I shall need your advice. Keep this secret.’
‘Well,’ Rafe says, ‘let us run up and down Cheap: “Thomas Cranmer has a secret, we don't know what it is!”’
A week later Hans turns up at Austin Friars. He has rented a house in Maiden Lane and is staying at the Steelyard while it is fixed up for him. ‘Let me see your new picture, Thomas,’ he says, walking in. He stands before it. Folds his arms. Steps back a pace. ‘You know these people? The likeness is good?’
Two Italian bankers, confederates, looking towards the viewer but longing to exchange glances; one in silks, one in fur; a vase of carnations, an astrolabe, a goldfinch, a glass through which the sand has half run; through an arched window, a ship rigged with silk, its sails translucent, drifting in a mirror sea. Hans turns away, pleased. ‘How does he get that expression in the eye, so hard yet so sly?’
‘How is Elsbeth?’
‘Fat. Sad.’
‘Is it surprising? You go home, give her a child, come away again.’
‘I don't reckon to be a good husband. I just send the money home.’
‘How long will you stay with us?’
Hans grunts, downs his cup of wine and talks about what he's left behind: talk about Basle, about the Swiss cantons and cities. Riots and pitched battles. Images, not images. Statues, not statues. It is the body of God, it is not the body of God, it is sort-of the body of God. It is his blood, it is not his blood. Priests may marry, they may not. There are seven sacraments, there are three. The crucifix we creep to on our knees and reverence with our lips, or the crucifix we chop it up and burn it in the public square. ‘I am no Pope-lover but I get tired of it. Erasmus has run off to Freiburg to the papists and now I have run off to you and Junker Heinrich. That's what Luther calls your king. “His Disgrace, the King of England.”’ He wipes his mouth. ‘All I ask is to do some good work and be paid for it. And I prefer not to have my efforts wiped out by some sectary with a pail of whitewash.’
‘You came here looking for peace and ease?’ He shakes his head. ‘Too late.’
‘I was just going over London Bridge and I saw someone had attacked the Madonna's statue. Knocked off the baby's head.’
‘That was done a while back. It would be that devil Cranmer. You know what he is when he's taken a drink.’
Hans grins. ‘You miss him. Who would have thought you would be friends?’
‘Old Warham is not well. If he dies this summer, Lady Anne will ask for Canterbury for my friend.’
Hans is surprised. ‘Not Gardiner?’
‘He's spoiled his chance with the king.’
‘He is his own worst enemy.’
‘I wouldn't say that.’
Hans laughs. ‘It would be a great promotion for Dr Cranmer. He will not want it. Not he. So much pomp. He likes his books.’
‘He will take it. It will be his duty. The best of us are forced against the grain.’
‘What, you?’
‘It is against the grain to have your old patron come and threaten me in my own house, and take it quietly. As I do. Have you been to Chelsea?’
‘Yes. They are a sad household.’
‘It was given out that he was resigning on grounds of ill health. So as not to embarrass anybody.’
‘He says he has a pain here,’ Hans rubs his chest, ‘and it comes on him when he starts to write. But the others look well enough. The family on the wall.’
‘You need not go to Chelsea for commissions now. The king has me at work at the Tower, we are restoring the fortifications. He has builders and painters and gilders in, we are stripping out the old royal apartments and making something finer, and I am going to build a new lodging for the queen. In this country, you see, the kings and queens lie at the Tower the night before they are crowned. When Anne's day comes there will be plenty of work for you. There will be pageants to design, banquets, and the city will be ordering gold and silver plate to present to the king. Talk to the Hanse merchants, they will want to make a show. Get them planning. Secure yourself the work before half the craftsmen in Europe are here.’
‘Is she to have new jewels?’
‘She is to have Katherine's. He has not lost all sense.’
‘I would like to paint her. Anna Bolena.’
‘I don't know. She may not want to be studied.’
‘They say she is not beautiful.’
‘No, perhaps she is not. You would not choose her as a model for a Primavera. Or a statue of the Virgin. Or a figure of Peace.’
‘What then, Eve? Medusa?’ Hans laughs. ‘Don't answer.’
‘She has great presence, esprit … You may not be able to put it in a painting.’
‘I see you think I am limited.’
‘Some subjects resist you, I feel sure.’
Richard comes in. ‘Francis Bryan is here.’
‘Lady Anne's cousin.’ He stands up.
‘You must go to Whitehall. Lady Anne is breaking up the furniture and smashing the mirrors.’
He swears under his breath. ‘Take Master Holbein in to dinner.’
Francis Bryan is laughing so hard that his horse twitches under him, uneasy, and skitters sideways, to the danger of passers-by. By the time they get to Whitehall he has pieced this story together: Anne has just heard that Harry Percy's wife, Mary Talbot, is preparing to petition Parliament for a divorce. For two years, she says, her husband has not shared her bed, and when finally she asked him why, he said he could not carry on a pretence any longer; they were not really married, and never had been, since he was married to Anne Boleyn.
‘My lady is enraged,’ Bryan says. His eyepatch, sewn with jewels, winks as he giggles. ‘She says Harry Percy will spoil everything for her. She cannot decide between striking him dead with one blow of a sword or teasing him apart over forty days of public torture, like they do in Italy.’
‘Those stories are much exaggerated.’
He has never witnessed, or quite believed in, Lady Anne's uncontrolled outbursts of temper. When he is admitted she is pacing, her hands clasped, and she looks small and tense, as if someone has knitted her and drawn the stitches too tight. Three ladies – Jane Rochford, Mary Shelton, Mary Boleyn – are following her with their eyes. A small carpet, which perhaps ought to be on the wall, is crumpled on the floor. Jane Rochford says, ‘We have swept up the broken glass.’ Sir Thomas Boleyn, Monseigneur, sits at a table, a heap of papers before him. George sits by him on a stool. George has his head in his hands. His sleeves are only medium-puffed. The Duke of Norfolk is staring into the hearth, where a fire is laid but not lit, perhaps attempting through the power of his gaze to make the kindling spark.
‘Shut the door, Francis,’ George says, ‘and don't let anybody else in.’
He is the only person in the room who is not a Howard.
‘I suggest we pack Anne's bags and send her down to Kent,’ Jane Rochford says. ‘The king's anger, once roused –’
George: ‘Say no more, or I may strike you.’
‘It is my honest advice.’ Jane Rochford, God protect her, is one of those women who doesn't know when to stop. ‘Master Cromwell, the king has indicated there must be an inquiry. It must come before the council. It cannot be fudged this time. Harry Percy will give testimony unimpeded. The king cannot do all he has done, and all he means to do, for a woman who is concealing a secret marriage.’
‘I wish I could divorce you,’ George says. ‘I