VIII (22 page)

“Marry
her
?”

Wolsey has turned the colour of porridge.

“And when… when did this idea occur to you?”

I don’t reply. Under my gaze, Wolsey sinks to his knees. “Sir, I am begging you. Not to.”

Silence. We are in a small chamber at Westminster; Wolsey is kneeling in a patch of sunshine, squinting against the light.

He opens his mouth, closes it; starts again. “Sir, kings do not marry for love. Surely you agree? That is what mistresses are for. Royal marriages are political alliances – made with foreign princesses. Not with the daughter of one of your own courtiers. This way, we… you, sir, would lose every single scrap of advantage that a new match could bring… And it would make the annulment a – a thousand times more difficult to achieve.”

I walk slowly into the shadows behind him. “I know why Lady Anne has refused me. Because she is sent by God.”

Wolsey turns and stares at me. “To be your
wife
?”

Bending to his ear, I whisper, “You are very quick.”

Then, briskly, I say, “And the annulment will not be so difficult to achieve as you pretend. Anne has already consulted her chaplains—” I see Wolsey’s expression. “
secretly
. They advise that it is a sin for me to keep Catherine as my wife a moment longer.”

There is a chair to one side of Wolsey. An embroidered chair, fringed with gold and decorated with his own coat of arms. I sit in it, hook my toe under a page’s stool to drag it towards me and prop my leg on it. I say, “The case is watertight. The Bible clearly states that a man may not marry his brother’s widow. The dispensation originally given was in error – what is written in the Bible is divine law, and the Pope cannot dispense with divine law.”

I spread my hands –
see
? I say, “We can open a private court – you can pronounce judgement within a fortnight. What are you Papal Legate for, after all?”

Wolsey is looking at my hands, unfocused.

“I am able to think for myself,” I say – and smile. “You should be proud. Your pupil has come of age at last.”

The key is new and ornate; I have had all the
locks changed. I slip it back into the purse at my belt and push the door open.

“Go on.” I nod to Anne.

She passes me and enters the small room, stopping in the middle of the floor to turn slowly and look about her.

It’s one of my most private spaces: a tower room built long ago for my mother. The small lattice windows are painted with her coat of arms. Outside it’s sunny and the coloured glass shines like jewels, but the room is shady and cavelike. Most of the wall space is taken up with cupboards and shelves stuffed with boxes and bags, books and documents.

In the dim room I see the gleam of Anne’s eyes and her small white teeth as she smiles.

“Feel free,” I say. “Explore. No secrets.”

She approaches a wall, trails a finger over a cupboard latch, along a shelf edge. She’s not sure what to open first.
Her hand reaches a box, covered in painted decoration. She lifts it down.

“What’s this?” she says, staring at the contents.

“A dragon. Dried.”

“Really?” She studies it with renewed interest, then puts it back.

She investigates shelves cluttered with astronomical instruments, leather- and velvet-covered boxes and several ornate clocks; cupboards out of which flop drifts of papers; others crowded with chessmen and jewelled hourglasses.

She loosens the strings of a green sarcenet bag and peers in. “A pair of spurs. Gilt. Old?”

“Henry V wore them at Agincourt.”

I’m lounging on a chair, enjoying watching her. I see her open a small box. “Scissors…” she says. And another. “Perfumes?”

“Probably.” Some of the boxes are so old I’ve forgotten what’s in them.

Next her fingers light on a flat case, covered in black velvet. She opens it. “Oh. And you.”

Inside, if I remember, is a carved wooden cameo. Anne considers it, her head on one side. “I think it’s quite like you.”

She grins at me quickly, then slides it back onto the shelf.

I say, “You’ll find jewels in there.” Her hand is on another cupboard door.

She glances at me again then dives in, fishing out boxes lined with small drawers – and in the drawers ropes of pearls, bracelets and brooches, necklaces, loose jewels, trimming for hoods and sleeves.

“You can have any of them you want.”

“They’re pretty,” she says at length, putting them back. “But I want Catherine’s jewels.” She shuts the cupboard. “When I’m queen.”

I watch as she picks up a dog collar. Sometimes she leaves me winded. Before I’ve recovered she says, “So. What’s the news from Wolsey?”

I push myself up and pretend to look for something on a shelf. “Oh, there’s a – uh, a small delay.”

“Why?”

“He says he needs to take advice. It’s all in hand.”

“Is it?”

She reaches out and tugs me towards her, by the sleeve; she pulls me very close.

In the shadows there seems to be something fierce about her, something other-worldly in the silky skin, the long neck, the pointed, elfin face.

“Are you sure?” she says.

“About what?” I stroke her cheek. “I’m sure about you.”

“Sure that it’s all in hand…” She closes her fingers round my wrist. “It’s a failing of mine; I don’t trust others much. I like to know exactly what’s going on…”

I study her. “But I think you do know… everything. It’s eerie. I think you can read my mind.”

“Can I?” She smiles. “Yes, maybe…”

We’re both laughing now, and I’m kissing her.

As I begin to kiss her neck, she tilts her head to one side. She says dreamily, “Tell me about Wolsey.”

I stop. We look at one another. Her gaze is entirely serious – not dreamy at all.

I disengage and lean my elbow on a shelf. “All right, he’s adjourned the case. He says it’s too difficult and he needs to take legal advice. But he’s given me guarantees—”

“Too difficult? Because?” Her eyes have narrowed.

I let out a breath. “The Bible clearly states in the Book of Leviticus that a man may not marry his brother’s widow. But elsewhere in the Old Testament, there’s a text contradicting
that—”

“In Deuteronomy, I know.” Anne moves into the light. She looks cool and elegant and human again. “But it deals with ceremonial law. It applies only to Jews, not Christians.”

“Ye-es. But not all theologians agree on that, do they? Wolsey thinks it’s unavoidable…” I hesitate.

“What is?”

“That the Pope must be involved.”

Anne has picked up and opened a box; now she snaps the lid shut. “But imperial troops have overrun Rome; the Pope is the Emperor’s prisoner.” She paces about. “If the trial is held there, do you imagine for
one moment
that the Pope will be allowed to make a judgement against Catherine, the Emperor’s own aunt?”

“The trial won’t be held in Rome. It won’t come to that. Wolsey has plans.”

Anne makes a noise in her throat, something like a laugh.

“He’s asking the Pope to send a document, specifically granting him authority to decide this case.”

Anne has stopped by a table; she’s fiddling with the stopper of a bottle. She says, “Do you ever doubt his loyalty?”

“Wolsey’s?” I glance out of the window. “I’ve known him a long time. Longer than you’ve…”

“Been alive?”

I smile. “Not far off it.”

She lifts the bottle, examining its surface. “Still. Catherine’s known him just as long. He may be working for her. What has she said?”

There’s an awkward silence. Anne looks at me sharply.

“You haven’t told her.”

I don’t move. I say, “I will.”

Silence again; we’re looking at one another. Suddenly I notice that the bottle she’s holding is engraved with an
entwined H and C – I go to her and slip it out of her hands. I say, “I just need to find the right moment.”

“Do you remember what my chaplain said? That it would be a high crime against God if you didn’t repudiate her straight away?”

“Progress is being made. Wolsey—”

“And what about my right moment, anyway?” she says. “I’ve turned down offers for this. I could be married and pregnant by now. I need to be sure.” Her thin fingers are on my arm again; their grip is surprisingly strong.

“Sure?”

She nods. “That I’m not wasting my time.”

“I didn’t want to trouble you when you’ve been
so busy with these… these negotiations. I mean with the French. So I ordered them anyway. One is purple velvet edged with ermine, three are cloth of gold, and then—” she counts on her fingers, “there’s one purple tinsel, one cloth of silver and one tawny cloth of gold—”

“Catherine—”

“Oh, and a couple of hoods. Black velvet lined with satin. The gable style suits Mary best, don’t you think?”

“Catherine.”

“Yes?”

We’re alone in her chamber. It faces south, across the Greenwich parkland, and today the sunshine is streaming in – a bright black light, almost unbearable. Having edged into the room, I’m standing in the shadows, just inside the door, sweating beneath my clothes.

God is all around: icons look down at me from every wall – Christ wearing the crown of thorns; Christ as the Man
of Sorrows, bleeding and attended by angels; the Virgin Mary with diadem and sceptre, balancing the Christ child on her knee. On an altar by the window, a gold monstrance blazes in the sun. At its heart, encased in crystal, lies a dull black splinter: a piece of the true cross.

Catherine is standing in the middle of the room, solid as a velvet-upholstered man-of-war, her prayer beads looped at her waist. A gold cross, heavy with gemstones, presses into the doughy flesh below her throat. Above it, her face bears an expression of such innocence – such openness. I am about to shatter her world.

I take a breath, then start, quickly. “Several wise and learned men have come to me with terrible news. They say that we are living in sin and always have been. They say our marriage is against the law of God.”

In my hands is a volume of the Old Testament, its embroidered cover imprinted on my fingers where I’ve been gripping it too tightly. I fumble for the page marked by a ribbon, then turn the book round and hold it out.

“Leviticus, chapter twenty, verse twenty-one. Read it.”

She doesn’t register the book – she’s still looking at me. I shove it at her; she doesn’t take it.

“Hal—”

“All right, then.” I turn the book back and read, translating the Latin: “
If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing… they shall be childless.
It means without sons.”

I glance up at her, then stare. “You’re not surprised?”

Her eyes are full, but her gaze is steady – tender. She says, “Something’s happened to you.”

“My conscience is disturbed.”

“I don’t mean that. What is it?”

I look at her, at a loss. Then I say, “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

A fly has come in through an open window; it lands on Catherine’s sleeve. I watch as it moves across the fabric; stops; moves again.

I look down at the Bible text; it swims slightly. I say, “There was a day… a while ago… I sat down to eat…” The colours of the illuminations are sliding and merging; I blink hard.

“I don’t know. Nothing looked the same.”

I haven’t heard her move, but suddenly here she is easing the book out of my hands, drawing me towards the window seat. I let her lead me. As we sit she says gently, “Go on.”

“Everything was so ugly.” The scene rises before my eyes again: the Presence Chamber; the crush of people, come to watch me eat; the greasy sheen of their hair, the pockmarked skin, their rank odour. And the colours of the tapestries, melting and running as I watched…

Our knees are almost touching; Catherine is holding my hands. She says, “And… how does everything look now?”

Like a child, I bury my face in her shoulder. The smell of her skin is so familiar; it feels like home.

After a while, without moving, I say, “Catherine, our marriage is cursed.”

“We married in good faith.”

“We were wrong.”

There’s a pause. She is breathing steadily. She says, “This isn’t the way to go.”

Abruptly, I sit up. Then stand. Move backwards, facing her. I say, “You have nothing to fear. You will be treated with great honour. You will lose no comforts: clothes, horses, land, jewels…”

She is standing too. “You are not yourself. You need me.”

“I need to be
free
of you,” I say, and leave the room.

Behind me the packed courtroom watches
me go: the lawyers, clerks, bishops. And the judges: two cardinals in their red robes. One of them is Wolsey, the other an ailing Italian named Campeggio, present at the Pope’s insistence. At the lower end of the chamber the common people gawp as I pass, making no noise except for shuffles and whispers. Merchants and their wives, shopkeepers, labourers – all have shoved and jostled for a viewing spot, and many who did not make it are squashed into the anteroom beyond or on the stairs.

I am wearing my public face: sober, dignified, gracious; fitting for a man struggling with his conscience; fitting for a man coming away from the opening day of the trial that will determine the validity (or otherwise) of his twenty-year marriage.

I don’t descend the packed staircase; instead I walk on, into an adjoining first-floor gallery heading north, and then strike north-west, as another gallery takes me diagonally
across the friary’s gardens and orchards. This leads straight into a new-built covered bridge that crosses the River Fleet and links Blackfriars, inside the City wall, with my palace of Bridewell just outside it.

It is a grey day, but hot and airless. The Fleet is an open sewer, its banks a public highway. The crowds here are as thick as the stench, their dusty, muddy clothes as brown as the water. As I pass the bridge’s windows I raise my hand to them in acknowledgement, suppressing the urge to grimace at the smell. A lone child shouts and waves – the rest gaze up at me dumbly.

Once over the bridge, in Bridewell Palace, I walk faster. Guards stand to attention as I approach, courtiers bow and curtsey. I don’t acknowledge them – I have dropped my public mask.

One of Wolsey’s men is waiting outside the door to my chamber: Thomas Cromwell. He’s a bruiser of a man in black velvet. I stop in front of him; dig my finger into his chest. “You can tell the guards: never let the common people into my Court again.”

“Yes, Your Grace. Your Grace—”

He’s got something to ask or tell me, but before he can say it I pass into the room and kick the door shut; it slams in his face.

Slumping into a chair, I press the heels of my hands into my eyes.

“Drink, sir?”

It’s a goblet, held out by one of my men. I take it and smash it into the hearth.

“They shout for her. Why not for me? Eh?”

“Who do?”

“The common people. The bloody rabble.” I fling my arms wide and yell at the ceiling: “‘Care for nothing, Queen Catherine! Heaven favours you!’… Damn them!” My fists
strike the chair-arms. “Can’t they see it’s an act? It’s calculated. She’s been
coached
, for Christ’s sake.”

I find that I do need a drink – urgently. I go to the sideboard and pour it myself; some of it slops over the side of the glass. “She went on her knees, do you know that? Grovelled at my feet in front of the whole courtroom, asking for pity, saying that she’s a foreigner and at my mercy, that she’s humble and obedient. And they treat her like she’s the bloody Second Coming.”

I gulp the drink; wipe my mouth. “And then when I stand up and say I have been in agonies of conscience… say I would be glad to find the marriage good if only someone could
prove
it to me, what do they do? They snigger behind their – their shit-covered hands.”

“Because they think you’re lying.”

I turn. My gentlemen attendants have melted away – perhaps at a nod from Anne. She is standing, unmoving, in the corner.

“Oh I
see
,” I say with sarcasm. “And do
you
think I’m lying, Anne?”

She looks back at me evenly. “No.”

It is nearly midsummer. The windows are open but the muggy heat is unforgiving. Anne – impervious, it seems, to the weather – is dressed in black, with only her face standing out pale in the shadows.

She says, “I think you
would
be glad to have it proved. But the only possible proof would be your son, standing here beside you now, aged sixteen.”

“Seventeen,” I say quietly. That child who lived for fifty-two days. “He would have been seventeen, this last new year.”

She looks at me, impassive. “Do you dream of him, ever?” she says. “He is your height, perhaps. Your colouring. Strong.
A great horseman. Skilled enough with a longbow to rival the best captain in your army. A leader of men in the making. Who loves and fears his father as a god.”

“You know, sometime I really must ask your brother about your favourite childhood hobby. I believe he will tell me it was tearing the wings off birds. Or drowning puppies.”

“I’m not being cruel. I’m reminding you why I am here.”

“You are showing me the prize, Anne – a son, an heir – without giving me the means to achieve it.”

Her eyebrows rise a fraction. “I have given you the means already.”

She has shown me books and pamphlets setting out arguments about the role of the Church. Saying that ancient histories and chronicles declare this realm of England to be an empire. That, as such, it is free from the authority of any foreign ruler. And that I, as king of England, have no superior except God.

Where – these writings ask – does it say in the Bible that a pope should have authority over a king?

Anne walks forward. In the centre of the room there’s a table strewn with papers relating to the trial. She stops beside it. “Have the case decided here,” she says. “Not like this,” she waves a dismissive hand over the papers. “Not under the Pope’s jurisdiction, under
yours
. Change your judges. Get rid of Wolsey. He has made so little progress he must be either incompetent or working against you: a nice choice. Get rid of this decrepit Italian cardinal, Campeggio. The Pope, I guarantee you, has given him a secret mission to delay and delay, until I am beyond childbearing age or we all topple into our graves from the tedium of it, whichever is the sooner. Instead, have the Archbishop of Canterbury try the case.”

I snort. “Old Warham? We’d get nowhere. He refuses to
act against Rome.”

“But what is he now – seventy-nine? Eighty? He can’t live much longer. Then you can appoint a new archbishop who sees the truth.”

I pour myself another drink; knock it back; look at her. “And if the case is decided without agreement from the Pope,” I say, “what then? Do you think he sends me a letter of congratulation and wishes me every happiness? Hm? I think he excommunicates me and invites all the kings of Christendom to come and deprive me of my throne.”

Anne walks up to me. She stands very close. She says, “Since when did England fear? Since when did
you
fear… anyone? France will support you against the Emperor. We Boleyns alone will give you ten thousand troops. Free of charge for a whole campaign season.”

I smile. “If you can raise that many, I’ve given you too much land.”

“I will lead them myself if necessary.”

“Christ.” I slip my hands around her waist. “I believe you would, too.”

“This is not about me,” Anne whispers, her face close to mine. “Or Catherine, or the Pope. It is about you – only you. God has spoken to you. So. Do you want to provide this empire of England with an heir – or don’t you?”