Page 61 of Boleyn Traitor
We are so enchanted by this vision of an England at peace with a beloved king and respected Church that we all fall in love with Robert Aske. Indeed, the only ones who avoid him are those who most agree with him: the old royals, the Spanish party: Poles, Courtenays, the Spanish ambassador. They are never seen talking with their hero, but smile distantly at his friendship with the king. Sir Geoffrey Pole, Lady Margaret’s spoiled youngest son, leaves court and spends the season in their great London house rather than say a Latin grace at dinner with Robert Aske the pilgrim.
The king calls Robert Aske his good angel and his saviour – the man who has rescued England from error. Robert Aske does not queue for the begrudging trading of gifts. The king takes a golden chain from his own neck and his own scarlet jacket of velvet from his shoulders and puts them on this new dearest friend. Jane clasps Aske’s hands in thanks for his gift of an ancient missal in Latin.
He seeks me out, as the queen’s trusted friend, and asks me the names of the people who come and go; he asks me to point out the great landowners. In return, I ask him about the pardonhe has won for all the pilgrims. ‘Should the Courtenays ask for a pardon, too?’
‘Why would they?’
‘Didn’t Reginald Pole, Margaret Pole’s son, promise to lead the pilgrims?’
He shakes his head. ‘I know nothing about it,’ he assures me. ‘I was just in Lincoln and Yorkshire with the humble people who love their religion when they called on me to speak for them. I never knew any of these grand people until I came to court.’
I nod, and smile, and make a note.
ROBERTASKE TAKESthe place of Lord Cromwell as the king’s new advisor. He recommends that a special council meets at York, to hear all the grievances of the pilgrims. The king says that the whole court will travel north and Jane will be crowned in the city as a sign of forgiveness and unity. Robert Aske says the church bells will ring out over moorland and river valleys. Monasteries and nunneries will be restored; the king will restore the Roman Catholic Church to England. Lord Cromwell will be exiled as a bad advisor, Reginald Pole will come home to his loving family.
All of this is proclaimed with such certainty by the king and greeted with such joy by court and country that even I start to believe that we are dancing a new masque –The Renaissance– and that good times are truly coming. This is the end of Anne’s reform, the end of my spymaster, and the end of my spying. I will become a courtier at this new court, of one true faith and one true word. I will be friend to this new advisor, Robert Aske. I will be re-born.
HE IS Aman for the season, the highlight of the Christmas feast, like a roasted suckling pig paraded on a trencher of gold with an apple in its dead mouth. The new year sees the handsome young man leave, loaded with gifts and blessings, ridingnorth to take the good news to the pilgrims that they have won, the Church will be restored to them.
But, as he rides out of the Hall Gate to the north, Lord Cromwell rides in at Sovereign’s Gate at the south, imperturbable in his dark-black suit, sitting deep in the saddle of his big cob horse, greeting old friends with a smile.
‘You just missed Robert Aske,’ I tell him.
‘I think I will meet him in future,’ he says.
He invites me and my father to a new year ritual of gift-giving in his old rooms at court – reclaimed from the Seymours – and now enlarged and redecorated. My father has a treasure for him.
‘My translation of Machiavelli’sThe Prince,’ he says to Cromwell, who reaches eagerly for the handwritten manuscript, beautifully bound by my father’s bookbinder – once a highly regarded craftswoman in charge of a bindery in her nunnery, now travelling from door to door and working for food.
‘I’m very glad of a copy in English,’ Cromwell exclaims. ‘I shall be glad to see what you’ve made of it. Does “duplicity” translate, or is it only an Italian concept, d’you think?’
‘It isduplicità, so an easy translation; but an un-English concept.’ My father smiles.
‘No duplicity in England?’
‘The tool of a courtier,’ my father says. ‘But a man such as Robert Aske would be a stranger to it.’
‘I think he’ll learn what it means,’ Cromwell remarks.
The Princeis a book that advises all rulers on how to gain the power they need to rule. It is far – very far – from the belief of first among equals that was the code of the Plantagenet kings who came before the Tudors. The kings of Margaret Pole’s family believed that they ruled with the support of the lords, who ruled in their turn with the consent of the people: power sitting on a sturdy base of love and loyalty, and the founds going deep. But the advice from the Italian philosopher NiccolòMachiavelli is that nothing is given for love: everything is traded for power, anda ruler who wants to command must promise anything and give away the least he can.
‘D’you think the scholar is right – that a perfect king is a tyrant?’ Cromwell asks my father.
‘A perfect king must enjoy perfect power – so, logically, he must be a tyrant,’ my father replies.
Cromwell laughs shortly. ‘It’s better to tyrannise people than have their love?’
‘I don’t know about love,’ my father says. ‘It’s not easily measured.’
The two men smile in accord. ‘And does your pretty daughter put the pursuit of power over the pursuit of love?’ Cromwell asks, turning their attention to me.
‘I hope no daughter of mine would pursue love,’ my father says disdainfully.
Cromwell smiles at me. ‘Ah, Jane,’ is all he says.
Greenwich Palace, Spring
1537
