Chapter 49 Greenwich Palace, Good Friday 1541
Greenwich Palace, Good Friday
WE CELEbrATE GOOD Friday in the old way.
The reforms that my spymaster Cromwell won might never have been.
He might as well never have been. The king goes on his knees around the stations of the cross in the royal chapel, praying and weeping at each point, in an orgy of holiness.
He crawls to the altar, his huge arse moving ponderously and unevenly as he tries to keep his weight off his injured leg and then prostrates himself, arms outstretched, on the stone floor.
Kitty glances anxiously at me through her veil. ‘Is he all right?’ she mouths.
The king lies as still as a dead man in an ecstasy of religious fervour; Kitty fidgets on her prie-dieu, alarmed at first and then bored.
Only after a good hour of lying on the cold stone floor, with all eyes upon him, does the king make a waving gesture with his outspread hands like a beached seal.
His back has seized up, and now he can’t get up.
Thomas Culpeper, Thomas Seymour, and Gregory Cromwell haul him first to his knees, where he slumps like a dummy in the tiltyard.
He is so heavy that they have to get Culpeper behind him, grasping him around the enormous belly, and Seymour and Gregory on either side, their shoulders under his arms. They have to count one-two-three before they can lever him to his feet.
Astoundingly, he manages this with dignity, as if he is still rapt in prayer, his eyes tight shut, one hand clenching the Bible, the other a rosary.
Only I see his grimace of pain as he has to bear weight on his bad leg.
Only I guess this is a holy masque – a pretend saintly trance.
Katheryn’s expression is hidden by her veil as she watches the three young men stagger under the weight of her husband and heave him back to his seat. The choir starts a low solemn chant; the service continues.
I think: God send us all eternal life – the king looks half-dead, and I’ve not yet got Kitty confirmed as regent queen. We’re in no place for him to die yet.