The Mirror and the Light

At Westminster the king continues to visit the queen every second night. The Germans ask, ‘Majesty, when will the coronation be?’ He, Cromwell, reminds the council it was planned for Candlemas; but Candlemas is past. Norfolk says, ‘We know why you want her crowned. You think once the king’s laid out the money, he won’t send her back.’

‘Send her back?’ He has to simulate outrage.

From the queen’s side of the palace, silence. The women brush by him frowning: there is always somewhere they have to be. There’s a question he ought to be asking Anna, but he doesn’t know what it is; or perhaps an answer that she needs from him. In stories, when you are in the forest you meet a lady, veiled and shrouded, and she asks you a riddle. If you get it right her clothes fall off at a glance. Her body glides into your arms, and her light merges with yours. But if you get it wrong she withers into a hag. She puts her hand on your member and it shrinks to the size of a bean.

He brings Charles Brandon to Austin Friars. He shows him the leopard, with which Charles is well pleased, and then takes him into his confidence: the king now affirms that as he will never love the queen he cannot do the act. ‘Cannot, will not – to the state, it is all one.’

Suffolk looks grave. ‘Given up completely, has he? I didn’t know that. Does Thomas Howard know? Do the bishops know? Any other man, you could suggest …’

He cannot imagine what Charles is going to say.

‘You could suggest, try thinking about another woman. But if Harry thought of another woman, he’d want to marry her. Then where would you be?’

At court he studies Norfolk’s niece. When a man’s eyes rest on her, which is very often, she ruffles her feathers like a plump little hen.

Thomas Howard is to go to France, the king says. He wants to penetrate the mind of François and thinks a great nobleman might succeed. ‘It needs someone of my lord Norfolk’s stature,’ he says.

Young Surrey says to his hangers-on, ‘It is only by Heaven’s providence that the king has a nobleman left to send. Cromwell would extinguish us all, if he had his way.’

Wriothesley pursues him: ‘Sir, you see Norfolk is eager to begin his mission? When before, sent abroad, he always dragged his feet? And I fear his French is not adequate.’

‘Perhaps he will stay quiet and get a name for wisdom.’

Richard Riche says, ‘You might try that sometime, Call-Me.’

Norfolk will have the support of Sir John Wallop, now appointed resident ambassador. Valloppe, the French call him. He is an experienced diplomat, but he would not have been the Cromwell choice: too friendly with Lisle, for one thing. He has his boy Mathew in Calais now, so he knows what goes on in the Lord Deputy’s house. He is waiting for one incriminating letter to turn up on his lordship’s desk, or perhaps in her ladyship’s sewing box – a letter to, or from, Reginald Pole.

In the days before he embarks, Norfolk is seen at Gardiner’s house in Southwark. ‘It is natural my lord should take advice,’ he says equably, when reports are brought to him. ‘Because Gardiner was our ambassador in France for so long.’

‘It is not that,’ Wriothesley says. ‘They are working something together.’

‘Yes. Well. I am working something myself.’

When Norfolk sees the surprise I have for him, he will never stir from his hearth again.

The Lenten fast of 1540 is kept in the strict old manner, under the eye of Gardiner and his friends. It is as well to let them have their way in small things, where they are vigilant. Thurston gets them through on saffron bread, onion tarts with raisins, baked rice with almond milk, and a new sauce for salt fish made with garlic and walnuts.

On Valentine’s Day, preaching wars break out. Gardiner against Barnes, Barnes against Gardiner. They are both bitter men, but Gardiner has nothing to lose, while Barnes stands in peril of his life. Barnes will break, as he once did before Wolsey. It’s not his faith, but his temperament that will fail. He is not Luther. Here he stands: till Gardiner knocks him across the room.

The Londoners, crouching under makeshift shelters, jostling beneath oiled canvases, listen to their sermons with their eyes screwed up against the rain, their hair plastered and their ears a-swill. Yet old wives say we shall have a hot summer. For now, as the poet says, no fresh green leaves, no apple trees, but thorns. Iron winter has a grip, the day he goes to Henry to ask for mercy.

‘Is this about Robert Barnes?’ Henry says. ‘It appears I was much deceived in him. Gardiner says he is a rank heretic. And to think I entrusted him with England’s business abroad! You are close enough to the man, you were derelict in not knowing his opinions and laying them bare. I suppose you did not know them?’