by Hilary Mante
‘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 understands 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 open-handed 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 half-open 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.
