Wolf Hall (57 page)

The date of James Bainham's execution is fixed for April 30. He cannot go to the king, not with any hope of a pardon. Long ago Henry was given the title of Defender of the Faith; he is keen to show he deserves it still.

At Smithfield in the stand put up for the dignitaries he meets the Venetian ambassador, Carlo Capello. They exchange a bow. “In what capacity are you here, Cromwell? As friend of this heretic, or by virtue of your position? In fact, what is your position? The devil alone knows.”

“And I am sure he will tell Your Excellency, when you next have a private talk.”

Wrapped in his sheet of flames, the dying man calls out, “The Lord forgive Sir Thomas More.”

On May 15, the bishops sign a document of submission to the king. They will not make new church legislation without the king's license, and will submit all existing laws to a review by a commission which will include laymen—members of Parliament and the king's appointees. They will not meet in Convocation without the king's permission.

Next day, he stands in a gallery at Whitehall, which looks down on an inner court, a garden, where the king waits, and the Duke of Norfolk busies to and fro. Anne is in the gallery beside him. She is wearing a dark red gown of figured damask, so heavy that her tiny white shoulders seem to droop inside it. Sometimes—in a kind of fellowship of the imagination—he imagines resting his hand upon her shoulder and following with his thumb the scooped hollow between her collarbone and her throat; imagines with his forefinger tracking the line of her breast as it swells above her bodice, as a child follows a line of print.

She turns her head and half-smiles. “Here he comes. He is not wearing the Lord Chancellor's chain. What can he have done with it?”

Thomas More looks round-shouldered and despondent. Norfolk looks tense. “My uncle has been trying to arrange this for months,” Anne says. “But the king will not be brought to it. He doesn't want to lose More. He wants to please everybody. You know how it is.”

“He knew Thomas More when he was young.”

“When I was young I knew sin.”

They turn, and smile at each other. “Look now,” Anne says. “Do you suppose that is the Seal of England, that he has got in that leather bag?”

When Wolsey gave up the Great Seal, he dragged out the process for two days. But now the king, in the private paradise below, is waiting with open hand.

“So who now?” Anne says. “Last night he said, my Lord Chancellors are nothing but grief to me. Perhaps I shall do without one.”

“The lawyers will not like that. Somebody must rule the courts.”

“Then who do you say?”

“Put it in his mind to appoint Mr. Speaker. Audley will do an honest job. Let the king try him in the role pro tem, if he will, and then if he does not like him he need not confirm it. But I think he will like him. Audley is a good lawyer and he is his own man, but he understands how to be useful. And he understands me, I think.”

“To think that someone does! Shall we go down?”

“You cannot resist it?”

“No more can you.”

They go down the inner staircase. Anne places her fingertips lightly on his arm. In the garden below, nightingales are hung in cages. Struck mute, they huddle against the sunlight. A fountain pit-patters into a basin. A scent of thyme rises from the herb beds. From inside the palace, an unseen someone laughs. The sound is cut off as if a door had closed. He stoops and picks a sprig of the herb, bruises its scent into his palm. It takes him to another place, far from here. More makes his bow to Anne. She barely nods. She curtsies deeply to Henry, and arranges herself by his side, her eyes on the ground. Henry clutches her wrist; he wants to tell her something, or just be alone with her.

“Sir Thomas?” He offers his hand. More turns away. Then he thinks better of it; he turns back and takes it. His fingertips are ashy cold.

“What will you do now?”

“Write. Pray.”

“My recommendation would be write only a little, and pray a lot.”

“Now, is that a threat?” More is smiling.

“It may be. My turn, don't you think?”

When the king saw Anne, his face had lit up. His heart is ardent; in his councillor's hand, it burns to the touch.

He catches Gardiner at Westminster, in one of those smoky back courts where the sunlight never reaches. “My lord bishop?”

Gardiner draws together his beetle brows.

“Lady Anne has asked me to think about a country house for her.”

“What is that to me?”

“Let me unfold to you,” he says, “the way my thoughts proceed. It should be somewhere near the river, convenient for Hampton Court, and for her barge to Whitehall and Greenwich. Somewhere in good repair, as she has no patience, she will not wait. Somewhere with pretty gardens, well established . . . Then I think, what about Stephen's manor at Hanworth, that the king leased him when he became Master Secretary?”

Even in the dim light he can see the thoughts chasing each other through Stephen's brain. Oh my moat and my little bridges, my rose gardens and strawberry beds, my herb garden, my beehives, my ponds and orchard, oh my Italianate terra-cotta medallions, my intarsia, my gilding, my galleries, my seashell fountain, my deer park.

“It would be graceful in you to offer her the lease, before it becomes a royal command. A good deed to set against the bishops' stubbornness? Oh, come on, Stephen. You have other houses. It isn't as if you'll be sleeping under a haystack.”

“If I were,” the bishop says, “I should expect one of your boys along with a ratting dog, to dig me out of my dreams.”

Gardiner's rodent pulses jump; his wet black eyes gleam. He is squeaking inside with indignation and stifled fury. But part of him may be relieved, when he thinks about it, that the bill has come in so early, and that he can meet its terms.

Gardiner is still Master Secretary, but he, Cromwell, now sees the king almost every day. If Henry wants advice, he can give it, or if the subject is outside his remit, he will find someone else who can. If the king has a complaint, he will say, leave it with me: if, by your royal favor, I may proceed? If the king is in a good humor he is ready to laugh, and if the king is miserable he is gentle and careful with him. The king has begun a course of dissimulation, which the Spanish ambassador, sharp-eyed as ever, has not failed to notice. “He sees you in private, not in his presence chamber,” he says. “He prefers if his nobles do not know how often he consults with you. If you were a smaller man, you could be brought in and out in a laundry basket. As it is, I think those so-spiteful privy chamber gentlemen cannot fail to tell their friends, who will mutter at your success, and circulate slanders against you, and plot to bring you down.” The ambassador smiles and says, “If I may proffer an image which will appeal to you—do I hit the nail on the head?”

In a letter from Chapuys to the Emperor, one which happens to go by way of Mr. Wriothesley, he learns of his own character. Call-Me reads it out to him: “He says your antecedents are obscure, your youth reckless and wild, that you are a heretic of long standing, a disgrace to the office of councillor; but personally, he finds you a man of good cheer, liberal, openhanded, gracious . . .”

“I knew he liked me. I should ask him for a job.”

“He says that the way you got into the king's confidence, you promised you would make him the richest king England has ever had.”

He smiles.

Late in May, two fish of prodigal size are caught in the Thames, or rather they are washed up, dying, on the muddy shore. “Am I expected to do something about it?” he says, when Johane brings the news in.

“No,” she says. “At least, I don't think so. It's a portent, isn't it? It's an omen, that's all.”

In late July, he has a letter from Cranmer in Nuremberg. Before this he has written from the Low Countries, asking for advice on his commercial negotiations with the Emperor, matters in which he feels out of his depth; from towns along the Rhine, he has written hopefully that the Emperor must come to an accommodation with the Lutheran princes, as he needs their help against the Turks on the frontier. He writes of how he struggles to become an adept in England's usual diplomatic game: proffering the King of England's friendship, dangling promises of English gold, while actually failing to provide any.

But this letter is different. It is dictated, written in a clerk's hand. It talks of the workings of the holy spirit in the heart. Rafe reads it out to him, and points out, down at the bottom and running up the left margin, a few words in Cranmer's own script: “Something has occurred. Not to be trusted to a letter. It may make a stir. Some would say I have been rash. I shall need your advice. Keep this secret.”

“Well,” Rafe says, “let us run up and down Cheap: ‘Thomas Cranmer has a secret, we don't know what it is!' ”

A week later Hans turns up at Austin Friars. He has rented a house in Maiden Lane and is staying at the Steelyard while it is fixed up for him. “Let me see your new picture, Thomas,” he says, walking in. He stands before it. Folds his arms. Steps back a pace. “You know these people? The likeness is good?”

Two Italian bankers, confederates, looking toward the viewer but longing to exchange glances; one in silks, one in fur; a vase of carnations, an astrolabe, a goldfinch, a glass through which the sand has half run; through an arched window, a ship rigged with silk, its sails translucent, drifting in a mirror sea. Hans turns away, pleased. “How does he get that expression in the eye, so hard yet so sly?”

“How is Elsbeth?”

“Fat. Sad.”

“Is it surprising? You go home, give her a child, come away again.”

“I don't reckon to be a good husband. I just send the money home.”

“How long will you stay with us?”

Hans grunts, downs his cup of wine and talks about what he's left behind: talk about Basle, about the Swiss cantons and cities. Riots and pitched battles. Images, not images. Statues, not statues. It is the body of God, it is not the body of God, it is sort of the body of God. It is his blood, it is not his blood. Priests may marry, they may not. There are seven sacraments, there are three. The crucifix we creep to on our knees and reverence with our lips, or the crucifix we chop it up and burn it in the public square. “I am no Pope-lover but I get tired of it. Erasmus has run off to Freiburg to the papists and now I have run off to you and Junker Heinrich. That's what Luther calls your king. ‘His Disgrace, the King of England.' ” He wipes his mouth. “All I ask is to do some good work and be paid for it. And I prefer not to have my efforts wiped out by some sectary with a pail of whitewash.”