Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

should never have been away. The king had seen him look with longing, and more than once, at Sheba’s face, not because he covets a queen but because she takes him back to his past, to a woman whom by accident she resembles: Anselma, an Antwerp widow, whom he might have married, he often thinks, if he had not made up his mind suddenly to take himself off back to England and pick up with his own people. In those days he did things suddenly: not without calculation, not without care, but once his mind was made up he was swift to move. And he is still the same man. As his opponents will find.
    ‘Gregory?’ His son is still in his riding coat, dusty from the road. He hugs him. ‘Let me look at you. Why are you here?’
    ‘You did not say I must not come,’ Gregory explains. ‘You did not absolutely forbid it. Besides, I have learned the art of public speaking now. Do you want to hear me make a speech?’
    ‘Yes. But not now. You ought not to ride about the country with just one attendant or two. There are people who would hurt you, because you are known to be my son.’
    ‘How am I known?’ Gregory says. ‘How would they know that?’ Doors open, there are feet on the stairs, there are questioning faces crowding the hall; the news from the courtroom has preceded him. Yes, he confirms, they are all guilty, all condemned, whether they will go to Tyburn I do not know, but I will move the king to grant them the swifter end; yes, Mark too, because when he was under my roof I offered him mercy, and this is all the mercy I can deliver.
    ‘We heard they are all in debt, sir,’ says his clerk Thomas Avery, who does the accounts.
    ‘We heard there were perilous crowds, sir,’ says one of his watchmen.
    Thurston the cook comes out, looking floury: ‘Thurston has heard there were pies on sale,’ says the jester Anthony. ‘And I, sir? I hear that your new comedy was very well-received. And everybody laughed except the dying.’
    Gregory says, ‘But there could still be reprieves?’
    ‘Undoubtedly.’ He does not feel like adding anything. Someone has given him a drink of ale; he wipes his mouth.
    ‘I remember when we were at Wolf Hall,’ Gregory says, ‘and Weston spoke so boldly to you, and so me and Rafe, we caught him in our magic net and dropped him from a height. But we would not really have killed him.’
    ‘The king is wreaking his pleasure, and so many fine gentlemen will be spoiled.’ He speaks for the household to hear. ‘When your acquaintances tell you, as they will, that it is I who have condemned these men, tell them that it is the king, and a court of law, and that all proper formalities have been observed, and no one has been hurt bodily in pursuit of the truth, whatever the word is in the city. And you will not believe it, please, if ill-informed persons tell you these men are dying because I have a grudge against them. It is beyond grudge. And I could not save them if I tried.’
    ‘But Master Wyatt will not die?’ Thomas Avery asks. There is a murmur; Wyatt is a favourite in his household, for his open-handed ways and his courtesy.
    ‘I must go in now. I must read the letters from abroad. Thomas Wyatt…well, let us say I have advised him. I think we shall soon see him here among us, but bear in mind that nothing is certain, the will of the king…No. Enough.’
    He breaks off, Gregory trails him. ‘Are they really guilty?’ he asks, the moment they are alone. ‘Why so many men? Would it not have stood better with the king’s honour if he named only one?’
    He says wryly, ‘That would distinguish him too much, the gentleman in question.’
    ‘Oh, you mean that people would say, Harry Norris has a bigger cock than the king, and he knows what to do with it?’
    ‘What a way with words you have indeed. The king is inclined to take it patiently, and where another man would strive to be secret, he knows he cannot be, because he is not a private man. He believes, or at least he wishes to show, that the queen has been indiscriminate, that she is impulsive, that her nature is bad and she cannot control it. And now that so many men are found to have erred with her, any possible defence is stripped away, do you see? That is why they have been tried first. As they are guilty, she must be.’
    Gregory nods. He seems to understand, but perhaps seeming is as far as it goes. When Gregory says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he means, ‘Did they do it?’ But when he says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he