Wolf Hall (84 page)

Sir John Shelton is head of this strange household, but he has chosen a time when Sir John is away from home; talk to the women, is his idea, rather than listen to Shelton after supper on the subjects of horses, dogs and his youthful exploits. But on the threshold, he almost changes his mind; coming downstairs at a rapid, creaking scuttle is Lady Bryan, mother of one-eyed Francis, who is in charge of the tiny princess. She is a woman of nearly seventy, well bedded into grand-maternity, and he can see her mouth moving before she is within range of his hearing: Her Grace slept till eleven, squalled till midnight, exhausted herself, poor little chicken! fell asleep an hour, woke up grizzling, cheeks scarlet, suspicion of fever, Lady Shelton woken, physician aroused, teething already, a treacherous time! soothing draft, settled by sun-up, woke at nine, took a feed . . . “Oh, Master Cromwell,” Lady Bryan says, “this is never your son! Bless him! What a lovely tall young man! What a pretty face he has, he must get it from his mother. What age would he be now?”

“Of an age to talk, I believe.”

Lady Bryan turns to Gregory, her face aglow as if at the prospect of sharing a nursery rhyme with him. Lady Shelton sweeps in. “Give you good day, masters.” A small hesitation: does the queen's aunt bow to the Master of the Jewel House? On the whole she thinks not. “I expect Lady Bryan has given you a full account of her charge?”

“Indeed, and perhaps we could have an account of yours?”

“You will not see Lady Mary for yourself?”

“Yes, but forewarned . . .”

“Indeed. I do not go armed, though my niece the queen recommends I use my fists on her.” Her eyes sweep over him, assessing; the air crackles with tension. How do women do that? One could learn it, perhaps; he feels, rather than sees, his son back off, till his regress is checked by the cupboard displaying the princess Elizabeth's already extensive collection of gold and silver plate. Lady Shelton says, “I am charged that, if the Lady Mary does not obey me, I should, and here I quote you my niece's words, beat her and buffet her like the bastard she is.”

“Oh, Mother of God!” Lady Bryan moans. “I was Mary's nurse too, and she was stubborn as an infant, so she'll not change now, buffet her as you may. You'd like to see the baby first, would you not? Come with me . . .” She takes Gregory into custody, hand squeezing his elbow. On she rattles: you see, with a child of that age, a fever could be anything. It could be the start of the measles, God forbid. It could be the start of the smallpox. With a child of six months, you don't know what it could be the start of . . . A pulse is beating in Lady Bryan's throat. As she chatters she licks her dry lips, and swallows.

He understands now why Henry wanted him here. The things that are happening cannot be put in a letter. He says to Lady Shelton, “Do you mean the queen has written to you about Lady Mary, using these terms?”

“No. She has passed on a verbal instruction.” She sweeps ahead of him. “Do you think I should implement it?”

“We will perhaps speak in private,” he murmurs.

“Yes, why not?” she says: a turn of her head, a little murmur back.

The child Elizabeth is wrapped tightly in layers, her fists hidden: just as well, she looks as if she would strike you. Ginger bristles poke from beneath her cap, and her eyes are vigilant; he has never seen an infant in the crib look so ready to take offense. Lady Bryan says, “Do you think she looks like the king?”

He hesitates, trying to be fair to both parties. “As much as a little maid ought.”

“Let us hope she doesn't share his girth,” Lady Shelton says. “He fleshes out, does he not?”

“Only George Rochford says not.” Lady Bryan leans over the cradle. “He says, she's every bit a Boleyn.”

“We know my niece lived some thirty years in chastity,” Lady Shelton says, “but not even Anne could manage a virgin birth.”

“But the hair!” he says.

“I know,” Lady Bryan sighs. “Saving Her Grace's dignity, and with all respect to His Majesty, you could show her at a fair as a pig-baby.” She pinches up the child's cap at the hairline, and her fingers work busily, trying to stuff the bristles out of sight. The child screws up her face and hiccups in protest.

Gregory frowns down at her: “She could be anybody's.”

Lady Shelton raises a hand to hide her smile. “You mean to say, Gregory, all babies look the same. Come, Master Cromwell.”

She takes him by the sleeve to lead him away. Lady Bryan is left reknotting the princess, who seems to have become loose in some particular. Over his shoulder, he says, “For God's sake, Gregory.” People have gone to the Tower for saying less. He says to Lady Shelton, “I don't see how Mary can be a bastard. Her parents were in good faith when they got her.”

She stops, an eyebrow raised. “Would you say that to my niece the queen? To her face, I mean?”

“I already have.”

“And how did she take it?”

“Well, I tell you, Lady Shelton, if she had had an ax to hand, she would have essayed to cut off my head.”

“I tell you something in return, and you can carry it to my niece if you will. If Mary were indeed a bastard, and the bastard of the poorest landless gentleman that is in England, she should receive nothing but gentle treatment at my hands, for she is a good young woman, and you would need a heart of stone not to pity her situation.”

She is walking fast, her train sweeping over stone floors, into the body of the house. Mary's old servants are about, faces he has seen before; there are clean patches on their jackets where Mary's livery badge has been unpicked and replaced by the king's badge. He looks about and recognizes everything. He stops at the foot of the great staircase. Never was he allowed to run up it; there was a back staircase for boys like him, carrying wood or coals. Once he broke the rules; and when he reached the top, a fist came out of the darkness and punched the side of his head. Cardinal Morton himself, lurking?

He touches the stone, cold as a tomb: vine leaves intertwined with some nameless flower. Lady Shelton looks at him smiling, quizzical: why does he hesitate? “Perhaps we should change out of our riding clothes before we meet Lady Mary. She might feel slighted . . .”

“So she might if you delay. She will make something of it, in either case. I say I pity her, but oh, she is not easy! She graces neither our dinner table nor supper table, because she will not sit below the little princess. And my niece the queen has laid down that food must not be carried to her own room, except the little bread for breakfast we all take.”

She has led him to a closed door. “Do they still call this the blue chamber?”

“Ah, your father has been here before,” she says to Gregory.

“He's been everywhere,” Gregory says.

She turns. “See how you get on, gentlemen. By the way, she will not answer to ‘Lady Mary.' ”

It is a long room, it is almost empty of furniture, and the chill, like a ghost's ambassador, meets them on the threshold. The blue tapestries have been taken down and the plaster walls are naked. By an almost dead fire, Mary is sitting: huddled, tiny and pitifully young. Gregory whispers, “She looks like Malekin.”

Poor Malekin, she is a spirit girl; she eats at night, lives on crumbs and apple peel. Sometimes, if you come down early and are quiet on the stairs, you find her sitting in the ashes.

Mary glances up; surprisingly, her little face brightens. “Master Cromwell.” She gets to her feet, takes a step toward him and almost stumbles, her feet entangled in the hem of her dress. “How long is it since I saw you at Windsor?”

“I hardly know,” he says gravely. “The years have been good to you, madam.”

She giggles; she is now eighteen. She casts around her as if bewildered for the stool on which she was sitting. “Gregory,” he says, and his son dives to catch the ex-princess, before she sits down on empty air. Gregory does it as if it were a dance step; he has his uses.

“I am sorry to keep you standing. You might,” she waves vaguely, “sit down on that chest.”

“I think we are strong enough to stand. Though I do not think you are.” He sees Gregory glance at him, as if he has never heard this softened tone. “They do not make you sit alone, and by this miserable fire, surely?”

“The man who brings the wood will not give me my title of princess.”

“Do you have to speak to him?”

“No. But it would be an evasion if I did not.”

That's right, he thinks: make life as hard as possible for yourself. “Lady Shelton has told me about the difficulty in . . . the dinner difficulty. Suppose I were to send you a physician?”

“We have one here. Or rather, the child has.”

“I could send a more useful one. He might give you a regimen for your health, and lay it down that you were to take a large breakfast, in your own room.”

“Meat?” Mary says.

“In quantity.”

“But who would you send?”

“Dr. Butts?”

Her face softens. “I knew him at my court at Ludlow. When I was Princess of Wales. Which I still am. How is it I am put out of the succession, Master Cromwell? How is it lawful?”

“It is lawful if Parliament makes it so.”

“There is a law above Parliament. It is the law of God. Ask Bishop Fisher.”

“I find God's purposes obscure, and God knows I find Fisher no fit elucidator. By contrast, I find the will of Parliament plain.”

She bites her lip; now she will not look at him. “I have heard Dr. Butts is a heretic these days.”

“He believes as your father the king believes.”

He waits. She turns, her gray eyes fixed on his face. “I will not call my lord father a heretic.”

“Good. It is better that these traps are tested, first, by your friends.”

“I do not see how you can be my friend, if you are also friend to the person, I mean the Marquess of Pembroke.” She will not give Anne her royal title.

“That lady stands in a place where she has no need of friends, only of servants.”

“Pole says you are Satan. My cousin Reginald Pole. Who lies abroad at Genoa. He says that when you were born, you were like any Christian soul, but that at some date the devil entered into you.”

“Did you know, Lady Mary, I came here when I was a boy, nine or ten? My uncle was a cook to Morton, and I was a poor sniveling lad who bundled the hawthorn twigs at dawn to light the ovens, and killed the chickens for the boiling house before the sun was up.” He speaks gravely. “Would you suppose the devil had entered me by that date? Or was it earlier, around the time when other people are baptized? You understand it is of interest to me.”

Mary watches him, and she does it sideways; she still wears an old-style gable hood, and she seems to blink around it, like a horse whose headcloth has slipped. He says softly, “I am not Satan. Your lord father is not a heretic.”

“And I am not a bastard, I suppose.”

“Indeed no.” He repeats what he told Anne Shelton: “You were conceived in good faith. Your parents thought they were married. That does not mean their marriage was good. You can see the difference, I think?”

She rubs her forefinger under her nose. “Yes, I can see the difference. But in fact the marriage was good.”

“The queen will be coming to visit her daughter soon. If you would simply greet her respectfully in the way you should greet your father's wife—”

“—except she is his concubine—”

“—then your father would take you back to court, you would have everything you lack now, and the warmth and comfort of society. Listen to me, I intend this for your good. The queen does not expect your friendship, only an outward show. Bite your tongue and bob her a curtsy. It will be done in a heartbeat, and it will change everything. Make terms with her before her new child is born. If she has a son, she will have no reason afterward to conciliate you.”

“She is frightened of me,” Mary says, “and she will still be frightened, even if she has a son. She is afraid I will make a marriage, and my own sons will threaten her.”

“Does anyone talk to you of marriage?”

A dry little laugh, incredulous. “I was a baby at the breast when I was married into France. Then to the Emperor, into France again, to the king, to his first son, to his second son, to his sons I have lost count of, and once again to the Emperor, or one of his cousins. I have been contracted in marriage till I am exhausted. One day I shall really do it.”

“But you will not marry Pole.”

She flinches, and he knows that it has been put to her: perhaps by her old governess Margaret Pole, perhaps by Chapuys, who stays up till dawn studying the tables of descent of the English aristocracy: strengthen her claim, put her beyond reproach, marry the half-Spanish Tudor back into the old Plantagenet line. He says, “I have seen Pole. I knew him before he went out of the kingdom. He is not the man for you. Whatever husband you get, he will need a strong sword arm. Pole is like an old wife sitting by the fire, starting at Hob in the Corner and the Boneless Man. He has nothing but a little holy water in his veins, and they say he weeps copiously if his servant swats a fly.”

She smiles: but she slaps a hand over her mouth like a gag. “That's right,” he says. “You say nothing to anybody.”

She says, from behind her fingers, “I can't see to read.”

“What, they keep you short of candles?”

“No, I mean my sight is failing. All the time my head aches.”

“You cry a good deal?” She nods. “Dr. Butts will bring a remedy. Till then, have someone read to you.”

“They do. They read me Tyndale's gospel. Do you know that Bishop Tunstall and Thomas More between them have identified two thousand errors in his so-called Testament? It is more heretical than the holy book of the Moslems.”

Fighting talk. But he sees that tears are welling up. “All this can be put right.” She stumbles toward him and for a moment he thinks she will forget herself and lurch and sob against his riding coat. “The doctor will be here in a day. Now you shall have a proper fire, and your supper. Wherever you like it served.”