by Hilary Mante
There are people in London who say that John Howard, grandfather of the Norfolk that is now, was more than a little concerned in the disappearance of the children who went into the Tower and never came out again. The Londoners say – and he reckons the Londoners know – that it was on Howard's watch that the princes were last seen; though Thomas More thinks it was Constable Brakenbury who handed the keys to the killers. Brakenbury died at Bosworth; he can't come out of his grave and complain.
The fact is, Thomas More is thick with the Norfolk that is now, and keen to deny that his ancestor helped disappear anyone, let alone two children of royal blood. In his mind's eye he frames the present duke: in one dripping, sinewy hand he holds a small golden-haired corpse, and in the other hand the kind of little knife a man brings to table to cut his meat.
He comes back to himself: Gardiner, jabbing the air, is pressing the Lord Chancellor on his evidence. Presently the fool's grumbling and groaning become unbearable. ‘Father,’ Margaret says, ‘please send Henry out.’ More rises to scold him, take him by the arm. All eyes follow him. But Gardiner takes advantage of the lull. He leans in, speaks English in an undertone. ‘About Master Wriothesley. Remind me. Is he working for me, or for you?’
‘For you, I would have thought, now he is made a Clerk of the Signet. They assist Master Secretary, do they not?’
‘Why is he always at your house?’
‘He's not a bound apprentice. He may come and go.’
‘I suppose he's tired of churchmen. He wants to know what he can learn from … whatever it is you call yourself, these days.’
‘A person,’ he says placidly. ‘The Duke of Norfolk says I'm a person.’
‘Master Wriothesley has his eye on his advantage.’
‘I hope we all have that. Or why did God give us eyes?’
‘He thinks of making his fortune. We all know that money sticks to your hands.’
Like the aphids to More's roses. ‘No,’ he sighs. ‘It passes through them, alas. You know, Stephen, how I love luxury. Show me a carpet, and I'll walk on it.’
The fool scolded and ejected, More rejoins them. ‘Alice, I have told you about drinking wine. Your nose is glowing.’ Alice's face grows stiff, with dislike and a kind of fear. The younger women, who understand all that is said, bow their heads and examine their hands, fiddling with their rings and turning them to catch the light. Then something lands on the table with a thud, and Anne Cresacre, provoked into her native tongue, cries, ‘Henry, stop that!’ There is a gallery above with oriel windows; the fool, leaning through one of them, is peppering them with broken crusts. ‘Don't flinch, masters,’ he shouts. ‘I am pelting you with God.’
He scores a hit on the old man, who wakes with a start. Sir John looks about him; with his napkin, he wipes dribble from his chin. ‘Now, Henry,’ More calls up. ‘You have wakened my father. And you are blaspheming. And wasting bread.’
‘Dear Lord, he should be whipped,’ Alice snaps.
He looks around him; he feels something which he identifies as pity, a heavy stirring beneath the breastbone. He believes Alice has a good heart; continues to believe it even when, taking his leave, permitted to thank her in English, she raps out, ‘Thomas Cromwell, why don't you marry again?’
‘No one will have me, Lady Alice.’
‘Nonsense. Your master may be down but you're not poor, are you? Got your money abroad, that's what I'm told. Got a good house, haven't you? Got the king's ear, my husband says. And from what my sisters in the city say, got everything in good working order.’
‘Alice!’ More says. Smiling, he takes her wrist, shakes her a little. Gardiner laughs: his deep bass chuckle, like laughter through a crack in the earth.
When they go out to Master Secretary's barge, the scent of the gardens is heavy in the air. ‘More goes to bed at nine o'clock,’ Stephen says.
‘With Alice?’
‘People say not.’
‘You have spies in the house?’
Stephen doesn't answer.
It is dusk; lights bob in the river. ‘Dear God, I am hungry,’ Master Secretary complains. ‘I wish I had kept back one of the fool's crusts. I wish I had laid hands on the white rabbit; I'd eat it raw.’
He says, ‘You know, he daren't make himself plain.’
‘Indeed he dare not,’ Gardiner says. Beneath the canopy, he sits hunched into himself, as if he were cold. ‘But we all know his opinions, which I think are fixed and impervious to argument. When he took office, he said he would not meddle with the divorce, and the king accepted that, but I wonder how long he will accept it.’
‘I didn't mean, make himself plain to the king. I meant, to Alice.’
Gardiner laughs. ‘True, if she understood what he said about her she'd send him down to the kitchens and have him plucked and roasted.’
‘Suppose she died? He'd be sorry then.’
‘He'd have another wife in the house before she was cold. Someone even uglier.’
He broods: foresees, vaguely, an opportunity for placing bets. ‘That young woman,’ he says. ‘Anne Cresacre. She is an heiress, you know? An orphan?’
‘There was some scandal, was there not?’
‘After her father died her neighbours stole her, for their son to marry. The boy raped her. She was thirteen. This was in York-shire … that's how they go on there. My lord cardinal was furious when he heard of it. It was he who got her away. He put her under More's roof because he thought she'd be safe.’
‘So she is.’
Not from humiliation. ‘Since More's son married her, he lives off her lands. She has a hundred a year. You'd think she could have a string of pearls.’
‘Do you think More is disappointed in his boy? He shows no talent for affairs. Still, I hear you have a boy like that. You'll be looking for an heiress for him soon.’ He doesn't reply. It's true; John More, Gregory Cromwell, what have we done to our sons? Made them into idle young gentlemen – but who can blame us for wanting for them the ease we didn't have? One thing about More, he's never idled for an hour, he's passed his life reading, writing, talking towards what he believes is the good of the Christian commonwealth. Stephen says, ‘Of course you may have other sons. Aren't you looking forward to the wife Alice will find you? She is warm in your praises.’
He feels afraid. It is like Mark, the lute player: people imagining what they cannot know. He is sure he and Johane have been secret. He says, ‘Don't you ever think of marrying?’
A chill spreads over the waters. ‘I am in holy orders.’
‘Oh, come on, Stephen. You must have women. Don't you?’
The pause is so long, so silent, that he can hear the oars as they dip into the Thames, the little splash as they rise; he can hear the ripples in their wake. He can hear a dog barking, from the southern shore. The Secretary asks, ‘What kind of Putney enquiry is that?’
The silence lasts till Westminster. But on the whole, not too bad a trip. As he mentions, disembarking, neither of them has thrown the other in the river. ‘I'm waiting till the water's colder,’ Gardiner says. ‘And till I can tie weights to you. You have a trick of resurfacing, don't you? By the way, why am I bringing you to Westminster?’
‘I am going to see Lady Anne.’
Gardiner is affronted. ‘You didn't say so.’
‘Should I report all my plans to you?’
He knows that is what Gardiner would prefer. The word is that the king is losing patience with his council. He shouts at them, ‘The cardinal was a better man than any of you, for managing matters.’ He thinks, if my lord cardinal comes back – which by a caprice of the king's he may, any time now – then you're all dead, Norfolk, Gardiner, More. Wolsey is a merciful man, but surely: only up to a point.
Mary Shelton is in attendance; she looks up, simpers. Anne is sumptuous in her nightgown of dark silk. Her hair is down, her delicate feet bare inside kidskin slippers. She is slumped in a chair, as if the day has beaten the spirit out of her. But still, as she looks up, her ey
es are sparkling, hostile. ‘Where've you been?’
‘Utopia.’
‘Oh.’ She is interested. ‘What passed?’
‘Dame Alice has a little monkey that sits on her knee at table.’
‘I hate them.’
‘I know you do.’
He walks about. Anne lets him treat her fairly normally, except when she has a sudden, savage seizure of I-who-will-be-Queen, and slaps him down. She examines the toe of her slipper. ‘They say that Thomas More is in love with his own daughter.’
‘I think they may be right.’
Anne's sniggering laugh. ‘Is she a pretty girl?’
‘No. Learned though.’
‘Did they talk about me?’
‘They never mention you in that house.’ He thinks, I should like to hear Alice's verdict.
‘Then what was the talk?’
‘The vices and follies of women.’
‘I suppose you joined it? It's true, anyway. Most women are foolish. And vicious. I have seen it. I have lived among the women too long.’
He says, ‘Norfolk and my lord your father are very busy seeing ambassadors. France, Venice, the Emperor's man – just in these last two days.’
He thinks, they are working to entrap my cardinal. I know it.
‘I did not think you could afford such good information. Though they say you have spent a thousand pounds on the cardinal.’
‘I expect to get it back. From here and there.’
‘I suppose people are grateful to you. If they have received grants out of the cardinal's lands.’
He thinks, your brother George, Lord Rochford, your father Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, haven't they got rich from the cardinal's fall? Look at what George is wearing these days, look at the money he spends on horses and girls; but I don't see much sign of gratitude from the Boleyns. He says, ‘I just take my conveyancer's fee.’
She laughs. ‘You look well on it.’
‘Do you know, there are ways and ways … Sometimes people just tell me things.’
It is an invitation. Anne drops her head. She is on the verge of becoming one of those people. But perhaps not tonight. ‘My father says, one can never be sure of that person, one can never tell who he's working for. I should have thought – but then I am only a woman – that it is perfectly obvious that you're working for yourself.’
That makes us alike, he thinks: but does not quite say.
Anne yawns, a little catlike yawn. ‘You're tired,’ he says. ‘I shall go. By the way, why did you send for me?’
‘We like to know where you are.’
‘So why does your lord father not send for me, or your brother?’
She looks up. It may be late, but not too late for Anne's knowing smile. ‘They do not think you would come.’
August: the cardinal writes to the king, a letter full of complaint, saying that he is being hounded by his creditors, ‘wrapped in misery and dread’ – but the stories that come back are different. He is holding dinners, and inviting all the local gentry. He is dispensing charity on his old princely scale, settling lawsuits, and sweet-talking estranged husbands and wives into sharing a roof again.
Call-Me-Risley was up in Southwell in June, with William Brereton of the king's privy chamber: getting the cardinal's signature on a petition Henry is circulating, which he means to send to the Pope. It's Norfolk's idea, to get the peers and bishops to sign up to this letter asking Clement to let the king have his freedom. It contains certain murky, unspecific threats, but Clement's used to being threatened – no one's better at spinning a question out, setting one party against the other, playing ends against the middle.
The cardinal looks well, according to Wriothesley. And his building work, it seems, has gone beyond repairs and a few renovations. He has been scouring the country for glaziers, joiners, and for plumbers; it is ominous when my lord decides to improve the sanitation. He never had a parish church but he built the tower higher; never lodged anywhere where he did not draw up drainage plans. Soon there will be earthworks, culverts and pipes laid. Next he will be installing fountains. Wherever he goes he is cheered by the people.
‘The people?’ Norfolk says. ‘They'd cheer a Barbary ape. Who cares what they cheer? Hang 'em all.’
‘But then who will you tax?’ he says, and Norfolk looks at him fearfully, unsure if he's made a joke.
Rumours of the cardinal's popularity don't make him glad, they make him afraid. The king has given Wolsey a pardon, but if he was offended once, he can be offended again. If they could think up forty-four charges, then – if fantasy is unconstrained by truth – they can think up forty-four more.
He sees Norfolk and Gardiner with their heads together. They look up at him; they glare and don't speak.
Wriothesley stays with him, in his shadow and footsteps, writes his most confidential letters, those to the cardinal and the king. He never says, I am too tired. He never says, it is late. He remembers all that he is required to remember. Even Rafe is not more perfect.
It is time to bring the girls into the family business. Johane complains of her daughter's poor sewing, and it seems that, transferring the needle surreptitiously into her wrong hand, the child has devised an awkward little backstitch which you would be hard-pushed to imitate. She gets the job of sewing up his dispatches for the north.
September 1530: the cardinal leaves Southwell, travelling by easy stages to York. The next part of his progress becomes a triumphal procession. People from all over the countryside flock to him, ambushing him at wayside crosses so that he can lay his magical hands on their children; they call it ‘confirmation’, but it seems to be some older sacrament. They pour in by the thousand, to gape at him; and he prays for them all.
‘The council has the cardinal under observation,’ Gardiner says, swishing past him. ‘They have had the ports closed.’
Norfolk says, ‘Tell him if I ever see him again, I will chew him up, bones, flesh and gristle.’ He writes it down just so and sends it up-country: ‘bones, flesh and gristle.’ He can hear the crunch and snap of the duke's teeth.
On 2 October the cardinal reaches his palace at Cawood, ten miles from York. His enthronement is planned for 7 November. News comes that he has called a convocation of the northern church; it is to meet at York the day after his enthronement. It is a signal of his independence; some may think it is a signal of revolt. He has not informed the king, he has not informed old Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury; he can hear the cardinal's voice, soft and amused, saying, now, Thomas, why do they need to know?
Norfolk calls him in. His face is crimson and he froths a little at the mouth as he starts to shout. He has been seeing his armourer for a fitting, and is still wearing sundry parts – his cuirass, his garde-reins – so that he looks like an iron pot wobbling to the boil. ‘Does he think he can dig in up there and carve himself a kingdom? Cardinal's hat not enough for him, only a crown will do for Thomas bloody Wolsey the bleeding butcher's boy, and I tell you, I tell you …’
He drops his gaze in case the duke should stop to read his thoughts. He thinks, my lord would have made such an excellent king; so benign, so sure and suave in his dealings, so equitable, so swift and so discerning. His rule would have been the best rule, his servants the best servants; and how he would have enjoyed his state.
His glance follows the duke as he bobs and froths; but to his surprise, when the duke turns, he smites his own metalled thigh, and a tear – at the pain, or something else – bubbles into his eye. ‘Ah, you think me a hard man, Cromwell. I am not such a hard man that I don't see how you are left. Do you know what I say? I say I don't know one man in England who would have done what you have done, for a man disgraced and fallen. The king says so. Even him, Chapuys, the Emperor's man, he says, you cannot fault what's-he-called. I say, it's a pity you ever saw Wolsey. It's a pity you don't work for me.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘we all want the same thing. For your niece to be queen. Can we not work together?’
; Norfolk grunts. There is something amiss, in his view, with that word ‘together’, but he cannot articulate what it is. ‘Do not forget your place.’
He bows. ‘I am mindful of your lordship's continuing favour.’
‘Look here, Cromwell, I wish you would come down and see me at home at Kenninghall, and talk to my lady wife. She's a woman of monstrous demands. She thinks I shouldn't keep a woman in the house, for my pleasant usage, you know? I say, where else should she be? Do you want me to disturb myself on a winter's night and venture out on the icy roads? I don't seem to be able to express myself correctly to her; do you think you could come down and put my case?’ He says, hastily, ‘Not now, of course. No. More urgent … see my niece …’
‘How is she?’
‘In my view,’ Norfolk says, ‘Anne's out for bloody murder. She wants the cardinal's guts in a dish to feed her spaniels, and his limbs nailed over the city gates of York.’
It is a dark morning and your eyes naturally turn towards Anne, but something shadowy is bobbing about, on the fringes of the circle of light. Anne says, ‘Dr Cranmer is just back from Rome. He brings us no good news, of course.’
They know each other; Cranmer has worked from time to time for the cardinal, as indeed who has not? Now he is active in the king's case. They embrace cautiously: Cambridge scholar, person from Putney.
He says, ‘Master, why would you not come to our college? To Cardinal College, I mean? His Grace was very sorry you would not. We would have made you comfortable.’
‘I think he wanted more permanence,’ Anne says, sneering.
‘But with respect, Lady Anne, the king has almost said to me that he will take over the Oxford foundation himself.’ He smiles. ‘Perhaps it can be called after you?’
This morning Anne wears a crucifix on a gold chain. Sometimes her fingers pull at it impatiently, and then she tucks her hands back in her sleeves. It is so much a habit with her that people say she has something to hide, a deformity; but he thinks she is a woman who doesn't like to show her hand. ‘My uncle Norfolk says Wolsey goes about with eight hundred armed men at his back. They say he has letters from Katherine – is that true? They say Rome will issue a decree telling the king to separate from me.’