Wolf Hall tct-1

by Hilary Mante

  They surged forward, roaring. Officers made a barrier with staves and shouted in great deep voices, back, back, back, and the crowd shrieked and fell back, and then came on again, roaring and chanting, as if it were a game. Eddies of smoke spoiled their view, and the crowd beat it aside, coughing. Smell her! they cried. Smell the old sow! He had held his breath, not to breathe her in. In the smoke the Loller was screaming. Now she calls on the saints! they said. The woman bent down and said in his ear, do you know that in the fire they bleed? Some people think they just shrivel up, but I've seen it before and I know.

  By the time the smoke cleared and they could see again, the old woman was well ablaze. The crowd began cheering. They had said it would not take long but it did take long, or so it seemed to him, before the screaming stopped. Does nobody pray for her, he said, and the woman said, what's the point? Even after there was nothing left to scream, the fire was stoked. The officers trod around the margins, stamping out any wisps of straw that flew off, kicking back anything bigger.

  When the crowd drifted home, chattering, you could tell the ones who'd been on the wrong side of the fire, because their faces were grey with wood-ash. He wanted to go home but again he thought of Walter, who had said that morning he was going to kill him by inches. He watched the officers strike with their iron bars at the human debris that was left. The chains retained the remnants of flesh, sucking and clinging. Approaching the men, he asked, how hot must the fire be, to burn bone? He expected them to have knowledge in the matter. But they didn't understand his question. People who are not smiths think all fires are the same. His father had taught him the colours of red: sunset red, cherry red, the bright yellow-red with no name unless its name is scarlet.

  The Loller's skull was left on the ground, the long bones of her arms and legs. Her broken ribcage was not much bigger than a dog's. A man took an iron bar and thrust it through the hole where the woman's left eye had been. He scooped up the skull and positioned it on the stones, so it was looking at him. Then he hefted his bar and brought it down on the crown. Even before the blow landed he knew it was false, skewed. Shattered bone, like a star, flew away into the dirt, but the most part of the skull was intact. Jesus, the man said. Here, lad, do you want a go? One good swipe will stove her in.

  Usually he said yes to any invitation. But now he backed away, his hands behind his back. God's blood, the man said, I wish I could afford to be choosy. Soon after that it came on to rain. The men wiped their hands, blew their noses and walked off the job. They threw down their iron bars amid what was left of the Loller. It was just splinters of bone now, and thick sludgy ash. He picked up one of the iron bars, in case he needed a weapon. He fingered its tapered end, which was cut like a chisel. He did not know how far he was from home, and whether Walter might come for him. He wondered how you kill a person by inches, whether by burning them or cutting them up. He should have asked the officers while they were here, for being servants of the city they would know.

  The stink of the woman was still in the air. He wondered if she was in Hell now, or still about the streets, but he was not afraid of ghosts. They had put up a stand for the gentlemen, and though the canopy was taken down, it was high enough off the ground to crouch underneath for shelter. He prayed for the woman, thinking it could do no harm. He moved his lips as he prayed. Rainwater gathered above him and fell in great drops through the planking. He counted the time between drops and caught them in his cupped hand. He did this just for a pastime. Dusk fell. If it were an ordinary day he would have been hungry by now and gone looking for food.

  In the twilight certain men came, and women too; he knew, because there were women, that they were not officers or people who would hurt him. They drew together, making a loose circle around the stake on its pile of stones. He ducked out from under the stand and approached them. You will be wondering what has happened here, he said. But they did not look up or speak to him.

  They fell to their knees and he thought they were praying. I have prayed for her too, he said.

  Have you? Good lad, one of the men said. He didn't even glance up. If he looks at me, he thought, he will see that I am not good, but a worthless boy who goes off with his dog and forgets to make the brine bath for the forge, so when Walter shouts where's the fucking slake-tub it's not there. With a sick lurch of his stomach he remembered what he'd not done and why he was to be killed. He almost cried out. As if he were in pain.

  He saw now that the men and women were not praying. They were on their hands and knees. They were friends of the Loller, and they were scraping her up. One of the women knelt, her skirts spread, and held out an earthenware pot. His eyes were sharp even in the gloom, and out of the sludge and muck he picked a fragment of bone. Here's some, he said. The woman held out the bowl. Here's another.

  One of the men stood apart, some way off. Why does he not help us? he said.

  He is the watchman. He will whistle if the officers come.

  Will they take us up?

  Hurry, hurry, another man said.

  When they had got a bowlful, the woman who was holding it said, ‘Give me your hand.’

  Trusting, he held it out to her. She dipped her fingers into the bowl. She placed on the back of his hand a smear of mud and grit, fat and ash. ‘Joan Boughton,’ she said.

  Now, when he thinks back on this, he wonders at his own faulty memory. He has never forgotten the woman, whose last remnants he carried away as a greasy smudge on his own skin, but why is it that his life as a child doesn't seem to fit, one bit with the next? He can't remember how he got back home, and what Walter did instead of killing him by inches, or why he'd run off in the first place without making the brine. Perhaps, he thinks, I spilled the salt and I was too frightened to tell him. That seems likely. One fear creates a dereliction, the offence brings on a greater fear, and there comes a point where the fear is too great and the human spirit just gives up and a child wanders off numb and directionless and ends up following a crowd and watching a killing.

  He has never told anyone this story. He doesn't mind talking to Richard, to Rafe about his past – within reason – but he doesn't mean to give away pieces of himself. Chapuys comes to dinner very often and sits beside him, teasing out bits of his life story as he teases tender flesh from the bone.

  Some tell me your father was Irish, Eustache says. He waits, poised.

  It is the first I have heard of it, he says, but I grant you, he was a mystery even to himself. Chapuys sniffs; the Irish are a very violent people, he says. ‘Tell me, is it true you fled from England at fifteen, having escaped from prison?’

  ‘For sure,’ he says. ‘An angel struck off my chains.’

  That will give him something to write home. ‘I put the allegation to Cremuel, who answered me with a blasphemy, unfit for your Imperial ear.’ Chapuys is never stuck for something to put in dispatches. If news is scant he sends the gossip. There is the gossip he picks up, from dubious sources, and the gossip he feeds him on purpose. As Chapuys doesn't speak English, he gets his news in French from Thomas More, in Italian from the merchant Antonio Bonvisi, and in God knows what – Latin? – from Stokesley, the Bishop of London, whose table he also honours. Chapuys is peddling the idea to his master the Emperor that the people of England are so disaffected by their king that, given encouragement by a few Spanish troops, they will rise in revolt. Chapuys is, of course, deeply misled. The English may favour Queen Katherine – broadly, it seems they do. They may mislike or fail to understand recent measures in the Parliament. But instinct tells him this; they will knit together against foreign interference. They like Katherine because they have forgotten she is Spanish, because she has been here for a long time. They are the same people who rioted against foreigners, on Evil May Day; the same people, narrow-hearted, stubborn, attached to their patch of ground. Only overwhelming force – a coalition, say, of Francis and the Emperor – will budge them. We cannot, of course, rule out the possibility that such a coalition may occur.

&nb
sp; When dinner is over, he walks Chapuys back to his people, to his big solid boys, bodyguards, who lounge about, chatting in Flemish, often about him. Chapuys knows he has been in the Low Countries; does he think he doesn't understand the language? Or is this some elaborate double-bluff?

  There were days, not too long past, days since Lizzie died, when he'd woken in the morning and had to decide, before he could speak to anybody, who he was and why. There were days when he'd woken from dreams of the dead and searching for them. When his waking self trembled, at the threshold of deliverance from his dreams.

  But those days are not these days.

  Sometimes, when Chapuys has finished digging up Walter's bones and making his own life unfamiliar to him, he feels almost impelled to speak in defence of his father, his childhood. But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

  On 14 April 1532, the king appoints him Keeper of the Jewel House. From here, Henry Wyatt had said, you are able to take an overview of the king's income and outgoings.

  The king shouts, as if to any courtier passing, ‘Why should I not, tell me why should I not, employ the son of an honest blacksmith?’

  He hides his smile, at this description of Walter; so much more flattering than any the Spanish ambassador has arrived at. The king says, ‘What you are, I make you. I alone. Everything you are, everything you have, will come from me.’

  The thought gives him a pleasure you can hardly grudge. Henry is so well disposed these days, so open-handed and amenable, that you must forgive him the occasional statement of his position, whether it is necessary or not. The cardinal used to say, the English will forgive a king anything, until he tries to tax them. He also used to say, it doesn't really matter what the title of the office is. Let any colleague on the council turn his back, he would turn again to find that I was doing his job.

  He is in a Westminster office one day in April when Hugh Latimer walks in, just released from custody at Lambeth Palace. ‘Well?’ Hugh says. ‘You might leave off your scribble, and give me your hand.’

  He rises from his desk and embraces him, dusty black coat, sinew, bone. ‘So you made Warham a pretty speech?’

  ‘I made it extempore, in my fashion. It came fresh from my mouth as from the mouth of a babe. Perhaps the old fellow is losing his appetite for burnings now his own end is so near. He is shrivelling like a seedpod in the sun, when he moves you can hear his bones rattle. Anyway, I cannot account for it, but here you see me.’

  ‘How did he keep you?’

  ‘Bare walls my library. Fortunately, my brain is furnished with texts. He sent me off with a warning. Told me if I did not smell of the fire then I smelled of the frying pan. It has been said to me before. It must be ten years now, since I came up for heresy before the Scarlet Beast.’ He laughs. ‘But Wolsey, he gave me my preacher's licence back. And the kiss of peace. And my dinner. So? Are we any nearer a queen who loves the gospel?’

  A shrug. ‘We – they – are talking to the French. There is a treaty in the air. Francis has a gaggle of cardinals who might lend us their voices in Rome.’

  Hugh snorts. ‘Still waiting on Rome.’

  ‘That is how it must be.’

  ‘We will turn Henry. We will turn him to the gospel.’

  ‘Perhaps. Not suddenly. A little and a little.’

  ‘I am going to ask Bishop Stokesley to allow me to visit our brother Bainham. Will you come?’

  Bainham is the barrister who was taken up by More last year and tortured. Just before Christmas he came before the Bishop of London. He abjured, and was free by February. He is a natural man; he wanted to live, how not? But once he was free his conscience would not let him sleep. One Sunday he walked into a crowded church and stood up before all the people, Tyndale's Bible in his hand, and spoke a profession of his faith. Now he is in the Tower waiting to know the date of his execution.

  ‘So?’ Latimer says. ‘You will or you won't?’

  ‘I should not give ammunition to the Lord Chancellor.’

  I might sap Bainham's resolve, he thinks. Say to him, believe anything, brother, swear to it and cross your fingers behind your back. But then, it hardly matters what Bainham says now. Mercy will not operate for him, he must burn.

  Hugh Latimer lopes away. The mercy of God operates for Hugh. The Lord walks with him, and steps with him into a wherry, to disembark under the shadow of the Tower; this being so, there is no need for Thomas Cromwell.

  More says it does not matter if you lie to heretics, or trick them into a confession. They have no right to silence, even if they know speech will incriminate them; if they will not speak, then break their fingers, burn them with irons, hang them up by their wrists. It is legitimate, and indeed More goes further; it is blessed.

  There is a group from the House of Commons who dine with priests at the Queen's Head tavern. The word comes from them, and spreads among the people of London, that anyone who supports the king's divorce will be damned. So devoted is God to the cause of these gentlemen, they say, that an angel attends the sittings of Parliament with a scroll, noting down who votes and how, and smudging a sooty mark against the names of those who fear Henry more than the Almighty.

  At Greenwich, a friar called William Peto, the head in England of his branch of the Franciscan order, preaches a sermon before the king, in which he takes as his text and example the unfortunate Ahab, seventh king of Israel, who lived in a palace of ivory. Under the influence of the wicked Jezebel he built a pagan temple and gave the priests of Baal places in his retinue. The prophet Elijah told Ahab that the dogs would lick his blood, and so it came to pass, as you would imagine, since only the successful prophets are remembered. The dogs of Samaria licked Ahab's blood. All his male heirs perished. They lay unburied in the streets. Jezebel was thrown out of a window of her palace. Wild dogs tore her body into shreds.

  Anne says, ‘I am Jezebel. You, Thomas Cromwell, are the priests of Baal.’ Her eyes are alight. ‘As I am a woman, I am the means by which sin enters this world. I am the devil's gateway, the cursed ingress. I am the means by which Satan attacks the man, whom he was not bold enough to attack, except through me. Well, that is their view of the situation. My view is that there are too many priests with scant learning and smaller occupation. And I wish the Pope and the Emperor and all Spaniards were in the sea and drowned. And if anyone is to be thrown out of a palace window … alors, Thomas, I know who I would like to throw. Except the child Mary, the wild dogs would not find a scrap of flesh to gnaw, and Katherine, she is so fat she would bounce.’

  When Thomas Avery comes home, he lowers to the flagstones the travelling chest in which he carries everything he owns, and rises with open arms to hug his master like a child. News of his government promotion has reached Antwerp. It seems Stephen Vaughan turned brick-red with pleasure and drank off a whole cup of wine without cutting it with water.

  Come in, he says, there are fifty people here to see me but they can wait, come and tell me how is everyone across the sea. Thomas Avery starts talking at once. But inside the doorway of his room, he stops. He is looking at the tapestry given by the king. His eyes search it, then turn to his master's face, and then back to the tapestry. ‘Who is that lady?’

  ‘You can't guess?’ He laughs. ‘It is Sheba visiting Solomon. The king gave it to me. It was my lord cardinal's. He saw I liked it. And he likes to give presents.’

  ‘It must be worth a fair sum.’ Avery looks at it with respect, like the keen young accountant he is.

  ‘Look,’ he says to him, ‘I have another present, what do you think of this? It is perhaps the only good thing ever to come out of a monastery. Brother Luca Pacioli. It took him thirty years to write.’
>
  The book is bound in deepest green with a tooled border of gold, and its pages are edged in gilt, so that it blazes in the light. Its clasps are studded with blackish garnets, smooth, translucent. ‘I hardly dare open it,’ the boy says.

  ‘Please. You will like it.’

  It is Summa de Arithmetica. He unclasps it to find a woodcut of the author with a book before him, and a pair of compasses. ‘This is a new printing?’

  ‘Not quite, but my friends in Venice have just now remembered me. I was a child, of course, when Luca wrote it, and you were not even thought of.’ His fingertips barely touch the page. ‘Look, here he treats of geometry, do you see the figures? Here is where he says you don't go to bed until the books balance.’

  ‘Master Vaughan quotes that maxim. It has caused me to sit up till dawn.’

  ‘And I.’ Many nights in many cities. ‘Luca, you know, he was a poor man. He came out of Sansepulcro. He was a friend of artists and he became a perfect mathematician in Urbino, which is a little town up in the mountains, where Count Federigo the great condottiere had his library of over a thousand books. He was magister at the university in Perugia, later in Milan. I wonder why such a man would remain a monk, but of course there have been practitioners of algebra and geometry who have been thrown into dungeons as magicians, so perhaps he thought the church would protect him … I heard him lecture in Venice, it will be more than twenty years ago now, I was your age, I suppose. He spoke about proportion. Proportion in building, in music, in paintings, in justice, in the commonwealth, the state; about how rights should be balanced, the power of a prince and his subjects, how the wealthy citizen should keep his books straight and say his prayers and serve the poor. He spoke about how a printed page should look. How a law should read. Or a face, what makes it beautiful.’

  ‘Will he tell me in this book?’ Thomas Avery glances up again at the Queen of Sheba. ‘I suppose they knew, who made the tapestry.’