Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

Your people are not vigilant, perhaps? My lord brother believes the queen is urging the Emperor to invade, as is the ambassador Chapuys, who by the way should be banished this kingdom.’
    ‘Well, you know,’ he says. ‘We can’t go throwing ambassadors out. Because then we don’t get to know anything at all.’
    Truth is, he is not afraid of Katherine’s intrigues: the mood between France and the Empire is at the moment unremittingly hostile, and if open war breaks out, the Emperor will have no troops to spare for invading England. These things swing about in a week, and the Boleyn reading of any situation, he has noticed, is always a little behind the times, and influenced by the fact that they pretend to have special friends at the Valois court. Anne is still in pursuit of a royal marriage for her ginger little daughter. He used to admire her as a person who learned from her mistakes, who would pull back, re-calculate; but she has a streak of stubbornness to equal that of Katherine, the old queen, and it seems in this matter she will never learn. George Boleyn has been over to France again, intriguing for the match, but with no result. What’s George Boleyn for ? That’s a question he asks himself. He says, ‘Highness, the king could not compromise his honour by any ill-treatment of the queen that was. If it became known, it would be a personal embarrassment to him.’
    Anne looks sceptical; she does not grasp the idea of embarrassment. The lights are low; her silver head bobs, glittering and small; the dwarf fusses and chuckles, muttering to herself out of sight; seated on her velvet cushions, Anne dangles her velvet slipper, like a child about to dip a toe in a stream. ‘If I were Katherine, I too would intrigue. I would not forgive. I would do as she does.’ She gives him a dangerous smile. ‘You see, I know her mind. Though she is a Spaniard, I can put myself in her place. You would not see me meek, if Henry cast me off. I too would want war.’ She takes a strand of hair between fingers and thumb, runs its length, thoughtful. ‘However. The king believes she is ailing. She and her daughter both, they are always mewling, their stomachs are disordered or their teeth falling out, they have agues or rheum, they are up all night puking and down all day moaning, and all their pain is due to Anne Boleyn. So look. Do you, Cremuel, go and see her without warning. Then tell me if she is feigning, or no.’
    She maintains, as an affectation, a skittish slur in her speech, the odd French intonation, her inability to say his name. There is a stir at the door: the king is coming in. He makes a reverence. Anne does not rise or curtsey; she says without preliminary, ‘I have told him, Henry, to go.’
    ‘I wish you would, Cromwell. And give us your own report. There is no one like you for seeing into the nature of things. When the Emperor wants a stick to beat me with, he says his aunt is dying, of neglect and cold, and shame. Well, she has servants. She has firewood.’
    ‘And as for shame,’ Anne says, ‘she should die inside, when she thinks of the lies she has told.’
    ‘Majesty,’ he says, ‘I shall ride at dawn and tomorrow send Rafe Sadler to you, if you permit, with the day’s agenda.’
    The king groans. ‘No escape from your big lists?’
    ‘No, sir, for if I gave you a respite you would forever have me on the road, on some pretext. Till I return, would you just…sit on the situation?’
    Anne shifts in her chair, brother George’s letter under her. ‘I shall do nothing without you,’ Henry says. ‘Take care, the roads are treacherous. I shall be your beadsman. Good night.’
    He looks about the outer chamber, but Mark has vanished, and there is only a knot of matrons and maids: Mary Shelton, Jane Seymour and Elizabeth, the Earl of Worcester’s wife. Who’s missing? ‘Where is Lady Rochford?’ he says, smiling. ‘Do I see her shape behind the arras?’ He indicates Anne’s chamber. ‘Going to bed, I think. So you girls get her installed and then you will have the rest of the night for your ill behaviour.’
    They giggle. Lady Worcester makes creepy motions with her finger. ‘Nine of the clock, and here comes Harry Norris, bare beneath his shirt. Run, Mary Shelton. Run rather slowly…’
    ‘Who do you run from, Lady Worcester?’
    ‘Thomas Cromwell, I could not possibly tell you. A married woman like myself?’ Teasing, smiling, she creeps her fingers along his upper arm.