Thomas Cromwell 1-3

III

A Painter's Eye

1534

When Hans brings the finished portrait to Austin Friars he feels shy of it. He remembers when Walter would say, look me in the face, boy, when you tell me a lie.He looks at the picture's lower edge, and allows his gaze to creep upwards. A quill, scissors, papers, his seal in a little bag, and a heavy volume, bound in blackish green: the leather tooled in gold, the pages gilt-edged. Hans had asked to see his Bible, rejected it as too plain, too thumbed. He had scoured the house and found the finest volume he owned on the desk of Thomas Avery. It is the monk Pacioli's work, the book on how to keep your books, sent to him by his kind friends in Venice.He sees his painted hand, resting on the desk before him, holding a paper in a loose fist. It is uncanny, as if he had been pulled apart, to look at himself in sections, digit by digit. Hans has made his skin smooth as the skin of a courtesan, but the motion he has captured, that folding of the fingers, is as sure as that of a slaughterman's when he picks up the killing knife. He is wearing the cardinal's turquoise.He had a turquoise ring of his own, one time, which Liz gave to him when Gregory was born. It was a ring in the shape of a heart.He raises his eyes, to his own face. It does not much improve on the Easter egg which Jo painted. Hans had penned him in a little space, pushing a heavy table to fasten him in. He had time to think, while Hans drew him, and his thoughts took him far off, to another country. You cannot trace those thoughts behind his eyes.He had asked to be painted in his garden. Hans said, the very notion makes me sweat. Can we keep it simple, yes?He wears his winter clothes. Inside them, he seems made of a more impermeable substance than most men, more compacted. He could well be wearing armour. He foresees the day when he might have to. There are men in this realm and abroad (not only in Yorkshire now) who would stab him as soon as look at him.I doubt, he thinks, they can hack through to the heart. The king had said, what are you made of?He smiles. There is no trace of a smile on the face of his painted self.‘Right.’ He sweeps into the next room. ‘You can come and see it.’They crowd in, jostling. There is a short, appraising silence. It lengthens. Alice says, ‘He has made you look rather stout, Uncle. More than he need.’Richard says, ‘As Leonardo has demonstrated to us, a curved surface better deflects the impact of cannon balls.’‘I don't think you look like that,’ Helen Barre says. ‘I see that your features are true enough. But that is not the expression on your face.’Rafe says, ‘No, Helen, he saves it for men.’Thomas Avery says, ‘The Emperor's man is here, can he come in and have a look?’‘He is welcome, as always.’Chapuys prances in. He positions himself before the painting; he skips forward; he leaps back. He is wearing marten furs over silks. ‘Dear God,’ Johane says behind her hand, ‘he looks like a dancing monkey.’‘Oh no, I fear not,’ Eustache says. ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Your Protestant painter has missed the mark this time. For one never thinks of you alone, Cremuel, but in company, studying the faces of other people, as if you yourself mean to paint them. You make other men think, not “what does he look like?” but “what do I look like?”’ He whisks away, then swings around, as if to catch the likeness in the act of moving. ‘Still. Looking at that, one would be loath to cross you. To that extent, I think Hans has achieved his aim.’When Gregory comes home from Canterbury, he takes him in alone to see the painting, still in his riding coat, muddy from the road; he wants to hear his son's opinion, before the rest of the household get to him. He says, ‘Your lady mother always said she didn't pick me for my looks. I was surprised, when the picture came, to find I was vain. I thought of myself as I was when I left Italy, twenty years ago. Before you were born.’Gregory stands at his shoulder. His eyes rest on the portrait. He doesn't speak.He is conscious that his son is taller than he is: not that it takes much. He steps sideways, though only in his mind, to see his boy with a painter's eye: a boy with fine white skin and hazel eyes, a slender angel of the second rank in a fresco dappled with damp, in some hill town far from here. He thinks of him as a page in a forest riding across vellum, dark curls crisp under a narrow band of gold; whereas the young men about him every day, the young men of Austin Friars, are muscled like fighting dogs, hair cropped to stubble, eyes sharp as sword points. He thinks, Gregory is all he should be. He is everything I have a right to hope for: his openness, his gentleness, the reserve and consideration with which he holds back his thoughts till he has framed them. He feels such tenderness for him he thinks he might cry.He turns to the painting. ‘I fear Mark was right.’‘Who is Mark?’‘A silly little boy who runs after George Boleyn. I once heard him say I looked like a murderer.’Gregory says, ‘Did you not know?’