Free Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel Page A

duty? Anne promised him a son if he would wed her, and you wonder, would he do so much for her, if it were all to do again?’
    Richard Riche joins them last, with a muttered apology. No heart-shaped bag for this Richard either, though once he would have been just the kind of young gallant to have five in different colours. What a change a decade brings! Riche was once the worst kind of law student, the kind with a file of pleas in mitigation to set against his sins; the kind who seeks out low taverns where lawyers are called vermin, and so is obliged in honour to start a fight; who arrives back at his lodgings in the Temple in the small hours stinking of cheap wine and with his jacket in shreds; the kind who halloos with a pack of terriers over Lincoln’s Inn Fields. But Riche is sobered and subdued now, protégé of the Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley, and constantly to and fro between that dignitary and Thomas Cromwell. The boys call him Sir Purse; Purse is getting fatter, they say. The cares of office have fallen on him, the duties of the father of a growing family; once a golden boy, he looks to be covered by a faint patina of dust. Who would have thought he would be Solicitor General? But then he has a good lawyer’s brain, and when you want a good lawyer, he is always at hand.
    ‘Bishop Gardiner’s book is not to your purpose,’ Riche begins. ‘Sir.’
    ‘It is not wholly bad. On the king’s powers, we concur.’
    ‘Yes, but,’ Riche says.
    ‘I was moved to quote to Gardiner this text: “Where the word of a king is, there is power, and who shall say to him, what doest thou?”’
    Riche raises his eyebrows. ‘Parliament shall.’
    Mr Wriothesley says, ‘Trust Master Riche to know what Parliament can do.’
    It was on the questions of Parliament’s powers, it seems, that Riche tripped Thomas More, tripped and tipped him and perhaps betrayed him into treason. No one knows what was said in that room, in that cell; Riche had come out, pink-faced, hoping and half-suspecting that he had got enough, and gone straight from the Tower of London to him, to Thomas Cromwell. Who had said calmly, yes, this will do; we have him, thank you. Thank you, Purse, you did well.
    Now Richard Cromwell leans towards him: ‘Tell us, my little friend Purse: in your good opinion, can Parliament put an heir in the queen’s belly?’
    Riche blushes a little; he is nearly forty now, but because of his complexion he can still blush. ‘I never said Parliament can do what God will not. I said it could do more than Thomas More would allow.’
    ‘Martyr More,’ he says. ‘The word is in Rome that he and Fisher are to be made saints.’ Mr Wriothesley laughs. ‘I agree it is ridiculous,’ he says. He darts a look at his nephew: enough now, say nothing more about the queen, her belly or any other part.
    For he has confided to Richard Cromwell something at least of the events at Elvetham, at Edward Seymour’s house. When the royal party was so suddenly diverted, Edward had stepped up and entertained them handsomely. But the king could not sleep that night, and sent the boy Weston to call him from his bed. A dancing candle flame, in a room of unfamiliar shape: ‘Christ, what time is it?’ Six o’clock, Weston said maliciously, and you are late.
    In fact it was not four, the sky still dark. The shutter opened to let in air, Henry sat whispering to him, the planets their only witnesses: he had made sure that Weston was out of earshot, refused to speak till the door was shut. Just as well. ‘Cromwell,’ the king said, ‘what if I. What if I were to fear, what if I were to begin to suspect, there is some flaw in my marriage to Anne, some impediment, something displeasing to Almighty God?’
    He had felt the years roll away: he was the cardinal, listening to the same conversation: only the queen’s name then was Katherine.
    ‘But what impediment?’ he had said, a little wearily. ‘What could it be, sir?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ the