Wolf Hall (82 page)

The king calls him in, with Gardiner, to look through the bill he proposes to put into Parliament to secure the succession of Anne's children. The queen is with them; many private gentlemen see less of their wives, he thinks, than the king does. He rides, Anne rides. He hunts, Anne hunts. She takes his friends, and makes them into hers.

She has a habit of reading over Henry's shoulder; she does it now, her exploring hand sliding across his silky bulk, through the layers of his clothing, so that a tiny fingernail hooks itself beneath the embroidered collar of his shirt, and she raises the fabric just a breath, just a fraction, from pale royal skin; Henry's vast hand reaches to caress hers, an absent, dreamy motion, as if they were alone. The draft refers, time and again, and correctly it would seem, to
“your most dear and entirely beloved wife Queen Anne.”

The Bishop of Winchester is gaping. As a man, he cannot unglue himself from the spectacle, yet as a bishop, it makes him clear his throat. Anne takes no notice; she carries on doing what she's doing, and reading out the bill, until she looks up, shocked: it mentions my death!
“If it should happen your said dear and entirely beloved wife Queen Anne to decease . . .”

“I can't exclude the event,” he says. “Parliament can do anything, madam, except what is against nature.”

She flushes. “I shall not die of the child. I am strong.”

He doesn't remember that Liz lost her wits when she was carrying a child. If anything, she was ever more sober and frugal, and spent time making store-cupboard inventories. Anne the queen takes the draft out of Henry's hand. She shakes it in a passion. She is angry with the paper, jealous of the ink. She says, “This bill provides that if I die, say I die now, say I die of a fever and I die undelivered, then he can put another queen in my place.”

“Sweetheart,” the king says, “I cannot imagine another in your place. It is only notional. He must make provision for it.”

“Madam,” Gardiner says, “if I may defend Cromwell, he envisages only the customary situation. You would not condemn His Majesty to a life as perpetual widower? And we know not the hour, do we?”

Anne takes no notice, it's as if Winchester had not spoken. “And if she has a son, it says, that son will inherit. It says,
heirs male lawfully begotten
. Then what happens to my daughter and her claim?”

“Well,” Henry says, “she is still a princess of England. If you look further down the paper, it says that . . .” He closes his eyes. God give me strength.

Gardiner springs to supply some: “If the king never had a son, not in lawful matrimony with any woman, then your daughter would be queen. That is what Cromwell proposes.”

“But why must it be written like this? And where does it say that Spanish Mary is a bastard?”

“Lady Mary is out of the line of succession,” he says, “so the inference is clear. We don't need to say more. You must forgive any coldness of expression. We try to write laws sparingly. And so that they are not personal.”

“By God,” Gardiner says with relish, “if this isn't personal, what is?”

The king seems to have invited Stephen to this conference in order to snub him. Tomorrow, of course, it could go the other way; he could arrive to see Henry arm in arm with Winchester and strolling among the snowdrops. He says, “We mean to seal this act with an oath. His Majesty's subjects to swear to uphold the succession to the throne, as laid out in this paper and ratified by Parliament.”

“An oath?” Gardiner says. “What sort of legislation needs to be confirmed by an oath?”

“You will always find those who will say a parliament is misled, or bought, or in some way incapable of representing the commonwealth. Again, you will find those who will deny Parliament's competence to legislate in certain matters, saying they must be left to some other jurisdiction—to Rome, in effect. But I think that is a mistake. Rome has no legitimate voice in England. In my bill I mean to state a position. It is a modest one. I draft it, it may please Parliament to pass it, it may please the king to sign it. I shall then ask the country to endorse it.”

“So what will you do?” Stephen says, jeering. “Have your boys from Austin Friars up and down the land, swearing every man Jack you dig out of an alehouse? Every man Jack and every Jill?”

“Why should I not swear them? Do you think because they are not bishops they are brutes? One Christian's oath is as good as another's. Look at any part of this kingdom, my lord bishop, and you will find dereliction, destitution. There are men and women on the roads. The sheep farmers are grown so great that the little man is knocked off his acres and the plowboy is out of house and home. In a generation these people can learn to read. The plowman can take up a book. Believe me, Gardiner, England can be otherwise.”

“I have made you angry,” Gardiner observes. “Provoked, you mistake the question. I asked you not if their word is good, but how many of them you propose to swear. But of course, in the Commons you have brought in a bill against sheep—”

“Against the runners of sheep,” he says, smiling.

The king says, “Gardiner, it is to help the common people—no grazier to run more than two thousand animals—”

The bishop cuts his king off as if he were a child. “Two thousand, yes, so while your commissioners are rampaging through the shires counting sheep, perhaps they can swear the shepherds at the same time, eh? And these plowboys of yours, in their preliterate condition? And any drabs they find in a ditch?”

He has to laugh. The bishop is so vehement. “My lord, I will swear whoever is necessary to make the succession safe, and unite the country behind us. The king has his officers, his justices of the peace—and the lords of the council will be put on their honor to make this work, or I will know why.”

Henry says, “The bishops will take the oath. I hope they will be conformable.”

“We want some new bishops,” Anne says. She names her friend Hugh Latimer. His friend Rowland Lee. It seems after all she does have a list, which she carries in her head. Liz made preserves. Anne makes pastors.

“Latimer?” Stephen shakes his head, but he cannot accuse the queen, to her face, of loving heretics. “Rowland Lee, to my certain knowledge, has never stood in a pulpit in his life. Some men come into the religious life only for ambition.”

“And have barely the grace to disguise it,” he says.

“I make the best of my road,” Stephen says. “I was set upon it. By God, Cromwell, I walk it.”

He looks up at Anne. Her eyes sparkle with glee. Not a word is lost on her.

Henry says, “My lord Winchester, you have been out of the country a great while, on your embassy.”

“I hope Your Majesty thinks it has been to his profit.”

“Indeed, but you have not been able to avoid neglecting your diocese.”

“As a pastor, you should mind your flock,” Anne says. “Count them, perhaps.”

He bows. “My flock is safe in fold.”

Short of kicking the bishop downstairs himself, or having him hauled out by the guards, the king can't do much more. “All the same, feel free to attend to it,” Henry murmurs.

There is a feral stink that rises from the hide of a dog about to fight. It rises now into the room, and he sees Anne turn aside, fastidious, and Stephen put his hand to his chest, as if to ruffle up his fur, to warn of his size before he bares his teeth. “I shall be back with Your Majesty within a week,” he says. His dulcet sentiment comes out as a snarl from the depth of his guts.

Henry bursts into laughter. “Meanwhile we like Cromwell. Cromwell treats us very well.”

Once Winchester has gone, Anne hangs over the king again; her eyes flick sideways, as if she were drawing him into conspiracy. Anne's bodice is still tight-laced, only a slight fullness of her breasts indicating her condition. There has been no announcement; announcements are never made, women's bodies are uncertain things and mistakes can occur. But the whole court is sure she is carrying the heir, and she says so herself; apples are not mentioned this time, and all the foods she craved when she was carrying the princess revolt her, so the signs are good it will be a boy. This bill he will bring into the Commons is not, as she thinks, some anticipation of disaster, but a confirmation of her place in the world. She must be thirty-three this year. For how many years did he laugh at her flat chest and yellow skin? Even he can see her beauty, now she is queen. Her face seems sculpted in the purity of its lines, her skull small like a cat's; her throat has a mineral glitter, as if it were powdered with fool's gold.

Henry says, “Stephen is a resolute ambassador, no doubt, but I cannot keep him near me. I have trusted him with my innermost councils, and now he turns.” He shakes his head. “I hate ingratitude. I hate disloyalty. That is why I value a man like you. You were good to your old master in his trouble. Nothing could commend you more to me than that.” He speaks as if he, personally, hadn't caused the trouble; as if Wolsey's fall were caused by a thunderbolt. “Another who has disappointed me is Thomas More.”

Anne says, “When you write your bill against the false prophetess Barton, put More in it, beside Fisher.”

He shakes his head. “It won't run. Parliament won't have it. There is plenty of evidence against Fisher, and the Commons don't like him, he talks to them as if they were Turks. But More came to me even before Barton was arrested and showed me how he was clear in the matter.”

“But it will frighten him,” Anne says. “I want him frightened. Fright may unmake a man. I have seen it occur.”

Three in the afternoon: candles brought in. He consults Richard's daybook: John Fisher is waiting. It is time to be enraged. He tries thinking about Gardiner, but he keeps laughing. “Arrange your face,” Richard says.

“You'd never imagine that Stephen owed me money. I paid for his installation at Winchester.”

“Call it in, sir.”

“But I have already taken his house for the queen. He is still grieving. I had better not drive him to an extremity. I ought to leave him a way back.”

Bishop Fisher is seated, his skeletal hands resting on an ebony cane. “Good evening, my lord,” he says. “Why are you so gullible?”

The bishop seems surprised that they are not to start off with a prayer. Nevertheless, he murmurs a blessing.

“You had better ask the king's pardon. Beg the favor of it. Plead with him to consider your age and infirmities.”

“I do not know my offense. And, whatever you think, I am not in my second childhood.”

“But I believe you are. How else would you have given credence to this woman Barton? If you came across a puppet show in the street, would you not stand there cheering, and shout, ‘Look at their little wooden legs walking, look how they wave their arms? Hear them blow their trumpets.' Would you not?”

“I don't think I ever saw a puppet show,” Fisher says sadly. “At least, not one of the kind of which you speak.”

“But you're in one, my lord bishop! Look around you. It's all one great puppet show.”

“And yet so many did believe in her,” Fisher says mildly. “Warham himself, Canterbury that was. A score, a hundred of devout and learned men. They attested her miracles. And why should she not voice her knowledge, being inspired? We know that before the Lord goes to work, he gives warning of himself through his servants, for it is stated by the prophet Amos . . .”

“Don't ‘prophet Amos' me, man. She threatened the king. Foresaw his death.”

“Foreseeing it is not the same as desiring it, still less plotting it.”

“Ah, but she never foresaw anything that she didn't hope would happen. She sat down with the king's enemies and told them how it would be.”

“If you mean Lord Exeter,” the bishop says, “he is already pardoned, of course, and so is Lady Gertrude. If they were guilty, the king would have proceeded.”

“That does not follow. Henry wishes for reconciliation. He finds it in him to be merciful. As he may be to you even yet, but you must admit your faults. Exeter has not been writing against the king, but you have.”

“Where? Show me.”

“Your hand is disguised, my lord, but not from me. Now you will publish no more.” Fisher's glance shoots upward. Delicately, his bones move beneath his skin; his fist grips his cane, the handle of which is a gilded dolphin. “Your printers abroad are working for me now. My friend Stephen Vaughan has offered them a better rate.”

“It is about the divorce you are hounding me,” Fisher says. “It is not about Elizabeth Barton. It is because Queen Katherine asked my counsel and I gave it.”

“You say I am hounding you, when I ask you to keep within the law? Do not try to lead me away from your prophetess, or I will lead you where she is and lock you up next door to her. Would you have been so keen to believe her, if in one of her visions she had seen Anne crowned queen a year before it occurred, and Heaven smiling down on the event? In that case, I put it to you, you would have called her a witch.”