Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel Page B

married in weeks. Gregory arrived within the year. Bawling, strong, one hour old, plucked from the cradle: he kissed the infant’s fluffy skull and said, I shall be as tender to you as my father was not to me. For what’s the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before?

    So this morning—waking early, brooding on what Liz said last night—he wonders, why should my wife worry about women who have no sons? Possibly it’s something women do: spend time imagining what it’s like to be each other.
    One can learn from that, he thinks.
    It’s eight o’clock. Lizzie is down. Her hair is pushed under a linen cap and her sleeves turned back. “Oh, Liz,” he says, laughing at her. “You look like a baker’s wife.”
    â€œYou mind your manners,” she says. “Pot-boy.”
    Rafe comes in: “First back to my lord cardinal?” Where else, he says. He gathers his papers for the day. Pats his wife, kisses his dog. Goes out. The morning is drizzly but brightening, and before they reach York Place it is clear the cardinal has been as good as his word. A wash of sunlight lies over the river, pale as the flesh of a lemon.

 
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PART TWO
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I

Visitation
    1529
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    They are taking apart the cardinal’s house. Room by room, the king’s men are stripping York Place of its owner. They are bundling up parchments and scrolls, missals and memoranda and the volumes of his personal accounts; they are taking even the ink and the quills. They are prizing from the walls the boards on which the cardinal’s coat of arms is painted.
    They arrived on a Sunday, two vengeful grandees: the Duke of Norfolk a bright-eyed hawk, the Duke of Suffolk just as keen. They told the cardinal he was dismissed as Lord Chancellor, and demanded he hand over the Great Seal of England. He, Cromwell, touched the cardinal’s arm. A hurried conference. The cardinal turned back to them, gracious: it appears a written request from the king is necessary; have you one? Oh: careless of you. It requires a lot of face to keep so calm; but then the cardinal has face.
    â€œYou want us to ride back to Windsor?” Charles Brandon is incredulous. “For a piece of paper? When the situation’s plain?”
    That’s like Suffolk; to think the letter of the law is some kind of luxury. He whispers to the cardinal again, and the cardinal says, “No, I think we’d better tell them, Thomas . . . not prolong the matter beyond its natural life . . . My lords, my lawyer here says I can’t give you the Seal, written request or not. He says that properly speaking I should only hand it to the Master of the Rolls. So you’d better bring him with you.”
    He says, lightly, “Be glad we told you, my lords. Otherwise it would have been three trips, wouldn’t it?”
    Norfolk grins. He likes a scrap. “Am obliged, master,” he says.
    When they go Wolsey turns and hugs him, his face gleeful. Though it is the last of their victories and they know it, it is important to show ingenuity; twenty-four hours is worth buying, when the king is so changeable. Besides, they enjoyed it. “Master of the Rolls,” Wolsey says. “Did you know that, or did you make it up?”

    Monday morning the dukes are back. Their instructions are to turn out the occupants this very day, because the king wants to send in his own builders and furnishers and get the palace ready to hand over to the Lady Anne, who needs a London house of her own.
    He’s prepared to stand and argue the point: have I missed something? This palace belongs to the archdiocese of York. When was Lady Anne made an archbishop?
    But the tide of men flooding in by the water stairs is sweeping them away. The two dukes have made themselves scarce, and there’s nobody to argue with. What a terrible sight, someone says: Master Cromwell balked of a fight.