‘I don’t want it.’
‘Believe me, you do.’
‘They will say it is a reward for betraying my friends.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ He slaps Petrarch down on the table. ‘Your friends? What friendship did they ever show you? What was Weston – a grinning puppet who couldn’t keep his prick in his breeches. Or Brereton, that braggart – I tell you, his folk in the north are well-warned. They think they write the law. But those days are done. There are no private kingdoms now. There is one law, and that is the king’s.’
‘Be careful,’ Wyatt says. ‘You are on the brink of explaining yourself.’
Or I am just on the brink, he thinks. ‘I sweated blood to save you, Tom. Your life hung by a hair.’
Wyatt looks up. ‘I will tell you why I am still alive. It is not because I fear death or am content to live in shame. It is because a woman is having my child. If it were not for that, then if you wanted Anne dead you would have had to contrive it some other way.’
He stares at him. ‘Who is she?’ He sits down on a three-legged stool. ‘You know you will tell me sooner or later.’ A thought strikes him. ‘Tell me it is not Edward Darrell’s daughter. She who followed Katherine, when the king banished her?’
Wyatt inclines his head.
‘Can you not love a woman, except she is poised to do you harm?’
‘I am as I am. It is a poor excuse.’
He says, ‘I remember Bess Darrell as a child when she was in the Dorset household. I used to do business for them. I know her father was bound in loyalty – he was Katherine’s chamberlain. But he is dead now, and the girl was never bound.’
‘You think she would have been better off with Anne Boleyn?’
Fair point. ‘Better in a nunnery. But I suppose you have your ways.’
‘I suppose I have,’ Wyatt says sadly. ‘I love her, and I have loved her a long time. It is only because she was away from the court we could keep it secret.’
When I rode up to Kimbolton, he thinks, to Katherine – was Bess there in the shadows? He remembers the old Spanish ladies; they did not trust the kitchen so they were cooking for Katherine in their own chamber, and the smell of smoke and vegetable water was trapped in their clothes. They insulted him in their own tongue, wondering aloud if he had a hairy body like Satan. He sees himself walk into Katherine’s presence, sees her huddled in her furs; the invalid smell envelops him, and from the corner of his eye he sees a slight form sliding away with a bowl. He had thought at the time, her maid carries the queen’s vomit covered, as if it were the sacred host. That must have been Edward Darrell’s daughter, golden hair under a servant’s cap.
‘I begged her,’ Wyatt says, ‘if she would not leave Katherine, then at least to take the oath when it was put to her. What is it to you, Bess, I said, if the king wants to call himself head of his church? I cited the precedents. I argued my best. Bishop Gardiner had not more force. But she would not let Henry win the argument. She was with Katherine when she died.’
‘Money?’ he says.
‘She had none. What Katherine left her was never paid. She has no protector if I fail. She knows I am married and nothing to be done there. She cannot go back to her family, carrying my child. I cannot send her home to Allington, my father will not receive her. I do not know who will take her in, because my wife’s family have turned everyone against me. This will give them occasion to rejoice. Nothing they love more, than to see me clawing my way through thorns.’
Wyatt won’t speak his wife’s name, not if he can help it. He has a child with her, a boy, but God knows how he got it.
‘Allington is your best hope. Shall I talk to your father?’
‘He is ill. I want to spare him. I dread his contempt. And I know I have earned it.’
He wants to say, it is not contempt, it is the opposite, he loves and admires you, but fortune has made him harsh. When Henry Wyatt lay in this fortress, it was not in an airy chamber but fettered in a cell, his ears straining, waiting for the footsteps of his torturers and the rattle of their keys. Torturers do not need extraordinary means, or special instruments. Opportunities for pain lie all around, in items of common use. His gaolers pulled Wyatt’s head back and wedged a horse’s bit into his mouth. They poured mustard and vinegar into his nostrils, so he was half-drowned in the acrid brew, spewing out what he could, inhaling the rest. Richard the usurper came to watch him suffer, and he urged him to give up his allegiance to the Tudor, who then lay out of the realm, a man without hope or resource. ‘Wyatt, why art thou such a fool? Thou servest for moonshine in the water a beggarly fugitive. Forsake him and become mine, who can reward thee.’
He would not forsake. They dropped him bleeding on the straw, in the dark. His teeth were broken and he heaved up his guts on the filthy floor. His belly was empty, the corrosive at work in his throat; he had neither clean water nor, when he could eat, did they bring him bread. Wyatt says, ‘It is a pretty story, how a cat brought my father food. I never believed it, even when I was a child. I thought, it is a tale for children who are simpler than me. But now I see what it is to be locked away. Prisoners believe all sorts of things. A cat will come and save us. Thomas Cromwell will come with the key.’
‘I wonder, would Bess take the oath now? Katherine is dead and it cannot offend her.’
‘I have not asked her,’ Wyatt says. ‘Nor I would not. Surely Henry will not pursue her? He has enough people to tell him he is head of the church and stands next to God. And we hope that once the Lady Mary is back at court, she will help us. She must have a care for Bess – for a young woman alone in the world, who held her mother’s hand when she was dying.’
‘No doubt,’ he says. ‘But while you have been here with Petrarch, the world moves on. The king will require Mary to take the oath herself. If she says no, she will be in here with you.’
Wyatt looks away. ‘Then you must help us. It is my honour that is at stake.’
He thinks, where was honour when you lifted Bess Darrell’s skirts? He stands up from the stool and gives it a nudge with his foot. It’s a miserable seat for a king’s councillor. ‘I’ll talk to Bess. There must be a place for her somewhere. Take the king’s money, Tom. You need it.’
‘I will obey you,’ Wyatt says, ‘as my father said I should. I suppose you can err like other men, and God he knows, you may be heading for disaster. But for me all roads lead there. I reach the crossroads and I throw the dice, and whichever comes up, it is the same – it is the swamp, or the abyss, or the ice. So I shall follow you as the gosling its mother. Or as Dante followed Virgil. Even to the underworld.’
‘I doubt I’ll be going further than the south coast this summer. Perhaps down to the Isle of Wight.’ He picks up the book of verses. It is unbruised, though the binding is soft as a woman’s skin: a Venetian printing, the title set within a woodcut of tumbling putti, the printer’s mark a sea-monster. Suppose someone saved the scraps of Wyatt’s verse – the pastoral scratched on the back of an armourer’s bill, the lyric a woman lays to her naked breast? If an editor applied himself to this writer’s life, he would find a story to ruin many. Wyatt says, ‘She never leaves me, Anne Boleyn. I see her as I saw her last, here in this place.’
He thinks, I see her too, in her little hat with the feather. With her tired eyes.
He goes out: ‘Martin! Who gave Wyatt such beggarly furnishings?’
‘He’s not complained, sir. Mind you, a gentleman – he doesn’t.’
‘But I’m a lord,’ he says. ‘And I’m complaining.’
He thinks, I didn’t notice that whoreson stool when I visited the prisoner before. But I can be forgiven, as I had just come from watching the Calais executioner perform his trick.
At Austin Friars, Gregory is waiting: ‘You are sent for by Fitzroy.’
‘I saw Wyatt,’ he says.
‘And?’ Gregory is anxious.
> ‘I’ll tell you later.’ We shouldn’t keep the king’s son waiting.
‘Rafe supposes Fitzroy will ask you if you are going to make him king.’
‘Hush.’
‘I mean, one of these days,’ Gregory says. ‘It’s no treason to say all men are mortal.’
‘No, but it’s not your best idea either.’ He thinks, that was Anne Boleyn’s mistake. She took Henry for a man like other men. Instead of what he is, and what all princes are: half god, half beast.
Gregory says, ‘Richard Riche is here. He is writing a loyal address. Shall we go and look on? I love to watch him work.’
Sir Richard goes through paperwork like a raven through a rubbish heap. Stab, stab, stab – with his pen, not a beak – till everything before him is minced or crushed or shattered, like a snail-shell burst on a stone.
‘Hello, Mr Speaker,’ Gregory says.
‘Hello, Little Crumb,’ Riche says absently.
Handsome and leisured, his boy gazes down at Sir Richard as he toils. ‘Riche considers his name his destiny,’ Gregory says. ‘He can turn ink into cash. You have a fine mind, don’t you, Ricardo?’
‘Ingenious,’ Riche says. ‘Retentive. I would not lay a claim beyond that.’
Riche’s duty is to welcome the king, when he opens Parliament. ‘May I read to you, sir? I have got some way with it.’
He sits. ‘Pretend I am the king.’
‘Let me get you a better hat,’ Gregory suggests.
Riche says, ‘By your leave, I am ready to begin.’
He reads. Gregory fidgets: ‘You remember the hat Ambassador Chapuys had? We wanted to borrow it for our snowman?’
‘Hush,’ he says. ‘Give heed to Mr Speaker.’
‘I wonder what happened to it.’
Riche breaks off, frowning. ‘You do not like my beginning?’
‘I think the king will like it.’
‘I next compare him to Solomon for wisdom –’
‘You can’t go wrong with Solomon.’
‘– then Samson for strength, and Absalom for beauty.’
‘Wait,’ Gregory says, ‘Absalom had luxuriant hair, or else he could not have been caught by it in the boughs of a tree. The king’s hair is … well … it is less profuse. He may think you are mocking him.’
‘No one will suspect Mr Speaker of mockery,’ he says firmly.
‘Still,’ Gregory says. ‘The conduct of Absalom was often deplorable.’
‘Put your speech aside,’ he says to Riche. ‘Come and see Fitzroy with me.’
Riche is more than ready. Christophe runs up as they are leaving. ‘Do not go without me, sir. What if some ruffian accosts you? Now you are a lord, you must be attended with force at all times.’
‘And you are force, are you?’ Riche is amused.
‘Let him come with us, he likes to be useful.’
Increasingly, he thinks Christophe’s dull appearance an advantage. No one would be cautious in front of such a churl. As they go out, he takes him by the front of his livery coat, straightens him, dusts him. ‘You’re supposed to do this for me,’ he says. ‘Were you walking about in my room in the night?’
‘In the night I was asleep,’ Christophe says. ‘It was some old ghost, I suppose.’
‘Surely not,’ Riche says. ‘I never heard of ghosts that walk in June.’
There’s something in that. It was the veiled ladies – living women, as far as one knows – who attended him, till dawn came and they faded into the wall. He remembers the dappling of their garments, the streaks of darkness where they had wiped the queen’s blood on their robes.
The king has gone hunting; but because of some anxiety of his doctors, his son has stayed in London, at St James’s, the palace they have been carving out of the site of the old hospital. They have cleared and drained the ground, which was flooded by the Tyburn, and now a pleasant park stands all about. It is a retreat for the king and his family, away from the crowds that surge around Whitehall.
Inside the gateway, the courtyard is piled with scaffolding, and as they step inside workmen’s shouts greet them, and the noise of chipping and hammering. At the sight of lords, the clamour falls silent, but the space still echoes with the sounds of metal against stone. A labourer slides down a ladder and pulls off his cap. ‘We’re knocking down the HA-HAs, sir.’
The initials, he means, of Henry and the late queen: so fondly intertwined, like snakes breeding.
‘I want you to leave off for an hour, while I talk to my lord Richmond.’
The man knocks dust off his cap. ‘We dursn’t, sir.’
‘Obey this man,’ Christophe says.
‘You’ll be paid for the time,’ he urges.
‘The master of works will need it in writing.’
He drops his hand flat on the man’s head, draws him nose to nose. ‘Why don’t I write your gaffer a love letter? Tell me his name and I’ll put his initials in a heart.’ He can smell the man’s sweat. ‘Christophe, go out to the kitchen and ask for bread, ale and cheese for these fellows. Tell them Cromwell said so.’
The man rams his cap back on. ‘It’s dinner time anyway. When you see King Harry, tell him we’re raising a beaker to the new bride.’
Behind the presence chamber, in a small panelled cabinet, the young Duke of Richmond receives them as an invalid, wearing a long gown and a nightcap. ‘I ran a fever last night. So once again my physicians will not let me stir.’
A few spots of rain spatter the window. ‘It’s no sort of day, sir. Better indoors.’
‘It’s not the sweating sickness,’ Riche says reassuringly.
‘No,’ the boy says. ‘Or I would not have summoned you here, masters, lest you be infected.’
They bow, thankful that their lives are considered: common men, such as they be.
‘Nor the plague,’ Riche adds. ‘There is none in fifty miles. At least, not yet.’
He laughs out loud. ‘Remind me to keep you from my bedside, if ever I take sick. Is that the way to lift my lord’s spirits?’
Stiffly, Riche begs the duke’s pardon. But he is puzzled: what was the joke?
The boy says, ‘Riche, I thank you for your gentle attendance, but now I wish to confer with Master Secretary.’
Riche is inclined to stand his ground. ‘With respect, my lord, Master Secretary has no secrets from me.’
He thinks, how profoundly wrong you are. Riche falters, lingers, bows himself out. Fitzroy says, ‘The hammering has stopped.’
‘I bribed them with bread and cheese.’
‘They cannot work quick enough for me. I want her gone, that woman. All traces. At least, everything visible.’ The boy casts a glance at the window, as if someone were signalling him from outside. ‘Cromwell, are there such things as slow poisons?’
He is startled. ‘God save your lordship.’
‘I thought perhaps, having been in Italy –’
‘You suspect the late queen has poisoned you?’
‘My father said she would have done it if she could.’
‘But your lord father was in a state of …’ Of what? ‘He was shocked by the discovery of the late queen’s crimes.’
‘And those crimes are greater, are they not, than common report? My lord Surrey tells me he was made privy to evidence that was never given in court. Worse was done, than was ever admitted. I would have punished her more straitly.’
How? he wonders. What would you have done, sir? Hacked her head off with a rusty kitchen knife? Burned her with green wood?
‘And,’ Richmond says, ‘she was a witch.’ His fingers, restless, tug at the string of his cap. ‘Some people do not believe in witches. Though St Thomas Aquinas makes mention of them. I have heard they can sour milk, and cause cattle to abort. They can cause a horse to shy in his path – always at the same place, to the i
njury of the rider.’
He thinks, if it’s always at the same place, the rider should keep a grip.
‘They can wither a man’s arm. Did not the usurper Richard suffer that fate?’
‘So he maintained, and yet it was as good an arm after the curse as before.’
‘Sometimes they harm children. They can do it with prayers, which they say backward. Or with poison. Do you not think it was Anne Boleyn who poisoned my lord cardinal?’
He had not expected that. Truthfully he answers, ‘No.’
‘Yet his end was not natural. I have been told it by wise and discreet gentlemen.’
‘It may be someone bribed his physicians.’ He thinks of Dr Agostino, taken from Cawood a prisoner, his feet bound under his horse. Where did he vanish to? Straight into Norfolk’s custody. He cannot tell the boy that, if there is a poisoner in the case, it is likely to be his own father-in-law.
Fitzroy says, ‘When I was a little child – I believe I told you once – the cardinal brought me a doll. It was an image of myself, in a robe all broidered over with the arms of England and France. I do not know where it is now.’
‘I can make a search, sir. You do not think your lady mother has it?’
The boy had not thought of that. ‘I do not think so. It was after we parted. She has other children now, and I suppose never thinks of me.’
‘On the contrary, sir. You are the origin of her fortune, of her present honourable marriage and rank. I am sure you she remembers you every day in her prayers.’
For six or seven years, male children live with the women. Then without choice or discussion, one day they are plucked away, their hair cropped so their ears are always cold, and thrust into the sullen world where everyone finds fault and visits punishment, and until you are married there is no kindness unless you pay for it. It was not how he had been reared, of course. When he was five he was foraging for items for the smithy’s scrap pile. At six he was with his father’s apprentices, under their feet, accustoming himself to the white-hot sparks that leap and arc, to the ringing pitch of the anvil and the thud, thud that goes on in your brain when the day’s work is done. At seven, able to curse but barely read, he was running wild like a tinker’s son.
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 10