Wolf Hall tct-1

by Hilary Mante

  ‘I agree entirely. Tell your father-in-law that.’

  It was a sour note to part on. I shall not indulge More, he thinks, or his family, in any illusion that they understand me. How could that be, when my workings are hidden from myself?

  He makes a note: Richard Cromwell to present himself to the Abbot of Westminster, to escort Sir Thomas More, prisoner, to the Tower.

  Why do I hesitate?

  Let's give him one more day.

  It is 15 April 1534. He calls in a clerk to tidy and file his papers, ready for tomorrow, and lingers by the fire, chatting; it is midnight, and the candles are burned down. He takes one and goes upstairs; Christophe, snoring, sprawls across the foot of his wide and lonely bed. Dear God, he thinks, my life is ridiculous. ‘Wake up,’ he says, but in a whisper; when Christophe does not respond, he lays hands on him and rolls him up and down, as if he were the lid for a pie, till the boy wakes up, expostulating in gutter French. ‘Oh by the hairy balls of Jesus.’ He blinks violently. ‘My good master, I didn't know it was you, I was dreaming I was a pastry. Forgive me, I am completely drunk, we have been celebrating the conjunction of the beautiful Helen with the fortunate Rafe.’ He raises a forearm, curls up his fist, makes a gesture of the utmost lewdness; his arm falls limp across his body, his eyelids slide ineluctably towards his cheeks, and with a final hiccup he subsides into sleep.

  He hauls the boy to his pallet. Christophe is heavy now, a rotund bulldog pup; he grunts, he mutters, but he does not wake again.

  He lays aside his clothes and says his prayers. He puts his head on the pillow: 7 sheets 2 pillows 1 bolster. He sleeps as soon as the candle is out. But his daughter Anne comes to him in a dream. She holds up her left hand, sorrowful, to show him she wears no wedding ring. She twists up her long hair and wraps it around her neck like a noose.

  Midsummer: women hurry to the queen's apartments with clean linen folded over their arms. Their faces are blank and shocked and they walk so quickly you know not to stop them. Fires are lit within the queen's apartments to burn what has bled away. If there is anything to bury, the women keep it a secret between themselves.

  That night, huddled in a window embrasure, the sky lit by stars like daggers, Henry will tell him, it is Katherine I blame. I believe she ill-wishes me. The truth is her womb is diseased. All those years she deceived me – she couldn't carry a son, and she and her doctors knew it. She claims she still loves me, but she is destroying me. She comes in the night with her cold hands and her cold heart, and lies between me and the woman I love. She puts her hand on my member and her hand smells of the tomb.

  The lords and ladies give the maids and midwives money, to say what sex the child was, but the women give different answers each time. Indeed, what would be worse: for Anne to have conceived another girl, or to have conceived and miscarried a boy?

  Midsummer: bonfires are lit all over London, burning through the short nights. Dragons stalk the streets, puffing out smoke and clattering their mechanical wings.

  Chapter II.

  The Map of Christendom.

  1534—1535

  ‘Do you want Audley's post?’ Henry asks him. ‘It's yours if you say so.’

  The summer is over. The Emperor has not come. Pope Clement is dead, and his judgments with him; the game is to play again, and he has left the door open, just a chink, for the next Bishop of Rome to hold a conversation with England. Personally, he would slam it shut; but these are not personal matters.

  Now he thinks carefully: would it suit him to be Chancellor? It would be good to have a post in the legal hierarchy, so why not at the top? ‘I have no wish to disturb Audley. If Your Majesty is satisfied with him, I am too.’

  He remembers how the post tied Wolsey to London, when the king was elsewhere. The cardinal was active in the law courts; but we have lawyers enough.

  Henry says, only tell me what you deem best. Abased, like a lover, he cannot think of the best presents. He says, Cranmer bids me, listen to Cromwell, and if he needs a post, a tax, an impost, a measure in Parliament or a royal proclamation, give it to him.

  The post of Master of the Rolls is vacant. It is an ancient judicial office, it commands one of the kingdom's great secretariats. His predecessors will be those men, bishops for the most part, eminent in learning: those who lie down on their tombs, with their virtues in Latin engraved beneath. He is never more alive than when he twists the stem of this ripe fruit and snaps it from the tree.

  ‘You were also right about Cardinal Farnese,’ Henry says.

  ‘Now we have a new Pope – Bishop of Rome, I should say – I have collected on my bets.’

  ‘You see,’ he says, smiling. ‘Cranmer is right. Be advised by me.’ The court is amused to hear how the Romans have celebrated Pope Clement's death. They have broken into his tomb, and dragged his naked body through the streets.

  The Master's house in Chancery Lane is the most curious house he has ever entered. It smells of must, mould and tallow, and behind its crooked facade it meanders back, a warren of little spaces with low doorways; were our forebears all dwarves, or were they not perfectly certain how to prop up a ceiling?

  This house was founded three hundred years ago, by the Henry that was then; he built it as a refuge for Jews who wished to convert. If they took this step – advisable if they wished to be preserved from violence – they would forfeit all their possessions to the Crown. This being so, it was just that the Crown should house and feed them for their natural lives.

  Christophe runs ahead of him, into the depths of the house. ‘Look!’ He trails his finger through a vast spider's web.

  ‘You've broken up her home, you heartless boy.’ He examines Ariane's crumbling prey: a leg, a wing. ‘Let's be gone, before she comes back.’

  Some fifty years after Henry had endowed the house, all Jews were expelled from the realm. Yet the refuge was never quite empty; even today two women live here. I shall call on them, he says.

  Christophe is tapping the walls and beams, for all the world as if he knew what he was looking for. ‘Wouldn't you run,’ he says with relish, ‘if someone tapped back?’

  ‘Oh, Jesus!’ Christophe crosses himself. ‘I expect a hundred men have died here, Jews and Christians both.’

  Behind this wainscot, it is true, he can sense the tiny bones of mice: a hundred generations, their articulated forefeet folded in eternal rest. Their descendants, thriving, he can smell in the air. This is a job for Marlinspike, he says, if we can catch him. The cardinal's cat is feral now, ranging at will through London gardens, lured by the scent of carp from the ponds of city monasteries, tempted – for all he knows – across the river, to be snuggled to the bosoms of whores, slack breasts rubbed with rose petals and ambergris; he imagines Marlinspike lolling, purring, declining to come home again. He says to Christophe, ‘I wonder how I can be Master of the Rolls, if I am not master of a cat.’

  ‘The Rolls have not paws to go walking.’ Christophe is kicking a skirting. ‘My foot go through it,’ he says, demonstrating.

  Will he leave the comforts of Austin Friars, for the tiny windows with their warped panes, the creaking passages, the ancient draughts? ‘It will be a shorter journey to Westminster,’ he says. His aim is bent there – Whitehall, Westminster and the river, Master Secretary's barge down to Greenwich or up to Hampton Court. I shall be back at Austin Friars often, he says to himself, almost every day. He is building a treasure room, a repository secure for any gold plate the king entrusts to him; whatever he deposits can quickly be turned into ready money. His treasure comes through the street on ordinary carts, to attract no attention, though there are vigilant outriders. The chalices are fitted into soft leather cases made for them. The bowls and dishes travel in canvas bags, interleaved with white woollen cloth at seven pence the yard. The jewels are swaddled in silk and packed into chests with new and shiny locks: and he has the keys. There are great pearls which gleam wet from the ocean, sapphires hot as India. There are jewels like the fruit you pick on
a country afternoon: garnets like sloes, pink diamonds like rosehips. Alice says, ‘For a handful of these I would, myself, overthrow any queen in Christendom.’

  ‘What a good thing the king hasn't met you, Alice.’

  Jo says, ‘I would as soon have it in export licences. Or army contracts. Someone will make a fortune in the Irish wars. Beans, flour, malt, horseflesh …’

  ‘I shall see what I can do for you,’ he says.

  At Austin Friars he holds the lease for ninety-nine years. His great-grandchildren will have it: some unknown Londoners. When they look at the documents his name will be there. His arms will be carved over the doorways. He rests his hand on the banister of the great staircase, looks up into the dust-mote glitter from a high window. When did I do this? At Hatfield, early in the year: looking up, listening for the sounds of Morton's household, long ago. If he himself went to Hatfield, must not Thomas More have gone up too? Perhaps it was his light footstep he expected, overhead?

  He starts to think again, about that fist that came out of nowhere.

  His first idea had been, move clerks and papers to the Rolls, then Austin Friars will become a home again. But for whom? He has taken out Liz's book of hours, and on the page where she kept the family listed he has made alterations, additions. Rafe will be moving out soon, to his new house in Hackney; and Richard is building in the same neighbourhood, with his wife Frances. Alice is marrying his ward Thomas Rotherham. Her brother Christopher is ordained and beneficed. Jo's wedding clothes are ordered; she is snapped up by his friend John ap Rice, a lawyer, a scholar, a man he admires and on whose loyalty he counts. I have done well for my folk, he thinks: not one of them poor, or unhappy, or uncertain of their place in this uncertain world. He hesitates, looking up into the light: now gold, now blue as a cloud passes. Whoever will come downstairs and claim him, must do it now. His daughter Anne with her thundering feet: Anne, he would say to her, couldn't we have felt mufflers over those hooves of yours? Grace skimming down like dust, drawn into a spiral, a lively swirl … going nowhere, dispersing, gone.

  Liz, come down.

  But Liz keeps her silence; she neither stays nor goes. She is always with him and not with him. He turns away. So this house will become a place of business. As all his houses will become places of business. My home will be where my clerks and files are; otherwise, my home will be with the king, where he is.

  Christophe says, ‘Now we are removed to the Rolls House, I can tell you, cher maître, how I am happy that you did not leave me behind. For in your absence they would call me snail brain and turnip head.’

  ‘Alors …’ he takes a view of Christophe, ‘your head is indeed like a turnip. Thank you for attracting my attention to it.’

  Installed at the Rolls, he takes a view of his situation: satisfactory. He has sold off his two Kent manors, but the king has given him one in Monmouthshire and he is buying another in Essex. He has his eye on plots in Hackney and Shoreditch, and is taking in leases on the properties around Austin Friars, which he intends to enfold in his building plans; and then, build a big wall around the lot. He has surveys to hand of a manor in Bedfordshire, one in Lincolnshire, and two Essex properties he intends to put in trust for Gregory. All this is small stuff. It's nothing to what he intends to have, or to what Henry will owe him.

  Meanwhile, his outgoings would frighten a lesser man. If the king wants something done, you have to be able to staff the enterprise and fund it. It is hard to keep up with the spending of his noble councillors, and yet there are a crew of them who live at the pawn-shop and come to him month by month to patch the holes in their accounts. He knows when to let these debts run; there is more than one kind of currency in England. What he senses is a great net is spreading about him, a web of favours done and favours received. Those who want access to the king expect to pay for it, and no one has better access than he. And at the same time, the word is out: help Cromwell and he will help you. Be loyal, be diligent, be intelligent on his behalf; you will come into a reward. Those who commit their service to him will be promoted and protected. He is a good friend and master; this is said of him everywhere. Otherwise, it is the usual abuse. His father was a blacksmith, a crooked brewer, he was an Irishman, he was a criminal, he was a Jew, and he himself was just a wool-trader, he was a shearsman, and now he is a sorcerer: how else but by being a sorcerer would he get the reins of power in his hand? Chapuys writes to the Emperor about him; his early life remains a mystery, but he is excellent company, and he keeps his household and retainers in magnificent style. He is a master of language, Chapuys writes, a man of most eloquent address; though his French, he adds, is only assez bien.

  He thinks, it's good enough for you. A nod and a wink will do for you.

  These last months, the council has never been out of harness. A hard summer of negotiating has brought a treaty with the Scots. But Ireland is in revolt. Only Dublin Castle itself and the town of Waterford hold out for the king, while the rebel lords are offering their services and their harbours to the Emperor's troops. Among these isles it is the most wretched of territories, which does not pay the king what it costs him to garrison it; but he cannot turn his back on it, for fear of who else might come in. Law is barely respected there, for the Irish think you can buy off murder with money, and like the Welsh they cost out a man's life in cattle. The people are kept poor by imposts and seizures, by forfeitures and plain daylight robbery; the pious English abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays, but the joke runs that the Irish are so godly they abstain every other day as well. Their great lords are brutal and imperious men, treacherous and fickle, inveterate feuders, extortionists and hostage takers, and their allegiance to England they hold cheap, for they are loyal to nothing and prefer force of arms to law. As for the native chiefs, they recognise no natural limit to their claims. They say that on their land they own every ferny slope and lake, they own the heather, the meadow grass and the winds that riffle it; they own every beast and every man, and in times of scarcity they take the bread to feed their hunting dogs.

  No wonder they don't want to be English. It would interrupt their status as slave-owners. The Duke of Norfolk still has serfs on his land, and even if the law courts move to free them the duke expects a fee from it. The king proposes to send Norfolk to Ireland, but he says he's spent enough futile months over there and the only way he'll go back is if they build a bridge so he can get home at the end of the week without getting his feet wet.

  He and Norfolk fight in the council chamber. The duke rants, and he sits back and folds his arms and watches him ranting. You should have sent young Fitzroy to Dublin, he tells the council. An apprentice king – make a show, stage a spectacle, throw some money about.

  Richard says to him, ‘Perhaps we should go to Ireland, sir.’

  ‘I think my campaigning days are over.’

  ‘I would like to be in arms. Every man should be a soldier once in his life.’

  ‘That is your grandfather speaking through you. Ap Evans the archer. Concentrate for now on making a show in the tournaments.’

  Richard has proved a formidable man in the lists. It is more or less as Christophe says: biff, and they are flat. You would think the sport was in his nephew's blood, as it is in the blood of the lords who compete. He carries the Cromwell colours, and the king loves him for it, as he loves any man with flair and courage and physical strength. Increasingly, his bad leg forces him to sit with the spectators. When he is in pain he is panicked, you can see it in his eyes, and when he is recovering he is restless. Uncertainty about his own state of health makes him less inclined for the expense and trouble of organising a large tournament. When he does run a course, with his experience, his weight and height, his superb horses and the steel of his temperament, he is likely to win. But to avoid accidents, he prefers to run against opponents he knows.

  Henry says, ‘The Emperor, two or three years back when he was in Germany, did he not have an evil humour in his thigh? They say the weather didn't suit h
im. But then his dominions offer a change of climate. Whereas from one part of my kingdom to the next there is no change to be found.’

  ‘Oh, I expect it's worse in Dublin.’

  Henry looks out, hopeless, at the teeming rain. ‘And when I ride out the people shout at me. They rise up out of ditches, and shout about Katherine, how I should take her back. How would they like it if I told them how to order their houses and wives and children?’

  Even when the weather clears the king's fears do not diminish. ‘She will escape and raise an army against me,’ he says. ‘Katherine. You do not know what she would do.’

  ‘She told me she would not run.’

  ‘And you think she never lies? I know she lies. I have proof of it. She lied about her own virginity.’

  Oh, that, he thinks tiredly.

  It seems Henry doesn't believe in the power of armed guards, in locks and keys. He thinks an angel recruited by the Emperor Charles will make them fall away. When he travels, he takes with him a great iron lock, which is affixed to his chamber door by a servant who goes with him for the purpose. His food is tasted for poison and his bed examined, last thing at night, for concealed weapons, such as needles; but even so, he is afraid he will be murdered as he sleeps.

  * * *

  Autumn: Thomas More is losing weight, a wiry little man emerging from what was never a superfluity of flesh. He lets Antonio Bonvisi send him food in. ‘Not that you Lucchese know how to eat. I'd send it myself, but if he took ill, you know what people would say. He likes dishes of eggs. I don't know if he likes much else.’

  A sigh. ‘Milk puddings.’

  He smiles. These are carnivorous days. ‘No wonder he doesn't thrive.’

  ‘I've known him for forty years,’ Bonvisi says. ‘A lifetime, Tommaso. You wouldn't hurt him, would you? Please assure me, if you can, that no one will hurt him.’

  ‘Why do you think I'm no better than he is? Look, I have no need to put him under pressure. His family and friends will do it. Won't they?’