LITMIR.BIZ

       II Devil's Spit Autumn and winter 1533

      It is magnificent. At the moment of impact, the king's eyes are open, his body braced for the atteint; he takes the blow perfectly, its force absorbed by a body securely armoured, moving in the right direction, moving at the right speed. His colour does not alter. His voice does not shake.

      ‘Healthy?’ he says. ‘Then I thank God for his favour to us. As I thank you, my lords, for this comfortable intelligence.’

      He thinks, Henry has been rehearsing. I suppose we all have.

      The king walks away towards his own rooms. Says over his shoulder, ‘Call her Elizabeth. Cancel the jousts.’

      A bleat from a Boleyn: ‘The other ceremonies as planned?’

      No reply. Cranmer says, all as planned, till we hear different. I am to stand godfather to the … the princess. He falters. He can hardly believe it. For himself, he ordered a daughter, and he got a daughter. His eyes follow Henry's retreating back. ‘He did not ask after the queen. He did not ask how she does.’

      ‘It hardly matters, does it?’ Edward Seymour, saying brutally what everyone is thinking.

      Then Henry, on his long solitary walk, stops, turns back. ‘My lord archbishop. Cromwell. But you only.’

      In Henry's closet: ‘Had you imagined this?’

      Some would smile. He does not. The king drops into a chair. The urge arises to put a hand on his shoulder, as one does for any inconsolable being. He resists it; simply folds his fingers, protectively, into the fist which holds the king's heart. ‘One day we will make a great marriage for her.’

      ‘Poor scrap. Her own mother will wish her away.’

      ‘Your Majesty is young enough,’ Cranmer says. ‘The queen is strong and her family are fertile. You can get another child soon. And perhaps God intends some peculiar blessing by this princess.’

      ‘My dear friend, I am sure you are right.’ Henry sounds dubious, but he looks around to take strength from his surroundings, as if God might have left some friendly message written on the wall: though there is only precedent for the hostile kind. He takes a breath and stands up and shakes out his sleeves. He smiles: and one can catch in flight, as if it were a bird with a strong-beating heart, the act of will that transforms a desolate wretch into the beacon of his nation.

      He whispers to Cranmer later, ‘It was like watching Lazarus get up.’

      Soon Henry is striding about the palace at Greenwich, putting the celebrations under way. We are young enough, he says, and next time it will be a boy. One day we will make a great marriage for her. Believe me, God intends some peculiar blessing by this princess.

      Boleyn faces brighten. It's Sunday, four in the afternoon. He goes and laughs a bit at the clerks who have ‘prince’ written on their proclamations, and who now have to squeeze extra letters in, then he goes back to working out the expenses for the new princess's household. He has advised that Gertrude, Lady Exeter, be among the child's godparents. Why should only the Maid have a vision of her? It will do her good to be seen by the whole court, smiling a forced smile and holding Anne's baby at the font.

      The Maid herself, brought to London, is kept in a private house, where the beds are soft and the voices around her, the voices of Cromwell women, hardly disturb her prayers; where the key is turned in the oiled lock with a click as small as the snap of a bird's bone. ‘Does she eat?’ he asks Mercy, and she says, she eats as heartily as you: well, no, Thomas, perhaps not quite so heartily as you.

      ‘I wonder what happened to her project of living on the Communion host?’

      ‘They can't see her dining now, can they? Those priests and monks who set her on this course.’

      Away from their scrutiny, the nun has started to act like an ordinary woman, acknowledging the simple claims of her body, like anyone who wants to live; but it may be too late. He likes it that Mercy doesn't say, ahh, the poor harmless soul. That she is not harmless by nature is clear when they have her over to Lambeth Palace to question her. You would think Lord Chancellor Audley, his chain of office hung about his splendid person, would be enough to subdue any country girl. Throw in the Archbishop of Canterbury, and you would imagine a young nun might feel some awe. Not a bit of it. The Maid treats Cranmer with condescension – as if he were a novice in the religious life. When he challenges her on any point and says, ‘How do you know that?’ she smiles pityingly and says, ‘An angel told me.’

      Audley brings Richard Riche with him to their second session, to take notes for them, and put any points that occur to him. He is Sir Richard now, knighted and promoted to Solicitor General. In his student days he was known for a sharp slanderous tongue, for irreverence to his seniors, for drinking and gaming for high stakes. But who would hold up his head, if people judged us by what we were like at twenty? Riche turns out to have a talent for drafting legislation which is second only to his own. His features, beneath his soft fair hair, are pinched with concentration; the boys call him Sir Purse. You'd never think, to see him precisely laying out his papers, that he was once the great disgrace of the Inner Temple. He says so, in an undertone, teasing him, while they wait for the girl to be brought in. Well, Master Cromwell! Riche says; what about you and that abbess in Halifax?

      He knows better than to deny it: or any of those stories the cardinal told about him. ‘Oh, that,’ he says. ‘It was nothing – they expect it in Yorkshire.’

      He is afraid the girl may have caught the tail end of the exchange, because today, as she takes the chair they have placed for her, she gives him a particularly hard stare. She arranges her skirts, folds her arms and waits for them to entertain her. His niece Alice Wellyfed sits on a stool by the door: just there in case of fainting, or other upset. Though a glance at the Maid tells you she is no more likely to faint than Audley is.

      ‘Shall I?’ Riche says. ‘Start?’

      ‘Oh, why not?’ Audley says. ‘You are young and hearty.’

      ‘These prophecies of yours – you are always changing the timing of the disaster you foresee, but I understood you said that the king would not reign one month after he married Lady Anne. Well, the months have passed, Lady Anne is crowned queen, and has given the king a fine daughter. So what do you say now?’

      ‘I say in the eyes of the world he seems to be king. But in the eyes of God,’ she shrugs, ‘not any more. He is no more the real king than he,’ she nods towards Cranmer, ‘is really archbishop.’

      Riche is not to be sidetracked. ‘So it would be justified to raise rebellion against him? To depose him? To assassinate him? To put another in his place?’

      ‘Well, what do you think?’

      ‘And among the claimants your choice has fallen on the Courtenay family, not the Poles. Henry, Marquis of Exeter. Not Henry, Lord Montague.’

      ‘Or,’ he says sympathetically, ‘do you get them mixed up?’

      ‘Of course not.’ She flushes. ‘I have met both those gentlemen.’

      Riche makes a note.

      Audley says, ‘Now Courtenay, that is Lord Exeter, descends from a daughter of King Edward. Lord Montague descends from King Edward's brother,

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