‘The council has the cardinal under observation,’ Gardiner says, swishing past him. ‘They have had the ports closed.’
Norfolk says, ‘Tell him if I ever see him again, I will chew him up, bones, flesh and gristle.’ He writes it down just so and sends it up-country: ‘bones, flesh and gristle.’ He can hear the crunch and snap of the duke's teeth.
On 2 October the cardinal reaches his palace at Cawood, ten miles from York. His enthronement is planned for 7 November. News comes that he has called a convocation of the northern church; it is to meet at York the day after his enthronement. It is a signal of his independence; some may think it is a signal of revolt. He has not informed the king, he has not informed old Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury; he can hear the cardinal's voice, soft and amused, saying, now, Thomas, why do they need to know?
Norfolk calls him in. His face is crimson and he froths a little at the mouth as he starts to shout. He has been seeing his armourer for a fitting, and is still wearing sundry parts – his cuirass, his garde-reins – so that he looks like an iron pot wobbling to the boil. ‘Does he think he can dig in up there and carve himself a kingdom? Cardinal's hat not enough for him, only a crown will do for Thomas bloody Wolsey the bleeding butcher's boy, and I tell you, I tell you …’
He drops his gaze in case the duke should stop to read his thoughts. He thinks, my lord would have made such an excellent king; so benign, so sure and suave in his dealings, so equitable, so swift and so discerning. His rule would have been the best rule, his servants the best servants; and how he would have enjoyed his state.
His glance follows the duke as he bobs and froths; but to his surprise, when the duke turns, he smites his own metalled thigh, and a tear – at the pain, or something else – bubbles into his eye. ‘Ah, you think me a hard man, Cromwell. I am not such a hard man that I don't see how you are left. Do you know what I say? I say I don't know one man in England who would have done what you have done, for a man disgraced and fallen. The king says so. Even him, Chapuys, the Emperor's man, he says, you cannot fault what's-he-called. I say, it's a pity you ever saw Wolsey. It's a pity you don't work for me.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘we all want the same thing. For your niece to be queen. Can we not work together?’
Norfolk grunts. There is something amiss, in his view, with that word ‘together’, but he cannot articulate what it is. ‘Do not forget your place.’
He bows. ‘I am mindful of your lordship's continuing favour.’
‘Look here, Cromwell, I wish you would come down and see me at home at Kenninghall, and talk to my lady wife. She's a woman of monstrous demands. She thinks I shouldn't keep a woman in the house, for my pleasant usage, you know? I say, where else should she be? Do you want me to disturb myself on a winter's night and venture out on the icy roads? I don't seem to be able to express myself correctly to her; do you think you could come down and put my case?’ He says, hastily, ‘Not now, of course. No. More urgent … see my niece …’
‘How is she?’
‘In my view,’ Norfolk says, ‘Anne's out for bloody murder. She wants the cardinal's guts in a dish to feed her spaniels, and his limbs nailed over the city gates of York.’
It is a dark morning and your eyes naturally turn towards Anne, but something shadowy is bobbing about, on the fringes of the circle of light. Anne says, ‘Dr Cranmer is just back from Rome. He brings us no good news, of course.’
They know each other; Cranmer has worked from time to time for the cardinal, as indeed who has not? Now he is active in the king's case. They embrace cautiously: Cambridge scholar, person from Putney.
He says, ‘Master, why would you not come to our college? To Cardinal College, I mean? His Grace was very sorry you would not. We would have made you comfortable.’
‘I think he wanted more permanence,’ Anne says, sneering.
‘But with respect, Lady Anne, the king has almost said to me that he will take over the Oxford foundation himself.’ He smiles. ‘Perhaps it can be called after you?’
This morning Anne wears a crucifix on a gold chain. Sometimes her fingers pull at it impatiently, and then she tucks her hands back in her sleeves. It is so much a habit with her that people say she has something to hide, a deformity; but he thinks she is a woman who doesn't like to show her hand. ‘My uncle Norfolk says Wolsey goes about with eight hundred armed men at his back. They say he has letters from Katherine – is that true? They say Rome will issue a decree telling the king to separate from me.’
‘That would be a clear mistake on Rome's part,’ Cranmer says.
‘Yes it would. Because he won't be told. Is he some parish clerk, the King of England? Or some child? This would not happen in France; their king keeps his churchmen under his hand. Master Tyndale says, “One king, one law, is God's ordinance in every realm.” I have read his book, The Obedience of a Christian Man. I myself have shown it to the king and marked the passages that touch on his authority. The subject must obey his king as he would his God; do I have the sense of it? The Pope will learn his place.’
Cranmer looks at her with a half-smile; she's like a child who you're teaching to read, who dazzles you by sudden aptitude.
‘Wait,’ she says, ‘I have something to show you.’ She darts a look. ‘Lady Carey …’
‘Oh, please,’ Mary says. ‘Do not give it currency.’
Anne snaps her fingers. Mary Boleyn moves forward into the light, a flash of blonde hair. ‘Give it,’ Anne says. It is a paper, which she unfolds. ‘I found this in my bed, would you believe? As it happened, it was a night when that sickly milk-faced creeper had turned down the sheet, and of course I could not get any sense out of her, she cries if you look at her sideways. So I cannot know who put it there.’
She unfolds a drawing. There are three figures. The central figure is the king. He is large and handsome, and to make sure you don't miss him he is wearing a crown. On either side of him is a woman; the one on the left has no head. ‘That's the queen,’ she says, ‘Katherine. And that's me.’ She laughs. ‘Anne sans tête.’
Dr Cranmer holds out his hand for the paper. ‘Give it to me, I'll destroy it.’
She crumples it in her fist. ‘I can destroy it myself. There is a prophecy that a queen of England will be burned. But a prophecy does not frighten me, and even if it is true, I will run the risk.’
Mary stands, like a statue, in the position where Anne left her; her hands are joined, as if the paper were still between them. Oh, Christ, he thinks, to see her out of here; to take her to somewhere she could forget she is a Boleyn. She asked me once. I failed her. If she asked me again, I would fail her again.
Anne turns against the light. Her cheeks are hollow – how thin she is now – her eyes are alight. ‘Ainsi sera,’ she says. ‘Never mind who grudges it, it will happen. I mean to have him.’
On their way out, he and Dr Cranmer do not speak, till they see the little pale girl coming towards them, the sickly milk-faced creeper, carrying folded linen.
‘I think this is the one who cries,’ he says. ‘So do not look at her sideways.’
‘Master Cromwell,’ she says, ‘this may be a long winter. Send us some more of your orange tarts.’
‘I haven't seen you for so long … What have you been doing, where have you been?’
‘Sewing mostly.’ She considers each question separately. ‘Where I'm sent.’
‘And spying, I think.’