After a manner, Rafe says. When the onlookers reminded him he had made no provision for her he nodded that yes, he knew: but she was not his wife, never his wife, he was married to Anne Boleyn. And all this he showed them, Rafe says, by pushing away any papers they laid before him, and by a petulant sweep of his hand over his embroidered coverlet: his palm, damp with his last secretions, brushing the emblems of Percy rule, the blue lion and lozenges of gold.
He says, ‘His memory was still good, despite his pain, if he remembered Anne Boleyn. I wonder if he remembered the night he walked in to arrest the cardinal?’
The Percys’ noble house is now utterly undone. Harry Percy has no offspring, and the king is his heir. His brother Thomas has pre-deceased him, beheaded for treason in the late broils; his brother Ingram lies in the Tower, under threat of the same.
And Robert Aske is dead. Norfolk supervises the execution. He is hanged in York, from the Clifford Tower, on a market day. Where now his tawny silk jacket with the velvet facings, his crimson satin doublet? Still in London at the Cardinal’s Hat. Aske begs to be full dead before he is cut up: the king concedes it.
After that, his mercy appears exhausted. Among the traitors fetched to London is a woman, Margaret Cheney – known as wife to Sir John Bulmer, but really his concubine. It is indecent to cut a woman apart in public or strip her to draw out her entrails, so if guilty of high treason she is burned. He goes to Henry. Asking for quick deaths devolves to him, a duty inherited from the cardinal. For Anne Boleyn he procured not only the swifter end, but the Calais swordsman: she too could have died by fire.
He says, ‘Sir, Bulmer’s woman is sent to suffer at Smithfield – I know the penalty is specified, but it is not often enforced.’
Henry grunts.
‘Consider, sir, she made a guilty plea.’
‘She could hardly do other,’ the king says. ‘No, my lord, there is no help for it, she must endure – it will be an example to other women, should they incline to papistry and rebellion.’
Margaret Cheney is beautiful. He has seen her. She is tender and young. He says, ‘Majesty, let me bring her where you can see her.’
Her beauty might move him. He can be moved. We have seen it happen.
Henry says, ‘I have no curiosity to see a traitor. Except Pole. I would be curious to see Pole, but you seem unable to get hold of him.’
He bows, withdraws: a failure, twice a failure. He thinks, perhaps Cranmer and I, perhaps if we pleaded on our knees for him to stop the burning … But Cranmer is in the country. In times past, the king’s women might have appealed to him, for one of their own sex. But the Lady Mary has been warned stiffly, by him, not to speak for any rebel; and the queen, he supposes, has been told the same by her brother.
He leans against the wall in the privy chamber. He thinks, do not falter, Master Secretary. Have no qualms, my lord Privy Seal; Baron Cromwell, do not fail. You must not soften now.
A young man approaches: ‘May I offer you assistance, my lord?’
‘Tom Culpeper,’ he says. The young fellow bows. Doublet silk, manners honed: by blood, some sort of Howard. Is there no end to them?
The young man says smoothly, ‘Messages from Calais, my lord.’
‘Lady Lisle is delivered at last?’
‘Ah, no, it is not yet her time.’
‘Then do not trouble the king. He looks every hour to hear Lisle has a son.’
He brushes past Culpeper, hugging his folio of papers. You cannot falter, he thinks, and you must not. You must crunch up the enemy, flesh, bones and all. You cannot afford to fail, you must bring Henry good news, you must dredge it up from somewhere; he is outwardly serene, but not serene or patient when he wakes in the night, not when his leg pains him in the small hours.
The king has pulled Francis Bryan back from France, saying, ‘What’s the use? This ingrate Pole always eludes us.’ The difficulty is not how to seize his person – it is where. In the Low Countries, jurisdictions lie so close that a man may easily pass from France to Empire and back in a day; territory is so contested that the border can change while a traveller is hearing Mass or taking a nap. But Pole does not hover in mid-air, he is always in someone’s jurisdiction. Any violence involved in arresting him could be taken as a hostile act on foreign soil: a provocation to war, or an excuse for it.
But where can Pole go next? Neither France nor the Low Countries will receive him, but they will not extradite him either. He says to Wriothesley, he will go to Italy now. He has missed his chance with our rebels. He will retreat to warmer climes, where his pedigree is applauded, and where with fellow prelates in scarlet he will pace on a white mule, while poor peasants throw money under the hooves.
And that is our chance to kill him, he thinks. For in Italy who owns the night, who can patrol it?
He says, ‘I wish I had the man who shot Packington. Were he the greatest papist alive, I would turn him, and send him after Reginald.’
