Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

occurring, unnatural conjugations of bodies, men and women and men and men. You feel nauseous, from the sticky heat and what you know of human nature, and you wonder why you have come. But you have been told that a man must go to the bath-house at least once in his life, or he won’t believe it when other people tell him what goes on.
     
     
    ‘The truth is,’ Mary Shelton says, ‘I would have tried to see you, Master Secretary, even if you had not sent for me.’ Her hand shakes; she takes a sip of wine, looks deeply into the bowl as if divining, then raises her eloquent eyes. ‘I pray I never pass another day like this one. Nan Cobham wants to see you. Marjorie Horsman. All the women of the bedchamber.’
    ‘Have you something to tell me? Or is it that you just want to cry on my papers and make the ink run?’
    She puts down the cup and gives him her hands. He is moved by the gesture, it is like a child showing you her hands are clean. ‘Shall we try to disentangle it?’ he asks gently.
    All day from the queen’s rooms, shouting, slamming doors, running feet: hissed conversations in undertones. ‘I wish I were gone from the court,’ Shelton says. ‘I wish myself in another place.’ She slides her hands away. ‘I should be married. Is that too much, to be married and have some children, while I am still young?’
    ‘Now, do not be sorry for yourself. I thought you were marrying Harry Norris.’
    ‘So did I.’
    ‘I know that there was some falling out between you, but that would be a year ago now?’
    ‘I suppose Lady Rochford told you. You should not listen, you know, she invents things. But yes, it was true, I quarrelled with Harry, or he quarrelled with me, and it was over young Weston coming to the queen’s rooms in and out of season, and Harry thought he was casting his fancy to me. And so thought I. But I did not encourage Weston, I swear.’
    He laughs. ‘But Mary, you do encourage men. It is what you do. You cannot help it.’
    ‘So Harry Norris said, I will give that puppy a kick in the ribs he will not forget. Though Harry is not that sort of man, to go around kicking puppies. And the queen my cousin said, no kicking in my chamber, if you please. Harry said, by your royal favour I will take him out to the courtyard and kick him, and –’ she cannot help laugh, though shakily, miserably, ‘– and Francis standing there all the time, though they were talking about him as if he were absent. So Francis said, well, I should like to see you kick me, for at your great age, Norris, you will wobble over –’
    ‘Mistress,’ he says, ‘can you make it short?’
    ‘But they go on like this an hour or more, scrapping and digging and scratching around for favour. And my lady the queen is never weary of it, she eggs them on. Then Weston, he said, do not agitate yourself, gentle Norris, for I come not here for Mistress Shelton, I come for the sake of another, and you know who that is. And Anne said, no, tell me, I cannot guess. Is it Lady Worcester? Is it Lady Rochford? Come, tell us, Francis. Tell us who you love. And he said, madam, it is yourself.’
    ‘And what did the queen say?’
    ‘Oh, she defied him. She said, you must not say so, for my brother George will come and kick you too, for the honour of the Queen of England. And she was laughing. But then Harry Norris quarrelled with me, about Weston. And Weston quarrelled with him, about the queen. And both of them quarrelled with William Brereton.’
    ‘Brereton? What had he to do with it?’
    ‘Well, he happened to come in.’ She frowns. ‘I think it was then. Or it was some other time that he happened to come in. And the queen said, now, here is the man for me, Will is one who shoots his arrow straight. But she was tormenting them all. You cannot understand her. One moment she is reading out Master Tyndale’s gospel. Next moment…’ She shrugs. ‘She opens her lips and out slides the devil’s tail.’
    So then, by Shelton’s account, a year passes. Harry Norris and Mistress Shelton are speaking again, and soon they have made it up and Harry is creeping to her bed. And all is as before. Until today: 29 April. ‘This morning it began with Mark,’ Mary Shelton says. ‘You know how he hovers? He is always outside the queen’s presence chamber. And as she goes by she does not speak to him but laughs and tugs his sleeve or knocks his elbow, and once she snapped off the feather in his cap.’
    ‘I never heard of this as