VIII (18 page)

Of course there’s time. A new year has begun:
it is spring, again, and Catherine is pregnant – again. This is the year I will conquer France; this is the year I will have a son.

Surely.

A fresh-scented morning: everything outside is unfurling, new-green and dewy. I’m just back from hunting; I stink of horse sweat and my sweat; I’m smeared with animal blood and comprehensively mud-splashed. I am also happy. My thoughts are still with the chase: the hard riding, the perilous jumps, the horn blasts, the howling and barking and the wonderful sight of the bucks going down – lurching, torn, glassy-eyed.

As the grooms of the wardrobe deliver the clothes I want to the door of my bedchamber (only a select group of people, of course, are allowed to touch my sanctified flesh), a letter arrives. It is from Wolsey, who is deep in business – papers and ink, seals and figures – in his rooms at Westminster.

Reading, I swat away the men who are trying to unlace
my sleeves, take a step back and lean against the wall. My heart has done a flip, my hands are shaking, my pulse seems to be thumping in my stomach. I read the letter twice, get blood on it from my gloves and then leave the room at speed, pounding along the gallery in my riding boots and muddying the new rush-matting.

Guards twitch aside their halberds as I reach the entrance to a chamber; I slam open the door.

“Did you know he was going to do this?”

I’ve caught a glimpse of a tableau: ladies sitting in
well-bred
poses in a sunlit bay window, gable headdresses bent over their sewing; a scene of industry and quiet conversation. Now all heads turn to me. Seeing my expression, the faces suddenly blank; each lady gets up from her stool and sinks immediately into a deep curtsey. Some of the sewing – some of it my own shirts, halfway through being embroidered – has slipped down the sides of skirts to the floor.

The ladies remain in their curtsies; the figure in the centre rises again – very upright – and says, “My lord?” Catherine is studiedly formal; she is signalling as strongly as if she were waving her arms:
Wait. We are in public
.

I don’t give a damn where we are. I shout, “Did. You. Know?”

A small movement of her hand to her ladies: go. The ladies straighten and file out, almost stumbling in their eagerness to get away. The last shuts the door carefully behind her.

Once they’ve gone Catherine moves forward, her hands reaching out to take mine. “Hal, what’s happened? What’s the matter?”

I sidestep to keep my distance. “He’s pulled out of the agreement.”

“Who?”

“Your father!” I throw the letter at her. She makes a swipe to catch it, but it zig-zags through the air. She stands looking at me. I shout, “Your bastard, pox-ridden father! Not only that, he’s persuaded the Emperor out of it too. They’ve made sodding terms with the French. There will be no invasion.” I walk up the room and back again, take a glass dish from a table and smash it into the hearth.

For several moments Catherine hasn’t moved. Now she stoops, with difficulty in her boned dress, to pick up the letter from the floor – I don’t help.

She scans the paper, looks up at me. “Hal, he’s done this before. Can’t you still—”

“Yes, he’s done this before,” I say in a singsong
speaking-to-an-idiot
tone. “But
this
time I don’t have the money to mount a campaign on my own. I. Am. Destroyed.” I dig my hands into my hair. “
This
was the year. Christ!
This
was the year I was going to be crowned in Paris.”

“Any agreement made with the French won’t last.”

I stride over to her, take her shoulders. “Were you in on it? That’s all I need you to tell me. Because I know you have this, this—” I grimace in disgust, “
private
correspondence with your father, and I’m sure he advises you on how you should string me along like a dog, and I want to know just how much the two of you have been making a fool out of me.”

“He can write what he likes, my loyalty is to you.”

“Then it’s so strange – isn’t it? – that you don’t deliver.”

Silence. We hold one another’s gaze. I say, quietly and distinctly, “This is what you are for. Do you think I married you for love? I married you to give me an alliance with Spain. And sons.” I look down at her belly. “Will this one live, do you think? For a change?”

My God, her control is magnificent. Not a single muscle in her face twitches. But her eyes… She looks as if she is drowning.

Six months later, on a clear and crisp autumn day that I spend flying hawks, another small coffin is placed in the crypt of the friars’ chapel at Greenwich.

Four more winters pass. How do I stand it?
I cannot even bear waiting while they dress me in the mornings.

The old King of France dies in his bed, leaving no sons to succeed him. The King of Spain – Catherine’s father – dies, too, before I can take revenge on him for his shitty betrayal of my glorious plan.

I find that I am no longer the youngest ruler in Christendom. A horse-faced young duke named Francis is the new king of France; he is as keen on empire-building as I am, and has his sights set on Italy. In Spain, the new king is Catherine’s eighteen-year-old nephew Charles, who has been brought up Dutch and whose mother, they say, is mad.

How curious the world is.

And now the campaigning season has come round again. I am not in an incense-clouded Paris cathedral or even a gunsmoke-filled battlefield. I am not in France in any capacity. I am at Hampton Court, Wolsey’s redbrick palace
on the Thames. In a garden. Waiting, still, for my empire. Waiting, still, for my sons.

There is a child, though: a girl. Mary. Two years old now, she is standing next to me on the gravel path, staring at a clump of marigolds and pointing one small finger towards a bee.

“Stripy,” she says gravely. She watches it for a long moment, then she looks at me. “The bee is buzzy.” She frowns and corrects herself. “
Busy
.” Then she smiles delightedly. “The bee is buzzy too!”

I swing her up into my arms. Her face is level with mine. Carved beasts on green-and-white wooden poles stand sentry at intervals along the clipped borders: lion, dragon, greyhound, antelope, dun cow, unicorn. The unicorn is odd, short-snouted and fierce-looking, its white-painted body lit by bright sunlight against a background of dark, gathering rain clouds.

Seeing it, Mary squeaks and hides her face in the crook of my neck, one hand gripping the gold chain that lies across my shoulders.

In her stiffened bodice and thick skirts she is a solid little bundle, though she is small for her age. If I shut my eyes and open them again, can I will myself to be holding a boy?

“
Look
at it,” I instruct her. “You are not afraid of anything.”

She lifts her head. She is a pretty child, her eyes the same blue as the sapphires edging her hood. Her gown is violet tinselled satin, the cuffs fur-edged, the sleeves lined with green silk. She is studying the jewels on my collar now, tapping them to see if they will pop, like bubbles.

“Look at it.”

She looks. Then she brings her hands up in front of her, fingers curled like claws, and makes a little growling noise.

“Stop laughing, Papa,” she tells me. “I am fiercing the
monster.”

As I set the girl down, Catherine says, “Her women tell me she never cries.”

“Of course she doesn’t. She’s my daughter.”

The small girl in violet satin runs off, stops, comes back, does a wobbly curtsey to me, and runs off again. Catherine turns and walks after her. I watch my wife’s retreating back for a moment – the long thick skirts, the black veil. From the back you cannot tell that she is carrying a new child. It has been a long wait, this time: the first pregnancy in two years. But she has begun to have children who live. First the girl – and now I am certain that she is carrying the boy.

“The betrothal can take place this autumn, sir,” says Wolsey, suddenly at my shoulder, “but I am stipulating that they must not be married until the Dauphin is fifteen. That gives you plenty of time to change your mind. And, of course, time may change it for you: the Dauphin may not live to be fifteen.”

He is talking of Mary’s marriage; we are engaged in a dance of negotiations with the new French king. Francis has lately been blessed with a son – this dauphin. So, if Mary marries the boy, my son (the baby Catherine is now carrying) will rule England and my grandson – Mary’s son – will one day rule France. Except, of course, that I will conquer France long before that. There is time, as Wolsey said, to change my mind. For now it is just another finger in the pie.

“And they’ve agreed, have they? To the delay?”

Wolsey waves a hand dismissively. “They will.”

I look at him, expectant.

“Oh,” he says, “there’ve been lots of ridiculous queries and quibbles. You know the French, they’re incapable of a straightforward yes.”

I start off down the gravel path towards the house; Wolsey
follows. I say, “Queries? About what?”

“Well… most recently, the validity of your marriage.”

My pace slows. For a moment I’m silent, then I laugh uproariously. “God, don’t they love to take the piss? Ridiculous. Do they need to see the bloody dispensation?”

We pass through a door and climb the private stairs that lead to my lodgings. Wolsey says, “Sir, I would like to set a date for Princess Mary’s betrothal ceremony. Would you prefer it to be before the Queen’s confinement – or afterwards, so we know the outcome?”

Outcome. He means: whether or not the child is a boy. Whether or not it lives.

Whether or not, if Mary were my only heir, I would want to send her to France.

“There is no doubt of the outcome.” We reach the head of the stairs and turn left; as I approach the door to a chamber, it is opened for me; the view inside is of a handful of men talking and laughing and lounging on benches. One of the youngest looks pink with annoyance, as if he’s being teased. “We’ll have the ceremony at Greenwich, as soon as it can be arranged. Spare no expense. I want the French dazzled. All right?” I pat Wolsey on his well-padded shoulder and say to the room, “Tennis?”

“Yup.” Brandon’s already on his feet, reaching for the case of racquets.

“You’re too slow for me these days, I’ll play with Norris.” I take the case and sling it to Henry Norris, one of my new younger gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, an easy and dependable youth. Brandon is standing astonished, opening and closing his mouth like a fish.

“I don’t blame you, Brandon, but you do sometimes forget that you’re older than me. You’re, what, nearly thirty-five now? You’ve done well to keep up with me as long as you
have.”

At this there’s general laughter, and a sardonic comment from Bryan’s direction featuring the word ‘grandpa’.

“And you,” I say. Several men start forward eagerly. I click my fingers. “Damn it, I’ve forgotten your name. Boleyn’s son.”

A dark-haired youth, the victim of the teasing, steps forward, flushing pink again – but this time with delight. “George, sir.”

“George, come and run the book.” I grin at Wolsey. “Forgive me, Father. You know I’m just
not
interested unless there’s money on it.”

“Chances?”

“Ten to one. Against.”

It’s November – less than a month since Mary and the French prince were betrothed amid breathtakingly expensive celebrations at Greenwich. The Dauphin, who is not yet even a year old, did not attend in person – instead the Admiral of France, as his stand-in, passed the large diamond ring onto Mary’s finger. Mary herself behaved well, although she became fidgety during the sermon and had to be picked up.

Since then we’ve stayed on at Greenwich, and tonight Catherine is in labour.

At one end of the Great Hall Norris has set up an archery target on a wooden frame: in front of it, on a stack of boxes, stands a candle in its holder. We’re laying bets on whether I can put the flame out with a shot.

Some say you don’t need a direct hit to do it; the arrow’s tail feathers make enough wind as they pass. They don’t – I know from experience.

I’m not just aiming to hit the candle; I’m aiming to hit the wick.

“Come on, it’s impossible,” George Boleyn shakes his head. “Even if you were sober. Let’s make it interesting. Fifty to one.”

“One shot only.”

“Right.”

We’ve been shooting all night. We’ve been drinking all night too. Chairs, with cloaks slung over them, are ranged haphazardly around the great fireplace; on a long table nearby the cloth is bunched and ruckled, littered with remnants of food and with cups, some upright, some not.

Now, as I pass the shaft of my arrow under the bowstring and rest its head in position against my knuckle, I am watched by the eager faces of Boleyn, Norris, my cousin the Marquis of Exeter and Thomas Wyatt, the handsome young son of one of my councillors. Compton is there too, but he never looks eager, just amused and watchful.

I nock and draw.

I think:
Become the arrow. See it hit the target before you’ve even released it
. If you can do that, everything else drops away. It’s a beautiful feeling. There’s only the arrow and the target – and they’re not even two separate things any more. Arrow-target. Joined. All one.

Reflections of firelight and candlelight play in the dark panes of the hall windows. Beyond, under a black, empty sky, the world is crisp, clear and bitterly cold.

The arrow flies. It hits the wick; the flame goes out.

“I’m too damned good. Aren’t I?” I beam at George. “Cough up.”

“Um. I’ll write you a note.”

“This’ll do.” I take a spare arrow and hook it under the gold chain around his neck, lifting it clear and dropping
it into Compton’s outstretched hands. Everyone laughs.

We send for more drink, and I expound – somewhat woozily – on the relative merits of my son being called Henry, after me, or Edward, after my mother’s father.

Meanwhile, Wyatt and Boleyn have formed a plan to mark the moment the glad tidings arrive: they’ve ordered up a cask of good wine from the cellars and are even now rolling it, with curses and mishaps, up two ladders.

Wyatt, a tall youth of usually impressive strength, is now laughing so hard he has to stop and cling to the ladder weakly, leaning his forehead on a rung.

When he’s recovered himself, he and George hoist the cask up to balance on one of the cross-beams of the hall roof, at the end nearest the main doorway, where they tie it to the corner truss with a messy net of ropes. The cask’s end overhangs

the beam, with its stopper clearly visible. They’ve adjusted the stopper carefully so that it’s slightly loosened, but not leaking.

“So, sir,” George explains to me, “the man comes in, gives the news, you shoot off the stopper and we hold him under the waterfall—”

“
Winefall
,” corrects Wyatt.

“Mouth open…”

“He’ll be the first to drink the prince’s health,” says Exeter, looking suddenly solemn. “An honourable dousing.”

“Don’t worry,” says George. “We’ll give you next turn.” Exeter grins.

By the time the man arrives, more wine has been downed and the room is very slightly pitching when I walk. I’m wondering what the odds are now of me hitting the cask at all, let alone the stopper.

“Well, sir, is my son born?” I’ve aimed, drawn the
bowstring back. My eyes are on the stopper. Out of the corner of my vision, I can tell by the way they’re standing that Norris and Boleyn have taken the startled man by the elbows and manoeuvred him to stand under the cask – which of course he hasn’t seen. Momentarily, I wonder about the whole cask coming loose from its ropes and landing on the poor sod’s head; the thought makes me laugh and is not helping my aim.

My arms begin to ache. I realise, abruptly, that the man hasn’t answered. That there is, in fact, a weird silence in the room.

“Is my son born?” I repeat, my eyes still on the stopper.

“Your Grace…” begins the man. And hesitates.

Keeping the bow still full-drawn, I swing my arms down; the arrow is now trained directly on the man’s face. “Is my son born
alive
?”

In the silence I have sobered up in an instant.

“
Does the child live?
”

The man’s eyes are swimming. Despite his terror, he cannot hold my gaze. “Saving Your Grace, it… it is a girl. That is to say…
was
a girl. She lived for a few minutes. Long enough to be held, they said.”

I change my aim fractionally and shoot. Not at the messenger – the man’s legs buckle in relief. Instead, a pane of glass in the window shatters. Shards of painted glass – pomegranate seeds and rose petals, Catherine’s emblem and mine – rain into the black garden.