Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

across the hall and clouted him, banged his head on the panelling and banished him the court. They say Nicholas Carew gave the man refuge, out of pity.
    Anthony is aggrieved about Sexton. One jester does not like to hear of the downfall of another; especially, Anthony says, when his only vice is foresight. Oh, he says, you have been listening to the gossip in the kitchen. But the fool says, ‘Henry kicks out the truth and Master Sexton with it. But these days it has a way of creeping under the bolted door and down the chimney. One day he will give in and invite it to stand by the hearth.’
     
     
    William Fitzwilliam comes to the Rolls House and sits down with him. ‘So how does the queen, Crumb? Still perfect friends, though you dine with the Seymours?’
    He smiles.
    Fitzwilliam jumps up, wrenches the door open to see no one is lurking, then sits down again, and resumes. ‘Cast your mind back. This Boleyn courtship, this Boleyn marriage. How did the king look, in the eyes of grown men? Like one who only studies his own pleasures. Like a child, that is to say. To be so impassioned, to be so enslaved by a woman, who after all is made just as other women are – some said it was unmanly.’
    ‘Did they? Well, I am shocked. We cannot have it said of Henry that he is not a man.’
    ‘A man’ – and Fitzwilliam stresses the word – ‘a man should be governor of his passions. Henry shows much force of will but little wisdom. It harms him. She harms him. The harm will go on.’
    It seems he will not name her, Anna Bolena, La Ana, the concubine. So, if she harms the king, would it be the act of a good Englishman to remove her? The possibility lies between them, approached but still unexplored. It is treason, of course, to speak against the present queen and her heirs; a treason from which the king alone is exempt, for he could not violate his own interest. He reminds Fitzwilliam of this: he adds, even if Henry speaks against her, do not be drawn.
    ‘But what do we look for in a queen?’ Fitzwilliam asks. ‘She should have all the virtues of an ordinary woman, but she must have them to a high degree. She must be more modest, more humble, more discreet and more obedient even than they: so that she sets an example. There are those who ask themselves, is Anne Boleyn any of these things?’
    He looks at Master Treasurer: go on.
    ‘I think I can speak frankly to you, Cromwell,’ Fitz says: and (after checking at the door once again) he does. ‘A queen should be mild and pitiful. She should move the king to mercy – not drive him on to harshness.’
    ‘You have some particular case in mind?’
    Fitz was in Wolsey’s household as a young man. No one knows what part Anne played in the fall of the cardinal; her hand was hidden in her sleeve. Wolsey knew he could hope for no mercy from her, and he received none. But Fitz seems to brush away the cardinal. He says, ‘I hold no brief for Thomas More. He was not the adept in affairs of state that he thought he was. He thought he could sway the king, he thought he could control him, he thought that Henry was still a sweet young prince he could lead by the hand. But Henry is a king and he will be obeyed.’
    ‘Yes, and?’
    ‘And I wish that with More it could have ended another way. A scholar, a man who was Lord Chancellor, to drag him out in the rain and cut off his head…’
    He says, ‘You know, sometimes I forget he’s gone. There is some piece of news and I think, what will More say to this?’
    Fitz glances up. ‘You don’t talk to him, do you?’
    He laughs. ‘I don’t go to him for advice.’ Though I do, of course, consult the cardinal: in the privacy of my short hours of sleep.
    Fitz says, ‘Thomas More scuttled his chances with Anne when he would not come to see her crowned. She would have seen him dead a year before it happened, if she could have proved treason on him.’
    ‘But More was a clever lawyer. Amongst the other things he was.’
    ‘The Princess Mary – the Lady Mary, I should say – she is no lawyer. A friendless girl.’
    ‘Oh, I would think that her cousin the Emperor counts as her friend. And a very good friend to have, too.’
    Fitz looks irritated. ‘The Emperor is a great idol, set up in another country. Day by day, she needs a more proximate defender. She needs someone to push forward her interests. Stop this, Crumb – this dancing around the point.’
    ‘Mary just needs to keep breathing,’ he says. ‘I am not often