‘Oh, many a one,’ he boasted.
Will said, ‘Well, this isn’t a hanging.’
When they dragged the old woman forth, battered and bound, he looked up into the face of his godmother and said, ‘What’s she done?’
‘Harry, you need to see her sizzle,’ his godmother said. ‘She is a Loller.’
Will said testily, ‘Lollard. Have it right.’
The godmother ignored him. ‘She is of the devil’s party, eighty years old and steeped in sin.’ She raised her voice above the roar. ‘Let this boy through!’
Some made way, thinking it a pious work to show a child a burning. Still, the crowd thickened. Some were praying aloud but others were eating yeast buns. Standing behind him, his guardian no longer smelled of the linen press but of excitement and heat. He twisted back towards her; he wanted to bury his head in her waist, to lock his arms around her. He knew he must forbear, or Will would squeeze his neck as he had squeezed his hand; and seeing him turn, thinking he was trying to get away, Will shoved him: ‘This boy is a heathen. What parish spawned you?’
Caution made him say, ‘I don’t have a parish.’
‘Everybody has a parish,’ Will scoffed. But then the crowd began to bellow out prayers. A preacher shouted above them. He said the pain of earthly fire was but a feather touch, a May morning, a mother’s caress, when compared with the agony of the flames of Hell.
When the fire was set the multitude carried him forward. He tried to swim against its tide, crying out for his godmother, but his voice was lost. He saw people’s backs, but he smelled human flesh. You had to breathe it in, till the wind changed. Some weakly folk wailed, others were sick at their own feet.
Afterwards when the excitement was done, the Loller reduced to bone, rendered to fat, to paste, the dignitaries departed and the ordinary spectators began to break up and go their ways. Some were drunk, swaying with arms linked, hullooing and pumping their fists and shouting as if they were at a bullfight. Others were sober, gathering in muttering groups. They had homes to go to: he, not. Putney seemed distant, as if it were a place in a story. ‘In a town by a river dwelled one Thomas Cromwell, with his father Walter and his dog. One day he strayed away, to seek his fortune in a foreign land …’
He wondered how long it would take him to reverse the story. Putney was clear the other side of London, and you are not always lucky, you do not always get a ride; and if they knew where he had been and what he had seen, surely every man and woman would curse him.
It came into his mind to go under the stand where the dignitaries had been, and live in it as in a house. Nobody stopped him. Nobody saw him. The sawn planks for his roof, he sat cross-legged on the damp ground. Time passed. He was aware of persons who waited on the fringes of the spectacle, as if waiting for the field to empty. One had a basin, another a basket. Still they lingered, as if afraid. The executioners returned with their iron bars, whistling, and smashed up the bones that were left, raking through the remnants.
Crouching in his new dwelling, he watched them as if from a great distance. His body felt cramped and frozen. The bones of his hand throbbed where Will had squeezed them. It came on to rain and the men dropped their tools and sought shelter. Water dripped between the planks above his head. He counted the drops. He caught them in his cupped hand and he drank them. He felt them run inside him and freeze to ice.
When the bones were shattered the officers wiped off their crowbars on the grass, pulled up their hoods and tramped from the field. They did not look directly at those waiting with basin and basket. But one of them spoke over his shoulder: ‘All yours, brothers.’
The men called brothers began to grub and scrape the ground. He crept out, telling them his name – Master Harry, blacksmith – and informing them of all that had passed. We know, they said, we saw. They said, this lady died for God’s word, Harry, and we are come to gather what remains. They smeared on the back of his hand a long streak of fat and ash. Remember this day, they said, as long as it pleases God to give you life.
He told them what the priest had informed him, about the feeble nature of earthly fire, how it was a cooling draught compared to the raging flames below. He rolled up his sleeve and showed them the puckered streak of flesh where he had seared himself at the forge. A woman said, that must have hurt you sore, sweetheart. He said, it is no hardship to a man to have a scar. My dad has many a one. ‘You go home now, son,’ a man said to him.
He said, ‘I don’t know how.’
They went their ways. He returned to his dwelling house under the stand. The sickness had quelled and he was hungry. He thought, the heel of a loaf would do me. He knew that in time he would have to sally out and steal something, but for now he must be quiet and still, because what if the men came back to pull down his house? They might haul him out, saying, ‘Here is a Lollard boy.’ They might start another fire and throw him on it, as a man throws a last bundle on a cart.
No one came. The light was waning. He was not afraid of the old woman’s ghost, but he was aware of company. In the smoke that still lingered, he could see certain shapes, low and slinking. At a distance but looping closer, the dogs of London.
To see them was to know their histories. Not one of them, he supposed, had name, kennel nor master. They were scabbed and scarred and limping, bowed and worn like shadows. For hours they must have lurked, keeping their distance, chins on their paws, drooling. When the officers were at work they dared not advance, for fear of stones thrown or a slingshot that would blind an eye. They were shivering with fright, but hunger made them brave: it made them dare all, while the smell of burned meat lay heavy on the air.
At first they came on their bellies. Then they rose to a crouch, their backs still dished, quivering with fear but always forward. They circled; they lifted their muzzles and sniffed the wind. They licked their lips. They drew nearer. Their eyes passed over him. They would have been afraid of the city dignitaries, of the officers, but they were not afraid of him, a ragged boy. The circle tightened. At any sound they crouched, froze. But still they closed in.
The Lollard was lean pickings, no more fat on her than a needle. When they realised nothing was left but her smell, would they turn on him? Chunk of Putney flesh: one can bite out his throat and lick his blood.
The space under the stand was tall enough for him to stand. The dogs raised their hackles. They hesitated for a moment; then came on, teeth bared.
His pockets were empty. He had no weapon, not even a pebble. He took a breath. He lurched forward with a shout: fuckoffbeastsyoufuckoffand die.
The dogs checked. They bolted, they scrambled backwards. But then they halted. They melted into their hunched, lumpen forms, and watched him. Then once again they formed a loop and began to creep towards him, flat to the ground, muzzles towards the stake. Will had asked him, What do you want so far from home, a child like you? A priest had said: ‘God sees into the righteous heart: He leads us to Sion.’
He threw up his arms, yelling, cursing. He pitched from under the stand, his left arm flailing, his right arm stretched towards the dogs as if to give them a blessing: but he made the horn sign at them, he made the fig.
He turned his back on the execution ground. He began to stumble away from the day he had passed: dazed, blundering westwards, knowing yesterday he walked with the sun behind him, till the world giddily swung, and a crowd swamped him and swept him up, and a godmother took him by the hand and towed him through it, saying, ‘Let this child to the front, he needs to see her suffer, hereafter it will make him a saint.’
It was not the first crime he had seen, but it was the first punishment. Much later he learned the woman’s name, Joan Boughton. She was no beggar, as she appeared, but a woman of education; a lord mayor of London had been among her folk.
Nothing protects you, nothing. In the last ditch, not rank, nor kin. Nothing between you and the fire.
In a
day or two he fetched up back in Putney. These were the first nights he spent in the open, but not the last. At home they had not missed him. His father hit him, but that was usual. Whatever dereliction had driven him to run, they had forgot it; soon it was subsumed in his next fault, because he could not help but sin: he was of all God’s creatures, his dad said, the most wretched. He did not wait for the priest to tell him more: Walter’s bellow was loud in his ear.
It was years before he realised the boy who went to Smithfield was not the one who came home. The child Thomas still crouched under the stand, vigilant as the dogs, his hands cupped to catch the rainwater, the icy drops on his palm. It is a work he has never undertaken, to go back and retrieve himself. He can see that small figure, at the wrong end of time; he can feel the heave of its ribs as it tries to cry without uttering. He can see and feel, without pitying the child; only suspect that, to keep the streets tidy, someone ought to collect it and send it home.
Summer approaches. The French ambassador says to him, ‘Limping, my lord Cremuel?’
‘I got an injury long ago in your country’s service. The leg sometimes lets me down.’
Castillon says, ‘I wonder your king does not think you are mocking him.’
Leave that to the King of Scots. The second week of June, Madame de Longueville lands at the town of Fife, and is met by James and his nobles. She looks bonny; she has had a luckier voyage than the Princess Madeleine. With the blessings and acclamation of their countrymen on both sides, she and James ride to their wedding.
The Emperor, meanwhile, seems to have cooled towards the project of our marriage with Christina. The king tells our man in Brussels to spend whatever money it takes, to make it happen. But it is spelled out to the English that since their king was formerly married to Katherine of Aragon, who was Christina’s near kin, they will need a dispensation from the Pope. In which matter, Ambassador Mendoza says, you may find you have made a difficulty for yourself.
Archbishop Cranmer says, I wish all this diplomacy would stop, this casting of Master Hans to the four winds and this bandying of women’s honour. The king’s bride should be someone he knows and feels he can love. Because Henry thinks marriage should not be contracted without love. He used to sing a song about it in Katherine’s day: I hurt no man, I do no wrong/Love true where I did marry …
But the council says, if a king makes a love-match once in his life, count him lucky. He can’t expect to do it again and again.
Since the king cannot have a wife he occupies himself in building. A new palace is to arise in Surrey, not far from Hampton Court. It is designed to create hunting grounds stretching many miles. At first it seems that a modest lodge will do, but then the king decides it will be one of the wonders of the world. He indents for Italian craftsmen and fetches in all the building stone from the demolition of Merton Abbey. He clears the manor house that stands already, with its farms, barns and stables, and knocks down the ancient parish church. He buys up tracts of adjacent manors. He orders a thousand loads of timber and begins building brick kilns.
Thomas Lord Cromwell, Vicegerent and Privy Seal, no longer has time to oversee the king’s building. He is able to advise on the choice of Italians, but the king is pleased to place Rafe Sadler in charge of the project. Anything Cromwell does for the king, Sadler and Thomas Wriothesley will be able to do: in time, and between them. He has trained them, encouraged them, written them as versions of himself: Rafe as the plain text, and Mr Wriothesley in cipher.
The building of the marvel goes on through the summer of 1538. When the king has a new wife he will place her in it, as a jewel in its setting. Meanwhile, separated from us by the Narrow Sea, the ladies of Europe watch the misty land through crystal mirrors; down the winding flowery path the messengers of the king advance, on high-stepping white steeds. In the old stories, princesses are never too old or too young or too papist. They wait patiently for the prince seven years and more, while he does his valiant deeds, and they spin out their fates from a single thread, growing the while their long golden hair.
Sometimes the king weeps for his late wife. Where shall we find a lady so benign, so meek, and so comely as Jane? As he cannot he amuses himself with the creation of the new palace, the rarest ever seen: and the name of the palace is Nonsuch.
II
Corpus Christi
June–December 1538
Wyatt has followed the Emperor from the shores of Spain to Nice, where Charles has disembarked to meet the Pope and the King of France. Their meeting is like some ill-starred conjunction in the heavens, which we could forecast but not prevent. Early June, Wyatt is in England, pacing a room at St James’s. The Lord Privy Seal, sitting in a splash of weak sun, follows him with his eyes.
‘I saw Farnese,’ Wyatt says. ‘Close enough to spit. With Polo leaning on his shoulder, conspiring in his papal ear. I should have spitted him on my dagger, and carried home his collops.’
Wherever the Emperor goes, Wyatt jolts after him, with his household of twenty or so young gallants: all armed, all poets, all lovers, all dicers. From Nice, Charles has sent him home with an enticement. If Lady Mary will marry Dom Luis, he will settle the duchy of Milan on them: Milan, his greatest prize, over which he and François have fought for years.
‘But he will never give up Milan,’ Wyatt says. ‘Not this side of the Last Judgement. And they are asking for an outrageous sum with Mary. The king should offer two-thirds.’
Always a good rule of thumb: knock a third off, see what answer you get. Wyatt says, ‘But then I don’t know if the king intends to let Mary go. Or if he even intends to marry himself, or is just playing a game with them all, and keeping Hans employed.’
He shrugs: I do not know anything.
‘I hate Spain,’ Wyatt says. ‘I would prefer the lowest cell in Newgate. And I cannot understand the Emperor. I cannot read him in any language. I hear the words he says, but nothing that lies between them. His face never changes. Sometimes he admits me every day. Sometimes I arrive and his servants shut me out. I think, have I committed some breach of manners? Is it reasonable to stand outside his presence chamber two days, or three, or until they sweep me out with the rushes? If I am told to quit his realm, do I pay my bills and leave my compliments, or do I run in the clothes I stand up in?’
‘It is prince’s tricks,’ he says. ‘Three days in a row Henry gives the French a private audience. Then he ignores them for a week.’
‘When he shuts me out I write my dispatches. I translate Seneca. I keep no company with women, whatever you hear, but with a skin of bad wine and the gospel. In Spain the women are cloistered. Husbands kill you on suspicion. If the Earl of Worcester were Spanish, you and his wife would be skewered and mouldy in your graves.’
‘I never had to do with Worcester’s wife,’ he says. ‘But it is just as when I say “I am not a Lutheran.” Nobody believes me.’
‘The Inquisitors in Toledo think all Englishmen are Lutherans. They have tried to put spies in my house. They offered money to my servants. Letters were stolen.’
‘I have warned you, lock up what you write. Prose or verse.’
Wyatt looks uneasy. ‘At first I thought it was you.’
He would not deny it; he has a man with Wyatt, as he has men with Gardiner in France. He sighs: ‘It is as much for your protection as anything else. My agents would not steal your letters, only read them at your desk. I am surprised at the freedom the Emperor gives the Inquisitors. Do not provoke them. You should show your face at Mass.’
‘No greater beadsman,’ Wyatt says. ‘I can mop and mow to an altar with the best of them.’
Heresy knows no borders, the Inquisitors declare. No traveller of any nation is exempt from our enquiries. And what could the King of England do, if they threw his envoy in a dungeon? He could make representations; but meanwhile, they could have bored a needle through our envoy’s tongue, or pulled out his finge
rnails.
A clerk comes in with a sheaf of papers. ‘From Sir Richard Riche, my lord. He said, never hesitate, but go straight in. This will rejoice Lord Cromwell, he said.’
He says to Wyatt, ‘I am augmented. I am to have the priory at Michelham. Gregory and I are writing our names on the chalk hills of Sussex. You too will have your reward.’ Even if posthumously, he thinks.
Wyatt watches the clerk out. He sits down. ‘Last year in France – Henry does not know this – Pole approached me. He sent presents. And a letter, wrapped around a flask of good wine.’
‘And?’
‘I read the letter. Francis Bryan drank the wine.’
‘Ah, Francis. How did he take to Nice?’
‘He gambled,’ Wyatt says, ‘as ever. The town stank like Hell, it was crammed to the rafters with papists, but Francis thrives on it. He plays for high stakes with the chancellors of great men, their familiar creatures, and he sleeps with their women. I could not prosper without him. I would learn nothing.’ Wyatt hesitates. ‘It seems to me I could approach our man Pole. I could contrive a meeting.’
He nods. ‘But remember no one has authorised you to make contact. I have not. The king has not.’
Wyatt curses. ‘When I am face to face with my opportunity, must I refuse it? What am I to do – send back to Westminster for instructions? Has Henry no faith in my judgement? If he wants an envoy, he should send who he trusts, and trust who he sends. And if he wants words and no deeds, let him choose some other man. I would kill Pole as soon as look at him.’
‘Well, that would terminate your embassy, for sure.’ He averts his face. ‘As it is, Henry will send you back, no matter how you squall.’
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 62