The cardinal clears his throat softly. ‘We all do,’ Cavendish
says, and the cardinal says, ‘Thomas, we are the works of his
hand.’
When they get out to the cardinal’s barge his flags are flying: the
Tudor rose, the Cornish choughs. Cavendish says, wide-eyed,
‘Look at all these little boats, waffeting up and down.’ For a
moment, the cardinal thinks the Londoners have turned out to
wish him well. But as he enters the barge, there are sounds of
hooting and booing from the boats; spectators crowd the bank,
and though the cardinal’s men keep them back, their intent is
clear enough. When the oars begin to row upstream, and not
downstream to the Tower, there are groans and shouted threats.
It is then that the cardinal collapses, falling into his seat, beginning to talk, and talks, talks, talks, all the way to Putney. ‘Do
they hate me so much? What have I done but promote their
trades and show them my goodwill? Have I sown hatred? No.
Persecuted none. Sought remedies every year when wheat was
scarce. When the apprentices rioted, begged the king on my
knees with tears in my eyes to spare the offenders, while they
stood garlanded with the nooses that were to hang them.’
‘The multitude,’ Cavendish says, ‘is always desirous of a
change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him
down – for the novelty of the thing.’
‘Fifteen years Chancellor. Twenty in his service. His father’s
before that. Never spared myself … rising early, watching late …’
‘There, you see,’ Cavendish says, ‘what it is to serve a prince!
We should be wary of their vacillations of temper.’
‘Princes are not obliged to consistency,’ he says. He thinks, I
may forget myself, lean across and push you overboard.
The cardinal has not forgotten himself, far from it; he is
looking back, back twenty years to the young king’s accession.
‘Put him to work, said some. But I said, no, he is a young man.
Let him hunt, joust, and fly his hawks and falcons …’ ‘Play instruments,’ Cavendish says. ‘Always plucking at
something or other. And singing.’
‘You make him sound like Nero.’
‘Nero?’ Cavendish jumps. ‘I never said so.’
‘The gentlest, wisest prince in Christendom,’ says the cardinal.
‘I will not hear a word against him from any man.’
‘Nor shall you,’ he says.
‘But what I would do for him! Cross the Channel as lightly as
a man might step across a stream of piss in the street.’ The cardinal shakes his head. ‘Waking and sleeping, on horseback or at my
beads … twenty years …’
‘Is it something to do with the English?’ Cavendish asks
earnestly. He’s still thinking of the uproar back there when they
embarked; and even now, people are running along the banks,
making obscene signs and whistling. ‘Tell us, Master Cromwell,
you’ve been abroad. Are they particularly an ungrateful nation?
It seems to me that they like change for the sake of it.’
‘I don’t think it’s the English. I think it’s just people. They
always hope there may be something better.’
‘But what do they get by the change?’ Cavendish persists.
‘One dog sated with meat is replaced by a hungrier dog who
bites nearer the bone. Out goes the man grown fat with honour,
and in comes a hungry and a lean man.’
He closes his eyes. The river shifts beneath them, dim figures
in an allegory of Fortune. Decayed Magnificence sits in the
centre. Cavendish, leaning at his right like a Virtuous Councillor,
mutters words of superfluous and belated advice, to which the
sorry magnate inclines his head; he, like a Tempter, is seated on
the left, and the cardinal’s great hand, with its knuckles of garnet
and tourmaline, grips his own hand painfully. George would
certainly go in the river, except that what he’s saying, despite the
platitudes, makes a bleak sense. And why? Stephen Gardiner, he
thinks. It may not be proper to call the cardinal a dog grown fat,
but Stephen is definitely hungry and lean, and has been promoted by the king to a place as his own private secretary. It is
not unusual for the cardinal’s staff to transfer in this way, after
careful nurture in the Wolsey school of craft and diligence; but
still, this places Stephen as the man who – if he manages his
duties properly – may be closer than anyone to the king, except
perhaps for the gentleman who attends him at his close-stool and
hands him a diaper cloth. I wouldn’t so much mind, he thinks, if
Stephen got that job.
The cardinal closes his eyes. Tears are seeping from beneath
his lids. ‘For it is a truth,’ says Cavendish, ‘that fortune is inconstant, fickle and mutable …’
All he has to do is to make a strangling motion, quickly, while
the cardinal has his eyes shut. Cavendish, putting a hand to his
throat, takes the point. And then they look at each other, sheepish. One of them has said too much; one of them has felt too
much. It is not easy to know where the balance rests. His eyes
scan the banks of the Thames. Still, the cardinal weeps and grips
his hand.
As they move upriver, the littoral ceases to alarm. It is not
because, in Putney, Englishmen are less fickle. It’s just that they
haven’t heard yet.
The horses are waiting. The cardinal, in his capacity as a churchman, has always ridden a large strong mule; though, since he has
hunted with kings for twenty years, his stable is the envy of
every nobleman. Here the beast stands, twitching long ears, in its
usual scarlet trappings, and by him Master Sexton, the cardinal’s
fool.
‘What in God’s name is he doing here?’ he asks Cavendish.
Sexton comes forward and says something in the cardinal’s
ear; the cardinal laughs. ‘Very good, Patch. Now, help me mount,
there’s a good fellow.’
But Patch – Master Sexton – is not up to the job. The cardinal
seems weakened; he seems to feel the weight of his flesh hanging on his bones. He, Cromwell, slides from his saddle, nods to three
of the stouter servants. ‘Master Patch, hold Christopher’s head.’
When Patch pretends not to know that Christopher is the mule,
and puts a headlock on the man next to him, he says, oh for Jesus’
sake, Sexton, get out of the way, or I’ll stuff you in a sack and
drown you.
The man who’s nearly had his head pulled off stands up, rubs
his neck; says, thanks Master Cromwell, and hobbles forward to
hold the bridle. He, Cromwell, with two others, hauls the cardinal into the saddle. The cardinal looks shamefaced. ‘Thank you,
Tom.’ He laughs shakily. ‘That’s you told, Patch.’
They are ready to ride. Cavendish looks up. ‘Saints protect us!’
A single horseman is heading downhill at a gallop. ‘An arrest!’
‘By one man?’
‘An outrider,’ says Cavendish, and he says, Putney’s rough but
you don’t have to send out scouts. Then someone shouts, ‘It’s
Harry Norris.’ Harry throws himself from his mount. Whatever
he’s come to do, he’s in a lather about it. Harry Norris is one of
the king’s closest friends; he is, to be exact, the Groom of the
Stool, the man who hands the diaper cloth.
Wolsey sees, immediately, that the king wouldn’t send Norris
to take him into custody. ‘Now, Sir Henry, get your breath back.
What can be so urgent?’
Norris says, beg pardon, my lord, my lord cardinal, sweeps off
his feathered cap, wipes his face with his arm, smiles in his most
engaging fashion. He speaks to the cardinal gracefully: the king
has commanded him to ride after His Grace and overtake him,
and speak words of comfort to him and give him this ring, which
he knows well – a ring which he holds out, in the palm of his
glove.
The cardinal scrambles from his mule and falls to the ground.
He takes the ring and presses it to his lips. He’s praying. Praying,
thanking Norris, calling for blessings on his sovereign. ‘I have
nothing to send him. Nothing of value to send to the king.’ He looks around him, as if his eye might light on something he can
send; a tree? Norris tries to get him on his feet, ends up kneeling
beside him, kneeling – this neat and charming man – in the
Putney mud. The message he’s giving the cardinal, it seems, is
that the king only appears displeased, but is not really displeased;
that he knows the cardinal has enemies; that he himself, Henricus
Rex, is not one of them; that this show of force is only to satisfy
those enemies; that he is able to recompense the cardinal with
twice as much as has been taken from him.
The cardinal begins to cry. It’s starting to rain, and the wind
blows the rain across their faces. The cardinal speaks to Norris
fast, in a low voice, and then he takes a chain from around his
neck and tries to hang it around Norris’s neck, and it gets tangled
up in the fastenings of his riding cape and several people rush
forward to help and fail, and Norris gets up and begins to brush
himself down with one glove while clutching the chain in the
other. ‘Wear it,’ the cardinal begs him, ‘and when you look at it
think of me, and commend me to the king.’
Cavendish jolts up, riding knee-to-knee. ‘His reliquary!’
George is upset, astonished. ‘To part with it like this! It is a piece
of the true Cross!’
‘We’ll get him another. I know a man in Pisa makes them ten
for five florins and a round dozen for cash up front. And you get
a certificate with St Peter’s thumbprint, to say they’re genuine.’
‘For shame!’ Cavendish says, and twitches his horse away.
Now Norris is backing away too, his message delivered, and
they are trying to get the cardinal back on his mule. This time,
four big men step forward, as if it were routine. The play has
turned into some kind of low comic interlude; that, he thinks, is
why Patch is here. He rides over and says, looking down from
the saddle, ‘Norris, can we have all this in writing?’
Norris smiles, says, ‘Hardly, Master Cromwell; it’s a confidential message to my lord cardinal. My master’s words were
meant only for him.’ ‘So what about this recompense you mention?’
Norris laughs – as he always does, to disarm hostility – and
whispers, ‘I think it might be figurative.’
‘I think it might be, too.’ Double the cardinal’s worth? Not on
Henry’s income. ‘Give us back what’s been taken. We don’t ask
double.’
Norris’s hand goes to the chain, now slung about his neck.
‘But it all proceeds from the king. You can’t call it theft.’
‘I didn’t call it theft.’
Norris nods, thoughtful. ‘No more did you.’
‘They shouldn’t have taken the vestments. They belong to my
lord as churchman. What will they have next? His benefices?’
‘Esher – which is where you are going, are you not? – is of
course one of the houses which my lord cardinal holds as Bishop
of Winchester.’
‘And?’
‘He remains for the while in that estate and title, but … shall
we say … it must come under the king’s consideration? You
know my lord cardinal is indicted under the statutes of praemunire, for asserting a foreign jurisdiction in the land.’
‘Don’t teach me the law.’
Norris inclines his head.
He thinks, since last spring, when things began to go wrong, I
should have persuaded my lord cardinal to let me manage his
revenues, and put some money away abroad where they can’t get
it; but then he would never admit that anything was wrong. Why
did I let him rest so cheerful?
Norris’s hand is on his horse’s bridle. ‘I was ever a person who
admired your master,’ he says, ‘and I hope that in his adversity he
will remember that.’
‘I thought he wasn’t in adversity? According to you.’
How simple it would be, if he were allowed to reach down and
shake some straight answers out of Norris. But it’s not simple;
this is what the world and the cardinal conspire to teach him. Christ, he thinks, by my age I ought to know. You don’t get on
by being original. You don’t get on by being bright. You don’t
get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook;
somehow he thinks that’s what Norris is, and he feels an irrational dislike taking root, and he tries to dismiss it, because he
prefers his dislikes rational, but after all, these circumstances are
extreme, the cardinal in the mud, the humiliating tussle to get
him back in the saddle, the talking, talking on the barge, and
worse, the talking, talking on his knees, as if Wolsey’s unravelling, in a great unweaving of scarlet thread that might lead you
back into a scarlet labyrinth, with a dying monster at its heart.
‘Master Cromwell?’ Norris says.
He can hardly say what he’s thinking; so he looks down at
Norris, his expression softened, and says, ‘Thanks for this much
comfort.’
‘Well, take my lord cardinal out of the rain. I’ll tell the king
how I found him.’
‘Tell him how you knelt in the mud together. He might be
amused.’
‘Yes.’ Norris looks sad. ‘You never know what will do it.’
It is at this point that Patch starts screaming. The cardinal, it
seems – casting around for a gift – has given him to the king.
Patch, he has often said, is worth a thousand pounds. He is to go
with Norris, no time like the present; and it takes four more of
the cardinal’s men to subdue him to the purpose. He fights. He
bites. He lashes out with fists and feet. Till he is thrown on to a
baggage mule, stripped of its baggage; till he begins to cry,
hiccupping, his ribs heaving, his stupid feet dangling, his coat
torn and the feather in his hat broken off to a stub.
‘But Patch,’ the cardinal says, ‘my dear fellow. You shall see
me often, once the king and I understand each other again. My
dear Patch, I will write you a letter, a letter of your own. I shall
write it tonight,’ he promises, ‘and put my big seal on it. The king
will cherish you; he is the kindest soul in Christendom. Patch wails on a single thin note, like someone taken by the
Turks and impaled.
There, he says to Cavendish, he’s more than one kind of fool.
He shouldn’t have drawn attention to himself, should he.
Esher: the cardinal dismounts under the shadow of old Bishop
Wayneflete’s keep, surmounted by octagonal towers. The
gateway is set into a defensive wall topped with a walkway; stern
enough at first sight, but the whole thing is built of brick, ornamented and prettily inlaid. ‘You couldn’t fortify it,’ he says.
Cavendish is silent. ‘George, you’re supposed to say, “But the
need could never arise.”’
The cardinal’s not used the place since he built Hampton
Court. They’ve sent messages ahead, but has anything been
done? Make my lord comfortable, he says, and goes straight
down to the kitchens. At Hampton Court, the kitchens have
running water; here, nothing’s running but the cooks’ noses.
Cavendish is right. In fact it is worse than he thinks. The larders
are impoverished and such supplies as they have show signs of
ill-keeping and plunder. There are weevils in the flour. There are
mouse droppings where the pastry should be rolled. It is nearly
Martinmas, and they have not even thought of salting their beef.
The batterie de cuisine is an insult, and the stockpot is mildewed.
There are a number of small boys sitting by the hearth, and, for
cash down, they can be induced into scouring and scrubbing;
children take readily to novelty, and the idea of cleaning, it
seems, is novel to them.
My lord, he says, needs to eat and drink now; and he needs to
eat and drink for … how long we don’t know. This kitchen must
be put in order for the winter ahead. He finds someone who can
write, and dictates his orders. His eyes are fixed on the kitchen
clerk. On his left hand he counts off the items: you do this, then
this, then thirdly this. With his right hand, he breaks eggs into a
basin, each one with a hard professional tap, and between his fingers the white drips, sticky and slow, from the yolk. ‘How old
is this egg? Change your supplier. I want a nutmeg. Nutmeg?
Saffron?’ They look at him as if he’s speaking Greek. Patch’s thin
scream is still hurting his ears. Dusty angels look down on him as
he pounds back to the hall.
It is late before they get the cardinal into any sort of bed worthy
of the name. Where is his household steward? Where is his comptroller? By this time, he feels it is true that he and Cavendish are
old survivors of a campaign. He stays up with Cavendish – not
that there are beds, if they wanted them – working out what they
need to keep the cardinal in reasonable comfort; they need plate,
unless my lord’s going to dine off dented pewter, they need
bedsheets, table linen, firewood. ‘I will send some people,’ he says,
‘to sort out the kitchens. They will be Italian. It will be violent at
first, but then after three weeks it will work.’
Three weeks? He wants to set those children cleaning the
copper. ‘Can we get lemons?’ he asks, just as Cavendish says, ‘So
who will be Chancellor now?’
I wonder, he thinks, are there rats down there? Cavendish
says, ‘Recall His Grace of Canterbury?’
Recall him – fifteen years after the cardinal chivvied him out of
that office? ‘No, Warham’s too old.’ And too stubborn, too
unaccommodating to the king’s wishes. ‘And not the Duke of
Suffolk’ – because in his view Charles Brandon is no brighter
than Christopher the mule, though better at fighting and fashion
and generally showing off – ‘not Suffolk, because the Duke of
Norfolk won’t have him.’
‘And vice versa.’ Cavendish nods. ‘Bishop Tunstall?’
‘No. Thomas More.’
‘But, a layman and a commoner? And when he’s so opposed in
the matter of the king’s marriage suit.’
He nods, yes, yes, it will be More. The king is known for
putting out his conscience to high bidders. Perhaps he hopes to
be saved from himself. ‘If the king offers it – and I see that, as a gesture, he might –
surely Thomas More won’t accept?’
‘He will.’
‘Bet?’ says Cavendish.
They agree the terms and shake hands on it. It takes their mind
off the urgent problem, which is the rats, and the cold; which is
the question of how they can pack a household staff of several
hundred, retained at Westminster, into the much smaller space at
Esher. The cardinal’s staff, if you include his principal houses,
and count them up from priests, law clerks, down to floorsweepers and laundresses, is about six hundred souls. They
expect three hundred following them immediately. ‘As things
stand, we’ll have to break up the household,’ Cavendish says.
‘But we’ve no ready money for wages.’
‘I’m damned if they’re going unpaid,’ he says, and Cavendish
says, ‘I think you are anyway. After what you said about the
relic.’
He catches George’s eye. They start to laugh. At least they’ve
got something worthwhile to drink; the cellars are full, which is
lucky, Cavendish says, because we’ll need a drink over the next
weeks. ‘What do you think Norris meant?’ George says. ‘How
can the king be in two minds? How can my lord cardinal be
dismissed if he doesn’t want to dismiss him? How can the king
give way to my lord’s enemies? Isn’t the king master, over all the
enemies?’
‘You would think so.’
‘Or is it her? It must be. He’s frightened of her, you know.
She’s a witch.’
He says, don’t be childish. George says, she is so a witch: the
Duke of Norfolk says she is, and he’s her uncle, he should know.
It’s two o’clock, then it’s three; sometimes it’s freeing, to think
you don’t have to go to bed because there isn’t a bed. He doesn’t
need to think of going home; there’s no home to go to, he’s got
no family left. He’d rather be here drinking with Cavendish, huddled in a corner of the great chamber at Esher, cold and tired
and frightened of the future, than think about his family and
what he’s lost. ‘Tomorrow,’ he says, ‘I’ll get my clerks down
from London and we’ll try and make sense of what my lord still
has by way of assets, which won’t be easy as they’ve taken all the
paperwork. His creditors won’t be inclined to pay up when they
know what’s happened. But the French king pays him a pension,
and if I remember it’s always in arrears … Maybe he’d like to
send a bag of gold, pending my lord’s return to favour. And you
– you can go looting.’
Cavendish is hollow-faced and hollow-eyed when he throws
him on to a fresh horse at first light. ‘Call in some favours.
There’s hardly a gentleman in the realm that doesn’t owe my lord
cardinal something.’
It’s late October, the sun a coin barely flipped above the
horizon. ‘Keep him cheerful,’ Cavendish says. ‘Keep him talking.
Keep him talking about what Harry Norris said …’
‘Off you go. If you should see the coals on which St Lawrence
was roasted, we could make good use of them here.’
‘Oh, don’t,’ Cavendish begs. He has come far since yesterday,
and is able to make jokes about holy martyrs; but he drank too
much last night, and it hurts him to laugh. But not to laugh is
painful too. George’s head droops, the horse stirs beneath him,
his eyes are full of bafflement. ‘How did it come to this?’ he asks.
‘My lord cardinal kneeling in the dirt. How could it happen?
How in the world could it?’
He says, ‘Saffron. Raisins. Apples. And cats, get cats, huge
starving ones. I don’t know, George, where do cats come from?
Oh, wait! Do you think we can get partridges?’
If we can get partridges we can slice the breasts, and braise
them at the table. Whatever we can do that way, we will; and so,
if we can help it, my lord won’t be poisoned.