lie in bronze above ground, and below ground in lead; all day candles stout as pillars flicker around them, bathing them in a greenish perpetual light. The abbey’s relics will be moved, but images and statues survive. Doubting Thomas kneels to put his fingers into the bloody gash in his Saviour’s breast. St Christopher carries his God, who crouches on his shoulders like a favourite cat. On the walls of the chapter house, St John sails to Patmos, a forlorn exile blotting his eyes. The useful camel and the dromedary pace the desert sands, while the roebuck tramples verdure beneath delicate hooves, and the patriarchs and virgins stand shoulder to shoulder with the confessors and martyrs, their beady eyes alert. The monuments of dead monarchs draw together, as if their bones were counselling each other; and the prophetic pavements beneath them, those stones of onyx, porphyry, green serpentine and glass, advise us through their inscriptions how many years the world will last.