King's Fool (20 page)

And gradually, almost imperceptibly, the thickening shadow of Thomas Cromwell began to hang over us. More powerful and sure and deadly than any sudden, swift spite of Anne Boleyn’s. As VicarGeneral—yet without ever having taken holy orders—he served his royal master well. The King never made a boon companion of him as he had of suave, entertaining Wolsey, but beneath Henry’s deceiving air of bluff naïvety he always had known most astutely how to pick his servants in every walk of life. He would even force men into office who had no ambition for it, like Archbishop Cranmer or—in much humbler estate—myself. But, with a kind of rough justice, it was usually those who eagerly wormed their way up to the dizzy peak of being essential whom he threw down when their usefulness was done.

Thomas Cromwell was all-powerful when Jane was Queen, and one had to admit that the man deserved it, for his capacity for hard work was incredible and carried out with a toad-cold objectiveness devoid of personal enmities. The gradual dissolution of the monasteries was already beginning to change the face of England, and by switching much of the economic power to the Crown was building up an almost despotic monarchy. Parliament was consulted, as a constitutional save-face, but dared less and less to oppose the wishes of the King. Successful courtiers, who in their hearts hated Cromwell for the martyrdom of good, brave men like Bishop Fisher of Rochester and Sir Thomas More, were glad enough to profit by a gift of Church lands. Holy Trinity Priory in Aldgate was gone. The church of the Crutched Friars was now part tennis court, part carpenter’s workshop. The new Queen’s younger brother had a greedy eye on rich pickings from Romsey Abbey, and the stones of many a noble nave and refectory were being ear-marked for the building of fortresses for the defence of our Channel coast. Often, in hours of leisure, I wondered how long my beloved Much Wenlock would stand. Homeless monks and nuns, besides the destitute whom they had fed, roamed the roads and begged.

But all this was the more obvious side of Cromwell’s work. Somehow he had to repair the inroads which Henry’s extravagance had made on his able father’s carefully hoarded wealth, and make up for what must have seemed to him the political lunacy of two royal marriages with mere subjects who had brought no rich dowry or foreign alliance. And this he did in devious ways, marking down the wealthy and biding his time to bring some serious charge against them so that all their possessions should be confiscated to the Crown. His spies were everywhere, his cat-and-mouse kind of patience inexhaustible. And the Pilgrimage of Grace, as the jargon of the day called that foredoomed crusade when men of the older faith rose bravely in the north in protest against destructive reforming zeal, only provided him eventually with more opportunities to fleece them.

Though the Queen herself begged that both men and monasteries should be spared, Henry told her not to meddle. Reluctantly he called in Norfolk, because he was his best soldier, and when he and Suffolk between them had finally put down the last fighting flare for Papal supremacy, and Robert Aske and other honest leaders had paid for it with their lives, so many were known to have sympathised that it was easy for Cromwell to bring suspicion on many a family up and down the country who, although living outwardly in orderly subjection to the King, yet in their hearts could not acknowledge him as supreme head of the Church.Again and again law-abiding citizens were arrested on a charge of Praemunire, although even the lawyers seem to have become confused as to its exact implications, and those of us whose worldly assets were negligible went on with our lives uncaring, or—if we cared—at least learned to keep silent tongues. For me this was rendered all the easier because in all save acknowledgement of Papal authority the services in the royal chapels went on unchanged. Henry loved the music and the ritual and the richly coloured vestments, and was a regular worshipper. “In spite,” some unsettling voice would chirp up in my mind as I caught sight of his reverently bowed head, “of Anne Boleyn.”

As the weeks wore on even I, who was never able to make friendly contact with the reserved, humourless new Queen, found myself praying for her safe and easy delivery. Mary Tudor, who had been so shorn of love, must often have prayed for her, and even that she might bear a son, although this would put aside all chances of the crown for herself. And devout Mary Tudor’s prayers would surely carry more weight with the Almighty than those of ribald Will Somers. And at last the day came when all those prayers were answered.

Ever since dawn Hampton Court had been in a state of pandemonium, with physicians and bishops and ambassadors arriving, ladies looking important and pre-occupied, and servants scurrying with steaming cups and chafing dishes up the back stairs.The September day dragged on, and with it the Queen’s long, painful labour, but at the actual momentous hour of birth the palace was extraordinarily silent. All the dignitaries of Church and state were crowded into the lying-in room, and lesser officials and pages hanging about for news outside. Tension had gone on too long. Somehow I did not want to join them, or share in the nervous, excited whispering. Slowly, thoughtfully, I walked back to the King’s deserted bedroom. I was
persona grata
there, and with a friendly word the servants on duty opened the door for me. I wandered about restlessly, picking up the King’s harp, which was so much finer than my own, and plucking a note or two of sweetness from its strings, then wandering to the fireplace to kick a falling log into place. How should I feel, I wondered, were I waiting for my child to be born, sharing vicariously in the long agony with which my wife’s tender body was being torn in payment for my joy with her? But Henry did not love as I loved. Such thoughts would not be in his mind. His anxiety was all for the child, based on the prideful reproduction of himself which lesser men shared, and yet rendered desperate by mightier, more impersonal issues. I found myself slipping into his mind, though it was so utterly different from my own. Almost tenderly, I picked up the bedgown which had fallen to the floor and draped it welcomingly across his chair before the fire. Memories and disgusts of the last few turbulent years receded, and for some reason or other I found myself smiling at the recollection of my Uncle Tobias’s comic visit to Court, and of Henry’s jovial kindness to him.

And then the bedchamber door was suddenly thrown open on a gust of excited sound, and as long as I live I shall not forget the warmth and joyful strength of Henry’s entry. His great frame seemed to fill the arched stone doorway, torchlight illuminated the ruddy gold of his close-cropped head and short, square-trimmed beard.

“God has given me a living son!” he cried out. And his voice filled the room, sweeping all Plantagenet claims and insecurity before him in a burst of Tudor pride.

With all those important lords and prelates at his back he caught sight of me, the only occupant of the room. He must have recognised the welcoming gesture of the warming bedgown, realised that the news was no repetition to me, and read the affectionate joy in my eyes. In that high moment he saw me as some part or appendage of his family.

He strode forward and seized both my hands in a grip that hurt. “Will! Will! I have a son!” he repeated.

THE CHRISTENING IN THE chapel at Hampton Palace will ever remain to me a blur of colours and incongruities. Mary, an ardent daughter of Rome, carrying the new-born babe who had supplanted her and handing him to Cranmer, the reforming Archbishop. Little red-headed Elizabeth, borne in Thomas Seymour’s spring arms, smiling in unwitting innocence at those who had been instrumental in bringing her own unremembered mother to the block. And her Boleyn grandfather, so tragically bereaved of brilliant son and exalted daughter, brought pitifully to holding a taper and a towel for the baptising of a Seymour heir.

I had squeezed myself into a corner of the King’s private gallery so that I could look down upon them all. Upon tall, dark Norfolk and thick-set, bearded Suffolk and all the other nobles resplendent with gold chains and followed by pages bearing christening gifts which would have paid the upkeep of their manors for a year. And upon the ladies in pearled caps and kirtles and billowing damask skirts. Plainly dressed by contrast and firmly standing her ground close to the infant prince was his nurse, Mother Jack—the only woman, I swear, of whom Henry Tudor ever stood in awe. And in the midst of all that throng, the exhausted Queen, brought on a pallet from her child-birth bed, with her husband sitting beaming beside her.

For once there was a becoming flush on Jane’s pale cheeks, and more and more frequently as the long ceremony dragged on I saw her pass a trembling hand across her forehead. Sometimes, when her husband’s attention was engaged elsewhere, she would close her eyes and lean back against her cushions as if all the lighted candles were swimming in a dizzy haze and the triumphant blaring of the heralds’ trumpets jangled in her fevered head.

From my vantage point I was amused to note the cunning with which the child Elizabeth tried to conceal her yawns, and touched to see how protectingly milady Mary took her hand as soon as the King rose to leave and the procession formed to follow him. There was no need for further rivalry, since both of them were relatively unimportant now.

Midnight had sounded from the courtyard clock before Queen Jane’s attendants bore her back along the draughty passages to her bed. And a week later she was dead. Jane, who only a few months ago had made a stir in London by riding her horse beside Henry’s across the frozen Thames, and who had sat patiently for Hans Holbein to paint her portrait.

More shocked, perhaps, than sad, Henry shut himself up alone to face this new development in his life, not suffering any of us to come near him. But next morning he was off to Windsor, leaving Mary to mourn the dead. Off to make arrangements for the late Queen’s interment there, he said. Sickness and the trappings of death he never could abide. But in all the years that followed he invariably referred to Jane as “my wife.” While Katherine’s body lay beneath a black and silver pall in the cold grandeur of Peterborough, and Anne’s headless corpse had been bundled hurriedly into an arrow chest and pushed beneath the paving stones of sad St. Peter-ad-Vincula in the Tower, Jane was laid to rest in the family vault at Windsor, to await her lord the King and lie beside him through the years. It was Henry’s acknowledgement that she was the mother of his son.

In a more devious way I owed a debt to her, too, for it was during the two years of his widowerhood that Henry needed me more, and I became far more to him than a mere jester. For a long time after Queen Katherine’s death I had gone on wearing the black suit which he had given me, or some other sober garments, and although nothing was said it seemed to me to be tacitly agreed between us that I should not resume my motley. Had Henry wished me to he would have said so when John Mallard, his chaplain, was having us painted together for a page of the exquisite psalter he was preparing in the Italian style for the King’s own use. It was Henry himself who insisted upon my being included. “Because Will is part of my daily personal life,” he said. And there we are pictured together in his bedroom, all done in rich colour beneath the lovely words of the psalm
Speravi in misericordia dei in eternum
. Painted for all posterity to see, he sitting in his Glastonbury chair playing the harp and I standing near him in sober black humming over the tune as we so often used to do, and the trees beyond the garden archway and the very tiles on the floor all just as real as life.Though I cannot say that the artist has flattered either of us.

If it had not been for my separation from the woman I loved, these would have been my happiest times at Court. Not only did the King like me to make music with him, but sometimes we fell to discussing this and that, and these were the long evenings when a close bond was forged between us.

Having begotten a son, Henry no longer seemed to want women.Only his ships. And books. And—as he says in that song of his which is so popular—music and good company. He was in his mid-forties and rapidly putting on weight, so that men who wished to be in the fashion had to wear great purled sleeves and swinging coats similar to those which the tailors so cunningly designed to hide the royal bulk, and wide-slashed shoes like those which a resourceful craftsman in Cordwainer Street thought up for the easing of the King’s incipient twinges of gout. The running sore on Henry’s leg was often very painful and, in Doctor Butts’s opinion, he had never been the same since his charger had rolled on him at that ill-fated tournament. He no longer jousted, and was less inclined for mummery and jesting. He would walk with a gaggle of courtiers in the gardens at Windsor, Greenwich or Hampton, but was content to watch younger men score bull’s-eyes at the butts. Fine theologian as he had been, he seldom troubled to read through a book now, but would pass it to some of the more learned courtiers and then set two men of opposing views to discuss it, which provided us all with many a worthwhile hour. Or he would take barge and go down-river to Gravesend or Woolwich to watch his galleons being built. “A good ship is more satisfying than a woman,” he would say, straddling the poop and imagining himself to be a ship’s master. And although Thomas Cromwell kept suggesting advantageous foreign marriages Henry Tudor discussed them half-heartedly and sporadically, behaving in the interim like an irritating boy bent on enjoying to the full a school holiday of freedom.

When the King of France’s daughter and one or two other ladies were mentioned as prospective brides, Henry seemed to expect them to be lined up for preliminary inspection, until Francis, in a fury, sent word that the ladies of his family were not brood mares to be looked over by buyers at a horse fair. And by the time the lovely little Duchess of Milan had gently intimated that she would be honoured to consider proposals from the King of England if only she had two necks, I think he began to realise that he was not the handsome matrimonial catch of Europe which he had once been. Henry hated being made fun of, particularly through the polite mouths of foreign ambassadors. Blinking his sandy lashes as he always did when momentarily abashed, he would puff and pshaw, and then call for our horses and ride off to Hunsdon to see his son. There, at least, he would be the dominant male giving his own orders. Or so he thought. But there was always Mother Jack to contend with.

“If every mouthful the poor mite takes is to be first tasted in case of poison, and every garment he wears tested against the plague,” she protested, after Henry had spent a laborious morning drawing up a new and more stringent set of nursery rules, “his Grace will be smothered by inspecting busybodies and scarce able to breathe God’s fresh air.”

It was the clash of wills behind which they hid years of grudging respect and affection for each other. After one ferocious glare, Henry tried to ignore her, and turned his attention to the small prodigy who had been brought to him. “He is sturdy. He comes on apace,” he declared triumphantly, which was probably music in the old lady’s ears. “See, milords, my son can almost walk alone!” And an endearing sight it was to see that great strong Tudor hold out his hands and cluck to the babe who, to be sure, did not seem quite so optimistic about it. “Come to your father, my brave lad!” encouraged Henry. The infant, who was the living spit of his mother, gave him a sweet, obliging smile and tottered forward, then tripped over his elaborate clothing, lost balance and sat down hard on his tender rump. His round, pale face creased into the preliminary misery of tears. He let out a long enraged howl.

And before his unfortunate father could set him on his tiny feet for a second venture, Mother Jack had swept him up into the accustomed comfort of her arms. “Your Grace cannot expect him to walk alone at scarce a year!” she defended her charge indignantly.“He must make a beginning,” blustered Henry, almost as red in the face as his yelling offspring.

“And grow up bandy!” snapped that dauntless woman, to the huge delight of her admiring audience. “Which he probably will anyway with all this dandling on your great knee until he pukes, poor poppet!”

She swept the disgruntled Prince off without further ceremony and tucked him into his cradle, and with crooned endearments rocked him to sleep.

How wonderfully one helpless child can kill all pretentiousness in a group of grown persons! “Could it be that the good body was once
your
nurse, Harry?” I teased.

“She was, though only assistant to Mistress Anne Luke,” he admitted ruefully. “And smacked me betimes where it most hurt.”

“Which would seem to give any woman an unfair lifelong advantage!” grinned Norfolk’s son, Surrey.

“And my mother, God rest her sweet soul, ever upheld her,”explained the King. “Which is why the old crone is so cantankerous today.”

“Probably her Grace the late Queen Elizabeth knew that Mother Jack would give her life for you,” I suggested.

“As she certainly would for her nursling Ned today,” agreed Henry, considerably mollified. “That being the reason why I gave her the appointment and why I allow myself to be so—so hectored.”

“Or because the Welsh dragon has met his match?” I murmured among the general laughter. But he preferred not to hear my impertinence, and spent the rest of the morning talking kindly to his elder daughter, whose docile submission must have soothed him as much as it saddened me.

I stood at a respectful distance watching her. Mary was a woman now, far more grave and reserved than nature had ever intended her to be. Gone were all the sparkle and spontaneity of her happy childhood, leaving her face plain as her mother’s, and pitifully wary. Only her brown eyes were still beautiful, and they were sad and shamed. Shamed because at long last she had been driven to deny the Pope’s supremacy and her own legitimacy, to the end that she might sometimes come home and receive a breath of family kindness for which she, of all lonely people, yearned. Yet she must have known that Cromwell’s spies were nosing about her household, whether here at Hunsdon or elsewhere, making sure that she did not go back on the document which she had been made to sign. Even her attractive husky voice had grown gruff with the strain of argument, and only when she bent over her small half-brother’s cradle did the beauty come back into her sallow face.

“We must be getting back to Whitehall, dear daughter, lest I find friend Cromwell waiting at the gates with some fresh foreign bride,” Henry excused himself with heavy humour, as soon as we had dined.

“At least the man works while most of us go hunting or sit rhyming,” Surrey had the grace to say.

“And brings in the money,” added the King succinctly.

Although most people hated Thomas Cromwell, he was always pleasant enough to me. On the rare occasions when he had time to notice me, that is. Perhaps he thought it as well to keep in with someone who, however unimportant, had the King’s affection. But I sometimes wondered whether he remembered how I used to bait his former master whose interests he had served faithfully until the end.

“Do you ever hear from Easton Neston these days, Somers?” he asked, a few days after the Hunsdon visit, when I happened to be standing beside him in a small ante-room waiting for the King to come from Mass.

It sounded like one of those casual questions which any important personage might put to a subordinate to avoid an awkward silence during some moment of propinquity. Yet, as his bull-like eyes swivelled round upon me, I felt an illogical conviction that he knew of the letter from Joanna lying warm and cherished against my breast. Could one of his ubiquitous spies have been down at the wharf waiting hopefully for Bart Festing, Master Fermor’s London agent, who had just come down from Neston? But, of course, that was absurd. Of what possible interest could my leisure hours be to a busy man like Cromwell? “Quite recently,” I replied.

“And where is that modish son of his these days? The one who married so well into the Vaux family and used to come to Court with milord sometimes.”

“He has been living in Calais for some time now so that he can attend to that end of the business,” I told him.

“I am sure he must be much needed there,” said Cromwell pleasantly. “Only last time I saw him he was telling me how enormously their trade with Europe was expanding, and how much spice his father was importing for this country from the East. A pleasantly frank young man. Years ago a colleague of mine, John Clark, met him in Florence, Somers, when on milord Cardinal’s business, and young Fermor was able to help him out of a temporary embarrassment by a loan of two hundred pounds, in return for which we ordered some expensive silks from him.”