Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

to the king’s own cellars.
    ‘Look, Crumb,’ Bryan says. ‘What I know is, Norris always imagined rutting with her.’
    ‘And her brother, what did he imagine?’
    Bryan shrugs. ‘She was sent to France and they never knew each other till they were grown. I have known such things happen, have not you?’
    ‘No, I cannot say I have. We never went in for incest where I grew up, God knows we had crimes enough and sins, but there were places our fantasy did not stretch.’
    ‘You saw it in Italy, I wager. Only sometimes people see it and they don’t dare name it.’
    ‘I dare name anything,’ he says calmly. ‘As you will see. My imagination may lag behind each day’s revelations, but I am working hard to catch up with them.’
    ‘Now she is not queen,’ Bryan says, ‘because she is not, is she…I can call her what she is, a hot minx, and where has she better opportunity, than with her family?’
    He says, ‘By that reasoning, do you think she goes to it with Uncle Norfolk? It could even be you, Sir Francis. If she has a mind to her relatives. You are a great gallant.’
    ‘Oh, Christ,’ Bryan says. ‘Cromwell, you would not.’
    ‘I only mention it. But as we are at one in this matter, or we appear to be, will you do me a service? You could ride over to Great Hallingbury, and prepare my friend Lord Morley for what is coming. It is not the sort of news you can break in a letter, not when the friend is elderly.’
    ‘You think it’s better face to face?’ An incredulous laugh. ‘My lord, I shall say, I come myself to spare you a shock – your daughter Jane will soon be a widow, because her husband is to be decapitated for incest.’
    ‘No, the matter of incest we leave to the priests. It is for treason he will die. And we do not know the king will choose decapitation.’
    ‘I do not believe I can do it.’
    ‘But I do. I have great faith in you. Think of it as a diplomatic mission. You have performed those. Though I wonder how.’
    ‘Sober,’ Francis Bryan says. ‘I shall need a drink for this one. And you know, I have a dread of Lord Morley. He is always pulling out some ancient manuscript, and saying, “Look here, Francis!” and laughing heartily at the jokes in it. And you know my Latin, any schoolboy would be ashamed of it.’
    ‘Don’t wheedle,’ he says. ‘Saddle your horse. But before you ride to Essex, do me a further service. Go see your friend Nicholas Carew. Tell him I agree to his demands and I will talk to Wyatt. But warn him, tell him not to push me because I will not be pushed. Remind Carew that there may be more arrests, I am not yet able to say who. Or rather, if I am able, I am not willing. Understand, and make your friends understand, that I must have a free hand to deal. I am not their waiting boy.’
    ‘Am I free to go?’
    ‘Free as air,’ he says, blandly. ‘But what about supper?’
    ‘You can eat mine,’ Francis says.
     
     
    Though the king’s chamber is dark, the king says, ‘We must look into a glass of truth. I think I am to blame, as what I suspected I did not own.’
    Henry looks at Cranmer as if to say, it’s your turn now: I admit my fault, so give me absolution. The archbishop looks harrowed; he does not know what Henry will say next, or if he can trust himself to respond. This is not a night for which Cambridge ever trained him. ‘You were not remiss,’ he tells the king. He darts a questioning look, like a long needle, at him, Cromwell. ‘In these matters, surely the accusation should not come before the evidence.’
    ‘You must bear in mind,’ he says to Cranmer – for he is bland and easy and full of phrases – ‘you must bear in mind that not I but the whole council examined the gentlemen who now stand accused. And the council called you in, laid the matter before you, and you did not demur. As you have said yourself, my lord archbishop, we would not have gone so far in the matter without grave consideration.’
    ‘When I look back,’ Henry says, ‘so much falls into place. I was misled and betrayed. So many friends lost, friends and good servants, lost, alienated, exiled from court. And worse…I think of Wolsey. The woman I called my wife practised against him with all her ingenuity, with every weapon of slyness and rancour.’
    Which wife would that be? Both Katherine and Anne worked against the cardinal. ‘I do not know why I have been so crossed,’ Henry says. ‘But does not Augustine call marriage “a mortal and