He opens his mouth and shouts. What do they mean, leaving the king lying here, untouched by Christian hand, as if he were already excommunicate? If this were any other fallen man they would be enticing his senses with rose petals and myrrh. They would be pulling his hair and tweaking his ears, burning a paper under his nose, wrenching open his jaw to trickle in holy water, blowing a horn next to his head. All this should be done and – he looks up and sees Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, running at him like a demon. Uncle Norfolk: uncle to the queen, premier nobleman of England. ‘By God, Cromwell!’ he snarls. And his import is clear. By God, I’ve got you now; by God, your presumptuous guts will be drawn: by God, before the day is over your head will be spiked.
Perhaps. But in the next seconds he, Cromwell, seems to body out and fill all the space around the fallen man. He sees himself, as if he were watching from the canvas above: his girth expands, even his height. So that he occupies more ground. So that he takes up more space, breathes more air, is planted and solid when Norfolk careers into him, twitching, trembling. So he is a fortress on a rock, serene, and Thomas Howard just bounces back from his walls, wincing, flinching, and blethering God knows what about God knows who. ‘MY LORD NORFOLK!’ he roars at him. ‘My lord Norfolk, where is the queen?’
Norfolk is panting hard. ‘On the floor. I told her. I myself. My place to do it. My place, am her uncle. Fallen in a fit. Fell down. Dwarf trying to pull her up. Kicked it away. Oh God Almighty!’
Now who governs, for Anne’s unborn child? When Henry purposed to go to France, he said he would leave Anne as regent, but that was more than a year ago, and besides he never did go, and so we don’t know if he would have done it; Anne had said to him, Cremuel, if I am regent, watch yourself, I will have your obedience or I will have your head. Anne as regent would have made short work of Katherine, of Mary: Katherine is passed beyond her reach, but Mary there for the killing. Uncle Norfolk, lurched down by the corpse for a quick prayer, has stumbled up again: ‘No, no, no,’ he is saying. ‘No woman with a big belly. Such cannot rule. Anne cannot rule. Me, me, me.’
Gregory is pushing through the crowd. He has had the sense to fetch Fitzwilliam, Master Treasurer. ‘The Princess Mary,’ he says to Fitz. ‘How to get her. I must have her. Or the realm is done for.’
Fitzwilliam is one of Henry’s old friends, a man of his own age: too capable by nature, thank God, to panic and gibber. ‘Her keepers are Boleyns,’ Fitz says. ‘I don’t know if they’ll yield her.’
Yes, and what a fool I was, he thinks, not to get among them and suborn them and advance-bribe them for an occasion such as this; I said I would send my ring for Katherine’s deliverance, but for the princess I made no such arrangement. Let Mary remain in the hands of the Boleyns, and she is dead. Let her fall into the hands of the papists, they will set her up as queen, and I am dead. There will be civil war.
Courtiers are now pouring into the tent, all inventing how Henry died, all exclaiming, denying, lamenting; the noise rises, and he grips Fitz’s arm: ‘If this news gets up-country before we do, we will never see Mary alive.’ Her guardians will not hang her up from the staircase, they will not stab her, but they will make sure she meets with an accident, a broken neck on the road. Then if Anne’s unborn child is a girl, Elizabeth is queen, as we have no other.
Fitzwilliam says, ‘Wait now, let me think. Where is Richmond?’ The king’s bastard, sixteen years old. He is a commodity, he is to be reckoned with, he is to be secured. Richmond is Norfolk’s son-in-law. Norfolk must know where he is, Norfolk is best placed to lay hands on him, bargain with him, lock him up or turn him loose: but he, Cromwell, does not fear a bastard boy, and besides, the young man favours him, in all their dealings he has buttered him like a parsnip.
Norfolk is now buzzing from side to side, a maddened wasp, and as if he were a wasp the onlookers shrink from him, eddying away, then swaying back. The duke buzzes into him; he, Cromwell, bats the duke away. He stares down at Henry. He thinks he has seen, but it might be fantasy, a twitch of an eyelid. It is enough. He stands over Henry, like a figure on a tomb: a broad, mute, ugly guardian. He waits: then he sees that flicker again, he thinks he does. His heart lurches. He puts his hand on the king’s chest, slapping it down, like a merchant closing a deal. Says calmly, ‘The king is breathing.’
There is an unholy roar. It is something between a moan and a cheer and a wail of panic, a shout to God, a riposte to the devil.
Beneath the jacket, within the horsehair padding, a fibrillation, a quiver of life: his hand heavy and flat on the regal breast, he feels he is raising Lazarus. It is as if his palm, magnetised, is drawing life back into his prince. The king’s respiration, though shallow, seems steady. He, Cromwell, has seen the future; he has seen England without Henry; he prays aloud, ‘Long live the king.’
‘Fetch the surgeons,’ he says. ‘Fetch Butts. Fetch any man with skill. If he dies again, they will not be blamed. My word on that. Get me Richard Cromwell my nephew. Fetch a stool for my lord Norfolk, he has had a shock.’ He is tempted to add, throw a bucket of water on Gentle Norris: whose prayers, he has time to notice, are of a marked papist character.
The tent is now so crowded that it seems to have been picked up by its moorings, to be carried on men’s heads. He takes a last look at Henry before his still form disappears under the ministrations of doctors and priests. He hears a long, retching gasp; but one has heard the same from corpses.
‘Breathe,’ Norfolk shouts. ‘Let the king breathe!’ And as if in obedience, the fallen man takes a deep, sucking, scraping breath. And then he swears. And then he tries to sit up.
And it is over.
But not entirely: not until he has studied the Boleyn expressions around. They look numb, bemused. Their faces are pinched in the bitter cold. Their great hour has passed, before they realised it has arrived. How have they all got here so fast? Where have they come from? he asks Fitz. Only then he realises that the light is fading. What felt like ten minutes has been two hours: two hours since Rafe stood in the doorway, and he dropped his pen on the page.
He says to Fitzwilliam, ‘Of course, it never happened. Or if it did, it was an incident of no importance.’
For Chapuys and the other ambassadors, he will stick by his original version: the king fell, hit his head, and was unconscious for ten minutes. No, at no time did we think he was dead. After ten minutes he sat up. And now he is perfectly well.
The way I tell it, he says to Fitzwilliam, you would think that the blow on the head had improved him. That he actually set out to get it. That every monarch needs a blow on the head, from time to time.
Fitzwilliam is amused. ‘A man’s thoughts at such a time hardly bear scrutiny. I recall thinking, should we not send for the Lord Chancellor? But I don’t know what I thought he was to do.’
‘My thought,’ he confesses, ‘was, somebody get the Archbishop of Canterbury. I think I believed a king couldn’t die without his supervision. Imagine trying to bustle Cranmer across the Thames. He would make you join him in a gospel reading first.’
