Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

her who hang on her words. Her rooms are busy thoroughfares, the privy chamber gentlemen constantly calling in on this errand or that, and lingering to play a game or share a song; where there is no message to carry, they invent one.
    Those gentlemen who are less in the queen’s favour are keen to talk to the newcomer and give him all the gossip. And some things he doesn’t need to be told, he can see and hear for himself. Whispering and scuffling behind doors. Covert mockery of the king. Of his clothes, of his music. Hints of his shortcomings in bed. Where would those hints come from, but the queen?
    There are some men who talk all the time about their horses. This is a steady mount but I used to have one speedier; that’s a fine filly you have there, but you should see this bay I have my eye on. With Henry, it’s ladies: he finds something to like in almost any female who crosses his path, and will scratch up a compliment for her, though she be plain and old and sour. With the young ones, he is enraptured twice a day: has she not the finest eyes, is not her throat white, her voice sweet, her hand shapely? Generally it’s look and don’t touch: the most he will venture, blushing slightly, ‘Don’t you think she must have pretty little duckies?’
    One day Rafe hears Weston’s voice in the next room, running on, amused, in imitation of the king: ‘Has she not the wettest cunt you ever groped?’ Giggles, complicit sniggers. And ‘Hush! Cromwell’s spy is about.’
    Harry Norris has been absent from court lately, spending time on his own estates. When he is on duty, Rafe says, he tries to suppress the talk, sometimes seems angry at it; but sometimes he lets himself smile. They talk about the queen and they speculate…
    Go on, Rafe, he says.
    Rafe doesn’t like telling this. He feels it is below him to be an eavesdropper. He thinks hard before he speaks. ‘The queen needs to conceive another child quickly to please the king, but where is it to come from, they ask. Since Henry cannot be trusted to do the business, which of them is to do him a favour?’
    ‘Did they come to any conclusion?’
    Rafe rubs the crown of his head and makes his hair stand up. You know, he says, they would not really do it. None of them. The queen is sacred. It is too great a sin even for such lustful men as they be, and they are too much in fear of the king, surely, even though they mock him. Besides, she would not be so foolish.
    ‘I ask you again, did they come to any conclusion?’
    ‘I think it’s every man for himself.’
    He laughs. ‘ Sauve qui peut. ’
    He hopes none of this will be needed. If he acts against Anne he hopes for a cleaner way. It’s all foolish talk. But Rafe cannot unhear it, he cannot unknow it, there it is.
     
     
    March weather, April weather, icy showers and splinters of sun; he meets Chapuys, indoors, this time.
    ‘You seem pensive, Master Secretary. Come to the fire.’
    He shakes away the raindrops from his hat. ‘I have a weight on my mind.’
    ‘Do you know, I think you only set up these meetings with me to annoy the French ambassador?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ he sighs, ‘he is very jealous. In truth I would visit you more often, except that word always gets back to the queen. And she contrives to use it against me in one way or another.’
    ‘I could wish you a more gracious mistress.’ The ambassador’s implicit question: how is that going, the getting of a new mistress? Chapuys has floated to him, could there not be a new treaty between our sovereigns? Something that would safeguard Mary, her interests, perhaps place her back in the line of succession, after any children Henry might have with a new wife? Assuming, of course, the present queen were gone?
    ‘Ah, Lady Mary.’ Lately he has taken to putting his hand to his hat when her name is mentioned. He can see the ambassador is touched by this, he can see him preparing to put it in dispatches. ‘The king is willing to hold formal talks. It would please him to be united in friendship to the Emperor. So much he has said.’
    ‘Now you must bring him to the point.’
    ‘I have influence with the king but I cannot answer for him, no subject can. This is my difficulty. To succeed with him, one must anticipate his desires. But one then stands exposed, should he change his mind.’
    Wolsey his master had advised, make him say what he wants, do not guess, for by guessing you may destroy yourself. But perhaps, since Wolsey’s day, the