Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

house is quiet – when all his houses are quiet – then dead people walk about on the stairs.
     
     
    Anne the queen sends for him to her own chamber; it is after supper. Only a step for him, as at every major palace rooms are reserved for him now, near the king’s. Just a staircase: and there, with the light of a sconce lapping at its gold trim, is the stiff new doublet of Mark Smeaton. Mark himself is lurking inside it.
    What brings Mark here? He is without musical instruments as an excuse, and he is got up as gorgeously as any of the young lords who wait on Anne. Is there justice? he wonders. Mark does naught and gets more bonny each time I see him, and I do everything and get more grey and paunchy by the day.
    Since unpleasantness usually ensues between them, it is in his mind to pass by with a nod, but Mark stands up straight and smiles: ‘Lord Cromwell, how are you?’
    ‘Ah, no,’ he says. ‘Still plain master.’
    ‘It is a natural mistake. You seem every inch the lord. And surely, the king will do something for you soon.’
    ‘Perhaps not. He needs me in the House of Commons.’
    ‘Even so,’ the boy murmurs, ‘it would seem ungracious in him, when others are rewarded for much less service. Tell me, they say you have got music scholars in your house?’
    A dozen or so merry little boys, saved from the cloister. They work at their books and practise their instruments, and at table they learn their manners; at supper they entertain his guests. They practise with the bow, and play fetch with the spaniels, and the littlest ones drag their hobby horses over the cobbles, and follow him about, sir, sir, sir, look at me, do you want to see me stand on my hands? ‘They keep the household lively,’ he says.
    ‘If you should ever want someone to put a polish on their performance, think of me.’
    ‘I will, Mark.’ He thinks, I wouldn’t trust you around my little boys.
    ‘You will find the queen discontented,’ the young man says. ‘You know her brother Rochford has lately gone into France on a special embassy, and today he has sent a letter; it seems to be the common talk over there that Katherine has been writing to the Pope, asking him to put into effect that wicked sentence of excommunication he has pronounced against our master. And which would result in untold hurts and perils to our realm.’ He nods, yes, yes, yes; he does not need Mark to tell him what excommunication is; can he not make it short? ‘The queen is angry,’ the boy says, ‘for if this is so, Katherine is a plain traitor, and the queen wonders, why do we not act against her?’
    ‘Suppose I tell you the reason, Mark? Would you take it in to her? It seems you could save me an hour or two.’
    ‘If you would entrust me –’ the boy begins; then sees his cold smile. He blushes.
    ‘I’d trust you with a motet, Mark. Although.’ He looks at him thoughtfully. ‘It does seem to me that you must stand high in the queen’s favour.’
    ‘Master Secretary, I believe that I do.’ Flattened, Mark is already bouncing back. ‘It is we lesser men, often, who are most fit for royal confidence.’
    ‘Well then. Baron Smeaton, eh, before long? I shall be the first to congratulate you. Even if I am still toiling on the benches of the Commons.’

     
    With a whisk of her hand, Anne shoos away the ladies around her, who bob to him and whisper out. Her sister-in-law, George’s wife, lingers: Anne says, ‘Thank you, Lady Rochford, I shall not need you again tonight.’
    Only her fool stays with her: a dwarf woman, peeping at him from behind the queen’s chair. Anne’s hair is loose beneath a cap of silver tissue shaped like a crescent moon. He makes a mental note of it; the women about him always enquire what Anne is wearing. This is how she receives her husband, the dark tresses displayed only for him, and incidentally for Cromwell, who is a tradesman’s son and doesn’t matter, any more than the boy Mark does.
    She begins, as she often does, as if in the middle of a sentence. ‘So I want you to go. Up-country to see her. Very secret. Only take the men you need. Here, you may read my brother Rochford’s letter.’ She flourishes it at her fingers’ ends, then changes her mind, whips it back. ‘Or…no,’ she says, and decides to sit on it instead. Perhaps, amid the news, it contains dispraise of Thomas Cromwell? ‘I am very suspicious of Katherine, very suspicious. It seems they know in France what we only guess at.