Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

grip. ‘Cremuel! You knew this was planned. How could you so embarrass me?’
    ‘It is for the best, I assure you.’ He adds, sombre, thoughtful, ‘What use as a diplomat would you be, Eustache, if you did not understand the character of princes? They do not think as other men think. To commoners’ minds like ours, Henry seems perverse.’
    Light dawns in the ambassador’s eye. ‘Ahh.’ He lets out a long breath. He grasps, in that single moment, why Henry has forced him to make a public reverence to a queen whom he no longer wants. Henry is tenacious of his will, he is stubborn. Now he has carried his point: his second marriage has been acknowledged. Now, if he likes, he can let it go.
    Chapuys draws his garments together, as if he feels a draught from the future. He whispers, ‘Must I really dine with her brother?’
    ‘Oh yes. You will find him a charming host. After all,’ he raises a hand to hide his smile, ‘has he not just enjoyed a triumph? He and his whole family?’
    Chapuys huddles closer. ‘I am shocked to see her. I have not seen her so close. She looks like a thin old woman. Was that Mistress Seymour, in the halcyon sleeves? She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?’
    ‘He thinks she’s stupid. He finds it restful.’
    ‘Clearly he is enamoured. There must be something about her not evident to the stranger’s eye.’ The ambassador sniggers. ‘No doubt she has a very fine enigme .’
    ‘No one would know,’ he says blankly. ‘She is a virgin.’
    ‘After so long at your court? Surely Henry is deluded.’
    ‘Ambassador, keep this for later. Your host is here.’
    Chapuys folds his hands over his heart. He makes George, Lord Rochford, a sweeping bow. Lord Rochford does the same. Arm in arm, they mince away. It sounds as if Lord Rochford is reciting verses in praise of the spring.
    ‘Hm,’ says Lord Audley: ‘What a performance.’ The weak sunshine glints from the Lord Chancellor’s chain of office. ‘Come on, my boy, let’s go and gnaw a crust.’ Audley chuckles. ‘The poor ambassador. He looks like someone being carried by slavers to the Barbary coast. He does not know what country he will wake up in tomorrow.’
    Nor do I, he thinks. You can rely on Audley to be jovial. He closes his eyes. Some hint, some intimation has reached him, that he has had the best of the day, though it is only ten o’clock. ‘Crumb?’ the Lord Chancellor says.
     
     
    It is some time after dinner that it all begins to fall apart, and in the worst possible way. He has left Henry and the ambassador together in a window embrasure, to caress each other with words, to coo about an alliance, to make each other immodest propositions. It is the king’s change of colour he notices first. Pink and white to brick red. Then he hears Henry’s voice, high-pitched, cutting: ‘I think you presume too much, Chapuys. You say I acknowledge your master’s right to rule in Milan: but perhaps the King of France has as good a right, or better. Do not presume to know my policy, ambassador.’
    Chapuys jumps back. He thinks of Jane Seymour’s question: Master Secretary, have you ever seen a scalded cat?
    The ambassador speaks: something low and supplicating. Henry raps back at him, ‘You mean to say that what I took as a courtesy, from one Christian prince to the other, is really a bargaining position? You agree to bow to my wife the queen, and then you send me a bill?’
    He, Cromwell, sees Chapuys hold up a placating hand. The ambassador is trying to interrupt, to limit the damage, but Henry talks over him, audible to the whole chamber, to the whole gaping assembly, and to those pressing in behind. ‘Does your master not remember what I did for him, in his early troubles? When his Spanish subjects rose up against him? I kept the seas open for him. I lent him money. And what do I get back?’
    A pause. Chapuys has to send his mind scurrying back, to the years before he was in post. ‘The money?’ he suggests weakly.
    ‘Nothing but broken promises. Recall, if you will, how I helped him against the French. He promised me territory. Next thing I heard, he was making a treaty with Francis. Why should I trust a word he says?’
    Chapuys draws himself up: as far as a little man can. ‘Game little cockerel,’ Audley says, in his ear.
    But he, Cromwell, is not to be distracted. His eyes are fastened on the king. He hears Chapuys say, ‘Majesty. That is not a question to be asked, by one prince of