should know her place, or be taught it. Howard sometimes grumbles in public: not about Henry, but about Anne Boleyn. And he has found it expedient to spend his time in his own country, harassing his duchess, who often writes to Thomas Cromwell with complaints of his treatment of her. As if he, Thomas Cromwell, could turn the duke into one of the world’s great lovers, or even into a semblance of a reasonable man.
But then when Anne’s latest pregnancy was known, the duke had come to court, flanked by his smirking retainers and soon joined by his peculiar son. Surrey is a young man with a great conceit of himself as handsome, talented and lucky. But his face is lopsided, and he does himself no favours, in having his hair cut like a bowl. Hans Holbein admits he finds him a challenge. Surrey is here tonight at Lambeth, forfeiting an evening in the brothel. His eyes roam about the room; perhaps he thinks Cranmer keeps naked girls behind the arras.
‘Well, now,’ says the duke, rubbing his hands. ‘When are you coming down to see me at Kenninghall, Thomas Cromwell? We have good hunting, by God, we have something to shoot at every season of the year. And we can get you a bedwarmer if you want one, a common woman of the type you like, we have a maidservant just now,’ the duke sucks in his breath, ‘you should see her titties.’ His knotty fingers knead the air.
‘Well, if she’s yours,’ he murmurs. ‘I wouldn’t like to deprive you.’
The duke shoots a glance at Cranmer. Perhaps one ought not to talk about women? But then, Cranmer’s not a proper archbishop, not in Norfolk’s view; he’s some petty clerk Henry found in the fens one year, who promised to do anything he asked in return for a mitre and two good meals a day.
‘By God, you look ill, Cranmer,’ the duke says with gloomy relish. ‘You look as if you can’t keep the flesh on your bones. No more can I. Look at this.’ The duke thrusts himself back from the table, elbowing a poor youth who stands ready with the wine jug. He stands up and parts his gown, thrusting out a skinny calf. ‘What do you make of that?’
That’s horrible, he agrees. It’s humiliation, surely, that wears Thomas Howard to the bone? In company his niece interrupts him and talks over him. She laughs at his holy medals and the relics he wears, some of them very sacred. At table she leans towards him, says, Come, uncle, take a crumb from my hand, you are wasting away. ‘And I am,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how you do it, Cromwell. Look at you, all fleshed out in your gown, an ogre would eat you roasted.’
‘Ah, well,’ he says, smiling, ‘that’s the risk I run.’
‘I think you drink some powder that you got in Italy. Keeps you sleek. I suppose you wouldn’t part with the secret?’
‘Eat up your jelly, my lord,’ he says patiently. ‘If I do hear of a powder I will get a sample for you. My only secret is that I sleep at night. I am at peace with my maker. And of course,’ he adds, leaning back at his ease, ‘I have no enemies.’
‘What?’ says the duke. His eyebrows shoot up into his hair. He serves himself some more of Thurston’s jelly crenellations, the scarlet and the pale, the airy stone and the bloody brick. As he swills them around his mouth he opines on several topics. Chiefly Wiltshire, the queen’s father. Who should have brought Anne up properly and with more attention to discipline. But no, he was too busy boasting about her in French, boasting about what she would become.
‘Well, she did become,’ says young Surrey. ‘Didn’t she, my lord father?’
‘I think it’s she who’s wasting me away,’ the duke says. ‘She knows all about powders. They say she keeps poisoners in her house. You know what she did to old Bishop Fisher.’
‘What did she do?’ young Surrey says.
‘Do you know nothing, boy? Fisher’s cook was paid to put a powder in the broth. It nigh killed him.’
‘That would have been no loss,’ the boy says. ‘He was a traitor.’
‘Yes,’ Norfolk says, ‘but in those days his treason stood still to be proved. This is not Italy, boy. We have courts of law. Well, the old fellow pulled around, but he was never well after. Henry had the cook boiled alive.’
‘But he never confessed,’ he says: he, Cromwell. ‘So we cannot say for sure the Boleyns did it.’
Norfolk snorts. ‘They had motive. Mary had better watch herself.’
‘I agree,’ he says. ‘Though I do not think poison is the chief danger to her.’
‘What then?’ Surrey says.
‘Bad advice, my lord.’
‘You think she should listen to you, Cromwell?’ Young Surrey now lays down his knife and begins to complain. Noblemen, he laments, are not respected as they were in the days when England was great. The present king keeps about himself a collection of men of base degree, and no good will come of it. Cranmer creeps forward in his chair, as if to intervene, but Surrey gives him a glare that says, you’re exactly who I mean, archbishop.
He nods to a boy to refill the young man’s glass. ‘You do not suit your talk to your audience, sir.’
‘Why should I?’ Surrey says.
‘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
