Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

didn’t know her. How can they mourn? What was she to them? A foreigner.’
    ‘I suppose it is proper,’ the king says, reluctant. ‘As she was once given the title of queen.’
    ‘Mistakenly,’ Anne says. She is relentless.
    The musicians strike up. The king tows Mary Shelton into the dance. Mary is laughing. She has been missing this last half hour, and now she’s pink-cheeked, her eyes brilliant; no mistaking what she’s been doing. He thinks, if old Bishop Fisher could see this kick-up, he would think the Antichrist has arrived. He is surprised to find himself, even for a moment, viewing the world through Bishop Fisher’s eyes.
    On London Bridge after his execution, Fisher’s head remained in such a state of preservation that the Londoners began to talk of a miracle. Eventually he had the bridge keeper pull it down and drop it in a weighted sack into the Thames.
    At Kimbolton, Katherine’s body has been turned over to the embalmers. He imagines a rustle in the dark, a sigh, as the nation arranges itself to pray. ‘She sent me a letter,’ Henry says. He slides it from among the folds of his yellow jacket. ‘I don’t want it. Here, Cromwell, take it away.’
    As he folds it he glances at it: ‘ And lastly I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things. ’
     
     
    After the dancing, Anne calls him in. She is sombre, dry, attentive: all business. ‘I wish to make my thoughts known to Lady Mary the king’s daughter.’ He notes the respectful address. It isn’t ‘the Princess Mary’. But it isn’t ‘the Spanish bastard’ either. ‘Now that her mother is gone and cannot influence her,’ Anne says, ‘we may hope she will be less stiff in maintaining her errors. I have no need to conciliate her, God knows. But I think if I could put an end to the ill-feeling between the king and Mary, he would thank me for it.’
    ‘He would be beholden to you, madam. And it would be an act of charity.’
    ‘I wish to be a mother to her.’ Anne flushes; it does sound unlikely. ‘I do not expect her to call me “my lady mother”, but I expect her to call me Your Highness. If she will conform herself to her father I shall be pleased to have her at court. She will have an honoured place, and not much below mine. I shall not expect a deep reverence from her, but the ordinary form of courtesy which royal persons use among themselves, within their families, the younger to the elder. Assure her, I shall not make her carry my train. She will not have to sit at table with her sister the Princess Elizabeth, so no question of her lower rank will arise. I think this is a fair offer.’ He waits. ‘If she will render me the respect which is my due, I shall not walk before her on ordinary occasions, but we will walk hand in hand.’
    For one so tender about her dignities as Anne the queen, it is an unparalleled set of concessions. But he imagines Mary’s face when it is put to her. He is glad he will not be there to see it in person.
    He makes a respectful good night, but Anne calls him back. She says, in a low voice: ‘Cremuel, this is my offer, I will go no further. I am resolved to make it and then I cannot be blamed. But I do not think she will take it, and then we will both be sorry, for we are condemned to fight till the breath goes out of our bodies. She is my death, and I am hers. So tell her, I shall make sure she does not live to laugh at me after I am gone.’
     
     
    He goes to Chapuys’s house to pay his condolences. The ambassador is wrapped in black. A draught is cutting through his rooms that seems to blow straight from the river, and his mood is one of self-reproach. ‘How I wish I had not left her! But she seemed better. She sat up that morning and they dressed her hair. I had seen her eat some bread, a mouthful or two, I thought that was an advance. I rode away in hope, and within hours she was failing.’
    ‘You must not blame yourself. Your master will know you did all you could. After all, you are sent here to watch the king, you cannot be too long from London in the winter.’
    He thinks, I have been there since Katherine’s trials began: a hundred scholars, a thousand lawyers, ten thousand hours of argument. Almost since the first word was spoken against her marriage, for the cardinal kept me informed; late at night with a glass of wine, he would talk about the king’s great matter and how he saw it would work out.
    Badly, he said.
    ‘Oh, this fire,’ Chapuys says.