‘He said that a higher law governed this and all realms, and if
Parliament trespassed on God’s law …’
‘On the Pope’s law, he means – for he holds them the same, he
couldn’t deny that, could he? Why is he always examining his
conscience, if not to check day and night that it is in accord with
the church of Rome? That is his comfort, that is his guide. It
seems to me, if he plainly denies Parliament its capacity, he denies
the king his title. Which is treason. Still,’ he shrugs, ‘how far does
it take us? Can we show the denial was malicious? He will say, I
suppose, that it was just talk, to pass the time. That you were
putting cases, and that anything said in that wise cannot be held
against a man.’
‘A jury won’t understand that. They’ll take him to mean what
he said. After all, sir, he knew it wasn’t some students’ debate.’
‘True. You don’t hold those at the Tower.’
Riche offers the memorandum. ‘I have written it down faithfully to the best of my recollection.’
‘You don’t have a witness?’
‘They were in and out, packing up the books in a crate, he had
a lot of books. You cannot blame me for carelessness, sir, for how
was I to know he would talk to me at all?’
‘I don’t blame you.’ He sighs. ‘In fact, Purse, you are the apple
of my eye. You’ll stand behind this in court?’
Doubtful, Riche nods. ‘Tell me you will, Richard. Or tell me you
won’t. Let’s have it straight. Have the grace to say so now, if you
think your courage might fail. If we lose another trial, we can kiss
goodbye to our livelihoods. And all our work will be for nothing.’
‘You see, he couldn’t resist it, the chance to put me right,’
Riche says. ‘He will never let it drop, what I did as a boy. He uses
me to make his sermon on. Well, let him make his next sermon
on the block.’
The evening before Fisher is to die, he visits More. He takes a
strong guard with him, but he leaves them in the outer chamber and goes in alone. ‘I’ve got used to the blind drawn,’ More says,
almost cheerfully. ‘You don’t mind sitting in the twilight?’
‘You need not be afraid of the sun. There is none.’
‘Wolsey used to boast that he could change the weather.’ He
chuckles. ‘It’s good of you to visit me, Thomas, now that we have
no more to say. Or have we?’
‘The guards will come for Bishop Fisher early tomorrow. I am
afraid they will wake you.’
‘I should be a poor Christian if I could not keep vigil with
him.’ His smile has seeped away. ‘I hear the king has granted him
mercy as to the manner of his death.’
‘He being a very old man, and frail.’
More says, with tart pleasantness, ‘I’m doing my best, you
know. A man can only shrivel at his own rate.’
‘Listen.’ He reaches across the table, takes his hand, wrings it:
harder than he meant. My blacksmith’s grip, he thinks: he sees
More flinch, feels his fingers, the skin dry as paper over the
bones. ‘Listen. When you come before the court, throw yourself
at that instant on the king’s mercy.’
More says, wonderingly, ‘What good will that do me?’
‘He is not a cruel man. You know that.’
‘Do I? He used not to be. He had a sweet disposition. But then
he changed the company he kept.’
‘He is susceptible always to a plea for mercy. I do not say he
will let you live, the oath unsworn. But he may grant you the
same mercy as Fisher.’
‘It is not so important, what happens to the body. I have led in
some ways a blessed life. God has been good and not tested me.
Now he does I cannot fail him. I have been vigilant over my
heart, and I have not always liked what I have found there. If it
comes into the hands of the hangman at the last, so be it. It will
be in God’s hands soon enough.’
‘Will you think me sentimental, if I say I do not want to see
you butchered?’ No reply. ‘Are you not afraid of the pain?’ ‘Oh yes, I am very much afraid, I am not a bold and robust
man such as yourself, I cannot help but rehearse it in my mind.
But I will only feel it for a moment, and God will not let me
remember it afterwards.’
‘I am glad I am not like you.’
‘Undoubtedly. Or you would be sitting here.’
‘I mean, my mind fixed on the next world. I realise you see no
prospect of improving this one.’
‘And you do?’
Almost a flippant question. A handful of hail smacks itself
against the window. It startles them both; he gets up, restless.
He would rather know what’s outside, see the summer in its sad
blowing wreckage, than cower behind the blind and wonder
what the damage is. ‘I once had every hope,’ he says. ‘The world
corrupts me, I think. Or perhaps it’s just the weather. It pulls me
down and makes me think like you, that one should shrink
inside, down and down to a little point of light, preserving one’s
solitary soul like a flame under a glass. The spectacles of pain
and disgrace I see around me, the ignorance, the unthinking
vice, the poverty and the lack of hope, and oh, the rain – the rain
that falls on England and rots the grain, puts out the light in a
man’s eye and the light of learning too, for who can reason if
Oxford is a giant puddle and Cambridge is washing away downstream, and who will enforce the laws if the judges are swimming for their lives? Last week the people were rioting in York.
Why would they not, with wheat so scarce, and twice the price
of last year? I must stir up the justices to make examples, I
suppose, otherwise the whole of the north will be out with billhooks and pikes, and who will they slaughter but each other? I
truly believe I should be a better man if the weather were better.
I should be a better man if I lived in a commonwealth where the
sun shone and the citizens were rich and free. If only that were
true, Master More, you wouldn’t have to pray for me nearly as
hard as you do. ‘How you can talk,’ More says. Words, words, just words. ‘I
do, of course, pray for you. I pray with all my heart that you will
see that you are misled. When we meet in Heaven, as I hope we
will, all our differences will be forgot. But for now, we cannot
wish them away. Your task is to kill me. Mine is to keep alive. It
is my role and my duty. All I own is the ground I stand on, and
that ground is Thomas More. If you want it you will have to take
it from me. You cannot reasonably believe I will yield it.’
‘You will want pen and paper to write out your defence. I will
grant you that.’
‘You never give up trying, do you? No, Master Secretary, my
defence is up here,’ he taps his forehead, ‘where it will stay safe
from you.’
How strange the room is, how empty, without More’s books:
it is filling with shadows. ‘Martin, a candle,’ he calls.
‘Will you be here tomorrow? For the bishop?’
He nods. Though he will not witness the moment of Fisher’s
death. The protocol is that the spectators bow their knee and
doff their hats to mark the passing of the soul.
Martin brings a pricket candle. ‘Anything else?’ They pause
while he sets it down. When he is gone, they still pause: the prisoner sits hunched over, looking into the flame. How does he
know if More has begun on a silence, or on preparation for
speech? There is a silence which precedes speech, there is a silence
which is instead of speech. One need not break it with a statement, one can break it with a hesitation: if … as it may be … if it
were possible … He says, ‘I would have left you, you know. To
live out your life. To repent of your butcheries. If I were king.’
The light fades. It is as if the prisoner has withdrawn himself
from the room, leaving barely a shape where he should be. A
draught pulls at the candle flame. The bare table between them,
clear now of More’s driven scribblings, has taken on the aspect of
an altar; and what is an altar for, but a sacrifice? More breaks his
silence at last: ‘If, at the end and after I am tried, if the king does not grant, if the full rigour of the penalty … Thomas, how is it
done? You would think when a man’s belly were slashed open he
would die, with a great effusion of blood, but it seems it is not so
… Do they have some special implement, that they use to pith
him while he is alive?’
‘I am sorry you should think me expert.’
But had he not told Norfolk, as good as told him, that he had
pulled out a man’s heart?
He says, ‘It is the executioner’s mystery. It is kept secret, to
keep us in awe.’
‘Let me be killed cleanly. I ask nothing, but I ask that.’
Swaying on his stool, he is seized, between one heartbeat and the
next, in the grip of bodily agitation; he cries out, shudders from
head to foot. His hand beats, weakly, at the clean tabletop; and
when he leaves him, ‘Martin, go in, give him some wine’ – he is
still crying out, shuddering, beating the table.
The next time he sees him will be in Westminster Hall.
On the day of the trial, rivers breach their banks; the Thames
itself rises, bubbling like some river in Hell, and washes its
flotsam over the quays.
It’s England against Rome, he says. The living against the dead.
Norfolk will preside. He tells him how it will be. The early
counts in the indictment will be thrown out: they concern
sundry words spoken, at sundry times, about the act and the
oath, and More’s treasonable conspiracy with Fisher – letters
went between the two of them, but it seems those letters are now
destroyed. ‘Then on the fourth count, we will hear the evidence
of the Solicitor General. Now, Your Grace, this will divert More,
because he cannot see young Riche without working himself into
a fit about his derelictions when he was a boy –’ The duke raises
an eyebrow. ‘Drinking. Fighting. Women. Dice.’
Norfolk rubs his bristly chin. ‘I have noticed, a soft-looking
lad like that, he always does fight. To make a point, you see. Whereas we damned slab-faced old bruisers who are born with
our armour on, there’s no point we need to make.’
‘Quite,’ he says. ‘We are the most pacific of men. My lord,
please attend now. We don’t want another mistake like Dacre.
We would hardly survive it. The early counts will be thrown out.
At the next, the jury will look alert. And I have given you a handsome jury.’
More will face his peers; Londoners, the merchants of the
livery companies. They are experienced men, with all the city’s
prejudices. They have seen enough, as all Londoners have, of the
church’s rapacity and arrogance, and they do not take kindly to
being told they are unfit to read the scriptures in their own
tongue. They are men who know More and have known him
these twenty years. They know how he widowed Lucy Petyt.
They know how he wrecked Humphrey Monmouth’s business,
because Tyndale had been a guest at his house. They know how
he has set spies in their households, among their apprentices
whom they treat as sons, among the servants so familiar and
homely that they hear every night their master’s bedside prayers.
One name makes Audley hesitate: ‘John Parnell? It might be
taken wrong. You know he has been after More since he gave
judgment against him in Chancery –’
‘I know the case. More botched it, he didn’t read the papers,
too busy writing a billet-doux to Erasmus, or locking some poor
Christian soul in his stocks at Chelsea. What do you want,
Audley, do you want me to go to Wales for a jury, or up to
Cumberland, or somewhere they think better of More? I must
make do with London men, and unless I swear in a jury of newborns, I cannot wipe their memories clear.’
Audley shakes his head. ‘I don’t know, Cromwell.’
‘Oh, he’s a sharp fellow,’ the duke says. ‘When Wolsey came
down, I said, mark him, he’s a sharp fellow. You’d have to get up
early in the morning to be ahead of him.