The Scarlet Peacock

by Field, David

  The governance of Calais, and the associated fortress of Guines with its prison at Hammes, all of which lay within the English occupied ‘Pale of Calais’, obviously carried with it a heavy responsibility, a great deal of administration, and the need for constant intelligence activity. Governors were chosen for their undoubted loyalty to the monarch they served, and Henry VII had, since his coronation, pursued a constant policy of employing men of lowly birth, whose loyalty he could purchase by elevating them to positions of authority in which they owed everything to their royal patron and benefactor. Sir Richard Nanfan was no exception, but as he approached his fiftieth year he found the duties increasingly onerous, particularly those relating to intelligence gathering.

  He was therefore more than interested when a man so close to the king as Richard Foxe, the Lord Privy Seal, and the Bishop of Winchester and Durham, recommended a sleek young priest who was both a budding diplomat and a multilingual scholar who could, in his spare time, minister to the ageing man’s spiritual needs. Almost immediately after attending – and helping to conduct – Thomas Deane’s Requiem Mass, Thomas was introduced to Sir Richard, and shortly thereafter joined his household across the Channel. For the next two years he familiarised himself with the rolling hills to the west that led down towards Artois, and the marshy wetlands to the north-east that marked the border with Flanders, which was then being ruled by the Burgundians from their traditional lands further south. Towns such as Bruges and Ghent were important to the English wool trade, and successive Dukes of Burgundy had featured strongly in European power politics in recent years; they were also, by marriage, aligned with the Holy Roman Empire, and could not be ignored by an English monarch with half an eye on defending his economic interests across the sea.

  In his capacity as chaplain to the Deputy Governor of Calais, and while posing as a simple cleric, Thomas rapidly assessed every church, castle, religious house and inn in the entire Pale, until he could have found his way around it blindfold, should the need arise. His regular reports to Sir Richard were detailed and perceptive, and large portions of them were incorporated into the reports that the Deputy Governor passed covertly to his patron and conspirator Richard Foxe, another whose clerical vestments disguised the fact that he was now King Henry’s principal spy and facilitator. It had been Foxe and his ‘ferrets’, as the King called them, who had lured Perkin Warbeck to his doom, and had later manufactured the excuse to justify his very public execution. Foxe was the ultimate intelligence machine, and he in turn relied on men like Thomas Wolsey, who owed their preferment to him.

  Foxe, in his turn, owed his preferment entirely to an increasingly paranoid Henry VII, who saw conspirators against his throne behind every chair, and whose obsessive amassing of wealth had led him, unwisely, to select base-born men whose morals were as flexible as their loyalty to their royal patron was unshakeable. Men such as Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson, who had thrived as agents of the Star Chamber, and had become members of ‘the Council Learned’, as it called itself, but which was almost totally dedicated to the sordid task of wringing as much money from the nobility and the wealthy merchant class as was possible, either legally or under threat of attainder or something worse.

  Foxe himself had risen from the yeoman class, had studied at Oxford, and had been a schoolmaster under holy orders when forced into exile with Henry Tudor in France, ahead of the invasion that had set the young Earl of Richmond on the throne. When Foxe’s increasingly aching bones reminded him that the time had come for him to find a successor to himself as the king’s chief bloodhound, he recognised in Thomas Wolsey a kindred soul, a base-born academic of the highest calibre who could hide the most confidential of matters beneath his ample cassock while reaping the financial rewards of rich benefices without any call upon the throne for material reward. Foxe had the king’s inner ear, and if Foxe assured him that a man possessed a safe pair of hands in which to place a delicate mission, then he was believed, and that man would be commissioned.

  Foxe constantly enquired of Nanfan how his industrious and talented chaplain was conducting himself, and he had sufficient acumen to appreciate that most of the intelligence with which he was being supplied from Calais had originally been sourced by Thomas Wolsey. When an urgent need arose for diplomatic overtures to be made to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, who was also, by his marriage to Mary of Burgundy, the ruler of not only his own rich area of north-eastern France, but also the Burgundian controlled lands in Flanders, there could be only one possible candidate for the task. However, it was in Foxe’s best interests to retain the ultimate credit for himself.

  *

  It was now 1506, and Sir Richard Nanfan had succeeded in obtaining a pension via the good offices of Foxe that would allow him to retire to his small estate in Gloucestershire. There was, however, one condition, and this was that he bring his chaplain back with him, and leave him at his Putney house with instructions to await further word from Foxe. Thomas had barely had time to unpack all his vestments and more personal items of apparel, which he handed to his steward with instructions that they be handed to the best washerwoman in the district, when word came that Thomas was to report to Foxe at Richmond Palace, where he was in attendance upon the King, who had need of those best informed regarding how matters lay outside his immediate kingdom.

  He found Foxe in the ante chamber of the royal suite, deep in conversation with a heavy-set middle aged man, richly dressed and with an air of authority. Foxe rose and walked towards Thomas where he stood just inside the heavy oak doors that had been opened by a page to facilitate his admission to the chamber.

  ‘Thomas, first let me congratulate you on the excellent and regular reports that Sir Richard was able to pass on to me from Calais. Now I would like you to meet Sir Thomas Lovell, the King’s Chancellor, the Master of his Wards, and a man who knows the King’s desires even before the King does.’

  ‘You flatter me as ever, Richard,’ the other man responded with a smile as he nodded to acknowledge Thomas’s obsequious bow. ‘Well, you look the part – now let us hope you can play it to perfection.’

  ‘What part, my lord?’ Thomas asked. Lovell looked enquiringly back at Foxe, who shook his head.

  ‘I have not yet had time to acquaint him with either the nature of his mission or the new role that he must play in the royal routine.’

  Thomas’s heart began to beat faster as he caught the inference of the words, and he was the next to look enquiringly at Foxe, who smiled knowingly back at him.

  ‘His Majesty has need of a new chaplain, Thomas. He bored the last one to death with his lack of venal sins, and it is most likely that you will exhaust yourself with nothing more, in his service, than the designing of mild penances for sins that owe more to the imagination than the commission. However, we – by which of course I mean the King’s Council – have need of your filed tongue back across the Channel. The precise nature of your mission will be explained to you later, and you are here today simply that you may receive the royal approval.’

  ‘I am to meet the King?’ Thomas mumbled in astonishment.

  ‘This very hour,’ Foxe assured him. ‘He is at present making a small board through that door, and once his dinner has been removed, we are to be admitted.’

  ‘But,’ Thomas protested, looking down at his second best soutane, ‘I am hardly dressed as befits one being granted a royal audience, unlike you gentlemen in all your finery.’

  Foxe smiled encouragingly. ‘Fear not upon that score, Thomas. His Majesty judges men not by their dress but by their loyalty. He is already well apprised of your loyal service to him in Calais, and on our recommendation wishes you to put to best use your intimate knowledge of the people of Flanders and those who currently rule them. But for this morning, he simply wishes to become acquainted with the man who will guide his soul through the darker days that he imagines lie ahead of him. You must know that his health is not of the best, that he is plagued with a gout that makes him short of temp
er, and that this past winter has laid him low with a recurrence of his lifelong chest ailment. He does not expect to live long, and he wishes to achieve as much as he can in order to ensure that the throne passes both safely and richly to young Prince Henry of Wales. With all these things on his mind, his Majesty sees no-one of his Council except we two.’

  Foxe looked up sharply as the dividing doors that gave access to the Presence Chamber opened silently, and a gentleman usher appeared in the opening, behind whom could be seen a slight figure retreating, from a dining table still littered with the remains of a frugal dinner, towards a padded chair slightly raised on a dais.

  ‘His Majesty will receive you now, gentlemen.’

  Foxe and Lovell strolled confidently into the presence around each side of the abandoned dinner table and the meal on it that appeared to have been barely touched. Thomas hesitated in the doorway, gazing at the King, a thin-faced, almost haggard, man with sparse greying hair lying in thin strands upon his head, who was dabbing at his mouth with a kerchief, and clearly attempting to suppress an irritating cough. He looked past his two Council members and raised a beckoning hand towards Thomas, who slowly approached the monarch, his head bowed in supplication.

  ‘You are highly spoken of, Father Wolsey,’ Henry reassured him. ‘I trust that your penances are as light as your countenance is sleek?’

  ‘Indeed, sire,’ Thomas croaked in his first address to his king, before he added, ‘if your Majesty’s sins be as light as your hand upon your people.’

  Henry chuckled, then began spluttering. Once he had regained the power of speech he grinned back at Thomas.

  ‘They told me you had a honeyed tongue, and that it may be most usefully employed in important affairs of state. As they no doubt also told you, your main value to me will be as an ambassador in those places where a filed tongue and a sharp wit will stand a man in good stead. I will leave those details to Foxe here. In the meantime, be advised that I observe Mass upon my rising every morning, which is usually with the sun. The rest of the day will be your own, but on those days when you are abroad I shall require you to send another priest in your stead. But since, according to my information, sending another priest to do your work is nothing new to you, we shall be well suited.’

  ‘I shall do my utmost to serve your Majesty with all my best endeavours, and in perpetual gratitude for the honour that you bestow upon me,’ Thomas assured him.

  ‘Save your flattery for foreign rulers,’ Henry muttered, before lapsing into another fit of coughing, and waving for Thomas to leave the presence. As he did so, he was followed out by Foxe, who drew him to one side.

  ‘Do not be deceived by the show his Majesty makes of being a weak old man. It suits his purpose to appear meek, while all the while arranging for the fortunes of others to be tipped into his pockets. Do simply follow his mood with your own, and you will be well rewarded with public offices. Join me for dinner in my chambers, and the nature and purpose of your first diplomatic progress can be explained more fully.’

  By early afternoon Thomas had learned that he was to proceed with all speed to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, and there assure him that Henry was eager to ally with him against Louis of France in order to prevent the latter from carrying out his badly-kept secret plan to attack Milan. Thomas was handed a ring bearing two intertwined jewelled stones crafted into the emblem of the Tudor Rose, which would serve as confirmation of his authority, and was to bring back a gold chain on which was hanging a medallion bearing the image of a Roman Emperor, which would be proof that he had spoken personally with the Emperor. He was to lose no time in setting off, and even less time in relaying the Emperor’s response personally to Foxe and the King.

  His heart singing elatedly at this opportunity to rise in the royal service, Thomas raced back to his Putney home, and set his servants about various immediate tasks. From one he obtained confirmation that the royal bargeman had been commanded to the steps at the foot of Fulham Palace to convey Thomas to Gravesend, while others prepared his bags for travel. He left instructions for an astonished Thomas Larke that he was to celebrate Mass for the King in his chambers at Richmond Palace at sunrise every day until Thomas’s return, and he ordered one of his grooms to ride hard to Dover, where he was to arrange for fresh horses and a Channel passage boat to be waiting by the following morning.

  Thomas and two grooms thundered through the night from Gravesend to Dover, where at first light they changed horses – leaving instructions with the ostler at the Sun Inn to have the horses ready for re-use within twenty four hours – and embarked for Calais. The rising sun was creeping across the sky as Thomas called briefly at the Governor’s castle, and yelled with delight when advised that Emperor Maximilian was believed to be still in his ducal residence in Bruges. By the middle of the day Thomas had reached the Imperial townhouse, and had ordered two fresh horses to be held ready for a speedy departure within hours, before insisting that he be admitted to the Emperor’s presence since he came with an urgent message from King Henry of England.

  Emperor Maximilian gazed with some amusement at the dust-streaked figure of the fat priest who knelt before him with an outstretched hand that contained a valuable jewelled token of his devious fellow royal across the water, and bade Thomas announce his business. Thanking God for the time he had taken to learn German, Thomas addressed Maximilian in his own tongue.

  ‘My gracious lord King Henry would be united with you in the suppression of French pretensions to the townships in Italy that King Louis is rumoured to be planning to attack.’

  ‘I knew nothing of this,’ Maximilian protested. Thomas saw his opportunity.

  ‘It is as my master thought,’ he replied, ‘and he also thought it appropriate that the tidings be brought to the most powerful ruler in Europe, to whose army he would gladly commit men of his own, to ensure your success in warding off King Louis’ intended sacking of Milan.’

  ‘Tell your master that I am greatly in his debt, that he shares such confidence with me, and shows me such support before making use of this knowledge for himself.’

  ‘That is not my master’s way,’ Thomas assured him. ‘May I assure my master that his offer of support has been accepted?’

  ‘Most gladly,’ Maximilian smiled down at him. ‘You may also give him this gold chain, on which is the likeness of the Emperor Caesar Augustus worked by one of the finest smiths in my native Vienna, as a token of my constancy in this matter. And now, your business concluded, you must rest for the night and enjoy the hospitality of my modest house.’

  ‘You are most gracious,’ Thomas replied unctuously, ‘but my bodily comfort is as nought compared with the anxiety with which my master awaits joyful confirmation that your causes shall be joined. If you will permit, I shall return to him post haste.’

  Maximilian smiled. ‘Your king is blessed, to have men so well endowed with both superior powers of statecraft and limitless amounts of energy. Depart with my blessing, Father Wolsey, and God speed your enterprise.’

  Scarcely able to believe his good fortune, Thomas hastily rejoined his two grooms, who had the horses waiting, along with a saddle pannier full of meat, bread and wine that they had coaxed from the cook, and as they raced towards the rapidly setting sun, chewing vigorously and exchanging the wine gourd from rider to rider, Thomas said a silent prayer to the God he served as well as his king, both of whom were showering him with good fortune.

  Once again they were fortunate in the state of the tide, as they rescued their first set of horses once they disembarked at Dover, and pounded directly through the lanes of Kent and Surrey until they reached Richmond at first light. Thomas demanded admittance to the royal apartments, and was just in time to see Thomas Larke, dressed in his finest soutane, emerge white-faced from the inner chamber and give thanks to God that he would not be required to conduct a third fumbling Mass for a monarch who coughed and shivered at all the inappropriate moments. Thomas was just thanking his personal chaplain
for the service he had rendered him, and assuring him that if there was anything he could do to return the favour, he need only ask, when the King himself appeared in the doorway, a puzzled frown on his face.

  ‘Wolsey,’ he announced sternly, ‘I did not submit to the furtive mutterings of this boy priest in order that you might spend longer in your bed. When is it your intention to travel on my business to the Emperor?’

  ‘In truth, sire,’ Thomas replied proudly, handing Henry the Imperial medallion on its chain, ‘I have already been and returned.’

  Henry looked thunderstruck as he took in the implications, then asked, ‘What reply did he give?’

  ‘That he is more than happy to unite with your Majesty in the joint enterprise that you propose. Indeed, he was seemingly full of gratitude for your gracious offer.’

  ‘Thomas, you have served me well. I ask only that you cause this information to be relayed to Bishop Foxe and my lord Lovell, and then you may take what is no doubt your much needed rest. I shall take supper with you here in my chamber this evening.’

  Thomas bowed, and when he looked up the King had retreated back into his chamber, and an usher had closed the door. Puffing out his cheeks in satisfaction, Thomas leaned on the younger shoulder of his bemused chaplain.

  ‘Let us home, Thomas, for I am both triumphant and exhausted. I have also come to learn that being in the service of a king provokes a fierce thirst. I hope that you have not consumed all the Beaujolais that we brought back upon our retreat from Calais.’

  CHAPTER 3

  The King is dead: Long live the King

  For once Thomas had little appetite, a condition he put down to the few hours of sleep he had enjoyed since his return from Bruges, and the realisation that he was taking supper with the three most powerful men in the realm. He sat across from King Henry, who was toying fitfully with a slice of venison pie, while Bishop Foxe sat to Thomas’s right, with Lord Lovell to his left. Both men were enjoying a hearty repast among the platters of cold meat, and rewarding themselves liberally with the excellent Burgundy wine that sat in jugs before them. But then, Thomas reasoned, they were no doubt used to dining with the King, whereas this was his first occasion, and he was too nervously engaged in choosing his words with care to be able to chew fine meats at the same time – even less dare he loosen his tongue with wine.