LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘I wonder what fish this purports to be?’ Cranmer says with mild interest. ‘Naturally I am delighted. But I knew it, you see, because this marriage is clean – why would not God bless it with offspring? And with an heir?’

      ‘Of course, with an heir. Look.’ He takes out the papers he has been working on. Cranmer washes his fishy fingers and hunches towards the candle flame. ‘So after Easter,’ he says, reading, ‘it will be against the law and the king's prerogative to make an appeal in any matter to the Pope. So there is Katherine's suit dead and buried. And I, Canterbury, can decide the king's cause in our own courts. Well, this has been long enough coming.’

      He laughs. ‘You were long enough coming.’ Cranmer was in Mantua when he heard of the honour the king intended for him. He began his journey circuitously: Stephen Vaughan met him at Lyons, and hustled him over the winter roads and through the snowdrifts of Picardy to the boat. ‘Why did you delay? Doesn't every boy want to be an archbishop? Though not me, if I think back. What I wanted was my own bear.’

      Cranmer looks at him, his expression speculative. ‘I'm sure that could be arranged for you.’

      Gregory has asked him, how will we know when Dr Cranmer is making a joke? He has told him, you won't, they are as rare as apple blossom in January. And now, for some weeks, he will be half-fearful that a bear will turn up at his door. As they part that day, Cranmer glances up from the table and says, ‘Of course, I don't officially know.’

      ‘About the child?’

      ‘About the marriage. As I am to be judge in the matter of the king's old marriage, it would not be proper for me to hear that his new one has already taken place.’

      ‘Right,’ he says. ‘What Rowland gets up to in the early hours of the morning is a matter for himself alone.’ He leaves Cranmer with head bowed over the remains of their meal, as if studying to reassemble the fish.

      As our severance from the Vatican is not yet complete, we cannot have a new archbishop unless the Pope appoints him. Delegates in Rome are empowered to say anything, promise anything, pro tem, to get Clement to agree. The king says, aghast, ‘Do you know how much the papal bulls cost, for Canterbury? And that I shall have to pay for them? And you know how much it costs to install him?’ He adds, ‘It must be done properly, of course, nothing omitted, nothing scanted.’

      ‘It will be the last money Your Majesty sends to Rome, if it rests with me.’

      ‘And do you know,’ the king says, as if he has discovered something astonishing, ‘that Cranmer has not a penny of his own? He can contribute nothing.’

      He borrows the money, on the Crown's behalf, from a rich Genovese he knows called Salvago. To persuade him into the loan, he sends around to his house an engraving which he knows Sebastian covets. It shows a young man standing in a garden, his eyes turned upwards to an empty window, at which it is to be hoped very soon a lady will appear; her scent hangs already in the air, and birds on the boughs look enquiringly into the vacancy, ready to sing. In his two hands the young man holds a book; it is a book shaped like a heart.

      Cranmer sits on committees every day, in back rooms at Westminster. He is writing a paper for the king, to show that even if his brother's marriage to Katherine was not consummated, it does not affect the case for the annulment, for certainly they intended to be married, and that intention creates affinity; also, in the nights they spent together, it must have been their intention to make children, even if they did not go about it the right way. In order not to make a liar out of Henry or Katherine, one or the other, the committee men think up circumstances in which the match may have been partly consummated, or somewhat consummated, and to do this they have to imagine every disaster and shame that can occur between a man and a woman alone in a room in the dark. Do you like the work, he enquires; looking at their hunched and dusty persons, he judges them to have the experience they need. Cranmer in his writing keeps calling the queen ‘the most serene Katherine', as if to separate her untroubled face, framed by a linen pillow, from the indignities being forced on her lower body: the boy's fumbling and scrabbling, the pawing at her thighs.

      Meanwhile Anne, the hidden Queen of England, breaks free from her gentleman companions as she walks through a gallery at Whitehall; she laughs as she breaks into a trot, almost a skip, and they reach out to contain her, as if she is dangerous, but she flings their hands away from her, laughing. ‘Do you know, I have a great longing to eat apples? The king says it means I am having a baby, but I tell him no, no, it can't be that …’ She whirls around, around again. She flushes, tears bounce out of her eyes and seem to fly away from her like the waters of an unregulated fountain.

      Thomas Wyatt pushes through the crowd. ‘Anne …’ He snatches at her hands, he pulls her towards him. ‘Anne, hush, sweetheart … hush …’ She collapses into hiccupping sobs, folding herself against his shoulder. Wyatt holds her fast; his eyes travel around, as if he had found himself naked in the road, and is looking for some traveller to come along with a garment to cover his shame. Among the bystanders is Chapuys; the ambassador makes a rapid, purposeful exit, his little legs working, a sneer stamped on his face.

      So that's the news sped to the Emperor. It would have been good if the old marriage were out, the new marriage in, confirmed to Europe before Anne's happy state were announced. But then, life is never perfect for the servant of a prince; as Thomas More used to say, we should not look to go to Heaven on feather beds.

      Two days later he is alone with Anne; she is tucked into a window embrasure, eyes closed, basking like a cat in a scarce shaft of winter sun. She stretches out her hand to him, hardly knowing who he is; any man will do? He takes her fingertips. Her black eyes snap open. It's like a shop when the shutters are taken down: good morning, Master Cromwell, what can we sell each other today?

      ‘I am tired of Mary,’ she says. ‘And I would like to be rid of her.’

      Does she mean Katherine's daughter, the princess? ‘She should be married,’ she says, ‘and out of my way. I never want to have to see her. I don't want to have to think about her. I have long imagined her married to some obscure person.’

      He waits, still wondering.

      ‘I don't suppose she would be a bad wife, for somebody who was prepared to keep her chained to the wall.’

      ‘Ah. Mary your sister.’

      ‘What did you think? Oh,’ she laughs, ‘you thought I meant Mary the king's bastard. Well, now you put it in my mind, she should be married too. What age is she?’

      ‘Seventeen this year.’

      ‘And still a dwarf?’ Anne doesn't wait for an answer. ‘I shall find some old gentleman for her, some very honourable feeble old gentleman, who will get no children on her and whom I will pay to stay away from court. But as for Lady Carey, what is to be done? She cannot marry you. We tease her that you are her choice. Some ladies have a secret preference for common men. We say, Mary, oh, how you long to repose in the arms of the blacksmith … even at the thought, you are growing hot.’

      ‘Are you happy?’ he asks her.

      ‘Yes.’ She drops her eyes, and her small hands rest on her ribcage. ‘Yes, because of this. You see,’ she says slowly, ‘I was always desired. But now I am valued. And that is a different thing, I find.’

      He pauses, to let her think her own thoughts: which he sees are precious to her. ‘So,’ she says, ‘you have a nephew Richard, a Tudor of sorts, though I am sure I cannot understand how that came about.’

      ‘I can draw out for you the tree of descent.’

      She shakes her head, smiling. ‘I wouldn't give you the trouble. Since this,’ her fingers slip downwards, ‘I wake up in the morning and I scarcely remember my name. I always wondered why women were foolish, and now I know.’

      ‘You mentioned my nephew.’

      ‘I have seen him with you. He looks a determined boy. He might do for her. What she wants are furs and jewels. You can give her those, can't you? And a child

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