Wolf Hall: Bring Up the Bodies

‘Thomas Wyatt says you are studying to write verse. I am fond of poems, as I passed my youth among the Italians. If you would favour me, I would like to read some.’

‘No doubt you would,’ Surrey says. ‘But I keep them for my friends.’

When he gets home his son comes out to greet him. ‘Have you heard what the queen is doing? She has risen from her childbed and things incredible are spoken of her. They say she was seen toasting cobnuts over the fire in her chamber, tossing them about in a latten pan, ready to make poisoned sweetmeats for the Lady Mary.’

‘It would be someone else with the latten pan,’ he says, smiling. ‘A minion. Weston. That boy Mark.’

Gregory sticks stubbornly by his version: ‘It was herself. Toasting. And the king came in, and frowned to see her at the occupation, for he didn’t know what it meant, and he has suspicions of her, you see. What are you at, he asked, and Anne the queen said, oh my lord, I am but making sweetmeats to reward the poor women who stand at the gate and call out their greetings to me. The king said, is it even so, sweetheart? Then bless you. And so he was utterly misled, you see.’

‘And where did this happen, Gregory? You see, she is at Greenwich, and the king at Whitehall.’

‘No matter,’ Gregory says cheerfully. ‘In France witches can fly, latten pan and cobnuts and all. And that is where she learned it. In truth the whole Boleyn affinity are become witches, to witch up a boy for her, for the king fears he can give her none.’

His smile becomes pained. ‘Do not spread this about the household.’

Gregory says happily, ‘Too late, the household has spread it about me.’

He remembers Jane Rochford saying to him, it must be two years back: ‘The queen has boasted she will give Katherine’s daughter a breakfast she will not recover from.’

Merry at breakfast, dead by dinner. It was what they used to say about the sweating sickness, that killed his wife and daughters. And unnatural ends, when they occur, are usually swifter than that; they cut down at a stroke.

‘I am going to my rooms,’ he says. ‘I have to draw up a paper. Do not let me be interrupted. Richard may come in if he will.’

‘What about me, can I come in? For instance, if the house were on fire, you would like to hear of it?’

‘Not from you. Why would I believe you?’ He pats his son. Hurries off to his private room and shuts the door.

The meeting with Norfolk has, on the face of it, no pay-off. But. He takes his paper. At the top he writes:

THOMAS BOLEYN

This is the lady’s father. He pictures him in his mind. An upright man, still lithe, proud of his looks, who pays great attention to turning himself out, just like his son George: a man to test the ingenuity of London goldsmiths, and to swivel around his fingers jewels which he says have been given him by foreign rulers. These many years he has served Henry as a diplomat, a trade for which he is fitted by his cold emollience. He is not a man wedded to action, Boleyn, but rather a man who stands by, smirking and stroking his beard; he thinks he looks enigmatic, but instead he looks as if he’s pleasuring himself.

Still, he knew how to act when the chance presented itself, how to set his family climbing, climbing, to the highest branches of the tree. It’s cold up there when the wind blows, the cutting wind of 1536.

As we know, his title of Earl of Wiltshire seems to him insufficient to indicate his special status, so he has invented for himself a French title, Monseigneur. And it gives him pleasure, to be so addressed. He lets it be known this title should be universally adopted. From whether the courtiers comply, you can tell a great deal about where they stand.

He writes:

Monseigneur: All the Boleyns. Their women. Their chaplains. Their servants.

All the Boleyn toadies in the privy chamber, that is to say,

Henry Norris

Francis Weston

William Brereton, etc.

But plain old ‘Wiltshire’, delivered in accents brisk:

The Duke of Norfolk.

Sir Nicholas Carew (of the privy chamber) who is cousin to Edward Seymour, and married to the sister of:

Sir Francis Bryan, cousin to the Boleyns, but cousin to the Seymours also, and friend of:

Mr Treasurer, William Fitzwilliam.

He looks at this list. He adds the names of two grandees:

The Marquis of Exeter, Henry Courtenay.

Henry Pole, Lord Montague.

These are the old families of England; they draw their claims from ancient lines; they smart, more than any of us, under the pretensions of the Boleyns.

He rolls up his paper. Norfolk, Carew, Fitz. Francis Bryan. The Courtenays, the Montagues, and their ilk. And Suffolk, who hates Anne. It is a set of names. You cannot take too much from it. These people are not necessarily friends of each other. They are just, to one degree and another, friends of the old dispensation and enemies of the Boleyns.

He closes his eyes. He sits, his breathing calm. In his mind, a picture appears. A lofty hall. Into which he