‘Truly, you don’t need to. He calls himself Richard Cromwell
now.’ As he is going – really going, this time – he adds, ‘Don’t let
it keep you awake, Stephen. I have been into the matter. You may
be related to Richard, but you are not related to me.’
He smiles. Inside, he is beside himself with rage, running with
it, as if his blood were thin and full of dilute venom like the
uncoloured blood of a snake. As soon as he gets home to Austin
Friars, he hugs Rafe Sadler and makes his hair stand up in spikes.
‘Heaven direct me: boy or hedgehog? Rafe, Richard, I am feeling
penitent.’
‘It is the season,’ Rafe says.
‘I want,’ he says, ‘to become perfectly calm. I want to be able
to get into the coop without ruffling the chickens’ feathers. I
want to be less like Uncle Norfolk, and more like Marlinspike.’
He has a long soothing talk in Welsh with Richard, who laughs
at him because old words are fading from his memory, and he is
forever sliding through bits of English, with a sly borderlands
intonation. He gives his little nieces the pearl and coral bracelets
he bought them weeks ago, but forgot to give. He goes down to
the kitchen and makes suggestions, all of them cheerful.
He calls his household staff together, his clerks. ‘We need to
plan it,’ he says, ‘how the cardinal will be made comfortable on
the road north. He wants to go slowly so the people can admire
him. He needs to arrive in Peterborough for Holy Week, and
from there shift by stages to Southwell, where he will plan his
further progress to York. The archbishop’s palace at Southwell
has good rooms, but still we may need to get builders in …’
George Cavendish has told him that the cardinal has taken to
spending time in prayer. There are some monks at Richmond
whose company he has sought; they spell out to him the value of
thorns in the flesh and salt in the wound, the merits of bread and
water and the sombre delights of self-flagellation. ‘Oh, that
settles it,’ he says, annoyed. ‘We have to get him on the road.
He’d be better off in Yorkshire. He says to Norfolk, ‘Well, my lord, how shall we do this? Do
you want him gone or not? Yes? Then come to the king with me.’
Norfolk grunts. Messages are sent. A day or so later, they find
themselves together in an antechamber. They wait. Norfolk
paces. ‘Oh, by St Jude!’ the duke says. ‘Shall we get some fresh
air? Or don’t you lawyers need it?’
They stroll in the gardens; or, he strolls, the duke stamps.
‘When do the flowers come out?’ the duke says. ‘When I was a
boy, we never had flowers. It was Buckingham, you know, who
brought in this knot garden sort of stuff. Oh dear, it was fancy!’
The Duke of Buckingham, keen gardener, had his head cut off
for treason. That was 1521: less than ten years ago. It seems sad
to mention it now, in the presence of the spring: singing from
every bush, every bough.
A summons is received. As they proceed to their interview, the
duke baulks and jibs; his eye rolls and his nostrils distend, his
breath comes short. When the duke lays a hand on his shoulder,
he is forced to slow his pace, and they scuffle along – he resisting
his impulse to pull away – like two war veterans in a beggars’
procession. Scaramella va alla guerra … Norfolk’s hand is trembling.
But it is only when they get into the presence that he fully
understands how it rattles the old duke to be in a room with
Henry Tudor. The gilded ebullience makes him shrink inside his
clothes. Henry greets them cordially. He says it is a wonderful
day and pretty much a wonderful world. He spins around the
room, arms wide, reciting some verses of his own composition.
He will talk about anything except the cardinal. Frustrated,
Norfolk turns a dusky red, and begins to mutter. Dismissed, they
are backing out. Henry calls, ‘Oh, Cromwell …’
He and the duke exchange glances. ‘By the Mass …’ mutters
the duke.
Hand behind his back, he indicates, be gone, my lord Norfolk,
I’ll catch up with you later. Henry stands with arms folded, eyes on the ground. He says
nothing till he, Cromwell, has come close. ‘A thousand pounds?’
Henry whispers.
It is on the tip of his tongue to say, that will be a start on the
ten thousand which, to the best of my knowledge and belief, you
have owed the Cardinal of York for a decade now.
He doesn’t say it, of course. At such moments, Henry expects
you to fall to your knees – duke, earl, commoner, light and heavy,
old and young. He does it; scar tissue pulls; few of us, by our
forties, are not carrying injuries.
The king signals, you can get up. He adds, his tone curious,
‘The Duke of Norfolk shows you many marks of friendship and
favour.’
The hand on the shoulder, he means: the minute and unexpected vibration of ducal palm against plebeian muscle and bone.
‘The duke is careful to preserve all distinctions of rank.’ Henry
seems relieved.
An unwelcome thought creeps into his head: what if you, Henry
Tudor, were to be taken ill and fall at my feet? Am I allowed to pick
you up, or must I send for an earl to do it? Or a bishop?
Henry walks away. He turns and says, in a small voice, ‘Every
day I miss the Cardinal of York.’ There is a pause. He whispers,
take the money with our blessing. Don’t tell the duke. Don’t tell
anyone. Ask your master to pray for me. Tell him it is the best I
can do.
The thanks he makes, still from his kneeling situation, is
eloquent and extensive. Henry looks at him bleakly and says,
dear God, Master Cromwell, you can talk, can’t you?
He goes out, face composed, fighting the impulse to smile
broadly. Scaramella fa la gala … ‘Every day I miss the Cardinal
of York.’
Norfolk says, what, what, what did he say? Oh, nothing, he says.
Just some special hard words he wants me to convey to the cardinal The itinerary is drawn up. The cardinal’s effects are put on
coastal barges, to be taken to Hull and go overland from there.
He himself has beaten the bargees down to a reasonable rate.
He tells Richard, you know, a thousand pounds isn’t much
when you have a cardinal to move. Richard asks, ‘How much of
your own money is sunk in this enterprise?’
Some debts should never be tallied, he says. ‘I myself, I know
what is owed me, but by God I know what I owe.’
To Cavendish he says, ‘How many servants is he taking?’
‘Only a hundred and sixty.’
‘Only.’ He nods. ‘Right.’
Hendon. Royston. Huntingdon. Peterborough. He has men
riding ahead, with precise instructions.
That last night, Wolsey gives him a package. Inside it is a small
and hard object, a seal or ring. ‘Open it when I’m gone.’
People keep walking in and out of the cardinal’s private
chamber, carrying chests and bundles of papers. Cavendish
wanders through, holding a silver monstrance.
‘You will come north?’ the cardinal says.
‘I’ll come to fetch you, the minute the king summons you
back.’ He believes and does not believe that this will happen.
The cardinal gets to his feet. There is a constraint in the air. He,
Cromwell, kneels for a blessing. The cardinal holds out a hand to
be kissed. His turquoise ring is missing. The fact does not evade
him. For a moment, the cardinal’s hand rests on his shoulder,
fingers spread, thumb in the hollow of his collarbone.
It is time he was gone. So much has been said between them
that it is needless to add a marginal note. It is not for him now to
gloss the text of their dealings, nor append a moral. This is not
the occasion to embrace. If the cardinal has no more eloquence to
offer, he surely has none. Before he has reached the door of the
room the cardinal has turned back to the fireplace. He pulls his
chair to the blaze, and raises a hand to shield his face; but his hand is not between himself and the fire, it is between himself
and the closing door.
He makes for the courtyard. He falters; in a smoky recess
where the light has extinguished itself, he leans against the wall.
He is crying. He says to himself, let George Cavendish not come
by and see me, and write it down and make it into a play.
He swears softly, in many languages: at life, at himself for
giving way to its demands. Servants walk past, saying, ‘Master
Cromwell’s horse is here for him! Master Cromwell’s escort at
the gate!’ He waits till he is in command of himself, and exits,
disbursing coins.
When he gets home, the servants ask him, are we to paint out
the cardinal’s coat of arms? No, by God, he says. On the
contrary, repaint it. He stands back for a look. ‘The choughs
could look more lively. And we need a better scarlet for the hat.’
He hardly sleeps. He dreams of Liz. He wonders if she would
know him, the man he vows that soon he will be: adamant, mild,
a keeper of the king’s peace.
Towards dawn, he dozes; he wakes up thinking, the cardinal just
now will be mounting his horse; why am I not with him? It is 5
April. Johane meets him on the stairs; chastely, she kisses his
cheek.
‘Why does God test us?’ she whispers.
He murmurs, ‘I do not feel we will pass.’
He says, perhaps I should go up to Southwell myself? I’ll go
for you, Rafe says. He gives him a list. Have the whole of the
archbishop’s palace scrubbed out. My lord will be bringing his
own bed. Draft in kitchen staff from the King’s Arms. Check the
stabling. Get in musicians. Last time I passed through I noticed
some pigsties up against the palace wall. Find out the owner, pay
him off and knock them down. Don’t drink in the Crown; the ale
is worse than my father’s.
Richard says, ‘Sir … it is time to let the cardinal go. ‘This is a tactical retreat, not a rout.’
They think he’s gone but he’s only gone into a back room. He
skulks among the files. He hears Richard say, ‘His heart is
leading him.’
‘It is an experienced heart.’
‘But can a general organise a retreat when he doesn’t know
where the enemy is? The king is so double in this matter.’
‘One could retreat straight into his arms.’
‘Jesus. You think our master is double too?’
‘Triple at least,’ Rafe says. ‘Look, there was no profit for him,
ever, in deserting the old man – what would he get but the name
of deserter? Perhaps something is to be got by sticking fast. For
all of us.’
‘Off you go then, swine-boy. Who else would think about the
pigsties? Thomas More, for instance, would never think about
them.’
‘Or he would be exhorting the pig-keeper, my good man,
Easter approacheth –’
‘– hast thou prepared to receive Holy Communion?’ Rafe
laughs. ‘By the way, Richard, hast thou?’
Richard says, ‘I can get a piece of bread any day in the week.’
During Holy Week, reports come in from Peterborough: more
people have crowded in to look at Wolsey than have been in that
town in living memory. As the cardinal moves north he follows
him on the map of these islands he keeps in his head. Stamford,
Grantham, Newark; the travelling court arrives in Southwell on
28 April. He, Cromwell, writes to soothe him, he writes to warn
him. He is afraid that the Boleyns, or Norfolk, or both, have
found some way of implanting a spy in the cardinal’s retinue.
The ambassador Chapuys, hurrying away from an audience
with the king, has touched his sleeve, drawn him aside.
‘Monsieur Cremuel, I thought to call at your house. We are
neighbours, you know. ‘I should like to welcome you.’
‘But people inform me you are often with the king now, which
is pleasant, is it not? Your old master, I hear from him every
week. He has become solicitous about the queen’s health. He
asks if she is in good spirits, and begs her to consider that soon
she will be restored to the king’s bosom. And bed.’ Chapuys
smiles. He is enjoying himself. ‘The concubine will not help him.
We know you have tried with her and failed. So now he turns
back to the queen.’
He is forced to ask, ‘And the queen says?’
‘She says, I hope God in his mercy finds it possible to forgive
the cardinal, for I never can.’ Chapuys waits. He does not speak.
The ambassador resumes: ‘I think you are sensible of the tangle
of wreckage that will be left if this divorce is granted, or, shall we
say, somehow extorted from His Holiness? The Emperor, in
defence of his aunt, may make war on England. Your merchant
friends will lose their livelihoods, and many will lose their lives.
Your Tudor king may go down, and the old nobility come into
their own.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘I am telling all Englishmen.’
‘Door-to-door?’
He is meant to pass to the cardinal this message: that he has
come to the end of his credit with the Emperor. What will that do
but drive him into an appeal to the French king? Either way,
treason lies.
He imagines the cardinal among the canons at Southwell, in
his chair in the chapter house, presiding beneath the high vaulting like a prince at his ease in some forest glade, wreathed by
carvings of leaves and flowers. They are so supple that it is as if
the columns, the ribs have quickened, as if stone has burst into
florid life; the capitals are decked with berries, finials are twisted
stems, roses entangle the shafts, flowers and seeds flourish on
one stalk; from the foliage, faces peers, the faces of dogs, of hares, of goats. There are human faces, too, so lifelike that perhaps they
can change their expression; perhaps they stare down, astonished, at the portly scarlet form of his patron; and perhaps in the
silence of the night, when the canons are sleeping, the stone men
whistle and sing.
In Italy he learned a memory system and furnished it with
pictures. Some are drawn from wood and field, from hedgerow
and copse: shy hiding animals, eyes bright in the undergrowth.
Some are foxes and deer, some are griffins, dragons. Some are
men and women: nuns, warriors, doctors of the church. In their
hands he puts unlikely objects, St Ursula a crossbow, St Jerome a
scythe, while Plato bears a soup ladle and Achilles a dozen
damsons in a wooden bowl. It is no use hoping to remember
with the help of common objects, familiar faces. One needs startling juxtapositions, images that are more or less peculiar, ridiculous, even indecent. When you have made the images, you place
them about the world in locations you choose, each one with its
parcel of words, of figures, which they will yield you on demand.
At Greenwich, a shaven cat may peep at you from behind a
cupboard; at the palace of Westminster, a snake may leer down
from a beam and hiss your name.
Some of these images are flat, and you can walk on them. Some
are clothed in skin and walk around in a room, but perhaps they
are men with their heads on backwards, or with tufted tails like
the leopards in coats of arms. Some scowl at you like Norfolk, or
gape at you, like my lord Suffolk, with bewilderment. Some
speak, some quack. He keeps them, in strict order, in the gallery
of his mind’s eye.
Perhaps it is because he is used to making these images that his
head is peopled with the cast of a thousand plays, ten thousand
interludes. It is because of this practice that he tends to glimpse
his dead wife lurking in a stairwell, her white face upturned, or
whisking around a corner of the Austin Friars, or the house at
Stepney. Now the image is beginning to merge with that of her sister Johane, and everything that belonged to Liz is beginning to
belong to her: her half-smile, her questioning glance, her way of
being naked. Till he says, enough, and scrubs her out of his mind.
Rafe rides up the country with messages to Wolsey too secret
to put into letters. He would go himself, but though Parliament
is prorogued he cannot get away, because he is afraid of what
might be said about Wolsey if he is not there to defend him; and
at short notice the king might want him, or Lady Anne. ‘And
although I am not with you in person,’ he writes, ‘yet be assured
I am, and during my life shall be, with your grace in heart, spirit,
prayer and service …’
The cardinal replies: he is ‘mine own good, trusty and most
assured refuge in this my calamity’. He is ‘mine own entirely
beloved Cromwell’.
He writes to ask for quails. He writes to ask for flower seeds.
‘Seeds?’ Johane says. ‘He is planning to take root?’
Twilight finds the king melancholy. Another day of regress, in
his campaign to be a married man again; he denies, of course, that
he is married to the queen. ‘Cromwell,’ he says, ‘I need to find
my way to ownership of those …’ He looks sidelong, not
wishing to say what he means. ‘I understand there are legal difficulties. I do not pretend to understand them. And before you
begin, I do not want them explained.’
The cardinal has endowed his Oxford college, as also the
school at Ipswich, with land that will produce an income in
perpetuity. Henry wants their silver and gold plate, their
libraries, their yearly revenues and the land that produces the
revenues; and he does not see why he should not have what he
wants. The wealth of twenty-nine monasteries has gone into
those foundations – suppressed by permission of the Pope, on
condition that the proceeds were used for the colleges. But do
you know, Henry says, I am beginning to care very little about
the Pope and his permissions? It is early summer. The evenings are long and the grass, the air,
scented. You would think that a man like Henry, on a night like
this, could go to whichever bed he pleases. The court is full of
eager women. But after this interview he will walk in the garden
with Lady Anne, her hand resting on his arm, deep in conversation; then he will go to his empty bed, and she, one presumes, to
hers.
When the king asks him what he hears from the cardinal, he
says that he misses the light of His Majesty’s countenance; that
preparations for his enthronement at York are in hand. ‘Then
why doesn’t he get to York? It seems to me he delays and delays.’
Henry glares at him. ‘I will say this for you. You stick by your
man.’
‘I have never had anything from the cardinal other than kindness. Why would I not?’
‘And you have no other master,’ the king says. ‘My lord
Suffolk asks me, where does the fellow spring from? I tell him
there are Cromwells in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire –
landed people, or once they were. I suppose you are from some
unfortunate branch of that family?’
‘No.’
‘You may not know your own forebears. I shall ask the
heralds to look into it.’
‘Your Majesty is kind. But they will have scant success.’
The king is exasperated. He is failing to take advantage of what
is on offer: a pedigree, however meagre. ‘My lord cardinal told
me you were an orphan. He told me you were brought up in a
monastery.’
‘Ah. That was one of his little stories.’
‘He told me little stories?’ Several expressions chase each other
across the king’s face: annoyance, amusement, a wish to call back
times past. ‘I suppose he did. He told me that you had a loathing
of those in the religious life. That was why he found you diligent
in his work.’ ‘That was not the reason.’ He looks up. ‘May I speak?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Henry cries. ‘I wish someone would.’
He is startled. Then he understands. Henry wants a conversation, on any topic. One that’s nothing to do with love, or
hunting, or war. Now that Wolsey’s gone, there’s not much scope
for it; unless you want to talk to a priest of some stripe. And if
you send for a priest, what does it come back to? To love; to
Anne; to what you want and can’t have.
‘If you ask me about the monks, I speak from experience, not
prejudice, and though I have no doubt that some foundations
are well governed, my experience has been of waste and corruption. May I suggest to Your Majesty that, if you wish to see a
parade of the seven deadly sins, you do not organise a masque
at court but call without notice at a monastery? I have seen
monks who live like great lords, on the offerings of poor people
who would rather buy a blessing than buy bread, and that is not
Christian conduct. Nor do I take the monasteries to be the
repositories of learning some believe they are. Was Grocyn a
monk, or Colet, or Linacre, or any of our great scholars? They
were university men. The monks take in children and use them
as servants, they don’t even teach them dog Latin. I don’t
grudge them some bodily comforts. It cannot always be Lent.
What I cannot stomach is hypocrisy, fraud, idleness – their
worn-out relics, their threadbare worship, and their lack of
invention. When did anything good last come from a
monastery? They do not invent, they only repeat, and what
they repeat is corrupt. For hundreds of years the monks have
held the pen, and what they have written is what we take to be
our history, but I do not believe it really is. I believe they have
suppressed the history they don’t like, and written one that is
favourable to Rome.’
Henry appears to look straight through him, to the wall
behind. He waits. Henry says, ‘Dogholes, then?’
He smiles. Henry says, ‘Our history … As you know, I am gathering
evidence. Manuscripts. Opinions. Comparisons, with how
matters are ordered in other countries. Perhaps you would
consult with those learned gentlemen. Put a little direction into
their efforts. Talk to Dr Cranmer – he will tell you what is
needed. I could make good use of the money that flows yearly to
Rome. King François is richer by far than I am. I do not have a
tenth of his subjects. He taxes them as he pleases. For my part, I
must call Parliament. If I do not, there are riots.’ He adds,
bitterly, ‘And riots if I do.’
‘Take no lessons from King François,’ he says. ‘He likes war
too much, and trade too little.’
Henry smiles faintly. ‘You do not think so, but to me that is
the remit of a king.’
‘There is more tax to be raised when trade is good. And if taxes
are resisted, there may be other ways.’
Henry nods. ‘Very well. Begin with the colleges. Sit down
with my lawyers.’
Harry Norris is there to show him out of the king’s private
rooms. Not smiling for once, rather stern, he says, ‘I wouldn’t be
his tax collector.’
He thinks, are the most remarkable moments of my life to be
spent under the scrutiny of Henry Norris?
‘He killed his father’s best men. Empson, Dudley. Didn’t the
cardinal get one of their houses?’
A spider scuttles from under a stool and presents him with a
fact. ‘Empson’s house on Fleet Street. Granted the ninth of
October, the first year of this reign.’
‘This glorious reign,’ Norris says: as if he were issuing a
correction.
Gregory is fifteen as summer begins. He sits a horse beautifully,
and there are good reports of his swordsmanship. His Greek …
well, his Greek is where it was.