The Scarlet Peacock

by Field, David

  George was sobbing silently as he took it all in, but Cromwell was angry.

  ‘This is all the making of the Boleyn witch! She has poisoned Henry’s mind against the master, and so far bewitched his senses that he has sent a Cardinal to his deathbed. I vow that the day shall come when I will avenge myself of that devil with her child duckies! As for the present, do you know where an apothecary may be found, George?’

  ‘Not at present, but I shall make it my first task to find one.’

  ‘Good. In the meantime I will speak with the master, and see if there is not some way to lift his spirits.’

  He tiptoed up the staircase, and was sitting by the bed when Wolsey opened his eyes.

  ‘Still here, Thomas? Did not the physician tell you that my days are now numbered? There is nothing you can do except sit with me and watch the sands of my life wash away.’

  ‘If you were not to die,’ Cromwell asked quietly, ‘if there was one place on this earth that you would wish to visit ere you make your final journey to meet God, where would it be?’

  ‘York,’ came the hoarse reply without hesitation. ‘In all these years I have never set eyes on my own minster, did you know that?’

  ‘You may leave that small matter with me,’ Cromwell assured him.

  A brief further conversation with George confirmed that the household was almost entirely bereft of funds, and Cromwell hurried back to Westminster, where he advised Henry privily that his former Lord Chancellor was close to death, and that his last wish was to set eyes on his cathedral of York, and perform one final Mass before God took him, but that there was no money left. Henry wiped a tear from his eye, and asked

  ‘How much does he need, say you?’

  Cromwell took a deep breath.

  ‘Perhaps a thousand marks?’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘It will require the consent of the Council, for such a sum to be voted out of Exchequer.’

  ‘Can you not raise it within the Household accounts?’ Cromwell asked, confused. Henry shook his head.

  ‘I cannot be seen to expend such a sum on one who has been attainted for praemunire, as you yourself can appreciate, Thomas. To do so would be condoning the offence. And, I may tell you privily, the Household would be sorely pressed to find such a sum at this time.’

  ‘By the same token, would not your Council baulk at such a step, given that my master is not well loved?’

  Henry nodded sadly.

  ‘To you, Thomas, falls the task of persuading Norfolk to the matter, since his is likely to be the loudest voice. It is time to discover whether or not your master bequeathed you his filed tongue.’

  Cromwell sought audience with Norfolk without delay. He found him in conference with Thomas Boleyn, and seated in the shadows was the Lady Anne, seemingly reading a book, but Thomas had no illusions that she would not be listening intently to their conversation.

  ‘Have you reconsidered my recent offer, Thomas?’ Norfolk enquired down his nose, ‘since it would seem that your former employer is without a groat to his name – not that it is much of a name these days.’

  Thomas swallowed his anger and forced a smile to his lips.

  ‘I have indeed, but it comes with one condition.’

  ‘You are in no position to bargain,’ Norfolk warned him, as Anne looked up from her book, and Boleyn signed her to silence.

  ‘I might be,’ Thomas offered with what he hoped was a conspiratorial smile. ‘In order to be free to join your service, I must needs rid myself of my current obligations, while you, I suspect, have an interest in seeing Thomas Wolsey as far from the King as is possible.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So he wishes to travel to York, and establish himself within his highest benefice. I have reason to believe that were he once there, he would not choose to return.’

  ‘And the difficulty with this?’ Norfolk persisted.

  ‘Finance, my lord. I have just come from the King, and he has offered one thousand marks to see the Cardinal on his way, subject to Council’s approval.’

  ‘And you approach me why, exactly?’

  ‘Forgive me, my lord, but it is widely rumoured throughout the Court that you have no love for the Cardinal, and might seek to oppose any grant of money to him.’

  ‘As your first service to me, do you know of any wealth of the Cardinal’s that might be hidden, in order that the Exchequer might be reimbursed?’

  ‘There is his recent endowment of the grammar school at Ipswich, my lord. In addition, there is his new college at Oxford.’

  Norfolk smiled.

  ‘Very well. Such is my desire to secure the services of a lawyer and drafter of documents with your skill that I will undertake not to oppose the grant of money to see the Archbishop appear in his diocese for the first time since he was granted it. I will also request, as your second duty, that you draft the assignment of the Ipswich endowment into the Exchequer. We will speak again tomorrow forenoon.’

  *

  Cromwell wasted no time in carrying the hopeful news back to Richmond, where he found Thomas back on his feet, albeit unsteadily, and drinking daily doses of beef tea to build up his strength once the medications from the apothecary had deadened the pains. Cromwell offered to remain for a few days, in order to assist George Cavendish with the task of gathering together the Cardinal’s few remaining possessions, ahead of the anticipated journey north, once Thomas was strong enough.

  A week or so later, in the early hours of a windy March morning, there was a heavy hammering on the door. Cromwell had been burning the candle late, in an effort to get all his master’s papers into some semblance of order, although he had not yet been able to bring himself to confess that he had paid the price of Thomas’s release to his diocese by entering Norfolk’s service. It felt to him like a terrible act of betrayal, and he was apprehensive as he beat George Cavendish to the door, in case it was some of Norfolk’s men come to seek him out and demand the reason for his early absence from his new post.

  There were three heavily cloaked men in the doorway, and the glint from the candle that Cromwell held up caught the flash of two sword blades. Cromwell mentally prepared himself for a fight, until the man in the centre demanded entry, and he recognised the voice.

  He bowed deeply, scarcely able to believe what was happening, as Henry and his two attendants stepped towards the embers of the fire and shook off their cloaks. Henry grinned back at where Cromwell remained in the doorway, still half bowing in amazement.

  ‘Off your mark, man, and get the Cardinal out of his bed.’

  Cromwell did as requested, and led a sleepy-eyed and disbelieving Thomas gently down the staircase to meet his visitors. Thomas stood there with an open mouth, convinced that he was still in his bed, and hallucinating.

  ‘Hal?’ he murmured weakly, after the longest of stares.

  ‘Who else? I am hungry and thirsty, and they tell me that Thomas Wolsey keeps a good table.’

  ‘Used to, Hal, used to, but unfortunately I am somewhat reduced in circumstances of late. The best I could offer you would be herring and manchet, although I believe we may have some Burgundy left, unless Cromwell here has drunk it all.’

  ‘I am well aware of your reduced circumstances, my dear old friend,’ Henry assured him, ‘since I was the one whose hand was instrumental in that, during a moment of weakness of which I am now thoroughly ashamed. And as for what we might share together at board, is there not something in the Bible about loaves and fishes?’

  ‘Indeed there is,’ Thomas replied with the first smile that Cromwell had seen in weeks, as he gestured to the stools around the table, and nodded to George Cavendish for the late supper to be served.

  There was no sign of any reluctance on Thomas’s part to eat as the conversation slipped easily from topic to topic, and Thomas assured Henry that although he had been ill, he was now feeling more like his old self, and was looking forward to serving God as loyally as he once served the nation.

  ‘
And that nation has not forgotten, my old friend,’ Henry replied, as he reached inside his cloak and extracted a drawstring bag which he placed on the table between them.

  ‘A thousand marks, my dear, dear friend, and God speed your journey north.’

  CHAPTER 17

  The road to York and oblivion

  The change in Thomas was immediate, and most noticeable. Although frequently in considerable pain, the regular supplies from the apothecary would usually deaden them sufficiently for Thomas to shrug them off in his enthusiasm for a return to public life, and his apparent reconciliation with Henry seemed to lift his spirits beyond any concern for his bodily ailments. He lost no time in issuing instructions for his household to be prepared to move north by the start of Easter Week 1529, and in a lengthy meeting with Cromwell that might well be his last for some time, if not for ever, Thomas entrusted him with the duty of keeping him fully apprised of events in London, where Cromwell was now assimilated into the administrative service of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, in his duties as Lord Treasurer of England.

  All of Thomas’s remaining possessions were loaded into a caravan of twelve carts smuggled out of his Oxford college only days before Norfolk’s men descended upon it, the steward of the College having been warned in advance by Cromwell of the fate that was about to encompass it. On the first day of Passion Week the procession wound its way east, crossed the Thames via London Bridge, and took the road north, arriving on the evening of the second day at Rye House in Hertfordshire, the home of the Parr family. It was here that Thomas received a hastily written note from the displaced Queen Katherine, who was being temporarily accommodated in Thomas’s former manor house of The More, where he had last resided overnight before bidding farewell to Cardinal Campeggio, and which had fallen to Henry following Thomas’s acquiescence to the praemunire.

  As Katherine had earnestly requested, Thomas, accompanied only by two sturdy grooms, and mounted on his tired old donkey, rode after supper, and under the cover of darkness, to a clandestine meeting with the former Queen. He found her gaunt in the face, plainly dressed, much whiter in the hair than he remembered, and as clearly shattered by the sudden reduction in her fortunes as Thomas was by his. She smiled weakly as she searched his gloved hand for his ring of office, and kissed it gently before easing herself into a chair and offering Thomas the one next to hers.

  ‘We are both the victims of the man we loved and so loyally served,’ she observed.

  ‘For myself,’ Thomas tactfully replied, ‘I do not regard my freedom to serve God in my see of York as a misfortune, Katherine.’

  ‘Ever the diplomat Tomaz,’ she smiled, ‘and where has it led you?’

  ‘On the road to York,’ he smiled back. Katherine looked at him with her head tilted at an angle of enquiry.

  ‘You know that I am forbidden access to my daughter the Princess Mary?’ she enquired. Thomas nodded.

  ‘It must bear upon you very hard, my lady, but I will ever pray that God will ease your heartache, and urge Henry to allow mother and daughter to be reunited.’

  ‘And would you be prepared to lend your assistance to that process by more diplomatic means, Tomaz?’

  ‘Your meaning, madam?’

  ‘Do you know Eustache Chapuys?’

  ‘I know of him, certainly. He is an Imperial envoy from Savoy, is he not?’

  ‘He is that and more, Tomaz. He is now the chosen Ambassador of my nephew Charles, and he is here in England to persuade Henry to allow Mary to join me in my exile. He will, in exchange, be prepared to assist Henry’s greatest ambition by urging my nephew Charles to bring pressure upon the Pope to grant the annulment of our marriage.’

  ‘You would support that annulment, madam? If so, why not simply tell Henry that?’

  ‘Because, Tomaz, I fear that my open consent to that outcome will encourage Henry to have Mary declared bastarda, which I cannot countenance, even at the cost of remaining separated from her. If the annulment comes from his Holiness directly, I can publically maintain my denial, and fight for Mary’s legitimacy, that she may one day be Queen of England if Henry cannot get a legitimate male heir by that night-crow Boleyn.’

  ‘And why do you tell me all this privily?’ Thomas enquired nervously. Katherine stared intensely at him.

  ‘Can I trust you, Tomaz, not as your Queen, but simply as a mother whose heart is breaking to know the loving presence of her only child?’

  ‘In either manner, madam, you may trust me as a servant of God first, and a fallen friend of Henry second.’

  ‘Then I may tell you privily that Chapuys will be visiting me here within days, and that when he departs he will carry with him letters to Charles from me, urging upon him those matters of which we spoke just now. I would that he also bear a letter from you, to the same effect. My nephew Charles may no longer trust you, but he respects your judgment, and now that you too have fallen from Henry’s favour, he would not see in any letter from you any duplicity or falsehood. And you being a man of God, it would be a natural part of your office to bless and urge the reunion of mother and daughter.’

  Thomas thought for a moment, then smiled.

  ‘I see no harm in that, Katherine. Indeed, given the friendship of many years between us, and in recognition of the happy days that we shared before Henry’s will became warped by Norfolk and his niece, I would deem it an honour to be able to perform this very personal service for you.’

  Katherine smiled, reached out, grasped his hand, and intoned an endearment in her native Spanish that brought a blush to Thomas’s face.

  ‘I am not yet a saint, madam, and it is my daily prayer that I become not a blessed martyr either.’

  Katherine smiled again, then turned to a groom who had been standing quietly in the corner, who left the chamber briefly and returned with a quill, some ink and a supply of vellum. As Katherine poured him some wine, Thomas sat and wrote a few lines, then shook the ink dry and handed it to Katherine to read. She smiled, nodded with satisfaction, and placed it on a pile that was already lying on a side table.

  ‘It will go with all the others,’ she advised him, nodding to the groom, who collected the papers, bowed, and left the chamber. A short while later Thomas took his leave and rode back to Rye House, comforted by the fact that he was performing tasks for God and mankind for once, and should perhaps always have done, rather than get in above his head in matters beyond his control.

  He was similarly comforted, in the Lady’s Chapel of Peterborough Abbey on Maundy Thursday, as he symbolically washed the feet of fifty-nine local poor men to whom he gave small sums of money, cloth for shirts and a modest quantity of simple food. On Easter Sunday he was reminded of more ambitious days as he once again donned his Cardinal’s robes in order to lead the Mass, after heading a solemn procession to the Abbey on his donkey, acknowledging the loving and loyal shouts of the crowds that lined his approach to the ancient building.

  Thomas and his entourage left the town proper the following Thursday, after ensuring that the local innkeepers and others who had played host to those of his household who could not be accommodated at the Abbey had been paid in full. But this was a short journey, to the nearby house of Sir William Fitzwilliams, who had cause to be grateful to Thomas in his Chancery days, when he had found in his favour against the London civic fathers who wished to prevent Fitzwilliams from establishing the Merchant Taylors Guild. After a week of convivial company, during which Thomas asked for his host’s forgiveness for not being able to eat anything other than a small helping of fish at each of several banquets, on account of his delicate constitution, it was back on the road, via Stamford, Grantham and Newark, to Southwell, where for the first time Thomas was within his Archbishop’s diocese of York, where he settled down to enjoy the warmth of an early summer.

  *

  As Norfolk slipped the small bag of coins into the outstretched hand of the grinning groom, who bowed backwards out of the chamber, Thomas Boleyn emerged from behind the arras where he
had been hiding and nodded towards the vellum sheet in Norfolk’s hand.

  ‘We are fortunate that Henry instructed that he report first to us.’ Norfolk smiled.

  ‘His primary concern was not to spy on his fallen favourite, but upon his ousted Queen in her communications with her nephew. Wolsey has a fine hand, does he not?’

  ‘Can it be mimicked, say you?’

  ‘Sufficient for Henry’s suspicious eye, with your daughter urging him on. The man I have sent for is said to be the finest forger in the city, and for the money I have promised him he would be prepared to imitate the hand of God himself, should I so require it.’

  ‘We were fortunate that it was not under seal.’

  ‘For that we can thank Henry himself, since he gave order that Katherine was to be supplied with no wax. We must, however, forge the seal of York upon the new one, ere we break it and present it to Henry as genuine. Then we shall see how far the serpent can wriggle from the royal wrath.’

  *

  Unaware of the treachery that would flow from his generous assistance to Katherine, Thomas spent his time at Southwell basking in the comforting glow of the love and admiration, bordering upon worship, by which he was surrounded. With little effort on his part, he had become the talking point of the entire region, and the chosen arbiter of long-running disputes between neighbours, rival families and estranged spouses that had been awaiting resolution and arbitration by a skilled mediator such as Thomas, who put into good effect for the common folk of the East Midlands what he had learned among kings and ambassadors. His was also the voice that commanded the worshippers in the Minster to fear God, and the hand that raised the Host, on Sundays and feast-days, when he happily dressed in all his ecclesiastical finery and relived his glory days. Then came a day when he was reminded forcefully of what he had recently escaped.

  On Corpus Christi Eve, Thomas had opted for an early night, and a large dose of the simple that kept his pains at bay sufficient for him to sleep fitfully, dreaming of angry kings and leering executioners armed with blunt axes. George Cavendish was then obliged, with considerable reluctance, to wake him again at the insistence of two messengers who claimed that they came from the King, and could not delay their return to Westminster, even to take food and drink.