Don’t repeat it, he thinks. Repetition is the only force it has.
‘The marriage with Katherine was made, and in weeks Arthur was dead. Thereafter, as you know …’
He thinks of Katherine’s miscarried children, their blind faces and their vestigial hands joined in prayer. ‘It was not I caused Warwick’s death,’ Henry says. ‘It was not even my father, it was Katherine’s people. I do not know why my father allowed the Spaniards to put a bloody hand into this realm’s affairs. How long must I suffer, to ease the conscience of Castile? And what more can I give Warwick’s family? I have promoted them. I have enriched them. Other kings would have kept them low.’
So much is true. They have worked on your shame, he thinks. ‘Who can read Margaret Pole, sir? Not I.’
Henry says, ‘Her son Montague has never liked me. To speak truthfully, I have never liked him. His brother Geoffrey is not a man to trust. But Reginald, I had hopes there – a gentle soul, one worthy to be cherished – or so I was told. I paid for his studies. I funded him to travel in Italy. I trusted him to go to the Sorbonne for me, to put my case in the matter of my annulment.’
His first annulment, he means. ‘I heard he put it very well.’
‘I would have rewarded him. I would have made him Archbishop of York. You know he is in minor orders, he is not yet a priest, but my thought was, he might quickly be ordained, and as the see was vacant after Wolsey – but he would none of it. Said he was too young. Not worthy. I should have known then, he meant to turn.’ The king thumps the folio. ‘All I asked of him was one word out of Italy – a statement, a scholar’s opinion, something I could set before the world, to show his family’s support. I told him, I do not need a book, I have books enough, I need just a word, to justify how and why I am head of my own church. And I waited. In great patience. And I was promised and promised, but nothing forthcame. Always some reason for delay. The heat, the cold, an outbreak of disease, the poor state of the roads, the untrustworthy nature of messengers, and his need to remove, to travel, consult some rare volume or some learned divine. Well, now it has come at last. It is a book after all.’ The king looks exhausted, as if he had written it himself. ‘And worth the waiting, because now the scales fall from my eyes.’
He moves to pick up the manuscript, but the king drops his hand on it. ‘I will save you the trouble. First there is a note to me, cold and insolent in tone. After that, each page more bitter than the last. I am a greater danger to Christians than the infidel Turk. He calls me a Nero, and a wild beast. He advises the Emperor Charles to invade. He claims that for the whole of my reign I have plundered my subjects and dishonoured the nobility. They are now ready to revolt, he claims, lords and commons both, and he exhorts them to do so, to rise up and murder me.’
‘It must appear to your Majesty –’
‘And I am damned,’ Henry says. ‘Hell gapes for me. Or so he says.’
‘– it must strike your Majesty that a rising, such as he advocates, cannot only be against somebody. It must also be for somebody.’
‘Of course. You see how it all works together? Pole exhorts Europe to take arms against me, and at the very same hour, my own daughter defies me. Tell me this – why is Reginald not a priest yet? When he is so fond of his prayers? I will tell you why. Because his family schemes to marry him to my daughter.’
Neat, if they could do it. Mary Tudor carries the best blood of Spain. Unite it with Plantagenet blood: that’s the thinking. The Pole family and their allies dream of a new England: which is to say, an old one, where they rule again.
‘I believe,’ he says, ‘that the Lady Mary regards your Majesty’s favour more than that of any bridegroom. Even if Heaven sent him.’
‘So you say. But then you always defend her.’
‘She is a woman, she is young. Trust me, your Majesty, she will see her duty, she will comply. These people who call themselves her supporters, they take advantage of her. I don’t believe she can penetrate their schemes.’
The king says, ‘I lived with her mother for twenty years, and I tell you, she could penetrate any scheme. You said yourself, if Katherine had been a man, she would have been a hero like Alexander.’
He had once said to Cranmer, the dreams of kings are not the dreams of other men. They are susceptible to visions, in which the figures of their ancestors come to speak to them of war, vengeance, law and power. Dead kings visit them; they say, ‘Do you know us, Henry? We know you.’ There are places in the realm where battles have been fought, places where, the wind in a certain direction, the moon waning, the night obscure, you can hear the thunder of hooves and the creak of harness and the screams of the slain; and if you creep close – if you were thin air, suppose you were a spirit who could slide between blades of grass – then you would hear the aspirations of the dying, you would hear them cry to God for mercy. And all these, the souls of England, cry to me, the king tells him, to me and every king: each king carries the crimes of other kings, and the need for restitution rolls forward down the years.
‘You think me superstitious,’ Henry says. ‘You do not understand me. However Pole’s family offends me, I am fastened to them, by the history that binds us together.’
The bonds of history can be loosened, he thinks. ‘If there was a crime, it is an old crime. If there was a sin, it is stale.’
‘You cannot enter into my difficulty. How can you?’
You’re right, he thinks, how can I? Ghosts don’t oppress the Cromwells. Walter does not rise by night, ale pot in hand, chisel in his belt, roistering by the wharves and showing his bruised knuckles to Putney. I don’t have a history, only a past. ‘Given my poor understanding, what shall I do for you, sir?’
‘Go and see Margaret Pole. She is here in London. See if she knew about her wretched son’s book. See if his brothers knew.’
‘They will disclaim it, I am sure.’
‘I ask myself, what did you know?’ The king’s eyes rest on him. ‘You do not seem amazed by it, as I was amazed.’
‘Your Majesty will remember why my lord cardinal employed me, in times past. It was not for my knowledge of the law. There are lawyers enough. It was for my connections in Italy. I am good to my friends there. I write them letters. They write to me.’
‘If you knew, you could have stopped it.’
‘I could have stopped Reginald sending the book to your Majesty. But he was determined to speak his mind. I could not, for example, stop him sending it to the Pope.’
Henry pushes the book across the table. ‘He swears there is only one copy, and this is it. But why should I believe him? In two months it could be printed and read everywhere. Likely the Pope is reading it now. And the Emperor too.’
‘I suppose Charles needs to be alerted. If he is to lead this invasion force that Pole seeks.’
‘They will never make landfall,’ Henry says. ‘I will eat them alive.’
Now everything falls away, the pain, the doubt and the jaundiced fear that has shadowed Henry this last hour. Now he slaps his hand down on the book, and a cannibal glint in his eye reminds you: dog eat dog, but no man eats England. He rises from his chair. You think he is going to say, Fetch me Excalibur.
But these are not the days of heroes and giants. He tells the king, ‘I believe men in the Pole livery have been seen at Hunsdon, with messages for Lady Mary – though of course, we do not know that she has read them. The Courtenays are there too, though she is forbidden visitors –’
‘The Courtenays? Lord Exeter himself?’ The king is shocked.
‘No. His lady wife. I think Lady Mary could not prevent her. You know what she is, Gertrude Courtenay.’
‘She will thrust herself in, by God. She tries my patience. Tell Exeter he is expelled from the council. A man who cannot control his wife is not fit to serve his country.’ Henry frowns. His mind runs over sundry faces. ‘What about Riche, shall we have Riche on?’