‘You may take your thumbprints off my soul,’ George says. ‘I discuss these matters with my chaplains.’
‘Yes, so they tell me. I think you have become too assured of forgiveness, believing you have years ahead of you to sin and yet though God sees all he must be patient, like a waiting man: and you will notice him at last, and answer his suit, if only he will wait till you are old. Is that your case?’
‘I will speak to my confessor about that.’
‘I am your confessor now. Did you say, in the hearing of others, that the king was impotent?’
George sneers at him. ‘He can do it when the weather is set fair.’
‘In doing so, you called into question the parentage of the Princess Elizabeth. You will readily see this is treason, as she is the heir to England.’
‘Faute de mieux, as far as you’re concerned.’
‘The king now believes he could not have a son from this marriage, as it was not lawful. He believes there were hidden impediments and that your sister was not frank about her past. He means to make a new marriage, which will be clean.’
‘I marvel you explain yourself,’ George says. ‘You never did so before.’
‘I do so for one reason – so that you can realise your situation and entertain no false hope. These chaplains you speak of, I will send them to you. They are fit company for you now.’
‘God grants sons to every beggar,’ George says. ‘He grants them to the illicit union, as well as the blessed, to the whore as well as the queen. I wonder that the king can be so simple.’
‘It is a holy simplicity,’ he says. ‘He is an anointed sovereign, and so very close to God.’
Boleyn scrutinises his expression, for levity or scorn: but he knows his face says nothing, he can rely on his face for that. You could look back through Boleyn’s career, and say, ‘There he went wrong, and there.’ He was too proud, too singular, unwilling to bridle his whims or turn himself to use. He needs to learn to bend with the breeze, like his father; but the time he has to learn anything is running out fast. There is a time to stand on your dignity, but there is a time to abandon it in the interests of your safety. There is a time to smirk behind the hand of cards you have drawn, and there is a time to throw down your purse on the table and say, ‘Thomas Cromwell, you win.’
George Boleyn, right forepaw.
By the time he gets to Francis Weston (right hindpaw) he has been approached by the young man’s family and offered a great deal of money. Politely, he has refused them; in their circumstances he would do just the same, except that it is hard to imagine Gregory or any member of his household to be such a fool as this young man has been.
The Weston family go further: they approach the king himself. They will make an offering, they will make a benevolence, they will make a large and unconditional donation to the king’s treasury. He discusses it with Fitzwilliam: ‘I cannot advise His Majesty. It is possible that lesser charges can be brought. It depends how much His Majesty thinks his honour is touched.’
But the king is not disposed to be lenient. Fitzwilliam says grimly, ‘If I were Weston’s people, I would pay the money anyway. To ensure favour. Afterwards.’
That is the very approach he has settled on himself, thinking of the Boleyn family (those who survive) and the Howards. He will shake the ancestral oaks and gold coins will drop each season.
Even before he comes to the room where Weston is held, the young man knows what to expect; he knows who is gaoled with him; he knows or has a good idea of the charges; his gaolers must have babbled, because he, Cromwell, has cut off communication between the four men. A talkative gaoler can be useful; he can nudge a prisoner towards cooperation, towards acceptance, towards despair. Weston must guess his family’s initiative has failed. You look at Cromwell and you think, if bribery won’t do it, nothing else will. It’s useless to protest or disclaim or contradict. Abasement might just do it, it’s worth a try. ‘I taunted you, sir,’ Francis says. ‘I belittled you. I am sorry I ever did so. You are the king’s servant and it was proper for me to respect that.’
‘Well, that is a handsome apology,’ he says. ‘Though you should beg forgiveness of the king and of Jesus Christ.’
Francis says, ‘You know I am not long married.’
‘And your wife left at home in the country. For obvious reasons.’
‘Can I write to her? I have a son. He is not yet a year.’ A silence. ‘I wish my soul to be prayed for after I am dead.’
He would have thought God could make his own decisions, but Weston believes the creator may be pushed and coaxed and maybe bribed a little. As if following his thought, Weston says, ‘I am in debt, Master Secretary. To the tune of a thousand pounds. I am sorry for it now.’
‘No one expects a gallant young gentleman like yourself to be thrifty.’ His tone is kindly, and Weston looks up. ‘Of course, these debts are more than you could reasonably pay, and even set against the assets you will have when your father dies, they are a heavy burden. So your extravagance gives people to think, what expectations had young Weston?’
For a moment, the young man looks at him with a dumb, rebellious expression, as if he does not see why this should be brought against him: what have his debts to do with anything? He does not see where it is leading. Then he does. He, Cromwell, puts out a hand to grab his clothes, to stop him slumping forward in shock. ‘A jury will easily grasp the point. We know the queen gave you money. How could you live as you did? It is easy to see. A thousand pounds is nothing to you, if you hoped to marry her once you had contrived the king’s death.’
When he is sure that Weston can sit upright, he opens his fist and eases his grip. Mechanically, the boy reaches up and straightens his clothes, straightens the little ruff of his shirt collar.
‘Your wife will be taken care of,’ he tells him. ‘Have no unease on that score. The king never extends animosity to widows. She will be cared for better, I dare say, than you ever cared for her.’
Weston looks up. ‘I cannot fault your reasoning. I see how it will weigh when it is given in evidence. I have been a fool and you have stood by and seen it all. I know how I have undone myself. I cannot fault your conduct either, because I would have injured you if I could. And I know I have not lived a good…I have not lived…you see, I thought I should have another twenty years or more to live as I have, and then when I am old, forty-five or fifty, I should give to hospitals and endow a chantry, and God would see I was sorry.’
He nods. ‘Well, Francis,’ he says. ‘We know not the hour, do we?’
‘But Master Secretary, you know that whatever wrong I have done, I am not guilty in this matter of the queen. I see by your face you know it, and all the people will know it too when I am brought out to die, and the king will know it and think about it in his private hours. I shall be remembered, therefore. As the innocent are remembered.’
It would be cruel to disturb that belief; he looks to his death to give him greater fame than his life has done. All the years that stretched before him, and no reason to believe that he meant to make any better use of them than he made of the first twenty-five; he himself says not. Brought up under the wing of his sovereign, a courtier since he was a child, from a family of courtiers: never a moment’s doubt about his place in the world, never a moment’s anxiety, never a moment’s thankfulness for the great privilege of having been born Francis Weston, born in the eye of fortune, born to serve a great king and a great nation: he will leave nothing but his debt, and a tarnished name, and a son: and anyone can father a son, he says to himself: until he remembers why we are here and what all this is about. He says, ‘Your wife has written for you to the king. Asking for mercy. You have a great many friends.’