Wolf Hall tct-1

by Hilary Mante

  Martin lets them in. More's head jerks up as they enter.

  ‘It's yes or no today,’ he says.

  ‘Not even good day and how do you.’ Somebody has given More a comb for his beard. ‘Well, what do I hear from Antwerp? Do I hear Tyndale is taken?’

  ‘That is not to the point,’ the Lord Chancellor says. ‘Answer to the oath. Answer to the statute. Is it a lawfully made statute?’

  ‘They say he strayed outside and the Emperor's soldiers have seized him.’

  He says coldly, ‘Had you prior knowledge?’

  Tyndale has been, not just taken, but betrayed. Someone tempted him out of his haven, and More knows who. He sees himself, a second self, enacting another rainy morning just like this: in which he crosses the room, hauls the prisoner to his feet, beats out of him the name of his agent. ‘Now, Your Grace,’ he says to Suffolk, ‘you are wearing a violent expression, pray be calm.’

  Me? Brandon says. Audley laughs. More says, ‘Tyndale's devil will desert him now. The Emperor will burn him. And the king will not lift a finger to save him, because Tyndale would not support his new marriage.’

  ‘Perhaps you think he showed sense there?’ Riche says.

  ‘You must speak,’ Audley says, gently enough.

  More is agitated, words tumbling over each other. He is ignoring Audley, speaking to him, Cromwell. ‘You cannot compel me to put myself in hazard. For if I had an opinion against your Act of Supremacy, which I do not concede, then your oath would be a two-edged sword. I must put my body in peril if I say no to it, my soul if I say yes to it. Therefore I say nothing.’

  ‘When you interrogated men you called heretics, you did not allow evasion. You compelled them to speak and racked if they would not. If they were made to answer, why not you?’

  ‘The cases are not the same. When I compel an answer from a heretic, I have the whole body of law behind me, the whole might of Christendom. What I am threatened with here is one particular law, one singular dispensation of recent make, recognised here but in no other country –’

  He sees Riche make a note. He turns away. ‘The end is the same. Fire for them. Axe for you.’

  ‘If the king grants you that mercy,’ Brandon says.

  More quails; he curls up his fingers on the tabletop. He notices this, detached. So that's a way in. Put him in fear of the more lingering death. Even as he thinks it, he knows he will not do it; the notion is contaminating. ‘On numbers I suppose you have me beat. But have you looked at a map lately? Christendom is not what it was.’

  Riche says, ‘Master Secretary, Fisher is more a man than this prisoner before us, for Fisher dissents and takes the consequences. Sir Thomas, I think you would be an overt traitor, if you dared.’

  More says softly, ‘Not so. It is not for me to thrust myself on God. It is for God to draw me to him.’

  ‘We take note of your obstinacy,’ Audley says. ‘We spare you the methods you have used on others.’ He stands up. ‘It is the king's pleasure that we move to indictment and trial.’

  ‘In the name of God! What ill can I effect from this place? I do nobody harm. I say none harm. I think none harm. If this be not enough to keep a man alive –’

  He cuts in on him, incredulous. ‘You do nobody harm? What about Bainham, you remember Bainham? You forfeited his goods, committed his poor wife to prison, saw him racked with your own eyes, you locked him in Bishop Stokesley's cellar, you had him back at your own house two days chained upright to a post, you sent him again to Stokesley, saw him beaten and abused for a week, and still your spite was not exhausted: you sent him back to the Tower and had him racked again, so that finally his body was so broken that they had to carry him in a chair when they took him to Smithfield to be burned alive. And you say, Thomas More, that you do no harm?’

  Riche begins to gather More's papers from the table. It is suspected he has been passing letters to Fisher upstairs: which is not a bad thing, if collusion in Fisher's treason can be shown. More drops his hand on them, fingers spread; then shrugs, and yields them. ‘Have them if you must. You read all I write.’

  He says, ‘Unless we hear soon of a change of heart, we must take away your pen and papers. And your books. I will send someone.’

  More seems to shrink. He bites his lip. ‘If you must take them, take them now.’

  ‘For shame,’ Suffolk says. ‘Do you take us for porters, Master More?’

  Anne says, ‘It is all about me.’ He bows. ‘When finally you have out of More what troubles his singular conscience, you will find that what is at the root of it is that he will not bend his knee to my queenship.’

  She is small and white and angry. Long fingers tip to tip, bending each other back; eyes bright.

  Before they go further, he has to recall to Henry last year's disaster; remind him that he cannot always have his own way, just by asking for it. Last summer Lord Dacre, who is one of the northern lords, was indicted for treason, accused of collusion with the Scots. Behind the accusation were the Clifford family, Dacre's hereditary enemies and rivals; behind them the Boleyns, for Dacre had been outspoken in support of the former queen. The stage was set in Westminster Hall, Norfolk presiding over the court, as High Steward of the kingdom: and Dacre to be judged, as was his right, by twenty fellow lords. And then … mistakes were made. Possibly the whole thing was a miscalculation, an affair driven too fast and hard by the Boleyns. Possibly he had erred in not taking charge of the prosecution himself; he had thought it was best to stay in the background, as many titled men have a spite against him for being who he is, and will take a risk to work him displeasure. Or else Norfolk was the problem, losing control of the court … Whatever the reason, the charges were thrown out, to an outpouring by the king of astonishment and rage. Dacre was taken straight back to the Tower by the king's guard, and he was sent in to strike some deal, which must, he knew, end with Dacre broken. At his trial Dacre had talked for seven hours, in his own defence; but he, Cromwell, can talk for a week. Dacre had admitted to misprision of treason, a lesser offence. He bought a royal pardon for £10,000. He was released to go north again, a pauper.

  But the queen was sick with frustration; she wanted an example made. And affairs in France are not going her way; some say that at the mention of her name, François sniggers. She suspects, and she is right, that her man Cromwell is more interested in the friendship of the German princes than in an alliance with France; but she has to pick her time for that quarrel, and she says she will have no peace till Fisher is dead, till More is dead. So now she circles the room, agitated, less than regal, and she keeps veering towards Henry, touching his sleeve, touching his hand, and he brushes her away, each time, as if she were a fly. He, Cromwell, watches. They are not the same couple from day to day: sometimes doting, sometimes chilly and distanced. The billing and cooing, on the whole, is the more painful to watch.

  ‘Fisher gives me no anxiety,’ he says, ‘his offence is clear. In More's case … morally, our cause is unimpeachable. No one is in doubt of his loyalty to Rome and his hatred of Your Majesty's title as head of the church. Legally, however, our case is slender, and More will use every legal, every procedural device open to him. This is not going to be easy.’

  Henry stirs into life. ‘Do I retain you for what is easy? Jesus pity my simplicity, I have promoted you to a place in this kingdom that no one, no one of your breeding has ever held in the whole of the history of this realm.’ He drops his voice. ‘Do you think it is for your personal beauty? The charm of your presence? I keep you, Master Cromwell, because you are as cunning as a bag of serpents. But do not be a viper in my bosom. You know my decision. Execute it.’

  As he leaves, he is conscious of the silence falling behind him. Anne walking to the window. Henry staring at his feet.

  So when Riche comes in, quivering with undisclosed secrets, he is inclined to swat him like a fly; but then he takes hold of himself, rubs his palms together instead: the merriest man in London. ‘Well, Sir Purse, did you pack up th
e books? And how was he?’

  ‘He drew the blind down. I asked him why, and he said, the goods are taken away, so now I am closing the shop.’

  He can hardly bear it, to think of More sitting in the dark.

  ‘Look, sir.’ Riche has a folded paper. ‘We had some conversation. I wrote it down.’

  ‘Talk me through it.’ He sits down. ‘I am More. You are Riche.’ Riche stares at him. ‘Shall I close the shutter? Is this better played out in the dark?’

  ‘I could not,’ Riche says, hesitant, ‘leave him without trying once again –’

  ‘Quite. You have your way to make. But why would he talk to you, if he would not talk to me?’

  ‘Because he has no time for me. He thinks I don't matter.’

  ‘And you Solicitor General,’ he says, mocking.

  ‘So we were putting cases.’

  ‘What, as if you were at Lincoln's Inn after supper?’

  ‘To tell the truth I pitied him, sir. He craves conversation and you know he rattles away. I said to him, suppose Parliament were to pass an act saying that I, Richard Riche, were to be king. Would you not take me for king? And he laughed.’

  ‘Well, you admit it is not likely.’

  ‘So I pressed him on it; he said, yes, majestic Richard, I so take you, for Parliament can do it, and considering what they have done already I should hardly be surprised if I woke up in the reign of King Cromwell, for if a tailor can be King of Jerusalem I suppose a lad from the smithy can be King of England.’

  Riche pauses: has he given offence? He beams at him. ‘When I am King Cromwell, you shall be a duke. So, to the point, Purse … or isn't there one?’

  ‘More said, well, you have put a case, I shall put you a higher case. Suppose Parliament were to pass an act saying God should not be God? I said, it would have no effect, for Parliament has no power to do it. Then he said, aye, well, young man, at least you recognise an absurdity. And there he stopped, and gave me a look, as if to say, let us deal in the real world now. I said to him, I will put you a middle case. You know our lord the king has been named by Parliament head of the church. Why will you not go with the vote, as you go with it when it makes me monarch? And he said – as if he were instructing some child – the cases are not alike. For one is a temporal jurisdiction, and Parliament can do it. The other is a spiritual jurisdiction, and is what Parliament cannot exercise, for the jurisdiction is out of this realm.’

  He stares at Riche. ‘Hang him for a papist,’ he says.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We know he thinks it. He has never stated it.’

  ‘He said that a higher law governed this and all realms, and if Parliament trespassed on God's law …’

  ‘On the Pope's law, he means – for he holds them the same, he couldn't deny that, could he? Why is he always examining his conscience, if not to check day and night that it is in accord with the church of Rome? That is his comfort, that is his guide. It seems to me, if he plainly denies Parliament its capacity, he denies the king his title. Which is treason. Still,’ he shrugs, ‘how far does it take us? Can we show the denial was malicious? He will say, I suppose, that it was just talk, to pass the time. That you were putting cases, and that anything said in that wise cannot be held against a man.’

  ‘A jury won't understand that. They'll take him to mean what he said. After all, sir, he knew it wasn't some students' debate.’

  ‘True. You don't hold those at the Tower.’

  Riche offers the memorandum. ‘I have written it down faithfully to the best of my recollection.’

  ‘You don't have a witness?’

  ‘They were in and out, packing up the books in a crate, he had a lot of books. You cannot blame me for carelessness, sir, for how was I to know he would talk to me at all?’

  ‘I don't blame you.’ He sighs. ‘In fact, Purse, you are the apple of my eye. You'll stand behind this in court?’

  Doubtful, Riche nods. ‘Tell me you will, Richard. Or tell me you won't. Let's have it straight. Have the grace to say so now, if you think your courage might fail. If we lose another trial, we can kiss goodbye to our livelihoods. And all our work will be for nothing.’

  ‘You see, he couldn't resist it, the chance to put me right,’ Riche says. ‘He will never let it drop, what I did as a boy. He uses me to make his sermon on. Well, let him make his next sermon on the block.’

  The evening before Fisher is to die, he visits More. He takes a strong guard with him, but he leaves them in the outer chamber and goes in alone. ‘I've got used to the blind drawn,’ More says, almost cheerfully. ‘You don't mind sitting in the twilight?’

  ‘You need not be afraid of the sun. There is none.’

  ‘Wolsey used to boast that he could change the weather.’ He chuckles. ‘It's good of you to visit me, Thomas, now that we have no more to say. Or have we?’

  ‘The guards will come for Bishop Fisher early tomorrow. I am afraid they will wake you.’

  ‘I should be a poor Christian if I could not keep vigil with him.’ His smile has seeped away. ‘I hear the king has granted him mercy as to the manner of his death.’

  ‘He being a very old man, and frail.’

  More says, with tart pleasantness, ‘I'm doing my best, you know. A man can only shrivel at his own rate.’

  ‘Listen.’ He reaches across the table, takes his hand, wrings it: harder than he meant. My blacksmith's grip, he thinks: he sees More flinch, feels his fingers, the skin dry as paper over the bones. ‘Listen. When you come before the court, throw yourself at that instant on the king's mercy.’

  More says, wonderingly, ‘What good will that do me?’

  ‘He is not a cruel man. You know that.’

  ‘Do I? He used not to be. He had a sweet disposition. But then he changed the company he kept.’

  ‘He is susceptible always to a plea for mercy. I do not say he will let you live, the oath unsworn. But he may grant you the same mercy as Fisher.’

  ‘It is not so important, what happens to the body. I have led in some ways a blessed life. God has been good and not tested me. Now he does I cannot fail him. I have been vigilant over my heart, and I have not always liked what I have found there. If it comes into the hands of the hangman at the last, so be it. It will be in God's hands soon enough.’

  ‘Will you think me sentimental, if I say I do not want to see you butchered?’ No reply. ‘Are you not afraid of the pain?’

  ‘Oh yes, I am very much afraid, I am not a bold and robust man such as yourself, I cannot help but rehearse it in my mind. But I will only feel it for a moment, and God will not let me remember it afterwards.’

  ‘I am glad I am not like you.’

  ‘Undoubtedly. Or you would be sitting here.’

  ‘I mean, my mind fixed on the next world. I realise you see no prospect of improving this one.’

  ‘And you do?’

  Almost a flippant question. A handful of hail smacks itself against the window. It startles them both; he gets up, restless. He would rather know what's outside, see the summer in its sad blowing wreckage, than cower behind the blind and wonder what the damage is. ‘I once had every hope,’ he says. ‘The world corrupts me, I think. Or perhaps it's just the weather. It pulls me down and makes me think like you, that one should shrink inside, down and down to a little point of light, preserving one's solitary soul like a flame under a glass. The spectacles of pain and disgrace I see around me, the ignorance, the unthinking vice, the poverty and the lack of hope, and oh, the rain – the rain that falls on England and rots the grain, puts out the light in a man's eye and the light of learning too, for who can reason if Oxford is a giant puddle and Cambridge is washing away downstream, and who will enforce the laws if the judges are swimming for their lives? Last week the people were rioting in York. Why would they not, with wheat so scarce, and twice the price of last year? I must stir up the justices to make examples, I suppose, otherwise the whole of the north will be out with billhooks and pikes, and who will t
hey slaughter but each other? I truly believe I should be a better man if the weather were better. I should be a better man if I lived in a commonwealth where the sun shone and the citizens were rich and free. If only that were true, Master More, you wouldn't have to pray for me nearly as hard as you do.’

  ‘How you can talk,’ More says. Words, words, just words. ‘I do, of course, pray for you. I pray with all my heart that you will see that you are misled. When we meet in Heaven, as I hope we will, all our differences will be forgot. But for now, we cannot wish them away. Your task is to kill me. Mine is to keep alive. It is my role and my duty. All I own is the ground I stand on, and that ground is Thomas More. If you want it you will have to take it from me. You cannot reasonably believe I will yield it.’

  ‘You will want pen and paper to write out your defence. I will grant you that.’

  ‘You never give up trying, do you? No, Master Secretary, my defence is up here,’ he taps his forehead, ‘where it will stay safe from you.’

  How strange the room is, how empty, without More's books: it is filling with shadows. ‘Martin, a candle,’ he calls.

  ‘Will you be here tomorrow? For the bishop?’

  He nods. Though he will not witness the moment of Fisher's death. The protocol is that the spectators bow their knee and doff their hats to mark the passing of the soul.

  Martin brings a pricket candle. ‘Anything else?’ They pause while he sets it down. When he is gone, they still pause: the prisoner sits hunched over, looking into the flame. How does he know if More has begun on a silence, or on preparation for speech? There is a silence which precedes speech, there is a silence which is instead of speech. One need not break it with a statement, one can break it with a hesitation: if … as it may be … if it were possible … He says, ‘I would have left you, you know. To live out your life. To repent of your butcheries. If I were king.’

  The light fades. It is as if the prisoner has withdrawn himself from the room, leaving barely a shape where he should be. A draught pulls at the candle flame. The bare table between them, clear now of More's driven scribblings, has taken on the aspect of an altar; and what is an altar for, but a sacrifice? More breaks his silence at last: ‘If, at the end and after I am tried, if the king does not grant, if the full rigour of the penalty … Thomas, how is it done? You would think when a man's belly were slashed open he would die, with a great effusion of blood, but it seems it is not so … Do they have some special implement, that they use to pith him while he is alive?’