Christophe sees to the horses and trundles out to the kitchen, seeking some young sister to feed him bread and honey. He and Riche are kept in an anteroom. Their entertainment is a painted cloth of St Catherine, suffering on her wheel. They listen to the sounds of the busy house and the town outside, till increased agitation in the air tells them their ruse is detected: scampering feet, a slamming door, a call of ‘Dame Elizabeth? Madam?’ Shaftesbury is a town of twelve churches, too many for the inhabitants. When they ring their bells, the streets quake.
‘So,’ says the abbess, ‘you have come yourself, Lord Cromwell.’
‘You know my face, madam.’
‘One of the gentlemen of the district has a portrait of you. He keeps it on display.’
‘I hope he does. It would be no good in his cellar. You visit many gentlemen?’
Her eyes flick up at him. ‘On the business of the house.’
‘What else? Did the painter do me justice?’
She surveys him. ‘He did you charity.’
‘What you have seen is a copy of a copy. Each version is worse. My son thinks I look like a murderer.’
The abbess is enjoying herself. ‘We lead such a quiet and blessed life here, I am not sure I have seen one for comparison.’ She stands up. ‘But you will want to get on. You have come to see Sister Dorothea.’
As he follows her she says, ‘Why is Richard Riche here? We are as wealthy, praise God, as any house of religion in the realm. I understood Sir Richard’s business is with houses of lesser value.’
‘We like to keep our figures current.’
‘I have been abbess for thirty years. Any question about our worth, ask me.’
‘Riche likes it on paper.’
‘I give you warning,’ Dame Elizabeth says. ‘And you can carry the warning to the king. I will not surrender this house. Not this year, nor next, nor any year this side of Heaven.’
He holds up his hands. ‘The king has no thought of it.’
‘Here.’ She pushes a door open. ‘Wolsey’s daughter.’
Dorothea half-rises. With a gesture, he bids her sit. ‘Madam, how do you? I have brought gifts.’
They are in a side room, small and sunless. He permits himself a single long look. She is not like the cardinal. Her mother’s daughter? She is pleasant enough to look at, though she cannot fetch up a smile. Perhaps she is thinking, where have you been these years past?
He says, ‘I saw you once when you were a little child. You will not remember me.’
She does not reach out for her presents, so he places them in her lap. She unties the bundle, glances at the books and lays them aside. But she picks up a kerchief of fine linen, and holds it to the light. It is worked with the three apples of St Dorothea, and with wreaths, sprigs and blossoms, the lily and the rose.
‘One of my household made it to honour you. Rafe Sadler’s wife – you may have heard your father speak of young Sadler?’
‘No. Who is he?’
He takes out of his pocket a letter. It is from John Clancey, a gentleman-servant to the cardinal, who acted for her father in placing her here. He has had the letter for some time, and he has formed the habit, not of carrying it around, but of knowing where it is.
‘Clancey tells me you want to continue in this life. But I think, you were very young when you made your vows.’
Her head is bent over the kerchief, studying the work. ‘So I can be dispensed?’
‘You are free to go.’
‘Go where?’ she asks.
‘You are welcome in my house.’
‘Live with you?’ The chill in her tone pushes him backwards, even in the cramped space. She folds up the kerchief, so the design is hidden. ‘How is my brother Thomas Winter?’
‘He is well and provided for.’
‘By you?’
‘It is the least I can do for the cardinal. When your brother is next in England, I could arrange for you to meet.’
‘We would have nothing to say to each other. He a scholar. I a poor nun.’
‘I would keep him in my house and gladly. But for the sake of his studies he would rather live abroad.’
‘A cardinal’s son has no place in England. In Italy, I am told, he would be well accepted.’
‘In Italy he would be Pope.’
She turns her shoulder. Very well, he thinks. No more jokes.
‘When Anne Boleyn came down,’ she says, ‘we believed true religion would be restored. The whole summer has passed, and now we doubt it.’
‘True religion was never left off,’ he says. ‘You have had no opportunity to see the king’s manner of life – so you imagine the court spends its days in masques and dancing. Not so, I assure you. The king hears three Masses in daylight hours. He keeps all the feasts of the church, as ever he did. Fasting is observed, and the meatless days. We scant nothing.’
‘We hear the sacraments are to be put down. And that all monks and nuns will be dispersed. Dame Elizabeth is sure the king will take our house in the end. Then how would we live?’
‘There are no such plans,’ he says. ‘But if that were to occur, you would be pensioned. I believe your abbess would bargain hard.’
‘But what would we do, without our sisters in religion? We cannot go back to our families, if our families are dead.’ She flushes. ‘Or even if they are alive, they might not want us.’
He must be patient. ‘Dorothea, there is no need to weep. You are imagining harms that could never touch you.’
He thinks, should I embrace her? A king’s daughter has cried on my shoulder – or she would have, if I had stayed still.
‘I have come here to give you good assurances,’ he says. ‘I understand this place is all you have known till now. But you have all your life before you.’
‘Clancey brought me and left me here under his name. Everybody knew I was Wolsey’s daughter. It was not my choice to come, but no more is it my choice to leave. I do not wish to be turned out to beg my bread.’
This is women, he thinks – they must enact some scene, to wring tears from themselves and you. I have already offered her my house.
‘I will make you an annuity,’ he says.
‘I will not take it.’
He brushes that aside; it is the kind of thing that people say. ‘Or I will find you suitors, if you could like marriage.’
‘Marriage?’ She is incredulous.
He laughs. ‘You have heard of that blessed state?’
‘A bastard daughter? The bastard daughter of a disgraced priest? And no looks, even?’
He thinks, a good dowry would make you a beauty. But that is not what she wants to hear. ‘Trust me, you are a lovely young woman. Till now, no good man has held up a mirror, for you to see yourself through his eyes. Once you have clothes and ornaments, you will be a welcome sight for a bridegroom. I know the best merchants, and I know the fashions at the French court, and in Italy. I have dressed …’ He breaks off. I have dressed two queens.
She appraises him. ‘I am sure your eye is expert.’
‘Or if you would consider me, I could, I myself –’
He stops. He is appalled. That is not at all what he meant to say.
She is staring at him. You cannot take back such a word. ‘I’ll marry you, mistress, if you’ll have me. I am, you may not know this, I am a long time a widower. I lack graces of person, but I lack nothing else. I am rich and likely to grow richer, so your want of fortune is no obstacle to me. I have good houses. You would find me generous. I look after my family.’ He hears his own voice, recommending himself as if he were a servant, urging his merits on this shocked young woman. ‘I have no children to burden you, except Gregory, who is almost grown and will be married himself soon. I would like more children. Or not, as you wished. If you want a marriage in name only, so you have a place in the world, then
for your father’s sake I would be prepared …’ He falters.
She crosses to the small window, and stares out of it furiously. There is nothing to see but a wall. ‘In name only? I do not understand you. Are you offering to marry me or not?’
‘You are alone in the world, and so am I. For your father’s sake I would cherish you. Who knows, you might grow fond of me. And if you did not, then – you would still have a home and a protector, and I would make no other demand on you.’
‘That is because you have a mistress?’
He does not answer.
‘Several, perhaps,’ she says, as if to herself. ‘It is true you have everything to commend you – if you were a buyer and I were for sale. You have money to buy any article, thanks to my father, who gave you your start in life.’
My start in life, he thinks: madam, you cannot imagine it. He feels bereft, injured, cold. Why should she have a stony heart towards him? Many times, that long winter at Esher, he had settled the cardinal’s debts. They were sums you would pay out of your pocket, but still: there were butchers, bargemen, rat-killers, men who make poultices for horses, purveyors of horoscopes and salt fish. And there had been other disbursements, that never went through the books: buying off the spies, for instance, that Norfolk had put in the household. ‘Your father was a liberal master,’ he says. ‘I owe him much that cannot be cast into figures. It was he who explained to me the king’s business. How things really work, not how people say they work. Not the custom, but the practice.’
‘Certainly,’ she says, ‘it was he who brought you to the king’s notice. With the result that we see.’
He thinks, she does not like my proposal, she does not. I should never have spoken, I know in my bones it is wrong; I am too old, and besides, so close to her father as I was, perhaps it seems to her we are related, almost as if she is my sister. He says, ‘Dorothea, tell me what it needs, to make you safe and comfortable. Forget I spoke of marriage.’ Despite himself, he smiles. He can’t stop himself trying to charm her. ‘There is still a way forward. Though you find my person defective.’
‘Your person is not defective,’ she says. ‘At least, not so defective as your nature and your deeds.’
He is still smiling. ‘You do not like my proceedings against the religious. I can understand that.’
‘Many of my sisters are keen to cast off their habits. If the house were dissolved they would go tomorrow. Dame Elizabeth does not speak ill of you. She says you are fair in your dealings.’
‘Well, then … I think it is my religion itself you do not like. I love the gospel and will follow it. Your father understood that.’
‘He understood everything,’ she says. ‘He understood you betrayed him.’
He gapes at her. He, Lord Cromwell. He who is never surprised.
‘When my father was in exile, and forced to go north, he wrote certain letters, out of his desperation to have the king’s favour again – letters begging the King of France to intercede for him. And he appealed to the queen – I mean Katherine, the queen that was – to forgive their differences and stand his friend.’
‘So much is true, but –’
‘You saw to it that those letters reached the Duke of Norfolk. You put upon them an evil construction, which they should never have borne. And Norfolk put them into the hand of the king, and so the damage was done.’
He cannot speak. Till he says, ‘You are much mistaken.’
She is shaking with rage. ‘You had your men in my father’s household in the north, do you deny it?’
‘They were there to serve him, to help him. Madam –’
‘They were there to spy on him. To goad him, to provoke him into rash actions and rash statements, which your master the duke then shaped into treason.’
‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘You think Norfolk is my master? I was no man’s servant but Wolsey’s.’
Be calm, he says to himself: not like a hasty gardener, who tugs out the weed but leaves the root in the ground. He asks her, ‘Who told you this, and how long have you believed it?’
‘I have always believed it. And always shall, whatever denial you make.’
‘If I were to bring you proofs that you are wrong? Written proofs?’
‘Forgery is among your talents, I hear.’
‘You hear too much. You listen to the wrong people.’
‘You are angry. Innocence is tranquil.’
Don’t speak to me of innocence, he thinks. I pulled down certain men who insulted your father, as an example to others – call them innocent, if your definition stretches. I ripped them from their gambling and dancing and tennis play. I made each one a bridegroom: I married them to crimes they had barely imagined, and walked them to their wedding breakfast with the headsman. I heard young Weston beg for his life. I held George Boleyn as he wept and called on Jesus. I heard Mark whimper behind a locked door; I thought, Mark is a feeble child, I will go down and free him, but then I thought, no, it is his turn to suffer.
‘If you are of this fixed opinion,’ he says, ‘then I shall not trouble you more. Since you hold it against all evidence and reason, how can I oppose it? I would swear an oath, I would do it gladly, but you would think –’
‘I would know you were a perjurer. I have been told, by those I trust, there is no faith or truth in Cromwell.’
He says, ‘When those you trust abandon you – Dorothea, come to me. I will never refuse you. I loved your father next to God, and any child of his body, or any soul who was true to him, may command me to any service. No risk, no cost, no effort too great.’
‘Take this with you,’ she says. She holds out the kerchief. ‘And these books, whatever they are.’
He picks up the gifts and leaves her. He stands outside the room. He leans against the wall, his eyes resting on a picture, where a twisted man adheres to a tree, and bleeds from head, hands and heart.
Richard Riche bustles up: ‘Sir?’
Christophe’s face is stricken. ‘Master, what has she said?’
‘I believe I have not cried since Esher,’ he says. ‘Since All Souls’ Eve.’
Riche says, ‘Have you not? You surprise me. The king’s great trials have not drawn a tear?’
‘No.’ He tries to smile. ‘When he is vexed the king cries enough for two men, so I thought my efforts needless.’
‘And what provokes this now?’ Riche asks. ‘If I may ask? With all respect?’
‘False accusation.’
‘Bitter,’ Riche says.
‘Richard, you do not think I betrayed the cardinal, do you?’
Riche blinks. ‘It never crossed my mind. You didn’t, did you?’
He thinks, Riche would not fault me, if I had betrayed him: what use is a fallen magnate? He says, ‘If not for me, the cardinal would have been killed in those days of his first disgrace, or if he had lived he would have lived a beggar. I put myself in hazard for him, my house and all I had. If I treated with Norfolk, it was only to speak for my master. I did not like Thomas Howard then and I do not now, and I was never his man and never will be, and if he came to me for a post as a pot boy I would not employ him.’
‘Nor I,’ says Christophe. ‘I would kick him in a ditch.’
‘When I wept,’ he says, ‘that day at Esher – my wife lately dead and my daughters, the ashes cold in the grates, the wind howling through every crack – then the dead souls came out of purgatory, blowing around the courtyards and rattling at the shutters to be let in. That was what we believed in those days. What many believed.’
‘I still,’ Christophe says.
‘I do not believe I shall cry again,’ he says. ‘I am done with tears.’ He hears his own voice, running on. ‘Do you know, when Wolsey was in the north, a fellow came to me, a factor for the cloth merchants: “The cardinal owes us over a thousand pounds.” I said, “Be exact.” He said, “On
e thousand and fifty-four pounds and some odd pence.” I said, “Will you remit the pence, for the love you bear him?” He said, “My masters have remitted and remitted, supplying cloth for vestments out of their piety and at no profit to themselves – and we are talking about cloth of gold.”’
He thinks, I tried by every means to save my master: I tried by exhortation, by prayer, and when that failed, I tried accountancy. Riche is wondering at him, but he cannot stop. ‘He said to me, this fellow, “The cardinal has owed the merchant Cavalcanti the sum of eighty-seven pounds, standing over these seven years, for richest cloth of gold at thirty shillings a yard, 311½ yards: and of the lesser quality, 195½ yards.” He said, “The whole order was left at York Place – I have the delivery note. The cardinal claims the king will pay,” he said to me – “but I think we shall see doomsday sooner than that.”’
‘Sir,’ Christophe says, ‘sit down on this chest. Using that handkerchief you may wipe your eyes.’
He looks at the green leaves, the loving stitches Helen has made, to give pleasure to a stranger. ‘So I said to Cavalcanti’s man, “Very well, I acknowledge the debt, all but five hundred marks – for the merchants swore they would give that sum to the cardinal, to have his friendship – and no doubt it will do them good at the Last Judgement.” But he said, “The sum was already knocked off, you cannot have it twice.” And I had to concede it.’
He sits down on the chest. Christophe says, ‘Sir, do not weep any more. You said you would not.’
‘After Harry Percy went up to Cawood with a warrant, the cardinal was set on the road without time to pay his debts. The apothecary came to me with a bill for medicines – useless, for the patient was dying.’
‘They are not paid by results,’ Riche says.
‘Once he was dead, the wolves closed in. Basden the fishmonger claimed he was owed for three thousand stockfish. “Since when?” I said.’
‘Sir …’ Riche says.
‘Bay salt too – but why would any kitchen buy salt at one mark the bushel?’ He looks around him. ‘The girl is right. There was rank ingratitude, there was false dealing, there was perjury, defamation and theft. But I was true to Wolsey, or God strike me down.’
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 32