The Scarlet Peacock

by Field, David

  Once they reached Sheffield Park, the home of the Earl of Shrewsbury, Thomas was so weak from lack of food and the lingering flux that it was necessary to delay the progress for over a fortnight, during which Thomas was advised privily by his host that Henry had sent messages ahead that Thomas was to be treated with all due reverence, and that while he had been left with no option but to place Thomas on trial, given the nature of the accusations against him, yet he felt sure in his own mind that Thomas would establish his innocence.

  ‘How can he be assured of that, when I know not even the nature of the accusations against me?’ Thomas complained. ‘And what if there be those who have been prevailed upon, by torture or by bribe, to give false testimony against me? How then will go my case? I was Chancellor for long enough to know that justice in this realm is handmaiden to expediency, and that the value of a man’s oath is measured by the strength of the King’s love towards him. Now that I am out of favour, what value my oath, pray tell me, my lord?’

  The night before they were due to leave Sheffield Park for Nottingham, Harry Percy sought out George Cavendish as he sat on a low stone ledge in the rear garden, taking in the last rays of the sun as it set over the distant Pennines to the west.

  ‘George,’ Percy began, ‘I am conscious that you are the person who Thomas most trusts, and it is to you that I must assign the most difficult of tasks. We received more visitors earlier today, as you may have been aware, but the most senior of them was closely hooded to mask his true identity. However, he has been sent by the King to enquire of your master what be his defence to the serious accusations that have been voiced against him, and it is in Thomas’s best interests that he make early answer.’

  George smiled reassuringly.

  ‘This is all that my master has been seeking ever since your arrival at Cawood. Where do you perceive there to be a difficulty?’

  Harry swallowed hard before replying.

  ‘The man sent by the King is Sir William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower, and Captain of the Royal Bodyguard.’

  George went white.

  ‘I pray you, my lord, do not expose my master to any further care or worry. He is a proud man, as you may know, and he will not show it, but he is half dead with fear and sorrow in such a combination that I fear for his life with this latest turn of events.’

  ‘It cannot be avoided, George. Kingston is the man judged by the King as best fitted for the task, and were better for your master to make early and vehement denial of the slanders against him.’

  ‘Do you adjudge them to be false, my lord?’ George enquired. Percy spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘What does it matter what I think? If the King be not persuaded to remove the taint of treason from Thomas’s head, then what will matter will be what the judges in Star Chamber think.’

  ‘All of whom are Norfolk’s men, no doubt?’

  Percy rose from the ledge next to George with a sigh.

  ‘Who can tell at this stage? But it were well for Thomas to meet with the King’s chosen interrogator here, where there can be no suggestion of a forced confession.’

  George shuddered.

  ‘The mere suggestion of that and my frail master will collapse into his shroud.’

  Somehow or other the matter had to be broached with Thomas, and it was with a sinking heart that George did his best as he handed Thomas his night-time simple.

  ‘There is heartening news, master. It seems that a messenger has been sent from the King to hear your defence to the charge laid against you.’

  ‘How can I defend myself against that which I have not yet been apprised of?’ Thomas sighed. George tried again.

  ‘But my lord Percy assures me that it would be best for you to at least deny any treasonous thoughts or actions.’

  ‘I would have hoped that Henry would know that of me at least,’ Thomas argued resignedly, ‘but what of Norfolk and his pliant niece? What poison might they have poured into his ear? We will perhaps know when I meet with this royal messenger. Do I know him?’

  George swallowed hard.

  ‘Probably not, master, since you have never met. He is perhaps known to you by name, if not in person.’

  Thomas lowered himself, wincing, down the bedcovers. ‘We may discuss this further in the morning, since – please God – I feel weary enough for sleep. Have my chaplain attend me for absolution while my head is still in the waking world.’

  George did so, relieved that he had not been obliged to reveal the identity of Thomas’s interrogator, but apprehensive of what might happen once it became known.

  In the event, it was Thomas’s host, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who broke the news as Thomas finished his second Mass of the day, and the chaplain slipped from his bedchamber. The Earl had been waiting in the half-open doorway, and now moved to sit by Thomas’s side as he pulled on his hose.

  ‘Today shall be the day when the King learns of your honesty and loyalty, my dear friend. The man is here who shall assure the King that your heart is ever true towards him.’

  ‘So George advises me, but he did not think fit to reveal his identity.’

  It fell silent until the Earl advised him softly.

  ‘Why, it is Sir William Kingston.’

  Thomas repeated the name out loud several times, then the colour drained completely from his face.

  ‘The same Sir William who is the Constable of the Tower?’

  ‘Indeed, but what of it? He is here simply to convey your defence to his Majesty.’

  ‘He is here to convey me to the Tower!’ Thomas wailed, before clutching his rosary and intoning streams of Latin that were unintelligible to the Earl’s ears. Then he looked back at the Earl with an anguished face as he gave the instruction.

  ‘Have Sir William meet me in the hall within the hour.’

  It was necessary for Thomas to take George’s arm as his weak legs threatened to collapse under him on the way down the staircase from the bedchamber, and George could feel his master trembling under the Cardinal’s robes that he had donned for the meeting. Kingston rose to meet him, but made no effort to kiss the ring of office that was held out to him. The two men sat across the board staring at each other, until Kingston broke the silence.

  ‘His Majesty commends himself unto you, my lord Cardinal.’

  Thomas narrowed his eyes, almost in defiance, as he replied.

  ‘The important question for this morning, surely Sir William, is whether or not I commend myself to his Majesty.’

  ‘That is why I am here, your Grace. The King authorises me to tell you that he holds no faith in these scandalous rumours that have been put about, but to avoid all suspicion of partiality, he must deal with you as he deals with all others accused of treason, namely order a trial in which you may prove your innocence to the world.’

  Thomas was shaking so hard that he was obliged to grip the edge of the table as he made his next point.

  ‘For over ten years I was the Chancellor of England, as you well know, and in that time it was rumoured that those listed to appear before Star Chamber accused of treason were subjected to all manner of brutalities in order to extract from them confessions that eliminated the need for further trial. Since you, as Constable of that awful place in which such atrocities were committed, must be well aware of what I speak, tell me truly – am I to be racked in order to convince the King of my guilt, in the absence of any other evidence against me?’

  ‘No, my lord, of that I assure you,’ Sir William replied with a shocked expression on his face that was not entirely convincing, since he himself was not entirely convinced. ‘To inflict such atrocity on a man of God such as yourself would be a mortal sin that no man’s soul could withstand.’

  ‘You have been informed that I am close to death?’ Thomas enquired in a croaking voice that was most convincing. ‘I doubt that I will make it to London ere God claims my soul, but at least it is a soul clear of all sin such as must cause you nightmares of your own ma
king. I take it that you have orders from the King to convey me to the Tower, assuming that I live that long?’

  ‘To London, certainly. I have no further orders.’

  ‘From the King, or from Norfolk?’

  ‘My orders come from the King’s own mouth, your Grace, although clearly I know not of their true origin.’

  ‘To London, and no further, say you?’

  ‘As God is my witness, your Grace.’

  Thomas looked up at him, eyes wide with fear.

  ‘And as God is my witness, Sir William, I am guilty of no treason against the man who I loyally served for some twenty years. You may inform him of that, but first you must inform me of the nature of my alleged treason. Am I condemned for visiting the Queen Katherine in her misery, as a man of God ministering unto the needy?’

  ‘No, your Grace, but it is said that there is a letter written by you under your seal inviting Charles of Spain to invade the nation, and promising him an army to support such invasion, in return for which you would be made Pope.’

  Thomas burst out laughing, then slowly the laughter turned to tears of self pity as he shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘I wrote no such letter, but I doubt not that it exists, and I smell the shit of Norfolk in this. But will his Majesty believe me?’

  ‘I cannot tell, your Grace, since mine is the simple task of conveying you to your trial. We must resume the journey on the morrow.’

  ‘By the time we reach Hendon, you will be conveying a corpse,’ Thomas assured him.

  *

  Thomas Cromwell sat staring at the wall. It was late at night in the Drafting Chamber of the Treasury, and in his hand the quill had gone dry from lack of use. The document on the table in front of him was only half complete, but his mind was elsewhere.

  He could not for one moment bring himself to believe that the man who had nurtured his career, had promoted him on merit, and had tutored his every action, was guilty of what they were accusing him of. But the evidence was said to be undeniable, in the form of a letter in Thomas’s hand, and under his seal. This was surely another slimy underhand deed of Norfolk’s, but would the King’s trust in Thomas be more powerful than such an incriminating document? And where was it being kept hidden?

  He sighed, and rose from his stool, stretching his back muscles after hours of cramping them over his work. The assignment deed that he was drafting could wait until the morrow, and everyone else had gone home. But his day had not been idle, and he had several conveyance deeds that required to be copied into a fairer hand than his; these could be left in the adjoining chamber on his way out of the Treasury House, to prove that he had not spent the entire day staring at the wall.

  He carried the deeds down the hallway and into the Copying Chamber, where one clerk still remained at his desk. Since that desk was piled high, and the clerk appeared to have plenty to occupy him, Cromwell moved on to one of the desks that had been vacated for the day. It was a mass of disorganised vellum, and as he cleared a space for his latest draft to be copied by the clerk whose desk it was, his eye lit upon a short document that was sticking out from the pile. The writing was all too familiar, and he lifted it out to read it more closely. It was from his disgraced master, to Charles of Spain, seeking his assistance in allowing the Princess Mary to be reunited with her mother.

  At a loss as to why this particular document required to be copied by a Treasury clerk, a horrible suspicion began to assail him. He shuffled hurriedly through the rest of the pile, and found a drawing. Not just any old drawing, but a perfect likeness of the seal of the Archbishop of York. Burning with fury, he looked up and addressed the remaining clerk in the chamber.

  ‘Whose position is this? It is quite the most untidy in the entire room.’

  The clerk looked up with a malicious grin.

  ‘The new man – Richard Bullmore. A lazy oaf, and likely to be dismissed if he does not change his ways.’

  Thanking the clerk for his assistance, Cromwell walked out into the laneway that gave access to King Street, searching his memory for why that name seemed so familiar. Then it came back to him, and his rage was almost ungovernable.

  The following evening, as the sun’s rays were sliding down behind the turrets of the western side of White Hall, Cromwell stood waiting in that same side lane. As the man strode past the narrow entrance to the alleyway in which Cromwell had been hidden from view, he leapt out and grabbed him by the collar and hauled him into the alleyway with him. With one hand over the man’s mouth, Cromwell extracted a wicked looking knife from his tunic belt and held the point to the man’s throat as he hissed into his ear.

  ‘Richard Bullmore, by my faith! “Tricky Dick” as we used to call you during my Putney days. You are fortunate indeed that you still have the use of your hands, given your skill in clipping coins and minting new ones from the silver. And now it would seem that you have made a new career of creating false documents. However, this time you have created one too many.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Bullmore croaked, as Cromwell removed his hand from his mouth.

  ‘Is the name Thomas Cromwell familiar to you, from your days in Putney?’

  ‘Walter Cromwell’s son? He was a violent man, as I recall. Have you inherited his nature?’

  ‘I certainly have, in your case,’ Cromwell assured him, fighting the urge to plunge the point of the knife straight into the man’s throat, or use it to slit his neck from ear to ear.

  ‘What do you want of me?’ the man asked, his voice wavering in abject terror.

  ‘A confession – to the King, no less. In person, on your knees. A confession to having created, no doubt on payment by my lord of Norfolk, a document seemingly under the hand and seal of the Archbishop of York, Thomas Wolsey, inviting Charles of Spain to invade.’

  ‘The King would have me put to death! And Norfolk would have me murdered in some dark alley!’

  ‘A dark alley such as this, perhaps?’ Cromwell hissed.

  ‘You intend to murder me?’ Bullmore whined as his bladder emptied in fear down the front of his hose.

  ‘Far too merciful,’ Cromwell assured him. ‘I will, in due course, should you not agree to confess, do what should have been done to you years ago. In plain, I shall cut off your hands. But prior to that, I shall practice on your bollocks.’

  ‘Have mercy, I beg you!’ Bullmore screamed.

  ‘The only mercy you can expect of me comes at the price of your confession to the King. Do I have your pledge on that, always keeping in mind that I can seek you out at any time, in any place?’

  ‘I pledge!’ Bullmore assured him. Cromwell removed the knife from the man’s throat and kneed him in the small of his back, sending him sprawling out into the laneway with an agonised shriek.

  ‘See to your hose,’ Cromwell instructed him as he replaced the knife in his belt with a satisfied smirk.

  The next sunrise saw him riding hard through the lanes northward out of Hertfordshire, on his way to wherever Thomas might be found. A few enquiries at wayside hostelries yielded the information that a party of horsemen under the King’s orders were expected from Leicester within days, and it did not require a mind trained in Courtly matters to suggest that Leicester Abbey might be the best place to enquire after his old master.

  George Cavendish embraced him warmly as a groom took off his heavily soiled riding cape, but Cromwell was the first to speak.

  ‘How goes your master?’

  George shook his head, and tears appeared in the corners of his eyes.

  ‘He is near to death, Thomas, and will be unlikely to make London. Just before we reached Leicester, on the road from Nottingham, he slid from his mule, and had to continue the journey with his legs tied under it, like some common criminal. He is in his bedchamber, and from time to time we hear his screams of agony.’

  ‘Has he the services of a physician?’

  ‘At Sheffield Park, at the house of my lord of Shrewsbury, he was attended by one Dr.Nicholas, who examined t
he black stools that he was then voiding. They were wondrous black, and the good physician gave them some Latin name that I do not recall, but which presages death within days. It is a canker, and it causes him great agonies.’

  ‘Has he been shriven?’

  ‘Every hour, the last not many minutes since. He is not just prepared for death, Thomas – he is praying for it.’

  ‘Have you a supply of that mandrake simple?’

  ‘An adequate supply until we reach London. I fear that I have been obliged to increase the dose, such has been my distress to see the pain he undergoes.’

  ‘And does the master still prefer Rhenish?’

  ‘In truth, while he does, he has not been able to stomach anything other than small beer since we left Cawood some weeks since.’

  Cromwell placed a hand on each of Cavendish’s shoulders and looked him intently in the eye.

  ‘Do you bring me a supply of Rhenish, and as much mandrake as you have. Then retire to your pantry, and I wish you a good night. I will keep vigil in the master’s chamber, and will sleep on the floor wrapped in my cloak.’

  A few minutes later Cromwell crept up to Thomas’s bedside with the draught in his hand. Thomas looked up and smiled wanly before uttering a shriek of pain. Cromwell tried not to show his distress at what he was witnessing, and what he must do, as he placed the draught on the side table and took Thomas’s cold hand in his.

  ‘I bring the greatest news possible, master. I have found the villain who drafted the pernicious deed that Norfolk would seek to employ for your downfall, and he has pledged to confess his part in it.’

  Thomas smiled, then screamed again as another wave of burning agony ran through his innards, leaving another stinking stool among the bedsheets.

  ‘The man will be dead ere he can testify. I am done for, Thomas, and only you can clear my good name now, by swearing on your oath what the man confessed to you. But I will be dead ere that happens, should God ease my sufferings in His infinite mercy.’