Master of Phantoms (Part 1/5)
Wolf Crawl Week 25: Monday 17 June – Sunday 23 June
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Welcome to week 25 of Wolf Crawl
This week, we are reading the first of five parts of ‘Master of Phantoms, London, April–May 1536’. This section runs to page 323 of the Fourth Estate paperback edition and the line: ‘And then you count the money. And lock it in your strongbox.’
You will find everything you need for this read-along on the main Cromwell trilogy page of my website, including:
Weekly updates, like this one
Online resources about Mantel’s writing and Thomas Cromwell
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Last week’s post:
This week’s story
Inquiries have begun. His friend Fitz has asked him to fathom ‘what the devil is going on among the queen’s waiting-women’. So, he, Cromwell, has opened his own court of inquiry. With almond cakes. Lady Worcester is first up, keen to dispel speculation that the child she carries is Henry’s. In return for Cromwell’s support, she will swear on oath that ‘doors are often closed’ in the queen’s chambers.
On St George’s Day, the Garter Knights gather to fill a vacancy in their order. Brandon throws him a wink, but no one makes Master Secretary a knight. Anne’s brother George is also passed over in favour of Crumb’s new friend, Sir Nicholas Carew.
With Richard Sampson, Bishop of Chichester, Cromwell looks for a clean solution to the Boleyn matter: annulment. He talks to Thomas Boleyn, who, for the right price, seems ready to testify against his daughter. But George comes too, and he is disgusted. Thomas Wriosthesley minutes our Lord Rochford’s displeasure.
He, Cromwell, calls in Mary Shelton. She tells him about a quarrel between Anne and Lady Rochford. She reports what she has witnessed without understanding its full significance. In the queen’s chambers, they have envisaged the king’s death. And Harry Norris has spoken about his love for Anne, alluding to more secrets yet uncovered.
Bring in Lady Rochford. Anne’s sister-in-law has her knives out for the queen. And she hates Anne’s brother, George, her husband. But Cromwell wants particulars. So Rochford says sister and brother are lovers. Why? ‘The better to rule.’ Anne needs a boy who doesn’t look like a bastard. A prince that looks like a Boleyn.
Lady Rochford will testify against Anne. She will give evidence against her husband.
He says, ‘Be advised by me. Talk to no one.’
Jane Rochford says, ‘Be advised by me. Talk to Mark Smeaton.’
This week’s characters
Click on each link for more details and plot summaries for each character:
Thomas Cromwell • Lady Worcester • Christophe • William Fitzwilliam • Anthony • Charles Brandon • Richard Sampson • Thomas Wriothesley • Thomas Boleyn • George Boleyn • Henry VIII • Mary Shelton • Mark Smeaton • Lady Rochford • Anne Boleyn • Henry Norris • Francis Weston • William Brereton • Rafe Sadler
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This week’s theme: Unspeakable acts
'I am not often perplexed,' he says, 'about how to proceed, but I find I have to deal with a matter I hardly dare speak of. I can only partly describe it, so I do not know how to draw up a charge sheet. I feel like one of those men who shows a freak at a fair.'
To understand this week’s reading, I think we need to go back to 1529. Wolsey’s last cast of the dice: himself and Cardinal Campeggio hearing evidence for and against the annulment of the king’s marriage. Back then, Cromwell and Rafe are ‘far-off spectators’ watching proceedings from the back of a packed hall. Katherine represents herself. He, Cromwell, is privately appalled.
It should never have come to this – to this public and unseemly exposure. Cardinal Campeggio has implored Katherine to bow to the king's will, accept that her marriage is invalid and retire to a convent. Certainly, she says sweetly, she will become a nun: if the king will become a monk.
Wolsey’s court hears evidence that Katherine was not a virgin when she married Henry. If you can call evidence memories from twenty-eight years ago. It is a sordid affair that the lawyer Cromwell feels is unnecessary:
The Spanish documents are different from the English documents, and that is where we should be now, among the subclauses, studying paper and ink, not squabbling in a court of law over a shred of skin and a splash of blood on a linen sheet.
Campeggio wrapped up the court early without a resolution, and within months, it was all over for Thomas Wolsey. The last throw of the dice: Snake eyes.
The long chapter “An Occult History of Britain” sees Cromwell sifting through his memories of the 1520s in a systematic attempt to determine what went wrong and ‘where everyone was sitting, at the moment the roof fell in.’ Why did Wolsey fail? When did it all fall apart?
These are not academic questions. Last autumn, Wolsey’s ghost whispered: ‘If he wants a new wife, fix him one. I didn’t, and I am dead.’
Now, in 1536, Master Secretary must fear history is repeating itself. He hopes for a clean way out. But he has heard the rumours and the ‘foolish talk.’ All of England knows it by now:
'What a play it makes.' He sighs. 'I wish now we could all take off our disguises and go home.' He is thinking, Sion Madoc, a boatman on the river at Windsor: 'She goes to it with her brother.' Thurston, his cook: 'They are standing in a line frigging their members.'
Mantel’s Cromwell is not prudish. When Thurston advises him to ‘take your cock out and put it on the table’, Cromwell quips, ‘I do that anyway. If the conversation flags.’ He doesn’t care for Call-Me in a dress (‘Go and change. I don’t like it.’), but he likes very much Gregory’s Snow Pope with its little carrot member.
But what Cromwell sees are complications if we proceed down this prurient path. ‘The bishops will be frigging themselves on their benches,’ he thinks as Lady Rochford embellishes her tale of incest between the Boleyns.
But masturbating clerics is the least of his concerns. It is the king who is prudish. Remember how he hates all bawdy talk? He is thin-skinned and short-tempered. He pictures himself a perfect prince in an illuminated Book of Hours:
Henry looks irritated. He should not have to manage this. Cromwell is supposed to manage it for him. Ease out the Boleyns, ease in the Seymours. His business is more kingly: praying for the success of his enterprises, and writing songs for Jane.
Cromwell imagines that Wolsey’s mistake was to make Henry feel less like a king. Powerless to conduct his own private affairs and subjected to scrutiny into the sex lives of his dead brother and living wife. Cromwell’s success these years past has been to make Henry believe he is an emperor. Now, he risks a route that will present the emperor with no clothes, cuckolded by his wife’s brother and by his own lifelong friend, Harry Norris. Lady Rochford says:
'It would kill Henry if he knew how they laugh at him. How his member is discussed.'
The ‘cleaner way’ of convents and annulment has been set aside. After Anne’s row with Harry Norris, ‘The king wishes inquiries to begin,’ Call-Me says. ‘Utmost discretion, but all possible speed. He can no longer ignore the talk.’
That talk, Cromwell knows, includes treason, adultery and incest. ‘Foolish talk,’ he had called it. Dangerous conversations and unspeakable acts. But it is now down this road that we must go.
'You seem very calm, sir.' Call-Me says. 'Yes. Learn from it.'
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Footnotes
1. Saint George and the Order of the Garter
St George’s Day. All over England, cloth and paper dragons sway in noisy procession through the streets, and the dragon-slayer after them in his armour of tin, beating an old rusty sword on his shield. Virgins plait wreaths of leaves, and spring flowers are carried into church. In the hall at Austin Friars, Anthony has hung from the ceiling beams a beast with green scales, a rolling eye and a lolling tongue; it looks lascivious, and reminds him of something, but he can’t remember what.
That something is a someone called Sir Francis Weston, ‘waggling along’ in his costume at Greenwich Palace last Christmas. ‘Said dragon,’ said Norris then, ‘is going to waggle waggle to the queen’s apartments to beg for sweetmeats.’
Saint George was a Roman soldier martyred in Palestine in the fourth century who became popular with Western knights during the Crusades. Around 1350, Edward III adopted Saint George as the patron saint of the English. He replaced Edward the Confessor, who had been important to the Anglo-Normans in securing the legitimacy of their dynasty.
The Plantagents preferred a more warlike saint. In 1348, Edward III founded an order of knighthood with the image and arms of Saint George. The Most Noble Order of the Garter. The order was named after the ceremonial garter displaying the motto ‘Shame on him who thinks evil of it’ in Anglo-Norman. By Cromwell’s day, the garter had become an exclusively feminine item of clothing, resulting in a few raised eyebrows and far-fetched theories about the origins of the order.
The Order of the Garter was often envisioned as a renewal of King Arthur’s fraternity of knights at the Round Table. Henry VII invested heavily in this myth, naming his firstborn Arthur Tudor and making him a Garter Knight in 1491. His younger brother Harry joined the order in 1494, aged only three and a half.
Today, 23 April 1536, Charles Brandon (Knight) is Cromwell’s friend again. And he is here to remind Crumb that it was he, Duke of Suffolk, who saved Cromwell when Wolsey came down. (‘Did you so, my lord?’) Brandon likes to ride through the halls on his horse like a shining knight of old. Cromwell sticks to the shadows and thinks, ‘Charles will not outlive me’ and ‘chivalry’s day is over.’
Further reading:
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2. What pairs with blue?
Hilary Mantel often shows us recorded history in a state of composition. As she writes in her Author’s Note to A Place of Greater Safety, ‘what goes on to the record is often tried out earlier, off the record.’ So, for example, Thomas More tries out phrases in private with Cromwell that he will use in public at his trial.
When the king complains that nothing pairs with blue apart from new, I had to go and find out what word Henry finally settled on. Here are the lyrics to “Wherto shuld I expresse”:
The daise delectable,
The violett wan and blo;
Ye ar not varyable;
I love you and no mo.
I love the idea that Henry, failing to find a fitting rhyme, just altered the pronunciation of ‘blue’ and ‘more’ to make them rhyme. How very Henry. You can listen to that song here:
Crumb, on the other hand, thinks: New? ‘What else do you need?’ How very Thomas Cromwell.
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3. On bathhouses and brothels
The atmosphere at court, this Friday evening in April, reminds him of the public bath-houses they have in Rome. The air is thick and the swimming figures of other men glide past you – perhaps men you know, but you don’t know them without their clothes. Your skin is hot then cold then hot again. The tiles are slippery beneath your feet. On each side of you are doors left ajar, just a few inches, and outside your line of sight, but very close to you, perversities are occuring, unnatural conjugations of bodies, men and women and men and men. You feel nauseous, from the sticky heat and what you know of human nature, and you wonder why you have come. But you have been told that a man must go to the bath-house at least once in his life, or he won’t believe it when other people tell him what goes on.
Medieval and early modern brothels were commonly located in or adjacent to public and private bathhouses. In the sixteenth century, London’s red light district was located just across London Bridge in Southwark. These brothels were known as stewhouses, either from the French word for the stoves that heated the water, or because of the nearby ‘stew ponds’ where the Bishop of Winchester farmed fish.
Mary Shelton tells Cromwell: ‘Anne said, does he think I am some item from Paris Garden? That is, you know –’
'I know what Paris Garden is.'
You can still pass down Paris Garden in Southwark today. In the sixteenth century, you could find nearby the Cardinal’s Hat, The Gun, The Castle, The Crane and The Swan. These stewhouses were licensed by the church, under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester: our old friend Stephen Gardiner. I have seen a rumour that Gardiner provided the king with ‘Winchester geese’ (prostitutes) to sweeten their friendship. There’s no evidence to substantiate this talk. But we exist now in a world where talk is its own kind of evidence.
In 1546, Henry will abolish these licensed brothels, and the stews will move to less conspicuous locations disguised as taverns and dispersed throughout London.
Mantel has looped a few threads around Anne, drawing her in. Chapuys refers to her as the king’s ‘concubine’. When she wears yellow at court, Cromwell remembers how Anne brought the colour to England in 1522, by which time, ‘it had slid down the scale abroad; in the domains of the Emperor, you’d see a woman in a brothel hoisting her fat dugs and tight-lacing her yellow bodice.’
But as Cromwell is convinced that Anne is no witch, he is (at first) sceptical that Anne is sexually promiscuous: ‘He himself thought Anne cold, a woman who took her maidenhead to market and sold it for the best price.’ Now he tries to imagine an Anne who craves intimacy when the king is gone:
Soon she is alone in the dark, with the scent of masculine sweat on the linen, and perhaps one useless maidservant turning and snuffling on a pallet: she is alone with the small sounds of river and palace. And she speaks, and no one answers, except the girl who mutters in her sleep: she prays, and no one answers; and she rolls on to her side, and smooths her hands over her thighs, and touches her own breasts.
This passage seems to work like a two-way mirror. There is something implausible about Cromwell’s re-imagined version of Anne. Something akin to a male fantasy of a woman alone. At the same time, it is as though Cromwell is trying out an image that may prove useful when let loose on Henry’s mind. Or on the busy buzzing midden minds of a jury for a trial yet to be imagined. And somewhere in that picture, trapped between Cromwell’s versions of Anne, is Anne herself. Infinitely lonely and without a friend in the world.
Further reading:
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Quote of the week: No more power than a donkey
‘You should not listen’ to Lady Rochford, says Mary Shelton. ‘She invents things.’ History is unkind to Jane Boleyn. Her words help undo her husband’s sister. Cromwell leads a faction at court that aims to destroy the queen, and Lady Rochford gives them almost everything they need.
‘She has not much of a negotiating position left. I think we have Henry Norris within bow shot. Weston. Oh, and Brereton too.’
But tucked away in all of this is a rather sympathetic portrait of an unhappily married woman whose only recourse is slander. This is a world where the king and George Boleyn can do what they want with whom they want, but the queen and Lady Rochford must be virtuous in all things. The men join a band of brothers and make each other knights of the Round Table. They plot their pleasure and their power. In such a world, what is a woman to do?
For what can a woman like Jane Rochford do when circumstances are against her? A widow well-provided can cut a figure in the world. A merchant's wife can with diligence and prudence take business matters into her hand, and squirrel away a store of gold. A labouring woman ill-used by a husband can enlist robust friends, who will stand outside her house all night and bang pans, till the unshaven churl tips out in his shirt to chase them off, and they pull up his shirt and mock his member. But a young unmarried gentlewoman has no way to help herself. She has no more power than a donkey; all she can hope for is a master who spares the whip.
Next week
Thank you for reading and joining me on this slow read of the Cromwell trilogy. Next week, we read the second of five parts of ‘Master of Phantoms, London, April–May 1536’. The second part runs from page 323 to page 361 of the Fourth Estate paperback edition, ending with the line: ‘We shall have no trouble with her now.’
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Until next week, I am your guide,
Master Simon Haisell
This is my third read of this volume, and (by virtue of its being a crawl, and attended by such excellent commentaries by Simon and others) by far the most rewarding. Each time, with more conviction at each stage, I am reminded that we still do not know the truth of these allegations, nor will we ever. Anne (this is surely not a spoiler) is doomed, and thereby becomes one of the most famous Englishwomen: you have to suppose that she would have preferred to live a few decades more….
The successive interviews in this section reinforce what a master of dialogue Hilary was. Each of the characters come off as distinct parts of the whole and it becomes obvious quite quickly (to everyone except George with his 'whatting') what is going to happen. The description of George in his white velvet alongside the flayed saint is wonderful. And Lady Worcester with the cakes. So good.
I'm feeling more with this reading generally. Despite knowing how it all plays out, I found myself silently willing Monseigneur to accept terms and compel Anne into a convent. Not that that would be ok, but it'd be better than what's coming. I'm glad that Crumb doesn't have to resort to fabrications of his own, that the convent option was his preferred route, so I don't have to feel too guilty about still rooting for him. Then there's the discomfort of the incest allegations. You think Mary Shelton's account is the big reveal of the week but then in comes Jane Rochford with her bombshell. I share Crumb's feelings of being momentarily at a loss as to how to proceed. Imagine having to tell Look- What-A-Big-Virile-Man-I-Am-Henry that his wife is at it with her brother. Oh dear...
Side note: I genuinely felt sorry for Anne's father here, how much he is going to lose.