Westminster Palace, June 1540
Westminster Palace, June
I GO TO SEE if my spymaster is at work in his dark chamber after morning prayers.
There is a yeoman of the guard barring the way before the locked door, and I walk briskly past, as if his room was never my destination.
The warm air drifts through the open door to the gardens and invites me to stroll through the courtyards and the jumble of pathways of the old palace.
I find myself at the royal stables. Thomas Cromwell’s big cob horse is in his usual stall; his groom is polishing the big leather saddle on a bench outside.
‘Where’s your master?’
He jumps to his feet, pulls his cap from his head and bows. ‘I don’t know, your ladyship,’ he says. None of Cromwell’s men ever tell anyone anything.
‘When he comes for his horse, please tell him that Lady Rochford would like to see him,’ I say, and as I am turning to go back to the queen’s rooms, my uncle Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk rides in and jumps down from his horse like a man half his age.
‘Ah, there you are, Jane,’ he says cheerfully. ‘And here am I, early for a meeting of the privy council. We have much to do today.’ He laughs. ‘Much to do.’
I fall into step beside him up the stone stairs into the open doorway. ‘Really?’ I say. ‘About the arrests?’ I lower my voice. ‘My lord, anything about the queen?’
‘Arrests!’ he exclaims. ‘They’re shipping them over from Calais as if they were quails! A baker’s dozen, all heretics.’
I have to steady my voice before I can ask him again: ‘My lord uncle, anything about the queen?’
‘It’s not the queen you need to worry about!
’ He laughs at me, showing his yellow teeth.
‘Not her! But one of your other fine friends. You’ll know it all in good time,’ he declares.
‘But I’ll see you at my door, claiming kinship and wanting friendship.
I will see you, all pretty smiles, at my door, Jane. ’
‘I’m always proud to be of the House of Howard,’ I say cautiously. ‘I am always glad of your friendship, Uncle.’
‘Never more than today!’ he taunts me and heads up the stone stairs to the privy council chamber.
THOMAS CROMWELL MUST be at the privy council meeting with my uncle and the other lords, and I expect he will find me when the meeting is over.
The meetings usually take all morning, especially in these troubled times when the king’s wishes are uncertain and changeable, and one group rises and the other falls, and only Thomas Cromwell – Lord Essex as he is now known – rides the crest of every tide.
In the queen’s rooms, the girls are sewing, and Kitty Howard is showing the queen the steps of a new dance. I walk past them to the tall Venetian glass windows and look down to the quayside and the river beyond.
The barge from the Tower is moored by the pier again – I rub my eyes as if I cannot believe that I see it again, as if it is a ghost, a harbinger.
A black-painted barge without a flag or standard, rocking lightly on the ebbing tide, the oarsmen in their places, as if ready to go in a moment, the gangplank against the pier, the stanchions in place, the bargemaster waiting at the pier as if he has to stand to attention because his passengers will be here at any moment.
And then I see the prisoner: bare-headed, slightly stooped, stumbling as he comes down the stone stairs, along the paved quay, one hand clasping the front of his beautiful black jacket where it has been ripped in a struggle.
Someone hurls his cap after him, and as it flies through the air, I recognise it.
It is the neat black velvet embroidered cap that Thomas Cromwell always wears – little different from the cap that he wore when he was a wool merchant.
The man walking behind him catches it and hands it to him with an odd little bow, as if he does not wish to be impolite to this man who is limping as if fatally hurt, to this man who says nothing as he stumbles along, to this man who ruled all of England this morning and is being hurried into the Tower barge to catch the ebbing tide, to take him to the Tower this afternoon.
It is Thomas Cromwell under arrest. It is Thomas Cromwell, bare-headed, with his cap in his hand, his jacket torn where someone has ripped off his insignia, his breeches tattered where someone tore off his precious Order of the Garter.
This is a disaster for me, for the queen, and for Thomas Cromwell himself.
I glance back to the room, at the ladies so pretty and comfortable and busy in their little occupations, and I think: nobody will ever know the terror that is gripping me in this pretty room, as I turn from the window and smile and say that we must start getting ready, for the king and the noblemen will come soon, and it will be dinnertime.
I supervise the dressing of the queen; I am most particular in the placing of her jewels and the positioning of her hood on her fair hair.
I meet her questioning brown eyes in the mirror, as if she is asking me why any of this would matter, if she is to go to Richmond Palace tomorrow?
If she is to declare herself a duchess of Cleves and not a queen of England?
Why dress like a bride to agree to the annulment of her marriage?
I don’t tell her that this poor outcome is now our most ambitious hope – that the man who planned to end her marriage and save her neck is going swiftly downstream in an unmarked barge to the Tower of London, and I don’t know what will greet him when he gets there.
I cannot tell her that there was another plan, all in place and ready to hand, a plan where she dies on the scaffold, just as my sister-in-law died.
I don’t know who will become head of the dark chamber if Thomas Cromwell is beheaded, who will open the box of secret letters, who will choose what plan grinds into place.
Both plans for the removal of the queen are equally ready, but one gives her Richmond Palace and 8,000 nobles a year, and the other deals her disgrace or even death.
I don’t know what will happen to her, without Cromwell shuffling the pack of picture cards; I don’t know what will happen to me without his protection.
I smile confidently and say to her: ‘Will Your Grace dance tonight?’
‘Oh, do let’s,’ says Katheryn Howard.
The queen laughs at Kitty Howard’s unending desire for dances and young partners, and says: ‘Yes, why not?’
AS MY UNCLE the Duke of Norfolk predicted, I am at his door the very next morning, although the queen’s barge is at the pier, waiting for the flowing tide to Richmond Palace. I ask his servant if His Grace is at home and if I may speak with him, and the duke himself comes to the door smiling.
‘Ah, Jane. I was expecting you,’ he says. ‘Do come in, dear niece.’
He leads me to his inner chamber. The empty grate is filled with herbs, and the room smells of lemon balm and hyssop. ‘You’ll be anxious about your spymaster.’
I nod. There is no point in denying it.
He gleams in his triumph like a well-fed falcon. ‘Lord Essex – now once again Master Thomas Cromwell – is being questioned in the Tower for heresy and treason. He’ll be executed within the month.’
I feel cold. ‘You seem very sure, my lord?’
‘They’re dancing in the streets for joy.’
‘Might there be a pardon? Or some mistake?’
‘The king’s archers have collected sacks of gold plate from Austin Friars, chests of money, and Cromwell’s debt book. D’you think he’s going to give it back?’
‘His lordship is to face a trial?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘As he says himself, trials take too long, with too many opinions. Quicker and easier for us all if I put the evidence before the Houses of Parliament and they issue a writ of attainder, and he is executed.’
‘That’s not justice,’ I say simply. ‘Nobody can think he has been treasonous to the king.’
‘As I say, I don’t need opinions. Clearly, he forced the king into a marriage which was against the king’s best interests.
Clearly, she’s a Lutheran bride and he’s a Lutheran spy.
The marriage will be annulled, and the man who treasonously forced this marriage on the king will die for it.
The king’s true friends, the old lords of the realm, the true nobility will be restored as his only advisors.
We’ve all had enough of new men. We won’t be ruled by merchants and mayors.
The king will be free to marry whoever he chooses.
As it happens, he will choose my niece.’
‘Kitty?’
‘Mistress Katheryn Howard. So she’s not going with you to Richmond. You can make up some excuse to tell the duchess.’
‘The duchess?’
‘The Duchess of Cleves.’ He sees my face. ‘Oh, all right: the queen. But anyway, Kitty Howard won’t serve her any more. She’s going home to her grandmother. The king can court her there without scandal.’
I am completely silent. Of course, the king, nearly fifty, in the first months of his fourth marriage, cannot court a girl of sixteen, his wife’s maid-of-honour, without scandal – not at Lambeth nor anywhere else.
But my first thought is for my own safety: ‘Thomas Cromwell’s servants will be fearful – many people inform for him: the investigators of the monasteries, the network of mayors and sheriffs and merchants . . .’
‘You mean you, I suppose? For Christ’s sake, Jane, don’t waste my time pretending you care about Cromwell’s slaveys. Your name needn’t come into it – if you’re prepared to be helpful now.’
‘What can I do to help you, Uncle?’
‘Did Cromwell have a plan to release the king from this false marriage? He says that he did? He says that he can set it in motion in return for his freedom. D’you know what it is?’
I don’t hesitate. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘What is it?’
‘He can tell you it himself? In return for his freedom?’
My uncle looks at me, hawklike. ‘Or you can tell me now?’
I have no choice. ‘The queen is to have Richmond Palace and 8,000 nobles a year,’ I tell him. ‘In return, she has to agree to an annulment – that she was precontracted.’
‘Precontract again?’ he says incredulously, just as I did.
‘Yes,’ I say firmly. ‘He thought it the only solution.’
Thomas Howard takes my chin in his hand and turns my face towards the light.
I don’t waver under his eagle-eyed inspection.
‘Not the only solution, I think. Wasn’t there some discussion of a witch overlooking the king’s marriage bed?
Some enchantment cast on the king’s potency?
D’you know why Lord Hungerford is in the Tower? ’
Something about the way his thumbnail digs into my chin reminds me that he is strong and I am only a woman, but I know that my woman’s frailty has taught me to be quicker-witted, more cunning. I can fool him. I can fool him now.
I gasp and cross myself. ‘God save us all. I know nothing about Lord Hungerford but what everyone knows: that he was cruel to his wife and perverse.’
‘So – no queen witch this time around?’ he asks. ‘Not like t’other one.’
‘There’s no need for accusations of witchcraft, it’s all done by agreement,’ I urge him.
‘Then why is Lord Hungerford condemned to die?’ he asks.
I turn a blank face to him; he will believe I know nothing. ‘For rebellion, isn’t it? And predicting the king’s death?’ I give a little start. ‘Oh yes, they say he used a witch, didn’t he? In Wiltshire, though? An old woman? Nothing to do with the queen?’
‘Quite separate?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Very well.’ He is satisfied. ‘And have you brokered this agreement with the queen? Is she ready to declare herself as good a maid as when she came into this country and that the king was inspired by God to leave her as that?’
‘She’ll consent,’ I assure him.
‘And you’ve got ladies lined up to give evidence that the king was in her bed, night after night, and chose not to consummate the wedding, for his conscience’s sake? Nothing about impotence?’
‘Nothing about impotence,’ I repeat, as if learning from him.
‘Very well,’ he says, with quiet satisfaction. ‘Cromwell is a master at this stuff; I give him that. You take the queen to Richmond Palace on the tide and bring your ladies back to swear their evidence when I tell you. And prepare the duchess to swear an oath as well.’
‘And if this is all done as Thomas Cromwell planned, does it earn him a pardon?’
‘Why should you care?’ my uncle demands. ‘Unless you share his faith, his treasonous faith? Unless you have worked with him as his spy and his crony in treasonous plots? Unless you’re a traitor like him? Are you a traitor? Another Boleyn traitor?’
I am silent. My spymaster, with his dark-eyed smile and reluctant snort of a laugh, will have to fall without a word from me. He has hundreds of friends, thousands of dependents. Someone should speak for him; I cannot. ‘No, of course not. I’ll do what I ought to do, in obedience to you, Uncle.’
‘Good,’ he says shortly. ‘And if this is successful, with the queen and ladies-in-waiting, with sworn evidence and legal annulment, then we’ll never say it was Cromwell’s plan, Jane. I will take the credit and earn the favour of the king.’
‘Very well.’ I think: yes, you braggart. You take the credit, and you’ll never know that it was my plan. I am too clever to take the credit. I will see this through from the shadows, and only I will know that you are all dancing to my tune.
‘You’ll never mention Thomas Cromwell again,’ he tells me.
I know that this is the death of Thomas Cromwell, who was a friend to me when I had no friends and made me feel loved when nobody loved me.
He was my tutor, my spymaster – he taught me all about treachery; it will come as no surprise to him when he learns that I have let him go to the scaffold without a word in his defence.
‘Very well.’