The Mirror and the Light

What the king is saying is preposterous. ‘Majesty, she has never strayed from her mother’s side …’

He steps back. He wants to walk away: for his own protection. He sees from the corner of his eye that Dr Chambers and Dr Butts have come in, with their modest caps, their long gowns. The king says, ‘I will speak with those gentlemen. No word of this should escape.’

No words escape from him, as he draws back from the king’s path. And no one addresses him, but clears his way, as he walks the length of the presence chamber and through the guard chamber and passes from view.

The two physicians are the first to seek him out. He is reading Wyatt’s letter, and lays it aside with the scenes it conjures, distant but clear. Wyatt is a presence even when he is absent, especially when he is absent. His letters are close narratives of diplomatic encounters. Yet, however tight you pin your attention to the page, you feel that something is escaping you, slipping into the air; then some other reader comes along, and reads it different.

Butts clears his throat. ‘My lord Cromwell, like you we are forbidden by the king to speak.’

‘What is there to say? We would speculate about the queen’s maidenhead. Such talk belongs to chaplains in confession, if it belongs anywhere at all.’

‘Very well,’ Butts says. ‘Now you know, and I know, and the king knows, that in such unmentionable matters he has been wrong before. He took the dowager Katherine to be untouched, though she had been wed to his brother. Later, he thought the contrary.’

Chambers says, ‘He thought Boleyn was a virgin, then he found she was unchaste since her French days.’

Butts says, ‘He knows the breasts and belly are evidence of naught. But just this morning he is ashamed and out of heart. When next he tries her it may be a different result.’

Chambers frowns: ‘You think so, brother?’

‘All men do sometimes fail,’ Butts says. ‘You need not look as though that is news to you, Lord Cromwell.’

‘My concern,’ he says, ‘is that he does not make this accusation again, that she is no maid. Because if he does I have to act upon it. However, if he says he mislikes her, has a distaste for her person –’

‘He does.’

‘– if he admits he has failed with her –’

‘– then perhaps you have a different sort of problem,’ Butts says.

‘I do not believe he has spoken to anyone,’ Chambers says, ‘except us. One or two of the privy chamber, possibly. His chaplain.’

‘But we fear the news will soon spread,’ Butts says. ‘Look at his face. Would anyone take him for a happy bridegroom?’

Also, he wonders, has Anna confided in anyone? He says, ‘I had better try and cheer him.’ Nagging at his attention is the treasure he needs to dispatch to York. He thinks, I do not want to be with Henry but I cannot risk his being with anyone else. I will have to dog his footsteps like the devil. He says, ‘What shall I tell the ambassadors of Cleves?’

‘Need you tell them anything? Let the queen speak for herself.’

Chambers says, ‘I do not think she will make any complaint. She is too well-bred. And innocent, perhaps.’

‘Or,’ Butts says, ‘perhaps of sufficient sense to see that that a bad beginning may be recouped. I have advised the king to keep to his own chamber tonight. By abstinence, appetite may increase.’

‘Time was when they used to display the bedsheets,’ Chambers says. ‘It is lucky those days have passed.’

But the king’s looks tell the tale. Thinks of all the people who crowded into the room at Rochester, to see him nourish love. At the first moment he saw Anna, he saw himself in the mirror of her eyes. From that instant it was written that there would never be love or affection between them. From that time he had no curiosity as to what he would find under her clothes: just teats and her slot, pouches of skin and hair.

He seeks out Jane Rochford. ‘Our opinion is, nothing happened,’ she says.

‘What does Anna say?’

‘Anna says nothing. Did you think we would fetch the men in this morning, to interpret?’

‘There are women who can do it.’ There are: because he has found some.

Jane says, ‘I think it is better if she keeps her own counsel and we keep ours, yes? If he has failed, no one wants to know that, surely? What can you do with the information?’

‘You are right,’ he says. ‘It is of no value. Therefore, take heed, it should have no currency.’

Rochford turns back to him, as if relenting. She says, ‘He lay on her, is our view. I think he put his fingers in her. C’est tout.’