Damn that feckless Abbot! Wolsey frowned as one wrong dredged up another. His servant, Cromwell, had determined that dissolving Wigmore monastery brought him enough to fund his work through to next spring. The man was a veritable hound for sniffing out disposable abbeys. It was not as if they were doing anything-gaining the remittance of sin for a smattering of rural yokels didn’t compare in any way to his two glorious colleges at Ipswich and Oxford. The quill trembled in his spasmed hand and punched through the stiff parchment. It had been several days, and His Majesty was still silent!
Wolsey thumped the table with his ringed hand and pushed up from his labours. He’d handled His Sovereign’s amours and problems before-Mary Blout and Mary Boleyn were the two most prominent. Henry was a lusty man, full of all the vigour expected of a monarch, but to cuddle his paramour before all, and treat Anne Boleyn as if she was already Queen-that was just too much to endure. This whole situation with the disaster of the annulment was the fault of that meddling Frenchified punk! It didn’t take a university scholar to see that My Lady Anne Boleyn was the drafter of all his problems, scheming, conspiring and plotting to pull him down as the King’s trusted servant. It was her hand behind that affair with secretary Knight last year and the ‘secret mission’ to the Pope. Damn, that had been close. A day’s delay in messages from his intelligencers would have seen the decretals wing their way straight into the King’s hands without ‘careful appraisal and editing’. That little surprise had the stiff necked Boleyns and their snarling pack deflated, taking the wind right out of their sails.
Until now, and the King’s silence and distance continued to grow.
Wolsey flexed his fingers and cracked his sore knuckles in irritation. Which problem first? Should he play down or use the Royal indiscretions? Imperial eyes watched every loving caress and mark of favour. It was a deliberate provocation on her part. The woman was so sure-may as well call her Queen Anne for the bitch was that in all but name! Why couldn’t His Majesty have asked for a French princess as Wolsey had been working towards? The prestige of the Christian world would have been his, not to mention the benefits of a firm French alliance against the shifting factions of Europe. This infatuation with that Boleyn temptress had thrown the complex game of crowns and lands into confusion. Wolsey clenched his left hand in frustration. Now to favour Henry’s passion, the path to a French crown receded, and England risked the wrath of Emperor Charles V for slighting his Aunt Katherine, and for no gain. And his hold on power, now not nearly so firm, cracked and crumbled away like old plaster.
And it wasn’t just the Boleyn curs baying. Now the court jackals scented blood as well, snarling and snapping away at his ankles. Brandon’s insult and Wigmore’s insolence were merely the first signs. And like any rebellious pack of hounds, they needed a firm hand on the whip to bring them to heel. Wolsey frowned and pinched the bridge of his nose. Damn them all to the nethermost regions of Hell! He’d seen the warnings but due to the demands of the Legatine Commission for His Majesty, it had been left to slip for too long. Only last month he’d received a report from his agent secreted amongst the French Ambassador’s retainers, full to the brim with open conspiracy.
"These Lords intend, after he is dead or ruined, to impeach the State of the Church, and take all its goods; which it is hardly needful for me to write in cipher, for they proclaim it openly. I expect they will do fine miracles as well, I expect the priests will never have the great seal again; and that in this Parliament they will have terrible fright."
Of all the ambassadors in residence, Du Bellay was the cleverest. If this was in his report to Francis, then Wolsey’s enemies had already sounded out foreign allies. What unnatural arrogance! The casual expectation of his fall was an insult. What, was he already dead and buried? Had they sung the last rites over him? Wolsey hadn’t gained this hold over the Kingdom and been the right hand of the monarch all these years just to have foreigners and strutting nobles dismiss him so readily. No! There had to be a way out of this thicket, a way to regain Henry’s approval and to banish that distancing silence.
He pushed himself painfully up from the table, and stood before the fire. His gentleman usher, Cavendish, stepped forward and offered a goblet of Rhenish wine. With a brief nod of acknowledgement, he took a hefty draught and stared into the crackling logs.
He’d tried getting rid of the Boleyn girl-it hadn’t worked. She was much cannier than her older sister, Mary, and so Henry had set his mind to marriage, legal and lawful, to Anne. So had begun the round of offer, bargain and threat between London and Rome. The bitch had even survived a bout of the sweats so she was unlikely to succumb to a sniffle. It was time he lacked now. Three years this had played out as he swatted off the petty intrigues of the Boleyns. And now he was out of time. Damn Clement for the weak fool that he was!
He’d solved the problems of Henry’s two sisters-a divorce for the Queen of Scotland and removal of the bigamy charges for the ungrateful Suffolk, thus elevating his stature as the papal expert. Now … now was different. After the letter from Master Casale in Rome, three days ago, any hopes of an annulment from the Apostolic See were dust. The only remaining army on the Italian peninsula were beaten, and as a result, that master of equivocation, Pope Clement, had finally decided to commit himself once and for all to Charles V and the Imperial faction by recalling the annulment case to a Papal court. A disaster-it was a complete disaster. Why did Clement have to pick now to stick irrevocably to a decision? By reputation, former Cardinal Giuliano Medici never resolved to one course of action for longer than it took to eat a capon. It was often quoted as a wry joke within the Apostolic chambers that His Holiness could agree to several opposing suggestions between one sip of wine and another. This last reported rumour from his agents in Rome, hinted at the cause for his unaccustomed consistency-an illegitimate Hapsburg daughter was to wed a papal nephew.
Wolsey passed back the empty goblet and slapped one meaty hand into the other. This too public failure could break him! That damned harpy would be at her royal paramour every day, whispering and pouting, flashing those dark eyes, every word dripping with venom. ‘Our Lord Chancellor promised so much …’ Damn her and damn Clement!
As this thought brought on yet another surge of bile, his ire acquired a more Romewards direction. Clement, that Florentine ditherer, it was all his fault. He had even fowled up the appointment of Cardinal Campeggio to the Annulment Commission. Lorenzo Campeggio was supposed to be England’s agent in the Holy See, a cleric bought and paid for by English gold. The Italian received the income from a bishopric and hefty annual gifts and yet now, despite all this generosity, he was hedging and wavering just like his master. As slowly as was possible, Campeggio had travelled all the way from Rome-two weeks even to get from Dover to London. A blind, crippled snail on crutches could have managed a faster journey! Almost daily he was advised to either halt and wait, or to speed up as the inconstant Papal mind wandered along its meandering path. Finally, after months wasted on the journey, Campeggio arrived, and in his very first conversation with the King, revealed that within his luggage was a Papal decretal granting the divorce. A much prayed for solution to this bitter, bitter problem.