Johane: ‘You say, “Rafe, go and find me a seat in the new Parliament.” And off he goes, like a girl who’s been told to bring the
washing in.’
‘It was harder than that,’ Rafe says.
Johane says, ‘How would you know?’
Seats in the Commons are, largely, in the gift of lords; of lords,
bishops, the king himself. A scanty handful of electors, if pressured from above, usually do as they’re told.
Rafe has got him Taunton. It’s Wolsey terrain; they wouldn’t
have let him in if the king had not said yes, if Thomas Howard
had not said yes. He had sent Rafe to London to scout the uncertain territory of the duke’s intentions: to find out what lies
behind that ferrety grin. ‘Am obliged, Master.’
Now he knows. ‘The Duke of Norfolk,’ Rafe says, ‘believes
my lord cardinal has buried treasure, and he thinks you know
where it is.’
They talk alone. Rafe: ‘He’ll ask you to go and work for him.’
‘Yes. Perhaps not in so many words.’
He watches Rafe’s face as he weighs up the situation.
Norfolk is already – unless you count the king’s bastard son –
the realm’s premier nobleman. ‘I assured him,’ Rafe says, ‘of your respect, your … your reverence, your desire to be at his –
erm –’
‘Commandment?’
‘More or less.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said, hmm.’
He laughs. ‘And was that his tone?’
‘It was his tone.’
‘And his grim nod?’
‘Yes.’
Very well. I dry my tears, those tears from All Hallows day. I
sit with the cardinal, by the fire at Esher in a room with a
smoking chimney. I say, my lord, do you think I would forsake
you? I locate the man in charge of chimneys and hearths. I give
him orders. I ride to London, to Blackfriars. The day is foggy, St
Hubert’s Day. Norfolk is waiting, to tell me he will be a good
lord to me.
The duke is now approaching sixty years old, but concedes
nothing to the calendar. Flint-faced and keen-eyed, he is lean as
a gnawed bone and as cold as an axe head; his joints seem knitted
together of supple chain links, and indeed he rattles a little as he
moves, for his clothes conceal relics: in tiny jewelled cases he has
shavings of skin and snippets of hair, and set into medallions he
wears splinters of martyrs’ bones. ‘Marry!’ he says, for an oath,
and ‘By the Mass!’, and sometimes takes out one of his medals
or charms from wherever it is hung about his person, and kisses
it in a fervour, calling on some saint or martyr to stop his current
rage getting the better of him. ‘St Jude give me patience!’ he will
shout; probably he has mixed him up with Job, whom he heard
about in a story when he was a little boy at the knee of his first
priest. It is hard to imagine the duke as a little boy, or in any way
younger or different from the self he presents now. He thinks
the Bible a book unnecessary for laypeople, though he under stands priests make some use of it. He thinks book-reading an
affectation altogether, and wishes there were less of it at court.
His niece is always reading, Anne Boleyn, which is perhaps why
she is unmarried at the age of twenty-eight. He does not see why
it’s a gentleman’s business to write letters; there are clerks for
that.
Now he fixes an eye, red and fiery. ‘Cromwell, I am content
you are a burgess in the Parliament.’
He bows his head. ‘My lord.’
‘I spoke to the king for you and he is also content. You will
take his instructions in the Commons. And mine.’
‘Will they be the same, my lord?’
The duke scowls. He paces; he rattles a little; at last he bursts
out, ‘Damn it all, Cromwell, why are you such a … person? It
isn’t as if you could afford to be.’
He waits, smiling. He knows what the duke means. He is a
person, he is a presence. He knows how to edge blackly into a
room so that you don’t see him; but perhaps those days are over.
‘Smile away,’ says the duke. ‘Wolsey’s household is a nest of
vipers. Not that …’ he touches a medal, flinching, ‘God forbid I
should …’
Compare a prince of the church to a serpent. The duke wants
the cardinal’s money, and he wants the cardinal’s place at the
king’s side: but then again, he doesn’t want to burn in Hell. He
walks across the room; he slaps his hands together; he rubs them;
he turns. ‘The king is preparing to quarrel with you, master. Oh
yes. He will favour you with an interview because he wishes to
understand the cardinal’s affairs, but he has, you will learn, a very
long and exact memory, and what he remembers, master, is when
you were a burgess of the Parliament before this, and how you
spoke against his war.’
‘I hope he doesn’t think still of invading France.’
‘God damn you! What Englishman does not! We own France.
We have to take back our own.’ A muscle in his cheek jumps; he paces, agitated; he turns, he rubs his cheek; the twitch stops, and
he says, in a voice perfectly matter-of-fact, ‘Mind you, you’re
right.’
He waits. ‘We can’t win,’ the duke says, ‘but we have to fight
as if we can. Hang the expense. Hang the waste – money, men,
horses, ships. That’s what’s wrong with Wolsey, you see. Always
at the treaty table. How can a butcher’s son understand –’
‘La gloire?’
‘Are you a butcher’s son?’
‘A blacksmith’s.’
‘Are you really? Shoe a horse?’
He shrugs. ‘If I were put to it, my lord. But I can’t imagine –’
‘You can’t? What can you imagine? A battlefield, a camp, the
night before a battle – can you imagine that?’
‘I was a soldier myself.’
‘Were you so? Not in any English army, I’ll be bound. There,
you see.’ The duke grins, quite without animosity. ‘I knew there
was something about you. I knew I didn’t like you, but I couldn’t
put my finger on it. Where were you?’
‘Garigliano.’
‘With?’
‘The French.’
The duke whistles. ‘Wrong side, lad.’
‘So I noticed.’
‘With the French,’ he chuckles. ‘With the French. And how
did you scramble out of that disaster?’
‘I went north. Got into …’ He’s going to say money, but the
duke wouldn’t understand trading in money. ‘Cloth,’ he says.
‘Silk, mostly. You know what the market is, with the soldier over
there.’
‘By the Mass, yes! Johnnie Freelance – he puts his money on
his back. Those Switzers! Like a troupe of play-actors. Lace,
stripes, fancy hats. Easy target, that’s all. Longbowman?’
‘Now and then.’ He smiles. ‘On the short side for that.’ ‘Me too. Now, Henry draws a bow. Very nice. Got the height
for it. Got the arm. Still. We won’t win many battles like that any
more.’
‘Then how about not fighting any? Negotiate, my lord. It’s
cheaper.’
‘I tell you, Cromwell, you’ve got face, coming here.’
‘My lord – you sent for me.’
‘Did I?’ Norfolk looks alarmed. ‘It’s come to that?’
The king’s advisers are preparing no fewer than forty-four
charges against the cardinal. They range from the violation of the
statutes of praemunire – that is to say, the upholding of a foreign
jurisdiction within the king’s realm – to buying beef for his
household at the same price as the king; from financial malfeasance to failing to halt the spread of Lutheran heresies.
The law of praemunire dates from another century. No one
who is alive now quite knows what it means. From day to day it
seems to mean what the king says it means. The matter is argued
in every talking shop in Europe. Meanwhile, my lord cardinal
sits, and sometimes mutters to himself, and sometimes speaks
aloud, saying, ‘Thomas, my colleges! Whatever happens to my
person, my colleges must be saved. Go to the king. Whatever
vengeance, for whatever imagined injury, he would like to wreak
on me, he surely cannot mean to put out the light of learning?’
In exile at Esher, the cardinal paces and frets. The great mind
which once revolved the affairs of Europe now cogitates ceaselessly on its own losses. He lapses into silent inactivity, brooding
as the light fails; for God’s sake, Thomas, Cavendish begs him,
don’t tell him you’re coming if you’re not.
I won’t, he says, and I am coming, but sometimes I am held
up. The House sits late and before I leave Westminster I have to
gather up the letters and petitions to my lord cardinal, and talk
with all the people who want to send messages but don’t want
them put into writing I understand, Cavendish says; but Thomas, he wails, you can’t
imagine what it’s like here at Esher. What time is it? my lord
cardinal says. What time will Cromwell be here? And in an hour,
again: Cavendish, what time is it? He has us out with lights, and
reporting on the weather; as if you, Cromwell, were a person to
be impeded by hailstorms or ice. Then next he will ask, what if he
has met with some accident on the road? The road from London
is full of robbers; wasteland and heathland, as the light fails, are
creeping with the agents of malefice. From that he will pass on to
say, this world is full of snares and delusions, and into many of
them I have fallen, miserable sinner that I am.
When he, Cromwell, finally throws off his riding cloak and
collapses into a chair by the fire – God’s blood, that smoking
chimney – the cardinal is at him before he can draw breath.
What said my lord of Suffolk? How looked my lord of
Norfolk? The king, have you seen him, did he speak to you?
And Lady Anne, is she in health and good looks? Have you
worked any device to please her – because we must please her,
you know?
He says, ‘There is one short way to please that lady, and that is
to crown her queen.’ He closes his lips on the topic of Anne and
has no more to say. Mary Boleyn says she has noticed him, but
till recently Anne gave no sign of it. Her eyes passed over him on
their way to someone who interested her more. They are black
eyes, slightly protuberant, shiny like the beads of an abacus; they
are shiny and always in motion, as she makes calculations of her
own advantage. But Uncle Norfolk must have said to her, ‘There
goes the man who knows the cardinal’s secrets,’ because now
when he comes into her sight her long neck darts; those shining
black beads go click, click, as she looks him up and down and
decides what use can be got out of him. He supposes she is in
health, as the year creeps towards its end; not coughing like a sick
horse, for instance, nor gone lame. He supposes she is in good
looks, if that’s what you like. One night, just before Christmas, he arrives late at Esher and
the cardinal is sitting alone, listening to a boy play the lute. He
says, ‘Mark, thank you, go now.’ The boy bows to the cardinal;
he favours him, barely, with the nod suitable for a burgess in the
Parliament. As he withdraws from the room the cardinal says,
‘Mark is very adept, and a pleasant boy – at York Place, he was
one of my choristers. I think I shouldn’t keep him here, but send
him to the king. Or to Lady Anne, perhaps, as he is such a pretty
young thing. Would she like him?’
The boy has lingered at the door to drink in his praises. A hard
Cromwellian stare – the equivalent of a kick – sends him out. He
wishes people would not ask him what the Lady Anne would
and would not like.
The cardinal says, ‘Does Lord Chancellor More send me any
message?’
He drops a sheaf of papers on the table. ‘You look ill, my lord.’
‘Yes, I am ill. Thomas, what shall we do?’
‘We shall bribe people,’ he says. ‘We shall be liberal and openhanded with the assets Your Grace has left – for you still have
benefices to dispose of, you still have land. Listen, my lord – even
if the king takes all you have, people will be asking, can the king
truly bestow what belongs to the cardinal? No one to whom he
makes a grant will be sure in their title, unless you confirm it. So
you still have, my lord, you still have cards in your hand.’
‘And after all, if he meant to bring a treason …’ his voice
falters, ‘if …’
‘If he meant to charge you with treason you would be in the
Tower by now.’
‘Indeed – and what use would I be to him, head in one place,
body in another? This is how it is: the king thinks, by degrading
me, to give a sharp lesson to the Pope. He thinks to indicate, I as
King of England am master in my own house. Oh, but is he? Or
is Lady Anne master, or Thomas Boleyn? A question not to be
asked, not outside this room. The battle is, now, to get the king alone; to find out his intentions, if he knows them himself, and broker a deal. The cardinal
urgently needs ready cash, that’s the first skirmish. Day after day,
he waits for an interview. The king extends a hand, takes from
him what letters he proffers, glancing at the cardinal’s seal. He
does not look at him, saying merely an absent ‘Thanks.’ One day
he does look at him, and says, ‘Master Cromwell, yes … I cannot
talk about the cardinal.’ And as he opens his mouth to speak, the
king says, ‘Don’t you understand? I cannot talk about him.’ His
tone is gentle, puzzled. ‘Another day,’ he says. ‘I will send for
you. I promise.’
When the cardinal asks him, ‘How did the king look today?’
he says, he looks as if he does not sleep.
The cardinal laughs. ‘If he does not sleep it is because he does
not hunt. This icy ground is too hard for the hounds’ pads, they
cannot go out. It is lack of fresh air, Thomas. It is not his
conscience.’
Later, he will remember that night towards the end of December when he found the cardinal listening to music. He will run it
through his mind, twice and over again.
Because as he is leaving the cardinal, and contemplating again
the road, the night, he hears a boy’s voice, speaking behind a halfopen door: it is Mark, the lute-player. ‘… so for my skill he says
he will prefer me to Lady Anne. And I shall be glad, because
what is the use of being here when any day the king may behead
the old fellow? I think he ought, for the cardinal is so proud.
Today is the first day he ever gave me a good word.’
A pause. Someone speaks, muffled; he cannot tell who. Then
the boy: ‘Yes, for sure the lawyer will come down with him. I say
lawyer, but who is he? Nobody knows. They say he has killed men
with his own hands and never told it in confession. But those hard
kinds of men, they always weep when they see the hangman.’
He is in no doubt that it is his own execution Mark looks
forward to. Beyond the wall, the boy runs on: ‘So when I am with Lady Anne she is sure to notice me, and give me presents.’
A giggle. ‘And look on me with favour. Don’t you think? Who
knows where she may turn while she is still refusing the king?’
A pause. Then Mark: ‘She is no maid. Not she.’
What an enchanting conversation: servants’ talk. Again comes
a muffled answer, and then Mark: ‘Could she be at the French
court, do you think, and come home a maid? Any more than her
sister could? And Mary was every man’s hackney.’
But this is nothing. He is disappointed. I had hopes of particulars; this is just the on dit. But still he hesitates, and doesn’t
move away.
‘Besides, Tom Wyatt has had her, and everybody knows it,
down in Kent. I have been down to Penshurst with the cardinal,
and you know that palace is near to Hever, where the lady’s
family is, and the Wyatts’ house an easy ride away.’
Witnesses? Dates?
But then, from the unseen person, ‘Shh!’ Again, a soft giggle.
One can do nothing with this. Except bear it in mind. The
conversation is in Flemish: language of Mark’s birthplace.
Christmas comes, and the king, with Queen Katherine, keeps it
at Greenwich. Anne is at York Place; the king can come upriver
to see her. Her company, the women say, is exacting; the king’s
visits are short, few and discreet.
At Esher the cardinal takes to his bed. Once he would never
have done that, though he looks ill enough to justify it. He says,
‘Nothing will happen while the king and Lady Anne are
exchanging their New Year kisses. We are safe from incursions
till Twelfth Night.’ He turns his head, against his pillows. Says,
vehement, ‘Body of Christ, Cromwell. Go home.’
The house at the Austin Friars is decorated with wreaths of
holly and ivy, of laurel and ribboned yew. The kitchen is busy,
feeding the living, but they omit this year their usual songs and
Christmas plays. No year has brought such devastation. His sister Kat, her husband Morgan Williams, have been plucked
from this life as fast as his daughters were taken, one day walking
and talking and next day cold as stones, tumbled into their
Thames-side graves and dug in beyond reach of the tide, beyond
sight and smell of the river; deaf now to the sound of Putney’s
cracked church bell, to the smell of wet ink, of hops, of malted
barley, and the scent, still animal, of woollen bales; dead to the
autumn aroma of pine resin and apple candles, of soul cakes
baking. As the year ends two orphans are added to his house,
Richard and the child Walter. Morgan Williams, he was a big
talker, but he was shrewd in his own way, and he worked hard
for his family. And Kat – well, latterly she understood her
brother about as well as she understood the motions of the stars:
‘I can never add you up, Thomas,’ she’d say, which was his
failure entirely, because who had taught her, except him, to count
on her fingers, and puzzle out a tradesman’s bill?
If he were to give himself a piece of advice for Christmas, he’d
say, leave the cardinal now or you’ll be out on the streets again
with the three-card trick. But he only gives advice to those who
are likely to take it.
They have a big gilded star at the Austin Friars, which they
hang in their great hall on New Year’s Eve. For a week it shines
out, to welcome their guests at Epiphany. From summer
onwards, he and Liz would be thinking of costumes for the
Three Kings, coveting and hoarding scraps of any strange cloth
they saw, any new trimmings; then from October, Liz would be
sewing in secrecy, improving on last year’s robes by patching
them over with new shining panels, quilting a shoulder and
weighting a hem, and building each year some fantastical new
crowns. His part was to think what the gifts would be, that the
kings had in their boxes. Once a king had dropped his casket in
shock when the gift began to sing.
This year no one has the heart to hang up the star; but he visits
it, in its lightless store room. He slides off the canvas sleeves that protect its rays, and checks that they are unchipped and unfaded.
There will be better years, when they will hang it up again;
though he cannot imagine them. He eases back the sleeves,
pleased at how ingeniously they have been made and how
exactly they fit. The Three Kings’ robes are packed into a chest,
as also the sheepskins for the children who will be sheep. The
shepherds’ crooks lean in a corner; from a peg hang angel’s
wings. He touches them. His finger comes away dusty. He shifts
his candle out of danger, then lifts them from the peg and gently
shakes them. They make a soft sound of hissing, and a faint
amber perfume washes into the air. He hangs them back on the
peg; passes over them the palm of his hand, to soothe them and
still their shiver. He picks up his candle. He backs out and closes
the door. He pinches out the light, turns the lock and gives the
key to Johane.
He says to her, ‘I wish we had a baby. It seems such a long time
since there was a baby in the house.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ Johane says.
He does, of course. He says, ‘Does John Williamson not do his
duty by you these days?’
She says, ‘His duty is not my pleasure.’
As he walks away he thinks, that’s a conversation I shouldn’t
have had.
On New Year’s Day, when night falls, he is sitting at his
writing table; he is writing letters for the cardinal, and sometimes
he crosses the room to his counting board and pushes the counters about. It seems that in return for a formal guilty plea to the
praemunire charges, the king will allow the cardinal his life, and
a measure of liberty; but whatever money is left him, to maintain
his state, will be a fraction of his former income. York Place has
been taken already, Hampton Court is long gone, and the king is
thinking of how to tax and rob the rich bishopric of Winchester.
Gregory comes in. ‘I brought you lights. My aunt Johane said,
go in to your father.’ Gregory sits. He waits. He fidgets. He sighs. He gets up. He
crosses to his father’s writing table and hovers in front of him.
Then, as if someone had said, ‘Make yourself useful,’ he reaches
out timidly and begins to tidy the papers.
He glances up at his son, while keeping his head down over his
task. For the first time, perhaps, since Gregory was a baby, he
notices his hands, and he is struck by what they have become: not
childish paws, but the large, white untroubled hands of a gentleman’s son. What is Gregory doing? He is putting the documents
into a stack. On what principle is he doing it? He can’t read them,
they’re the wrong way up. He’s not filing them by subject. Is he
filing them by date? For God’s sake, what is he doing?
He needs to finish this sentence, with its many vital
subclauses. He glances up again, and recognises Gregory’s
design. It is a system of holy simplicity: big papers on the
bottom, small ones on top.
‘Father …’ Gregory says. He sighs. He crosses to the counting
board. With a forefinger he inches the counters about. Then he
scoops them together, picks them up and clicks them into a tidy
pile.
He looks up at last. ‘That was a calculation. It wasn’t just
where I dropped them.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ Gregory says politely. He sits down by the fire
and tries not to disturb the air as he breathes.
The mildest eyes can be commanding; under his son’s gaze, he
asks, ‘What is it?’
‘Do you think you can stop writing?’
‘A minute,’ he says, holding up a delaying hand; he signs the
letter, his usual form: ‘your assured friend, Thomas Cromwell.’
If Gregory is going to tell him that someone else in the house is
mortally ill, or that he, Gregory, has offered himself in marriage
to the laundry girl, or that London Bridge has fallen down, he
must be ready to take it like a man; but he must sand and seal this.
He looks up. ‘Yes?’