Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

against the Boleyns.’
    ‘Why should I? The queen and I are perfect friends.’
    ‘That’s not what you tell Chapuys.’
    He inclines his head. Interesting, the people who talk to Chapuys; interesting too, what the ambassador chooses to pass on, from one party to another.
    ‘Did you hear them?’ Fitz says. His tone is disgusted. ‘Outside the tent, when we thought the king was dead? Shouting “Boleyn, Boleyn!” Calling out their own name. Like cuckoos.’
    He waits. Of course he heard them; what is the real question here? Fitz is close to the king. He was brought up at court with Henry since they were small boys, though his family is good gentry, not noble. He has been to war. Has had a crossbow bolt in him. Has been abroad on embassies, knows France, knows Calais, the English enclave there and its politics. He is of that select company, the Garter knights. He writes a good letter, to the point, neither abrupt nor circumlocutory, nor larded with flattery, nor cursory in expressions of regard. The cardinal liked him, and he is affable to Thomas Cromwell when they dine daily in the guard chamber. He is always affable: and now more so? ‘What would have happened, Crumb, if the king had not come back to life? I shall never forget Howard pitching in, “Me, me, me!”’
    ‘It is not a spectacle we will erase from our minds. As for…’ he hesitates, ‘well, if the worst had been, the king’s body dies but the body politic continues. It might be possible to convene a ruling council, made up from the law officers, and from those chief councillors that are now…’
    ‘…amongst whom, yourself…’
    ‘Myself, granted.’ Myself in several capacities, he thinks: who more trusted, who closer, and not just Master Secretary but a law officer, Master of the Rolls? ‘If Parliament were willing, we might bring together a body who would have ruled as regent till the queen was delivered, and perhaps with her permission during a minority…’
    ‘But you know Anne would give no such permission,’ Fitz says.
    ‘No, she would have all to rule herself. Though she would have to fight Uncle Norfolk. Between the two of them I do not know who I would back. The lady, I think.’
    ‘God help the realm,’ Fitzwilliam says, ‘and all the men in it. Of the two, I would sooner have Thomas Howard. At least if it came to it, one could challenge him to come outside and fight. Let the lady be regent and the Boleyns would walk on our backs. We would be their living carpet. She would have “AB” sewn into our skins.’ He rubs his chin. ‘But so she will anyway. If she gives Harry a son.’
    He is aware that Fitz is watching him. ‘On the topic of sons,’ he says, ‘have I thanked you in proper form? Let me know if there is anything I can do for you. Gregory has thrived under your guidance.’
    ‘The pleasure is mine. Send him back to me soon.’
    I will, he thinks, and with the lease on a little abbey or two, when my new laws are passed. His desk is piled high with business for the new session of Parliament. Before many years are out he would like Gregory to have a seat beside him in the Commons. He must see all aspects of how the realm is governed. A term in Parliament is an exercise in frustration, it is a lesson in patience: whichever way you like to look at it. They commune of war, peace, strife, contention, debate, murmur, grudges, riches, poverty, truth, falsehood, justice, equity, oppression, treason, murder and the edification and continuance of the commonwealth; then do as their predecessors have done – that is, as well as they might – and leave off where they began.
     
     
    After the king’s accident, everything is the same, yet nothing is the same. He is still on the wrong side of the Boleyns, of Mary’s supporters, the Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Suffolk, and the absent Bishop of Winchester; not to mention the King of France, the Emperor, and the Bishop of Rome, otherwise known as the Pope. But the contest – every contest – is sharper now.
    On the day of Katherine’s funeral, he finds himself downcast. How close we hug our enemies! They are our familiars, our other selves. When she was sitting on a silk cushion at the Alhambra, a seven-year-old working her first embroidery, he was scrubbing roots in the kitchen at Lambeth Palace, under the eye of his uncle John, the cook.
    So often in council he has taken Katherine’s part, as if he were one of her appointed lawyers. ‘You make this argument,