Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

failing, and during the night she told her chaplain that she would like to take communion: asking anxiously, what hour is it now? It is not yet four o’clock, he told her, but in case of urgency, the canonical hour can be advanced. Katherine waits it out, lips moving, a holy medal folded in her palm.
    She will die that day, she says. She has studied death, many times anticipated it, and she is not shy at its approach. She dictates her wishes about her burial arrangements, which she does not expect to be observed. She asks for her household to be paid off, her debts to be settled.
    At ten in the morning a priest anoints her, touching the holy oil to her eyelids and lips, her hands and feet. These lids will now seal and not reopen, she will neither look nor see. These lips have finished their prayers. These hands will sign no more papers. These feet have finished their journey. By noon her breathing is stertorous, she is labouring to her end. At two o’clock, light cast into her chamber by the fields of snow, she resigns from life. As she draws her last breath, the sombre forms of her keepers close in. They are reluctant to disturb the aged chaplain, and the old women shuffling from her bedside. Before they have washed her, Bedingfield has put his fastest rider on the road.
     
     
    8 January: the news arrives at court. It filters out from the king’s rooms then runs riot up staircases to the rooms where the queen’s maids are dressing, and through the cubby holes where kitchen boys huddle to doze, and along lanes and passages through the breweries and the cold rooms for keeping fish, and up again through the gardens to the galleries and bounces up to the carpeted chambers where Anne Boleyn sinks to her knees and says, ‘At last God, not before time!’ The musicians tune up for the celebrations.
    Anne the queen wears yellow, as she did when she first appeared at court, dancing in a masque: the year, 1521. Everyone remembers it, or they say they do: Boleyn’s second daughter with her bold dark eyes, her speed, her grace. The fashion for yellow had started among the wealthy in Basle; for a few months, if a draper could get hold of it, he could make a killing. And then suddenly it was everywhere, in sleeves and hose and even hair-bands for those who couldn’t afford more than a sliver. By the time of Anne’s debut it had slid down the scale abroad; in the domains of the Emperor, you’d see a woman in a brothel hoisting her fat dugs and tight-lacing her yellow bodice.
    Does Anne know this? Today her gown is worth five times the one she wore when her father was her only banker. It is sewn over with pearls, so that she moves in a blur of primrose light. He says to Lady Rochford, do we call it a new colour, or an old colour come back? Will you be wearing it, my lady?
    She says, I don’t think it suits any complexion, myself. And Anne should stick to black.
    On this happy occasion, Henry wants to show off the princess. You would think such a small child – she is now almost two and a half – would be looking about her for her nurse, but Elizabeth chuckles as she is passed hand-to-hand by the gentlemen, scuffing up their beards and batting at their hats. Her father bounces her in his arms. ‘She looks forward to seeing her little brother, don’t you, dumpling?’
    There is a stir from the courtiers; all Europe knows Anne’s condition, but it is the first time it has been mentioned in public. ‘And I share her impatience,’ the king says. ‘It’s been long enough to wait.’
    Elizabeth’s face is losing its baby roundness. Hail Princess Ferret Face. The older courtiers say they can see the king’s father in her, and his brother, Prince Arthur. She has her mother’s eyes though, busy and full in their orbits. He thinks Anne’s eyes beautiful, though best when they gleam with interest, as a cat’s do when she sees the whisk of some small creature’s tail.
    The king seizes back his darling and coos to her. ‘Up to the sky!’ he says, and tosses her up, then swoops her down and plants a kiss on her head.
    Lady Rochford says, ‘Henry has a tender heart, does he not? Of course, he is pleased with any child. I have seen him kiss a stranger’s baby in much the same way.’
    At the first sign of fractiousness the child is taken away, wrapped tight in furs. Anne’s eyes follow her. Henry says, as if remembering his manners, ‘We must accept that the country will mourn for the dowager.’
    Anne says, ‘They