“New evidence, Master Cromwell?”
He looked about him. There was no one within earshot on this cold first day of November. Most courtiers were indoors, huddled by fires and braziers. He lowered his voice. “We have letters proving that Wolsey has written to the Emperor and the King of France, asking them to intercede with the King on his behalf. A foolish move, is it not, Lady Anne, on the part of a man who was charged under the Statute of Praemunire? It is being construed as treason, and he is to answer for it.”
“The King believes it?” Only a few days ago, she had heard Henry say that Wolsey was a better man than any of his councillors, and praise him for the way he was carrying out his spiritual duties in Yorkshire.
“Yes. Even as we speak, a warrant is being drawn up for his arrest.” Cromwell’s porcine eyes fleetingly registered emotion.
“You are sorry for your old master,” she said.
“He was a good master,” he observed thoughtfully, then his mouth set in its familiar bullish line. “But I would not want anyone to think I have any love for a man who has committed treason. You might like to know that the Earl of Northumberland has been deputed to arrest the Cardinal in the King’s name.”
Harry Percy, now come into his father’s estate! There was a kind of justice in it.
“It is fitting, is it not?” Cromwell said softly, and suddenly Anne remembered being in Harry’s arms under that lime tree near the Observant Friars’ house, and a man in black watching them.
“You saw us!” she exclaimed. “You knew!”
“I had the ear of the Cardinal. I know what happened. There was no betrothal to Mary Talbot. It had been discussed, true, but Wolsey pushed it through. It was his way of being revenged on you Boleyns for sneering at him. Be grateful he stopped at that. He brought that fool Buckingham to the block.”
Anne stared at him. “So Harry and I were lawfully betrothed after all?”
“Yes, you had witnesses. But the Cardinal had it formally annulled. Percy had no choice but to agree or face the King’s displeasure. I am sorry for you, Lady Anne. It was a cruel way to treat you. But now you will have your revenge.”
“You think I am wrong to want that?” she asked, appalled. She had been right all along about Wolsey.
“No one would blame you,” Cromwell said.
—
Despite the gray weather, Anne was outside, watching Henry shooting at the butts at Hampton Court—that great sprawling palace that Wolsey had built and later given to him, as an extravagant gesture of loyalty. He had just scored a bull’s-eye when Wolsey’s gentleman usher, George Cavendish, approached and bowed low.
“Your Grace, the Cardinal is dead,” he announced.
Henry turned ashen. “Dead?” he echoed.
“Yes, sir. He had been ailing for months, and being brought to London, he was taken ill at Leicester, where the monks of the abbey gave him shelter. He died that night.” Cavendish was near to tears. He had been devoted to his master. He would not look at Anne.
Henry swallowed. “Did he speak of me at the end?” His voice was hoarse.
Cavendish looked uneasy.
“What did he say?” Henry asked. “Tell me!”
“Sir, forgive me. He said that, if he had served God as diligently as he had your Grace, He would not have abandoned him in his gray hairs.”
There was a tense silence.
“I wish he had lived!” Henry burst out, and stalked off.
—
Anne left him alone. She was waiting until he had had time to absorb the news. But it was he who came to her.
“God will judge him,” he said. He looked as if he had been weeping for hours.
“You would have had him face an earthly judge,” she reminded him. “He must have known he was bound for the Tower.”
“Was he a traitor?” he asked, troubled.
“You know he was.”
“I know only what his enemies said about him.”
“You had proof! In those letters he sent.”
“But was his intention treasonous?” He was racked with doubt.
“What else could it have been?”
He looked at her then, his eyes misting, then his expression hardened.
“Yes, he was a traitor, in the pocket of Rome. You might say that God has given judgment.”
She wondered if Henry really would have gone so far as to execute a cardinal of the Church. When it came to it, he would probably have forgiven Wolsey, as he had so many times before. He had loved him.
Not so the rest of the court. The Cardinal had been virulently envied and resented, and there was much rejoicing at his death. Having barely suppressed her jubilation when she was with Henry, Anne knew a huge sense of relief that never again could Wolsey return and confound her.
Father and George were triumphant.
“Good riddance!” spat Uncle Norfolk.
George and the debonair Francis Weston grabbed Anne’s hands and pulled her in the direction of the office of the Master of the Revels.
“I’ve an excellent idea for a masque,” George explained. “Francis agrees.”
“A masque? Now?”
“There will never be a better time. I’m calling it The Going to Hell of Cardinal Wolsey.”
Anne wondered what Henry would say, but their excitement was infectious, and they had certainly captured the prevailing mood of the moment. And so she dressed up as a particularly beguiling devil, and joined the others in celebrating Wolsey’s end, prodding the actor playing the Cardinal with pitchforks as he disappeared into the fiery pit, while musicians played discordant notes and the court roared its approval. And Henry, surprisingly, raised no protest, but laughed with the rest, hiding whatever grief he was feeling. It was Cromwell, she noticed, who turned away.
—
Anne was deeply saddened to hear that Margaret of Austria had died of a fever. Only last year Margaret had skillfully negotiated what had become known as the Ladies’ Peace between France and Spain, herself representing the Emperor Charles, and Madame Louise representing King Fran?ois.
“She was a great lady,” Henry said.
“She was an inspiration,” Anne replied. And she had proved, as Isabella had, that a woman could rule as successfully as any man—as Anne intended to do herself.
—
Katherine lay gravely ill at Richmond. It seemed wrong to hope that she would follow Wolsey to the grave, and so resolve the Great Matter at a stroke, yet Anne could not but do so. Henry, whose patience with Katherine had all but run out, showed little sympathy and stayed with Anne at Hampton Court.