Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

about. But no visitors, except under the king’s seal or mine. Although –’ He breaks off; he can see the day, next spring and if Katherine is still alive, when the Emperor’s army is riding up-country, and it is necessary to snatch her out of their path and hold her hostage; it would be a poor show if Edmund refused to yield her. ‘Look.’ He shows his turquoise ring. ‘You see this? The late cardinal gave it me, and I am known to wear it.’
    ‘Is that it, the magic one?’ Grace Bedingfield takes his hand. ‘Melts stone walls, makes princesses fall in love with you?’
    ‘This is the one. If any messenger brings you this, let him in.’
    When he closes his eyes that night a vault rises above him, the carved roof of Kimbolton’s church. A man ringing handbells. A swan, a lamb, a cripple with a stick, two lovers’ hearts entwined. And a pomegranate tree. Katherine’s emblem. That might have to go. He yawns. Chisel them into apples, that’ll fix it. I’m too tired for unnecessary effort. He remembers the woman at the inn and feels guilty. He pulls a pillow towards him: just a pillow, Edmund.
    When the innkeeper’s wife spoke to him as they were mounting their horses, she had said, ‘Send me a present. Send me a present from London, something you can’t get here.’ It will have to be something she can wear on her back, otherwise it will be vanished away by some light-fingered traveller. He will remember his obligation, but very likely by the time he returns to London he will have forgotten what she looked like. He had seen her by candlelight, and then the candle was out. When he saw her by daylight she could have been a different woman. Perhaps she was.
    When he sleeps he dreams of the fruit of the Garden of Eden, outstretched in Eve’s plump hand. He wakes momentarily: if the fruit is ripe, when did those boughs blossom? In what possible month, in what possible spring? Schoolmen will have addressed the question. A dozen furrowed generations. Tonsured heads bent. Chilblained fingers fumbling scrolls. It’s the sort of silly question monks are made for. I’ll ask Cranmer, he thinks: my archbishop. Why doesn’t Henry ask Cranmer’s advice, if he wants to be rid of Anne? It was Cranmer who divorced him from Katherine; he would never tell him he must go back to her stale bed.
    But no, Henry cannot speak of his doubts in that quarter. Cranmer loves Anne, he thinks her the pattern of a Christian woman, the hope of good Bible readers all over Europe.
    He sleeps again and dreams of the flowers made before the dawn of the world. They are made of white silk. There is no bush or stem to pluck them from. They lie on the bare uncreated ground.
     
     
    He looks closely at Anne the queen, the day he brings back his report; she looks sleek, contented, and the benign domestic hum of their voices, as he approaches, tell him that she and Henry are in harmony. They are busy, their heads together. The king has his drawing instruments to hand: his compasses and pencils, his rules, inks and penknives. The table is covered in unscrolling plans, and in artificers’ moulds and batons.
    He makes them his reverence, and comes to the point: ‘She is not well, and I believe it would be a kindness to let her have a visit from ambassador Chapuys.’
    Anne shoots out of her chair. ‘What, so he can intrigue with her more conveniently?’
    ‘Her doctors suggest, madam, that she will soon be in her grave, and not able to work you any displeasure.’
    ‘She would come out of it, flapping in her shroud, if she saw the chance to thwart me.’
    Henry stretches out a hand: ‘Sweetheart, Chapuys has never acknowledged you. But when Katherine is gone, and can no longer make trouble for us, I will make sure he bends his knee.’
    ‘Nevertheless, I do not think he should go out of London. He encourages Katherine in her perversity, and she encourages her daughter.’ She darts a glance at him. ‘Cremuel, you agree, do you not? Mary should be brought to court and made to kneel before her father and swear the oath, and there on her knees she should beg pardon for her treasonous obstinacy, and acknowledge that my daughter, and not she, is heir to England.’
    He indicates the plans. ‘Not building, sir?’
    Henry looks like a child caught with its fingers in the sugar box. He pushes one of the batons towards him. The designs, still novel to the English eye, are those he grew accustomed to in Italy: fluted urns and vases, mantled