Читать книгу Hilary Mantel Collection: Six of Her Best Novels - Hilary Mantel - Страница 26

Rafe is standing over him, saying it is seven o'clock already. The king has gone to Mass.

He has slept in a bed of phantoms. ‘We did not want to wake you. You never sleep late.’

The wind is a muted sigh in the chimneys. A handful of rain like gravel rattles against the window, swirls away, and is thrown back again. ‘We may be in Calais for some time,’ he says.

When Wolsey had gone to France, five years ago, he had asked him to watch the situation at court and to pass on a report of when the king and Anne went to bed. He had said, how will I know when it happens? The cardinal had said, ‘I should think you'll know by his face.’

The wind has dropped and the rain respited by the time he reaches the church, but the streets have turned to mud, and the people waiting to see the lords come out still have their coats pulled over their heads, like a new race of walking decapitees. He pushes through the crowd, then threads and whispers his way through the gathered gentlemen: s'il vous plaît, c'est urgent, make way for a big sinner. They laugh and let him through.

Anne comes out on the Governor's arm. He looks tense – it seems his gout is troubling him – but he is attentive to her, murmuring pleasantries to which he gets no response; her expression is adjusted to a careful blankness. The king has a Wingfield lady on his arm, face uptilted, chattering. He is taking no notice of her at all. He looks large, broad, benign. His regal glance scans the crowd. It alights on him. The king smiles.

As he leaves the church, Henry puts on his hat. It is a big hat, a new hat. And in that hat there is a feather.