The Mirror and the Light

‘I am not here to speak for Barnes.’ In his mind he goes out of the room and comes in again. ‘I am here about Gertrude Courtenay, sir. We might release her. Keep the evidence on file. Her fault is credulity, which women cannot help; and loyalty to those passed away, a thing your Majesty understands.’

‘Katherine is never truly dead, is she?’ Henry sounds exhausted. ‘And there are some who will never accept she was not my wife.’

‘Lady Exeter will need means to live, so if your mercy further permits, I will arrange an annuity out of her husband’s lands.’

‘God curse him,’ Henry says. ‘Very well, release the woman, keep Exeter’s child in ward; I want no traitor whelp running free through the realm.’

He makes a note. Henry says, ‘Cromwell, could you have a child?’

He is startled. ‘I think you could,’ Henry says. ‘You are of common stock. Common men have vigour.’

The king does not know they wear out. At forty a labourer is broken and gnarled. His wife is worn to the bone at thirty-five.

‘I thought I would get another son from this marriage,’ the king says, ‘but there is no sign God intends it.’ He sinks into his chair, turns over a few leaves of paper. ‘We might write to Cleves this moment. You could write at my dictation, as we used to.’

He says, ‘My eyes are not what they were.’

So much for common stock. ‘But you still write letters,’ Henry says, ‘I am familiar with your hand. I want you to ask Wilhelm himself where those papers are, that show if his sister was married, because –’ He leans his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. ‘Cromwell, can we not pay her off?’

‘We could offer her a settlement, yes. I do not know how much we would have to find to placate her brother. And I do not know how to salvage your Majesty’s reputation, if you renounce a lawful match. It would be hard to hold up your head before your fellow princes. Or come by another wife.’

‘I could come by one tomorrow,’ Henry says harshly.

The door opens, cautiously. It is the boys with lights. ‘Bring candles here,’ he says. But the king seems to have forgotten the letter. Henry waits till they are alone again, but even then he does not speak; till the warm light diffuses through the room and he says, ‘You remember, my lord, the day we rode down to the Weald? To see the ironmasters, and find out new ways of casting cannon?’

An icy vapour breathes on the windowpanes. Henry’s diamonds, as he moves, look like steel beads, or those seeds that fall on stony ground. He waits, the quill beneath his fingertips. ‘Those were brighter days,’ the king says. ‘Jane could not travel, being great with my heir. She did not like me to leave her, but she knew we had long planned the excursion, and your lordship’s press of business being what it is, and the duties of a king being what they are, she would not ask me to forbear. I remember rising early and, it being about St John’s Day, it was light before the permitted hour for Mass; Jane said, will you tarry till your chaplain comes? And I tarried, because the fears of a woman in that condition, they must be heeded. It will be only two nights or three, I said, though we shall take it at an easy pace. We shall listen to the birdsong and ride, like knights of Camelot, through the woods. We shall enjoy the sunshine.’ Henry pauses: ‘The sunshine, where did that go?’

‘God made February, sir, as well as June.’

‘Spoken like a bishop.’ Henry looks up. ‘I want you and Gardiner to be reconciled.’

We tried that, he thinks.

‘At Easter, sit down together.’

‘On my honour, I will attempt it.’

Silence. He thinks, perhaps what I said was not good enough? ‘I will make peace if I can.’

The boys have not closed the shutters. He rises to do it. Henry says, ‘Leave those, I want what light there is.’ Beyond the glass gulls swing by, as if they have mistaken the towers of Westminster for a sea cliff.

Henry is watching him. His vast hands have fallen onto his gown, limp and empty. He says, ‘But when I think about it, Cromwell … I recall we never made that journey.’

‘Into Kent? No, but it was projected –’

‘Projected, yes. But always some reason we could not go.’

He sits down again, facing the king. ‘Let us say we did, sir. It is no harm to imagine it.’ England’s green heart: distant church bells, the shade of the trees from the heat. ‘Let us say the ironmasters gave us their best welcome, and opened their minds to us, and showed us all their secrets.’

‘They must,’ Henry says. ‘No one could keep secrets from me. It is no use to try.’

He goes out: one hand against the wall, he utters a prayer. The Book Called Henry has no advice for him.

The king has moved from his native ground: as if he has entered another realm where cause does not link to effect; nor does he care how he opens his heart. Think of the days when the Boleyns came down. The king had written a play, about Boleyn’s monstrous adulteries. He kept it in a little book in his bosom, and tried to show it to people.