March: Lucy Petyt, whose husband is a master grocer and amember of the Commons, comes to see him at Austin Friars.She is wearing black lambskin – imported, at a guess – and amodest grey worsted gown; Alice receives her gloves andsurreptitiously slides in a finger to appraise the silk lining. Herises from his desk and takes her hands, drawing her to the fireand pressing upon her a cup of warm spiced wine. Her handsshake as she cradles the cup and she says, ‘I wish John had this.This wine. This fire.’It was snowing at dawn on the day of the raid on Lion’s Quay,but soon a wintery sun was up, scouring windowpanes andcasting the panelled rooms of city houses into sharp relief,ravines of shadows and cold floods of light. ‘That is what Icannot get out of my mind,’ Lucy says, ‘the cold.’ And Morehimself, his face muffled in furs, standing at the door with hisofficers, ready to search the warehouse and their own rooms. ‘Iwas the first there,’ she says, ‘and I kept him hovering with pleasantries – I called up, my dear, here is the Lord Chancellor comeon parliamentary business.’ The wine floods into her face,loosens her tongue. ‘I kept saying, have you breakfasted, sir, areyou sure, and the servants were weaving under his feet, impedinghim’ – she gives a little, mirthless, whooping laugh – ‘and all thetime John was stowing his papers behind a panel –’‘You did well, Lucy.’‘When they walked upstairs John was ready for him – oh,Lord Chancellor, welcome to my poor house – but the poorhapless man, he had cast his Testament under his desk, my eyewent straight to it, I wonder their eyes didn’t follow mine.’An hour’s search realised nothing; so are you sure, John, theChancellor said, that you have none of these new books, becauseI was informed you had? (And Tyndale lying there, like a poisonstain on the tiles.) I don’t know who could have told you that,said John Petyt. I was proud of him, Lucy says, holding out hercup for more wine, I was proud that he spoke up. More said, it is true I have found nothing today, but you must go with thesemen. Mr Lieutenant, will you take him?John Petyt is not a young man. At More’s direction he sleepson a pad of straw laid on the flagstones; visitors have been admitted only so that they can take back to his neighbours the news ofhow ill he looks. ‘We have sent food and warm clothes,’ Lucysays, ‘and been turned away on the Lord Chancellor’s orders.’‘There’s a tariff for bribes. You pay the gaolers. You needready money?’‘If I do I shall come to you.’ She puts the cup down on hisdesk. ‘He cannot lock us all up.’‘He has prisons enough.’‘For bodies, yes. But what are bodies? He can take our goods,but God will prosper us. He can close the booksellers, but stillthere will be books. They have their old bones, their glass saintsin windows, their candles and shrines, but God has given us theprinting press.’ Her cheeks glow. She glances down to the drawings on his desk. ‘What are these, Master Cromwell?’‘The plans for my garden. I am hoping to buy some of thehouses at the back of here, I want the land.’She smiles. ‘A garden … It is the first pleasant thing I haveheard of in a while.’‘I hope you and John will come and enjoy it.’‘And this … You are going to build a tennis court?’‘If I get the ground. And here, you see, I mean to plant anorchard.’Tears well into her eyes. ‘Speak to the king. We count on you.’He hears a footstep: Johane’s. Lucy’s hand flies to her mouth.‘God forgive me … For a moment I took you for your sister.’‘The mistake is made,’ Johane says. ‘And sometimes persists.Mistress Petyt, I am very sorry to hear your husband is in theTower. But you have brought this on yourselves. You peoplewere the first to throw calumnies at the late cardinal. But now Isuppose you wish you had him back. Lucy goes out without a further word, only one long lookover her shoulder. Outside he hears Mercy greet her; she will geta more sisterly word there. Johane walks to the fire and warmsher hands. ‘What does she think you can do for her?’‘Go to the king. Or to Lady Anne.’‘And will you? Do not,’ she says, ‘do not do it.’ She scrubsaway a tear with her knuckle; Lucy has upset her. ‘More will notrack him. Word will get out, and the city would not have it. Buthe may die anyway.’ She glances up at him. ‘She is quite old, youknow, Lucy Petyt. She ought not to wear grey. Do you see howher cheeks have fallen in? She won’t have any more children.’‘I get the point,’ he says.Her hand clenches on her skirt. ‘But what if he does? What ifhe does rack him? And he gives names?’‘What’s that to me?’ He turns away. ‘He already knows myname.’He speaks to Lady Anne. What can I do? she asks, and he says,you know how to please the king, I suppose; she laughs and says,what, my maidenhead for a grocer?He speaks to the king when he is able, but the king gives hima blank stare and says the Lord Chancellor knows his business.Anne says, I have tried, I myself as you know have put Tyndale’sbooks into his hand, his royal hand; could Tyndale, do youthink, come back into this kingdom? In winter they negotiated,letters crossing the Channel. In spring, Stephen Vaughan, hisman in Antwerp, set up a meeting: evening, the concealing dusk,a field outside the city walls. Cromwell’s letter put into his hand,Tyndale wept: I want to come home, he said, I am sick of this,hunted city to city and house to house. I want to come home andif the king would just say yes, if he would say yes to the scriptures in our mother tongue, he can choose his translator, I willnever write more. He can do with me what he pleases, torture meor kill me, but only let the people of England hear the gospel . Henry has not said no. He had not said, never. ThoughTyndale’s translation and any other translation is banned, hemay, one day, permit a translation to be made by a scholar heapproves. How can he say less? He wants to please Anne.But summer comes, and he, Cromwell, knows he has gone tothe brink and must feel his way back. Henry is too timid,Tyndale too intransigent. His letters to Stephen sound a note ofpanic: abandon ship. He does not mean to sacrifice himself toTyndale’s truculence; dear God, he says, More, Tyndale, theydeserve each other, these mules that pass for men. Tyndale willnot come out in favour of Henry’s divorce; nor, for that matter,will the monk Luther. You’d think they’d sacrifice a fine point ofprinciple, to make a friend of the King of England: but no.And when Henry demands, ‘Who is Tyndale to judge me?’Tyndale snaps a message back, quick as word can fly: one Christian man may judge another.‘A cat may look at a king,’ he says. He is cradling Marlinspikein his arms, and talking to Thomas Avery, the boy he’s teachinghis trade. Avery has been with Stephen Vaughan, so he can learnthe practice among the merchants over there, but any boat maybring him to Austin Friars with his little bag, inside it a woollenjerkin, a few shirts. When he comes clattering in he shouts outfor Mercy, for Johane, for the little girls, for whom he bringscomfits and novelties from street traders. On Richard, on Rafe,on Gregory if he’s about, he lands a few punches by way ofsaying I’m back, but always he keeps his bag tucked under hisarm.The boy follows him into his office. ‘Did you never feel homesick, master, when you were on your travels?’He shrugs: I suppose if I’d had a home. He puts the cat down,opens the bag. He fishes up on his finger a string of rosary beads;for show, says Avery, and he says, good boy. Marlinspike leapson to his desk; he peers into the bag, dabbing with a paw. ‘Theonly mice in there are sugar ones.’ The boy pulls the cat’s ears, tussles with him. ‘We don’t have any little pets in MasterVaughan’s house.’‘He’s all business, Stephen. And very stern, these days.’‘He says, Thomas Avery, what time did you get in last night?Have you written to your master? Been to Mass? As if he caresfor the Mass! It’s all but, how’s your bowels?’‘Next spring you can come home.’As they speak he is unrolling the jerkin. With a shake he turnsit inside out, and with a small pair of scissors begins to slit opena seam. ‘Neat stitching … Who did this?’The boy hesitates; he colours. ‘Jenneke.’He draws out from the lining the thin, folded paper. Unwrapsit: ‘She must have good eyes.’‘She does.’‘And lovely eyes too?’ He glances up, smiling. The boy lookshim in the face. For a moment he seems startled, and as if he willspeak; then he drops his gaze and turns away.‘Just tormenting you, Tom, don’t take it to heart.’ He isreading Tyndale’s letter. ‘If she is a good girl, and in Stephen’shousehold, what harm?’‘What does Tyndale say?’‘You carried it without reading it?’‘I would rather not know. In case.’In case you found yourself Thomas More’s guest. He holdsthe letter in his left hand; his right hand curls loosely into a fist.‘Let him come near my people. I’ll drag him out of his court atWestminster and beat his head on the cobbles till I knock intohim some sense of the love of God and what it means.’The boy grins and flops down on a stool. He, Cromwell,glances again at the letter. ‘Tyndale says, he thinks he can nevercome back, even if my lady Anne were queen … a project he doesnothing to aid, I must say. He says he would not trust a safeconduct, even if the king himself were to sign it, while ThomasMore is alive and in office, because More says you need not keep a promise you have made to a heretic. Here. You may as well read.Our Lord Chancellor respects neither ignorance nor innocence.’The boy flinches, but he takes the paper. What a world is this,where promises are not kept. He says gently, ‘Tell me who isJenneke. Do you want me to write to her father for you?’‘No.’ Avery looks up, startled; he is frowning. ‘No, she’s anorphan. Master Vaughan keeps her at his own charge. We are allteaching her English.’‘No money to bring you, then?’The boy looks confused. ‘I suppose Stephen will give her adowry.’The day is too mild for a fire. The hour is too early for acandle. In lieu of burning, he tears up Tyndale’s message. Marlinspike, his ears pricked, chews a fragment of it. ‘Brother cat,’ hesays. ‘He ever loved the scriptures.’Scriptura sola. Only the gospel will guide and console you. Nouse praying to a carved post or lighting a candle to a painted face.Tyndale says ‘gospel’ means good news, it means singing, itmeans dancing: within limits, of course. Thomas Avery says,‘Can I truly come home next spring?’John Petyt at the Tower is to be allowed to sleep in a bed: nochance, though, that he will go home to Lion’s Quay.Cranmer said to him, when they were talking late one night, StAugustine says we need not ask where our home is, because inthe end we all come home to God.Lent saps the spirits, as of course it is designed to do. Going inagain to Anne, he finds the boy Mark, crouched over his lute andpicking at something doleful; he flicks a finger against his head ashe breezes past, and says, ‘Cheer it up, can’t you?’Mark almost falls off his stool. It seems to him they are in adaze, these people, vulnerable to being startled, to beingambushed. Anne, waking out of her dream, says, ‘What did youjust do?’ ‘Hit Mark. Only,’ he demonstrates, ‘with one finger.’Anne says, ‘Mark? Who? Oh. Is that his name?’This spring, 1531, he makes it his business to be cheerful. Thecardinal was a great grumbler, but he always grumbled in someentertaining way. The more he complained, the more cheerful hisman Cromwell became; that was the arrangement.The king is a complainer too. He has a headache. The Duke ofSuffolk is stupid. The weather is too warm for the time of year.The country is going to the dogs. He’s anxious too; afraid ofspells, and of people thinking bad thoughts about him in anyspecific or unspecific way. The more anxious the king becomes,the more tranquil becomes his new servant, the more hopeful,the more staunch. And the more the king snips and carps, themore do his petitioners seek out the company of Cromwell, sounfailing in his amiable courtesy.At home, Jo comes to him looking perplexed. She is a younglady now, with a womanly frown, a soft crinkle of flesh on herforehead, which Johane her mother has too. ‘Sir, how shall wepaint our eggs at Easter?’‘How did you paint them last year?’‘Every year before this we gave them hats like the cardinal’s.’She watches his face, to read back the effect of her words; it is hisown habit exactly, and he thinks, not only your children are yourchildren. ‘Was it wrong?’‘Not at all. I wish I’d known. I would have taken him one. Hewould have liked it.’Jo puts her soft little hand into his. It is still a child’s hand, theskin scuffed over the knuckles, the nails bitten. ‘I am of the king’scouncil now,’ he says. ‘You can paint crowns if you like.’This piece of folly with her mother, this ongoing folly, it has tostop. Johane knows it too. She used to make excuses, to be wherehe was. But now, if he’s at Austin Friars, she’s at the house inStepney.‘Mercy knows,’ she murmurs in passing. The surprise is it took her so long, but there is a lesson here;you think people are always watching you, but that is guilt,making you jump at shadows. But finally, Mercy finds she haseyes in her head, and a tongue to speak, and picks a time whenthey can be alone. ‘They tell me that the king has found a wayaround at least one of his stumbling blocks. I mean, the difficultyof how he can marry Lady Anne, when her sister Mary has beenin his bed.’‘We have had all the best advice,’ he says easily. ‘Dr Cranmerat my recommendation sent to Venice, to a learned body ofrabbis, to take opinions on the meaning of the ancient texts.’‘So it is not incest? Unless you have actually been married toone sister?’‘The divines say not.’‘How much did that cost?’‘Dr Cranmer wouldn’t know. The priests and the scholars goto the negotiating table, then some less godly sort of man comesafter them, with a bag of money. They don’t have to meet eachother, coming in or going out.’‘It hardly helps your case,’ she says bluntly.‘There is no help in my case.’‘She wants to talk to you. Johane.’‘What’s there to say? We all know –’ We all know it can gonowhere. Even though her husband John Williamson is stillcoughing: one is always half listening for it, here and at Stepney,the annunciatory wheezing on a stairway or in the next room;one thing about John Williamson, he’ll never take you bysurprise. Dr Butts has recommended him country air, andkeeping away from fumes and smoke. ‘It was a moment of weakness,’ he says. Then … what? Another moment. ‘God sees all. Sothey tell me.’‘You must listen to her.’ Mercy’s face, when she turns back, isincandescent. ‘You owe her that.’ ‘The way it seems to me, it seems like part of the past.’ Johane’svoice is unsteady; with a little twitch of her fingers she settles herhalf-moon hood and drifts her veil, a cloud of silk, over oneshoulder. ‘For a long time, I didn’t think Liz was really gone. Iexpected to see her walk in one day.’It has been a constant temptation to him, to have Johane beautifully dressed, and he has dealt with it by, as Mercy says, throwing money at the London goldsmiths and mercers, so the womenof Austin Friars are bywords among the city wives, who saybehind their hands (but with a worshipful murmur, almost agenuflection), dear God, Thomas Cromwell, the money must beflowing in like the grace of God.‘So now I think,’ she says, ‘that what we did because she wasdead, when we were shocked, when we were sorry, we have toleave off that now. I mean, we are still sorry. We will always besorry.’He understands her. Liz died in another age, when the cardinal was still in his pomp, and he was the cardinal’s man. ‘If,’ shesays, ‘you would like to marry, Mercy has her list. But then, youprobably have your own list. With nobody on it we know.’‘If, of course,’ she says, ‘if John Williamson had – God forgiveme but every winter I think it is his last – then of course I,without question, I mean, at once, Thomas, as soon as decent,not clasping hands over his coffin … but then the church wouldn’tallow it. The law wouldn’t.’‘You never know,’ he says.She throws out her hands, words flood out of her. ‘They sayyou intend to, what you intend, to break the bishops and make theking head of the church and take away his revenues from the HolyFather and give them to Henry, then Henry can declare the law ifhe likes and put off his wife as he likes and marry Lady Anne andhe will say what is a sin and what not and who can be married. Andthe Princess Mary, God defend her, will be a bastard and afterHenry the next king will be whatever child that lady gives him.’ ‘Johane … when Parliament meets again, would you like tocome down and tell them what you’ve just said? Because itwould save a lot of time.’‘You can’t,’ she says, aghast. ‘The Commons will not vote it.The Lords will not. Bishop Fisher will not allow it. ArchbishopWarham. The Duke of Norfolk. Thomas More.’‘Fisher is ill. Warham is old. Norfolk, he said to me only theother day, “I am tired” – if you will permit his expression – “offighting under the banner of Katherine’s stained bedsheet, and ifArthur could enjoy her, or if he couldn’t, who gives a – who caresany more?”’ He is rapidly altering the duke’s words, which werecoarse in the extreme. ‘“Let my niece Anne come in,” he said,“and do her worst.”’‘What is her worst?’ Johane’s mouth is ajar; the duke’s wordswill be rolling down Gracechurch Street, rolling to the river andacross the bridge, till the painted ladies in Southwark are passingthem mouth to mouth like ulcers; but that’s the Howards foryou, that’s the Boleyns; with or without him, news of Anne’scharacter will reach London and the world.‘She provokes the king’s temper,’ he says. ‘He complainsKatherine never in her life spoke to him as Anne does. Norfolksays she uses language to him you wouldn’t use to a dog.’‘Jesu! I wonder he doesn’t whip her.’‘Perhaps he will, when they’re married.