Wolf Hall

‘Anything he can think of,’ Gardiner says. ‘There is no limit, that I can see.’

He says, ‘The king is good to those who think him good.’ He floats it to the bishop, below the music.

‘Well,’ Gardiner says, ‘if your mind is infinitely flexible. As yours, I see, would have to be.’

He speaks to Mistress Seymour. ‘Look,’ she says. She holds up her sleeves. The bright blue with which she has edged them, that kingfisher flash, is cut from the silk in which he wrapped her present of needlework patterns. How do matters stand now at Wolf Hall, he asks, as tactfully as he can: how do you ask after a family, in the wake of incest? She says in her clear little voice, ‘Sir John is very well. But then Sir John is always very well.’

‘And the rest of you?’

‘Edward angry, Tom restless, my lady mother grinding her teeth and banging the doors. The harvest coming in, the apples on the bough, the maids in the dairy, our chaplain at his prayers, the hens laying, the lutes in tune, and Sir John … Sir John as always is very well. Why don't you make some business in Wiltshire and ride down to inspect us? Oh, and if the king gets a new wife, she will need matrons to attend her, and my sister Liz is coming to court. Her husband is the Governor of Jersey, you know him, Anthony Oughtred? I would rather go up- country to the queen, myself. But they say she is moving again, and her household is being reduced.’

‘If I were your father … no …’ he rephrases it, ‘if I were to advise you, it would be to serve Lady Anne.’

‘The marquess,’ she says. ‘Of course, it is good to be humble. She makes sure we are.’

‘Just now it is difficult for her. I think she will soften, when she has her heart's desire.’ Even as he says it, he knows it is not true.

Jane lowers her head, looks up at him from under her eyelids. ‘That is my humble face. Do you think it will serve?’

He laughs. ‘It would take you anywhere.’

When the dancers are resting, fanning themselves, from the galliards, pavanes and almanes, he and Wyatt sing the little soldiers' air: Scaramella to the war has gone, with his shield, his lance. It is melancholy, as songs are, whatever the words, when the light is failing and the human voice, unaccompanied, fades in the shadows of the room. Charles Brandon asks him, ‘What is it about, that song, is it about a lady?’

‘No, it is just about a boy who goes off to war.’

‘What are his fortunes?’

Scaramella fa la gala. ‘It's all one big holiday to him.’

‘Those were better days,’ the duke says. ‘Soldiering.’

The king sings to the lute, his voice strong, true, plangent: ‘As I Walked the Woods So Wild.’ Some women weep, a little the worse for strong Italian wines.

At Canterbury, Archbishop Warham lies cold on a slab; coins of the realm are laid on his eyelids, as if to seal into his brain for eternity the image of his king. He is waiting to go down under the pavement of the cathedral, in the dank charnel vacancy by Becket's bones. Anne sits still as a statue, her eyes on her lover. Only her restless fingers move; she clutches on her lap one of her little dogs, and her hands run over and over its fur, twisting its curls. As the last note dies, candles are brought in.

October, and we are going to Calais – a train two thousand strong, stretched from Windsor to Greenwich, from Greenwich across the green fields of Kent to Canterbury: to a duke an entourage of forty, to a marquess thirty-five, to an earl twenty-four, while a viscount must scrape by with twenty, and he with Rafe and any clerks he can pack into the ships' rat-holes. The king is to meet his brother France, who intends to oblige him by speaking to the Pope in favour of his new marriage. Francois has offered to marry one of his three sons – his three sons, how God must love him – to the Pope's niece, Catherine de' Medici; he says he will make it a precondition of the match that Queen Katherine is refused leave to appeal her case to Rome, and that his brother England is allowed to settle his marital affairs in his own jurisdiction, using his own bishops.

These two potent monarchs will see each other for the first time since the meeting called the Field of the Cloth of Gold, which the cardinal arranged. The king says the trip must cost less than that occasion, but when he is questioned on specifics he wants more of that and two of those – everything bigger, plusher, more lavish, and with more gilding. He is taking his own cooks and his own bed, his ministers and musicians, his horses, dogs and falcons, and his new marquess, whom Europe calls his concubine. He is taking the possible claimants to the throne, including the Yorkist Lord Montague, and the Lancastrian Nevilles, to show how tame they are and how secure are the Tudors. He is taking his gold plate, his linen, his pastry chefs and poultry-pickers and poison-taster, and he is even taking his own wine: which you might think is superfluous, but what do you know?

Rafe, helping him pack his papers: ‘I understand that King Francis will speak to Rome for the king's cause. But I am not sure what he gets out of this treaty.’

‘Wolsey always said that the making of a treaty is the treaty. It doesn't matter what the terms are, just that there are terms. It's the goodwill that matters. When that runs out, the treaty is broken, whatever the terms say.’

It is the processions that matter, the exchange of gifts, the royal games of bowls, the tilts, jousts and masques: these are not preliminaries to the process, they are the process itself. Anne, accustomed to the French court and French etiquette, sets out the difficulties in store. ‘If the Pope were to visit him, then France could advance towards him, perhaps meeting him in a courtyard. But two monarchs meeting, once they are in sight, should take the same number of steps towards each other. And this works, unless one monarch – helas – were to take very small steps, forcing the other to cover the ground.’

‘By God,’ Charles Brandon bursts out, ‘such a man would be a knave. Would Francis do that?’

Anne looks at him, lids half-lowered. ‘My lord Suffolk, is your lady wife ready for the journey?’

Suffolk reddens. ‘My wife is a former Queen of France.’

‘I am aware of it. Francois will be pleased to see her again. He thought her very beautiful. Though of course, she was young then.’

‘My sister is beautiful still,’ Henry says, pacific. But a tempest is boiling up inside Charles Brandon, and it breaks with a yell like a crack of thunder: ‘You expect her to wait on you? On Boleyn's daughter? Pass you your gloves, madam, and serve you first at dinner? Make your mind up to it – that day will never come.’

Anne turns to Henry, her hand fastening on his arm. ‘Before your face he humiliates me.’

‘Charles,’ Henry says, ‘leave us now and come back when you are master of yourself. Not a moment before.’ He sighs, makes a sign: Cromwell, go after him.

The Duke of Suffolk is seething and steaming. ‘Fresh air, my lord,’ he suggests.

Autumn has come already; there is a raw wind from the river. It lifts a flurry of sodden leaves, which flap in their path like the flags of some miniature army. ‘I always think Windsor is a cold place. Don't you, my lord? I mean the situation, not just the castle?’ His voice runs on, soothing, low. ‘If I were the king, I would spend more time at the palace in Woking. You know it never snows there? At least, not once in twenty years.’

‘If you were king?’ Brandon stumps downhill. ‘If Anne Boleyn can be queen, why not?’

‘I take that back. I should have used a more humble expression.’

Brandon grunts. ‘She will never appear, my wife, in the train of that harlot.’

‘My lord, you had better think her chaste. We all do.’

‘Her lady mother trained her up, and she was a great whore, let me tell you. Liz Boleyn, Liz Howard as was – she was the first to take Henry to bed. I know these things, I am his oldest friend. Seventeen, and he didn't know where to put it. His father kept him like a nun.’

‘But none of us believe that story now. About Monseigneur's wife.’

‘Monseigneur! Christ in Heaven.’

‘He likes to be called that. It is no harm.’

‘Her sister Mary trained her up, and Mary was trained in a brothel. Do you know what they do, in France? My lady wife told me. Well, not told me, but she wrote it down for me, in Latin. The man has a cock-stand, and she takes it in her mouth! Can you imagine such a thing? A woman who can do such a filthy proceeding, can you call that a virgin?’

‘My lord … if your wife will not go to France, if you cannot persuade her … shall we say that she is ill? It would be something you could do for the king, whom you know is your friend. It would save him from –’ He almost says, from the lady's harsh tongue. But he backs out of that sentence, and says something else. ‘It would save face.’