how to remember him. He left us bread and wine, body and blood. What more do we need? I cannot see where he asked for shrines to be set up, or instituted a trade in body parts, in hair and nails, or asked us to make plaster images and worship them.’
‘Would you be able to estimate,’ Henry says, ‘even … no, I suppose you wouldn't.’ He gets to his feet. ‘Well, the sun shines, so …’
Better make hay. He sweeps the day's papers together. ‘I can finish up.’ Henry goes off to get into his double-padded riding coat. He thinks, we don't want our king to be the poor man of Europe. Spain and Portugal have treasure flowing in every year from the Americas. Where is our treasure?
Look around you.
His guess is, the clergy own a third of England. One day soon, Henry will ask him how the Crown can own it instead. It's like dealing with a child; one day you bring in a box, and the child asks, what is in there? Then it goes to sleep and forgets, but next day, it asks again. It doesn't rest until the box is open and the treats given out.
Parliament is about to reconvene. He says to the king, no parliament in history has worked as hard as I mean to work this one.
Henry says, ‘Do what you have to do. I will back you.’
It's like hearing words you've waited all your life to hear. It's like hearing a perfect line of poetry, in a language you knew before you were born.
He goes home happy, but the cardinal is waiting for him in a corner. He is plump as a cushion in his scarlet robes and his face wears a martial and mutinous expression. Wolsey says, you know he will take the credit for your good ideas, and you the blame for his bad ones? When fortune turns against you, you will feel her lash: you always, he never.
He says, my dear Wolsey. (For now that cardinals are finished in this realm, he addresses him as a colleague, not a master.) My dear Wolsey, not entirely so – he didn't blame Charles Brandon for splintering a lance inside his helmet, he blamed himself for not putting his visor down.
The cardinal says, do you think this is a tilting ground? Do you think there are rules, protocols, judges to see fair play? One day, when you are still adjusting your harness, you will look up and see him thundering at you downhill.
The cardinal vanishes, with a chortle.
Even before the Commons convenes, his opponents meet to work out their tactics. Their meetings are not secret. Servants go in and out, and his method with the Pole conclaves bears repeating: there are young men in the Cromwell household not too proud to put on an apron and bring in a platter of halibut or a joint of beef. The gentlemen of England apply for places in his household now, for their sons and nephews and wards, thinking they will learn statecraft with him, how to write a secretary's hand and deal with translation from abroad, and what books one ought to read to be a courtier. He takes it seriously, the trust placed in him; he takes gently from the hands of these noisy young persons their daggers, their pens, and he talks to them, finding out behind the passion and pride of young men of fifteen or twenty what they are really worth, what they value and would value under duress. You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.
The boys are astonished by the question, their souls pour out. Perhaps no one has talked to them before. Certainly not their fathers.
You introduce these boys, violent or unscholarly as they are, to humble occupations. They learn the psalms. They learn the use of a filleting blade and a paring knife; only then, for self-defence and in no formal lesson, they learn the
Before spring comes, some of the poor men who stand at his gate find their way inside it. The eyes and ears of the unlettered are as sharp as those of the gentry, and you need not be a scholar to have a good wit. Horseboys and kennelmen overhear the confidences of earls. A boy with kindling and bellows hears the sleepy secrets of early morning, when he goes in to light a fire.
On a day of strong sunlight, sudden and deceptive warmth, Call-Me-Risley strides into Austin Friars. He barks, ‘Give you good morning, sir,’ throws off his jacket, sits down to his desk and scrapes forward his stool. He picks up his quill and looks at the tip of it. ‘Right, what do you have for me?’ His eyes are glittering and the tips of his ears are pink.
‘I think Gardiner must be back,’ he says.
‘How did you know?’ Call-Me throws down his pen. He jumps up. He strides about. ‘Why is he like he is? All this wrangling and jangling and throwing out questions when he doesn't care about the answers?’
‘You liked it well enough when you were at Cambridge.’
‘Oh, then,’ Wriothesley says, with contempt for his young self. ‘It's supposed to train our minds. I don't know.’
‘My son claims it wore him out, the practice of scholarly disputation. He calls it the practice of futile argument.’
‘Perhaps Gregory's not completely stupid.’
‘I would be glad to think not.’
Call-Me blushes a deep red. ‘I mean no offence, sir. You know Gregory's not like us. As the world goes, he is too good. But you don't have to be like Gardiner, either.’
‘When the cardinal's advisers met, we would propose plans, there would perhaps be some dispute, but we would talk it through; then we would refine our plans, and implement them. The king's council doesn't work like that.’
‘How could it? Norfolk? Charles Brandon? They'll fight you because of who you are. Even if they agree with you, they'll fight you. Even if they know you're right.’
‘I suppose Gardiner has been threatening you.’
‘With ruin.’ He folds one fist into the other. ‘I don't regard it.’
‘But you should. Winchester is a powerful man and if he says he will ruin you that is what he means to do.’
‘He calls me disloyal. He says while I was abroad I should have minded his interests, instead of yours.’
‘My understanding is, you serve Master Secretary, whoever is acting in that capacity. If I,’ he hesitates, ‘if – Wriothesley, I make you this offer, if I am confirmed in the post, I will put you in charge at the Signet.’
‘I will be chief clerk?’ He sees Call-Me adding up the fees.
‘So now, go to Gardiner, apologise, and get him to make you a better offer. Hedge your bets.’
His face alarmed, Call-Me hovers. ‘Run, boy.’ He scoops up his jacket and thrusts it at him. ‘He's still Secretary. He can have his seals back. Only tell him, he has to come here and collect them in person.’
Call-Me laughs. He rubs his forehead, dazed, as if he's been in a fight. He throws on his coat. ‘We're hopeless, aren't we?’
Inveterate scrappers. Wolves snapping over a carcase. Lions fighting over Christians.
The king calls him in, with Gardiner, to look through the bill he proposes to put into Parliament to secure the succession of Anne's children. The queen is with them; many private gentlemen see less of their wives, he thinks, than the king does. He rides, Anne rides. He hunts, Anne hunts. She takes his friends, and makes them into hers.
She has a habit of reading over Henry's shoulder; she does it now, her exploring hand sliding across his silky bulk, through the layers of his clothing, so that a tiny fingernail hooks itself beneath the embroidered collar of his shirt, and she raises the fabric just a breath, just a fraction, from pale royal skin; Henry's vast hand reaches to caress hers, an absent, dreamy motion, as if they were alone. The draft refers, time and again, and correctly it would seem, to ‘
The Bishop of Winchester is gaping. As a man, he cannot unglue himself from the spectacle, yet as a bishop, it makes him clear his throat. Anne takes no notice; she carries on doing what she's doing, and reading out the bill, until she looks up, shocked: it mentions my death! ‘
