Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

any good to her.’
    ‘Did you not go to her, to comfort her? She being your mistress?’
    ‘No. I went looking for you.’ She checks herself, her tone suddenly sobered. ‘We – her women – we want to speak out and save ourselves. We are afraid she is not honest and that we will be blamed for concealing it.’
    ‘In the summer,’ he says, ‘not last summer but the one before, you said to me that you believed the queen was desperate to get a child, and was afraid the king could not give her one. You said he could not satisfy the queen. Will you repeat it now?’
    ‘I’m surprised you don’t have a note of our talk.’
    ‘It was a long talk, and – with respect to you, my lady – more full of hints than particulars. I want to know what you would stand to, if you were to be put on oath before a court.’
    ‘Who is to be tried?’
    ‘That is what I am hoping to determine. With your kind help.’
    He hears these phrases flow out of him. With your kind help. Yourself not offended. Saving his Majesty.
    ‘You know it has come out about Norris and Weston,’ she says. ‘How they have declared their love for her. They are not the only ones.’
    ‘You do not take it as just a form of courtesy?’
    ‘For courtesy, you do not sneak around in the dark. On and off barges. Slipping through gates by torchlight. Bribes to the porters. It has been happening these two years and more. You cannot know who you have seen, where and when. You would be sharp if you could catch any of them.’ She pauses, to be sure she has his attention. ‘Let us say the court is at Greenwich. You see a certain gentleman, one who waits on the king. And you suppose his tour of duty is over, and you imagine him to be in the country; but then you are about your own duties with the queen, and you see him whisking around the corner. You think, why are you here? Norris, is that you? Many a time I have thought some one of them is at Westminster, and then I spy him at Richmond. Or he is supposed to be at Greenwich, and there he is at Hampton Court.’
    ‘If they change their duties among themselves, it is no matter.’
    ‘But I do not mean that. It is not the times, Master Secretary. It is the places. It is the queen’s gallery, it is her antechamber, it is her threshold, and sometimes the garden stair, or a little gate left unlocked by some inadvertence.’ She leans forward, and her fingertips brush his hand as it lies on his papers. ‘I mean they come and go by night. And if anyone enquires why they should be there, they say they are on a private message from the king, they cannot say to whom.’
    He nods. The privy chamber carry unwritten messages, it is one of their tasks. They come and go between the king and his peers, sometimes between the king and foreign ambassadors, and no doubt between the king and his wife. They do not brook questioning. They cannot be held to account.
    Lady Rochford sits back. She says softly, ‘Before they were married, she used to practise with Henry in the French fashion. You know what I mean.’
    ‘I have no idea what you mean. Were you ever in France yourself?’
    ‘No. I thought you were.’
    ‘As a soldier. Among the military, the ars amatoria is not refined.’
    She considers this. A hardness creeps into her voice. ‘You wish to shame me out of saying what I must say, but I am no virgin girl, I see no reason not to speak. She induced Henry to put his seed otherwise than he should have. So now he berates her, that she caused him to do so.’
    ‘Opportunities lost. I understand.’ Seed gone to waste, slid away in some crevice of her body or down her throat. When he could have been seeing to her in the honest English way.
    ‘He calls it a filthy proceeding. But God love him, Henry does not know where filth begins. My husband George is always with Anne. But I’ve told you that before.’
    ‘He is her brother, I suppose it is natural.’
    ‘Natural? Is that what you call it?’
    ‘My lady, I know you would like it to be a crime to be a fond brother and a cold husband. But there is no statute that makes it so, and no precedent for your relief.’ He hesitates. ‘Do not think I am without sympathy for you.’
    For what can a woman like Jane Rochford do when circumstances are against her? A widow well-provided can cut a figure in the world. A merchant’s wife can with diligence and prudence take business matters into her hands, and squirrel away a store of gold. A labouring woman ill-used by a