The Mirror and the Light

Richard says, ‘Do you know that the king had Carew’s wife in his bed? Before Carew married her, and after?’

‘No!’ Gregory says. ‘Am I old enough to know? Does everybody know? Does Carew know they know?’

Richard grins. ‘He knows we know.’

It’s better than gossip. It’s power: it’s news from the court’s inner economy, from the counting house where the units of obligation are fixed and the coins of shame are weighed. Richard says, ‘I could like her myself, Eliza Carew. If a man were not a married man …’

‘Out of our sphere,’ he says.

‘When has that stopped you? It’s only a fortnight since you and the Earl of Worcester’s wife were shut in a room together.’

Getting evidence.

‘And she came out smiling,’ Richard says.

Because I paid her debts.

Gregory says, ‘And she’s big with child. Which people do talk about.’

‘Let’s go,’ Richard says, ‘before Carve-Away comes back. We might laugh at him.’

But their names are called: Rafe, whisking around a corner. He has come from the king, and his expression – if you could parse it – is a compound of reverence, wariness and incredulity. ‘He wants you, sir.’

He nods. ‘You boys go home.’ Then a thought strikes him. ‘But Richard –’

His nephew turns. He whispers. ‘Do you attend Sir William Fitzwilliam. See if he will stand my ally in the king’s council. He knows Henry’s mind. He knows him as well as any man.’

It was Fitzwilliam who came to him, last March, to spell out to him how the Boleyns were detested, and how this detestation might unite natural foes, give them a common interest. It was Fitzwilliam who hinted at the king’s own need for a change: who did it with the calm authority of a man who had known Henry since his youth.

Richard says, ‘I think he will follow your star, sir.’

‘Find out his hopes,’ he says. ‘And raise them.’

‘Sir –’ Rafe prompts.

He takes Rafe’s arm. A knot of gentlemen turn their faces, and watch them pass. Rafe looks over his shoulder as the gentlemen fall behind, arranged as if waiting for Hans to paint them: silken hose, silken beards, their daggers in scabbards of black velvet, crimson velvet books in their hands. They are all Howards, or Howard kin, and one is the Duke of Norfolk’s young half-brother, who shares his name: Thomas Howard the Lesser. No danger of confusing the two. The Lesser is the worst poet at court. The Greater never rhymed in his life.

Rafe says, ‘The king is not as sanguine as he appears. He is not sure now of what he believed yesterday. He says, is justice served? He does not doubt Anne’s guilt, but he says, what about the gentlemen? You remember, sir, what ado we had to get him to sign the warrants? How we stood over him? Now he has fallen into doubts again. “Harry Norris was my old friend,” he says. “How is it possible he betrayed me with my wife? And Mark – a lute player, a boy like that – is it likely she would sin with him?”’

Time was a king lived under the eye of his court. He ate in the great hall, spoke out all his thoughts, shat behind a scant curtain and copulated behind one too. Now rulers enjoy solitude: soft-slippered servants guard them, and in their recessed apartments noise is hushed. As the minister heads for the inner rooms, hat in hand, he institutes an inner process whereby he becomes pliable, infinitely patient. Usually, in cases of disturbance to the king’s peace of mind, he would call on the archbishop. But not in this matter. Since the former queen was indicted, Cranmer has had no peace of mind to spare.

At the door of the privy chamber he is ushered through. In the old days – that’s to say, a month ago – the king’s gentlemen would be vigilant to intercept him. You would expect Harry Norris, sliding out: I regret, Master Secretary, his Majesty is at prayer. And how long will he be praying, Harry? Oh, the whole morning, I don’t doubt … Norris fading away, with a charming smile of apology; while from behind a closing door he would hear a giggle from that little ape Francis Weston.

The courtiers ask, is it possible, really, that the queen was bedding such a grinning pup as Weston?

What can you do but shrug?

The king is seated, slumped, elbows on knees. In the hour since he left the public gaze his verdant sheen has greyed. Charles Brandon is with him, standing over him like a sentinel.

He makes his reverence: ‘Majesty.’ And a polite murmur, as he rises: ‘My lord Suffolk.’

The duke gives him a wary nod. Henry says, ‘Crumb, have you heard this story about Katherine’s tomb?’

Suffolk says, ‘It’s in every tavern and marketplace. At the very instant Anne’s head leapt from her body, the candles on Katherine’s tomb ignited – without touch of living hand.’ The duke looks anxious to have it right. ‘You need not believe it, Cromwell. I don’t.’

Henry is irritable. ‘Of course not. It is a story. Where did it start, Crumb?’

‘Dover.’

‘Oh.’ Henry had not expected an answer. ‘She is buried in Peterborough. What do they know of it in Dover?’

‘Nothing, Majesty.’