Bring Up the Bodies (31 page)

‘Peace, peace,' Audley soothes. ‘We will do the apologising, Monsieur. Let him cool down. Never fear. Hold back your dispatches to your good master, do not write tonight. We will keep the talks going.'

Over Audley's shoulder, he sees Edward Seymour, gliding through the crowd. ‘Ah, ambassador,' he says, with a suave confidence he does not feel. ‘Here is an opportunity for you to meet –'

Edward springs forward, ‘
Mon cher ami…
'

Black glances from Boleyns. Edward into the breach, armed with confident French. Sweeping Chapuys aside: none too soon. A stir at the door. The king is back, erupting into the midst of the gentlemen.

‘Cromwell!' Henry stops before him. He is breathing hard. ‘Make him understand. It is not for the Emperor to make conditions to me. It is for the Emperor to apologise, for threatening me with war.' His face congests. ‘Cromwell, I know just what you have done. You have gone too far in this matter. What have you promised him? Whatever it is, you have no authority. You have put my honour in hazard. But what do I expect, how can a man like you understand the honour of princes? You have said, “Oh, I am sure of Henry, I have the king in my pocket.” Don't deny it, Cromwell, I can hear you saying it. You mean to train me up, don't you? Like one of your boys at Austin Friars? Touch my cap when you come down of a morning and say “How do you, sir?” Walk through Whitehall half a pace behind you. Carry your folios, your inkhorn and your seal. And why not a crown, eh, brought behind you in a leather bag?' Henry is convulsing with rage. ‘I really believe, Cromwell, that you think you are king, and I am the blacksmith's boy.'

He will never claim, later, that his heart did not turn over. He is not one to boast of a coolness no reasonable man would possess. Henry could, at any moment, gesture to his guards; he could find himself with cold metal at his ribs, and his day done.

But he steps back; he knows his face shows nothing, neither repentance nor regret nor fear. He thinks, you could never be the blacksmith's boy. Walter would not have had you in his forge. Brawn is not the whole story. In the flames you need a cool head, when sparks are flying to the rafters you must note when they fall on you and knock the fire away with one swat of your hard palm: a man who panics is no use in a shop full of molten metal. And now, his monarch's sweating face thrust into his, he remembers something his father told him: if you burn your hand, Tom, raise your hands and cross your wrists before you, and hold them so till you get to the water or the salve: I don't know how it works, but it confuses the pain, and then if you utter a prayer at the same time, you might get off not too bad.

He raises his palms. He crosses his wrists. Back you go, Henry. As if confused by the gesture – as if almost relieved to be stopped – the king ceases ranting: and he backs off a pace, turning his face away and so relieving him, Cromwell, of that bloodshot stare, of the indecent closeness of the popping blue whites of the king's eyes. He says, softly, ‘God preserve you, Majesty. And now, will you excuse me?'

So: whether he will excuse or no, he walks away. He walks into the next room. You have heard the expression, ‘My blood was boiling'? His blood is boiling. He crosses his wrists. He sits down on a chest and calls for a drink. When it is fetched he takes into his right hand the cool pewter cup, running the pads of his fingers around its curves: the wine is strong claret, he spills a drop, he blots it with his forefinger and for neatness touches it with his tongue, so it vanishes. He cannot say whether the trick has decreased the pain, as Walter said it would. But he is glad his father is with him. Someone must be.

He looks up. Chapuys's face is hovering over him: smiling, a mask of malice. ‘My dear friend. I thought your last hour had come. Do you know, I thought you would forget yourself and hit him?'

He looks up and smiles. ‘I never forget myself. What I do, I mean to do.'

‘Though you may not mean what you say.'

He thinks, the ambassador has suffered cruelly, just for doing his job. In addition, I have injured his feelings, I have been ironical about his hat. Tomorrow I shall organise him a present, a horse, a horse of some magnificence, a horse for his own riding. I myself, before it departs my stables, will lift a hoof and check the shoe.

The king's council meets next day. Wiltshire, or Monseigneur, is present: the Boleyns are sleek cats, lolling in their seats and preening their whiskers. Their kinsman, the Duke of Norfolk, looks ragged, unnerved; he stops him on the way in – stops him, Cromwell – ‘All right, lad?'

Was ever the Master of the Rolls so addressed, by the Earl Marshal of England? In the council chamber Norfolk scuffles the stools about, creaks down on one that suits him. ‘That's what he does, you know.' He flashes him a grin, a glimpse of fang. ‘You're balanced just so, standing on your feet, then he blows the pavement from under you.'

He nods, smiling patiently. Henry comes in, sits like a great sulky baby on a chair at the head of the table. Meets no one's eye.

Now: he hopes his colleagues know their duties. He has told them often enough. Flatter Henry. Beseech Henry. Implore him to do what you know he must do anyway. So Henry feels he has a choice. So he feels a warm regard for himself, as if he is not consulting his own interests but yours.

Majesty, the councillors say. If it please you. To look favourably, for the sake of the realm and commonweal, on the Emperor's slavish overtures. On his whimpers and pleas.

This occupies fifteen minutes. At last, Henry says, well, if it is for the good of the commonweal, I will receive Chapuys, we will continue negotiations. I must swallow, I suppose, any personal insults I have received.

Norfolk leans forward. ‘Think of it like a draught of medicine, Henry. Bitter. But for the sake of England, do not spit.'

The subject of physicians once raised, the marriage of the Lady Mary is discussed. She continues to complain, wherever the king moves her, of bad air, insufficient food, insufficient consideration of her privacy, of dolorous limb pains, headaches and heaviness of spirit. Her doctors have advised that congress with a man would be good for her health. If a young woman's vital spirits are bottled up, she becomes pale and thin, her appetite wanes, she begins to waste; marriage is an occupation for her, she forgets her minor ailments; her womb remains anchored and primed for use, and shows no tendency to go wandering about her body as if it had nothing better to do. In default of a man, the Lady Mary needs strenuous exercise on horseback; difficult, for someone under house arrest.

Henry clears his throat at last, and speaks. ‘The Emperor, it is no secret, has discussed Mary with his own councillors. He would like her married out of this realm, to one of his relatives, within his own domains.' His lips tighten. ‘In no wise will I suffer her to go out of the country; or indeed to go anywhere at all, while her behaviour to me is not what it ought to be.'

He, Cromwell, says, ‘Her mother's death is still raw with her. I have no doubt she will see her duty, over these next weeks.'

‘How pleasing to hear from you at last, Cromwell,' says Monseigneur with a smirk. ‘You do most usually speak first, and last, and everywhere in the middle, so that we more modest councillors are obliged to speak sotto voce, if at all, and pass notes to each other. May we ask if this new reticence of yours relates, in any way, to yesterday's events? When His Majesty, if I do recall correctly, administered a check to your ambition?'

‘Thank you for that,' the Lord Chancellor says, flatly. ‘My lord Wiltshire.'

The king says, ‘My lords, the subject is my daughter. I am sorry to have to recall you. Though I am far from sure she should be discussed in council.'

‘Myself,' Norfolk says, ‘I would go up-country to Mary and make her swear the oath, I would plant her hand on the gospel and hold it there flat, and if she would not take her oath to the king and to my niece's child, I would beat her head against the wall till it were as soft as a baked apple.'

‘And thank you again,' Audley says. ‘My lord Norfolk.'

‘Anyway,' the king says sadly. ‘We have not so many children that we can well afford to lose one out of the kingdom. I would rather not part with her. One day she will be a good daughter to me.'

The Boleyns sit back, smiling, hearing the king say he seeks no great foreign match for Mary, she is of no importance, a bastard whom one considers only out of charity. They are well content with the triumph afforded them yesterday by the Imperial ambassador; and they are showing their good taste by not boasting about it.

As soon as the meeting ends, he, Cromwell, is mobbed by the councillors: except for the Boleyns, who waft off in the other direction. The meeting has gone well; he has got everything he wants; Henry is back on course for a treaty with the Emperor: why then does he feel so restless, stifled? He elbows his colleagues aside, though in a mannerly fashion. He wants air. Henry passes him, he stops, he turns, he says, ‘Master Secretary. Will you walk along with me?'

They walk. In silence. It is for the prince, not the minister, to introduce a topic.

He can wait.

Henry says, ‘You know, I wish we would go down to the weald one day, as we have said, to talk to the ironmasters.'

He waits.

‘I have had various drawings, mathematical drawings, and advices concerning how our ordnance can be improved, but to be truthful, I cannot make as much of it as you would.'

More humble, he thinks. A little more humble yet.

Henry says, ‘You have been in the forest and met charcoal burners. I remember you said to me once, they be very poor men.'

He waits. Henry says, ‘One must know the process from the beginning, I think, whether one is making armour or ordnance. It is no use demanding of a metal that it has certain properties, a certain temper, unless you know how it is made, and the difficulties your craftsman may encounter. Now, I have never been too proud to sit down for an hour with the gauntlet maker, who armours my right hand. We must study, I think, every pin, every rivet.'

And? Yes?

He leaves the king to stumble on.

‘And, well. And, so. You are my right hand, sir.'

He nods. Sir. How touching.

Henry says, ‘So, to Kent, to the weald: will we go? Shall I choose a week? Two, three days should do it.'

He smiles. ‘Not this summer, sir. You will be engaged otherwise. Besides, the ironmasters are like all of us. They must have a holiday. They must lie in the sun. They must pick apples.'

Henry looks at him, mild, beseeching, from the tail of his blue eye: give me a happy summer. He says, ‘I cannot live as I have lived, Cromwell.'

He is here to take instructions. Get me Jane: Jane, so kind, who sighs across the palate like sweet butter. Deliver me from bitterness, from gall.

‘I think I might go home,' he says. ‘If you will permit. I have much to do if I am to set this affair in train, and I feel…' His English deserts him. This sometimes happens. ‘
Un peu…
' But his French deserts him too.

‘But you are not ill? You will be back soon?'

‘I shall seek a consultation with the canon lawyers,' he says. ‘It may take some days, you know what they are. It will go no slower than I can help. I shall speak to the archbishop.'

‘And perhaps to Harry Percy,' Henry says. ‘You know how she…the betrothal, the whatever, the relationship between them…well, I think they were as good as married, were they not? And if that won't run…' He rubs his beard. ‘You know that I was, before I was with the queen, I was, on occasion, with her sister, her sister Mary, which –'

‘Oh yes, sir. I remember Mary Boleyn.'

‘– and it will be seen that, having been linked with kin so near to Anne, I could not make a valid marriage to her…however, you will only use that if you have to, I do not want unnecessary…'

He nods. You don't want history to make a liar of you. In public before your courtiers you had me state that you had never had to do with Mary Boleyn, while you sat there and nodded. You removed all impediments: Mary Boleyn, Harry Percy, you swept them aside. But now our requirements have changed, and the facts have changed behind us.

‘So fare you well,' Henry says. ‘Be very secret. I trust in your discretion, and your skill.'

How necessary, but how sad, to hear Henry apologise. He has developed a perverse respect for Norfolk, with his grunt of ‘All right, lad?'

In an antechamber Mr Wriothesley is waiting for him. ‘So do you have instructions, sir?'

‘Well, I have hints.'

‘Do you know when they might take form?'

He smiles. Call-Me says, ‘I hear that in council the king declared he will seek to marry Lady Mary to a subject.'

Surely that's not what the meeting concluded? In a moment, he feels like himself again: hears himself laughing and saying, ‘Oh for Christ's sake, Call-Me. Who told you that? Sometimes,' he says, ‘I think it would save time and work if all the interested parties came to the council, including foreign ambassadors. The proceedings leak out anyway, and to save them mishearing and misconstruing they might as well hear everything at first hand.'