The Mirror and the Light

‘I regret it was not to be. But this way, you owe nothing to the Emperor.’

‘Kings cannot choose where to bestow their hearts,’ Henry says. ‘I see I must frame myself to love elsewhere. But you can tell Master Holbein I am pleased with his picture of the Duchess Christina. I think she is standing in the room, and about to speak to me. Tell Hans I shall not part with it. I shall keep it to look at.’

‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Perhaps not in the new queen’s view, sir.’

The king says, ‘Give me some credit, my lord. I am not a barbarian.’

He goes to the Tower. He walks through the apartments where the queens of England sleep, the night before they are crowned; where Anne Boleyn spent her last days. Jane never lodged here, she never lived long enough to be crowned, there was always the plague or the rebels, or we were going to do it in York – but in the end we never did it at all. A tinker from Essex, drinking in the Bell not far from where he stands, has given scandal to the folk of Tower Hill by bawling in his cups that Jane was murdered by her own child. Edward will be a slaughterer, the wretch shouts, just like his father.

You know the end of this story. The watch comes, and bears the tinker away. What is such a fellow fit for, but to be whipped at the cart’s arse or hanged? Lord Cromwell stands before the image of the late queen, painted on the wall by an uncertain hand. He sees a pale round face, a fall of yellow hair. He wonders, will it double for Anna? Or must I repaint? I should not like to obliterate such a good lady. Anne Boleyn is lurking within the plaster, her dark gaze burning through.

He thinks, I wish the court would call Anna by that name, not use Anne. But women are to be named and renamed, it is their nature, and they have no country of their own; they go where their husbands take them, where their father and brothers send them. A trip down the street for them can be as big as a voyage across the sea. Jane Rochford talked about it once. I was given like a hound pup, she said, though with less thought: I was handed over, my future gone. (And her father, Lord Morley, such a grave and patient scholar.)

While he is at the Tower he visits Margaret Pole. No prayer book at hand, no sewing in her lap, she is sitting idle in a shaft of sun, which lights her long Plantagenet face; she looks like one of her foremothers, set in a glass window. ‘My lady?’ he says. ‘I trust you are comfortable. You must prepare for a long residence.’

‘Better than the other thing,’ she says. ‘Or does the king hope this winter will kill me? I see that would be a way forward for you.’

‘If you have complaints of your treatment, put them in writing.’

‘I know why you keep me alive. You still believe my son Reynold will come and redeem me. You think he will hand himself over for love of me.’ She considers him. ‘Would you have done so much for your mother, Master Cromwell?’

He is stony. ‘If you require anything, put that in writing too.’

‘You will soon know better about Reynold. He would not cross the street to save a woman, though she were the woman who bore him.’

‘He cares more for a plaster statue,’ he suggests.

‘In truth he envies me my state. He thinks I have the chance to earn a martyr’s crown.’

‘By being churlish to me? You can say what you like to me, madam. I have heard it all before. You can call me plain Cromwell or call me a cur. It will not alter my policy.’

‘I have noticed,’ she says, ‘common men often love their mothers. Sometimes they even love their wives.’

In the first week of September a contract of marriage is signed in Düsseldorf. Wilhelm’s envoys are on the road that same day, to carry the papers to England. Everyone is happy except Archbishop Cranmer, who says, ‘I am afraid, my lord.’

He stifles the impulse to say, aren’t you always?

‘To lack a common language, it is not a trivial thing. Believe me, I know.’

‘I thought you were happy with Grete.’

‘And so I was. But I chose her for myself. We had spent time together. We could not talk except through others. But we felt that ease between us, that betokened a happy household.’

He says, mischievous, ‘My lord of Norfolk says, no point talking to women, you can do your husband’s part without it.’

‘Norfolk?’ Fitzwilliam is coming in with the other councillors. ‘All he knows is to fell a maid and jump on her.’

‘I believe it,’ Charles Brandon says. ‘No way with women.’

Cranmer says, ‘Very well, you are pleased to make sport of me. But I do not believe the king should let others choose his bride. Did he not say to the French, bring your ladies to Calais, so we may talk? Did he not say, I cannot be beholden to any man’s choice, the thing touches me too near?’

‘He wanted to marry Christina without seeing her,’ Charles Brandon says reasonably. ‘He trusted her picture, and he heard Mr Wriothesley say she had dimples.’

Fitzwilliam says, ‘He had his pick before. He picked Boleyn. She was his choice entirely. His unholy mistake, which we had to clear up.’