The pain is acute, a raw stinging, a ripping, a throb. He can taste his death: slow, metallic, not come yet. In his terror he tries to obey his father, but his hands cannot get a purchase, nor can he crawl. He is an eel, he is a worm on a hook, his strength has ebbed and leaked away beneath him and it seems a long time ago now since he gave his permission to be dead; no one has told his heart, and he feels it writhe in his chest, trying to beat. His cheek rests on nothing, it rests on red. He thinks, follow. Walter says, ‘That’s right, boy, spew everywhere, spew everywhere on my good cobbles. Come on, boy, get up. By the blood of creeping Christ, stand on your feet.’
He is very cold. People imagine the cold comes after but it is now. He thinks, winter is here. I am at Launde. I have stumbled deep into the crisp white snow. I flail my arms in angel shape, but now I am crystal, I am ice and sinking deep: now I am water. Beneath him the ground upheaves. The river tugs him; he looks for the quick-moving pattern, for the flitting, liquid scarlet. Between a pulse-beat and the next he shifts, going out on crimson with the tide of his inner sea. He is far from England now, far from these islands, from the waters salt and fresh. He has vanished; he is the slippery stones underfoot, he is the last faint ripple in the wake of himself. He feels for an opening, blinded, looking for a door: tracking the light along the wall.
EPITAPH
For you perhaps, if as I hope and wish you will live long after me, there will follow a better age. When the darkness is dispelled, our descendants will be able to walk back, into the pure radiance of the past.
PETRARCH: AFRICA IX
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Eighteen months after Henry married Katherine Howard, she was accused of adultery with the courtier Thomas Culpeper. It was claimed that she had already taken lovers before her marriage to the king. She was beheaded, along with Jane Rochford, who had facilitated her affair.
Henry had no more children. His sixth and final wife was Katherine Parr, formerly Lady Latimer. The astute and scholarly Katherine, who survived him, then married Thomas Seymour – her fourth husband – and died after giving birth to Seymour’s daughter.
After his divorce from Anne of Cleves, his fourth wife, Henry enjoyed a warm relationship with her. Enriched by estates that included confiscations from Thomas Cromwell, she lived in style, showed no desire to return to her native country, and survived Henry by ten years.
Henry lived for seven years after Cromwell; he was ill, disabled and dangerous. He went to war with France and devalued the currency. His son Edward was nine when he came to the throne, with Edward Seymour as Lord Protector. During Edward’s reign, England became a firmly Protestant country. But Edward died at fifteen, probably of tuberculosis. When his sister Mary came to the throne she attempted to re-establish the Roman Catholic church. She appointed Stephen Gardiner her Lord Chancellor, and Reginald Pole, back from his long exile, became her Archbishop of Canterbury. Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer and many others were burned as heretics.
Reginald’s Pole’s mother, Margaret Countess of Salisbury, remained in the Tower after Cromwell’s death and was executed in 1541. Geoffrey Pole was pardoned and released, but fled to Rome, only returning to England when Mary came to the throne. He died in 1558, leaving eleven children.
Once Henry had had time to regret Cromwell’s death, he re-granted Gregory a baron’s title. Gregory sometimes appeared at court, but lived quietly at Launde Abbey. He died young, and his wife Elizabeth put up a fine monument which can still be seen in the chapel. Richard Cromwell also survived his uncle’s disgrace. He was appointed to the king’s privy chamber, and served in the French war. He died in 1545, a wealthy man. His great-grandson, Oliver Cromwell, was Lord Protector of the first English republic.
Anselma and Jenneke are fictional. It is thought that Thomas Cromwell had an illegitimate daughter called Jane, who was probably born not long after after his wife’s death. But we do not know who her mother was and can make no useful guesses.
After surviving harsh times in the years after Cromwell’s death, Rafe Sadler stayed in royal service almost to his death, at which point he was around eighty years of age. When he died in 1587, he was said to be the richest commoner in England. His house in Hackney, Bricke Place, is now known as Sutton House, and is in the care of the National Trust. The adjacent King’s Place, once Harry Percy’s house, no longer stands.
Like Sadler, Thomas Wyatt suffered imprisonment in 1541. He was released back into the king’s service, but forced to return to the wife from whom he had separated many years before, and leave Bess Darrell, with whom he had at least one son. In the autumn of 1543 he was sent to Cornwall to welcome an envoy from the Emperor who had arrived unexpectedly in Falmouth. He developed a fever, broke his journey at Sherbourne, and died there.
William Fitzwilliam succeeded Cromwell as Lord Privy Seal. In 1542 he led a fighting force to Scotland, but took ill and died before reaching the border; he left no heirs. Both Thomas Wriothesley and Richard Riche became Lord Chancellor. Wriothesley had a rocky career during what remained of Henry’s reign. Under Edward he became Earl of Southampton and one of the Council of Regency, but lost out in ferocious faction fighting and died in 1550. Richard Riche, who succeeded him in office, founded a dynasty and a school, Felsted School; he left fifteen children and a fortune.
Arthur Lord Lisle remained in the Tower after Cromwell’s execution. Eighteen months later the king issued his pardon, but next day, before he could be released, he died of ‘rejoicing’. Honor Lisle returned to England, and lived till 1566. Her daughter Anne Bassett married Walter Hungerford, son of the man who was executed with Thomas Cromwell. John Husee remained a faithful member of the Calais garrison and worked to supply Henry’s French campaign. He died two years later, but the letters he exchanged with his employers, together with letters written by Lord and Lady Lisle and their family, form a unique chronicle of the era. Like George Cavendish, Wolsey’s gentleman servant, John Husee is one of history’s great witnesses.
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, died in 1545, lamented by his friend the king. His granddaughter was Lady Jane Grey, who laid claim to the throne after the death of Edward, and reigned as ‘the nine days queen’ before being displaced by Mary, and subsequently executed.
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was beheaded for treason on 19 January 1547. His father Norfolk was due to follow him on 28 January, but was reprieved by the death of the king himself some hours before. So Norfolk died in his bed, at the age of eighty.
Eustache Chapuys remained strenuously employed in Imperial service till 1545, and after his retirement the Emperor turned to him as a source of advice on English affairs. He lived in Leuven, where he founded a college for students from his native Savoy. He had an illegitimate son, who predeceased him, and having no heir he devoted some of his accrued wealth to setting up scholarships for students from England.
Marie de Guise, Madame de Longueville, who married the King of Scots despite being coveted by Henry, had only one surviving child, a daughter usually known as Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary’s second husband, Lord Darnley, was the son of Lady Margaret Douglas and the Earl of Lennox.
Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan, was one of the most fascinating people of her era. Her long career included a happy marriage. In 1555, during the reign of Mary, she paid her first visit to England, making an excursion to the Tower of London; no doubt she was aware that if she had married Henry, she could have visited it earlier.