Wolf Hall tct-1

by Hilary Mante

  Gregory comes in. ‘I brought you lights. My aunt Johane said, go in to your father.’

  Gregory sits. He waits. He fidgets. He sighs. He gets up. He crosses to his father's writing table and hovers in front of him. Then, as if someone had said, ‘Make yourself useful,’ he reaches out timidly and begins to tidy the papers.

  He glances up at his son, while keeping his head down over his task. For the first time, perhaps, since Gregory was a baby, he notices his hands, and he is struck by what they have become: not childish paws, but the large, white untroubled hands of a gentleman's son. What is Gregory doing? He is putting the documents into a stack. On what principle is he doing it? He can't read them, they're the wrong way up. He's not filing them by subject. Is he filing them by date? For God's sake, what is he doing?

  He needs to finish this sentence, with its many vital subclauses. He glances up again, and recognises Gregory's design. It is a system of holy simplicity: big papers on the bottom, small ones on top.

  ‘Father …’ Gregory says. He sighs. He crosses to the counting board. With a forefinger he inches the counters about. Then he scoops them together, picks them up and clicks them into a tidy pile.

  He looks up at last. ‘That was a calculation. It wasn't just where I dropped them.’

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ Gregory says politely. He sits down by the fire and tries not to disturb the air as he breathes.

  The mildest eyes can be commanding; under his son's gaze, he asks, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you think you can stop writing?’

  ‘A minute,’ he says, holding up a delaying hand; he signs the letter, his usual form: ‘your assured friend, Thomas Cromwell.’ If Gregory is going to tell him that someone else in the house is mortally ill, or that he, Gregory, has offered himself in marriage to the laundry girl, or that London Bridge has fallen down, he must be ready to take it like a man; but he must sand and seal this. He looks up. ‘Yes?’

  Gregory turns his face away. Is he crying? It would not be surprising, would it, as he has cried himself, and in public? He crosses the room. He sits down opposite his son, by the hearth. He takes off his cap of velvet and runs his hands back through his hair.

  For a long time no one speaks. He looks down at his own thick-fingered hands, scars and burn marks hidden in the palms. He thinks, gentleman? So you call yourself, but who do you hope to mislead? Only the people who have never seen you, or the people you keep distanced with courtesy, legal clients and your fellows in the Commons, colleagues at Gray's Inn, the household servants of courtiers, the courtiers themselves … His mind strays to the next letter he must write. Then Gregory says, his voice small as if he had receded into the past, ‘Do you remember that Christmas, when there was the giant in the pageant?’

  ‘Here in the parish? I remember.’

  ‘He said, “I am a giant, my name is Marlinspike.” They said he was as tall as the Cornhill maypole. What's the Cornhill maypole?’

  ‘They took it down. The year of the riots. Evil May Day, they called it. You were only a baby then.’

  ‘Where's the maypole now?’

  ‘The city has it in store.’

  ‘Shall we have our star again next year?’

  ‘If our fortunes look up.’

  ‘Shall we be poor now the cardinal is down?’

  ‘No.’

  The little flames leap and flare, and Gregory looks into them. ‘You remember the year I had my face dyed black, and I was wrapped in a black calfskin? When I was a devil in the Christmas play?’

  ‘I do.’ His face softens. ‘I remember.’

  Anne had wanted to be dyed, but her mother had said it was not suitable for a little girl. He wishes he had said that Anne must have her turn as a parish angel – even if, being dark, she had to wear one of the parish's yellow knitted wigs, which slipped sideways, or fell over the children's eyes.

  The year that Grace was an angel, she had wings made of peacock feathers. He himself had contrived it. The other little girls were dowdy goose creatures, and their wings fell off if they caught them on the corners of the stable. But Grace stood glittering, her hair entwined with silver threads; her shoulders were trussed with a spreading, shivering glory, and the rustling air was perfumed as she breathed. Lizzie said, Thomas, there's no end to you, is there? She has the best wings the city has ever seen.

  Gregory stands up; he comes to kiss him good night. For a moment his son leans against him, as if he were a child; or as if the past, the pictures in the fire, were an intoxication.

  Once the boy has gone to bed he sweeps his papers out of the tidy stack he has made. He refolds them. He sorts them with the endorsement out, ready for filing. He thinks of Evil May Day. Gregory did not ask, why were there riots? The riots were against foreigners. He himself had not long been home.

  As 1530 begins, he does not hold an Epiphany feast, because so many people, sensible of the cardinal's disgrace, would be obliged to refuse his invitation. Instead, he takes the young men to Gray's Inn, for the Twelfth Night revels. He regrets it almost at once; this year they are noisier, and more bawdy, than any he remembers.

  The law students make a play about the cardinal. They make him flee from his palace at York Place, to his barge on the Thames. Some fellows flap dyed sheets, to impersonate the river, and then others run up and throw water on them from leather buckets. As the cardinal scrambles into his barge, there are hunting cries, and one benighted fool runs into the hall with a brace of otter hounds on a leash. Others come with nets and fishing rods, to haul the cardinal back to the bank.

  The next scene shows the cardinal floundering in the mud at Putney, as he runs to his bolt-hole at Esher. The students halloo and cry as the cardinal weeps and holds up his hands in prayer. Of all the people who witnessed this, who, he wonders, has offered it up as a comedy? If he knew, or if he guessed, the worse for them.

  The cardinal lies on his back, a crimson mountain; he flails his hands; he offers his bishopric of Winchester to anyone who can get him back on his mule. Some students, under a frame draped with donkey skins, enact the mule, which turns about and jokes in Latin, and farts in the cardinal's face. There is much wordplay about bishoprics and bishop's pricks, which might pass as witty if they were street-sweepers, but he thinks law students should do better. He rises from his place, displeased, and his household has no choice but to stand up with him and walk out.

  He stops to have a word with some of the benchers: how was this allowed to go forward? The Cardinal of York is a sick man, he may die, how will you and your students stand then before your God? What sort of young men are you breeding here, who are so brave as to assail a great man who has fallen on evil times – whose favour, a few short weeks ago, they would have begged for?

  The benchers follow him, apologising; but their voices are lost in the roars of laughter that billow out from the hall. His young household are lingering, casting glances back. The cardinal is offering his harem of forty virgins to anyone who will help him mount; he sits on the ground and laments, while a flaccid and serpentine member, knitted of red wool, flops out from under his robes.

  Outside, lights burn thin in the icy air. ‘Home,’ he says. He hears Gregory whisper, ‘We can only laugh if he permits us.’

  ‘Well, after all,’ he hears Rafe say, ‘he is the man in charge.’

  He falls back a step, to speak with them. ‘Anyway, it was the wicked Borgia Pope, Alexander, who kept forty women. And none of them were virgins, I can tell you.’

  Rafe touches his shoulder. Richard walks on his left, sticking close. ‘You don't have to hold me up,’ he says mildly. ‘I'm not like the cardinal.’ He stops. He laughs. He says, ‘I suppose it was …’

  ‘Yes, it was quite entertaining,’ Richard says. ‘His Grace must have been five feet around his waist.’

  The night is loud with the noise of bone rattles, and alive with the flames of torches. A troop of hobby horses clatters past them, singing, and a party of men wearing antlers, with bells at their h
eels. As they near home a boy dressed as an orange rolls past, with his friend, a lemon. ‘Gregory Cromwell!’ they call out, and to him as their senior they courteously raise, in lieu of hats, an upper slice of rind. ‘God send you a good new year.’

  ‘The same to you,’ he calls. And, to the lemon: ‘Tell your father to come and see me about that Cheapside lease.’

  They get home. ‘Go to bed,’ he says. ‘It's late.’ He feels it best to add, ‘God see you safe till morning.’

  They leave him. He sits at his work table. He remembers Grace, at the end of her evening as an angel: standing in the firelight, her face white with fatigue, her eyes glittering, and the eyes of her peacock's wings shining in the firelight, each like a topaz, golden, smoky. Liz said, ‘Stand away from the fire, sweetheart, or your wings will catch alight.’ His little girl backed off, into shadow; the feathers were the colours of ash and cinders as she moved towards the stairs, and he said, ‘Grace, are you going to bed in your wings?’

  ‘Till I say my prayers,’ she said, darting a look over her shoulder. He followed her, afraid for her, afraid of fire and some other danger, but he did not know what. She walked up the staircase, her plumes rustling, her feathers fading to black.

  Ah, Christ, he thinks, at least I'll never have to give her to anyone else. She's dead and I'll not have to sign her away to some purse-mouthed petty gent who wants her dowry. Grace would have wanted a title. She would have thought because she was lovely he should buy her one: Lady Grace. I wish my daughter Anne were here, he thinks, I wish Anne were here and promised to Rafe Sadler. If Anne were older. If Rafe were younger. If Anne were still alive.

  Once more he bends his head over the cardinal's letters. Wolsey is writing to the rulers of Europe, to ask them to support him, vindicate him, fight his cause. He, Thomas Cromwell, wishes the cardinal would not, or if he must, could the encryption be more tricky? Is it not treasonable for Wolsey to urge them to obstruct the king's purpose? Henry would deem it is. The cardinal is not asking them to make war on Henry, on his behalf: he's merely asking them to withdraw their approval of a king who very much likes to be liked.

  He sits back in his chair, hands over his mouth, as if to disguise his opinion from himself. He thinks, I am glad I love my lord cardinal, because if I did not, and I were his enemy – let us say I am Suffolk, let us say I am Norfolk, let us say I am the king – I would be putting him on trial next week.

  The door opens. ‘Richard? You can't sleep? Well, I knew it. The play was too exciting for you.’

  It is easy to smile now, but Richard does not smile; his face is in shadow. He says, ‘Master, I have a question to put to you. Our father is dead and you are our father now.’

  Richard Williams, and Walter-named-after-Walter Williams: these are his sons. ‘Sit down,’ he says.

  ‘So shall we change our name to yours?’

  ‘You surprise me. The way things are with me, the people called Cromwell will be wanting to change their names to Williams.’

  ‘If I had your name, I should never disown it.’

  ‘Would your father like it? You know he believed he had his descent from Welsh princes.’

  ‘Ah, he did. When he'd had a drink, he would say, who will give me a shilling for my principality?’

  ‘Even so, you have the Tudor name in your descent. By some accounts.’

  ‘Don't,’ Richard pleads. ‘It makes beads of blood stand out on my forehead.’

  ‘It's not that hard.’ He laughs. ‘Listen. The old king had an uncle, Jasper Tudor. Jasper had two bastard daughters, Joan and Helen. Helen was Gardiner's mother. Joan married William ap Evan – she was your grandmother.’

  ‘Is that all? Why did my father make it sound so deep? But if I am the king's cousin,’ Richard pauses, ‘and Stephen Gardiner's cousin … what good can it do me? We're not at court and not likely to be, now the cardinal … well …’ He looks away. ‘Sir … when you were on your travels, did you ever think you would die?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes.’

  Richard looks at him: how did that feel?

  ‘I felt,’ he said, ‘irritated. It seemed a waste, I suppose. To come so far. To cross the sea. To die for …’ He shrugs. ‘God knows why.’

  Richard says, ‘Every day I light a candle for my father.’

  ‘Does that help you?’

  ‘No. I just do it.’

  ‘Does he know you do it?’

  ‘I can't imagine what he knows. I know the living must comfort each other.’

  ‘This comforts me, Richard Cromwell.’

  Richard gets up, kisses his cheek. ‘Good night. Cysga'n dawel.’

  Sleep well; it is the familiar form for those who are close to home. It is the usage for fathers, for brothers. It matters what name we choose, what name we make. The people lose their name who lie dead on the field of battle, the ordinary corpses of no lineage, with no herald to search for them and no chantry, no perpetual prayers. Morgan's bloodline won't be lost, he is sure of it, though he died in a busy year for death, when London was never out of black. He touches his throat, where the medal would have been, the holy medal that Kat gave him; his fingers are surprised not to find it there. For the first time he understands why he took it off and slid it into the sea. It was so that no living hand could take it. The waves took it, and the waves have it still.

  The chimney at Esher continues to smoke. He goes to the Duke of Norfolk – who is always ready to see him – and asks him what is to be done about the cardinal's household.

  In this matter, both dukes are helpful. ‘Nothing is more malcontent,’ says Norfolk, ‘than a masterless man. Nothing more dangerous. Whatever one thinks of the Cardinal of York, he was always well served. Prefer them to me, send them in my direction. They will be my men.’

  He directs a searching look at Cromwell. Who turns away. Knows himself coveted. Wears an expression like an heiress: sly, coy, cold.

  He is arranging a loan for the duke. His foreign contacts are less than excited. The cardinal down, he says, the duke has risen, like the morning sun, and sitteth at Henry's right hand. Tommaso, they say, seriously, you are offering what as guarantee? Some old duke who may be dead tomorrow – they say he is choleric? You are offering a dukedom as security, in that barbaric island of yours, which is always breaking out into civil war? And another war coming, if your wilful king will set aside the Emperor's aunt, and install his whore as queen?

  Still: he'll get terms. Somewhere.

  Charles Brandon says, ‘You here again, Master Cromwell, with your lists of names? Is there anyone you specially recommend to me?’

  ‘Yes, but I am afraid he is a man of a lowly stamp, and more fit that I should confer with your kitchen steward –’

  ‘No, tell me,’ says the duke. He can't bear suspense.

  ‘It's only the hearths and chimneys man, hardly a matter for Your Grace …’

  ‘I'll have him, I'll have him,’ Charles Brandon says. ‘I like a good fire.’

  Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor, has put his signature first on all the articles against Wolsey. They say one strange allegation has been added at his behest. The cardinal is accused of whispering in the king's ear and breathing into his face; since the cardinal has the French pox, he intended to infect our monarch.

  When he hears this he thinks, imagine living inside the Lord Chancellor's head. Imagine writing down such a charge and taking it to the printer, and circulating it through the court and through the realm, putting it out there to where people will believe anything; putting it out there, to the shepherds on the hills, to Tyndale's ploughboy, to the beggar on the roads and the patient beast in its byre or stall; out there to the bitter winter winds, and to the weak early sun, and the snowdrops in the London gardens.

  It is a wan morning, low unbroken cloud; the light, filtering sparely through glass, is the colour of tarnished pewter. How brightly coloured the king is, like the king in a new pack of cards: how small his flat blue eye.

  There is a crowd of
gentlemen around Henry Tudor; they ignore his approach. Only Harry Norris smiles, gives him a polite good morning. At a signal from the king, the gentlemen retire to a distance; bright in their riding cloaks – it is a hunting morning – they flutter, eddy, cluster; they whisper, one to the other, and conduct a discourse in nods and shrugs.

  The king glances out of the window. ‘So,’ he says, ‘how is …?’ He seems reluctant to name the cardinal.

  ‘He cannot be well till he has Your Majesty's favour.’

  ‘Forty-four charges,’ the king says. ‘Forty-four, master.’

  ‘Saving Your Majesty, there is an answer to each one, and given a hearing we would make them.’

  ‘Could you make them here and now?’

  ‘If Your Majesty would care to sit.’

  ‘I heard you were a ready man.’

  ‘Would I come here unprepared?’

  He has spoken almost without thinking. The king smiles. That fine curl of the red lip. He has a pretty mouth, almost like a woman's; it is too small for his face. ‘Another day I would put you to the test,’ he says. ‘But my lord Suffolk is waiting for me. Will the cloud lift, do you think? I wish I'd gone out before Mass.’

  ‘I think it will clear,’ he says. ‘A good day to be chasing something.’

  ‘Master Cromwell?’ The king turns, he looks at him, astonished. ‘You are not of Thomas More's opinion, are you?’

  He waits. He cannot imagine what the king is going to say.

  ‘La chasse. He thinks it barbaric.’

  ‘Oh, I see. No, Your Majesty, I favour any sport that's cheaper than battle. It's rather that …’ How can he put it? ‘In some countries, they hunt the bear, and the wolf and the wild boar. We once had these animals in England, when we had our great forests.’

  ‘My cousin France has boar to hunt. From time to time he says he will ship me some. But I feel …’

  You feel he is taunting you.

  ‘We usually say,’ Henry looks straight at him, ‘we usually say, we gentlemen, that the chase prepares us for war. Which brings us to a sticky point, Master Cromwell.’