What has occurred here? Someone is to be whipped. The kitchen steward’s hand slaps the table. The misdeed stated: who and what and why. (Well, not why, no one is interested in why.) The theft, the infraction, the breach – of manners or protocol, piecrust or bowl: the kitchen sin, the pantry crime: whatever it is, Uncle John’s senior means to skin somebody for it, he is bellowing his intentions so loud that his voice bounces around the cold vaulting above and reverberates in the chambers of the skull. And it is the eel boy who sits weeping, neck bent, knuckles pressed into his eyes, while the kitchen steward pummels him for information: the red-headed eel boy who he, Thomas Cromwell, had half-drowned in a water butt only yesterday. ‘It was me!’ The eel boy is streaked with angry tears, nose bubbling with snot, eyes screwed tight. ‘Leave me. Get off me. Enough. It was me.’
He hides his smile: a bad week for the eel boy.
It is only as the boy is hauled away to his punishment, and the knot of gawping menials disperses, that his uncle says to him, his voice low: ‘You demon, it was you, wasn’t it?’
‘What, me? I was nowhere near. You heard him. He confessed.’
‘Yes, but he had no choice. God alone knows.’ John turns away. ‘Could you not rub along with the little wretch, he being a townsman of yours?’
‘People from Putney don’t like each other. You know it.’
‘You’re as twisty as a skewer, Thomas. Where will you end up?’
Whitehall, it seems. The king lays down his quill. He rubs together the tips of his fingers; right, done, deo gratias. Rafe whisks the paperwork away. Each stroke of the pen will translate into a stroke of the axe. Like the eel boy, they will understand that if Thomas Cromwell says, ‘You did it,’ you did it. No use arguing. It only prolongs the pain.
Outside the room he says to Rafe, ‘Get those warrants to the Tower before he changes his mind.’
‘Sir …?’ Rafe’s glance, puzzled, travels to his master’s hand. He is holding – how did it get there? – the king’s penknife, ‘HR’ picked out in letters of jet. Ah, he says, I had better … Rafe says, I will, I’ll take it back to him, and he says, no, you see those papers into Kingston’s hands, then you can get home to Helen before it’s dark.
Rafe goes; one parting glance over his shoulder, flash of pallor above a swirl of black. He, Cromwell, moves back towards his master, the knife in his grip. He stands in the doorway, words on his lips: Majesty, I find I have this knife in my hand, though it belongs to you.
But Henry is at prayer. Beside the table, he is kneeling, uncushioned, on the stone floor: his eyes closed. Lips move: salve, regina. The mild evening is draped around him, the rosy light.
He drops the king’s penknife on the table and walks away. Not backing, as one does, from the presence of the monarch, but assured as a man in his own house, turning from someone in mid-conversation, quitting the room and leaving the door open.
Last night young Dick Purser had said to him, ‘Master, is the queen really guilty? Did she really go to it with all those brave fellows?’
No use to say, she is not on trial for that, but for treason. A month from now, it is only the bawdry and lechery that folk will remember. ‘You want my opinion?’ He had passed his hand over his face. ‘You see, Dick, it is why we have courts of law, and judges, and juries … to protect us from the tyranny of one man’s opinion.’
Outside the king’s chamber, gentlemen servants had tried to converge on him, but he distanced them with an outstretched palm. ‘Go in to the king, he is praying but I dare say he will soon want his supper.’ He was irritated; if Henry has a mind to fall to his knees and beseech the Blessed Virgin, someone should have foreseen it and provided a hassock. ‘Light a fire, the dew is falling. Later he may ask for music …’
Clément Janequin, his psalms. The duets of Francesco Spinacino, the saltarellos of Dalza the Milanese: the pavane alla venetiana, pavane alla ferrarese: a new toccata from Capirola, quickly rehearsed from a manuscript decorated at its edges with the images of apes and leaping hares. The galliard, the basse-dance, Chansons nouvelles en musique à quatre parties: four parties now dead, or dead in effect, and five if you count George Boleyn. On other light evenings, the musicians will ease themselves to the royal threshold: the jellies go out, and the fruits roasted in honey, and as the waiters depart, the consort arrives, one with lute in hand: a single note, shivering, is drawn from a string tightened to a seraph key. With Norris, Brereton, and Weston gone, other gentlemen, chosen by Thomas Cromwell, will take their places in the privy chamber, close to the person of the king. But old servants are the best, the ones who know when you need to sing and when you need to pray. Will death stop them jotting their names on the roster, pricking their names on the list: six weeks off and six weeks on? By the third week in May, their heads are in the street. Autumn will come, the days shortening, and the shade of Harry Norris will slide back to his tasks, bobbing in a corner like a spider on his silk. There is a place, a sequestered place in the imagination, where the eel boy is always waiting to be whipped, where George Boleyn is always in his prison room, always rising in welcome: Master Cromwell, I knew you would come. As George had stood, his hands held out, an image had stirred inside him, and he was elsewhere: in some other enclosed space, the light failing, as if a shutter had half-closed. Above him a shadow, like the outstretched wing of an angel; blood in his mouth, and the curve not of feathers but of stone: and a chill, a deep chill in the marrow. A stone arch, a cellar, a crypt, where someone is waiting in the dark: someone who has apprehended pain for so long that he walks towards it, arms open, relieved that it is here at last.
He remembers himself at eighteen years of age, a shattered creature crawling from the battlefield, creeping through Italy till he came to rest – or a halt, anyway – at the gate of the Frescobaldi banking house. He did not know then whose house it was, only that he needed shelter. He had seen the city’s saint drawn on walls – the city’s patron, one should say: Hercules as an infant, crushing a snake in his fist; Hercules as a hero cleaning out the Augean stables with his bucket and his rake. So when the gate opened to his knock he crawled inside. ‘My name?’ he told the steward. ‘My name is Ercole, I can labour.’
Now when he recalls himself, helpless on the cobbles, he sees himself blackened as he crawls, as if escaping from a burning building. He walks the rooms of the manor at Mortlake, Lord Cromwell on home ground, the wash of the river familiar as the waters of his mother’s womb. He douses his light at last, and sleeps, and dreams he stands, wrapped in his cloak of night, on a wharf where the burning boats have fired the quays.
Towards morning, banging at the gate wakes the household. He rises, prays briefly, and goes down to see what the noise is about. It is Richmond’s people, come from St James’s to say the young duke is dead.
He says, ‘Is someone on the road to tell the king?’ (For once, this is not his role: Mortlake to the Dover road, one has not wings.) ‘Alert my lord archbishop. He should be ready to go to the king’s side.’
He thinks, Henry will say this is God’s punishment on him, for allowing the bishops to make new articles of faith. For stripping the number of the sacraments away.
‘Ensure word goes up-country to my lady Clinton. Remember the feelings of a mother, tell her gently – not banging on the gate and shouting it to the skies.’
Seventeen years back, when the king’s son was born, he himself had not been at court or anywhere near it, and so he had to rely on others to tell him about those days. Francis Bryan saw Bessie Blount when she first came into the queen’s household, fair as a goddess and not yet fourteen. The king would not touch her at that age; the most lenient confessor would have shaken his jowls at it. Henry danced with her, and waited a year or two, always mindful of Charles Brandon bustling behind him, ready to snap her up. Then Queen Katherine had to watch her as her little maid of honour filled out, plump and smiling and sick every morning. Katherine said n
othing, only praising her glowing skin. Why, she had said, I think our little Bessie is in love.
Bessie was whisked away before her belly showed. Her family were sensible of the honour and hopeful of a son for the king. It was the cardinal who arranged everything. The king never saw her afterwards – perhaps once, after the child was born. He received the compliments, insincere, of the ambassadors: this shows your Highness well capable of siring a boy, and surely God will not long deny your Highness the consolation of one born in wedlock? But everybody knew Katherine’s courses had stopped, and she would not bear another child.
It was Wolsey who set up a household for the infant, who found the new mother an honourable marriage, who filtered the funds through – the land grants and honours. Perhaps he looked after Bessie too well. Ten years on, with his power slipping away, his enemies unlocked their chest brimming with slights and derelictions, and out crawled a musty slander. They alleged that – taking their pattern from Bessie Blount – all the maids in England wished to become concubines. Harlots had flocked to the king’s vicinity, they said, hoping for rich rewards.
It appears, the cardinal had said dryly, I must add to my crimes the degradation of the married state, the corruption of virgins and the valorisation of pimps everywhere.
It is not, and never has been, the custom of the kings of England to attend the burials of their sons or their wives. At the death of Prince Arthur, the chief mourner was the Duke of Norfolk’s forebear, so word comes from the king that it would be fitting to follow custom, and for the rites to be arranged by the Howard that is now. And since Fitzroy was under the guardianship of the present duke, and married to his daughter, it seems proper that he should lie at Thetford, among the duke’s own ancestors. Instructions are that the removal is to be in a closed cart, the whole matter handled in silence.
‘What is Henry doing?’ Chapuys says. ‘He cannot hope to conceal that his son has died, can he?’
He says, ‘Eustache, I cannot tell you about the king’s state of mind. I am employed to make laws and mind the treasury. For the rest he has the archbishop.’
‘That dubious fellow.’
He looks at him sharply to see what he knows. ‘Heretic,’ Chapuys says. Oh, only that, he thinks. He is relieved. The ambassador turns back for a parting shot. ‘Richmond’s death is not a bad thing for the interests of the Princess Mary.’ He smirks. ‘Your bride-to-be.’
His familars gather at the Rolls House. Call-Me says, ‘My lord Privy Seal … you recall that day you went over to St James’s with Richard Riche? When Fitzroy was first taken ill? You sent Riche out of the sickroom, he told me. What happened? May I ask?’
He thinks, the son spoke treason against the father. But it doesn’t matter now.
Wriothesley says, ‘Richmond feared he had been poisoned. I heard him say so.’
‘For God’s sake, don’t start that up,’ Rafe Sadler says. ‘Or I’ll give you a slap.’
‘And so you could, little man, if you stood on a box.’ Call-Me decides to take it in good part; he is too interested in plots to be diverted. ‘If Richmond had been named in the succession bill, there would have been grounds for suspicion against Mary’s people. And even as it is, knowing Mary’s nature …’
Rafe says, ‘Never mind her nature. The king is reconciled with her. It cost our master no little trouble.’
‘Reconciled?’ Wriothesley snorts. ‘She has been forced to bow her knee. Do you think she will forgive? I do not.’
Gregory begs, ‘Boys, don’t fight. No one is poisoned. Surely.’
He says to Wriothesley, ‘Think what you like, but don’t go dragging this rumour around the Inns of Court. Or wherever it is you go.’
‘Or the brothels of Southwark,’ Rafe says under his breath.
‘Do you?’ Gregory is interested.
Rafe asks, ‘What are we going to say to Henry?’
It is the only question left. He must get down to Kent, and say something. Forty-five years on this earth, twenty-seven of them as King of England – and all he has to show for it are three bastard children, one of them now a corpse.
He goes to the Tower to see Meg Douglas, in his pocket a recent example of her verse. ‘Shall I read to you?’
Recognising her handwriting, she is startled. ‘How did you get that?’
‘Now may I mourn as one of late
Driven by force from my delight
And cannot see my lonely mate
To whom forever my heart is plight.’
‘I think you still don’t understand,’ he says. ‘There was no plighting. You can’t afford plighting. Your state was grave last week, my lady, but this week it is worse.’
‘Because Richmond is dead.’ She looks up. ‘That takes me nearer the throne. He is no longer in my way.’
God help her, she supposes that gives her some greater leverage. He says, ‘Can you imagine the king’s doleful state? They say he cannot speak for sorrow. He has been struck dumb for two days.’
She says nothing. He throws the paper down in front of her. She has written her name under the verse, what she thinks is her name now: Margaret Howard. ‘I have told the king how you were beguiled and misled. But now your eyes are opened and you are heartily sorry for what you have done. You repudiate Lord Thomas Howard, and you wish never to see him or speak to him again.’
‘But that is not true.’
‘It will be true, in time.’
‘I cannot live without Lord Thomas.’
‘You will find you can.’
‘You don’t know,’ she says.
He wants to ask her, what did you think would come out of this? That you would sit in a turret, and Tom Truth come riding over the hills, his lyre slung behind his saddle? And you at the high window, letting down your strawberry tresses? When Mary Fitzroy stood guard outside the door, did you know how your beau would secure you, with a brutal thrust that made you bleed? Did you know how he would use and spoil you?
She says, ‘My lady mother has written to me from Scotland. She says I must obey my uncle the king in all things. If I do not she will disown me.’
‘She is the king’s own sister, she understands him. After the summer we have passed, do you not think he is sensitive to his honour? You have chosen an evil hour to fall in love.’
He thinks, you have no notion how hard I am working for you. Neither had the Lady Mary. She ought to marry me, really, out of gratitude. So should you.
Constable Kingston is waiting for him outside. ‘Sir William,’ he tells him, ‘I still have hopes Jane will be crowned this summer. So move Lady Meg to the Garden Tower. She must live in apprehension till I can frame the king’s mind to mercy, and that will not be a while yet.’
‘Myself,’ Kingston says, ‘I would stop these letters going between. But I am told it is your pleasure your man Martin should act Cupid. Why encourage it, if you are trying to stop the king proceeding against her?’
‘I want their verses for the book.’
Perhaps Kingston thinks he means the statute book. Or a prayer book. ‘The book of poems,’ he says. The burning sighs. The frozen heart. Better the frozen heart than the perils of the thaw.
Kingston says, ‘Lord Thomas is a harmless young man in himself.’ There is something almost timid in Kingston’s bearing: this man of singular experience, fishing for some inkling of what comes next. ‘Pray God the archbishop can console the king in this last blow of fate. They fall so fast, I do not know how he endures it.’
It is dusk when he arrives at the Palace of St James, and at the news of his arrival, servants gather in whispering assemblies, hushing each other. The officers already wear mourning. The menials, in their livery of yellow and blue, have tied black bands about their sleeves. But all colours are fading to subfusc, the yellow bruised, the blue deepening to indigo. A man begs him, ‘Sir, my lord of Surrey is in the stableyard. He is pic
king the best horses for himself, and we are afraid we will be blamed.’
He quickens his step. The servant speeds along with him. ‘What will happen to us? To the household?’
‘I will take as many as I can. The king will be good to you.’
He feels no confidence in the latter. The king’s response to his son’s death, so far as one can understand it, is not sorrow but a jealous rage, as if he had been cheated of something. Norfolk has applied to him for better instructions: ‘Cromwell, what am I to do here? Closed cart? What does that imply? Shall I have to build a monument at my own expense? Or does Henry want me to shovel the boy into some common pit, like a churl who wears homespun and dines on a boiled onion?’
In the stableyard, he finds young Surrey, standing by as the groom Colins leads out Richmond’s black jennet. She is a gleaming and well-muscled creature of Spanish breed, nimble-footed in trappings of black velvet.
Surrey’s eyes flicker over him. No greeting. ‘He would have wanted me to have the beast.’
‘You must account to the king for what you take to your use. But no one will demur, if you clear it with my lord’s master of the horse.’
‘Giles will give me no trouble,’ Surrey says. ‘Besides, where is he?’
‘At his prayers, I hazard.’
‘I thought you did not believe in prayers for the dead?’
‘Perhaps Giles Foster does.’
Black elongates the young man’s spider limbs. As he turns, a red-gloved hand on the horse’s mane, a low shaft of sunlight catches him and he glitters, head to toe, as a web glints with dew. On closer inspection, it proves he is sewn over with diamonds. He should have thrown a cloak around himself, even at the risk of dimming his lustre; high-bred though the jennet is, she still smells of horse. Surrey reaches for the bridle. ‘Will you step out of my way, Cromwell? I want to walk her.’
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 26