Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

alone.’
    He takes the paper. Some twenty-five years ago, when Katherine’s entourage had first arrived in England, Thomas More had described them as hunchbacked pygmies, refugees from Hell. He cannot comment; he was still out of England himself, and far from the court, but it sounds like one of More’s poetic exaggerations. This lady came a little later; she was Katherine’s favourite; only her marriage to an Englishman had parted them. She was beautiful then, and now, a widow, she is beautiful still; she knows it and will use it, even when she is shrinking with misery and blue with cold. She swirls out of her cloak, and gives it to Rafe Sadler, as if he stood there for that purpose. She crosses the room and takes his hands. ‘Mother of God, Thomas Cromwell, let me go. You will not refuse me this.’
    He glances at Rafe. The boy is as immune to Spanish passion as he might be to a wet dog buffeting the door. ‘You must understand, Lady Willoughby,’ Rafe says coolly, ‘that this is a family matter, not even a council matter. You may beseech Master Secretary all you like, but it is for the king to say who visits the dowager.’
    ‘Look, my lady,’ he says. ‘The weather is filthy. Even if it thaws tonight, it will be worse up-country. I cannot guarantee your safety, even if I give you an escort. You might fall from your horse.’
    ‘I will walk there!’ she says. ‘How will you stop me, Master Secretary? Keep me in chains? Will you have your black-faced peasant tie me up and lock me in a closet till the queen is dead?’
    ‘You are ridiculous, madam,’ Rafe says. He seems to feel some need to step in and protect him, Cromwell, from women’s wiles. ‘It is as Master Secretary says. You cannot ride in this weather. You are no longer young.’
    Under her breath she utters a prayer, or curse. ‘Thank you for your gallant reminder, Master Sadler, without your advice I might have thought myself sixteen. Ah, do you see, I am an Englishwoman now! I know how to say the opposite of what I mean.’ A shadow of calculation crosses her face. ‘The cardinal would have let me go.’
    ‘Then what a pity he is not here to tell us about it.’ But he takes the cloak from Rafe, places it around her shoulders. ‘Go, then. I see you are determined. Chapuys is riding up there with a pass, so perhaps…’
    ‘I am sworn to be on the road at dawn. God turn his back on me, if I am not. I shall outpace Chapuys, he is not impelled as I am.’
    ‘Even if you get there…it is a harsh country and the roads barely worth the name. You might reach the castle itself and have a fall. Even under the walls.’
    ‘What?’ she says. ‘Oh, I see.’
    ‘Bedingfield has his orders. But he could not leave a lady in a snowdrift.’
    She kisses him. ‘Thomas Cromwell. God and the Emperor will requite you.’
    He nods. ‘I trust in God.’
    She sweeps out. They can hear her voice raised in enquiry: ‘What are these strange mounds of snow?’
    ‘I hope they do not tell her,’ he says to Rafe. ‘She is a papist.’
    ‘One never kisses me like that,’ Christophe complains.
    ‘Perhaps if you washed your face,’ he says. He looks keenly at Rafe. ‘You would not have let her go.’
    ‘I would not,’ Rafe says stiffly. ‘The ruse would not have occurred to me. And even if it had…no, I would not, I would have been afraid to cross the king.’
    ‘That’s why you will thrive and live to be old.’ He shrugs. ‘She will ride. Chapuys will ride. And Stephen Vaughan will watch them both. Are you coming tomorrow morning? Bring Helen and her daughters. Not the baby, it’s too cold. We are going to have a fanfare, Gregory says, and then trample the papal court into the ground.’
    ‘She loved the wings,’ Rafe says. ‘Our little girl. She wants to know if she can wear them every year.’
    ‘I don’t see why not. Till Gregory has a daughter big enough.’
    They embrace. ‘Try to sleep, sir.’
    He knows Brandon’s words will go round in his head when that head touches the pillow. ‘When it comes to the affairs of nations you cannot deal, you are not fit to talk to princes.’ Useless to swear vengeance on Duke Dripping Pan. He will undo himself, and perhaps for good this time, shouting around Greenwich that Henry is a cuckold. Surely even an old favourite cannot get away with that?
    Besides, Brandon’s right. A duke can represent his master at the court of a foreign king. Or a cardinal; even if he is low-born like Wolsey,