Anne Boleyn: A Novel (27 page)

“Then now is the time to stop them, Sire, once and for all,” Cromwell answered. “Reports have been sent me from all over the country where the priests have refused to pray for Queen Anne and have preached against her and the marriage openly. The offenders have been examined and punished, but making an example of a few individuals isn’t enough.”

“I know that,” Henry said. “We must break the power of the Church over the minds of the common people before this sentence from Rome can be spread through the country. Otherwise, friend, we might have a rising...”

“It’s possible,” Cromwell admitted. “And to
prevent
the action, we might as well use the severity that would have to be employed to put it down.”

Henry looked at him. “You have something in that crafty mind, Thomas. Speak up; what is it?”

“First, Sire, let us consider the construction of the Church. Not on its highest levels; we’re well acquainted with Convocation and the powers of the bishops. And being within reach of your hand, the bishops can quickly be subdued. One example might have to be made...Fisher of Rochester, for instance.”

“Nothing but death will subdue him!” the King said.

Cromwell smiled gently. “Even so. Convocation can be bent; in fact, with Cranmer at their head, telling them by words and example that the King’s will is their only law, we need hardly trouble about them.

“After the hierarchy, there are the parish priests, mostly ignorant peasants, completely cut off from the affairs of the country outside their own villages; few of them will be aware of the breach with the Pope for the best part of a year or more! They can be disciplined when necessary, like the few fellows I mentioned a minute ago, who spoke against the Queen. They can be bewildered and frightened, Sire, and they have a limited influence with their flock, being of no better learning or status than the rest.

“Now the danger, as I see it, doesn’t lie with the highest or lowest, but with the section in between. The monasteries. The monks are not ignorant; they hold the only means of schooling in most parts of England, and their word is respected. As great landlords, they hold the livelihood of many of your subjects, and those who lost their pasture when their Lord enclosed the land for his own use have fled to the monasteries, where they eat and work under the monks’ protection. There are many different orders, and the members don’t stay all their lives in one village like the parish priest; they travel, hear the news of the outer world and pass it on. It’s been so for centuries, Sire; the monks have been the couriers of the people. The news of Your Grace’s quarrel with the Pope will be spread through England by traveling friars, like the news of your marriage. Another thing, the monasteries are wealthy, while the King grows poor.”

“What are you suggesting?”

Cromwell folded his hands in his sleeves and said simply, “Suppression.”

Henry considered him and then stroked the end of his soft red beard with one finger.

“In other words, close them down and disband the monks.

Silence them; break their influence. Then take their lands and money.”

“Not all, Sire,” he protested. “Those responsible for the suppression should receive suitable rewards.”

Henry laughed. “And they’ll suppress all the harder, eh? By God, Thomas, why not? What good do they do...they house outlaws—I stopped that by forbidding Sanctuary—but they still take in hordes of beggars and employ them, tilling their own lands and enlarging their own crafts, stealing their loyalty from the King at the same time. They teach book learning and treason at the same time, too. I’ll found schools and scholarships to take their place, Thomas. And in some places, they live lives of debauchery that cry out for punishment!”

He had found his excuse, and Cromwell knew it. The real reasons, political and economic, for the destruction of the monasterial system would soon be forgotten by Henry, and his own put forward as a complete justification.

The monks were immoral. The monasteries were a scandal to the King’s conscience, for their luxury and evil living, and defiance of the laws of God. The King’s Grace would not tolerate such an open sore on the body of England. Cromwell could almost hear the speech in Parliament and the Lords, and see the King’s eyes filling with tears as he described the peril of his subjects’ souls with such an influence among them. The promise of a distribution of the monasteries’ wealth would not come from Henry; someone else would mention that, and a whole crowd of righteous nobles would discover their consciences and set out with drawn swords to purify in the King’s name.

Henry remained thoughtful and went on to prod his Secretary, “But remember affairs abroad are as vital as at home. I’ve sent the Queen’s brother, Lord Rochford, back to the King of France. My dear brother Francis appears to be angry because the marriage took place without his being informed. He’s bent on meeting the Pope, and in his frame of mind I think Clement might influence him against us. That meeting must be prevented until the Queen’s child is born.”

“I think my Lord Norfolk’s offices might strengthen our efforts,” Cromwell remarked. Privately he disapproved of sending a man as young as Rochford on such a delicate mission. He lacked the experience and he was too partisan to his sister.

“It’s possible that King Francis may dishonor his alliance with you if this sentence is confirmed,” Cromwell said, fingering his lower lip. He had never trusted Francis, and he had an uncomfortable feeling that Clement’s action might restore some of the prestige his previous vacillations had lost. Papal excommunication, backed by the might of the Empire, could have one of two effects on Francis. Fear of imperial supremacy might drive the King of France to side with Henry, or he might decide his ally was likely to be beaten anyway, in which case he would certainly range himself on the side of the Pope.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Henry broke in on him. “You think we wasted our time going to France and making treaties with Francis. Well, who kept Clement lulled while I married Her Grace and got Cranmer consecrated Archbishop? Clement was so full of plans over this French meeting that he almost forgot what might be happening in England. He thought Francis was a true gauge of the situation here and judged accordingly. One hint of what happened in January, or the real intentions of Master Cranmer, and he’d have delivered his sentence months ago, and forbidden the consecration to Canterbury! No! Francis is angry, but make no mistake, Thomas; if he betrays us now, he’d have done so anyway as soon as it suited him.”

“As usual the King foresees everything.” Cromwell bowed. “But may I suggest finding other allies to replace the French King, if he deserts us?”

“Who? The German Principalities?”

“The Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Duke of Brunswick...they’re all opposed to the Pope’s authority. And some of the Bavarian Dukes. Catholic or not, they’re all bitter enemies of the Empire. Let me send my friend Stephen Vaughan as your emissary.”

“Send him,” Henry agreed. “And I’ll adopt your suggestion and order Norfolk to wait on at the French court. Rochford’s well enough but he lacks his uncle’s craft.”

Cromwell hadn’t thought there was much likelihood of Rochford’s prolonging negotiations over the marriage and Cranmer’s annulment. He and Anne were as anxious for a complete break with the Pope as Cromwell was himself; but the Secretary was ready to play for time so that Henry could consolidate his gains in England and bring the last independent elements in Church and State to their knees. Anne and Rochford were not. As Queen she had sided with the Reformers; she read the English translation of the Bible and pensioned priests of Lutheran tendencies out of her own pocket. She had obtained benefices for some of them, ensuring, as her Uncle Norfolk jeered, that Anne the Queen should be prayed for in some of the churches in England! Some of King Henry’s young men, like Francis Weston, with whom she was very friendly, openly expressed sympathy with the new religion. Only terror of the King’s orthodoxy prevented them from joining in attacks on the sacrifice of the Mass and the doctrine of Transubstantiation itself.

That was the logical outcome of Henry’s defiance of Papal authority and his delegation of spiritual power to temporal courts. It was impossible to reduce the power and prestige of Catholicism as low as he was doing without exposing its most sacred dogmas to attack. The King did not see that, and Cromwell knew him well enough to know that he would never see it, or allow it in his lifetime. He would suppress the monasteries, dismiss the sentence of excommunication as an empty threat, while he kept his bigamous wife at his side in defiance of the Christian world, and still send heretics to the stake at Smithfield for denying the principles he had violated himself.

If Anne hoped to interest him in the new religion, she was making a mistake; she and her brother and their friends were ahead of the times in their opinions. Only men like himself, with no belief one way or another, were safe with Henry now.

“What are you thinking, Thomas?”

The King was watching him, half smiling; he liked mocking Cromwell as he had once done with the great Wolsey. Like Wolsey, Cromwell never retaliated.

“I was thinking how much you had changed, Sire.”

“Changed? In what way?”

That was another weakness of the great; Cromwell smiled to himself. They could never resist hearing about themselves.

“Majesty is a strange thing; some men assume it, others have it from birth. You always had it; from the first moment I ever saw you when I was in the late Cardinal’s service, I knew that I was seeing a man born to be a King. But in those days I never thought the quality could increase; yet it has.”

“You flatter me, Thomas,” the King said quickly.

Cromwell shook his head. It was curious to be able to pay a King a compliment and speak the truth at the same time.

“I never flatter, Sire. I’d be a fool to try to compete with the experts at court.”

“I see through them,” Henry said. “Don’t think I’m taken in.”

“I don’t. That’s part of what I mean. You were always a King, Sire; now you’ve become a great King. It might be that everything that’s happened to you was only a preparation, a means of making you what you’ve become.”

“It might,” Henry said. “God knows, Thomas. He shapes the destinies of men.”

“Kings are his instruments,” Cromwell agreed, leaving his own train of thought to follow Henry’s favorite theory. It was astonishing to think that Anne had first propounded it; she was clever and quick and fierce; Cromwell allowed her all those qualities, but he had never thought her intellectual. But of course, the idea was emotional; it was the cry of an impatient woman, ready to say any insanity to urge the man on to do what she wanted. But it had taken hold of Henry’s mind and it grew tentacles until Anne’s cry “Get rid of your wife and marry me...You’re God’s annointed; how can it be wrong if you know that it’s right?” became quite simply, “You’re God’s annointed; therefore how can anything you do be wrong?”

God was man’s best excuse for his own weaknesses and evil-doing, if He was properly used. It was God’s will. Under that banner one could pillage and murder and persecute, without any feeling of guilt.

It was better to be as he, Cromwell, was. It was better to kill and steal and betray without making excuses to oneself, whatever had to be said to the world. He believed in nothing, and therefore he sheltered behind nothing. When the time came, and it was surely coming, for much blood to be shed, for peasants and priests and friars and noblemen to die because they opposed the King, Henry would slay in the name of God; yet he was a great King as Cromwell called him, because he was a great man; even his weakness was on a massive scale. Where others strutted in their purple and grew vain, his belief in himself was already a mania.

“God has guided me.” Henry’s voice broke in. “Whatever I’ve done is to his credit, not mine, Thomas. Believe me, that knowledge makes me very humble. And very strong. That’s the change you see and can’t identify. Strength. I do what must be done without doubts. I’ve found the invulnerability of an Achilles, without the flawed heel. I’m immune, Thomas,” he said slowly. “Immune from fear or indecision or petty pride; and immune now from pity, which is the worst of all weakness. Pity kept me a slave to Catherine for seven years, until I hardened my heart. Pity denied me my son for that much longer. I have done with pity.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“You once said your idea of a true Prince was the Grand Turk,” the King pointed at him. “And I abused you as un-Christian, but there was truth in it. The heathen is brought up without conscience. The heathen is damned; but the Prince of heathens doesn’t stay his hand or alter his will for kin or kith. Christian or otherwise, that, Thomas, is what makes a Prince.”

Cromwell looked into his eyes without flinching.

“When the time comes to punish traitors, will you remember that, Sire?”

“I will,” Henry answered him, “And they shall pay for it, whoever they may be.”

Hampton Court in summer, the red brick buildings glowing like jewels in the green countryside, with the riverbanks bordered by flowering trees, and the palace gardens brilliant with shrubs and rock plants; the court was in residence, and smoke from the palace kitchens rose like gray fingers into the cloudless sky. In the window seat of her privy chamber, Anne sat sewing a tiny shirt for her son. He must be big, as her ladies said, for in the last three months she could hardly walk across the room without getting tired, and out of breath. The slim and lovely lines of her figure had swollen out, making her face and neck seem grotesquely thin by contrast. She was sallow, and the hair piled under her jeweled cap was lank and lifeless; there were hollows under her eyes. She had been crying that day, and the hands holding her needle trembled.

She looked up at the girl sitting opposite her on a stool, also sewing for the baby Prince, and her eyes dilated with hatred. The girl was plump and round, with a fine skin and bright brown eyes; she avoided the Queen’s look and bent over her sewing. It was Meg Shelton, once Anne’s dearest friend and companion. There was no friendship between them now.