Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

the king, sometimes not, that sometimes Norris was with her, and sometimes others of the gentlemen. But you are right, Master Secretary. It is of no moment. The doctors can be sure of very little. We cannot say when it was conceived. Who was here and who was there.’
    ‘Perhaps we should leave it like that,’ he says.
    ‘So. Now that she has lost another chance, poor lady…what world will be?’
    The dwarf scrambles to her feet. Watching him, holding his gaze, she pulls her skirts up. He is not quick enough to look away. She has shaved herself or someone has shaved her, and her parts are bald, like the parts of an old woman or a little child.
     
     
    Later, before the king, holding Mary Shelton’s hand, Jane Rochford is unsure of everything. ‘The child had the appearance of a male,’ she says, ‘and of about fifteen weeks’ gestation.’
    ‘What do you mean, the appearance of?’ the king demands. ‘Could you not tell? Oh, get away, woman, you have never given birth, what do you know? It should have been matrons at her bedside, what did you want there? Could not you Boleyns give way to someone more useful, must you be there in a crowd whenever disaster strikes?’
    Lady Rochford’s voice shakes, but she sticks to her point. ‘Your Majesty may interview the doctors.’
    ‘I have.’
    ‘I only repeat their words.’
    Mary Shelton bursts into tears. Henry looks at her and says humbly, ‘Mistress Shelton, forgive me. Sweetheart, I did not mean to make you cry.’
    Henry is in pain. His leg has been bound up by the surgeons, the leg he injured in the joust over ten years ago; it is prone to ulcerate, and it seems that the recent fall has opened a channel into his flesh. All his bravado has melted away; it is like the days when he dreamed of his brother Arthur, the days he was run ragged by the dead. It is the second child she has lost, he says that night, in private: though who knows, there could have been others, the women keep these things to themselves till their bellies show, we do not know how many of my heirs have bled away. What does God want of me now? What must I do to please him? I see he will not give me male children.
    He, Cromwell, stands back while Thomas Cranmer, pale and smooth, takes charge of the king’s bereavement. We much misconstrue our creator, the archbishop says, if we blame him for every accident of fallen nature.
    I thought he regarded every sparrow that falls, the king says, truculent as a child. Then why does he not regard England?
    Cranmer will have some reason. He hardly listens. He thinks of the women about Anne: wise as serpents, mild as doves. Already a certain line is being spun, about the day’s events; it is spun in the queen’s chamber. Anne Boleyn is not to blame for this misfortune. It is her uncle Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, who is at fault. When the king took his tumble, it was Norfolk who burst in on the queen, shouting that Henry was dead, and giving her such a shock that the unborn heart stopped.
    And further: it is Henry’s fault. It is because of the way he has been behaving, mooning over old Seymour’s daughter, dropping letters in her place in chapel and sending her sweetmeats from his table. When the queen saw he loved another, she was struck to the quick. The sorrow she has taken has made her viscera revolt and reject the tender child.
    Just be clear, Henry says coldly, when he stands at the foot of the lady’s bed and hears this reading of events. Just be clear on this, madam. If any woman is to blame, it is the one I am looking at. I will speak to you when you are better. And now fare you well, because I am going to Whitehall to prepare for the Parliament, and you had better stay in bed till you are restored. Which I myself, I doubt I will ever be.
    Then Anne shouts after him – or so Lady Rochford says – ‘Stay, stay my lord, I will soon give you another child, and all the quicker now Katherine is dead…’
    ‘I do not see how that will speed the business.’ Henry limps away. Then in his own rooms the privy chamber gentlemen move carefully about him, as if he were made of glass, making their preparations for departure. Henry is repenting now of his hasty pronouncement, because if the queen stays behind all the women must stay behind, and he will not be able to feast his eyes on his little bun-face, Jane. Further reasoning follows him, conveyed by Anne in a note perhaps: this lost foetus, conceived when Katherine was alive, is