by Lucy Beckett
“I too have been afraid. I too have run away, and many times failed to find safety either in running or in staying still. Always I have loved books, a study, solitude, gardens—gardens above all. Sometimes I have thought that I love trees more even than my friends, although my friends have been—the health of my life. But fortune has thrust me among great causes, great affairs of Church and state. They said in England, and no doubt led the king to believe, that ambition took me to Rome and made a traitor of me. It was not so. At first I refused the cardinal’s hat. But I had chosen to obey the pope. So I obeyed him. And I was persuaded then that the best means I had of restoring what had been destroyed in England was to stay in Rome and labour for the reform of the whole Church. And yet to leave England then was also to run away. Others stayed. Others stayed and were killed. Bishop Fisher, Thomas More, my family. My family died because I was not there, and I was afraid to return.
“And the Council, the great Council of the whole Church, of which we hoped for so much, which was so often delayed and for such unworthy reasons that we who worked for it in Rome felt that all our efforts were no more than the struggling of flies in syrup—
“I remember Cardinal Contarini, the best man I ever knew. Long ago, long before the Council, he saw the pope one day at Ostia. He gave him our report on the Dataria, that sink which swallowed up the money of the poor and made the very name of Rome hated and feared throughout the Church. Yes, the pope agreed that reforms were necessary. Yes, a commission would be appointed. Yes, our report was accepted and its condemnation of corrupt, grasping officials. We rejoiced. A few days later Contarini came to my room. He looked old, worn out. The report? I asked him. He said nothing, only shrugged his shoulders. We heard no more of the reform of the Dataria. When at last the Council was called, it was too late. Contarini was dead, had died in disgrace because he had tried to piece together the unity of the Church when the rifts were already too deep to mend. But the truth, the truth—it was too late for unity, but it can never be too late for the truth.
“The pope appointed three legates to the Council. I was one. At the beginning I spoke to the whole Council. I begged them, pleaded with them, the bishops, cardinals, princes of the Church, to take upon themselves the charge and trust that was theirs and with it the burden of guilt, no less theirs, for the evils and errors that neglect had allowed to flourish. I was full of hope. Soon the Council reached the question of justification, of our salvation in Christ, the very centre of our belief, the heart of our faith. They would define in a few words, a few articles, a mystery that can never be perfectly defined in the language of law. And the words they chose must have nothing in common, nothing, with the words Luther had used. So the Jesuits said, especially the Jesuits. As if everything that Luther ever wrote must be false because he wrote it. I implored them to change their minds, to understand, to return to the New Testament, to Saint Paul. I did all I could to show them that it was not agreement with the Protestants I sought but that we should not limit and confine the truth out of fear of agreement with the Protestants. I spoke in vain, utterly in vain. And when I saw how it would be, I went away. Again, I did not stay. I became ill and left the city, left the Council, did not stay to hear a Jesuit declare, and carry all the Council with him, that the throne of divine justice must not be turned into a throne of mercy—as if—as if Christ had never come to tell us that it is indeed so, to be, himself, for us, that mercy, that forgiveness. O Master Fletcher. . .”
The cardinal looked at him with pleading eyes.
“I had forsaken my country, sacrificed my family to a tyrant’s revenge, and myself lived in constant danger of murder, all for the sake of loyalty to the one, holy, Catholic Church. I had to watch that Church exclude from orthodoxy things I knew in conscience to be of the truth of God.
“What could I do? You will ask, what did I do? I ran away. I obeyed the Church, and I ran away. After that I never again spoke of those things that I had known and understood when they were not heresy because the very Council for which I had toiled so long and in which I had put all my trust had declared them—heresy. Yet they are there, Master Fletcher, they are there, not only in Luther but in Saint Bernard, in Saint Augustine, in Saint Paul, where Luther found them, and the day will come when this truth also will be told.
“After that I lost the will to act, the will to move. Perhaps there was nowhere else that I could run to. I only waited, and let what would befall me. Nine years ago, during the Conclave that elected Pope Julius, I found one morning that I myself lacked but one single vote. I might be pope. I might myself rule the Church I had loved so long, for which I had lost so much. I might myself have brought about the reforms for which I had striven in vain. . . There was a silence, a great silence. I waited for a voice to speak. One more vote. I remember that I was thinking of a friend of mine who lay dying at my house in Rome. I thought that if I should be elected, I would be able to leave the Conclave and see him again before he died. No one spoke. The vote was not cast. Some of my friends were sorry. I was—neither sorry nor glad. That silence had been for me—had been a momentary chill, as if a cloud had moved across the sun.”
He paused, looking down, into the past. His face was white again, quiet and sad.
“Did you see your friend before he died?”
He smiled.
“I did. The Conclave lasted another two months, but he did not die until a few days after it ended. Now he, and several others among my friends, and I myself are disgraced, abused, in Rome. But that comes at the end of this tale.
“Five more years I waited. I did nothing. I said nothing. To call it patience would be to fasten a fine word to what was no more than staying still. King Edward died. My cousin the Princess Mary, whom I knew when she was a child, a proud, brave, dutiful, frightened child, was queen. Then I was for a little while again full of hope. I came home after all to England. The Church was restored. All that I had longed for since the king first broke with Rome seemed at last to be coming to pass. And yet. . .”
He sighed a deep, rasping sigh that shook the whole of his frail body.
“Perhaps it was only that it was too late. Too late for England, too late for the queen, too late for me. Perhaps I should never have accepted the burden of an office that in my numbness, my lethargy, my unhappy sleep, I was unfit to bear.
“But it has been unjust!”
His voice suddenly rose to a feverish cry.
“It has been unjust, Master Fletcher. It has been more than I, more than even I, have deserved.”
He was leaning forward, his back for the first time unsupported by the pillows. Both hands grasped the fur. The little cat stirred in its sleep.
“The pope, Master Fletcher, the pope for the sake of whose authority I sacrificed my family and have allowed misguided Englishmen in their scores to burn and have kept silence many years even at the price of the whole truth—the pope has lately condemned me as a heretic, revoked my legatine commission, and recalled me to Rome to be questioned by the Inquisition. I know him well. He is a man, like King Harry, whom I loved for most of my life. Twenty years ago I persuaded Pope Paul to make him a cardinal when another man was already chosen in his place. And now he also calls me a traitor.
“Friends of mine he has put in prison for no other reason than that they are friends of mine. Twenty years ago and more, in Venice, he and I and Cardinal Contarini and others used to discuss day after day the healing of the Church, in the garden of San Giorgio with the monks, under the trees, and the light on the water—the years of hope—we saw what must be done—we knew—the pope must not exercise power as a prince of this world, we said. The pope must be in truth as he is called, the servant of the servants of God. And now this man, this good man as I thought, but old and hard and jealous of that very power he used to scorn, has waged on behalf of his family and Naples a war, a bloody war against half of Christendom. He has set France against Spain to save the worldly power of Rome as the popes have done for fifty years. Long ago I he
ard the Emperor Charles plead before another pope, at what if anywhere on earth should be the throne of justice and peace, only for justice and peace. In vain then. In vain now. Nothing changes. And yet the world I leave is worse than the world then, for what we understood and failed to perform, for what we glimpsed and failed to build.
“And I myself, an exile after all, in England and an exile from the Church, pronounced a heretic though I obeyed, though I left the Council and never spoke after.”
He leaned back against the pillows and said quietly, the pain gone from his voice: “The queen refused to allow me to go to Rome, refused to allow me to be replaced as legate on the pope’s command. So that I who staked my life, my family’s lives, my very soul, on obedience to the Church in defiance of the crown of England now die at last obedient to the crown of England and in defiance of the Church.”
He laughed, without bitterness.
“What will you? I am too ill—as you said of yourself in Bishop Bonner’s cellar, there is nothing left for me to do now but to die—and God. . .”
He paused and laid his hand on the cat’s head.
“God forgives us, as—when—we forgive them who injure us—and ourselves. These last weeks I think I have understood what many times in the past I thought I knew—but we never know—we never reach the end of understanding—the understanding of God—the mystery of his love. . .
“I have hated them both, the king and the pope, most deeply hated them, or, rather, not them but the blindness, the cruelty, the injustice in them. But what is the use of hate? I wrote my book to the king, and the blackness in him became blacker still. Last summer I wrote a long letter to the pope. It had in it all that I have told you and more. It was to justify myself before him who had unjustly cast me off. I threw it in the fire. But as I watched it burn, I was full of anger. I burned it because it would have served no purpose, not because I had forgiven him the wrong I had suffered. Now—now at last I see that the wrong is one wrong, the sin, their sin and mine, all one, the mud that holds us back, the bog in which we struggle, ourselves—and at the end there is none but God to free us, not the king and all his laws, not even the Church and her authority, her discipline, her tradition, but only Christ, his hands held out to each of us, to take or not to take. Faith. Forgiveness.
“All this time I failed to forgive because I felt them stronger than I. They threatened and condemned me, and I ran away into my righteous silence, my nothingness. I would not bear any blame. I would be innocent of sin. But who is innocent?
“With you it has been altogether different. Listen, Master Fletcher, listen. . .”
His eyes shone with the brightness of clear discovery.
“You have always felt yourself to be the stronger one—stronger than your brother, your father, your wife, the people you preached to, all. You have taken upon yourself the charge, the guilt. Where there was fault, it was yours. Because you have courage and understanding, where there was lack of courage and understanding, it was your lack. You think you have failed, again and again. You have failed. No man is innocent. But you have borne all the blame. You judge only yourself. Others you do not hold to account. You forgive them. Therefore, therefore, Master Fletcher, you are yourself forgiven. You have but to accept forgiveness, to take the hands—they are there. I in my weakness would not forgive; you in your strength will not be forgiven. The result is the same—to be stuck fast—caught—and the remedy also is the same. The remedy—look there, Master Fletcher.”
Without moving his hand from the bed the cardinal raised one finger and pointed in the direction of the picture on the chest.
He had not forgotten it. He leaned forward and saw it again. The contrast between the heavy dead figure and the live ones struggling forward beneath it struck him more violently even than before.
“Look there. Many hours I have lain here alone, my eyes fixed upon that—and thought that there is all the sorrow of the world, and all its cure. That piece of paper scratched on by an old, shaking hand has brought me as I am dying further into. . . life than all the definitions of theology and all the books I ever read.”
The cardinal’s voice dropped to a whisper as he said:
Né pinger, né scolpir sie più che quieti
l’anima, volta a quell’ amor divino
Ch’aperse, a prender noi, in croce le braccie.
How they come, grieving, bearing their ruined hope. We are given the day, the hour. We hear the word of God. We recognise his love, as they recognised Christ. Then, as they did, we run away. They watched him taken prisoner, condemned to a slave’s death, and they ran away. At last they turned and saw him there, as we must turn, again and again. He was among the dead. He, they, all of us were among the dead. But the third day came.
“What has he done for us? What have we done to him? Look at him there. He was—he is—God with us. He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He has. It is all done, yet all to do, over and over, in every soul. And he is—see how they carry him there, pleading, with hope and trust—he is of us, with God. He told us, he came to tell us, and to be, in us and for us. . . That is all. It is enough.”
The cardinal stopped speaking and lay quiet, his eyes, in his exhausted face, fixed on the picture.
Very softly Robert Fletcher said: “It is enough.” When he looked up again the cardinal’s eyes were closed.
He sat on in his chair, watching now only the still flames of the tapers burning on either side of the picture. Silence lapped them. There was nothing left to be said.
After a while the cardinal opened his eyes and smiled.
“I am tired now. I shall sleep. I think perhaps the fever will not come tonight. Not tonight. But soon, very soon. Go now. When I am dead, you will go your own way. You are a man without a name. What is the cardinal of England to you? It is because of that that I have tried to tell you, you out of them all. . . You shall have my letter. Do with it what you will.”
Robert Fletcher got up and stood beside the bed for a moment, his head bowed, as if beside a grave.
“Farewell, Master Fletcher. Dominus tecum.”
“Et cum spiritu tuo. Good-night, my lord.”
He walked to the door and, as he reached it, turned to look back. He saw the friendly eyes regarding him across the firelight, the long beard mingled with the fur of the rug, the hand resting on the cat’s head.
“Farewell, my lord.”
He closed the door behind him, nodded to the servant outside it, and went away through the cold rooms of the palace.
14
November 1558
Don Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, Count of Feria, at the court of Queen Mary in London, to King Philip of Spain and England, in Brussels; November 1558.
“. . . On my return to London I was deeply shocked and grieved to discover the serious worsening of the queen’s condition. I fear that her Majesty’s expectation of life must now be counted in days rather than weeks and that it has therefore become necessary for me, as your Majesty’s ambassador to what will shortly become no longer your Majesty’s Kingdom, to consider the dispositions that may with most benefit to your Majesty’s concerns be made for the next reign. It is my belief that the accession of the Lady Elizabeth to the realm of England will be welcomed both at court and by the common people and that the crown will pass to her with no tumult or disturbance save that of general rejoicing. Her likely regulation of the Church is as yet an open question: she has conducted herself and her household in recent years with a discretion that leaves her intention as to the future government of the religious affairs of the realm a matter for speculation. Certain it is that she would be ill-advised to take any harsh or precipitate action in these matters, and, from all I learn of her, and of those who have her ear, she will tread cautiously for a while for the sake of quiet among the people (she is said to be a woman of sound judgement, though also of a merry wit and high spirit). Since the cardinal’s case is hardly less grave than that of the queen, it is likely that the new quee
n will early be given the opportunity to appoint an archbishop of Canterbury of her own choosing, to lead the Church in whatever direction her opinion may tend. Thanks to his long indolence in affairs of state and his fall from favour in Rome, the cardinal, alas, will leave no loyal followers at court to further the cause of Rome after his death, though I myself shall, it need not be said, do all that is in my power.
“As to the matter of the Lady Elizabeth’s marriage, there can be no doubt that the surest way to protect your Majesty’s interests both in England and in the Netherlands would be for your Majesty to gain her hand, and with it the continuation of the present alliance (the necessary dispensation from Rome should be forthcoming in the next papal reign if not in this: even his Holiness cannot live for ever). To the arrangement of this most advantageous match, which could not but strengthen the cause of the Catholic Church in England, I shall devote my best endeavours whenever her Majesty shall have reached the term of her natural life. She is said to be calm in mind and spirit and suffering no great pain, and to speak often of your Majesty with the deepest affection.”
15
January 1559
“Will you lend me the warmth of your fire? It’s bitter walking now the sun is set.”
“Aye. It will be.”
The man looked him up and down. He waited, leaning on his staff. His cloak, which had been new a month ago, was caked with dried mud and torn where a dog had snatched it in its teeth.
“You’re an old man to be on t’ road for nowt at t’ year’s worst end. Be you a pilgrim of some sort?”
“Of some sort, aye.”
“Sit there. On yon side. We’ve work to do before dark.”
But the man picked up an empty sack, shook it free of the chips of wood that had fallen on it, and laid it down by the fire for him to sit on. He nodded his thanks, pulled his hat further over his eyes, wrapped his cloak round him, and sat down. The land was black already, without colour, as if the sky had taken to itself such light as the afternoon still kept. The moon was up but could cast neither light nor shadow on the earth while the sky was not yet dark. Even the flames of the fire had no brightness in them but only flapped from the burning brushwood like dirty rags. The fire gave out some heat nevertheless, and he was very cold. Walking over frozen ruts and trying not to slip on iced-over puddles had worn him out more than trudging through the mud earlier on his journey.
