‘Well,’ Call-Me says, ‘yes … if you think I should address her as you might address the House of Commons. I might suggest, I suppose, that with obedience comes some diminution of responsibility.’
‘That might ease her mind. But Call-Me, don’t speak to her as if she were a little girl. And don’t try to frighten her. She is brave like her mother and will strike out, she is stubborn like her mother and will dig in. If she angers you, step back and let Rafe speak. Appeal to her womanly nature. To her daughter’s love. Tell her how much it hurts her father,’ he puts a hand to his heart, ‘tell her it hurts him, here, that she should put the dead before the living.’
The outlines of Master Wriothesley have blurred; he sinks into indistinction, as if the night were lapping at him. He would like the princess to linger, till she melts in the heat of his will: till she dissolves into acquiescence – which she will, if only he can find the right phrases to unresolve her.
‘Sir,’ Wriothesley says, ‘I think you know something no one else does.’
‘Me? I don’t know anything. Nobody tells me a thing.’
‘Is it something to do with Wyatt?’
Rafe has told him that verses are written against Wyatt, coded accusations and bitter jokes, circulated by the courtiers within breath of the king’s own person. A paper is inserted into a prayer book, or tucked into a glove, or played instead of the king of spades. ‘They are all afraid,’ Call-Me says. ‘They are looking over their shoulders. They don’t know if more charges will be laid. I was deep in talk with Francis Bryan, and when Wyatt’s name came up, he lost the thread of what he was saying, and he looked at me as if he had never seen me before.’
‘Francis?’ He laughs. ‘He was probably drunk.’
‘The women are afraid too, it seems to me. When I carried a message to Jane the queen, there were glances – hushing, and shuffling, and signs between them –’
‘My poor boy! You come in and women make signs at each other? Has this happened before? Tell me what the signs were and I will try to interpret them.’
Call-Me flushes. ‘Sir, it is not a joke. The queen – I mean, the other one – she is paid out for her evil dealings, but there is more. There is something else. You go into a room, you hear a door bang, you feel someone has run from your approach. But at the same time, you feel that someone is watching you.’
Someone is, he thinks.
‘Everyone believes,’ Call-Me says, ‘that it was Wyatt’s testimony that condemned Anne – but they do not know why he would give it, because they think him brave and reckless and …’
‘Witless?’
‘Not that, but he is very gallant – and they think, what did Anne do to him, to turn the honey to gall? They imagined he would be buried in her tomb with her, rather than –’
No wonder you break off. Sometimes our fantasies make a leap, sudden and precise, like dancers in a line. We see the arrow chest, barely wide enough for one. ‘They think Wyatt should have died for love? When they would not cross the street for it?’
He thinks of Wyatt in his prison, as dusk slips through the runnels and estuaries of the Thames, where the last light slides like silk, floating, sinking; it is the light that moves, when the stream is still. Wyatt seems distant to him, as if held in a mirror; or as if he had lived a long time ago. He says, ‘Safe journey tomorrow. Remember everything Mary says. As soon as you leave her, write it down.’
He goes to his room, Christophe thumping along behind him. ‘The ridiculous Mathew,’ Christophe says. ‘I hear he is promoted. You should send him back to Wolf Hall. He is more fit for a pig-keeper than for a servant to a lord.’
‘I could go up and see Mary myself,’ he says. ‘There and back before anyone knew I was gone.’
He closes the door of his chamber, shutting the day out. Christophe says, ‘Like when we went up to Kimbolton, in secret to see the old queen. When we stopped at the inn, and the bold wife of the innkeeper –’
‘Yes. Enough.’
‘– jumped into your bed. And next morning you said to me, “Christophe, pay the reckoning,” and gave me your purse. And then when we got to Kimbolton we went to the church. You remember I whistled, and the priest appeared?’
He remembers the stone devil, his serpentine coils; the archangel Michael, his wings with teal-coloured feathers, his sword raised to hack.
‘We all thought you would make confession. We hoped to hear it. But you did not. Besides, even if we are sorry for a thing, we cannot be forgiven if we fully mean to do it again.’
He sees himself in the glass, stripped to his shirt, a startling flash of white. Out of his brocade and velvet, his person is broad, a graceless slab of muscle and bone. His greying hair is cropped, so nothing softens the features with which God has punished him – small mouth, small eyes, large nose. He wears linen shirts so fine you can read the laws of England through them. He has a green velvet coat that was made for him last year and sent down to Wolf Hall; he has a riding coat of deep purple; he has his robe from the last coronation, a darkish crimson in which, said one of Anne’s ladies, he looked like a travelling bruise. If clothes make the man, he is made; but no one ever said, even when he was young, ‘Tommaso looks handsome today.’ They only said, ‘You’ve got to be up early to get ahead of that squat English bastard.’ You can’t even say he looks well on a horse. He just looks useful on a horse. He gets in the saddle and he goes somewhere. He sets an ambling pace, but he is there before anyone else.
The night is warm, but Christophe has lit a small, crackling fire, and set the perfume pan to burn. Sweet herbs, frankincense: these drive off contagion in any season. A bank of beeswax candles, ready for the touch of a taper; ink at his hand, his day-book ready on the table, turned to a blank leaf in case he wakes and remembers something for tomorrow’s list. I think I shall rest tonight, he says to Christophe, and Christophe says, the ambassador has long departed, even Call-Me is turned out, Master Richard is at home with his wife, the king is saying his prayers, or perchance he labours with the queen to please her; birds have tucked their heads beneath their wings, the prisoners of London are snoring in the Tower and the Marshalsea, the Clink and the Fleet. In the precincts of Austin Friars, Dick Purser has loosed the watchdogs. God is in His Heaven. The bolts are on the gates.
‘And I,’ he says, ‘am at home in my own chamber for once.’ Seven years back, when Florence was besieged by the Emperor and begging for French aid, the burgesses went to the merchant Borgherini’s house: ‘We want to buy your bedroom.’ There were fine painted panels, rich hangings and other furnishings they thought might make a bribe for King François. But Margherita, the merchant’s wife, stood her ground and threw their offer back in their faces. Not everything in life is for sale, she said. This room is my family’s heart. Away with you! If you want to take away my bedroom, you will have to carry your loot over my corpse.
He would not die for his furniture. But he understands Margherita – always supposing the story to be true. Our possessions outlast us, surviving shocks that we cannot; we have to live up to them, as they will be our witnesses when we are gone. In this room are the goods of people who can no longer use them. There are books his master Wolsey gave him. On the bed, the quilt of yellow turkey satin under which he slept with Elizabeth, his wife. In a chest, her carved image of the Virgin is cradled in a quilted cap. Her jet rosary beads are curled inside her old velvet purse. There is a cushion cover on which she was working a design, a deer running through foliage. Whether death interrupted her or just dislike of the work, she had left her needle in the cloth. Later some other hand – her mother’s, or one of her daughters’ – drew out the needle; but around the twin holes it left, the cloth had stiffened into brittle peaks, so if you pass your finger over the path of her stitches – the path they would have taken – you can feel the bumps, like snags in the weave. He has had the small Flanders chest moved in here from next door, and h
er furred russet gown is laid up in spices, along with her sleeves, her gold coif, her kirtles and bonnets, her amethyst ring, and a ring set with a diamond rose. She could stroll in and get dressed. But you cannot make a wife out of bonnets and sleeves; hold all her rings together, and you are not holding her hand.
Christophe says, ‘You are not sad, sir?’
‘No. I am not sad. I am not allowed to be. I am too useful to be sad.’
My first thought was right, he says: I should not go to Mary, or not yet. Let it run … see what Rafe and Call-Me bring back. He thinks, the cardinal would have known how best to manage this. Wolsey always said, work out what people want, and you might be able to offer it; it is not always what you think, and may be cheap to supply. It didn’t work with Thomas More. He was a drowning man who struck away the hands stretched to save him. Offer after offer was made, and More took none. The age of persuasion has ended, as far as Henry is concerned; it ended the day More dripped to the scaffold, to drown in blood and rainwater. Now we live in an age of coercion, where the king’s will is an instrument reshaped each morning, as if by a master-forger: sharp-pointed, biting, it spirals deep into our crooked age. You will see Henry, profound in deception, take an ambassador’s arm and charm him. Lying gives him a deep and subtle pleasure, so deep and subtle he does not know he is lying; he thinks he is the most truthful of princes. Henry says that he, Cromwell, is too humble a man to deal with foreign grandees, so he stands against the wall and keeps his eyes on Henry’s face. Afterwards he will have his own hurried conversation with the ambassador: Cremuel, am I to believe him this time? And he will say earnestly, You should, ambassador, you must. Do you think I am new-hatched? He tells me this now, but what will he say next week? Trust me, ambassador, I swear I will keep him to his word. Yes, but by what do you swear, now you have thrown out the holy relics?
Then he puts his hand on his heart. By my faith, he says. ‘Ah, Master Secretary,’ the ambassador will say, ‘your hand is on your heart too often. And your faith I think is a very light matter and changeable from day to day.’
And then the ambassador will glance over his shoulder, and edge towards him. ‘Meet me, Cremuel. Let us dine.’
Then the dice is shaken in the bone cup – and never mind who is humble. He will deal and deal again and, brimming to confide, the ambassador will unfold his grievances. My master, my master the Emperor, my master the king … he is very like your master in some ways … and I should hazard, my dear Cremuel, that day by day your anxieties are not unlike mine. The envoy will then proffer little bluffs and double-bluffs, looking keenly to see how they are taken; and when Cremuel nods and says, ‘I see,’ then they are gaining firmer ground; with the lift of an eyebrow, the flicker of a smile, they proceed, negotiating the necessary falsities with the ease of men skipping over puddles. His new friend will understand that princes are not as other men. They have to hide from themselves, or they would be dazzled by their own light. Once you know this, you can begin to erect those face-saving barriers, screens behind which adjustments can take place, corners for withdrawal, open spaces in which to turn and reverse. There is a smooth pleasure in the process, a gratifying expertise, but there is a price too: a bilious aftertaste, a jaundiced fatigue. Jean de Dinteville had said to him once, have you ever considered, Cremuel, why do we lie and lie? And when we make our deathbed confession, will force of habit carry us to Hell?
But that again was a ploy; just something the Frenchman was trying out on him. In Henry’s own council chamber, with or without the king’s presence, there is a conspiracy of gestures, of sighs, a counter-point to what can be spoken aloud; but when a messenger from the privy chamber comes in to say, ‘His Majesty is delayed,’ there is a shuffle and covert relief. The councillors may speculate as to why: gone riding, perhaps, or bowels recalcitrant, or just feeling lazy – or tired, who knows, of the sight of our faces? Someone will say, ‘Master Secretary, will you?’ And led by him through the agenda, they will begin their round of scrapping and cavilling, but with a furtive camaraderie they would not like Henry to witness, for he prefers his councillors divided. If councillors frown at the foe, the king can smile – ever-gracious prince. If they bully, he can reward. If they insist, he lulls, he coaxes, charms. It is his councillors, as mean a crew as ever walked, who carry his sins for him: who agree to be worse people, so Henry can be better.
It is June and the nights are short; but when the city gates are closed, the fires covered, then he, Cremuel, draws the bedcurtains and is shut in with the business of England. Outside this room, this bed, a long darkness stretches away, to the seashore and across the waves: to the walls of Calais, through the sleeping fields of France, across the dark snow peaks and through Italy to the sultanates. Night covers London like a blanket, as if we were gone already and under our pall, black velvet and a cold silver cross. How many lives have we, where we sleep and dream, and lost languages flow back into our mouths? All knew Cromwell, when he was a child. Put an Edge on It, they called him – because his father sharpened knives. Before he was twelve, he was his father’s little debt collector: amiable, smiling, tenacious. At fifteen he was on the road with his bundle, bruised and fleeing, heading for another bruising and another war; but at least, as a soldier of King Louis, he was paid to receive blows. He spoke French then, the argot of the camp. He spoke whatever language you need for trading and bartering – anything from a canvas sack to a saint’s image, tell me what you want, I’ll get it. At eighteen, two of his lives were behind him. His third life began in Florence, in the courtyard of the Frescobaldi house, when he crawled smashed from the battlefield; propping himself against the wall, he saw with glazed eyes his new field of endeavour. In time the master called him upstairs: the young Englishman, able to disentangle the affairs of his compatriots, and then to become perfect in the business of his new masters, trusted, discreet, reverent to his elders, never fatigate, nor despondent, nor overthrown by any demand. He is not as other Englishmen, his masters said, when they sent him to their friends: does not brawl in the street, does not spit like a devil, carries a knife but keeps it in his coat. In Antwerp he began afresh, clerk to the English merchants. He is Italian, they cried, full of sleight and guile – whisking up a profit out of air. That was his fourth life: pays bas. He spoke useful Spanish, and the Antwerp tongue. He left it – left the widow Anselma in her waterside house full of shadows; you must go home, she said, and meet a young Englishwoman of good fortune, and I hope she will make you happy at bed and at board. In the end she said, Thomas, if you do not leave now I shall pack your bundle and throw it in the Scheldt – take this boat, she had said, as if she thought there might never be another.
His next life was with his wife, his children, with his master the great cardinal. This is my real life, he thought, I have arrived at it now: but the moment you think that, you are due to take up your bundle again. His heart and mind travelled north, with the cardinal into exile; it ended on the road, and they buried him at Leicester, dug in with Wolsey. His sixth life was as Master Secretary, the king’s servant. His seventh, Lord Cromwell, now begins.
First we must, he thinks, have a ceremony: crown Queen Jane. For Anne Boleyn I filled the streets with speaking saints, with falcons the height of men. I unspooled a mile of blue, like a path to Heaven, from the abbey door to the coronation chair: I costed it by the yard and, lady, you walked it. Now I must begin again: new banners, painted cloths with the emblem of the phoenix; with the day star, the gates of Heaven, the cedar tree and the lily among thorns.
He stirs in his sleep. He is walking the blue, the waves. In Ireland they want longbows, and good bows come in at five marks for twenty. In Dover they want money for wages for the king’s works on the walls. They want spades, scoops and forty dozen shovels, and they want them yesterday. I must make a note, he thinks, indent for them, and I must find out what ails the women at court. Call-Me has seen it, I have seen it. There is a story beneath the story. They have secrets
not yielded yet.
George Boleyn’s widow, Jane, is down in Kent, trying to pick up her affairs and face her future; she has written to him about her want of money. The Earl of Worcester’s wife, Beth, has gone off to the country carrying her big belly. Not his child, despite what the gossips say. If it is a boy, the earl may fuss about its provenance. If a girl, he may shrug and agree to own her. Women can be out in their reckoning. Their midwives can mislead them.
Once in Venice, he thinks, I saw a woman painted on a wall high above the canal, stars and moon at her back. ‘Hold up that torch,’ his friend Karl Heinz had said. ‘Tommaso, do you see her?’ And for an instant he did; from the wall of the German House, she looked down at Cremuello, come all the way from Putney. He was her pilgrim, she his shrine; naked, garlanded, she touched her burning heart.
When Anne died, four women attended her. They waded in her blood. Their faces were veiled and he does not believe they were the same women who had watched and waited with her through the final week, women he had planted around her to record all she said. He believes that the king, beseeched by God knows who, had allowed her to choose her own companions for her last walk over the rough ground, the wind pulling at her clothes, and her head turning, turning, for news that never came.
Lady Kingston, he thinks, would tell me who those women were. But must I know? They will have memories of the day. They might try to share them.
Leave me, he says to them, I need to sleep. Stay at the corners of the bed, under your draperies. Swaddle that gasping head in cloth and wrap it round and round. You know what Medusa does. You cannot look in her face. You must trap her image in polished steel. Gaze into the mirror of the future: the unspotted glass, specula sine macula. We will dress the city for Jane. At every corner a paradise, with a maiden seated in a rose arbour, the roses being striped, argent, vermilion; a serpent coiled about the apple tree, and singing birds, trapped by Adam, hanging in cages from the bough.
The Mirror and the Light: 2020’s highly anticipated conclusion to the best selling, award winning Wolf Hall series (The Wolf Hall Trilogy, Book 3) Page 8