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"What is he, a brewer's boy?" one of her ladies-in-waiting says. "From... Putney," the lady says, as if it were a skin-eating disease. It probably is. Must be one of those pestilential holes down by the river, the kind where eels are grown inside the heads of horses, submerged in water.
Anne fans herself, but she does not bat an eye.
"They say his father almost killed him," another lady says. "That's how he got his wretched face."
Anne fans herself, petting her spaniel with the other hand.
She watches Cromwell as he inches along, trying to sidle through between the useless and pretty. Court is like that: a gathering of the amusing and decorative, next to the powermongers who glide through their midst like knives through butter. Silent, clad in somber Flemish velvet, they'll trade and barter power like fishmongers hawk mackerel and eel...
Now Anne has to giggle: she imagines Cromwell as he handles one of the fat, ugly omnivores from Putney. Oh, he is good; she will give him that. The brewer's boy with the broken nose has wriggled himself into the Realm like an eel into a cadaver. Wolsey's cadaver, most likely. He's all piety, of course. He's all humility and self-effacing manner. But when you meet him alone, when you run into him in one of the corridors, you'll find him uncowed and unflinching. Steady of eye. Sure in his ways.
One of Anne's ladies laughs at Cromwell - a little shrilly perhaps, in the exact moment when most conversations have come to a lull. The musicians pause, the dancers step aside to catch their breaths, fiddling with the strings of chemises and bodices... and then everybody turns to look at the silly goose.
"Lady Sheldon is indisposed," Anne declares. "The vapors, I presume." She looks at her spaniel as it licks her hand. "By your leave, Your Majesty? Perhaps we should retreat." Snapping her fan, she rises, gathering her retinue around her.
Bless Cousin Madge, the doughy lump. Why, if stupidity guaranteed an entrance, Madge might be Queen already.
Anne's upper lip curls a little. She knows it's wise to keep that grin off her face, especially now that Master Cromwell is watching, but it goes hard. Because if he's half as good as people say he is, then he'll be worth twice his price. At the very least.
***
What did she play again, at the court masque? Cromwell sucks on a tooth and watches her exit. Was it Perseverance? Or was it Chastity?
Both would suit her, for Lady Anne wields both like a weapon, so that the King pines for her. Bent over his lute, His Majesty writes sorrowful tunes and allegories, believing himself to be a paragon of courtly love - a suitor taken from the pages of the Romance de la Rose, fit for Ovid's Ars Amatoria, and endowed with a nobility of heart that will make him immortal. Just like King Arthur.
But Cromwell knows what Wolsey knew before him, and that is that their king is fickle. Florid, fickle, and inconstant. He also knows that the Lady Anne must either reel in her catch, or lose it.
"Madame." He nods as she passes.
She wrinkles her upturned nose at him.
She may find him distasteful, an upstart, a nobody grown fat on Wolsey's vine, but... "At your service," he says and drops into the curtest bow.
If she's got half a brain in that pretty head of hers, she knows she won't get anywhere without him. Her father is too oily, her uncle too brash. What the little girl doesn't seem to appreciate is that she is chattel - a pretty larva to cover the ugly face of her family's bid for greatness.
"What services might a lowly woman require from an esteemed gentleman as yourself, Lord Chancellor?" Her lilt is soft, yet the gauntlet is thrown with a poise Cromwell has last seen on the Continent, in long-forgotten summers spent among the condottieri and pikemen.
"Good counsel," he says and smiles, fingering the mole trimmings of his doublet. "A parley, if you will, to be held at your earliest convenience, under the smallest number of eyes and ears."
He does not receive an answer before she and her ladies sail away - a small imperious flotilla under French brocade, showing more cleavage than all the whores of Putney.
***
Bon Dieu, but what was she thinking? Inviting the man is demeaning enough, but having to look on while he takes a stroll through her halls does go too far.
He passes a hand over tapestries from Antwerp and intarsia cabinets from Siena, runs fingers over tooled leather and pietra dura as if they belonged to him - so Anne makes a mental note to have every surface wiped and scrubbed once he's gone.
She does not know why he smiles to himself, stopping, as he does, to study the antique sculpture of a sleeping child, a pudgy, lumpy thing Anne already wanted to see thrown out.
"And do you like it at York Place," he says, his thumb traceing the boy's marble mouth.
"Thank you." Anne tilts her head. "It find it satisfactory."
"Rooms fit for a cardinal, Madame."
"But not for a queen," she snaps. Aie, merde: faux-pas.
Clasping his hands behind his back, Cromwell turns. Hunched forward, he resembles a shrewd bird, a rare mix of parrot and vulture rather than a man. "Mistress Anne," he says, "allow me to be frank. Before the kingdom can pass into your hands, it must first between pass between your legs. For that, you might want to want to open them," he says. "And open them soon."
She blanches. Then she blushes. It's odd - he doesn't move when her hand connects with his cheek; Cromwell just stands there like a ruffled crow, half-leering, half amused at being slapped.
"You are out of bounds, sir."
"Indeed I am." Now he folds his hands in front of his black, pleated tabard. "Uncouth as it is, it is also the truth. You should find yourself wishing to please His Majesty in all conceivable ways, lest he finds another lady who is less attached to her... virtue."
Anne snorts impetuously and slaps him again, this time for good measure.
"That will be all, Master Cromwell."
***
Standing under the arches of York Place, Cromwell looks up and sees her shadow watching from a window. If she takes his advice to heart, well then. Perhaps the problem sorts itself out, and there will be no more: she lifts her skirts, Henry gets what he wants, and within a month or three, their monarch will be bored. It is always thus, Wolsey used to say; it is the way of Henry's royal flesh. Why should it be different now?
Because the doxy plays hard to get. Because she is a bloodhound and a gambler and a powermonger like the best of them.
He sighs. Next time he should ask her for Michelangelo's Cupid, for the lovely forgery of antiquity Cesare Borgia gave to his sister-in-law, Isabella Gonzaga d'Este.
It has always spoken to him, ever since he first saw it in Italy.
Sic transit gloria mundi, it seemed to say today.
.