from London and we'll try and make sense of what my lord still has by way of assets, which won't be easy as they've taken all the paperwork. His creditors won't be inclined to pay up when they know what's happened. But the French king pays him a pension, and if I remember it's always in arrears … Maybe he'd like to send a bag of gold, pending my lord's return to favour. And you – you can go looting.’
Cavendish is hollow-faced and hollow-eyed when he throws him on to a fresh horse at first light. ‘Call in some favours. There's hardly a gentleman in the realm that doesn't owe my lord cardinal something.’
It's late October, the sun a coin barely flipped above the horizon. ‘Keep him cheerful,’ Cavendish says. ‘Keep him talking. Keep him talking about what Harry Norris said …’
‘Off you go. If you should see the coals on which St Lawrence was roasted, we could make good use of them here.’
‘Oh, don't,’ Cavendish begs. He has come far since yesterday, and is able to make jokes about holy martyrs; but he drank too much last night, and it hurts him to laugh. But not to laugh is painful too. George's head droops, the horse stirs beneath him, his eyes are full of bafflement. ‘How did it come to this?’ he asks. ‘My lord cardinal kneeling in the dirt. How could it happen? How in the world could it?’
He says, ‘Saffron. Raisins. Apples. And cats, get cats, huge starving ones. I don't know, George, where do cats come from? Oh, wait! Do you think we can get partridges?’
If we can get partridges we can slice the breasts, and braise them at the table. Whatever we can do that way, we will; and so, if we can help it, my lord won't be poisoned.
II An Occult History of Britain 1521–1529
Once, in the days of time immemorial, there was a king of Greece who had thirty-three daughters. Each of these daughters rose up in revolt and murdered her husband. Perplexed as to how he had bred such rebels, but not wanting to kill his own flesh and blood, their princely father exiled them and set them adrift in a rudderless ship.
Their ship was provisioned for six months. By the end of this period, the winds and tides had carried them to the edge of the known earth. They landed on an island shrouded in mist. As it had no name, the eldest of the killers gave it hers: Albina.
When they hit shore, they were hungry and avid for male flesh. But there were no men to be found. The island was home only to demons.
The thirty-three princesses mated with the demons and gave birth to a race of giants, who in turn mated with their mothers and produced more of their own kind. These giants spread over the whole landmass of Britain. There were no priests, no churches and no laws. There was also no way of telling the time.
After eight centuries of rule, they were overthrown by Trojan Brutus.
The great-grandson of Aeneas, Brutus was born in Italy; his mother died in giving birth to him, and his father, by accident, he killed with an arrow. He fled his birthplace and became leader of a band of men who had been slaves in Troy. Together they embarked on a voyage north, and the vagaries of wind and tide drove them to Albina's coast, as the sisters had been driven before. When they landed they were forced to do battle with the giants, led by Gogmagog. The giants were defeated and their leader thrown into the sea.
Whichever way you look at it, it all begins in slaughter. Trojan Brutus and his descendants ruled till the coming of the Romans. Before London was called Lud's Town, it was called New Troy. And we were Trojans.
Some say the Tudors transcend this history, bloody and demonic as it is: that they descend from Brutus through the line of Constantine, son of St Helena, who was a Briton. Arthur, High King of Britain, was Constantine's grandson. He married up to three women, all called Guinevere, and his tomb is at Glastonbury, but you must understand that he is not really dead, only waiting his time to come again.
His blessed descendant, Prince Arthur of England, was born in the year 1486, eldest son of Henry, the first Tudor king. This Arthur married Katherine the princess of Aragon, died at fifteen and was buried in Worcester Cathedral. If he were alive now, he would be King of England. His younger brother Henry would likely be Archbishop of Canterbury, and would not (at least, we devoutly hope not) be in pursuit of a woman of whom the cardinal hears nothing good: a woman to whom, several years before the dukes walk in to despoil him, he will need to turn his attention; whose history, before ruin seizes him, he will need to comprehend.
Beneath every history, another history.
The lady appeared at court at the Christmas of 1521, dancing in a yellow dress. She was – what? – about twenty years old. Daughter of the diplomat, Thomas Boleyn, she has been brought up since childhood in the Burgundian court at Mechelen and Brussels, and more recently in Paris, moving in Queen Claude's train between the pretty chateaux of the Loire. Now she speaks her native tongue with a slight, unplaceable accent, strewing her sentences with French words when she pretends she can't think of the English. At Shrovetide, she dances in a court masque. The ladies are costumed as Virtues, and she takes the part of Perseverance. She dances gracefully but briskly, with an amused expression on her face, a hard, impersonal touch-me-not smile. Soon she has a little trail of petty gentlemen following her; and one not so petty gentleman. The rumour spreads that she is going to marry Harry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland's heir.
The cardinal hauls in her father. ‘Sir Thomas Boleyn,’ he says, ‘speak to your daughter, or I will. We brought her back from France to marry her into Ireland, to the Butlers' heir. Why does she tarry?’
‘The Butlers …’ Sir Thomas begins, and the cardinal says, ‘Oh yes? The Butlers what? Any problem you have there, I'll fix the Butlers. What I want to know is, did you put her up to it? Conniving in corners with that foolish boy? Because, Sir Thomas, let me make myself plain: I won't have it. The king won't have it. It must be stopped.’
‘I have scarcely been in England these last months. Your Grace cannot think that I am party to the scheme.’
‘No? You would be surprised what I can think. Is this your best excuse? That you can't govern your own children?’
Sir Thomas is looking wry and holding out his hands. He's on the verge of saying, young people today … But the cardinal stops him. The cardinal suspects – and has confided his suspicion – that the young woman is not enticed by the prospect of Kilkenny Castle and its frugal amenities, nor by the kind of social life that will be available to her when, on special occasions, she hacks on the poor dirt roads to Dublin.
‘Who's that?’ Boleyn says. ‘In the corner there?’
The cardinal waves a hand. ‘Just one of my legal people.’
‘Send him out.’
The cardinal sighs.
‘Is he taking notes of this conversation?’
‘Are you, Thomas?’ the cardinal calls. ‘If so, stop it at once.’
Half the world is called Thomas. Afterwards, Boleyn will never be sure if it was him.
‘Look now, my lord,’ he says, his voice playing up and down the diplomat's scales: he is frank, a man of the world, and his smile says, now Wolsey, now Wolsey, you're a man of the world too. ‘They're young.’ He makes a gesture, designed to impersonate frankness. ‘She caught the boy's eye. It's natural.
