Better blame Norfolk, and bishops Gardiner, Stokesley and Sampson, than wonder aloud whether Henry is weak or duplicitous or incapable of seeing his own interest.
‘Our friends from Germany are appalled,’ Cranmer says. ‘I have to defend our master to them.’
‘How do you do that?’ he asks, interested.
‘Where was Lord Audley in this? Opening and shutting his mouth like one of those wooden idols worked by strings. And Fitzwilliam – I thought he stood your friend.’
He no longer trusts Lord Chancellor Audley. He no longer trusts Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam. Count up the bishops and perhaps ten of them are sound. This is how the king has been able to put through a bill that, among other measures, requires married priests to abandon their wives, on pain of hanging. The measure is deferred a week or two, to allow farewells.
‘What will you and Grete do?’ he asks.
‘Part. What else can we do?’
‘And your daughter?’
‘Grete will take her back to Germany.’
It would be thought a sin, in other circumstances, to put a family asunder. Cranmer says, ‘We begged the king, put the question to the universities – we begged him to search the scriptures, and find where it is forbidden, for a man to have a life companion. I cannot understand him. It is he who insists, marriage is a very high sacrament, in existence since the world began. Then why does he deny it to so many of us? Does he think we are not men, as he is a man? And also, once the bill is passed, none of us will preach on the Blessed Sacrament, its nature. We dare not. We would not know what it is safe to say, without being tripped by the law and cited for heresy.’
This is what the king calls concord: an enforced silence. Bishop Latimer and Bishop Shaxton have openly opposed the king; they cannot continue in office. Cranmer says, ‘I have thought of resigning myself. What is the use of me? Perhaps I should pack my bags and go with Grete.’
‘You told me, in a similar case, I should take heart and take the long view.’
‘How long?’ Cranmer is shaken into bluntness. ‘Till he dies? Because for all that has been said and done these ten years, if we have lost Henry now, we have lost him for ever.’
‘He is not constant in error, is he? What is written on parchment may have no effect in practice. Any ordinance, any measure, I can delay, I can –’ he hesitates over the word ‘frustrate’ – ‘I can work with it,’ he says. ‘There is scope to walk all around these new articles of faith, and ease them in this direction or that –’
‘Except one,’ Cranmer says. ‘My wife and child are not subject to loose interpretation. They are either here, or in Nuremberg. They cannot hover between.’
‘You may see Grete again. If I can get the king his bride, we may be able to hold our heads up in Europe.’
‘I doubt the marriage will be made. We are alienating our friends.’
He shrugs. ‘I am running out of ladies. And in Cleves they are not Lutherans, after all. They may find it possible to live with this new order.’
‘What about your daughter?’ Cranmer says. ‘She cannot come here now, can she? Not and keep her religion?’ He does not wait for an answer: but before the eyes of the Vicegerent, as he paces, Canterbury starts to talk himself around. He is like a man retreating from a cliff edge: in despair he thinks he will throw himself down on the rocks, but then he feels the blue air bouncing him along to perdition, he feels the wind in his lungs, he sees the gulls flying below, he is blown like a feather to the brink, and then he digs his heels in, he grabs at the sparse bent shrubs, screws up his eyes and holds tight for his life. He says, ‘You will not hear me speak against the king.’
‘No one asked you to.’ He feels cold. He wants to put his head down on the desk.
‘I cannot think he means ill, or to distress his subjects. It must be his qualms, his scruples, are genuine, and they have tormented him, perhaps, more than we know.’
‘Perhaps,’ he says.
‘He has carried knowledge that has been a burden to him. He has looked the other way. He has spared me, for one.’
‘Our rulers count up our derelictions,’ he says. ‘They may say nothing, but they keep a secret book.’
‘We know what Christ requires of us,’ Cranmer says. ‘We know what charity is, and what obedience, and we know His teaching, blessed are the peacemakers. Much though I mislike it, I see that peace is what the king intends. All good subjects will follow him.’
‘Naturally,’ he says. ‘Or suffer.’
His ill-wishers say Hugh Latimer will be hanged before Christmas. He means to prevent that. But Cranmer’s wife will be on a boat before the week is out, and there is nothing he can suggest to hold her here.
Just in case there should be any mistake – in case any fool should take the king for a papist – we have a Water Triumph. A burning June day and, well wrapped up, he stands beside the new French ambassador, explaining the spectacle. Before the eyes of king and court, a galley full of Romans fights true-born English sailors. Cardinals are cast into the Thames, splashing and screaming, while drummers beat out a victory tattoo. The sun dances, the pipes blare, the papal tiara goes bobbing downstream. ‘By St Jude!’ Marillac exclaims. ‘I trust those fellows can swim?’
‘They were handpicked,’ he says, ‘at my request.’ He sighs. ‘One has to tell people every little thing.’
The king is cheering from beneath his canopy. The dukes are thundering their appreciation. Gallants are throwing money in the Thames.
‘Still, it is a good show,’ the Frenchman says generously. A barge is fishing up the combatants from the water. ‘Their costumes I think will not be able to be used again.’ He chuckles. ‘But what does Henry care? You have made him rich, have you not?’
‘You see our navy is building,’ he says. ‘I myself will be pleased to escort you on a tour of our southern ports, if you care to ride out now the weather is better.’
A diplomatic pause. He eyes the new ambassador sideways. He is not above thirty but said to be astute: shrewd enough to quit his country some years back, when there were whispers that he favoured Luther. He went east with his cousin, who was ambassador to the Turk, and was presently made ambassador in his turn; now, whether he regards his sympathy with reform as a youthful folly, or whether François has picked him as likely to get on with Cremuel … who knows? He says, ‘We English have to put on a show for you. We do not want to be overshadowed by your last posting.’
The gallants are surging away, in the king’s wake. They are going to cross to Southwark to see a bear baited.
‘They remember you well, in Constantinople,’ Marillac says. ‘You are spoken of.’
He stifles his surprise. It will be some random Englishman, another rover called Thomas.
‘By the way,’ Marillac says, ‘officially I am not here. I have stayed away in protest.’
‘I understand. I am often in two places, or no place. And I agree it is not a seemly spectacle, though you will admit it is entertaining. You know, I miss your countryman Dinteville, he was always so gloomy he made me laugh. I thought your king might send him again.’ He adds hastily, ‘We are glad to have you, of course, that goes without saying.’
Marillac turns to look at him, astonished. ‘You have not heard? Of the great disgrace?’
He thinks back, to when the late dauphin was poisoned. ‘I understood there was some slander spoken – but the family were cleared, surely?’
‘Oh yes, as far as that goes. But there was a further scandal. The whole house is undone. Sodomy, I fear.’
His heart sinks. ‘Where is Dinteville now?’
Marillac shrugs: who cares? ‘Italy, I think.’
Murder first, then sodomy. It sounds like something Gardiner would dream up, to ruin a foe. He thinks of the ambassador, muffled in his furs, splendid as Hans painted him: the broken lute string, the skull badge he retai
ned in his cap. He says, ‘If he were here with us today, he would be shivering, and hastening home to a good fire and spiced wine.’
Marillac laughs. ‘We are well able for the weather. So, shall we row across and see the bear?’
When Parliament closes and before the court disperses, the king orders a dinner. Cranmer is to give it: he is to hold it at Lambeth Palace; Norfolk is to attend, and Stephen Gardiner; Cranmer is to do his office as archbishop, and reconcile all parties, sitting them down in amity and feeding them junkets.
It is the beginning of a hot summer, much drier than in recent years – you would say almost a drought, if it did not tempt Heaven to drench you. It seems sometimes as if it has been raining ever since the cardinal came down.
They are not far into the dinner when Gardiner accuses him of murder. The talk has turned to Rome, and to the city’s monuments and squares, its faded glories. ‘You were there when Cardinal Bainbridge died,’ Gardiner says, wiping his mouth. ‘Interesting, that.’ He says to the guests at large, ‘It was given out that one of the cardinal’s household poisoned him.’
He leans forward: ‘You know different, do you?’
Along the board, knives are set down; guests stop chewing to listen. Gardiner turns to Wriothesley; he’s young, he doesn’t know these things. ‘They arrested a priest, name of Rinaldo. They crushed his legs till the marrow seeped out – which does throw doubt on the coherence of his confession.’
He – the Lord Privy Seal – sits back and surveys Gardiner. He knows he is baiting him, and that he must not take the bait. ‘It’s twenty-five years, Stephen. Most of the people who know about it are dead.’
‘Bainbridge took ill at the dinner table,’ Gardiner says. ‘A powder in his broth.’
‘Yes,’ Norfolk says helpfully. ‘Like when Bishop Fisher was poisoned. When the cook was boiled alive.’
A murmur of distaste runs around the table. ‘We are losing our appetites,’ the Lord Chancellor objects.
‘The powder was bought in Spoleto,’ Stephen says. ‘I know the shop.’
He laughs. ‘And does the shop know you?’
Norfolk says, ‘What would be the rate for a murder among the Romans? Because this priest, Rinaldo … I suppose somebody fee’d him?’
‘Naturally,’ Gardiner says. ‘Bishop Gigli.’
He can see Norfolk’s memory working. He’s chewing the name, as if it were overcooked: Gigli, Silvestro Gigli. ‘Bishop of Worcester,’ Norfolk bursts out. ‘Wolsey’s crony.’
‘Exactly,’ Stephen says. ‘Wolsey’s chief friend in Rome. Once Bainbridge was removed, Wolsey was clear to be the next English cardinal.’
There is a silence: which he breaks, signalling to a boy for more wine. ‘Half the city wanted Bainbridge dead. The French hated him. The Florentines hated him. And he was in debt.’
‘You saw the books?’ Gardiner says. ‘Who let you in?’
The capons come in and the carvers do their office. In Rome, at the Pope’s table, the carver holds the meat skewered and swipes slices from it in mid-air; it lends an air of crisis to the mildest repast. He, Lord Cromwell, puts down his cup and turns to the guests, opening his hands, smiling: ‘I always assumed the Pope’s master of ceremonies killed Bainbridge. He hated him because he was English and was always genuflecting out of his place, or turning up with the wrong type of crozier. The Curia thought he was a barbarian.’
Cranmer, at the head of the table, is fidgeting. ‘How were you in Rome, my lord Cromwell?’
‘Private business. I didn’t know Wolsey then.’
Gardiner says balefully, ‘You always knew Wolsey.’
It was Corpus Christi, 15 June, when Bainbridge ate the broth and was seized with colic. The doctors purged him, and he was well enough to go out to supper that night. Would he want to miss the Cretan wine, the caviar, at Cardinal Carretto’s house?
Next day Bainbridge was raging about as usual and kicking the servants. It was not till 14 July he collapsed and died. They arrested the priest Rinaldo because Bainbridge was known to have struck him in public, and they saw he had a grievance.
After three days of torment in the papal dungeons, Rinaldo managed to get hold of a knife. He stabbed himself ineptly, though he did a better job than Geoffrey Pole. It took him a day or two to die, and then the Romans hanged his corpse in public. Before they quartered it, he saw it dangling – he, Cremuello the oltramarino, giovane inglese. Rinaldo had labels tied to his feet stating his crime. He had confessed that Gigli gave him fifteen ducats to kill his master, but that detail was not written on the labels. It would have blown a hole in the Vatican’s wall of secrecy. Bishops and cardinals slay each other, and humble men suffer for their crimes.
That summer was hot even by the Roman standard. At nightfall the very stones seemed to sweat, breathing out the day’s accumulation of lies. He himself moved through the heat, smooth and silent and untroubled. Since the snake bit him, something of its nature had entered his blood, and he could lie coiled till needed.
Norfolk says, ‘I was never at Rome. I knew Bainbridge, of course. He was choleric.’
‘Yes, and he was fifty or more,’ Cranmer says. ‘And he drove himself. Such men perish in the heat. Besides, I always heard the priest retracted his confession before he died.’
‘So who was the murderer?’ Stephen says.
Call-Me says, ‘You are seriously accusing Lord Cromwell?’
‘He was no lord in those days,’ Norfolk says.
No more was he. He can see himself now, at twilight, lurking in the Piazza Navona. Since he got his red hat, Bainbridge took himself seriously as a future pope, and set his stall out in fine style. He took a lease on Francesco Orsini’s palace, with easy access to the Vatican and the English Hospice where his countrymen lodged. The front was imposing, loggias, terraces; Bainbridge fitted it out with money from the Sauli bankers, and he owed the Grimaldi as well. Any number of people would have employed Cremuello to watch Bainbridge’s back gate, and several did; he split the intelligence between them, with attention to what they wanted to hear.
While lurking there he fell into talk with a street girl, teasing her about her hair. She had bleached it, but now it was grown out by a hand’s span. Your sable locks are just as good, he said, a novelty for Englishmen; we have enough of tow-heads. You’re English? she said. Jesu, one would not know it. So that is why you are watching the house of the English cardinal. Are you homesick for the sounds of your countrymen carousing? Watch presently, and some of them will come out and spew in the street.
Later that night she said to him, now I’ll tell you a thing. Romans, Tuscans, Frenchmen, English, Germans: all pay out for blondes. It is a shame for me and my sisters in the trade; we are born wrong. I would bleach it again, but after a certain point it falls out, and no man of any nation wants a woman who is bald.
She yawned. Well, that was nice, she said, you would like to do it again in a different position? By the way, if you want a job in the palace among your countrymen, I can get you in there. My cousin works in the kitchen.
She mistook him for a clerk fallen on hard times. After all, he dressed like one. He turned to her and negotiated the new position and its price. How had one the energy, in that heat? But you don’t feel it so much when you are young.
‘My lord?’ Wriothesley says
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘My lord bishop, I forget what you were saying?’
‘Wolsey,’ Stephen says deliberately, ‘had scarcely the grace to hide his hand in the murder. He and Bishop Gigli were fast friends, till they scrapped about who got Bainbridge’s vestments after he was dead. Wolsey wanted them packed up and sent to London for his use. When I was his secretary, I saw the letters in the files.’
‘You know what I think?’ Norfolk says. ‘We’re better off without cardinals, and proud old prelates such as we used to have. Now the archbishop here,’ he j
erks his thumb at Cranmer, ‘at least he conducts himself humble-wise. You can tell by his countenance he spends his time at prayer, instead of browbeating noblemen and plotting their downfall and wrangling and cheating and embezzling. All of which were daily proceedings with Thomas Wolsey.’
‘My lord Norfolk,’ he says.
‘Yes, and promoting false knaves to positions of trust, and soliciting bribes, falsifying deeds, bullying his betters, and consorting with conjurers and generally thieving, lying and cheating –’
He rises from his place.
‘– to the detriment and ruin of the commonweal and the shame of the king.’
He has the duke in his grasp. He holds him at arm’s length. He could easily jerk him forward then kick his feet from under him.
Cranmer shoots to his feet. ‘For shame, Thomas, he’s an old man.’ He takes a grip on Norfolk’s coat and tries to pull him free, as if he were a pike on a gaff and he wants to put him back in the stream.
It is only when sweat starts out of the archbishop – or possibly tears – that he, Cromwell, drops the duke. Thomas Howard swears at him, a horrible oath like a gunner.
The servants come in. The meats are cleared. They sit glaring at each other over the ginger comfits.
‘Well,’ Stephen says, ‘I don’t know when I enjoyed a peace conference as much as I enjoyed this one.’
It is time for the king to quit London for the summer. He will go as soon as Parliament rises. The entourage will first lodge at Beddington, the pleasant house that belonged to Nicholas Carew. Then 7 July to Oatlands, from there to Woking.
Months, years have gone by, when Lord Cromwell has never thought of his early life; when he has pushed the past into the yard and barred the door on it. Now it is not Gardiner’s questions about Italy that trouble him: Italy keeps its secrets. It is Putney that works away at him, distant but close. When he was weak from fever the past broke in, and now he has no defence against his memories, they re-capitulate themselves any time they like: when he sits in the council chamber, words fall about him in a drizzling haze, and he finds himself wrapped in the climate of his childhood. He is a monk who descends the night stair, still wrapped in dreams, so that the shuffling feet of his brethren are transformed to the whisper of leaves in the forests of infancy: and like a hidden creature stirring from a leaf-bed, his mind stirs and turns, on a restless circuit. He tries to tether it (to now, this time, this place) but it will roam: scenting the staleness of soiled straw and stagnant water, the hot grease of the smithy, horse sweat, leather, grass, yeast, tallow, honey, wet dog, spilled beer, the lanes and wharves of his childhood.
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 74