Only at dinner, when everyone notices that Lord Lisle is missing from his place and his chamberlain says he has been summoned to London, do I allow myself to think: can this be the false supposition, thepetitio principiithat Thomas Cromwell and I played when we said: suppose that the king is unmanned by witchcraft? Suppose that Papists have hired a witch? Did I help my spymaster imagine a supposition which was not an intellectual game but a new masque of entrapment?
LORDLISLE’S SILENTdisappearance launches a wave of arrests, as a stone thrown into a millpond sends ripples spreading in dark water. Dr Richard Sampson, the king’s reliable advisor on divorce, is arrested, too – no reason is given out, butperhaps he thought – as I did – that three prior contracts for three successive wives was straining belief.
George Carew, young kinsman of the executed Sir Nicholas Carew, follows his commander, Lord Lisle, into the Tower, both of them accused of giving the keys of England’s last foothold in France to our enemies.
Anne Basset cries all day in her room for her mother Lady Lisle, who sends an anguished note to say that she has been turned out of her home in Calais, and her household goods and her wardrobes of beautiful clothes have been taken from her. Even her famous aviary of quails has been seized by Robert Radcliffe the Earl of Sussex – one of the king’s brutish old lords who wins not only the quails but the captaincy of Calais, too.
‘Poor little birds!’ Kitty Howard says, holding Anne Basset in her arms. ‘He’ll never look after them properly.’
THE EARL OFSussex dives into the riches of Calais and all the spy records. It’s a town riven with gossip, heresy, disloyalty, and treason. Thomas Cromwell has friends throughout the Staple where the merchants gather, half of them Lutherans, some even worse. Reginald Pole is said to have the keys to the castle; the King of France is said to be a friend of the Lisles. Robert Radcliffe finds a document which shows that Lord Lisle once sold a horse to the emperor of Spain: a dishonest broker can make much of this – and he does. And if Arthur, Lord Lisle is accused of treason, will the imaginary plot run on? Will Lord Hungerford be accused of witchcraft next? And then, will anyone mention the queen?
Every day, we hear of another arrest and not all of them are Papists; many are Lutherans, the queen’s religion. Suspicion spreads like a plague mist as I walk around the Palace of Westminster, wrapped against the cold like a masquer, with a cloak hiding my gown and a hood hiding my face. It is so like the May of only four years ago,when nobody knew what was happening and who had offended, that I feel as if I am reliving the days when I wrote to George and wrote to my father and met with Master Cromwell and the duke, and asked everyone: what is happening? What is happening?
This time, I don’t need to ask. I can imagine it all; because I was in the room where the unthinkable was first thought, built like a dark downward stair: one step after another – and the lowest point was naming the queen as a witch.
I think: I must speak to her. I must warn her against any questions about witchcraft. I must make sure that she knows the words: witchcraft, enchantment, sortilège, dark arts, curse, impotence, and death, to deny them if they are ever put to her in questioning. I must warn her to tell someone that she fears that her marriage to the king is not valid. She should do this today, before the music changes again and someone – like the Earl of Sussex, who is dancing through Calais, or William Fitzwilliam, who was such a strong partner to Margaret Pole – gets hold of her and swirls her around in a new dance called theLiar’s Volta.
Only Thomas Cromwell can reassure me that the queen is safe, and I lie in wait for him as he arrives early one morning, with a servant carrying his great wooden box full of warrants for the king to sign as he prays at Prime.
‘Lord Cromwell?’ I curtsey. ‘My lord?’
He beams at me. ‘Lord Essex it is now, Lady Rochford!’
‘Lord Essex, I will not delay you. I know you’re going to mass.’
‘I have a moment for you, Lady Rochford. The bell is not yet tolling.’
‘The ladies in the queen’s rooms are much concerned about the arrests, Lord Essex.’
‘Are they?’ he asks me, smiling. ‘I would be surprised if they thought about anything but their own ambition. Or is it just you? Just you who is concerned? Since I have a moment. But only a moment?’
I step closer. ‘You’re not pursuing thepetitio principii?’ I whisper. ‘Not the witchcraft accusation?’
‘I am,’ he says frankly. ‘But not up to the queen’s door. She can be kept out of it as long as she agrees to an annulment. The matter can begin and end with the unfortunate Lord Hungerford and his friends on one scaffold and the unfortunate Lord Lisle on another, and no connection from them to the queen at all.’
‘But thereisno connection,’ I point out. ‘No connection to the queen at all!’
Lord Cromwell smiles. ‘None at all, none will be made – if she agrees to an annulment.’
‘But if she does not, then you have this... this possible third act?’
‘This inducement,’ he says gently. ‘She can make a false admission of invalidity or face a false accusation of witchcraft – it can be her choice. I have no preference. They both achieve the same end – I want a final blow to the Spanish party and to set the king free of a marriage that he doesn’t want.’
He is so smilingly cheerful that I feel foolish when I take hold of his hands and say, breathlessly: ‘But, Lord Essex, one way gives an innocent woman 8,000 nobles a year and the Palace of Richmond and the other names her as a witch. And the punishment for witchcraft is death.’
He bows over my hands and lets me go. ‘That’s why I know that you will advise her to make the right choice. Will you bring ladies to the Tower to give evidence, Lady Rochford? I will send a barge for you. I should like one – no, I should like two other ladies to sign evidence. You choose whomever you think would be the most convincing.’
I put a hand on his arm. ‘I know you wouldn’t hurt her,’ I say earnestly. ‘She’s very young. Her father is dead; her brother doesn’t protect her. She’s not even fluent in our language. She could be easily entrapped by a bad advisor. But it was you who brought her to England, Lord Essex, and she has done nothing wrong. You would not hurt her.’
He puts his hand over mine. His hands are still callused from hard work, though he has sat among the nobility for years. ‘I won’thurt her,’ he promises. ‘But she has to help me to set her free. You have to help me free her from this marriage.’
IT IS LIKEthe other May Day. I have the same swirling sense of darkness behind my eyes, and I seem to be running wherever I go, though I don’t really know where to go, and certainly I should not be seen running and breathless.
I skid to a halt before the double doors of the queen’s rooms as they are opened, and I curtsey as the queen and her ladies come out for mass, their heads veiled, holding their prayer books. I snatch up a scarf to veil my head and step into the procession behind the queen.
In the royal chapel, everything is comfortingly unchanged: the king in his balcony, his foot propped on a stool, half-listening to the priest, who is saying the prayers in Latin although today the Bible readings are in English. The king holds a pen as Cromwell, steady as a turning water wheel, bends forward, slides a paper before him, whispers in his ear, and the king signs without reading. Behind Cromwell, his clerk scatters the new signatures with sand to dry the ink, before putting them in the great wooden box. Kneeling in prayer on one side of the king is his new favourite, Thomas Culpeper; on the other side is his brother-in-law, Thomas Seymour, and standing at the back of the balcony, Sir Anthony Browne.
Everything is as it always is, as it always will be. Except that I know that this time next year, there will be a new queen beside me, looking over at the king and bowing with respect, sliding to her knees and praying earnestly that God will give her a son, as the king cannot. Today, the fate of this queen lies in my hands, and Thomas Cromwell has shown me a way to bring her out of the valley of the shadow of death into safety and freedom.
