He nods, saying nothing.
‘The Spanish party has persuaded the king that his marriage is invalid,’ I say slowly. ‘And you have set up an inquiry into it.’ I enjoy the step by step of the discovery; but I know that this isa path that winds to the end of the Boleyns. ‘Master Cromwell – I cannot believe you are siding with the Spanish—’
‘Obeying the king,’ he interjects.
‘—siding with the Spanish to say that Anne is not a valid wife and so she is not queen?’
‘Alas, since the king knows it from God, there can be no denying.’
‘But what about the oaths? All of England swore that she was the one and only wife and queen. You swore it! I did! Why did Sir Thomas More die if Anne is not the only wife and queen?’
‘He died for denying that the king is supreme. Nobody can deny that.’
I open my mouth to say that if the king is supreme, then he can give himself a dispensation and continue married to Anne. I close it again.
‘Quite,’ says Thomas Cromwell. ‘The Supreme Head of the Church has received a new vision. Anne is not in it.’
It takes me a moment to realise that this is the end of Anne as queen. She will have to withdraw to the country, perhaps even go abroad. George and I will have to keep out of the way until this scandal is succeeded by another and all forgotten, or until the king’s new vision requires our services. This is going to be a difficult time. We cannot repay all our loans and return our gifts; our court debts alone are far beyond our income. And if we’re not at court, we’ll get none of the riches from the abbey fines, or any fees or bribes. God knows how we will manage; God knows what we will do. We’ve lived all our lives at court, George as a diplomat and me as a spy. We have lost our fortune, our life and our work.
But this is a blindingly brilliant victory for the Spanish party, who have rid themselves of an enemy queen and all her supporters. When Anne is gone, they can return Lady Mary to favour; they will make her an heir to the throne; she will supersede our Princess Elizabeth. The king will be free to marry again, and, of course, he has already chosen his bride, who is completely under their control and living at Sir Nicholas Carew’s house.
The king can marry Jane Seymour tomorrow; he can marry her in a Roman Catholic church if he wants; the damned pope can marry him in the damned Sistine Chapel if he likes, and Lady Mary will carry her new stepmother’s wedding train with a happy heart. This is her triumph over Anne and the final revenge of her dead mother. They have won, and we have lost, and it was all over in four days in May.
‘What a turn against us,’ I say, thinking of the debts and packing our goods and vacating our rooms. ‘What a change of season. And are they coming back here?’ I ask. ‘Anne and George? Or do we have to leave court at once?’
‘I had planned they would come back here, sign all the contracts and then retire,’ Master Cromwell takes his time, speaking lawyer-like, slow, so that I understand. ‘That is what I thought would be the conclusion of the inquiry. But then there was a development – not of my making. My inquiry was complete. And successful. But then – to my surprise – new evidence was volunteered.’
‘What new evidence?’ I am barely interested. George’s falcons alone cost us more than we earn in rents.
‘Evidence of adultery, of infidelity.’
Now he has my full attention. ‘Whose adultery?’
‘Adultery by the queen,’ Cromwell repeats. ‘Out of thin air, they produced evidence of adultery by the queen.’
I scrape my knuckles against the bricks behind my back, as if to wake myself up from a nightmare. ‘That isantinomic.’ I grasp at scholarship. ‘If they proved her marriage was invalid, then she is a single woman. Any love affair of hers is no adultery. She is free to be promiscuous, as free as any single lady-in-waiting.’
‘I agree with you. And that is why they are not stopping at adultery; they accuse of worse. They say there was perversity, even magical entrapment...’
‘But this is ridiculous!’ I catch a breath. ‘Master Cromwell, I know you would never bring a case to court with faulty accusationand hearsay evidence. My father says you’re the greatest lawyer in England. You’d never allow such gross gossip as evidence.’
He smiles. ‘Your father is generous.’
‘But you never would.’
‘Indeed. I would prefer not. But my opinion is now irrelevant. They have taken my little inquiry and whipped it into a panic.’
‘Panic?’ My voice is too sharp, as if I am infected with groundless fear. I take a breath before I speak again. ‘Adultery is no cause for panic?’
‘But treason is,’ he says. ‘A huge treason plot in the heart of court. Sexual perversion, a ring of corruption and witchcraft.’
I burst out laughing at the story as wild as the oldest Romance. ‘No, no, this can’t happen!’ I exclaim. ‘Anne wrote the laws of treason! She can’t be prosecuted by the laws she invented. Master Cromwell! You cannot allow the Spanish party to whip up a story like a spinning top. They can’t invent accusations and take it into a trial! Where will it stop?’
‘That’s the very point,’ he says, as if glad that someone agrees with him. ‘They won’t stop – and I will let them go to the utter extent of folly. They will overreach and destroy themselves. They are planning on naming dozens of men, citing incidents that could never have happened – accusing her of meeting a man when she was miles away that night and in bed with the king. Accusing her of grossness, of perversions, even witchcraft. Their accusations against the queen are so wildly exaggerated, it will become obvious to everyone that they are lies. I am giving them the rope to hang themselves. They think they are trapping her; but they are trapping themselves.’
‘So, what happens when the trial collapses, for goingad absurdum longitudines?’
‘Then the king will round on them for failing to give him what he wants, and he will destroy them.’
