Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

with him, blame will be visited on her. And she is young and has her life to live.’
    ‘He will not blame Mary. I know the king. He is not so mean a man.’
    He is silent. She still loves her husband, he thinks: in some kink or crevice of her old leathern heart, she is still hoping for his footstep, his voice. And with his gift to her hand, how can she forget that he once loved her? After all, there must have been weeks of work in the silk roses, he must have ordered them long before he knew the child was a boy. ‘We called him the New Year’s prince,’ Wolsey had said. ‘He lived fifty-two days, and I counted every one.’ England in winter: the pall of sliding snow, blanketing the fields and palace roofs, smothering tile and gable, slipping silent over window glass; feathering the rutted tracks, weighting the boughs of oak and yew, sealing the fishes under ice and freezing the bird to the branch. He imagines the cradle, curtained in crimson, gilded with the arms of England: the rockers huddled into their clothes: a brazier burning and the air fresh with the New Year scents of cinnamon and juniper. The roses brought to her triumphant bedside – how? In a gilded basket? In a long box like a coffin, a casket inlaid with polished shells? Or tumbled to her coverlet from a silk sheath embroidered with pomegranates? Two happy months pass. The child thrives. It is understood through the world that the Tudors have an heir. And then on the fifty-second day, a silence behind a curtain: a breath, not a breath. The women of the chamber snatch up the prince, crying in shock and fear; hopelessly crossing themselves, they cower by the cradle to pray.
    ‘I will see what can be done,’ he says. ‘About your daughter. About a visit.’ How perilous can it be to bring one little girl across country? ‘I do think the king would permit it, if you would advise Lady Mary to be in all respect conformable to his will, and recognise him, as now she does not, as head of the church.’
    ‘In that matter the Princess Mary must consult her own conscience.’ She holds up a hand, palm towards him. ‘I see you pity me, Cromwell. You should not. I have been prepared for death a long time. I believe that Almighty God will reward my efforts to serve him. And I shall see my little children again, who have gone before me.’
    Your heart could break for her, he thinks: if it were not proof against breaking. She wants a martyr’s death on the scaffold. Instead she will die in the Fens, alone: choke on her own vomit, like as not. He says, ‘What about Lady Mary, is she also ready to die?’
    ‘The Princess Mary has meditated on Christ’s passion since she was an infant in the nursery. She will be ready when he calls.’
    ‘You are an unnatural parent,’ he says. ‘What parent would risk a child’s death?’
    But he remembers Walter Cromwell. Walter used to jump on me with his big boots: on me, his only son. He gathers himself for one last effort. ‘I have instanced to you, madam, a case where your stubbornness in setting yourself against the king and his council served only to bring about a result you most abhor. So you can be wrong, do you see? I ask you to consider that you may be wrong more than once. For the love of God, advise Mary to obey the king.’
    ‘The Princess Mary,’ she says, dully. She does not seem to have the breath for any further protest. He watches her for a moment, and prepares to withdraw. But then she looks up. ‘I have wondered, master, in what language do you confess? Or do you not confess?’
    ‘God knows our hearts, madam. There is no need for an idle formula, or for an intermediary.’ No need for language either, he thinks: God is beyond translation.

     
    He falls out of the door and almost into the arms of Katherine’s keeper: ‘Is my chamber ready?’
    ‘But your supper…’
    ‘Send me up a bowl of broth. I am talked out. All I want is my bed.’
    ‘Anything in it?’ Bedingfield looks roguish.
    So, his escort has informed on him. ‘Just a pillow, Edmund.’
    Grace Bedingfield is disappointed he has retired so early. She thought she would get all the court news; she resents being stuck out here with the silent Spaniards, a long winter ahead. He must repeat the king’s instructions: utmost vigilance against the outside world. ‘I don’t mind if Chapuys’s letters get through, it will keep her occupied working the cipher. She isn’t important to the Emperor now, it’s Mary he cares