His bargemaster says, ‘We saw the duke’s barge, and we said, by the Mass, pity my lord – Norfolk and Gardiner, both?’
He says, ‘I feel to my master the king as I do to Christ, hanging between two thieves.’
He takes off his glove, slides a hand inside his garments. When his hand appears again, his knife is in it. ‘Christophe?’ he says. ‘This is yours now. Try not to use it.’
Christophe turns the knife over in his hands. ‘I shall stand taller for owning it. Why do you part with it now?’
‘Because I almost stuck it in Norfolk.’ From his crew, a subdued cheer. ‘You can tell Mr Sadler I have surrendered it.’ Rafe wanted me to grow up, he thinks, before I grow old.
Bastings asks, ‘Did you make it yourself, sir? When you did that sort of work?’
‘No. That one I made … I lost it. This was given me by a young lady in Rome. I have had it for some years.’
‘And put it to some use, I warrant,’ Bastings says admiringly. ‘Sir, a thing you should know. That little lass of the duke’s, I hear she is spoiled. There is one in the old duchess’s household boasts he has had his fingers in her cunt. He says he has felt it in the dark and he would know it among a hundred.’
‘Where did you hear that, from the watermen?’ He wraps his cloak around himself. Even if it is true, he thinks, what can I do with it? If the king is in love he will trample anyone who gets between him and his sport. He says, ‘Bastings – consort with men with cleaner minds.’
I shall forget I ever heard it, he thinks. He is rowed across the Thames, furiously forgetting it. One among a hundred?
I kissed her sweet, and she kissed me;
I danced the darling on my knee.
My fancy fairly on her I set:
So merrily singeth the nightingale.
Mr Wriothesley is waiting for him. He tells him, ‘You can write to the ambassadors that Winchester and I have dined. That we now understand each other perfectly.’
Wriothesley says, ‘Shall I add some such phrase as “all past displeasures be now forgot”?’
‘At your discretion, Mr Wriothesley.’
Sometimes it seems to him we have not made any advance since Epiphany. The Romans and Britons are still fighting through his dreams. They advance, retreat, press forward again. They slash, they stab, they feint, they duck; they raise their armoured limbs slowly and chop, chop, chop.
In Calais, a new commission is sitting to find out heretics. Norfolk started it, when he passed through: setting a fire there, then stepping on a boat and sailing away. He says to the king, ‘Why don’t we find out traitors instead? Forty Frenchmen under arms could take Calais in an hour. The rot is within, and I do not mean the townsfolk, I mean those who have charge of all.’
The king says, pained, ‘Lord Lisle is very dear to me.’
‘I won’t trouble Lord Lisle,’ he says. Not yet: I will start with his friends. ‘I want certain papers. Wyatt has told me what to look for. He knows all about Calais.’
‘Oh, Wyatt,’ the king says. ‘What he says he does not mean, and what he means he does not say.’
It is Bishop Sampson who is his immediate target. Putting him under house arrest, he impounds his papers and scours them for any hint of dealings with Pole; any hints that others, among his friends, might have dealt with Pole. When the king says, well, Cromwell, what proof, he says, sir, it is intricate work. It is like putting together one of the pavements at the abbey. You have triangles and circles, rectangles and squares. You have limestone and porphyry, serpentine and glass. You must work with the eye of faith: the onlookers will not see the pattern, till suddenly they do.
Now the season changes. Each brightening day is made up of other days he has known. He sees a flock of chaffinches rise like flying roses from a still pool. His hawks watch dust motes as they flitter against a wall, as if the sunlight is a living thing, their prey.
Henry calls him in. ‘I must put a matter to you. It is a matter of some gravity. Come with me here into my closet and close the door.’
A window is open. Someone is singing outside. He thinks, is this where all my broken nights have led me, my unquiet dreams?
In slumbers oft for fear I quake.
For heat and cold I burn and shake.
For lack of sleep my head doth ache
What means this?
He follows the king. What can you do but, as Cicero says, live hopefully, die bravely?
He goes home to a disturbed household. Call-Me meets him, a document in his hand. ‘Sir, you had better see this at once.’
It is a transcript – a copy, let’s be blunt – of a letter from Ambassador Marillac to François. ‘Marillac says the king is about to arrest Cranmer. He is to go to the Tower, with Barnes.’
Call-Me has put a man in the ambassador’s train. ‘Well done for this,’ he says. The paper feels hot.
‘There is worse, sir. Marillac says the king means to take the Privy Seal from us and give it to Fitzwilliam. And that he will cast you down from your office as Vicegerent, and raise up Bishop Tunstall.’
He says, ‘I have just been with the king. I know he is swift to reverse his policies, but he has not had time to do this in half an hour. I have come straight from him and I bring news. It is good news for you, and I hope you will think so.’
He is about to say, go and get Rafe, but Rafe is already coming in, his eyes on Marillac’s letter. ‘Can I see the text, sir? Call-Me will not part with it.’
‘Ignore it,’ he says. ‘The ambassador sits in his lodgings concocting these fantastical tales – they only need Sexton in an ass’s head and Will Somer as a Spanish harlot.’
Rafe and Call-Me look at each other. Rafe says, ‘The original letter will be on the Dover road by now. Do you want the rider to have an accident?’
‘He could lose his missive in a puddle,’ Wriothesley suggests.
The suggestion is so mild it makes him laugh. ‘Let it go,’ he says. ‘If France gets his hopes up, so much the sweeter. He would like to see me dismissed, and the king served by boys and fools.’
‘Which are we?’ Wriothesley says.
‘Neither, you are the chosen ones. Be quiet and hear my news, you will be better for it. You know ever since I have been Master Secretary I have tried to be with the king’s person – but I am always wanted at Westminster – so you know what my life has been.’
Those days that roll from dawn to dawn. For lack of sleep my head doth ache … ‘With the king’s permission, I am going to divide my duties. I have broached it with him before, but the time is now.’
Mr Wriothesley offers to interrupt, but he continues. ‘You will divide the task. Each of you will be Master Secretary. You will split your time so that one of you is in Westminster, the other with the king. I will make machinery, so that your work passes perfectly from hand to hand.’
‘A prodigy of nature,’ Rafe says. He is astonished. ‘Two bodies with one head.’
‘One awake and one asleep,’ Wriothesley says.
‘You will both be knights. You will both be raised to the council. When Parliament meets, you will sit in the Commons, and I in the Lords.’ He slaps his hands on their shoulders. ‘You know what I have made this office, by God’s grace and the king’s. Nothing eludes it. Nothing lies beyond it. Everything starts with you. And with you, everything stops.’
He sits down. ‘Now, also –’
‘There is more?’
He holds up a hand. Sudden pleasure afflicts like sudden pain, and leaves you dizzy, numb. At such times in your life, if ever you see such times – if fortune favours you, as fortune favours the brave – you lose for a moment a sense of the firm boundaries of yourself, and become light as air. ‘I am to have Oxford’s post, Chief of the Household, Lord Great Chamberlain. His son keeps his peerage, as is natural, but as poor Essex had no heir direct, I am to have his tit
le.’
He had thought the sands of time were running out: running through the cracks in the shining bowl of possibility he holds in his hands. ‘Now all is mended,’ he says.
Call-Me flushes. ‘I congratulate you, sir, from the bottom of my heart.’
He says, ‘The king explained to me how I was an aspect of his glory. He said, “It is not given to every ruler to look past a man’s provenance to his capacities. God gave you talents, Cromwell. And he caused you to be born at such a time and place that you could use them in my service.”’
‘And you kept your countenance?’ Rafe says.
‘I did, so please keep yours. He is right to congratulate himself. He thinks of the laws passed and the money made. If I were a prince and I had Cromwell, I would think myself Heaven’s elect.’
‘I wonder why now,’ Call-Me says. ‘In justice he might have done it long ago. But he knows it will give much offence.’
‘Not as much offence, as it gives delight,’ Rafe says. ‘Tell the household. Send to Mr Richard. Get Gregory. By God! Will Gregory be called Lord Gregory now? Will he have the title?’
Below, a roar goes up. Thomas Avery shoots in, embraces him. ‘Sir, they will all expect some increase in their wages.’
‘That is fitting, as they will be serving an earl.’
The room fills up with his people, faces shining. He draws Avery aside. ‘You remember what I told you? About my money abroad?’
Avery is surprised. ‘I do, sir.’
‘So you know what to do?’
The boy frowns. ‘Forgive me, but your lordship is talking as if your fortunes were reversed. As if you had suffered a blow of fate, instead of great promotion and honour.’
‘Find my daughter,’ he says. ‘Open a channel to her, so she can have funds.’
She can use my money, he thinks, though not my love.
‘When I left the king –’ he says. He breaks off. Truth is, he had stood on the threshold and thought, those I want to tell are dead. I want to tell my good master Frescobaldi, and my friends in his kitchen. I want to tell the boy who, as I walked upstairs to the counting house, was scrubbing the stairs. I want to tell Anselma, and my wife and children, and the girl in Rome who gave me my knife. I want to sing Scaramella: Scaramella to the war is gone, bomboretta, bomboro. I want to tell Wolsey, and get his blessing. I want to tell Walter, and see his face. News will travel to Putney: Put-an-edge-on-it has been made an earl! He wants to tell the eel boy; he wishes he were alive, so he could go down there, dig him out of his drinking den, and pound it into his skull.
At Austin Friars, the watchdogs get an extra bone. The leopard an extra carcass. Anthony the jester goes about the house, his face solemn, ringing his silver bells.
On a fine spring day, his new style is proclaimed. The new secretaries are at work. Sir Call-Me-Risley reads the patents of creation that make him an earl. Sir Rafe Sadler proclaims him Lord Chamberlain.
When Marillac next comes to court, the ambassador sees him, starts, and goes the other way. He feels some sympathy: the ambassador tells his king what he wants to hear, and though he is across the sea he must guess at the irritable requirements of a sick man. They say François cannot ride half a mile these days. They say he is dying. But he has died so many times, in popular report. Like our king, he rises again.
Henry says, ‘Ambassador Marillac declares he can no longer transact business with Cremuel present. He believes you are a spy for the Emperor.’
‘That puts us in a difficulty,’ he says.
‘Not necessarily. I can see him alone.’
He bows. It has always been the king’s belief that prince speaks to prince, and common men crouch just within earshot, ready to scurry at command. Henry says, ‘We must mollify François. If he lives, he may make a new treaty with me. And the Emperor, too, I see we must begin to conciliate him.’
He hears the message. Work both sides of the bank, Cromwell. As we always have.
Sometimes, he says to Wriothesley, the best thing you can do is to pick up your papers and get yourself out.
From the French court, no reaction to his promotion: or none polite enough for the record. From the Imperial court, an equal silence. But congratulations from Eustache Chapuys, who waits in Flanders for Charles to send him back as ambassador: which he will do, Chapuys says, as soon as the rift with England is mended.
A rumour has taken hold in the city that Anna will be crowned at Whit. He does not counter it. It will spread abroad, and tend to calm. Dr Harst visits the queen, but what he draws from her is a mystery. Harst is useless, always pestering him with incomprehensible requests about protocol. He, the Earl of Essex, is busy, because Parliament will open and he has packed the schedule with legislation. The king expects him to raise taxes. The money from abbey lands is slow to come in; as he once had to explain to the cardinal, it is delicate work, to turn real property into hard cash.
He speaks in the Lords, not about taxes, but about God: setting forth the king’s intent, which is harmony. He feels he has never spoken so well, nor said so little.
After the first session, Master Secretary Rafe comes to him: ‘Richard Riche is not content. He thinks, with so many changes, he should have been promoted.’
To what? What better thing could a man be, than Master of Augmentations? Riche has his estate in Essex. He has received Bartholomew, one of the greatest of London priories. But Rafe says, ‘He has conceived a grudge, sir. Because you do not love him as you love Thomas Wyatt.’
‘Wyatt will soon be home,’ he says. It is perverse of Riche to raise a comparison. ‘It just shows …’ he says to Rafe; but he lets his sentence trail. It shows how unaccountable men are, what they harbour in their souls: which by no means shows on their faces.
Rafe says, ‘You remember your neighbour Stow? When he came with a complaint, saying you had stolen part of his garden?’
‘There was no trespass. Stow had his fence in the wrong place.’
‘We know that at Austin Friars. You said, I know where my boundaries are. But Stow went through the town bad-mouthing you. His family complains and everybody believes them.’
He reads the lesson that Rafe intends. He has stolen nothing from the Earl of Oxford’s family. But the Veres think they own the chamberlain’s post by long continuance in it, and they intended to hold it while the world endures.
When he meets Gardiner, the bishop says, ‘My congratulations, Cromwell.’
‘Essex,’ he says. ‘I am Thomas Essex now.’
‘You confounded the French,’ Gardiner says. ‘They were sure the Cleves debacle had finished you. And if not Cleves, then the heretics in Calais, claiming you for their own. Do you know there was a soothsayer called Calchas, who survived his predicted hour of death, and died of laughing?’
‘But then there was the poet Petrarch. He lay as one dead for the best part of a day. His people were praying for his soul. But just before the burial party was due, he sat up – and then he lived another thirty years. Thirty years, Stephen.’
Parliament assembles and the court is filling up, the biggest court in years. He sees Jane Rochford in conversation with Norfolk. They look earnest; her kinsman is showing her some deference, by God.
He traps her later, his tone teasing. ‘What was Uncle Norfolk telling you?’
‘Things convenient for me to know.’
She swings away from him, haughty, angry: useless. He thinks, I’ve lost her. When did that happen?
His son’s wife comes to him; ‘I bring news of needlework. I know your lordship is interested.’
He tilts his head: I’m listening.
‘I was bidden to do a piece of work. One of the maids could have done it, but it was handed to me out of malice. It was something of Jane’s. Jane the queen, my sister, it was her girdle book, her little prayers. I was told, take this and pick the initials out. I said,
I will not do it. I am Mistress Cromwell, not some servant.’
‘Lady Cromwell,’ he reminds her.
‘I should have said so, should I not? I forgot. My title is too new.’
She is on the brink of angry tears, and he would like to put his arms around her, but better not. Bess should not be stitching, unstitching; she could run a field camp, or direct a siege.
‘The next thing I see, Katherine Howard is wearing it at her waist. It is not the first gift she has had, that belonged to some lady better than she will ever be. The king wants to have her in his bed, to maul her about and see if he can do aught. And her people will say to her, do not gratify him, do not give way, do not so much as glance in his direction. I know.’ Her face is set. ‘We Seymours did it ourselves. We cannot complain – though we do. The Howards believe he might marry her. And who is to say he will not?’
He feels weary. ‘What does Anna say? She must know.’ He has seen her demeanour: sullen, listless. ‘She should give the king no cause to complain. If I were to advise her –’
‘But you do not. You don’t go near her.’
If he were to counsel Anna, it would be to patience. The dowager Katherine won the admiration of all, when she sat smiling by the king she supposed her husband, through hours of court ceremonies, hours which stretched into years. Never was she seen with tears on her cheeks, or an angry frown.
‘Yes,’ Bess says, ‘Katherine was a great pattern for womanhood. She died alone and friendless, did she not?’
On May Day, Richard Cromwell is to fight in the tournament at Greenwich, scheduled to fill five days with combat, spectacle and public rejoicing. He rides for the challengers, called the Gentlemen of England: among his team-mates, the gallant and handsome Thomas Seymour, and among his foes, the young Earl of Surrey, making his public debut in the lists.
Gregory no doubt will fight next year. For now he is a practice opponent. He has not Richard’s weight, but he has style and no fear, the best armour, the best horseflesh.
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 86