Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

Anne has made use of him, too, but Cranmer can never see that. ‘“ I am in such perplexity ,” he writes, “ that my mind is clean amazed; for I never had better opinion in woman, than I had in her .”’
    Henry interrupts him. ‘See how we were all deceived.’
    ‘“ …which maketh me to think ,”’ he reads, ‘“ that she should not be culpable. And again, I think your Highness would not have gone so far, except she had surely been culpable .”’
    ‘Wait till he hears it all,’ Henry says. ‘He will not have heard the like. At least, I hope he has not. I do not think there has ever been an instance in the world like this.’
    ‘“ Now I think that your Grace best knoweth, that next unto your Grace I was most bound unto her of all creatures living… ”’
    Henry breaks in again. ‘But you will see he goes on to say, if she is culpable she should be punished without mercy, and held for an example. Seeing how I raised her from nothing. And further he says, that no one who loves the gospel will favour her, rather hate her.’
    Cranmer adds, ‘ Wherefore I trust that your Grace will bear no less entire favour unto the truth of the gospel, than you did before forsomuch as your grace’s favour to the gospel was not led by affection unto her, but by zeal unto the truth. ’
    He, Cromwell, puts the letter down. That seems to cover everything. She cannot be guilty. But yet she must be guilty. We, her brethren, repudiate her.
    He says, ‘Sir, if you want Cranmer, send for him. You could comfort each other, and perhaps between you try to understand all this. I will tell your people to let him in. You look as if you need fresh air. Go down the stair into the privy garden. You will not be disturbed.’
    ‘But I have not seen Jane,’ Henry says. ‘I want to look at her. We can bring her here?’
    ‘Not yet, sir. Wait till the business is more forward. There are rumours on the streets, and crowds who want to see her, and ballads made, deriding her.’
    ‘Ballads?’ Henry is shocked. ‘Find out the authors. They must be straitly punished. No, you are right, we must not bring Jane here until the air is pure. So you go to her, Cromwell. I want you to carry a certain token.’ He produces from among his papers a tiny, jewelled book: the kind a woman keeps at her girdle, looped on a gold chain. ‘It was my wife’s,’ he says. Then he checks himself and looks away in shame. ‘I mean to say, it was Katherine’s.’
     
     
    He does not want to take the time to go down to Surrey to Carew’s house, but it seems he must. It is a well-proportioned house put up some thirty years ago, its great hall especially splendid and much copied by gentlemen building their own houses. He has been there before, with the cardinal in his time. It looks as though since then Carew has brought Italians in to replan the gardens. The gardeners doff their straw hats to him. The walks are coming into their early summer glory. Birds twitter from an aviary. The grass is shorn as close as velvet pile. Nymphs watch him with stone eyes.
    Now that the business is tending one way and one way only, the Seymours have begun teaching Jane how to be a queen. ‘This business you get up to with doors,’ Edward Seymour says. Jane blinks at him. ‘The way you hold the door still and slide yourself around it.’
    ‘You told me to be discreet.’ Jane lowers her eyes, to show him what discretion means.
    ‘Now. Go out of the room,’ Edward says. ‘Come back in. Like a queen, Jane.’
    Jane sneaks out. The door creaks behind her. In the hiatus, they look at each other. The door swings open. There is a long pause – as it might be, a regal pause. The doorway stands empty. Then Jane appears, inching around the corner. ‘Is that better?’
    ‘Do you know what I think?’ he says. ‘I think that from now on Jane won’t be opening her own doors, so it doesn’t matter.’
    ‘My belief is,’ Edward says, ‘this modesty could pall. Look up at me, Jane. I want to see your expression.’
    ‘But what makes you think,’ Jane murmurs, ‘that I want to see yours?’
    In the gallery the whole family is assembled. The two brothers, prudent Edward and hasty Tom. Worthy Sir John, the old goat. Lady Margery, the noted beauty of her day, about whom John Skelton once penned a line: ‘benign, courteous and meek’, he called her. The meekness is not evident today: she looks grimly triumphant, like a woman who has squeezed success from life,