Gardiner puts his fingertips together. ‘Add the braggarts in with the rest, and your household falls little short of three thousand persons. It is the household of a prince. Your livery is seen not only through London, but through England.’
‘Three thousand? With that number I would be bankrupt. Look, every man in England has applied to me these seven years, to take his son into my service. I take who I can, and bring them up in learning and good manners. For the most part their fathers pay their keep, so you cannot say I employ them.’
‘You speak as if they were all meek scribblers,’ Gardiner says. ‘But it is well-known that you take in runaway apprentices, roisterers, ruffians …’
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘roaring boys such as Richard Riche was once, in days he would rather forget. I do not deny I give a second life to those who have the enterprise to knock at my gates.’ He looks at Riche. ‘Any chancer has his chance with me.’
‘You feed the poor at your gates every day,’ Norfolk says.
‘It is what great men do.’
‘You think they will rise in your support, a pauper army. Well, they will not, sir. They will not favour a shearsman, such as you once were.’ The duke affects to shiver. ‘Great man, you call yourself! St Jude protect me!’
Riche selects a paper from his file. ‘I have here the inventories from Austin Friars. You owned some three hundred handguns, four hundred pikes, near eight hundred bows, and halberds and harness for, as my lord Norfolk says, an army. I have heard you say, and Wriothesley will bear me out, that you had a bodyguard of three hundred that would come to your whistle, day or night.’
‘When the northern rebels were up,’ he says, ‘I was ashamed I could not turn out enough men of my own. So I did what any loyal subject would do, if he had means. I augmented my resources.’
‘Oh, you prate of your loyalty,’ Norfolk says. ‘When you would have sold the king to heretics! When you would have sold Calais to foul sacramentaries –’
‘I?’ he says. ‘Sold Calais? Look to the Lisles for that. It is to them and the Poles you should look for treason. Not to me, who owes everything to the king – but to those who think it their natural right to sweep him aside. To those who think his family’s rule a mere interruption to their own.’
Gardiner says, ‘My lord Norfolk, shall we come to Calais another day?’
He can see the bishop’s feet under the board, barely restraining themselves from kicking the duke’s shins. Presumably they are still taking testimony from Lord Lisle, and have not decided into what form of lie they will bend it.
Richard Riche taps his papers. ‘My lord bishop, I have such matter here …’
Gardiner stands up. ‘Save it.’
He, Cromwell, wants to hold Gardiner back, reason with him. Winchester knows this is silly stuff – rings, sorcerers, Valentines – and he is ashamed, no doubt, of what has come out of his own mouth. But Gardiner sweeps out, Norfolk bustling after: Riche beckons the clerk to help him with his files. ‘I wish you a pleasant evening, my lord,’ he says: as if they were at home at Austin Friars.
Mr Wriothesley looks after them. He stands up; he seems to need support, and clings to the trestle top. ‘Sir –’
‘Save your breath.’
‘When I was in Brussels, a hostage, I hear you did not lift a finger for me.’
‘That is not true.’
‘You said that if they held me in prison in Vilvoorde, you could not get me out.’
‘No more could I.’
‘That scoundrel Harry Phillips – you set me and others to entrap him, when you yourself were using him as your agent and spy.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Bishop Gardiner. You let me suffer because of Phillips. I took him in good faith to my lodging, and he robbed me, and made me look a fool.’
‘I never made use of Phillips,’ he says. ‘Truly. He has always been too slippery for me.’
‘Sir, Norfolk wants them to hang you at Tyburn, like a common thief. And because you are a traitor he wants them to pull your bowels out. He wants you to suffer the most painful death the law affords. He is set on it.’
‘You seem set on it yourself.’
‘No, sir. You understand how it is with me. I can do no other than I do, I assure you. But I want to see you treated with honour. If need be I shall petition the king.’
‘Christ, Call-Me,’ he says, ‘stand up straight. How do you think you will fare with Henry these next few years, if you are cringing and whining in the presence of a man who, you say yourself, is doomed?’
‘I trust not, sir.’ His voice is unsteady. ‘The king gives you permission to write to him. Do it tonight.’
Gardiner stands in the doorway. ‘Wriothesley?’
Call-Me tries to pick up his papers, but a letter drops out and he has to kneel on the floor to fish it from under the table. It has the Courtenay seal, and he – Essex– wants to trap it with his foot and make Call-Me scrap for it. But he thinks, what’s the point? He puts out a hand to help the young man to his feet. ‘Take him,’ he says to Gardiner. ‘He’s all yours.’
Late afternoon, Rafe comes. He hears his voice and his heart leaps. He thinks, if Henry changes his mind, it is Rafe he will send.
But he knows from the boy’s face there is no good news. ‘And yet he permits you to visit me,’ he says. ‘Is that not a hopeful sign?’
‘He is afraid you might get out,’ Rafe says. ‘He has set a strong guard. But he does not think I have a martial character.’
‘What does he think I might do to him, if I did get out?’
‘Here is Cranmer’s letter,’ Rafe says. ‘I will wait.’
He walks to the window with it; he has not his spectacles, he needs some brought in. The paper seems to shake as he unfolds it. Cranmer, having heard of his treason, expresses himself both sorrowful and amazed: he that was so advanced by your Majesty: he whose surety was only by your Majesty: he who loved your Majesty, as I ever thought, no less than God … he that cared for no man’s displeasure to serve your Majesty: he that was such a servant, in my judgement, in wisdom, diligence, faithfulness and experience, as no prince in this realm ever had … I loved him as my friend, for so I took him to be; but I chiefly loved him for the love which I thought I saw him bear ever towards your grace …
… but now …
He looks up. ‘Now it comes … on the one hand, on the other …’
… but now, if he be a traitor, I am sorry that I ever loved or trusted him … but yet again I am very sorrowful …
He folds the paper. Fear seeps from the fold. He says, ‘You must understand, Rafe, Cranmer and I agreed long ago, that if one of us looked set to go down, the other would save himself.’
‘That may be, sir. But I think he should have got himself to the king’s presence. If the archbishop had been in peril of his life, would you have stood by? I don’t think you would.’
‘Don’t make me answer questions. It’s been questions all day. Cranmer does what is in him. It is all any man can do. Rafe, what happened to my picture? That Hans made?’
‘Helen took it, sir. She has it safe.’
‘Where is The Book Called Henry?’
‘We burned it, sir. I took my people to your house before Wriothesley came there. We burned a great many things, and raked the ashes into the garden.’
‘Absence speaks.’
‘But not clearly,’ Rafe says. ‘I do not believe they can bring a single substantial charge against you. John Wallop has written from France, with what he can dredge up. They say it was the common talk there that you meant to make yourself king.’ Rafe bows his head. ‘François sent a letter, and the king had me English it and read it out to the council. I myself.’
‘It was a test. I hope you passed.’
‘François says, now Cromwell is gone we can be friends again. I
am clear in my own mind that this was what he broached with Norfolk in February. And therefore it is no wonder he and Winchester have been so bold. All their conferences behind the hand, their dinners and their masques … and of course they have the girl, parading her where the king cannot help but see her.’
‘Rafe,’ he says, ‘would you bring me some more books? Petrarch, his Remedies for Fortune. Thomas Lupset, The Way of Dying Well.’
Lupset was tutor to the cardinal’s son. He wrote not a moment too soon, for he was dead at thirty-five.
Rafe says, ‘Do not yield. Do not resign yourself, I beg you. You know the king is impulsive …’
‘Is he? We always say so.’ But perhaps his caprices are designed to keep us working and keep us hoping. Anne Boleyn thought till her last moment that he would change his mind. She died incredulous.
When Rafe goes out he turns back to Cranmer’s letter. He sees the question that his archbishop leaves for Henry: Who will your Grace trust thereafter, if you cannot trust him?
That evening he sits down to write to the king. The late afternoon had brought Fitzwilliam, with a fresh file which he ran through briskly: moving on to new ground, with conversations alleged, confederacies, conspiracies and – a strange one this – breaching the king’s confidence by talking about his futile nights with the queen. ‘But everybody knew,’ he had said, baffled. ‘And he gave his permission for me to talk to you, and to people in Anna’s household.’
‘He doesn’t recall that now,’ Fitzwilliam said. ‘He thinks you have made him a laughing stock.’
Fitzwilliam and his hangers-on had pestered him for half an hour. Not once did his fellow councillor look him in the face till at last they took themselves out for their supper.
Christophe sets out ink and paper. He can write by nature’s light; it is dusk, but a window gives onto the garden. What can he say? Once Henry had told him, ‘You were born to understand me.’ That understanding has broken down. He has sorely offended, and all he can do is argue that whatever his offence, he has not committed it wilfully, or out of malice: that he trusts God will reveal the truth. He begins with the usual phrases expressing his lowliness: one cannot do too much for Henry in this way, or at least, a prisoner cannot. Prostrate at the feet of your most excellent Majesty, I have heard your pleasure … that I should write such things as I thought meet concerning my miserable state …
He thinks, I have never limited my desires. Just as I have never slacked my labours, so I have never said, ‘Enough, I am now rewarded.’
Mine accusers your Grace knoweth, God forgive them. For as I ever had love to your honour, person, life, prosperity, health, wealth, joy and comfort, and also your most dear and most entirely beloved son, the Prince his Grace, and your proceedings, God so help me in this mine adversity, and confound me if ever I thought the contrary.
They are rewriting my life, he thinks. They represent that all my obedience has been outward obedience, and all these years in secret I have been creeping closer to Henry’s enemies – such as his daughter, my supposed bride. Perhaps I should have told him the truth about Mary. But I will spare her now. I cannot help my own daughter, I can only help the king’s.
What labours, pains and travails I have taken according to my most bounden duty God also knoweth. For if it were in my power, as it is in God’s, to make your Majesty to live ever young and prosperous, God knoweth I would. If it had been or were in my power to make you so rich as ye might enrich all men, God help me, I would do it. If it had been or were in my power to make your Majesty so puissant as all the world should be compelled to obey you, Christ he knoweth, I would.
He thinks, ten years I have had my soul flattened and pressed till it’s not the thickness of paper. Henry has ground and ground me in the mill of his desires, and now I am fined down to dust I am no more use to him, I am powder in the wind. Princes hate those to whom they have incurred debts.
For your Majesty has been most bountiful to me, and more like a dear father (your Majesty not offended) than a master.
Certain threats his father used to make ring in his ears. I’ll pound you to paste, boy, I’ll flatten you, I’ll knock you into the middle of next week.
I have committed my soul my body and goods at your Majesty’s pleasure …
Well, Henry knows that. I have nothing, that does not come from him. And no hope, but in his mercy and God’s.
Sir, as to your common wealth I have, after my wit, power and knowledge, travailed therein, having had no respect to persons (your Majesty only excepted) … but that I have done any injustice or wrong wilfully, I trust God shall bear me witness, and the world not able justly to accuse me …
It is not only kings who cannot be grateful. The fortunes he has made, the patronage he has dispensed: these count against him now, because favours that cannot be repaid eat away at the soul. Men scorn to live under an obligation. They would rather be perjurers, and sell their friends.
Brother Martin says, when you think of death, cast out fear. But perhaps that advice is easier to take if you expect to die in your bed, with a priest buzzing in your ear. Gardiner will press for heresy charges and burn him if he can. He knows about that: the green wood, the vagrant wind, and the dogs of London whimpering at the smell.
The king might grant the axe. That is the best he can hope for, unless. There is always unless. Erasmus says, ‘No man is to be despaired of, so long as the breath is in him.’
He signs off: Written with the quaking hand and most sorrowful heart of your most sorrowful subject and most humble servant and prisoner, this Saturday at your Tower of London.
He dries the ink. One cannot help but lie. His hand is not notably quaking. But it is true his heart is sorrowful. He sits with his hand to his chest, rubbing it a little. ‘Christophe,’ he says, ‘fetch in my supper. What am I having?’
‘Thank Christ! I thought you had lost your appetite. We have strawberries and cream. And the Italian merchants have sent you their sympathy and a cheese.’
The merchant Antonio Bonvisi used to send food to Thomas More, dishes fragrant with spice. But More would push them aside, and say to his servant, ‘John, can you find me a milk pudding?’
The Duke of Urbino, Federigo di Montefeltro, was asked what it took to rule a state. ‘Essere umano,’ he said: to be human. He wonders if Henry will reach the standard.
There is no reply to his letter. No direct reply, at least. Beginning early, in tender summer dawns, the interrogations proceed into the hot afternoons, when the broad light in the chamber grows dusty. Sometimes the sessions are quiet and industrious, sometimes they are more like exchanges of insults than any proceeding of state. Like Fitzwilliam, Call-Me cannot look at him. He says, ‘He did this,’ and ‘He did that,’ as if Thomas Essex were not in the room. When Gardiner graces them with his presence he is grave, dry, judicious, careful to suppress the bubbling anticipation he must feel.
The clerk Gwyn sneaks back a time or two. Norfolk does not notice him because a clerk is beneath his notice, unless he offends. The clerk entertains him – the prisoner – by sometimes casting up a glance to Heaven, or turning down his mouth in disbelief at what he must record. Till Riche bursts out, ‘I am not content with this clerk. He keeps looking at the prisoner.’
‘So do you keep looking at me,’ he says. ‘I am not content with you, Richard Riche. You speak as if I have been a traitor all the years you have known me. Where has your evidence been till now? Did it fall out through a hole in your pocket?’
Riche says, ‘It is no small thing, to indict a man so close to the king. I sought guidance. I prayed about it.’
‘And your prayers were answered?’
Riche says coldly, ‘Oh, yes.’
Once again Gwyn packs up his penknives and quills without demur, though not without a backward glance. Another clerk comes in and ahems over how to continue, until Norfolk snarls at him to start anywhere
. In this way the hours pass, marked off by the bells from St Peter ad Vincula and from the city outside the walls. The questions never make more sense than they did on the first day, nor does the picture of his life ever reflect the reality as he sees it. The mirror presents an alien face, eyes askew, mouth gaping. Lord Montague, and Exeter, and Nicholas Carew suffered this estrangement from self; and Norris and George Boleyn before them. Montague had said, ‘The king never made a man but he destroyed him again.’ Why should Cromwell be an exception?
Florence made me, he thinks. London unmade me. In Florence the bell called Leone announces the dawn even to the blind. Then rings Podestà, then Popolo. At Terce, when the law courts open, Leone and Montarina summon litigants and advocates to their business.
When he was an infant, his sister Kat used to tell him the bells made the time. When the hour strikes, and the music shivers in the air, you have the best of it; and what’s left is like a sucked plumstone on the side of a plate.
Lord Audley shows his face: shifty, ashamed. I created you, Audley, he thinks. I promoted you above your deserts, to have a compliant chancellor: and you have grown rich. ‘I thought you were with me, my lord. You always posed as valiant for the gospel, but I think you were only valiant for my favour. You swore to be my friend for life.’ He adds, ‘I have it in writing.’
Fitzwilliam absents himself. Perhaps he has said to the king, I know Crumb is no traitor, I cannot do it?
‘He is busy,’ Wriothesley says.
Riche says, ‘He is appointed Lord Privy Seal in your place.’
Norfolk says, ‘There is more matter than your arrest, for trusted men to deal with. There are more men in this realm, than Cromwell.’
‘But none so necessary to the commonweal,’ he says. ‘I am surprised your son Surrey is not here to gloat.’
He thinks, if they let that spider in, I shall put my boot heel on him.
He is suspicious of Gardiner’s absence: what is he working at? Charles Brandon comes in, and confirms that Cromwell said that if he were king he would spend more time in Woking. He remembers another occasion: ‘The king gave Crumb a ring from his own finger. And Crumb said, “It fits me exactly, it needs no adjustment.”’
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 91