‘I have met him,’ he says. ‘Pole.’ He remembers a fledgling scholar, body neither tall nor short nor stout nor lean; fairish hair, broad pleasant countenance. Reginald’s plain exterior gives no idea of the elaborate, useless nature of his mind, with its little shelves and niches for scruples and doubts. ‘One time I believe I laughed at him,’ he says. The boy had prated about how virtue should rule nations. I do not disagree, he had said; but read some books to bolster your scant practical experience. The Italians understand these matters.
Since then Reginald has been frightened of him. He speaks ill of him: says he is a devil, and you can’t speak worse than that. And yet, when a travelling scholar calls on him, or a noble young Italian wishing to improve his English, Pole never thinks to ask, ‘Could this be an emissary of Satan, alias Cromwell?’ Time was, Reginald was tempted by Luther’s teachings; we know how he wobbled onto that course, and wobbled off again. Time was, he doubted the Pope’s authority; his doubts were recorded. Pole’s folly is, that he thinks aloud. Some apprentice phrase, modelled on Cicero, trembles in the air; he believes no one hears. He writes, and he thinks no one reads; but friends of Lucifer look into his book. At dusk he locks his manuscript in a chest, but the devil has a key. Demons know every crossing-out and every blot. His ink betrays him. The fibres in his paper are spies. When he lies down at night, the horsehair in his mattress and the feathers in his bolster are eavesdropping on England’s behalf, as he supplicates, in hedging, quibbling terms, whatever form of God he believes in that day.
Fitz says, ‘You could bring the Poles down now. The whole family.’
‘Except for Reginald,’ Riche chips in. ‘He is out of the jurisdiction.’
Lord Audley says, ‘A good point, Mr Speaker. But you leave one singing bird in the cage, to lure another home.’
Riche says, ‘How is that on the point, Lord Chancellor? It is rather the opposite, do you not think? Pole being free, his song lures out the others. We see treason on the wing.’
‘Oh,’ Audley says. ‘Yes, I suppose you are right.’
He says, ‘I could have brought them down two years ago.’
‘The prophetess,’ Fitz says, ‘Eliza Barton, there was a great traitor. That was like them, to shelter behind the skirts of some deluded little nun who thought God talked to her. Only – tell me if I am wrong – did not Barton favour the Courtenay claim over the Poles?’
‘The difference between the families kept eluding her,’ Riche says. ‘That was my view. I believe Master Secretary is right. Let their designs play out. We should stay our hand. They will hang themselves.’
‘By God, a councillor already,’ Fitz says. He snatches Riche’s hat off and lopes the length of the chamber, throwing it up to the Tudor roses in the ceiling. Is that a stray HA-HA lurking up there? The Lord Chancellor, loyal soul, is squinting up and craning his neck.
L’Erber, the Pole house: Margaret, the countess, looks up at his entrance, but does not speak.
What’s she doing? Needlework, like any beldame. Her hawk’s profile is lowered over her work, as if she is pecking it.
Margaret’s son, Henry Lord Montague, winces visibly at the sight of him. ‘Master Secretary. Please sit.’
He would rather stand. ‘I take it you know what’s in the book, more or less? The king keeps it close. He will treat you to some extracts, but he would like you to write to your brother in Italy, to tell him he is not offended.’
Montague stares at him. ‘Not offended?’
‘Your brother is welcome to return to England to put his case.’
‘I ask you,’ Montague says, ‘would you come, if you were Reynold?’
Reynold: that’s what his family call him. A name with a liquid, subtle nature.
‘The king would offer him a safe-conduct. And you have always found the king a man of his word.’
Montague says, ‘We, his family – I tell you, Cromwell, we are amazed by my brother’s proceedings. I think you knew more of this than we did.’
‘Shall I tell the king that you repudiate him?’
Montague hesitates. ‘That is strong …’
‘Deprecate.’ Margaret Pole speaks. ‘You may say we deprecate his writings and are dismayed.’
‘Astonished,’ he suggests. ‘Struck by sorrow and frozen with horror, to find he sets up his judgement against the king’s. That he belies his prince, slanders him, threatens him with invasion, and tells him he is damned.’
‘I am not my brother’s keeper,’ Montague says.
‘Someone must be. If not you, then me. Reginald needs to be locked away for his own protection. At present, I stand between you and the king’s displeasure.’
‘Good of you,’ Montague says.
‘I stand also between the king and his daughter. You must see that, before this book arrived, the Lady Mary was in jeopardy through her own foolish pride. But now, because the king suspects she is complicit in this, her position is graver still. And it is your family who has put her in danger.’
Montague is a languid man, hard to arouse, hard to bait. It is Margaret Pole who puts down her work and speaks. ‘We helped you pull down the Boleyns, when they were threatening your life.’
‘I took the risks of that enterprise. Not you.’
‘You owe us a debt,’ she says, ‘and now you do not have to pay it. You knew the book was in preparation. You knew all that would occur.’
‘Can you explain that to Nicholas Carew? He doesn’t seem to take it in. I owe him nothing. I owe you nothing, madam. The obligation is on the other side. And whether Mary lives or dies – I will not say it is in my hands, but it may be in yours. I look for your aid to keep her in the land of the living. Where I think she can do most good.’
‘Her mother, God rest her soul, made me her Lady Governor,’ Margaret Pole says. ‘How would I repay Katherine’s trust, if I advised the princess to act against her own conscience?’
Montague says, ‘I do not see, Cromwell, what is your interest in this. You appear to want to save Mary from herself, and save her from her friends too. But you cannot imagine she will favour you thereafter?’
‘Should she become queen,’ Margaret Pole says, ‘and I hope and pray she never has that misfortune, then she will at once, surely –’
What? Put me in the Tower? Strike off my head? Make me Lord Chancellor?
‘My lady mother …’ Montague warns.
‘Ah, I see the Treason Act,’ Margaret says gaily. ‘I see its trip-wire. It is a crime to envisage the future. We are trapped in the hour we occupy.’
‘In past months,’ he says to Montague, ‘you have spoken with the Emperor’s man Chapuys, and assured him that England is ready to rise against the king.’ He holds up a hand: do not interrupt me. ‘Only two, three weeks ago, in the West Country, we saw simple people in arms.’
‘That is Courtenay land,’ Montague says. ‘So tax them with it.’
No loyalty among thieves, he thinks. ‘It is lucky for you no great harm is done, and the country now quiet. But any repetition – any further breach of the king’s peace, in any part of the realm – it will be hard for you to show you are not the instigator.’
‘But could you show that he is?’ Margaret puts in. ‘Because in my poor understanding, it is for the accuser to demonstrate guilt.’
‘That should not be a matter of great difficulty. Besides, the common law provides ways to protect the realm from traitors. I mean an attainder, by which no trial is needed.’
Margaret is still. She glides her needle into her cloth. Her father died this way.
‘Madam,’ he says, ‘do not by your resistances and your evasions and your plots corrupt a good king who has done everything in his power to recompense your family for what it has suffered. Pray for concord, as all good Christians ought. And write the Lady Mary a letter.’
‘You will carry it?’ Mont
ague says.
‘Give it to your friend Chapuys. That way, the young lady will not say it is forged.’
Margaret says, ‘You are a snake, Cromwell.’
‘Oh no, no, no.’ A dog, madam, and on your scent. He interposes his reassuring bulk between her person and the light. Margaret is sewing a border of flowers. It is the emblem of her family, the viola: known also as the pansy, or heart’s-ease. ‘I compliment you. I am surprised your sight is still sharp enough for that work.’
She reaches for her scissors. ‘I have seen other days, and better.’
He sends nephew Richard to the Tower with an order to free Thomas Wyatt. The arrival of Pole’s book, as news of its content seeps and leaks through the court, has caused such a stir that no one is looking Wyatt’s way. No one has seen the text, but when they guess at what is in it, their guesses are not bad enough; they cannot imagine its bitter prolixity, its heedless squandering of the favour of the living, its praise of dead men. Rumours of new arrests are flying. Lady Hussey, who once served in Mary’s household, is whisked into the Tower. He sends Wriothesley to talk to her. She admits that when, by the king’s grace, she had licence to visit Hunsdon at Whitsuntide, she addressed the Lady Mary as Princess.
‘She claims it was old habit,’ Wriothesley says. ‘She swears she did not mean, God strike her, to claim that Mary was Henry’s lawful successor. She spoke unthinkingly. She says.’
Richard Cromwell, banging in. ‘I told Wyatt, go down to Kent and never dwell on the dead. Stay there till he’s told. Constable Kingston wants to know, will he need lodgings for any other noble prisoners, and if so, can you say how many and specify their rank and sex and age, and tell him when they will be arriving? He wants to be ready.’
‘Is Kingston not always ready? You astonish me.’
‘Sir,’ Wriothesley says, ‘I know you pity the Lady Mary. But let her go now.’ He says to Richard, ‘She looks modest as any maid, she speaks low, she shrinks from men, but when Sadler and I went to Hunsdon – if she had a dagger I swear she would have stuck it in me, when I told her how neat a job the man from Calais made.’
She’s hard to like, he says. That’s all he will say.
As Henry takes his place at the council board, he rests a fist on the table to steady himself; he moves cautiously, steering himself so as not to knock or jolt. Courteous, he murmurs his thanks to his new councillor, as Riche eases back a chair to give clear passage to his bandaged leg. ‘Sworn in, Riche? Good.’ He falls into his seat with a little grunt, and grips the council board to drag himself towards it.
‘A cushion, Majesty?’ Lord Audley suggests.
Henry closes his eyes. ‘Thank you, no. Today there is only one matter –’
‘A more capacious chair perhaps?’
The king’s voice shakes, ‘– one salient matter … Thank you, Lord Audley, I am comfortable.’
He catches the Lord Chancellor’s eye, and presses a palm across his own mouth. But Richard Riche is not so easily suppressed. At the sight of Edward Seymour: ‘You here, sir? I did not think you were sworn?’
‘Well, it appears –’ Edward says.
‘It appears that I want his opinion,’ the king says. ‘In this instance at least. These are matters that come very near me. You understand, Riche?’
Edward is the king’s brother now; of course he wants his advice. But Edward sits awkwardly on a stool at the end of the table. He looks like a man who is on trial, to see if he gives satisfaction; perhaps his sister is in the same case.
Richard Riche cannot settle. He leans over to whisper: sir, is this truly a meeting of the council, or some other form of conference? He, Cromwell, whispers back: just sit still and listen. Fitzwilliam looks around. ‘Where is my lord of Norfolk?’
‘I have directed him,’ Henry says, ‘to avoid my sight.’
Good news for Fitz. His quarrels with the Howards go back a decade and more. ‘You should never have sent him to Mary, sir. You know what he is. He talks to a woman as if she were a town wall and he has to breach her.’
‘I do not think,’ the Lord Chancellor says, ‘that you should speak of the king’s daughter as “a woman”.’
‘Well, what else is she?’ Fitzwilliam says. ‘If I call her a lady, it does not alter the case. Norfolk was the last man to do anything with her.’
Henry says, ‘I admit, I chose ill. It is not likely she will yield to force.’ Is there a hint, in his tone, of perverse pride? ‘We must choose another messenger. Perhaps my lord archbishop, with his gentle persuasions …’
Fitz stares at him. ‘She hates Cranmer. How would she not? Cranmer divorced you from her mother. He called her the product of incest.’
‘And so she is.’ The king bows his head. ‘It was a great sin – committed, as you know, in ignorance.’
‘Majesty,’ Edward Seymour says, ‘we are all cognisant – there is no need – spare yourself –’
‘Forgive me if it appears the weight of twenty years is on my shoulders.’ The king seems calm, resigned: but I know, he thinks, that dangerous twitch of his mouth. ‘Since in Christendom for a clear generation it has been debated in every students’ hall, bawled out in every pulpit, and jangled in every alehouse, I have no objection if the matter be stated again. Though the scripture is clear that such a marriage is not licit, I believed, in those days, that the Pope had power to dispense. I know better now. My daughter Mary is the product of a union illegitimate. If Katherine would not acknowledge the sin in this life, as she would not, then I fear she will suffer for it in the place where she is now.’
Peterborough, he thinks.
‘For my part,’ the king says, ‘my eyes being opened to the abusions and pretences of Rome, I have wrought for seven years to rid myself of that accursed jurisdiction and to lead my country on a true path to Christ. If I have not atoned by this time – then, gentlemen, I know not how, and I know not when. To be defied by my daughter, to know that my own kin and cousins urge her on, to be reviled in my own house by that monster of ingratitude, Pole – to be called heretic and schismatic and Judas –’
‘No, sir,’ Riche interrupts. ‘It was not your Majesty that Pole called a Judas. It was Bishop Sampson, for acting as proctor in your divorce.’
‘Our new councillor is an exact man.’ Henry turns to Riche. ‘Then what does he call me? Antichrist, is it? Lucifer?’
Day star, he thinks, bringer of light.
‘So I warn you,’ Henry says. ‘If I hear one voice raised in support of that errant creature my daughter, I shall know I am hearing treason. I am taking advice. I have called in the judges to consider what is the best way to bring her to trial.’
Fitzwilliam slaps his palm on the board. ‘Trial? Jesus save us! Your flesh and blood? I implore you, think before you do this. You will make yourself a monster in the sight of all.’
He cuts in, ‘Majesty, Mary is ill.’
‘The king will be ill!’ Riche says. ‘Look at him!’
Edward Seymour whispers, ‘Riche, forbear.’
Henry turns to him. ‘Tell me, Crumb, when is she not ill? I wonder if so weakly a creature can be mine. Her brothers and sisters all died. I wonder how she lived. I wonder what God meant by it.’
Fitzwilliam says, ‘Well, if you don’t know, Harry, who does? You are His deputy, are you not? You know all our fates.’
‘I know yours,’ Henry says.
Henry glances up to the doors. A nod, and the guards would march in. Richard Riche sits frozen on his bench, jaw dropped, fingers poised as if to make a note. Edward Seymour half-rises: ‘Pardon, Majesty. Pardon Master Treasurer’s plain speaking. We are all … we are all over-wrought …’
Henry sighs. ‘Over-wrought, abused, exhausted. True, Ned, we are. Go on, Fitzwilliam, take yourself out of the council chamber before I have you taken, my patience is not infinite, neither with you nor my daughter. So, Crumb, t
ell us about her illness. What is it this time? I heard it was cramps, then fever, then headache, then toothache.’
‘I am afraid it is all of them. She writes –’
‘Let me see her letter.’
The letter is in his pocket.
‘I shall send for it, sir.’
‘Some of you councillors know more of my daughter’s mind than I do myself.’ Again, that tight smile: Henry is in pain. ‘Master Secretary promised me he could get her compliance – that he would make her swear the oath without stirring himself from Whitehall. But he too has failed me.’
Fitzwilliam is almost out of the room; but he turns to face the councillors, his papers held across his chest. ‘Some of us are trying to save you from yourself, Majesty. You are flailing and injuring all about, because Pole has insulted you. Reckon with your enemies, not your friends. As for Mary – lock her up, yes, keep her close where she can do no harm – but that you should go so far as to consult the judges, that you should consider bringing your own daughter before a court – because what then? I tell you, she is guilty. What needs a judge? What needs a jury? She will not swear the oath and she will give you her reasons, as Thomas More would not. She will say she is not a bastard, but a princess of England, and that you are no more head of the church than I am. Then what will you do? Cut off her head?’
Audley turns down his mouth. ‘Brave man.’
‘Dead man,’ Seymour murmurs.
He, Lord Cromwell, rises from his place. He strides across the room, grasps Master Treasurer by his coat, trips him off-balance, tumbles him backwards and bundles him towards the doors. They open smoothly, like the gates of Hell. He seizes the treasurer’s chain of office, trying to loop it over Fitz’s head. The councillor bellows, the chain twists; Fitz threads his fingers into it; they tussle. ‘Hands off me, Cromwell,’ Fitz bawls, and swipes at him with his other fist. But he has a grip on the chain and he hauls Fitz nose to nose, spitting into his face, ‘Give it over, you dolt.’
The Mirror and the Light: 2020’s highly anticipated conclusion to the best selling, award winning Wolf Hall series (The Wolf Hall Trilogy, Book 3) Page 13
