Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

inferior to the conception that will follow, at some unknown date, but soon. For even if the child had lived and grown up, there would have been some who still doubted his claim; whereas now Henry is a widower, no one in Christendom can dispute that his marriage to Anne is licit, and any son they beget is heir to England.
    ‘Well, what do you make of that chain of reasoning?’ Henry demands. Leg stout with bandages, he heaves himself into a chair in his private rooms. ‘No, do not confer, I want an answer from each of you, each Thomas alone.’ He grimaces, though he means to smile. ‘Do you know the confusion you cause among the French? They have made of you one composite counsellor, and in dispatches they call you Dr Chramuel.’
    They exchange glances, he and Cranmer: the pork butcher and the angel. But the king does not wait for their advice, joint or several; he talks on, like a man sticking a dagger into himself to prove how much it hurts. ‘If a king cannot have a son, if he cannot do that, it matters not what else he can do. The victories, the spoils of victory, the just laws he makes, the famous courts he holds, these are as nothing.’
    It is true. To maintain the stability of the realm: this is the compact a king makes with his people. If he cannot have a son of his own, he must find an heir, name him before his country falls into doubt and confusion, faction and conspiracy. And who can Henry name, that will not be laughed at? The king says, ‘When I remember what I did for the present queen, how I raised her from a gentleman’s daughter…I cannot think now why I did it.’ He looks at them as if to say, do you know, Dr Chramuel? ‘It seems to me,’ he is groping, perplexed, for the right phrases, ‘it seems to me I was somehow dishonestly led into this marriage.’
    He, Cromwell, eyes the other half of himself, as if through a mirror: Cranmer looks thrown. ‘How, dishonestly?’ the archbishop asks.
    ‘I feel sure I was not in my clear mind then. Not as I am now.’
    ‘But sir,’ Cranmer says. ‘Majesty. Saving Your Grace, your mind cannot be clear. You have suffered a great loss.’
    Two, in fact, he thinks: today your son was born dead, and your first wife buried. No wonder you tremble.
    ‘It seems to me I was seduced,’ Henry says, ‘that is to say, I was practised upon, perhaps by charms, perhaps by spells. Women do use such things. And if that were so, then the marriage would be null, would it not?’
    Cranmer holds out his hands, like a man trying to send back the tide. He sees his queen vanishing into thin air: his queen who has done so much for true religion. ‘Sir, sir…Majesty…’
    ‘Oh, peace!’ Henry says: as if it were Cranmer who had started it. ‘Cromwell, when you were soldiering, did you ever hear of anything that would heal a leg like mine? I have knocked it again now and the surgeons say the foul humours must come out. They fear that the rot has got as far as the bone. But do not tell anybody. I would not like word to spread abroad. Will you send a page to find Thomas Vicary? I think he must bleed me. I need some relief. Give you good night.’ He adds, almost under his breath, ‘For I suppose even this day must end.’
    Dr Chramuel goes out. In an antechamber, one of him turns to the other. ‘He will be different tomorrow,’ the archbishop says.
    ‘Yes. A man in pain will say anything.’
    ‘We should not heed it.’
    ‘No.’
    They are like two men crossing thin ice; leaning into each other, taking tiny, timid steps. As if that will do you any good, when it begins to crack on every side.
    Cranmer says uncertainly, ‘Grief for the child sways him. Would he wait so long for Anne, to throw her over so quickly? They will soon be perfect friends.’
    ‘Besides,’ he says. ‘He is not a man to admit he was wrong. He may have his doubts about his marriage. But God help anyone else who raises them.’
    ‘We must calm these doubts,’ Cranmer says. ‘Between us we must do it.’
    ‘He would like to be the Emperor’s friend. Now that Katherine is not there to cause ill-feeling between them. And so we must face the fact that the present queen is…’ He hesitates to say, superfluous; he hesitates to say, an obstacle to peace.
    ‘She is in his way,’ Cranmer says bluntly. ‘But he will not sacrifice her? Surely he will not. Not to please Emperor Charles or any man. They need not think it. Rome need not think it. He will never revert.’
    ‘No. Have