by Hilary Mante
‘If the sums are in doubt, or indeed the whole case, may I look after it?’
The king hesitates. ‘I'm not sure you have a locus standi in the matter.’
It is at this moment that Brandon, quite unexpectedly, gives him a testimonial. ‘Harry, let him. When this fellow has finished, the Breton will be paying you.’
Dukes revolve in their spheres. When they confer, it is not for pleasure in each other's society; they like to be surrounded by their own courts, by men who reflect them and are subservient to them. For pleasure, they are as likely to be found with a kennel-man as another duke; so it is that he spends an amiable hour with Brandon, looking over the king's hounds. It is not yet the season for hunting the hart, so the running dogs are well fed in their kennels; their musical barking rises into the evening air, and the tracking dogs, silent as they are trained to be, rise on their hind legs and watch, dripping saliva, the progress of their suppers. The kennel children are carrying baskets of bread and bones, buckets of offal and basins of pigs'-blood pottage. Charles Brandon inhales, appreciative: like a dowager in a rose garden.
A huntsman calls forward a favourite bitch, white patched with chestnut, Barbada, four years old. He straddles her and pulls back her head to show her eyes, clouded with a fine film. He will hate to kill her, but he doubts she will be much use this season. He, Cromwell, cups the bitch's jaw in his hand. ‘You can draw off the membrane with a curved needle. I've seen it done. You need a steady hand and to be quick. She doesn't like it, but then she won't like to be blind.’ He runs his hand over her ribs, feels the panicked throb of her little animal heart. ‘The needle must be very fine. And just this length.’ He shows them, between finger and thumb. ‘Let me talk to your smith.’
Suffolk looks sideways at him. ‘You're a useful sort of man.’
They walk away. The duke says, ‘Look here. The problem is my wife.’ He waits. ‘I have always wanted Henry to have what he wants, I have always been loyal to him. Even when he was talking about cutting my head off because I'd married his sister. But now, what am I to do? Katherine is the queen. Surely? My wife was always a friend of hers. She's beginning to talk of, I don't know, I'd give my life for the queen, that sort of thing. And for Norfolk's niece to have precedence over my wife, who was Queen of France – we can't live with it. You see?’
He nods. I see. ‘Besides,’ the duke says, ‘I hear Wyatt is due back from Calais.’ Yes, and? ‘I wonder if I ought to tell him. Tell Henry, I mean. Poor devil.’
‘My lord, leave it alone,’ he says. The duke lapses into what, in another man, you would call silent thought.
Summer: the king is hunting. If he wants him, he has to chase him, and if he is sent for, he goes. Henry visits, on his summer progress, his friends in Wiltshire, in Sussex, in Kent, or stays at his own houses, or the ones he has taken from the cardinal. Sometimes, even now, the queen in her stout little person rides out with a bow, when the king hunts within one of his great parks, or in some lord's park, where the deer are driven to the archers. Lady Anne rides too – on separate occasions – and enjoys the pursuit. But there is a season to leave the ladies at home, and ride into the forest with the trackers and the running hounds; to rise before dawn when the light is clouded like a pearl; to consult with the huntsman, and then unharbour the chosen stag. You do not know where the chase will end, or when.
Harry Norris says to him, laughing, your turn soon, Master Cromwell, if he continues to favour you as he does. A word of advice: as the day begins, and you ride out, pick a ditch. Picture it in your mind. When he has worn out three good horses, when the horn is blowing for another chase, you will be dreaming of that ditch, you will imagine lying down in it: dead leaves and cool ditch-water will be all you desire.
He looks at Norris: his charming self-deprecation. He thinks, you were with my cardinal at Putney, when he fell on his knees in the dirt; did you offer the pictures in your head to the court, to the world, to the students of Gray's Inn? For if not you, then who?
In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or the living Christ, or an old enemy of yours; or a new enemy, one you do not know until you see his face appear between the rustling leaves, and see the glint of his dagger. You may find a woman asleep in a bower of leaves. For a moment, before you don't recognise her, you will think she is someone you know.
At Austin Friars, there is little chance to be alone, or alone with just one person. Every letter of the alphabet watches you. In the counting house there is young Thomas Avery, whom you are training up to take a grip on your private finances. Midway through the letters comes Marlinspike, strolling in the garden with his observant golden eyes. Towards the end of the alphabet comes Thomas Wriothesley pronounced Risley. He is a bright young man, twenty-five or so and well connected, son of York Herald, nephew to Garter King-at-Arms. In Wolsey's household he worked under your direction, then was carried away by Gardiner, as Master Secretary, to work for him. Now he is sometimes at court, sometimes at Austin Friars. He's Stephen's spy, the children say – Richard and Rafe.
Master Wriothesley is tall, with red-blond hair, but without the propensity of others of that complexion – the king, let's say – to grow pink when gratified, or mottled when crossed; he is always pale and cool, always his handsome self, always composed. At Trinity Hall he was a great actor in the students' plays, and he has certain affectations, a consciousness of himself, of how he appears; they mimic him behind his back, Richard and Rafe, and say, ‘My name is Wri-oth-es-ley, but as I wish to spare you effort, you can call me Risley.’ They say, he only complicates his name like that so he can come here and sign things, and use up our ink. They say, you know Gardiner, he is too angry to use long names, Gardiner just calls him ‘you’. They are pleased with this joke and for a while, every time Mr W appears, they shout, ‘It's you!’
Have mercy, he says, on Master Wriothesley. Cambridge men should have our respect.
He would like to ask them, Richard, Rafe, Master Wriothesley call me Risley: do I look like a murderer? There is a boy who says I do.
This year, there has been no summer plague. Londoners give thanks on their knees. On St John's Eve, the bonfires burn all night. At dawn, white lilies are carried in from the fields. The city daughters with shivering fingers weave them into drooping wreaths, to pin on the city's gates, and on city doors.
He thinks about that little girl like a white flower; the girl with Lady Anne, who manoeuvred herself around the door. It would have been easy to find out her name, except he didn't, because he was busy finding out secrets from Mary. Next time he sees her … but what's the use of thinking of it? She will come of some noble house. He had meant to write to Gregory and say, I have seen such a sweet girl, I will find out who she is and, if I steer our family adroitly in the next few years, perhaps you can marry her.
He has not written this. In his present precarious situation, it would be about as useful as the letters Gregory used to write to him: Dear father, I hope you are well. I hope your dog is well. And now no more for lack of time.
Lord Chancellor More says, ‘Come and see me, and we'll talk about Wolsey's colleges. I feel sure the king will do something for the poor scholars. Do come. Come and see my roses before the heat spoils them. Come and see my new carpet.’
It is a muted, grey day; when he arrives at Chelsea, Master Secretary's barge is tied up, the Tudor flag limp in the sultry air. Beyond the gatehouse, the red-brick house, new-built, offers its bright facade to the river. He strolls towards it, through the mulberry trees. Standing in the porch, under the honeysuckle, Stephen Gardiner. The grounds at Chelsea are full of small pet animals, and as he approaches, and his host greets him, he sees that the Chancellor of England is holding a lop-eared rabbit with snowy fur; it hangs peacefully in his hands, like ermine mittens.
‘Is your son-in-law Roper with us today?’ Gardiner asks.
‘A pity. I hoped to see him change his religion again. I wanted to witness it.’
‘A garden tour?’ More offers.
‘I thought that we might see him sit down a friend of Luther, as formerly he was, yet come back to the church by the time they bring in the currants and gooseberries.’
‘Will Roper is now settled,’ More says, ‘in the faith of England and of Rome.’
He says, ‘It's not really a good year for soft fruit.’
More looks at him out of the tail of his eye; he smiles. He chats genially as he leads them into the house. Lolloping after them comes Henry Pattinson, a servant of More's he sometimes calls his fool, and to whom he allows licence. The man is a great brawler; normally you take in a fool to protect him, but in Pattinson's case it's the rest of the world needs protection. Is he really simple? There's something sly in More, he enjoys embarrassing people; it would be like him to have a fool that wasn't. Pattinson's supposed to have fallen from a church steeple and hit his head. At his waist, he wears a knotted string which he sometimes says is his rosary; sometimes he says it is his scourge. Sometimes he says it is the rope that should have saved him from his fall.
Entering the house, you meet the family hanging up. You see them painted life-size before you meet them in the flesh; and More, conscious of the double effect it makes, pauses, to let you survey them, to take them in. The favourite, Meg, sits at her father's feet with a book on her knee. Gathered loosely about the Lord Chancellor are his son John; his ward Anne Cresacre, who is John's wife; Margaret Giggs, who is also his ward; his aged father, Sir John More; his daughters Cicely and Elizabeth; Pattinson, with goggle eyes; and his wife Alice, with lowered head and wearing a cross, at the edge of the picture. Master Holbein has grouped them under his gaze, and fixed them for ever: as long as no moth consumes, no flame or mould or blight.
In real life there is something fraying about their host, a suspicion of unravelling weave; being at his leisure, he wears a simple wool gown. The new carpet, for their inspection, is stretched out on two trestle tables. The ground is not crimson but a blush colour: not rose madder, he thinks, but a red dye mixed with whey. ‘My lord cardinal liked turkey carpets,’ he murmurs. ‘The Doge once sent him sixty.’ The wool is soft wool from mountain sheep, but none of them were black sheep; where the pattern is darkest the surface has already a brittle feel, from patchy dyeing, and with time and use it may flake away. He turns up the corner, runs his fingertips over the knots, counting them by the inch, in an easy accustomed action. ‘This is the Ghiordes knot,’ he says, ‘but the pattern is from Pergamon – you see there within the octagons, the eight-pointed star?’ He smooths down the corner, and walks away from it, turns back, says ‘there’ – he walks forward, puts a tender hand on the flaw, the interruption in the weave, the lozenge slightly distorted, warped out of true. At worst, the carpet is two carpets, pieced together. At best, it has been woven by the village's Pattinson, or patched together last year by Venetian slaves in a backstreet workshop. To be sure, he needs to turn the whole thing over. His host says, ‘Not a good buy?’
It's beautiful, he says, not wanting to spoil his pleasure. But next time, he thinks, take me with you. His hand skims the surface, rich and soft. The flaw in the weave hardly matters. A turkey carpet is not on oath. There are some people in this world who like everything squared up and precise, and there are those who will allow some drift at the margins. He is both these kinds of person. He would not allow, for example, a careless ambiguity in a lease, but instinct tells him that sometimes a contract need not be drawn too tight. Leases, writs, statutes, all are written to be read, and each person reads them by the light of self-interest. More says, ‘What do you think, gentlemen? Walk on it, or hang it on the wall?’
‘Walk on it.’
‘Thomas, your luxurious tastes!’ And they laugh. You would think they were friends.
They go out to the aviary; they stand deep in talk, while finches flit and sing. A small grandchild toddles in; a woman in an apron shadows him, or her. The child points to the finches, makes sounds expressive of pleasure, flaps its arms. It eyes Stephen Gardiner; its small mouth turns down. The nurse swoops in, before tears ensue; how must it be, he asks Stephen, to have such effortless power over the young? Stephen scowls.
More takes him by the arm. ‘Now, about the colleges,’ he says. ‘I have spoken to the king, and Master Secretary here has done his best – truly, he has. The king may refound Cardinal College in his name, but for Ipswich I see no hope, after all it is only … I am sorry to say this, Thomas, but it is only the birthplace of a man now disgraced, and so has no special claim on us.’
‘It is a shame for the scholars.’
‘It is, of course. Shall we go in to supper?’
In More's great hall, the conversation is exclusively in Latin, though More's wife Alice is their hostess and does not have a word of it. It is their custom to read a passage of scripture, by way of a grace. ‘It is Meg's turn tonight,’ More says.
He is keen to show off his darling. She takes the book, kissing it; over the interruptions of the fool, she reads in Greek. Gardiner sits with his eyes shut tight; he looks, not holy, but exasperated. He watches Margaret. She is perhaps twenty-five. She has a sleek, darting head, like the head of the little fox which More says he has tamed; all the same, he keeps it in a cage for safety.
The servants come in. It is Alice's eye they catch as they place the dishes; here, madam, and here? The family in the picture don't need servants, of course; they exist just by themselves, floating against the wall. ‘Eat, eat,’ says More. ‘All except Alice, who will burst out of her corset.’
At her name she turns her head. ‘That expression of painful surprise is not native to her,’ More says. ‘It is produced by scraping back her hair and driving in great ivory pins, to the peril of her skull. She believes her forehead is too low. It is, of course. Alice, Alice,’ he says, ‘remind me why I married you.’
‘To keep house, Father,’ Meg says in a low voice.
‘Yes, yes,’ More says. ‘A glance at Alice frees me from stain of concupiscence.’
He is conscious of an oddity, as if time has performed some loop or snared itself in a noose; he has seen them on the wall as Hans froze them, and here they enact themselves, wearing their various expression of aloofness or amusement, benignity and grace: a happy family. He prefers their host as Hans painted him; the Thomas More on the wall, you can see that he's thinking, but not what he's thinking, and that's the way it should be. The painter has grouped them so skilfully that there's no space between the figures for anyone new. The outsider can only soak himself into the scene, as an unintended blot or stain; certainly, he thinks, Gardiner is a blot or stain. The Secretary waves his black sleeves; he argues vigorously with their host. What does St Paul mean when he says Jesus was made a little lower than the angels? Do Hollanders ever make jokes? What is the proper coat of arms of the Duke of Norfolk's heir? Is that thunder in the distance, or will this heat keep up? Just as in the painting, Alice has a little monkey on a gilt chain. In the painting it plays about her skirts. In life, it sits in her lap and clings to her like a child. Sometimes she lowers her head and talks to it, so that no one else can hear.
More takes no wine, though he serves it to his guests. There are several dishes, which all taste the same – flesh of some sort, with a gritty sauce like Thames mud – and then junkets, and a cheese which he says one of his daughters has made – one of his daughters, wards, step-daughters, one of the women of whom the house is full. ‘Because one must keep them employed,’ he says. ‘They cannot always be at their books, and young women are prone to mischief and idleness.’
‘For sure,’ he mutters. ‘They'll be fighting in the streets next.’ His eyes are drawn unwillingly to the cheese; it is pitted and wobbling, like the face of a stable boy after a night out.
‘Henry Pattinson is excitable tonight,’ More says. ‘Perhaps he should be bled. I hope his diet has not been too rich.’
Old John More – who must be eighty now – has come in for supper, and so they yield the conversation to him; he is fond of telling stories. ‘Did you ever hear of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and the beggar who claimed to be blind? Did you ever hear of the man who didn't know the Virgin Mary was a Jew?’ Of such a sharp old lawyer one hopes for more, even in his dotage. Then he begins on anecdotes of foolish women, of which he has a vast collection, and even when he falls asleep, their host has more. Lady Alice sits scowling. Gardiner, who has heard all these stories before, is grinding his teeth.
‘Look there at my daughter-in-law Anne,’ More says. The girl lowers her eyes; her shoulders tense, as she waits for what is coming. ‘Anne craved – shall I tell them, my dear? – she craved a pearl necklace. She did not cease to talk about it, you know how young girls are. So when I gave her a box that rattled, imagine her face. Imagine her face again when she opened it. What was inside? Dried peas!’
The girl takes a deep breath. She raises her face. He sees the effort it costs her. ‘Father,’ she says, ‘don't forget to tell the story of the woman who didn't believe the world was round.’
‘No, that's a good one,’ More says.
When he looks at Alice, staring at her husband with painful concentration, he thinks, she still doesn't believe it.
After supper they talk about wicked King Richard. Many years ago Thomas More began to write a book about him. He could not decide whether to compose in English or Latin, so he has done both, though he has never finished it, or sent any part of it to the printer. Richard was born to be evil, More says; it was written on him from his birth. He shakes his head. ‘Deeds of blood. Kings' games.’
‘Dark days,’ says the fool.
‘Let them never come again.’
‘Amen.’ The fool points to the guests. ‘Let these not come again either.’