‘I shall not regret this business if it brings the traitors out,’ he says.
Chapuys is shocked. ‘You cannot mean the princess!’
‘Any approaches, Mary must report to me. Any letters, they must come straight from her hand to mine.’
‘By the way,’ the ambassador says, ‘I hear that the Courtenays have taken in Thomas Guiett’s woman. It is a charity.’
‘A duty. Bess Darrell gave all she had to Katherine in her trouble.’
‘An angel’s face,’ Chapuys says, ‘and an angel’s disposition. Ah, Thomas, it is always the women who suffer. Those tender creatures whose protection God has given into our hands.’
‘I told Mary, I have done all for her that I will do. Let her move one inch towards the rebels, and I will cut off her head.’
‘Truly, Thomas?’ The ambassador smiles. ‘We know this game, you and I. It is your duty to come here and boast to me of the strength of the king’s forces, and say how he is loved throughout the land. And it is my duty to exclaim, “Cremuel, what kind of imbecile do you take me for?” You know what I must say, and I know what you must say. Why do we not, as the tennis players say, cut to the chase?’
‘Very well,’ he says. ‘Let me say something new. If your master subverts my king in his own country, I will find means to make him suffer, by uniting my king with the princes of Germany, who are your master’s subjects – or he thinks they are.’
I doubt it, mon cher,’ the ambassador says cheerfully. ‘All your talks so far have come to nothing. Henry may hate the Pope, but he hates Luther worse. You once told me you hated him yourself. I believe you incline to the Swiss heretics, for whom the host is but a piece of bread.’
‘You are my confessor?’
‘You have a great many secrets. You and your archbishop.’
He thinks, if Chapuys knows Cranmer has a wife, he will keep it back till it can do most damage.
‘Bread can be more than one thing,’ he says. ‘Anything can.’
‘If Henry were to destroy you for heresy, it would be …’ Chapuys thinks about it. ‘It would be a tragedy, Thomas.’
‘You would come to Smithfield to see me burned.’
‘That would be my painful duty.’
‘Painful my arse. You’d buy a new hat.’
Chapuys laughs. ‘Forgive me,’ he says. ‘I sympathise with you. At such a time you must feel the inferiority of your birth – which at other times’ – a courtly nod – ‘is not evident. Your rivals at court can turn out their tenantry, and arm them from their caches of weaponry that they have owned time out of mind. But you have no retainers of your own. You can expend some of your wealth, no doubt. Yet the cost of keeping even one soldier in the field, especially if he is mounted, and at this end of the season, fodder so dear … I do not care to estimate, but figures come easily to you. Of course, you could go and fight yourself –’
‘My soldiering days are done.’
‘But no one would follow you. Not even the Londoners. They want noble captains. In Italy there are charcoal-burners and ostlers who have founded honourable houses and left great names. But England has its own rules.’
Not prayer nor Bible verse, nor scholarship nor wit, nor grant under seal nor statute law can alter the fact of villain blood. Not all his craft and guile can make him a Howard, or a Cheney or a Fitzwilliam, a Stanley or even a Seymour: not even in an emergency. He says, ‘Ambassador, I must leave you and cross the river to see Norfolk. Or his heart will break.’
Chapuys says, ‘He is chafing to be at the rebels. Any glory going, he wants to get it. He wants to slaughter somebody, even if it’s only tanners and plumbers. He is in high spirits, I hear. He thinks this affair will bring you down.’
When he goes to the Norfolk stronghold in Lambeth, he takes an entourage: Rafe Sadler, Call-Me. He hopes Gregory’s presence will ease matters.
The duke’s great hall is like an armourers’ shop and Thomas Howard, batting to and fro, looks more worn and gristly than ever, like a man who has chewed and digested himself. ‘Cromwell! No time to talk to you. I’m only here to get my orders direct and then get on the road. North, east, I will go where the king commands, I have six hundred armed and ready to ride, I have five cannon – five, and they are all mine. I have artillery –’
‘No, my lord,’ he says.
‘And I can whistle up another fifteen hundred men in short order.’ The duke pounds Gregory’s shoulder. ‘Well, lad! Are you saddled and armed? Oh, I tell you, Cromwell, he’s a wise quick piece, this young fellow! What a summer we had of it! He spares no horseflesh, eh? Let’s hope he doesn’t go at the women so hard!’
Speaking of women … but no, he thinks, I will mention his duchess later. First to disabuse him. ‘Gregory stays at home,’ he says. ‘But the king has given a command to my nephew Richard. He is taking cannon from the Tower. The king has declared a muster in Bedfordshire, at Ampthill.’
‘So thereto I proceed,’ says the duke. ‘Is Harry going to the Tower?’
‘Staying at Windsor.’
‘Probably wise. In olden times, I was once told, the rabble pulled the Archbishop of Canterbury out of the Tower, and cut off his head. But Windsor should stand against rebels and all else, the wrath of God excepted. It should be strong enough to keep out these piddlewits, if every gentleman in the realm does his part. How many can you turn out, Cromwell?’
‘One hundred,’ he says.
He wishes the ground would open and swallow him.
‘One hundred,’ the duke repeats. ‘Clerks, are they?’
He is sending his builders from Austin Friars, and his cooks. Cooks are belligerent men, they are worth two. But to equip them he will need to go begging to the London armourers, and pay whatever they charge. He says, ‘Everything I have is at the king’s disposal.’
‘I should hope so,’ Norfolk says. ‘Since everything comes from him in the first place. No disrespect, my lord. But your father was a pauper, all know.’
‘Not a pauper, my lord. A roisterer, I concede. It was not money we lacked, so much as peace of mind.’
The duke grunts. ‘You can handle a weapon, therefore. I hear you’ve killed men.’
‘Who hasn’t?’
At his back, he feels Call-Me stiffen in alarm.
‘Not without cause, I dare say,’ the duke concedes. ‘And as God gave you other talents, beside the ruffian kind, it is proper to use them for the commonweal.’
The duke is doing his best to be civil. He is straining every sinew, as he paces and twitches and breaks off to bellow an order to a man at arms. But whiffs of hostility come from him – he can no more help it than a manure heap can help stinking. ‘You can tell the king from me,’ he says, ‘that if his forces are extended in the north, he will be hard put to hold down the east country too.’
‘Which is why it is the king’s pleasure –’ Wriothesley begins.
The duke turns on him. ‘I’m talking to Cromwell. Who has been to war, which is more than you have, sir.’
‘We have enjoyed the benefits of a forty-year peace,’ Wriothesley says, ‘under the most sagacious of kings.’
Norfolk glares. ‘To maintain which, every gentleman must lead their tenants, and maintain his right and title – which we are right glad to do, and God defend our cause. This will find out traitors, I assure you.’
His eyes meet the duke’s: those indented, fiery pits. ‘I hear some of these rural stuffwits are proclaiming Mary,’ the duke says. ‘God knows who has stirred them towards that treason, but we can make a shrewd guess. If she moves an inch towards the rebels, I will not speak for her, I will not defend her, I will do naught.’
‘Nor I,’ he says.
‘If the Scots were to come down …’ The duke gnaws his lip. ‘We need every strong man. We need every brute who can wield a staff and every gentleman who can sit a hor
se. Henry wouldn’t let my nephew out of the Tower, would he?’
‘Tom Truth? No.’
‘I only hope the king knows I had no part in his folly.’
It is a question, really; but he turns aside, and says to the duke, ‘So the king’s pleasure is – as Master Wriothesley here hoped to explain – that you linger neither in London nor near his person, but repair to your own country, there to ensure quietness –’
The fiery pits glint. ‘What? There are no rebels in my country!’
‘You must see there are not,’ Rafe Sadler says. ‘For now, my lord Suffolk takes command of the king’s forces.’
‘Brandon? That horsekeeper? By St Jude,’ says the duke. ‘Am I to be set aside? Me, of the best blood this nation affords?’
‘It is all one, my lord,’ Rafe says. ‘Blood, I mean. We all come of the same parentage, if you go back far enough.’
‘Any priest will tell you,’ he says gravely.
The duke glares. He knows this is true. But he would prefer if there had been a special Adam and Eve, as forebears to the Howards. ‘What about my son?’ he says. ‘What about Surrey? It appears I have offended his Majesty, God knows how, but surely he will not rebuff my son’s service?’
‘He says he’ll see,’ Call-Me says.
‘See?’ The duke is simmering. ‘See? I had better ride to Windsor and meet my sovereign face to face. For I doubt not you misreport him.’ Call-Me opens his mouth, but the duke says, ‘One more word, and I’ll gralloch you, Wriothesley. The king knows he has no more faithful servant in England than Thomas Howard.’
‘My advice, my lord – if you will hear it –’
But the duke will not. ‘I have followed the Tudor’s words in every matter – as ever I shall, so help me God. Yet what fortune falls to me? The monasteries are pulled down, and every little jack and knave is paid. But where is my reward?’
‘If you want abbeys,’ Gregory says, ‘you must apply to Richard Riche. The Master of Augmentations.’
‘Apply?’ The duke fairly spits the word. ‘Why should I apply for what should be granted as of right?’
‘It reminds me,’ he says, ‘I have a letter from my lady your duchess. She says it is four years now since you separated.’
‘Aye. Best years of my life,’ the duke says.
‘She complains of scant living.’
‘Her choice.’
‘You don’t want her back, but you don’t want to maintain her?’
‘Let her family keep her.’
‘Sir, it is shameful,’ Rafe says. His face flushes. ‘Forgive me, but I cannot fail to speak, when I hear of a woman misused.’
The duke shoves his face into Rafe’s. ‘We all know about your woman, Sadler. We know you bought her out of a brothel, and so well-used they handed her over for the pence in a pauper’s pocket.’
Rafe says, ‘If you were not an old man, I would strike you.’
He, Lord Cromwell, steps between them. The duke says, ‘I’ll stick you, Sadler. I’ll spit you like a pullet.’
‘My lord,’ he says, ‘if there is anything I can do, to hasten your return to favour – count on me.’
The duke whirls away, cursing. ‘You know in the north parts they use your name to frighten children? Be quiet, they say, or we’ll fetch Cromwell.’
‘Do they?’ he says. ‘Lord Cromwell would be more polite.’
‘Your title is still a novelty,’ the duke says, ‘and change is slow up there. Their view is, the fellow will be dead before we have to use it.’
As they cross the river on his barge, rain drives into their faces, and the flag with his coat of arms whips about its pole; the statue of Becket on the wall of the archbishop’s palace is barely visible through the spray, but Bastings his bargemaster salutes the saint just the same.
‘I’ll have that traitor down,’ he says. ‘One day soon.’
‘But sir, the rivermen hold him lucky.’
‘You make your own luck,’ he says.
They sit under the canopy. ‘That was ill-considered,’ he tells Rafe. ‘Face-and-brace with the duke?’
‘I have only done one foolish thing in my life,’ Rafe says. ‘I mean, in marrying Helen. And since those who have seen her know I was truly wise, I have not even that to set in my account. Therefore while I am still young enough, I am looking to run into danger. So I know how it feels.’
‘Because we are not fighting men,’ Wriothesley says, laughing. ‘We must try our manhood where we find the opportunity.’
‘Give me notice of the next time,’ he says. ‘And keep Uncle Norfolk out of it.’
He broods. He will stand up each one of his men against Norfolk’s – cooks or clerks or masons. He will stand up himself, against the duke. Norfolk has tenants, but he has cash. If the duke has ancient blood, he has stomach. If the duke is an impregnable fortress, then he is a siege engine, he is God’s catapult, he is the Warwolf; he is the trebuchet and the mangonel, crashing boulders into the walls and chucking body parts over them. People will tell him that the duke’s walls are unbreachable, like the walls of Caerphilly, like Maynooth. But he believes there is no fortress that cannot be undermined or betrayed from within. He doesn’t want Norfolk dead. He wants him alive and conformable. He wants him grateful.
He says to Wriothesley, ‘Tell Riche. Treat with the duke for his requirements. Find out what abbeys he has in view.’
‘I believed he maintained the old ways,’ Wriothesley says. ‘I hear he hates the scriptures. Now he is asking for profit from the monks’ fall?’
‘The Howards were merchants once,’ he says.
Wriothesley says, ‘I suspect we were all merchants once.’
‘One hears,’ Rafe says, ‘that in Lincolnshire monks have come out with battle-axes, and are leading the rebel columns. The king says their vows will not save them, when the broil is over he will hang them up in their habits.’
They disembark. The steps are half under water, it threatens to lap over their boots. Richard will be lucky if he can get his cannon north of Enfield, he thinks, before he is bogged down. The rebels are now advancing on Lincoln. They are said to be ten thousand men mounted and armed, with another thirty thousand behind them, and their ranks increasing by five hundred every day.
‘Let me go with Richard,’ Gregory begs. ‘For the honour of our house. Or with Fitzwilliam – he will have me in his train. He is keen to be killing rebels, he says he will eat them with salt.’
‘You apply to your book, Master Gregory,’ Richard says. ‘You are not done learning yet. And look after your father.’
He has to get back to Windsor to the king. Government must still go forward, it does not stop because we are raising an army. Henry insists he will go up to Ampthill to the muster, and all must try to dissuade him. For the next weeks – who knows, perhaps for ever – he, Thomas Cromwell, will be on the sodden road west of London, or on the swollen river, while his carpenters and spit-boys and glaziers fight north and east through their own morass. He thinks of all the roads of the kingdom swilling into trackless mud, into drench and mire.
He goes out to say goodbye to Thurston. His chief cook is resolved to go with Master Richard to pepper some traitors, but he is tearful as he stands polishing a knife, turning it about, a glint on the blade. ‘I remember your little lass Anne,’ he says, ‘when she came looking for eggs to paint. I offered her a brown egg from the bantam, and she says to me, “Thurston,” – or rather, “Master Thurston,” she says – “I want to paint the cardinal in his scarlet hat, and you give me this egg? Do you say to me he has a head the size of a thumbnail, and a complexion like a Moor? You must do better,” she says. “Only a good-sized egg will answer, and a milk-white shell.” You could not have put it better yourself.’ Thurston blows his nose on his apron. ‘God rest her. A milk-white shell.’
When he thinks of his d
aughters now it is as very little girls, clinging to their mother’s skirts. He eases them away from him, to wherever the dead live now. He sits alone, under a blue ceiling newly painted with stars, in a chamber suited to the head of a house: lofty, airy, draughty. He closes the shutter, pulls his chair to the fire. He knows these eastern towns. Horncastle, Louth itself, Boston where he did much business when he was young, going to Rome once to represent their pious guild. He knows people in Lincoln who will report to him, and he has advance notice, from the rebels’ camp, of their demands. He remembers Norfolk saying to him once, ‘Give a pike to some tosswit and he is more dangerous than the greatest general, because he has nothing to lose.’ If his informants are correct, the rebels are writing lists of demands, and what they demand – along with the restoration of the Golden Age – are amendments of certain laws that bear on inheritance, how they can dispose of their goods in their wills. These are not the concerns of simple people. What has Hob or Hick to leave behind him, but some bad debts and broken shoes? No: these are the complaints of small landowners, and men who don’t like to pay their taxes. Men who want to be petty kings in their shires, who want the women to curtsey as they pass through the marketplace. I know these paltry gods, he thinks. We had them in Putney. They have them everywhere.
From the fireplace wall, there is a scrape and scratch. The spaniel at his feet scrambles up and shakes herself, her nose raised and twitching, her eyes shining in merriment; the marmoset is stirring in his night-box, and the dog hopes he will venture out. He remembers a lightless November afternoon: Anne Boleyn, her moue of distaste as she pulled her sleeve away from the tiny paw reaching for her hand. ‘Who sent it? I don’t want it. Because Katherine coveted such creatures does not mean I do.’
Someone in pity had made it a little wool jacket, and like a nervous petitioner the creature was shredding it with its nails: it shrank and twitched under the lady’s hostile glance. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said. ‘It will thrive with me, I keep my houses warm.’
‘Do you? How?’ Anne was shivering even in her ermine.
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 35