Hilary Mantel Collection: Six of Her Best Novels

It makes a change from drunk with drink; the king, these days, calls for the wine jug more often than he did in his lean and sporting youth. He, Cromwell, watches as Henry tilts in his chair. First forward, as if to rest his forehead on the table. Then he starts and jerks backwards. A line of drool trickles down his beard.

This would be the moment for Harry Norris, the chief among the privy chamber gentlemen; Harry with his noiseless tread and his soft unjudging hand, murmuring his sovereign back to wakefulness. But Norris has gone across country, carrying the king’s love letter to Anne. So what to do? Henry does not look like a tired child, as five years ago he might have done. He looks like any man in mid-life, lapsed into torpor after too heavy a meal; he looks bloated and puffy, and a vein is burst here and there, and even by candlelight you can see that his faded hair is greying. He, Cromwell, nods to young Weston. ‘Francis, your gentlemanly touch is required.’

Weston pretends not to hear him. His eyes are on the king and his face wears an unguarded expression of distaste. Tom Seymour whispers, ‘I think we should make a noise. To wake him naturally.’

‘What sort of noise?’ his brother Edward mouths.

Tom mimes holding his ribs.

Edward’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘You laugh if you dare. He’ll think you’re laughing at his drooling.’

The king begins to snore. He lurches to the left. He tilts dangerously over the arm of his chair.

Weston says, ‘You do it, Cromwell. No man so great with him as you are.’

He shakes his head, smiling.

‘God save His Majesty,’ says Sir John, piously. ‘He’s not as young as he was.’

Jane rises. A stiff rustle from the carnation sprigs. She leans over the king’s chair and taps the back of his hand: briskly, as if she were testing a cheese. Henry jumps and his eyes flick open. ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ he says. ‘Really. I was just resting my eyes.’

When the king has gone upstairs, Edward Seymour says, ‘Master Secretary, time for my revenge.’

Leaning back, glass in hand: ‘What I have done to you?’

‘A game of chess. Calais. I know you remember.’

Late autumn, the year 1532: the night the king first went to bed with the queen that is now. Before she lay down for him Anne made him swear an oath on the Bible, that he would marry her as soon as they were back on English soil; but the storms trapped them in port, and the king made good use of the time, trying to get a son on her.

‘You checkmated me, Master Cromwell,’ Edward says. ‘But only because you distracted me.’

‘How did I?’

‘You asked me about my sister Jane. Her age, and so on.’

‘You thought I was interested in her.’

‘And are you?’ Edward smiles, to take the edge off the crude question. ‘She is not spoken for yet, you know.’

‘Set up the pieces,’ he says. ‘Would you like the board aligned as it was when you lost your train of thought?’

Edward looks at him, carefully expressionless. Incredible things are related of Cromwell’s memory. He smiles to himself. He could set up the board, with only a little guesswork; he knows the type of game a man like Seymour plays. ‘We should begin afresh,’ he suggests. ‘The world moves on. You are happy with Italian rules? I don’t like these contests that drag out for a week.’

Their opening moves see some boldness on Edward’s part. But then, a white pawn poised between his fingertips, Seymour leans back in his chair, frowning, and takes it into his head to talk about St Augustine; and from St Augustine moves to Martin Luther. ‘It is a teaching that brings terror to the heart,’ he says. ‘That God would make us only to damn us. That his poor creatures, except some few of them, are born only for a struggle in this world and then eternal fire. Sometimes I fear it is true. But I find I hope it is not.’

‘Fat Martin has modified his position. Or so I hear. And to our comfort.’

‘What, more of us are saved? Or our good works are not entirely useless in God’s sight?’

‘I should not speak for him. You should read Philip Melanchthon. I will send you his new book. I hope he will visit us in England. We are talking to his people.’

Edward presses the pawn’s little round head to his lips. He looks as if he might tap his teeth with it. ‘Will the king allow that?’

‘He would not let in Brother Martin himself. He does not like his name mentioned. But Philip is an easier man, and it would be good for us, it would be very good for us, if we were to come into some helpful alliance with the German princes who favour the gospel. It would give the Emperor a fright, if we had friends and allies in his own domains.’

‘And that is all it means to you?’ Edward’s knight is skipping over the squares. ‘Diplomacy?’

‘I cherish diplomacy. It’s cheap.’

‘Yet they say you love the gospel yourself.’

‘It is no secret.’ He frowns. ‘Do you really mean to do that, Edward? I see my way to your queen. And I should not like to take advantage of you again, and have you say I spoiled your game with small talk about the state of your soul.’

A skewed smile. ‘And how is your queen these days?’

‘Anne? She is at outs with me. I feel my head wobble on my shoulders when she stares at me hard. She has heard that once or twice I spoke favourably of Katherine, the queen that was.’

‘And did you?’

‘Only to admire her spirit. Which, anyone must admit, is steadfast in adversity. And again, the queen thinks I am too favourable to the Princess Mary – I mean to say, to Lady Mary, as we should call her now. The king loves his elder daughter still, he says he cannot help it – and it grieves Anne, because she wants the Princess Elizabeth to be the only daughter he knows. She thinks we are too soft towards Mary and that we should tax her to admit her mother was never married lawfully to the king, and that she is a bastard.’

Edward twiddles the white pawn in his fingers, looks at it dubiously, sets it down on its square. ‘But is that not the state of affairs? I thought you had made her acknowledge it already.’

‘We solve the question by not raising it. She knows she is put out of the succession, and I do not think I should force her beyond a point. As the Emperor is Katherine’s nephew and Lady Mary’s cousin, I try not to provoke him. Charles holds us in the palm of his hand, do you see? But Anne does not understand the need to placate people. She thinks if she speaks sweetly to Henry, that is enough to do.’

‘Whereas you must speak sweetly to Europe.’ Edward laughs. His laugh has a rusty sound. His eyes say, you are being very frank, Master Cromwell: why?

‘Besides,’ his fingers hover over the black knight, ‘I am grown too great for the queen’s liking, since the king made me his deputy in church affairs. She hates Henry to listen to anyone but herself and her brother George and Monseigneur her father, and even her father gets the rough side of her tongue, and gets called lily-liver and timewaster.’

‘How does he take that?’ Edward looks down at the board. ‘Oh.’

‘Now take a careful look,’ he urges. ‘Do you want to play it out?’

‘I resign. I think.’ A sigh. ‘Yes. I resign.’

He, Cromwell, sweeps the pieces aside, stifling a yawn. ‘And I never mentioned your sister Jane, did I? So what’s your excuse now?’

When he goes upstairs he sees Rafe and Gregory jumping around near the great window. They are capering and scuffling, eyes on something invisible at their feet. At first he thinks they are playing football without a ball. But then they leap up like dancers and back-heel the thing, and he sees that it is long and thin, a fallen man. They lean down to tweak and jab, to apply torsion. ‘Ease off,’ Gregory says, ‘don’t snap his neck yet, I need to see him suffer.’

Rafe looks up, and affects to wipe his brow. Gregory rests hands on knees, getting his breath back, then nudges the victim with his foot. ‘This is Francis Weston. You think he is helping put the king to bed, but in fact we have him here in ghostly form. We stood around a corner and waited for him with a magic net.’

‘We are punishing him,’ Rafe leans down. ‘Ho, sir, are you sorry now?’ He spits on his palms. ‘What next with him, Gregory?’

‘Haul him up and out the window with him.’

‘Careful,’ he says. ‘The king favours Weston.’

‘Then he’ll favour him when he’s got a flat head,’ Rafe says. They scuffle and push each other out of the way, trying to be the first to stamp Francis flat. Rafe opens a window and both stoop for leverage, hoisting the phantom across the sill. Gregory helps it over, unsnagging its jacket where it catches, and with one shove drops it head first on the cobbles. They peer out after it. ‘He bounces,’ Rafe observes, and then they dust off their hands, smiling at him. ‘Give you good night, sir,’ Rafe says.