Wolf Hall (68 page)

In March, news comes from Calais that Lord Berners has died. The afternoon in his library, the storm blowing outside: it seems when he looks back a haven of peace, the last hour he had to himself. He wants to make an offer for his books—a generous one, to help Lady Berners—but the folios seem to have jumped off their desks and walked, some in the direction of Francis Bryan, the old man's nephew, and some to another connection of his, Nicholas Carew. “Would you forgive his debts,” he asks Henry, “at least for his wife's lifetime? You know he leaves—”

“No sons.” Henry's mind has moved ahead: once I was in that unhappy state, no sons, but soon I shall have my heir.

He brings Anne some majolica bowls. The word
MASCHIO
is painted on the outside, and inside are pictures of plump blond-haired babies, each with a coy little phallus. She laughs. The Italians say for a boy you have to keep warm, he tells her. Heat up your wine to heat up your blood. No cold fruit, no fish.

Jane Seymour says, “Do you think it's already decided, what it will be, or does God decide later? Do you think it knows itself, what it is? Do you think if we could see inside you, we would be able to tell?”

“Jane, I wish you were still down in Wiltshire,” Mary Shelton says.

Anne says, “You needn't cut me up, Mistress Seymour. It is a boy, and no one is to say or think otherwise.” She frowns, and you can see her bending, concentrating, the great force of her will.

“I'd like a baby,” Jane says.

“Watch yourself,” Lady Rochford tells her. “If your belly shows, mistress, we'll have you bricked up alive.”

“In her family,” Anne says, “they'd give her a bouquet. They don't know what continence means, down at Wolf Hall.”

Jane is flushed and trembling. “I meant no harm.”

“Leave her,” Anne says. “It's like baiting a field mouse.” She turns to him. “Your bill is not passed yet. Tell me what is the delay.”

The bill, she means, to forbid appeals to Rome. He begins to explain to her the strength of the opposition, but she raises her eyebrows and says, “My father is speaking for you in the Lords, and Norfolk. So who dare oppose us?”

“I shall have it through by Easter, depend upon it.”

“The woman we saw in Canterbury, they say her people are printing a book of her prophecies.”

“That may be, but I shall make sure no one reads it.”

“They say on St. Catherine's Day last, while we were at Calais, she saw a vision of the so-called princess Mary crowned queen.” Her voice runs on, fluid, rapid, these are my enemies, this prophetess and those about her, Katherine who is plotting with the Emperor, her daughter Mary the supposed heir, Mary's old governess Margaret Pole, Lady Salisbury, she and all her family are my enemies, her son Lord Montague, her son Reginald Pole, who is abroad, people talk of his claim to the throne so why can he not be brought back, his loyalty examined? Henry Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter, he believes he has a claim, but when my son is born that will put him out of his conceit. Lady Exeter, Gertrude, she is forever complaining that noblemen are being put down from their places by men of low birth, and you know who she means by that.

My lady, her sister says softly, do not distress yourself.

I am not distressed, Anne says. Her hand over the growing child, she says calmly, “These people want me dead.”

The days are still short, the king's temper shorter. Chapuys bows and writhes before him, twisting and grimacing, as if he had in mind to ask Henry to dance. “I have read with some perplexity certain conclusions reached by Dr. Cranmer—”

“My archbishop,” the king says coldly; at great expense, the anointing has taken place.

“—conclusions regarding Queen Katherine—”

“Who? You mean my late brother's wife, the Princess of Wales?”

“—for Your Majesty knows that dispensations were issued in such form as to allow your own marriage to be valid, whether or not that former marriage was consummated.”

“I do not want to hear the word
dispensation
,” Henry says. “I do not want to hear you mention what you call my marriage. The Pope has no power to make incest licit. I am no more Katherine's husband than you are.”

Chapuys bows.

“If the contract had not been void,” Henry says, patient for the last time, “God would not have punished me with the loss of my children.”

“We do not know the blessed Katherine is beyond childbearing.” He looks up with a sly, delicate glance.

“Tell me, why do you think I do this?” The king sounds curious. “Out of lust? Is that what you think?”

Kill a cardinal? Divide your country? Split the church? “It seems extravagant,” Chapuys murmurs.

“But that is what you think. That is what you tell the Emperor. You are wrong. I am the steward of my country, sir, and if I now take a wife in a union blessed by God, it is to have a son by her.”

“But there is no guarantee that Your Majesty will have a son. Or any living children at all.”

“Why would I not?” Henry reddens. He is on his feet, shouting, angry tears spilling down his face. “Am I not a man like other men? Am I not? Am I not?”

He is a game little terrier, the Emperor's man; but even he knows that when you've made a king cry it's time to back off. On the way out he says—dusting himself down, with his accustomed, self-deprecatory flutter—“There is a distinction to be drawn between the welfare of the country and the welfare of the Tudor line. Or do you not think so?”

“So who is your preferred candidate for the throne? You favor Courtenay, or Pole?”

“You should not sneer at persons of royal blood.” Chapuys shakes out his sleeves. “At least now I am officially informed of the lady's state, whereas before I could only deduce it from certain spectacles of folly I had witnessed . . . Do you know how much you are staking, Cremuel, on the body of one woman? Let us hope no evil comes near her, eh?”

He takes the ambassador by the arm, wheels him around. “What evil? Say what you mean.”

“If you would let go your grip on my jacket. Thank you. Very soon you resort to manhandling people, which shows, as they say, your breeding.” His words are full of bravado, but he is trembling. “Look around you and see how by her pride and her presumption she offends your own nobility. Her own uncle has no stomach for her tricks. The king's oldest friends make excuses to stay away from court.”

“Wait till she's crowned,” he says. “Watch them come running.”

On April 12, Easter Sunday, Anne appears with the king at High Mass, and is prayed for as Queen of England. His bill went through Parliament just yesterday; he expects a modest reward, and before the royal party go in to break their fast, the king waves him over and gives him Lord Berners's old post, chancellor of the exchequer. “Berners suggested you for it.” Henry smiles. He likes giving; like a child, he enjoys anticipating how pleased you will be.

During Mass, his mind had wandered through the city. What noisome goose houses have they waiting for him at home? What rows in the street, what babies left on church steps, what unruly apprentices with whom he will please have a word? Have Alice and Jo painted Easter eggs? They are too grown up now, but they are content to be the children of the house until the next generation comes along. It's time he put his mind to husbands for them. Anne, if she had lived, could be married by now, and to Rafe, as he is still not spoken for. He thinks of Helen Barre; how fast she gets on with her reading, how they cannot do without her at Austin Friars. He believes now that her husband is dead, and he thinks, I must talk to her, I must tell her she is free. She is too proper to show any pleasure, but who would not like to know that she is no longer subject to a man like that?

Through Mass, Henry keeps up a constant buzz of talk. He sorts papers and passes them up and down to his councillors; only at the consecration does he throw himself to his knees in a fever of reverence, as the miracle takes place and a wafer becomes God. As soon as the priest says,
“Ite, missa est,”
he whispers, come to me in my closet, alone.

First the assembled courtiers must make their bows to Anne. Her ladies sweep back and leave her alone in a little sunlit space. He watches them, watches the gentlemen and councillors, among whom, on this feast day, are many of the king's boyhood friends. He watches Sir Nicholas Carew in particular; nothing is wanting in his reverence to his new queen, but he cannot help a downturn of his mouth. Arrange your face, Nicholas Carew, your ancient family face. He hears Anne saying, these are my enemies: he adds Carew to the list.

Behind the chambers of state are the king's own rooms, which only his intimates see, where he is served by his gentlemen, and where he can be free of ambassadors and spies. This is Henry Norris's ground, and Norris gently congratulates him on his new appointment, and moves away, soft-footed.

“You know Cranmer is to convene a court to make a formal dissolution of the . . .” Henry has said he does not want to hear any more about his marriage, so he will not even say the word. “I have asked him to convene at the priory at Dunstable, because it is, what, ten, twelve miles to Ampthill, where she is lodged—so she can send her lawyers, if she likes. Or come to the court herself. I want you to go to see her, go secretly, just talk to her—”

Make sure she springs no surprises.

“Leave Rafe with me while you are gone.” At being so easily understood, the king relaxes into good humor. “I can rely on him to say what Cromwell would say. You have a good boy there. And he is better than you are at keeping his face straight. I see you, when we sit in council, with your hand before your mouth. Sometimes, you know, I want to laugh myself.” He drops into a chair, covers his face as if to shade his eyes. He sees that, once again, the king is about to cry. “Brandon says my sister is dying. There is no more the doctors can do for her. You know that fair hair she had once, hair like silver—my daughter had that. When she was seven she was the image of my sister, like a saint painted on a wall. Tell me, what am I to do with my daughter?”

He waits, till he knows it is a real question. “Be good to her, sir. Conciliate her. She should not suffer.”

“But I must make her a bastard. I need to settle England on my lawful children.”

“Parliament will do it.”

“Yes.” He sniffs. Scrubs his tears away. “After Anne is crowned. Cromwell, one thing, and then we will have our breakfast, because I am really very hungry. This project of a match for my cousin Richard . . .”

He thinks his way, rapidly, around the nobility of England. But no, he sees it's his Richard, Richard Cromwell. “Lady Carey . . .” The king's voice softens. “Well, I have thought it over, and I think, no. Or at least, not at this time.”

He nods. He understands his reason. When Anne understands it, she will spit nails.

“Sometimes it is a solace to me,” Henry says, “not to have to talk and talk. You were born to understand me, perhaps.”

That is one view of their situations. He was six years or so in this world before Henry came into it, years of which he made good use. Henry takes off his embroidered cap, throws it down, runs his hands through his hair. Like Wyatt's golden mane, his hair is thinning, and it exposes the shape of his massive skull. For a moment he seems like a carved statue, like a simpler form of himself, or one of his own ancestors: one of the race of giants that roamed Britain, and left no trace of themselves except in the dreams of their petty descendants.

He goes back to Austin Friars as soon as he can get away. Surely he can have one day off? The crowds outside his gate have dispersed, as Thurston has fed them an Easter dinner. He goes out to the kitchen first, to give his man a slap on the head and a gold piece. “A hundred open maws, I swear,” Thurston says. “And by supper time they'll be round again.”

“It is a shame there should be beggars.”

“Beggars my arse. What comes out of this kitchen is so good, there are aldermen out there, with their hoods up so we don't know them. And I have a houseful here, whether you are with us or not—I have Frenchmen, Germans, I have Florentiners, they all claim to know you and they all want their dinner to their own liking, I have their servants down here, pinch of that, soupçon of the other. We must feed fewer, or build another kitchen.”

“I'll get it in hand.”

“Master Rafe says for the Tower you have bought out the whole of a quarry in Normandy. He says the Frenchmen are all undermined, and dropping into holes in the ground.”

Such beautiful stone. The color of butter. Four hundred men on the payroll, and anyone standing about instantly redeployed to the building work at Austin Friars. “Thurston, don't let anybody put pinches or soupçons in our dinner.” He thinks, that's how Bishop Fisher nearly died; unless it was an unboiled stockpot after all. You could never fault Thurston's stockpot. He goes and views it, bubbling away. “Where is Richard, do you know?”