Who can say he will be a faithful husband? Will you?’
‘I may not get the chance.’
‘On the contrary, I have a wife for you. Thomas Murfyn’s girl?
A Lord Mayor’s daughter is not a bad prospect. And your
fortune will more than match hers, I will make sure of that. And
Frances likes you. I know because I have asked her.’
‘You have asked my wife to marry me?’
‘Since I was dining there yesterday – no point in delay, was
there?’
‘Not really.’ Richard laughs. He stretches back in his chair.
His body – his capable, admirable body, which has impressed the
king so much – is rinsed with relief. ‘Frances. Good. I like
Frances.’
Mercy approves. He cannot think how she would have taken
to Lady Carey; he had not broached the topic with the women.
She says, ‘Don’t leave it too long to make a match for Gregory.
He is very young, I know. But some men never grow up until
they have a son of their own.’
He hasn’t thought about it, but it might be true. In that case,
there’s hope for the kingdom of England.
Two days later he is back at the Tower. The time goes quickly
between Easter and Whit, when Anne will be crowned. He
inspects her new apartments and orders in braziers to help dry
out the plaster. He wants to get on with the frescoes – he wishes
Hans would come down, but he is painting de Dinteville and
says he needs to push on with it, as the ambassador is petitioning
Francis for his recall, a whining letter on every boat. For the new
queen we are not going to have those hunting scenes you see
painted everywhere, or grim virgin saints with the instruments of
their torture, but goddesses, doves, white falcons, canopies of
green leaves. In the distance, cities seated on the hills: in the foreground, temples, groves, fallen columns and hot blue skies delineated, as within a frame, by borders of Vitruvian colours,
quicksilver and cinnabar, burnt ochre, malachite, indigo and purple. He unrolls the sketches the craftsmen have made.
Minerva’s owl spreads her wings across a panel. A barefoot
Diana fits an arrow to her bow. A white doe watches her from
the trees. He scribbles a direction to the overseer: Arrow to be
picked out in gold. All goddesses have dark eyes. Like a wingtip
from the dark, dread brushes him: what if Anne dies? Henry will
want another woman. He will bring her to these rooms. Her eyes
may be blue. We will have to scour away the faces and paint them
again, against the same cities, the same violet hills.
Outside he stops to watch a fight. A stonemason and the
bricklayer’s gaffer are swiping at each other with battens. He
stands in the ring with the trowel men. ‘What’s it about?’
‘Nuffing. Stone men have to fight brick men.’
‘Like Lancaster and York?’
‘Like that.’
‘Have you ever heard of the field called Towton? The king
tells me more than twenty thousand Englishmen died.’
The man gapes at him. ‘Who were they fighting?’
‘Each other.’
It was Palm Sunday, the year 1461. The armies of two kings
met in the driving snow. King Edward the king’s grandfather was
the winner, if you can say there was a winner at all. Corpses made
a bobbing bridge across the river. Uncounted numbers crawled
away, rolled and tumbled in their own blood: some blinded,
some disfigured, some maimed for life.
The child in Anne’s womb is the guarantee of no more civil
war. He is the beginning, the start of something, the promise of
another country.
He walks into the fight. He bellows at them to stop. He gives
them both a push and they bowl over backwards: two crumbly
Englishmen, snappable bones, chalky teeth. Victors of Agincourt. He’s glad Chapuys isn’t there to see. The trees are in full leaf when he rides into Bedfordshire, with a
small train on unofficial business. Christophe rides beside him
and pesters him: you have said you will tell me who is Cicero,
and who is Reginald Pole.
‘Cicero was a Roman.’
‘A general?’
‘No, he left that to others. As I, for example, might leave it to
Norfolk.’
‘Oh, Norferk.’ Christophe subjects the duke to his peculiar
pronunciation. ‘He is one who pisses on your shadow.’
‘Dear God, Christophe! I’ve heard of spitting on someone’s
shadow.’
‘Yes, but we speak of Norferk. And Cicero?’
‘We lawyers try to memorise all his speeches. If any man were
walking around today with all of Cicero’s wisdom in his head he
would be …’ He would be what? ‘Cicero would be on the king’s
side,’ he says.
Christophe is not much impressed. ‘Pole, he is a general?’
‘A priest. That is not quite true … He has offices in the church,
but he has not been ordained.’
‘Why not?’
‘No doubt so he can marry. It is his blood that makes him
dangerous. He is a Plantagenet. His brothers are here in this
kingdom under our eye. But Reginald is abroad and we are afraid
he is plotting with the Emperor.’
‘Send one to kill him. I will go.’
‘No, Christophe, I need you to stop the rain spoiling my
hats.’
‘As you wish.’ Christophe shrugs. ‘But I will kill a Pole when
you require it, it will be my pleasure.’
The manor at Ampthill, once fortified, has airy towers and a
splendid gatehouse. It stands on a hill with views over wooded
countryside; it is a pleasant seat, the kind of house you’d visit
after an illness to get your strength back. It was built with money gained in the French wars, in the days when the English used to
win them.
To accord with Katherine’s new status as Dowager Princess
of Wales, Henry has trimmed her household, but still she is
surrounded by chaplains and confessors, by household officers
each with their own train of menials, by butlers and carvers,
physicians, cooks, scullions, maltsters, harpers, lutenists,
poultry keepers, gardeners, laundresses, apothecaries, and an
entourage of wardrobe ladies, bedchamber ladies and their
maids. But when he is ushered in she nods to her attendants to
withdraw. No one had told her to expect him, but she must
have spies on the road. Hence her nonchalant parade of occupation: a prayer book in her lap, and some sewing. He kneels to
her, nods towards these encumbrances. ‘Surely, madam, one or
the other?’
‘So, English today? Get up, Cromwell. We will not waste our
time, as at our last interview, selecting which language to use.
Because nowadays you are such a busy man.’
Formalities over, she says, ‘First thing. I shall not attend your
court at Dunstable. That is what you have come to find out, is it
not? I do not recognise this court. My case is at Rome, awaiting
the attention of the Holy Father.’
‘Slow, isn’t he?’ He gives her a puzzled smile.
‘I will wait.’
‘But the king wishes to settle his affairs.’
‘He has a man who will do it. I do not call him an archbishop.’
‘Clement issued the bulls.’
‘Clement was misled. Dr Cranmer is a heretic.’
‘Perhaps you think the king is a heretic?’
‘No. Only a schismatic.’
‘If a general council of the church were called, His Majesty
would submit to its judgment.’
‘It will be too late, if he is excommunicate, and put outside the
church.’ ‘We all hope – I am sure you do, madam – that day will never
come.’
‘Nulla salus extra ecclesiam. Outside the church there is no salvation. Even kings come to judgment. Henry knows it, and is afraid.’
‘Madam, give way to him. For the present. Tomorrow, who
knows? Do not cut off every chance of rapprochement.’
‘I hear Thomas Boleyn’s daughter is having a child.’
‘Indeed, but …’
Katherine, above anyone, should know that guarantees
nothing. She takes his meaning; thinks about it; nods. ‘I see
circumstances in which he might turn back to me. I have had
much opportunity to study that lady’s character, and she is
neither patient nor kind.’
It doesn’t matter; she only has to be lucky. ‘In the event they
have no children, you should think of your daughter Lady Mary.
Conciliate him, madam. He may confirm her as his heir. And if
you will give way, he will offer you every honour, and a great
estate.’
‘A great estate!’ Katherine stands up. Her sewing slides from
her skirts, the prayer book hits the floor with a fat leathery
thump, and her silver thimble goes skittering across the boards
and rolls into a corner. ‘Before you make me any more preposterous offers, Master Cromwell, let me offer you a chapter from
my history. After my lord Arthur died, I passed five years in
poverty. I could not pay my servants. We bought in the cheapest
food we could find, coarse food, stale food, yesterday’s fish – any
small merchant kept a better table than the daughter of Spain.
The late King Henry would not let me go back to my father
because he said he was owed money – he haggled over me like
one of the doorstep women who sold us bad eggs. I put my faith
in God, I did not despair, but I tasted the depth of humiliation.’
‘So why would you want to taste it again?’
Face to face. They glare at each other. ‘Assuming,’ he says,
‘humiliation is all the king intends. ‘Say it plainly.’
‘If you are found out in treason the law will take its course
with you, as if you were any other subject. Your nephew is
threatening to invade us in your name.’
‘That will not happen. Not in my name.’
‘That is what I say, madam.’ He softens his tone. ‘I say the
Emperor is busy with the Turks, he is not so fond of his aunt –
saving your presence – that he will raise another army. But others
say, oh, be quiet, Cromwell, what do you know? They say we
must fortify our harbours, we must raise troops, we must put the
country in a state of alert. Chapuys, as you know, continually
agitates with Charles to blockade our ports and impound our
goods and our merchant ships abroad. He urges war in every
dispatch.’
‘I have no knowledge of what Chapuys puts in his dispatches.’
It is a lie so staggering that he has to admire it. Having delivered it, Katherine seems weakened; she sinks down again into
her chair, and before he can do it for her she wearily bends from
the waist to pick up her sewing; her fingers are swollen, and
bending seems to leave her breathless. She sits for a moment,
recovering herself, and when she speaks again she is calm, deliberate. ‘Master Cromwell, I know I have failed you. That is to
say, I have failed your country, which by now is my country
too. The king was a good husband to me, but I could not do that
which is most necessary for a wife to do. Nevertheless, I was, I
am, a wife – you see, do you, that it is impossible for me to
believe that for twenty years I was a harlot? Now the truth is, I
have brought England little good, but I would be loath to bring
her any harm.’
‘But you do, madam. You may not will it, but the harm is
done.’
‘England is not served by a lie.’
‘That is what Dr Cranmer thinks. So he will annul your
marriage, whether you come to the court or not. ‘Dr Cranmer will be excommunicated too. Does it not cause
him a qualm? Is he so lost to everything?’
‘This archbishop is the best guardian of the church, madam,
that we have seen in many centuries.’ He thinks of what Bainham
said, before they burned him; in England there have been eight
hundred years of mystification, just six years of truth and light;
six years, since the gospel in English began to come into the
kingdom. ‘Cranmer is no heretic. He believes as the king
believes. He will reform what needs reformation, that is all.’
‘I know where this will end. You will take the church’s lands
and give them to the king.’ She laughs. ‘Oh, you are silent? You
will. You mean to do it.’ She sounds almost light-hearted, as
people do sometimes when they’re told they’re dying. ‘Master
Cromwell, you may assure the king I will not bring an army
against him. Tell him I pray for him daily. Some people, those
who do not know him as I do, they say, “Oh, he will work his
will, he will have his desire at any price.” But I know that he
needs to be on the side of the light. He is not a man like you, who
just packs up his sins in his saddlebags and carries them from
country to country, and when they grow too heavy whistles up a
mule or two, and soon commands a train of them and a troop of
muleteers. Henry may err, but he needs to be forgiven. I therefore believe, and will continue to believe, that he will turn out of
this path of error, in order to be at peace with himself. And peace
is what we all wish for, I am sure.’
‘What a placid end you make, madam. “Peace is what we all
wish for.” Like an abbess. You are quite sure by the way that you
would not think of becoming an abbess?’
A smile. Quite a broad smile. ‘I shall be sorry if I don’t see you
again. You are so much quicker in conversation than the dukes.’
‘The dukes will be back.’
‘I am braced. Is there news of my lady Suffolk?’
‘The king says she is dying. Brandon has no heart for
anything. I can well believe it,’ she murmurs. ‘Her income as dowager
queen of France dies with her, and that is the greater part of his
revenue. Still, no doubt you will arrange him a loan, at some iniquitous rate of interest.’ She looks up. ‘My daughter will be curious
to know I have seen you. She believes you were kind to her.’
He only remembers giving her a stool to sit on. Her life must
be bleak, if she remembers that.
‘Properly, she should have remained standing, awaiting a sign
from me.’
Her own pain-racked little daughter. She may smile, but she
doesn’t yield an inch. Julius Caesar would have had more
compunction. Hannibal.
‘Tell me,’ she says, testing the ground. ‘The king would read a
letter from me?’
Henry has taken to tearing her letters up unread, or burning
them. He says they disgust him with their expressions of love.
He does not have it in him to tell her this. ‘Then rest for an hour,’
she says, ‘while I write it. Unless you will stay a night with us? I
should be glad of company at supper.’
‘Thank you, but I must start back, the council meets tomorrow. Besides, if I stayed, where would I put my mules? Not to
mention my team of drivers.’
‘Oh, the stables are half-empty. The king makes sure I am kept
short of mounts. He thinks that I will give my household the slip
and ride to the coast and escape on a ship to Flanders.’
‘And will you?’
He has retrieved her thimble; he hands it back; she bounces it
in her hand as if it were a die and she were ready to cast it.
‘No. I shall stay here. Or go where I am sent. As the king wills.
As a wife should.’
Until the excommunication, he thinks. That will free you
from all bonds, as wife, as subject. ‘This is yours too,’ he says. He
opens his palm; in it a needle, tip towards her. The word is about town that Thomas More has fallen into
poverty. He laughs about it with Master Secretary Gardiner.
‘Alice was a rich widow when he married her,’ Gardiner says.
‘And he has land of his own; how can he be poor? And the
daughters, he’s married them well.’
‘And he still has his pension from the king.’ He is sifting
through paperwork for Stephen, who is preparing to appear as
leading counsel for Henry at Dunstable. He has filed away all the
depositions from the Blackfriars hearings, which seem to have
happened in another era.
‘Angels defend us,’ Gardiner says, ‘is there anything you don’t
file?’
‘If we keep on to the bottom of this chest I’ll find your father’s
love letters to your mother.’ He blows dust off the last batch.
‘There you are.’ The papers hit the table. ‘Stephen, what can we
do for John Frith? He was your pupil at Cambridge. Don’t
abandon him.’
But Gardiner shakes his head and busies himself with the
documents, leafing through them, humming under his breath,
exclaiming ‘Well, who’d have known!’ and ‘Here’s a nice point!’
He gets a boat down to Chelsea. The ex-Chancellor is at ease
in his parlour, daughter Margaret translating from the Greek in a
drone barely audible; as he approaches, he hears him pick her up
on some error. ‘Leave us, daughter,’ More says, when he sees
him. ‘I won’t have you in this devil’s company.’ But Margaret
looks up and smiles, and More rises from his chair, a little stiff as
if his back is bad, and offers a hand.
It is Reginald Pole, lying in Italy, who says he is a devil. The
point is, he means it; it’s not an image with him, as in a fable, but
something he takes to be true, as he takes the gospel to be true.
‘Well,’ he says. ‘We hear you can’t come to the coronation
because you can’t afford a new coat. The Bishop of Winchester
will buy you one himself if you’ll show your face on the day.’
‘Stephen? Will he? ‘I swear it.’ He relishes the thought of going back to London
and asking Gardiner for ten pounds. ‘Or the guildsmen will
make a collection, if you like, for a new hat and a doublet as
well.’
‘And how are you to appear?’ Margaret speaks gently, as if she
has been asked to mind two children for the afternoon.
‘They are making something for me. I leave it to others. If I
only avoid exciting mirth, it will be enough.’
Anne has said, you shall not dress like a lawyer on my coronation day. She has called out to Jane Rochford, taking notes like a
clerk: Thomas must go into crimson. ‘Mistress Roper,’ he says,
‘are you not yourself curious to see the queen crowned?’
Her father cuts in, talking over her: ‘It is a day of shame for the
women of England. One can hear them say on the streets – when
the Emperor comes, wives shall have their rights again.’
‘Father, I am sure they take care not to say that in Master
Cromwell’s hearing.’
He sighs. It’s not much, to know that all the merry young
whores are on your side. All the kept women, and the runaway
daughters. Though now Anne is married, she sets herself up for
an example. Already she has slapped Mary Shelton, Lady Carey
tells him, for writing a riddle in her prayer book, and it was not
even an indecent one. The queen sits very erect these days, child
stirring in her belly, needlework in hand, and when Norris and
Weston and their gentlemen friends come swarming into her
apartments, she looks at them, when they lay compliments at her
feet, as if they were strewing her hem with spiders. Unless you
approach her with a Bible text in your mouth, better not
approach her at all.
He says, ‘Has the Maid been up to see you again? The
prophetess?’
‘She has,’ Meg says, ‘but we would not receive her.’
‘I believe she has been to see Lady Exeter. At her invitation.’
‘Lady Exeter is a foolish and ambitious woman,’ More says . ‘I understand the Maid told her that she would be Queen of
England.’
‘I repeat my comment.’
‘Do you believe in her visions? Their holy nature, that is?’
‘No. I think she is an impostor. She does it for attention.’
‘Just that?’
‘You don’t know what young women will do. I have a houseful of daughters.’
He pauses. ‘You are blessed.’
Meg glances up; she recalls his losses, though she never heard
Anne Cromwell demand, why should Mistress More have the
pre-eminence? She says, ‘There were holy maids before this. One
at Ipswich. Only a little girl of twelve. She was of good family,
and they say she did miracles, and she got nothing out of it, no
personal profit, and she died young.’
‘But then there was the Maid of Leominster,’ More says, with
gloomy relish. ‘They say she is a whore at Calais now, and laughs
with her clients after supper at all the tricks she worked on the
believing people.’
So he does not like holy maids. But Bishop Fisher does. He
has seen her often. He has dealings with her. As if taking the
words out of his mouth, More says, ‘Of course, Fisher, he has his
own views.’
‘Fisher believes she has raised the dead.’ More lifts an
eyebrow. ‘But only for so long as it took for the corpse to make
his confession and get absolution. And then he fell down and
died again.’
More smiles. ‘That sort of miracle.’
‘Perhaps she is a witch,’ Meg says. ‘Do you think so? There are
witches in the scriptures. I could cite you.’
Please don’t. More says, ‘Meg, did I show you where I put the
letter?’ She rises, marking with a thread her place in the Greek
text. ‘I have written to this maid, Barton … Dame Elizabeth, we
must call her, now she is a professed nun. I have advised her to leave the realm in tranquillity, to cease to trouble the king with
her prophecies, to avoid the company of great men and women,
to listen to her spiritual advisers, and, in short, to stay at home
and say her prayers.’
‘As we all should, Sir Thomas. Following your example.’ He
nods, vigorously. ‘Amen. And I suppose you kept a copy?’
‘Get it, Meg. Otherwise he may never leave.’
More gives his daughter some rapid instructions. But he is
satisfied that he is not ordering her to fabricate such a letter on
the spot. ‘I would leave,’ he says, ‘in time. I’m not going to miss
the coronation. I’ve got my new clothes to wear. Will you not
come and bear us company?’
‘You’ll be company for each other, in Hell.’
This is what you forget, this vehemence; his ability to make his
twisted jokes, but not take them.
‘The queen looks well,’ he says. ‘Your queen, I mean, not
mine. She seems very comfortable at Ampthill. But you know
that, of course.’
More says, unblinking, I have no correspondence with the,
with the Princess Dowager. Good, he says, because I am watching two friars who have been carrying her letters abroad – I am
beginning to think that whole order of the Franciscans is
working against the king. If I take them and if I cannot persuade
them, and you know I am very persuasive, into confirming my
suspicion, I may have to hang them up by their wrists, and start
a sort of contest between them, as to which one will emerge first
into better sense. Of course, my own inclination would be to
take them home, feed them and ply them with strong drink, but
then, Sir Thomas, I have always looked up to you, and you have
been my master in these proceedings.
He has to say it all before Margaret Roper comes back. He
raps his fingers on the table, to make More sit up and pay attention. John Frith, he says. Ask to see Henry. He will welcome you
like a lost child. Talk to him and ask him to meet Frith face-to face. I’m not asking you to agree with John – you think he’s a
heretic, perhaps he is a heretic – I’m asking you to concede just
this, and to tell it to the king, that Frith is a pure soul, he is a fine
scholar, so let him live. If his doctrine is false and yours is true
you can talk him back to you, you are an eloquent man, you are
the great persuader of our age, not me – talk him back to Rome,
if you can. But if he dies you will never know, will you, if you
could have won his soul?
Margaret’s footstep. ‘Is this it, Father?’
‘Give it to him.’
‘There are copies of the copy, I suppose?’
‘You would expect us,’ the girl says, ‘to take all reasonable care.’
‘Your father and I were discussing monks and friars. How can
they be good subjects of the king, if they owe their allegiance to
the heads of their orders, who are abroad in other countries, and
who are themselves perhaps subjects of the King of France, or
the Emperor?’
‘I suppose they are still Englishmen.’
‘I meet few who behave as such. Your father will enlarge on
what I say.’ He bows to her. He takes More’s hand, holding its
shifting sinews in his own palm; scars vanish, it is surprising how
they do, and now his own hand is white, a gentleman’s hand,
flesh running easily over the joints, though once he thought the
burn marks, the stripes that any smith picks up in the course of
business, would never fade.
He goes home. Helen Barre meets him. ‘I’ve been fishing,’ he
says. ‘At Chelsea.’
‘Catch More?’
‘Not today.’
‘Your robes came.’
‘Yes?’
‘Crimson.’
‘Dear God.’ He laughs. ‘Helen –’ She looks at him; she seems
to be waiting. ‘I haven’t found your husband.’