Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

talking to his wife, who is Francis Bryan’s sister. His wife is talking, or writing at least, to Mary to let her know that her prospects are improving by the hour, that La Ana may be displaced. At the very least, it’s a way of keeping Mary quiet for the while. He doesn’t want her to hear the rumours that Anne is launching fresh hostilities. She may panic, and try to escape; they say she has various absurd plans, like drugging the Boleyn women about her and spurring off by night. He has warned Chapuys, though not in so many words of course, that if Mary does escape Henry is likely to hold him responsible, and to have no regard for the protection of his diplomatic status. At the very least, he will be booted around like Sexton the jester. At worst, he may never see his native shores again.
    Francis Bryan is keeping the Seymours at Wolf Hall abreast of events at court. Fitzwilliam and Carew are talking to the Marquis of Exeter, and Gertrude, his wife. Gertrude is talking over supper to the Imperial ambassador, and to the Pole family, who are as papist as they dare to be, who have teetered on the edge of treason these last four years. No one is talking to the French ambassador. But everyone is talking to him, Thomas Cromwell.
    In sum, this is the question his new friends are asking: if Henry can retire one wife, and she a daughter of Spain, can he not give a pension to Boleyn’s daughter and put her away in some country house, having found defects in the marriage documents? His casting off of Katherine, after twenty years of marriage, offended all Europe. The marriage with Anne is recognised nowhere but in this realm, and has not endured three years; he could annul it, as a folly. After all, he has his own church to do so, his own archbishop.
    In his head he rehearses a request. ‘Sir Nicholas? Sir William? Will you come to my humble house to dine?’
    He does not really mean to ask them. Word would soon reach the queen. A coded glance is enough, a nod and a wink. But once again in his mind he sets the table.
    Norfolk at the head. Montague and his sainted mother. Courtenay and his blasted wife. Sliding in behind them, our friend Monsieur Chapuys. ‘Oh, dammit,’ Norfolk sulks, ‘now must we speak French?’
    ‘I will translate,’ he offers. But who’s this clattering in? It’s Duke Dishpan. ‘Welcome, my lord Suffolk,’ he says. ‘Take a seat. Careful not to get crumbs in that great beard of yours.’
    ‘If there were a crumb.’ Norfolk is hungry.
    Margaret Pole spears him with a glacial stare. ‘You have set a table. You have given us all seats. You have given us no napery.’
    ‘My apologies.’ He calls for a servant. ‘You wouldn’t want to get your hands dirty.’
    Margaret Pole shakes out her napkin. On it is imprinted the face of the dead Katherine.
    A bawling comes from without, the direction of the buttery. Francis Bryan reels in, already a bottle to the good. ‘ Pastime with good company… ’ He crashes to his place.
    Now he, Cromwell, nods to his menials. Extra stools are fetched. ‘Squeeze them in,’ he says.
    Carew and Fitzwilliam enter. They take their places without a smile or a nod. They have come ready to the feast, their knives in their hands.
    He looks around at his guests. All are prepared. A Latin grace; English would be his choice, but he will suit his company. Who cross themselves ostentatiously, in papist style. Who look at him, expectant.
    He shouts for the waiters. The doors burst open. Sweating men heave the platters to the table. It seems the meat is fresh, in fact not slaughtered yet.
    It is just a minor breach of etiquette. The company must sit and salivate.
    The Boleyns are laid at his hand to be carved.
     
     
    Now that Rafe is in the privy chamber, he has closer acquaintance with the musician, Mark Smeaton, who has been promoted among the grooms. When Mark first showed himself at the cardinal’s door, he sloped up in patched boots and a canvas doublet that had belonged to a bigger man. The cardinal put him into worsted, but since he joined the royal household he goes in damask, perched on a fine gelding with a saddle of Spanish leather, the reins clutched in gold-fringed gloves. Where is the money coming from? Anne is recklessly generous, Rafe says. The gossip is that she has given Francis Weston a sum to keep his creditors at bay.
    You can understand, Rafe says, that because now the king does not admire the queen so much, she is keen to have young men about