He wants to put his hand on the king’s shoulder, as he sits sweating in a cold room; the lords of the council have taken the cheer and the warmth with them, and there is no power in the stray shafts of spring sun that trace a shivering line down the wall.
The king says, ‘I am a man who … my hopes … after so long … and I want to be sure …’
Fitz raises his eyebrows.
‘When I married the queen, that is, before I married her … I need not remind you of the circumstances, but rest assured that though I was hasty, yet I am constant in my affections –’
‘Spit it out, sir,’ Fitzwilliam says.
‘Are we truly married?’ Henry says. ‘When I entered into that compact, there was nothing to impede or frustrate it?’
‘You mean,’ he says, ‘nothing about the queen that you should have known?’
Fitz sounds shocked. ‘I am sure you found no reason to question that gracious lady’s virginity.’
Henry colours faintly. ‘Not at all. But are you certain you did all you should, as my councillors? The most diligent enquiries? You can be sure she was absolutely free to enter into matrimony?’
‘There was no pre-contract,’ Fitz says, ‘if that is what troubles your Majesty.’
‘But was she not once courted by William Dormer?’
‘It was something and nothing,’ Fitzwilliam says.
He says, ‘It was nothing.’
Fitz says, ‘To be blunt, sir, the Dormer family would not come to a settlement. They concluded the Seymours were not –’
‘Rich enough,’ he finishes.
‘So you think there was nothing between them?’ The king gets to his feet. ‘If you are sure. Because I need to be sure. Because I cannot start hoping again, it will kill me. I have lost Richmond. I never had a son born in wedlock, that lived. I must know that this time I am safe. That no one can question his birthright. I have been patient. Surely God will reward me now.’ There is a glitter of tears in his eyes. He, Cromwell, turns away, and Fitzwilliam turns, so they do not see them spill. But the king says, ‘I should know you by now, eh, Crumb? If ever a man was thorough, you are that man.’
The king squeezes his shoulder. There is a new magic in the royal touch. It transmits a vision, a vision of what England could be. You imagine the city of London in the days when prophets walk its streets, when angels cluster on gable ends; you look up as you leave your house, hearing their strong wingbeats in the air.
At his first session with Hans, the king can hardly walk for the weight of ornamentation. ‘How best to do this, Master Holbein?’ His face is solemn, attentive.
Hans waves his hand towards the privy chamber gentlemen, the pages, the hangers-on: it is a motion of erasure.
The room empties. Space clears around the king. ‘Can I stay?’ he asks.
Henry says, ‘You may sit with me, my lord Cromwell, but I don’t require conversation.’
He smiles. ‘I’ll stay if your Majesty will grant me five minutes when Hans is done.’
Henry does not reply. He has fixed his gaze on nothingness and he looks as if he is thinking about God. He, Master Secretary, clears himself off to the window, sits on a stool and looks through his papers. His spaniel flops down at his feet. There is no sound in the room but her gentle snoring, except with the king’s every respiration, his garments shift and sigh: as if, a fraction after the king breathes, his clothes breathe too. Behind the silence, he begins to hear other sounds: footsteps above, a scuffling outside the door, a soughing wind that tests the window’s glass in its frame. Every so often he glances up at Henry, in case he wants anything. After a time the king grows tired of God, and starts watching his minister instead. ‘I wonder you can see to read.’
‘I am fortunate.’
‘Mm,’ the king says. ‘You should bathe your eyes with a decoction of rue.’
As he works at his drawing Hans purses his lips and sucks his teeth. He bites down on his lower lip. He hums. As he stands back and lets out his breath there is a sibilance, very nearly a whistle.
The king says, ‘We should have music, perhaps.’
‘Master Hans is doing his best to supply it,’ he says.
Henry says, ‘What did you want with me, my lord Privy Seal?’
‘To talk about the King of Scots, by your leave. You know he is still in France, he has not set forth with his bride. Her father is apprehensive at the thought of her putting to sea. They say she is so frail you can see through her.’
Henry snorts. ‘It is Scotland who is apprehensive. He is quaking. He has been boasting to François he will kick my throne from under me, and now he must reckon with the consequences. He is afraid one of my ships will take him as soon as he is out of port.’
‘Indeed, but now he appeals to your Majesty as a gentleman – he wants to shorten the voyage, land with his bride at Dover and have safe conduct to the border.’
Henry says, ‘What, have his train eat up everything in their path, and sow sedition as they march? Parade in their strength through the north country, showing their banners? Does he think I’m a fool?’
Hans breaks off humming. He coughs.
Ah well. It is a chance lost, of a meeting between two monarchs, uncle and nephew, who have long avoided each other.
The king’s hand rests on the pommel of his dagger: ‘Like this?’ he says to Hans.
Hans says, ‘Perfect.’
Henry eases his shoulders, flexes his knees. Portrait-taking freezes muscle, makes feet hard to manage, makes elbows feel as if they belong to someone else. The harder he tries to hold still, the more the king fidgets. He says, ‘I have messages from Ireland. They want you to go over for a season, my lord Cromwell. They think you could bring order. I do suppose you could.’
‘So am I to go?’
‘No. They might murder you.’
Hans hums.
The king shifts his stance. ‘When are the bishops going to utter?’
Since early in the year the bishops have been working on their profession of faith. It is only last July that the ten articles were issued, and gave birth to months of debate. The king hopes a new statement will consolidate opinion. But every time the bishops send Henry some text, he writes over it and makes nonsense of their propositions. Then the papers go back to Thomas Cranmer: who emends the king’s emendations, and corrects his syntax while he is about it.
Hans says, ‘Would your Majesty be so gracious as to turn his face? Not to Lord Cromwell, to me?’
Henry obeys. He stares at the painter and speaks to his minister: ‘Has Lisle’s man been here? I marvel Lady Lisle has not taken to her chamber. She must be near her time.’
‘Your Majesty will be the first to know.’
Hans says, ‘If she has a boy Lord Lisle will shoot off cannon, so if it is a still day they will hear it in Dover and put a rider on the road. I hope the walls of Calais do not fall down.’
‘Master,’ he whispers, ‘you forget yourself. Apply to your trade.’
Sometimes, sitting beside the king – it is late, they are tired, he has been working since first light – he allows his body to confuse with that of Henry, so that their arms, lying contiguous, lose their form and become cloudy like thaw water. He imagines their fingertips graze, his mind meets the royal wilclass="underline" ink dribbles onto the paper. Sometimes the king nods into sleep. He sits by him scarcely breathing, careful as a nursemaid with a fractious brat. Then Henry starts, wakes, yawns; he says, as if he were to blame, ‘It is midnight, master!’ The past peels away: the king forgets he is ‘my lord’; he forgets what he has made him. At dawn, and twilight, when the light is an oyster shell, and again at midnight, bodies change their shape and size, like cats who slide from dormer to gable and vanish into the murk.
But today it is not ten o’clock: a morning in early spring, the light a primrose blur. ‘Is it not dinnertime?’ the king says, and then, ‘What do you hear from Norfolk?’