Thomas Cromwell 1-3

II

The Five Wounds

London, Autumn 1536

Rumours of Tyndale’s death seep through England as smoke leaks through thatch. Are we to believe them? The privy chamber gentlemen say that the king has asked the Emperor for assurances – one sovereign to another – that this Englishman is really dead. But if such an assurance is given or denied, it is not in any document that passes across his desk. ‘I thought we got everything,’ Call-Me says tetchily.

When our people abroad write to the king, they send a copy to my lord Privy Seal – often with a covering note that says more than the original. Henry likes to treat with monarchs brother to brother; ‘Crumb,’ he says, ‘I cannot fault your management of my affairs at home, but some matters should lie between princes only, and I cannot ask my fellow kings to deal with you, because …’ The king looks into the distance, perhaps trying to imagine Putney. ‘Not that you can help it.’

Some maintain Tyndale is still alive, and his keepers are trying to torment him into a spectacular public recantation. But our Antwerp contacts are silent. Perhaps we are missing something, and news is encoded in some merchant’s invoice? Call-Me-Risley says, ‘In Venice they have men who spend every day working at ciphers. The more they do it, the better they get.’

‘I’m sure that could be arranged for you,’ Rafe says. ‘But then Lord Cromwell would put you on a per diem, and you would not get the fees from the office of the Signet, and what would Mistress Call-Me say about that? She would not put her views in cipher – they would hear her scolding in Calais.’

Henry is restless; as if trying to prolong the summer, he tows Jane from house to house. He tries to make sure either he or Rafe is by the king’s side. He says to Chapuys, ‘These talks with the Scots – they will never happen. Henry will not go further north than York. He apprehends bad food and bandits and no proper baths. And the King of Scots will not come south, for the same reasons.’

They are at Whitehall. Chapuys joins him in a window embrasure. The ambassador’s entourage backs off, but he feels them watching. ‘Is Tyndale truly burned?’

‘Henry has not spoken to you? He knows your attachment to that heretic.’

‘I couldn’t abide the man,’ he says. ‘Nobody could.’

But then, we didn’t require Tyndale for a supper guest, or a companion in a game of bowls. We required him for the health of our souls. Tyndale knew God’s word and carried a light to guide us through the marsh of interpretation, so we would not be lost – as Tyndale himself put it – like a traveller tricked by Robin Goodfellow, and left stripped and shoeless in the wastes.

Ambassador Chapuys, you notice, has not exactly said he is dead; he has only let him fall, as it were naturally, into the past tense.

He visits the convent at Shaftesbury as a private gentleman, as if attending on Sir Richard Riche, the Chancellor of Augmentations: with Christophe, as a boy attending him. Begging the favour of an interview with Dame Elizabeth Zouche, he expects to be kept waiting, and he is.

‘Laughable,’ Riche says, gloomily. ‘You the second man in the church. And me, who I am.’

‘King Alfred founded this abbey,’ he tells Christophe. ‘They are rich because they have the bones of Edward the Martyr.’

‘What tricks do they do?’ Christophe asks.

‘The usual miracles,’ Riche says. ‘Perhaps we shall witness one.’

Christophe sees to the horses and trundles out to the kitchen, seeking some young sister to feed him bread and honey. He and Riche are kept in an anteroom. Their entertainment is a painted cloth of St Catherine, suffering on her wheel. They listen to the sounds of the busy house and the town outside, till increased agitation in the air tells them their ruse is detected: scampering feet, a slamming door, a call of ‘Dame Elizabeth? Madam?’ Shaftesbury is a town of twelve churches, too many for the inhabitants. When they ring their bells, the streets quake.

‘So,’ says the abbess, ‘you have come yourself, Lord Cromwell.’

‘You know my face, madam.’

‘One of the gentlemen of the district has a portrait of you. He keeps it on display.’

‘I hope he does. It would be no good in his cellar. You visit many gentlemen?’

Her eyes flick up at him. ‘On the business of the house.’

‘What else? Did the painter do me justice?’

She surveys him. ‘He did you charity.’

‘What you have seen is a copy of a copy. Each version is worse. My son thinks I look like a murderer.’

The abbess is enjoying herself. ‘We lead such a quiet and blessed life here, I am not sure I have seen one for comparison.’ She stands up. ‘But you will want to get on. You have come to see Sister Dorothea.’

As he follows her she says, ‘Why is Richard Riche here? We are as wealthy, praise God, as any house of religion in the realm. I understood Sir Richard’s business is with houses of lesser value.’

‘We like to keep our figures current.’

‘I have been abbess for thirty years. Any question about our worth, ask me.’

‘Riche likes it on paper.’

‘I give you warning,’ Dame Elizabeth says. ‘And you can carry the warning to the king. I will not surrender this house. Not this year, nor next, nor any year this side of Heaven.’

He holds up his hands. ‘The king has no thought of it.’

‘Here.’ She pushes a door open. ‘Wolsey’s daughter.’

Dorothea half-rises. With a gesture, he bids her sit. ‘Madam, how do you? I have brought gifts.’

They are in a side room, small and sunless. He permits himself a single long look. She is not like the cardinal. Her mother’s daughter? She is pleasant enough to look at, though she cannot fetch up a smile. Perhaps she is thinking, where have you been these years past?

He says, ‘I saw you once when you were a little child. You will not remember me.’

She does not reach out for her presents, so he places them in her lap. She unties the bundle, glances at the books and lays them aside. But she picks up a kerchief of fine linen, and holds it to the light. It is worked with the three apples of St Dorothea, and with wreaths, sprigs and blossoms, the lily and the rose.

‘One of my household made it to honour you. Rafe Sadler’s wife – you may have heard your father speak of young Sadler?’

‘No. Who is he?’

He takes out of his pocket a letter. It is from John Clancey, a gentleman-servant to the cardinal, who acted for her father in placing her here. He has had the letter for some time, and he has formed the habit, not of carrying it around, but of knowing where it is.

‘Clancey tells me you want to continue in this life. But I think, you were very young when you made your vows.’

Her head is bent over the kerchief, studying the work. ‘So I can be dispensed?’

‘You are free to go.’

‘Go where?’ she asks.

‘You are welcome in my house.’

‘Live with you?’ The chill in her tone pushes him backwards, even in the cramped space. She folds up the kerchief, so the design is hidden. ‘How is my brother Thomas Winter?’

‘He is well and provided for.’

‘By you?’

‘It is the least I can do for the cardinal. When your brother is next in England, I could arrange for you to meet.’

‘We would have nothing to say to each other. He a scholar. I a poor nun.’

‘I would keep him in my house and gladly. But for the sake of his studies he would rather live abroad.’

‘A cardinal’s son has no place in England. In Italy, I am told, he would be well accepted.’

‘In Italy he would be Pope.’

She turns her shoulder. Very well, he thinks. No more jokes.

‘When Anne Boleyn came down,’ she says, ‘we believed true religion would be restored. The whole summer has passed, and now we doubt it.’

‘True religion was never left off,’ he says. ‘You have had no opportunity to see the king’s manner of life – so you imagine the court spends its days in masques and dancing. Not so, I assure you. The king hears three Masses in daylight hours. He keeps all the feasts of the church, as ever he did. Fasting is observed, and the meatless days. We scant nothing.’

‘We hear the sacraments are to be put down. And that all monks and nuns will be dispersed. Dame Elizabeth is sure the king will take our house in the end. Then how would we live?’

‘There are no such plans,’ he says. ‘But if that were to occur, you would be pensioned. I believe your abbess would bargain hard.’

‘But what would we do, without our sisters in religion? We cannot go back to our families, if our families are dead.’ She flushes. ‘Or even if they are alive, they might not want us.’

He must be patient. ‘Dorothea, there is no need to weep. You are imagining harms that could never touch you.’

He thinks, should I embrace her? A king’s daughter has cried on my shoulder – or she would have, if I had stayed still.

‘I have come here to give you good assurances,’ he says. ‘I understand this place is all you have known till now. But you have all your life before you.’

‘Clancey brought me and left me here under his name. Everybody knew I was Wolsey’s daughter. It was not my choice to come, but no more is it my choice to leave. I do not wish to be turned out to beg my bread.’

This is women, he thinks – they must enact some scene, to wring tears from themselves and you. I have already offered her my house.

‘I will make you an annuity,’ he says.

‘I will not take it.’

He brushes that aside; it is the kind of thing that people say. ‘Or I will find you suitors, if you could like marriage.’

‘Marriage?’ She is incredulous.

He laughs. ‘You have heard of that blessed state?’

‘A bastard daughter? The bastard daughter of a disgraced priest? And no looks, even?’

He thinks, a good dowry would make you a beauty. But that is not what she wants to hear. ‘Trust me, you are a lovely young woman. Till now, no good man has held up a mirror, for you to see yourself through his eyes. Once you have clothes and ornaments, you will be a welcome sight for a bridegroom. I know the best merchants, and I know the fashions at the French court, and in Italy. I have dressed …’ He breaks off. I have dressed two queens.

She appraises him. ‘I am sure your eye is expert.’

‘Or if you would consider me, I could, I myself –’

He stops. He is appalled. That is not at all what he meant to say.

She is staring at him. You cannot take back such a word. ‘I’ll marry you, mistress, if you’ll have me. I am, you may not know this, I am a long time a widower. I lack graces of person, but I lack nothing else. I am rich and likely to grow richer, so your want of fortune is no obstacle to me. I have good houses. You would find me generous. I look after my family.’ He hears his own voice, recommending himself as if he were a servant, urging his merits on this shocked young woman. ‘I have no children to burden you, except Gregory, who is almost grown and will be married himself soon. I would like more children. Or not, as you wished. If you want a marriage in name only, so you have a place in the world, then for your father’s sake I would be prepared …’ He falters.

She crosses to the small window, and stares out of it furiously. There is nothing to see but a wall. ‘In name only? I do not understand you. Are you offering to marry me or not?’

‘You are alone in the world, and so am I. For your father’s sake I would cherish you. Who knows, you might grow fond of me. And if you did not, then – you would still have a home and a protector, and I would make no other demand on you.’

‘That is because you have a mistress?’

He does not answer.

‘Several, perhaps,’ she says, as if to herself. ‘It is true you have everything to commend you – if you were a buyer and I were for sale. You have money to buy any article, thanks to my father, who gave you your start in life.’

My start in life, he thinks: madam, you cannot imagine it. He feels bereft, injured, cold. Why should she have a stony heart towards him? Many times, that long winter at Esher, he had settled the cardinal’s debts. They were sums you would pay out of your pocket, but still: there were butchers, bargemen, rat-killers, men who make poultices for horses, purveyors of horoscopes and salt fish. And there had been other disbursements, that never went through the books: buying off the spies, for instance, that Norfolk had put in the household. ‘Your father was a liberal master,’ he says. ‘I owe him much that cannot be cast into figures. It was he who explained to me the king’s business. How things really work, not how people say they work. Not the custom, but the practice.’

‘Certainly,’ she says, ‘it was he who brought you to the king’s notice. With the result that we see.’

He thinks, she does not like my proposal, she does not. I should never have spoken, I know in my bones it is wrong; I am too old, and besides, so close to her father as I was, perhaps it seems to her we are related, almost as if she is my sister. He says, ‘Dorothea, tell me what it needs, to make you safe and comfortable. Forget I spoke of marriage.’ Despite himself, he smiles. He can’t stop himself trying to charm her. ‘There is still a way forward. Though you find my person defective.’

‘Your person is not defective,’ she says. ‘At least, not so defective as your nature and your deeds.’

He is still smiling. ‘You do not like my proceedings against the religious. I can understand that.’

‘Many of my sisters are keen to cast off their habits. If the house were dissolved they would go tomorrow. Dame Elizabeth does not speak ill of you. She says you are fair in your dealings.’

‘Well, then … I think it is my religion itself you do not like. I love the gospel and will follow it. Your father understood that.’

‘He understood everything,’ she says. ‘He understood you betrayed him.’

He gapes at her. He, Lord Cromwell. He who is never surprised.

‘When my father was in exile, and forced to go north, he wrote certain letters, out of his desperation to have the king’s favour again – letters begging the King of France to intercede for him. And he appealed to the queen – I mean Katherine, the queen that was – to forgive their differences and stand his friend.’

‘So much is true, but –’

‘You saw to it that those letters reached the Duke of Norfolk. You put upon them an evil construction, which they should never have borne. And Norfolk put them into the hand of the king, and so the damage was done.’

He cannot speak. Till he says, ‘You are much mistaken.’

She is shaking with rage. ‘You had your men in my father’s household in the north, do you deny it?’

‘They were there to serve him, to help him. Madam –’

‘They were there to spy on him. To goad him, to provoke him into rash actions and rash statements, which your master the duke then shaped into treason.’

‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘You think Norfolk is my master? I was no man’s servant but Wolsey’s.’

Be calm, he says to himself: not like a hasty gardener, who tugs out the weed but leaves the root in the ground. He asks her, ‘Who told you this, and how long have you believed it?’

‘I have always believed it. And always shall, whatever denial you make.’

‘If I were to bring you proofs that you are wrong? Written proofs?’

‘Forgery is among your talents, I hear.’

‘You hear too much. You listen to the wrong people.’

‘You are angry. Innocence is tranquil.’

Don’t speak to me of innocence, he thinks. I pulled down certain men who insulted your father, as an example to others – call them innocent, if your definition stretches. I ripped them from their gambling and dancing and tennis play. I made each one a bridegroom: I married them to crimes they had barely imagined, and walked them to their wedding breakfast with the headsman. I heard young Weston beg for his life. I held George Boleyn as he wept and called on Jesus. I heard Mark whimper behind a locked door; I thought, Mark is a feeble child, I will go down and free him, but then I thought, no, it is his turn to suffer.

‘If you are of this fixed opinion,’ he says, ‘then I shall not trouble you more. Since you hold it against all evidence and reason, how can I oppose it? I would swear an oath, I would do it gladly, but you would think –’

‘I would know you were a perjurer. I have been told, by those I trust, there is no faith or truth in Cromwell.’

He says, ‘When those you trust abandon you – Dorothea, come to me. I will never refuse you. I loved your father next to God, and any child of his body, or any soul who was true to him, may command me to any service. No risk, no cost, no effort too great.’

‘Take this with you,’ she says. She holds out the kerchief. ‘And these books, whatever they are.’

He picks up the gifts and leaves her. He stands outside the room. He leans against the wall, his eyes resting on a picture, where a twisted man adheres to a tree, and bleeds from head, hands and heart.

Richard Riche bustles up: ‘Sir?’

Christophe’s face is stricken. ‘Master, what has she said?’

‘I believe I have not cried since Esher,’ he says. ‘Since All Souls’ Eve.’

Riche says, ‘Have you not? You surprise me. The king’s great trials have not drawn a tear?’

‘No.’ He tries to smile. ‘When he is vexed the king cries enough for two men, so I thought my efforts needless.’

‘And what provokes this now?’ Riche asks. ‘If I may ask? With all respect?’

‘False accusation.’

‘Bitter,’ Riche says.

‘Richard, you do not think I betrayed the cardinal, do you?’

Riche blinks. ‘It never crossed my mind. You didn’t, did you?’

He thinks, Riche would not fault me, if I had betrayed him: what use is a fallen magnate? He says, ‘If not for me, the cardinal would have been killed in those days of his first disgrace, or if he had lived he would have lived a beggar. I put myself in hazard for him, my house and all I had. If I treated with Norfolk, it was only to speak for my master. I did not like Thomas Howard then and I do not now, and I was never his man and never will be, and if he came to me for a post as a pot boy I would not employ him.’

‘Nor I,’ says Christophe. ‘I would kick him in a ditch.’

‘When I wept,’ he says, ‘that day at Esher – my wife lately dead and my daughters, the ashes cold in the grates, the wind howling through every crack – then the dead souls came out of purgatory, blowing around the courtyards and rattling at the shutters to be let in. That was what we believed in those days. What many believed.’

‘I still,’ Christophe says.

‘I do not believe I shall cry again,’ he says. ‘I am done with tears.’ He hears his own voice, running on. ‘Do you know, when Wolsey was in the north, a fellow came to me, a factor for the cloth merchants: “The cardinal owes us over a thousand pounds.” I said, “Be exact.” He said, “One thousand and fifty-four pounds and some odd pence.” I said, “Will you remit the pence, for the love you bear him?” He said, “My masters have remitted and remitted, supplying cloth for vestments out of their piety and at no profit to themselves – and we are talking about cloth of gold.”’

He thinks, I tried by every means to save my master: I tried by exhortation, by prayer, and when that failed, I tried accountancy. Riche is wondering at him, but he cannot stop. ‘He said to me, this fellow, “The cardinal has owed the merchant Cavalcanti the sum of eighty-seven pounds, standing over these seven years, for richest cloth of gold at thirty shillings a yard, 311½ yards: and of the lesser quality, 195½ yards.” He said, “The whole order was left at York Place – I have the delivery note. The cardinal claims the king will pay,” he said to me – “but I think we shall see doomsday sooner than that.”’

‘Sir,’ Christophe says, ‘sit down on this chest. Using that handkerchief you may wipe your eyes.’

He looks at the green leaves, the loving stitches Helen has made, to give pleasure to a stranger. ‘So I said to Cavalcanti’s man, “Very well, I acknowledge the debt, all but five hundred marks – for the merchants swore they would give that sum to the cardinal, to have his friendship – and no doubt it will do them good at the Last Judgement.” But he said, “The sum was already knocked off, you cannot have it twice.” And I had to concede it.’

He sits down on the chest. Christophe says, ‘Sir, do not weep any more. You said you would not.’

‘After Harry Percy went up to Cawood with a warrant, the cardinal was set on the road without time to pay his debts. The apothecary came to me with a bill for medicines – useless, for the patient was dying.’

‘They are not paid by results,’ Riche says.

‘Once he was dead, the wolves closed in. Basden the fishmonger claimed he was owed for three thousand stockfish. “Since when?” I said.’

‘Sir …’ Riche says.

‘Bay salt too – but why would any kitchen buy salt at one mark the bushel?’ He looks around him. ‘The girl is right. There was rank ingratitude, there was false dealing, there was perjury, defamation and theft. But I was true to Wolsey, or God strike me down.’

A bell is ringing. He can hear the nuns begin to stir, gathering to say their office. He says, ‘I should have gone up to Yorkshire with him. I should have been with him when he died. I should not have let the king get in my way.’

‘My lord,’ Riche says, his tone hushed, ‘the king is not in our way. He is our way.’

He says, ‘I shall go back in to Dorothea. I shall explain it to her.’

Christophe says, ‘You cannot undo what she has been believing for so long. Let it rest.’

‘Good advice, on the whole,’ Riche says. ‘My lord, that was the Vespers bell. We had best be on the road, unless we incline to spend a night here. I have parted on good terms with the abbess, I find her a reasonable woman and well-found in the law – these women surprise one. I have the figures. So for now I have done here – if you have.’

‘I have done,’ he says. ‘Allons.’

He remembers the false prophetess, the nun Eliza Barton. She said she could find the dead for you, if you gave her enough money. She searched Heaven and Hell, she said, and never found Wolsey, till she found him at last in a place that was no place, seated among the unborn.

In London, he twists the embroidered kerchief in his hand. Rafe comes; ‘You can give this back to Helen.’

‘I hear,’ Rafe says gently, ‘you were ill-received.’

‘You counselled me,’ he says, ‘you and my nephew – you said, you must let the cardinal go. Whether I would or no, he was prised away from me. But I did not know he would go as far as he has gone now.’ His hand describes the space of the room. ‘I am used to his visits. I see him in my mind. I ask his advice. He is dead but I make him work.’

‘He will come again, sir, when you need him.’

He shakes his head. Dorothea has rewritten his story. She has made him strange to himself. ‘Who could have told her I betrayed her father – except her father himself?’

Rafe says, ‘So much expenditure of time, of goods, of prayers … surely he knew your devotion?’

We must hope so. You can persuade the quick to think again, but you cannot remake your reputation with the dead.

‘I see now I should have asked her more questions. Your master the duke, she said. By God, I’d rather work for Patch.’

Rafe puts his finger to his lips. ‘You know what the cardinal used to say. Walls have eyes and ears.’

As if he is not safe in his own house. But then, Sadler is a more cautious man than he will ever be.

And Riche? Riche tells his story all around Lincoln’s Inn, and the courts of Westminster, and the guildsmen’s houses in the city: boasts of him, or so he hears. ‘Lord Cromwell had all the figures in his head. Stockfish, bay salt, I know not what. Even though he was stricken, at Wolsey’s girl insulting him. I fear he has been grievously slandered, and who knows who is at the root of it, when he has so many enemies? And yet he has a remarkable mind,’ Riche says reverently, ‘remarkable. I think if writing were rubbed out, and all the records of government erased, he would carry them in his head, with all the laws of England, precedent and clause. And I am a fortunate man, to stand his friend, and to have been able to work a little to soothe his temper. Yes, I am glad I was standing by. Praise God,’ says Richard Riche, ‘I learn from him every day.’

Returned from Shaftesbury, body and mind, he opens letters from Gardiner in France, saying that the dauphin is dead: an unexplained fever, three days’ duration. Henry, who so recently lost a son of his own, offers his sympathies, and the court goes into black. No hardship for Lord Cromwell: black’s what he’s in. He appears at many gaudy occasions – as a courtier he cannot help it – but he would not want his brothers in the city to say, ‘These days Cromwell is wholly in crimson,’ or ‘He has taken to purple as if he were a bishop.’

The news from France is soon corrected. Not that the dauphin is alive, rather that his death was in no way natural. But, he asks, why would anyone trouble to poison the boy? François has other sons.

The French embassy maintains silence. Anthony walks through Austin Friars, ringing his new silver bells and crying, ‘God be thanked, one Frenchman less!’ The sound fades behind closed doors, up staircases, through distant galleries. ‘One less, who cares how?’

The sound echoes: who-who, an owl’s cry: how-how, the hound’s call. Austin Friars is augmented, growing into a palace. Builders bang and hammer from dawn. Richard Cromwell walks in with a roll of drawings in his hand. ‘Our neighbour Stow is bad-mouthing you all over London. You know he has a summerhouse? Our boys have put it on rollers and run it twenty feet back on his own side. He says we’re stealing his land. I sent a message, compliments to Master Stow and may we have sight of his plans?’

He looks up. ‘I know where my boundaries are. He lays a serious charge and I take it ill.’

‘So go fuck himself,’ Christophe suggests.

They scarcely knew Christophe was in the room. But there he squats in the corner, like a gargoyle fallen off a church. He remembers the boy saying, that day when they rode up to Kimbolton, ‘I will kill a Pole for you. I will kill a Pole when you require it.’

He thinks, if Christophe can be in my room undetected, I am sure he could weasel in to Reginald’s household. He says to Richard, ‘It is time I saw about him. Having him stopped.’

‘Stow?’ Richard is surprised. ‘A stiff letter will do it.’

‘Pole. Reynold. As you suggested, it may take a knife.’

But then, he would be sorry if Christophe should end his days screaming in some hell-hole, probed and burned by Italian tortures. The French also are devoted to pain; they say you never get the truth without it. The rumour is that they have arrested a man for poisoning their prince, but they are coaxing him for the while, because they believe he will confess to some master-plot. Subtle methods have their place. But any interrogator would look at Christophe and see subtlety as wasted. ‘Christophe,’ he says, ‘if ever –’ He shakes his head. ‘No, never mind.’

If I do employ him, he vows, I will tell him to bawl out, ‘Thomas Cromwell’s man,’ before they can burn or stretch him. Why not? I will take the blame. My list of sins is so extensive that the recording angel has run out of tablets, and sits in the corner with his quill blunted, wailing and ripping out his curls.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Get your coat, Richard. We’re going outside to tramp up and down our line and put down markers for a stone wall as high as two men. And our friend Stow can sit behind it and howl.’

In Lincolnshire, in the east of England, the rumour has been spreading these three weeks that the king is dead. Drinkers gathering at alehouses claim that the councillors are keeping it a secret, so they can continue to levy taxes in the king’s name, and spend the proceeds on their pleasures. Rafe says, ‘Has anyone told Henry he’s dead? I think he ought to know, and I think it should come from someone more senior than me.’

Rafe yawns. He has been with the king at Windsor all week and he has never been in bed before midnight. Henry lingers over paperwork, accepting it from his hand in the morning but calling him in after supper to confer, keeping him standing while he frowns over the dispatches. There are rumours of unrest up in Westmorland; anything that happens near the border, Henry says, you can depend upon the Scots to make it worse. The King of Scots has taken ship, sailed away to France to find a bride, but the winds have driven him back on his own shore. Meanwhile the Emperor offers Henry a joint enterprise against France. Charles is fitting out a fleet of warships. As proof of our commitment, he would like cash on the table.

He says to Chapuys, ‘No wonder your master comes cap-in-hand. Why does he never have ready money? And he pays out such huge sums in interest.’

‘He ought to have you managing his cash,’ Chapuys says. ‘Come on now, Thomas – show willing. My master pays you a pension. We do not fee you for nothing.’

‘That is what the French say too. How can I please you both?’

Chapuys waves a hand. ‘I too would take their bounty. Now you are a lord, you have heavy expenses. But we all know that you are the Emperor’s man in your heart. Think of the advantages to your merchants that would be forfeit, if my master was provoked against them. Be mindful of the losses, if my master were to close his ports to Englishmen.’

He smiles. Chapuys is always threatening him with blockades and bankruptcy. ‘The difficulty is that my prince no longer trusts yours. Time was when your master promised to kick out King François and give my king half his territory. And Henry, good soul, believed him. But then, while we were polishing up our French so we could address our new subjects, Charles was talking to them behind our back and patching up a treaty. We are not fools twice. This time, we would need some great assurances, before we laid out a penny.’

‘Make a marriage with us,’ Chapuys coaxes. ‘Lady Mary says she is not inclined to matrimony, but she would be glad, I believe, to be reunited with her own bloodline. My master will offer his own nephew, the Portuguese prince. Dom Luis is a fine young man, she could do no better.’

‘The King of France has sons.’

‘Mary will not take a Frenchman,’ Chapuys says.

‘That is not what she says to me.’

The king is still keeping his newly-beloved daughter at arm’s length. It is understood that when Jane the queen is crowned, that will be the time for her to come to court, making a great entrance. Meanwhile Mary seems tranquil, ordering new clothes and trotting through the leafy days on Pomegranate and other mounts her friend Lord Cromwell has supplied. She has plenty money for her privy purse – thanks again to her friend – and seems content to encounter her royal father by pre-arrangement, for a day here and there: for supper, and a turn in the gardens when the sun is not too high for a virgin’s complexion. Henry has begged her, ‘Tell me the truth, daughter. When you acknowledged me as what I am, head of the church, did someone prompt you, or constrain you, or urge you to say one thing and mean another? Or did you do it of your own free will?’

He would like to divert the king from this line of questioning. It drives Mary deeper into evasion. Chapuys has told her to send to Rome for the Pope’s pardon, for statements she made in favour of her father. She made them, she argues, under duress.

But in Rome they argue, reasonably enough, that Mary’s declarations were public, and any retraction would need to be public too. She would have to tell Henry, to his face, that she has changed her mind.

Then where would she be? Dead.

Mr Wriothesley says, my lord, you should challenge her. You know where her loyalty lies: to Rome, and to her dead mother. If the ignorant populace are in thrall to an Italian warlord who sets himself up as God’s deputy, surely a king’s daughter should know better? Surely by now, the world and all she has seen has knocked off the shackles of her upbringing, and allowed her to walk a straight path towards reason?

But he does not dispute with Mary. He simply repeats to her, madam, obedience is your refuge. Be consistent in it. With consistency comes peace of mind, and peace of mind is what you need.

Amen to that, she says. She looks grave. Just make my father’s wishes known to me, Lord Cromwell. I will perform them.

‘Mary says,’ he tells Chapuys, ‘that she will marry a Portuguese prince, or a French prince, any prince her father selects. But please note, Eustache, she does not say at any point, “But if I had my choice, I would take for my bridegroom the Lord Privy Seal.”’

The ambassador chuckles – a rusty little sound, like a key grating in a lock – and holds out his hands as if to say, guilty.

Luckily for Chapuys, gossip is not a capital crime.

When the first reports of trouble come in, he is at Windsor with the king. The days are still fine and it is warm in the sun. It is Michaelmas, and through the realm there are processions, with the banners of Our Lady and the angels and saints. All summer, a ban on sermons has been in force, to keep the peace. The ban is lifted for the feast. From the town of Louth in Lincolnshire – a shire of no great fame – there are reports of crowds gathering after Mass. They do not disperse even at dusk.

You know those nights, in market towns. A little money jangling in the pocket, and old companions stumbling through the streets, arms entwined. Youths carolling under a sailing moon, daring each other to leap a ditch or break into an empty house. If it rained they’d go in. But the weather holds. Darkness falls and the marketplace is still packed. Leather flasks are passed hand to hand. Stale grudges are let out for air. Wiping of mouths, spitting at feet. Any quarrel will do, for apprentices looking for a brawl. The clubs and knives come out.

Nine o’clock, a chill in the air. A few masters pick up staves and trot shoulder to shoulder to face down the boys. ‘Sore heads tomorrow, lads! Come on now, get home while your legs will carry you.’

Shog off, say the apprentices. We will break your pates.

Their masters say, almost sorrowful, do you not think we were young once? All right, stay out and starve. See if we care.

Through the hours of darkness the townsfolk hear hallooing from the marketplace – some fool tootling on a trumpet, another bashing a drum. The sun rises on cobbles plastered with puke. The marauders stretch, piss against a wall and go looking for pies. They ransack a baker’s stall, and by ten o’clock they have broached a cask of wine, making cups of their hollow palms.

Last night they stole the watchman’s rattle, and knocked the watchman down. Now they go rattling through the streets, proclaiming the ballad of Worse-was-it-Never. There was a former age, it seems, when wives were chaste and pedlars honest, when roses bloomed at Christmas and every pot bubbled with fat self-renewing capons. If these times are not those times, who is to blame? Londoners, probably. Members of Parliament. Reforming bishops. People who use English to talk to God.

Word spreads. On the farms around, labourers see the chance of a holiday. Faces blackened, some wearing women’s attire, they set off to town, picking up any edged tool that could act as a weapon. From the marketplace you can see them coming, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Old men anywhere in England will tell you about the drunken exploits of harvests past. Rebel ballads sung by our grandfathers need small adaptation now. We are taxed till we cry, we must live till we die, we be looted and swindled and cheated and dwindled … O, Worse was it Never!

Farmers bolt their grain stores. The magistrates are alert. Burgers withdraw indoors, securing their warehouses. In the square some rascal sways on top of a husting, viewing the rural troops as they roll in. ‘Pledge yourselves to me – Captain Poverty is my name.’ The bell-ringers, elbowed and threatened, tumble into the parish church and ring the bells backward. At this signal, the world turns upside down.

Morning brings Richard Riche riding from London to Windsor with rumours of assault on officials of the Court of Augmentations. ‘Our men are in Louth, sir – gone in to value the treasures at St James’s church, which you know is a very rich one.’

He pictures the spire rising three hundred feet, holding up the Lincolnshire sky, clouds draped about it like wet washing. It takes two days to ride from here to Lincolnshire, sparing nor horse nor man. Even as Riche is talking, new messengers are bellowing below: rural gawpers, clay on their boots. How did such folk get here, within the castle walls? They call up, ‘Is it true the king is dead?’

He comes down the stair towards them. ‘Who says so?’

‘All the east believes it. He died at midsummer. A puppet lies in his bed and wears his crown.’

‘So who rules?’

‘Cromwell, sir. He means to pull down all the parish churches. He will melt the crucifixes for cannon, to fire on the poor folk of England. Taxes will be tenpence in every shilling, and no man shall have a fowl in his pot but he pay a levy on it. There will be no bread next winter but made of pease flour and beans, and the commons shall be poisoned by it and lie in the fields like blown sheep, with no priest to confess them.’

‘Wipe your feet,’ he tells them. ‘I shall bring you to a dead king, and you may kneel and beg his pardon.’

The messenger is cowed. ‘We do but report what we have heard.’

‘That’s how wars start.’ Somewhere out of sight a man is singing, voice echoing around the stones:

‘Now God defend and make an end

Their crimes to mend:

From Crum and Cram and Cramuel

St Luke deliver such to Hell.

God send me well!’

He thinks, I believe that’s Sexton. I thought the pest was crushed. ‘Who is Cromwell?’ he asks the messengers. ‘What manner of man do you take him to be?’

Sir, they say, do you not know him? He is the devil in guise of a knave. He wears a hat and under it his horns.

As the trouble spreads from the town of Louth throughout the shire, the king demands, without result, the immediate attendance of Sir Thump and Lord Mump, Lord Stumble and Sheriff Bumble. It is still the hunting season, and they cannot be got to his side for three, four days. First, messengers must go and tell them of the disturbances to the peace. Then they must say, ‘Lincolnshire up? What the devil do you mean, up?’ Then they must instruct their stewards, they must kiss their wives, they must make their general adieux …

‘Come in, cousin Richard,’ the king calls. ‘I need my family. No one else rallies to me in my need.’

At this point he, Thomas Cromwell, could say ‘I told you so.’ Last year he had argued, if we are closing houses of religion, let us deal with them case by case: no need to frighten the people with a bill in Parliament. But Riche had insisted, no, no, no, we should have the clarity of statute. Lord Audley had said, ‘Cromwell, you cannot do everything as you did it in the cardinal’s time. Would not such a programme take us the rest of our lives?’

He had closed his eyes: ‘My lord, I suggested dealing with the houses individually. I did not suggest “one at a time”. That is different.’

But he was overruled. They beat the drum for their intentions: and now look! The king at Windsor wants familar faces about him. His boys are edged onto benches where the great magnates of the realm are used to sit. When the archbishop comes in, dusty from the road, they are at a loss to find an episcopal sort of chair.

‘Why are you here?’ he asks: politely enough. ‘You were not looked for.’

‘Because of the songs,’ Cranmer says. ‘Crum and Cram and Cramuel. Do they think there is you, my lord, and me, and then some third person compounded of both?’

‘It is a mystery. Like the Trinity.’

It seems the trouble is not confined to a distant shire. Cranmer says, ‘There are placards hung through Lambeth. I am not safe in my house. Hugh Latimer has been threatened. I hear in Lincolnshire they have attacked Bishop Longland’s servants.’

John Longland is a cautious, rigid, unsmiling man, who helped the king to get free from his first marriage: not popular on that account, in his own see or through the realm. The upset is worse than Cranmer knows. In Horncastle – it is well-witnessed – one of Longland’s men has been bludgeoned to death, the parish clergy cheering as he gasped his life out; and a man who calls himself Captain Cobbler is strutting with the victim’s coat on his back.

‘My lord archbishop, you should know that I am in the songs too,’ Richard Riche says. ‘I hear my name is reviled.’

‘It would be,’ Richard Cromwell says. ‘It’s a fine name for a rhyme. Flitch, pitch, ditch.’

He says to Cranmer, ‘Perhaps withdraw to the country for a week or two?’

‘Well, if the country were safe,’ Cranmer murmurs. ‘I am afraid there are papists in my own household. If they travel about with me, where shall I go? But London is your business, my lord. If this contagion is spreading, you must look to it.’

‘Switch, twitch, hitch,’ Richard says.

‘Hush,’ Fitzwilliam says. ‘The king is here.’

Mr Wriothesley is a pace behind the king; he has a new doublet of sea-green satin, in which he glows like a Venetian, and delicately he edges aside the quills and penknives of smaller men, to mark out a place for himself. Rafe Sadler, harassed in his old grey riding coat, nudges himself onto a bench end.

‘My lord archbishop!’ the king says. ‘No, do not kneel! It is I should kneel to you.’

‘Why?’ Richard Cromwell whispers. ‘What sin has he done now?’

He suppresses a smile. King and prelate tussle; Cranmer is set on his feet. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ the king says, ‘the news is poor hearing. I would incline to mercy if this brawl were to end now, with no further harm to gentlemen’s property nor insult to the crown.’ He sighs: Henry the Well-Beloved. ‘They fear the winter, poor devils. Reassure them that should there be scarcities, no one will profit from their distress. Proclaim a fixed price for grain if you must. Set up a commission to investigate hoarding. My lord Privy Seal knows what to do, he will remember how the cardinal used to deal with such matters in his day. Offer the malcontents a free pardon, but only if they disperse now.’

‘I counsel you against leniency,’ Fitzwilliam says. ‘If this should spread to Yorkshire, and north to the border, we are all in peril.’

He leans forward. ‘May I alert my lord of Norfolk? He could turn out his tenants and quiet the eastern shires.’

‘Keep Thomas Howard away from me,’ the king says.

Riche says, ‘With respect, Majesty, it is towards the rebels we would send him. Not towards your sacred person.’

The king is annoyed. ‘I think I can rely on my officers in those parts. If need be, my lord of Suffolk has a sufficient power.’

Wriothesley holds up a dispatch. ‘It is stated here that wherever they gather they are chanting, “Bread or Blood”. They have sworn oaths. What oaths,’ he consults his papers, ‘we await advisement.’

Fitzwilliam says, ‘Saving your Majesty, the reason for these riots – it is not just about filling their bellies. They want their monks back.’

‘Their monks are not gone,’ Richard Riche says. ‘I wish to God they were, and the revenue from the great houses free to use.’

Under the table, he – Lord Cromwell – kicks Riche’s ankle.

Fitzwilliam says, ‘They ask for the old worship to be restored. The Pope to have his primacy.’

‘They ask for all things to be as they were in times past,’ Wriothesley says. ‘And God knows, even my lord cardinal would have found that outwith his powers, to make time flow backwards.’

‘But their saints are eternal,’ Fitzwilliam says, ‘or so they think. They want them back, those our injunctions have taken away. They are asking for St Wilfred. They want Crispin and Crispianus, and the virgin Agatha. They want Giles and Swithin, and all the harvest saints. They would rather have a holiday than get the crops in, and they would rather parade with banners than set the winter wheat.’ He says, ‘They believe that if you harvest on saints’ days, your hands drop off. The fruits of learning may one day be seen in England, but let me advertise you, they are not seen yet.’

Cranmer says, ‘I understand they are burning books.’

‘Poor men do not rise without leaders,’ he says. ‘Let no man tell me they do.’

Letters come in. The seals are broken. The king tosses the papers down as he reads: ‘Here, Wriothesley. Give my lord Cromwell sight of this.’

Call-Me is reading over the king’s shoulder. ‘As you say, Lord Cromwell, certain gentlemen are leading the canaille. We have names.’

‘But the gentlemen protest they are enforced?’

‘Haled out of bed in the middle of the night,’ Wriothesley says. ‘Nightcaps on their heads.’

‘One has heard of it before,’ he says. Their wives screaming, and country folk with torches aloft in their hands, threatening to fire the barns unless the gentlemen saddle up and lead them to the king. These broils begin the same, and from age to age they end the same. The gentry pardoned, and the poor dangling from trees.

He says, ‘I will send a message up-country to Lord Talbot. Tell him to turn out his people and get himself to Nottingham with the strongest company he can find. Hold the castle, and from there he can move either by Mansfield towards Lincoln, or up to Yorkshire if –’

The king says, ‘Sadler, send to Greenwich for my armour.’

There is a babble of protest: no, sire, do not risk your sacred person! For Lincolnshire? God forbid.

‘If the common folk are saying I am dead, what choice have I?’

Cranmer says, ‘The malcontents aim at your councillors, not your Majesty’s person. To whom they declare themselves loyal – but such rebels always do. I know what they intend for me. If they come south I shall be burned.’

‘Lord Cromwell’s head is their chief demand,’ Wriothesley says. ‘They believe my lord has practised some device or sorcery on the king. As the cardinal did before him.’

He says, ‘I am offended for my prince, that they deem him no more than a child to be led.’

‘By God, I am offended too,’ Henry says. He has read all the news that comes in, but only now does he seem to take it in – flushed, his fist thumping the table. ‘I take it ill to be instructed by the folk of Lincolnshire, which is one of the most brute and beastly shires in the realm. How do they presume to dictate what men I keep about me? Let them understand this. When I choose a humble man for my councillor, HE IS NO MORE HUMBLE. Who will advise me, when Lord Cromwell is put down? Will these rebels do it? Colin Clump and Peter Pisspiddle, and old Grandpa Gaphead and his goat?’

‘No, they will not,’ the archbishop murmurs.

‘Will Robin Ragbag raise the revenues?’ the king asks.

‘Or Simple Simon draft a law?’ Riche pipes up as if he cannot help himself. Henry glares at the interruption. His voice rises. ‘I made my minister, and by God I will maintain him. If I say Cromwell is a lord, he is a lord. And if I say Cromwell’s heirs are to follow me and rule England, by God they will do it, or I shall come out of my grave and want to know why.’

There is a silence.

The king rises. ‘Keep me informed.’

Master Wriothesley steps out of the king’s way, watching him with solemn eyes.

‘I go to shoot,’ Henry says. He rolls away with his gentlemen, to the archery butts below the royal apartments. ‘Keep my eye in,’ he calls. His voice trails after him, and is lost in the afternoon.

The council disperses, except the archbishop: except Fitzwilliam, and except Richard Riche, who sticks at the table, frowning and leafing through his papers, and Wriothesley, who leans over him, whispering. It is settled that Charles Brandon will stop whatever he is doing, take men and restore order in Lincolnshire. Charles is a brisk man for this sort of thing, and we rely on him not to be too heavy-handed with the poorer sort. Lord Chancellor Audley, now on his way to Windsor, should be sent back to his own parts, in case any spark blown south should start a fire in Essex.

‘So, Crumb, how does it feel?’ Fitzwilliam asks him. ‘To be the heir presumptive to England?’

He waves the joke away. ‘But he proclaimed you!’ Fitz says. ‘Sir Richard Riche, you are witness.’

A non-committal grunt from Riche, head low over his notes. Fitz says, ‘The king by himself can appoint you, since he made his new law for the succession. Certainly Parliament can make you king – what think you, Riche?’

Suppose Parliament were to pass an act saying that I, Richard Riche, should be king? If Riche hears an echo from Thomas More’s day, it does not distract him. ‘Riche will not look up,’ Fitz says. ‘I must be wrong. I am no lawyer, am I? Still, my ears did not deceive me. He named you next king, Crumb. And I have thought that, of late, young Gregory had a very princely air about him.’

‘It is since he came back from Kenninghall,’ he says. ‘He enjoyed his summer with Norfolk.’

‘If this business spreads,’ Fitz says, ‘we will have to unleash Uncle Norfolk, whether Harry wants him or no. He has the forces in the east, and he is a power in the north.’

Riche says, not pausing in his scribbling, ‘Anyone you can pull back from Ireland?’

‘We’re barely holding the Pale,’ he says. ‘I would abandon the wretched place, except it would let our enemies in Europe set up camp on our doorstep. My lord archbishop,’ he turns to Cranmer, ‘you must take your lady out of London. Keep her safe at some small house of yours –’

The archbishop emits a shriek – muffled, like Jonah’s inside the whale.

Riche cuts him off. ‘Oh, peace, my lord archbishop. We all know you have married a wife.’

Fitz says, ‘We all know.’

‘No one here would betray you,’ Riche says. ‘The king holds you in high esteem, and if he does not choose to know, we do not choose to tell him.’

‘I pray God to move his heart,’ the archbishop says, ‘so he relents, and understands matrimony as a blessing no man should be denied.’

‘He likes it himself,’ Fitzwilliam says. ‘You would think he would like it for others.’

‘Give him time,’ he says. ‘And Riche, I know you are keen for work, you Augmentations men, and I am sorry I kicked you under the table, but I do not want the king to say we pushed him or led him where he did not want to go.’

‘But we have a plan?’ Riche says. ‘For the great houses to be dissolved?’

‘Oh, we always have a plan.’

Call-Me straightens up from his conference with Riche’s papers: glimpsing himself in the window, he studies his wavering shape and adjusts the angle of his cap. ‘My lord archbishop, you should comfort your lady that all will be well. I hear she does not speak our language. That must make her start at shadows. The rebels will not come here.’

‘No?’ Cranmer says. ‘You will not talk it away, Wriothesley. It is no light matter and I believe we are ill-prepared. I do not believe this is the action of a few malcontent men. You will find the Emperor’s finger in the pie. You will find certain familiars of his Majesty, who look to a future without him. They will proclaim Mary if they can get her, and then we shall have war. You need not mince matters with me, Mr Wriothesley. I have seen the worst men can do, to their fellow men and to women. In Germany I have seen a battlefield. I have not spent all my life at Cambridge.’

He turns his back on the archbishop and walks to the window. He can see the king and his gentlemen at their sport, in a haze of late sunshine. On the opposite bank, out of sight through the trees, the scholars of Eton are conning their book, and filing to oratory and chapel to pray for their founder, King Henry VI of blessed memory.

Riche has joined him, silent at his elbow. Far below them, he sees a shifting glitter, like salmon skin, against the afternoon: it is the queen in a dress of silver grey, brought out to watch the sport. ‘She looks – cushioned,’ Riche says.

‘She is a great doer at the table, that is all. She is not with child. Lady Rochford tells me when her courses come. No husband more anxious than I.’

‘The other one was skin and bone at the last. A thin old woman.’

The king looks up, as if he knows he is being watched. He turns and waves: Lord Cromwell, come out to play?

He holds up a letter, just arrived: scratches his head to show he is busy making sense of it. The sunshine has faded, and the river light is green; the king, swimming in it, thrusts out his lip to mimic a sulky child. Then he plucks off his hat and points with it towards Datchet: I shall come in when the light fails.

‘October already!’ people say. ‘Where did the summer go?’

Helen has sewn another kerchief, in place of that he carried to Shaftesbury. She has sewn the laurel, which lives for ever, and the ivy, continual in its green.

An order goes to the London guilds to muster men and arm them. Beacons set by the rebels are seen across the river Humber. It is certain Yorkshire will rise. ‘Rely on my lord Cromwell to placate them,’ Fitzwilliam says, smiling. ‘In Yorkshire they treasure his good word.’

The king raises an eyebrow. He must explain – an activity he dislikes. ‘In former times, Majesty, they used to threaten my life.’

Mr Wriothesley adds, ‘My lord Privy Seal was detested, for his service to the cardinal.’

‘Sir,’ Riche says, ‘had we not better heed the archbishop’s words, and secure the person of the Lady Mary?’

‘What do you suggest?’ he asks Riche. ‘Chaining her up?’

The king looks uneasy. ‘I would not for the world that rebels use my daughter against me. Keep watch on her, will you?’

He says, ‘She’s watched.’

In London they halt all large gatherings, including Sunday games. Horses are requisitioned, the garrison at the Tower reinforced. Let merchants buy up stocks of wool and finished cloth and keep the outworkers of Essex employed, as well as apprentices in the city: we know about idle hands. Masters should look well to their servants. All the priests and friars should deliver up any arms they possess to the city – save they may keep a knife for cutting their meat at table.

Wriothesley comes to him: you need to go to the Tower and get the king’s gold plate and start turning it into coin. Then back here to Windsor, quick as you can.

He says, I am going to see Chapuys.

It is said that a servant of his called Bellowe, a trusted clerk, has been captured and blinded. They have skinned a new-dead bull, sewn Bellowe in its hide, then loosed dogs.

He pictures Bellowe, as he was. Presumably his own father would not know him now. Only God will recognise him, restoring his features at the general resurrection.

He thinks, how can they know the dogs are hungry enough? Do they whip them into pens and starve them? Even his own watchdogs would not eat a living man.

The ambassador says, ‘I understand the Duke of Norferk is in London, and in a fever to see you. Alack, where is Cremuel? One would think the duke is in love.’

‘He wants me to put him back in credit with the king.’

‘Henry thinks he has disrespected the corpse of the poor little Fitzroy,’ the ambassador says. ‘The king asked for no pomp, so the duke tips his dead bastard in a wagon.’

‘It gives you something to amuse the Emperor with. In your dispatches.’

‘I myself think Norferk was angry with the boy for dying. What about Madame Jane, is Henry tired of her yet?’

‘You see, this is how my master is traduced,’ he says. ‘Fickleness is not his vice – even you must allow that. He was with Katherine twenty years. He waited seven years for Boleyn.’

‘There were concubines, of course. Although, what king is without them? There was Richmond’s mother. And the Boleyn sister who he bedded before Anne. The court is speculating who will come next. They say Norferk will put his daughter forward. He must get use out of her, and perhaps it would pique Henry’s appetite, to penetrate the widow of his dead son.’

‘Eustache …’ he says.

‘I see you are out of humour.’

‘It’s the scent of treason in the air. It makes my eyes water. It sets my teeth on edge.’

Grievous, Chapuys murmurs.

‘If your master means to send aid to our rebels, he has left it late in the year.’

‘Ah, you call them rebels. I thought it was merely a few turnips, sodden with drink? What interest could my master have in their proceedings?’

‘None. Unless he has received bad advice. Through your usual bad sources.’

He imagines upending Lord Montague and other Poles, and smacking the soles of their feet till their secrets spill out of their mouths. He imagines laying a clasp-knife to the heart of Nicholas Carew, prising it open like an oyster. He imagines shaking Gertrude Courtenay, till treason drops from her like falling leaves. Slicing the cranium of her husband, the Marquis of Exeter, and stirring a forefinger in the murk of his intentions.

‘I shall not regret this business if it brings the traitors out,’ he says.

Chapuys is shocked. ‘You cannot mean the princess!’

‘Any approaches, Mary must report to me. Any letters, they must come straight from her hand to mine.’

‘By the way,’ the ambassador says, ‘I hear that the Courtenays have taken in Thomas Guiett’s woman. It is a charity.’

‘A duty. Bess Darrell gave all she had to Katherine in her trouble.’

‘An angel’s face,’ Chapuys says, ‘and an angel’s disposition. Ah, Thomas, it is always the women who suffer. Those tender creatures whose protection God has given into our hands.’

‘I told Mary, I have done all for her that I will do. Let her move one inch towards the rebels, and I will cut off her head.’

‘Truly, Thomas?’ The ambassador smiles. ‘We know this game, you and I. It is your duty to come here and boast to me of the strength of the king’s forces, and say how he is loved throughout the land. And it is my duty to exclaim, “Cremuel, what kind of imbecile do you take me for?” You know what I must say, and I know what you must say. Why do we not, as the tennis players say, cut to the chase?’

‘Very well,’ he says. ‘Let me say something new. If your master subverts my king in his own country, I will find means to make him suffer, by uniting my king with the princes of Germany, who are your master’s subjects – or he thinks they are.’

I doubt it, mon cher,’ the ambassador says cheerfully. ‘All your talks so far have come to nothing. Henry may hate the Pope, but he hates Luther worse. You once told me you hated him yourself. I believe you incline to the Swiss heretics, for whom the host is but a piece of bread.’

‘You are my confessor?’

‘You have a great many secrets. You and your archbishop.’

He thinks, if Chapuys knows Cranmer has a wife, he will keep it back till it can do most damage.

‘Bread can be more than one thing,’ he says. ‘Anything can.’

‘If Henry were to destroy you for heresy, it would be …’ Chapuys thinks about it. ‘It would be a tragedy, Thomas.’

‘You would come to Smithfield to see me burned.’

‘That would be my painful duty.’

‘Painful my arse. You’d buy a new hat.’

Chapuys laughs. ‘Forgive me,’ he says. ‘I sympathise with you. At such a time you must feel the inferiority of your birth – which at other times’ – a courtly nod – ‘is not evident. Your rivals at court can turn out their tenantry, and arm them from their caches of weaponry that they have owned time out of mind. But you have no retainers of your own. You can expend some of your wealth, no doubt. Yet the cost of keeping even one soldier in the field, especially if he is mounted, and at this end of the season, fodder so dear … I do not care to estimate, but figures come easily to you. Of course, you could go and fight yourself –’

‘My soldiering days are done.’

‘But no one would follow you. Not even the Londoners. They want noble captains. In Italy there are charcoal-burners and ostlers who have founded honourable houses and left great names. But England has its own rules.’

Not prayer nor Bible verse, nor scholarship nor wit, nor grant under seal nor statute law can alter the fact of villain blood. Not all his craft and guile can make him a Howard, or a Cheney or a Fitzwilliam, a Stanley or even a Seymour: not even in an emergency. He says, ‘Ambassador, I must leave you and cross the river to see Norfolk. Or his heart will break.’

Chapuys says, ‘He is chafing to be at the rebels. Any glory going, he wants to get it. He wants to slaughter somebody, even if it’s only tanners and plumbers. He is in high spirits, I hear. He thinks this affair will bring you down.’

When he goes to the Norfolk stronghold in Lambeth, he takes an entourage: Rafe Sadler, Call-Me. He hopes Gregory’s presence will ease matters.

The duke’s great hall is like an armourers’ shop and Thomas Howard, batting to and fro, looks more worn and gristly than ever, like a man who has chewed and digested himself. ‘Cromwell! No time to talk to you. I’m only here to get my orders direct and then get on the road. North, east, I will go where the king commands, I have six hundred armed and ready to ride, I have five cannon – five, and they are all mine. I have artillery –’

‘No, my lord,’ he says.

‘And I can whistle up another fifteen hundred men in short order.’ The duke pounds Gregory’s shoulder. ‘Well, lad! Are you saddled and armed? Oh, I tell you, Cromwell, he’s a wise quick piece, this young fellow! What a summer we had of it! He spares no horseflesh, eh? Let’s hope he doesn’t go at the women so hard!’

Speaking of women … but no, he thinks, I will mention his duchess later. First to disabuse him. ‘Gregory stays at home,’ he says. ‘But the king has given a command to my nephew Richard. He is taking cannon from the Tower. The king has declared a muster in Bedfordshire, at Ampthill.’

‘So thereto I proceed,’ says the duke. ‘Is Harry going to the Tower?’

‘Staying at Windsor.’

‘Probably wise. In olden times, I was once told, the rabble pulled the Archbishop of Canterbury out of the Tower, and cut off his head. But Windsor should stand against rebels and all else, the wrath of God excepted. It should be strong enough to keep out these piddlewits, if every gentleman in the realm does his part. How many can you turn out, Cromwell?’

‘One hundred,’ he says.

He wishes the ground would open and swallow him.

‘One hundred,’ the duke repeats. ‘Clerks, are they?’

He is sending his builders from Austin Friars, and his cooks. Cooks are belligerent men, they are worth two. But to equip them he will need to go begging to the London armourers, and pay whatever they charge. He says, ‘Everything I have is at the king’s disposal.’

‘I should hope so,’ Norfolk says. ‘Since everything comes from him in the first place. No disrespect, my lord. But your father was a pauper, all know.’

‘Not a pauper, my lord. A roisterer, I concede. It was not money we lacked, so much as peace of mind.’

The duke grunts. ‘You can handle a weapon, therefore. I hear you’ve killed men.’

‘Who hasn’t?’

At his back, he feels Call-Me stiffen in alarm.

‘Not without cause, I dare say,’ the duke concedes. ‘And as God gave you other talents, beside the ruffian kind, it is proper to use them for the commonweal.’

The duke is doing his best to be civil. He is straining every sinew, as he paces and twitches and breaks off to bellow an order to a man at arms. But whiffs of hostility come from him – he can no more help it than a manure heap can help stinking. ‘You can tell the king from me,’ he says, ‘that if his forces are extended in the north, he will be hard put to hold down the east country too.’

‘Which is why it is the king’s pleasure –’ Wriothesley begins.

The duke turns on him. ‘I’m talking to Cromwell. Who has been to war, which is more than you have, sir.’

‘We have enjoyed the benefits of a forty-year peace,’ Wriothesley says, ‘under the most sagacious of kings.’

Norfolk glares. ‘To maintain which, every gentleman must lead their tenants, and maintain his right and title – which we are right glad to do, and God defend our cause. This will find out traitors, I assure you.’

His eyes meet the duke’s: those indented, fiery pits. ‘I hear some of these rural stuffwits are proclaiming Mary,’ the duke says. ‘God knows who has stirred them towards that treason, but we can make a shrewd guess. If she moves an inch towards the rebels, I will not speak for her, I will not defend her, I will do naught.’

‘Nor I,’ he says.

‘If the Scots were to come down …’ The duke gnaws his lip. ‘We need every strong man. We need every brute who can wield a staff and every gentleman who can sit a horse. Henry wouldn’t let my nephew out of the Tower, would he?’

‘Tom Truth? No.’

‘I only hope the king knows I had no part in his folly.’

It is a question, really; but he turns aside, and says to the duke, ‘So the king’s pleasure is – as Master Wriothesley here hoped to explain – that you linger neither in London nor near his person, but repair to your own country, there to ensure quietness –’

The fiery pits glint. ‘What? There are no rebels in my country!’

‘You must see there are not,’ Rafe Sadler says. ‘For now, my lord Suffolk takes command of the king’s forces.’

‘Brandon? That horsekeeper? By St Jude,’ says the duke. ‘Am I to be set aside? Me, of the best blood this nation affords?’

‘It is all one, my lord,’ Rafe says. ‘Blood, I mean. We all come of the same parentage, if you go back far enough.’

‘Any priest will tell you,’ he says gravely.

The duke glares. He knows this is true. But he would prefer if there had been a special Adam and Eve, as forebears to the Howards. ‘What about my son?’ he says. ‘What about Surrey? It appears I have offended his Majesty, God knows how, but surely he will not rebuff my son’s service?’

‘He says he’ll see,’ Call-Me says.

‘See?’ The duke is simmering. ‘See? I had better ride to Windsor and meet my sovereign face to face. For I doubt not you misreport him.’ Call-Me opens his mouth, but the duke says, ‘One more word, and I’ll gralloch you, Wriothesley. The king knows he has no more faithful servant in England than Thomas Howard.’

‘My advice, my lord – if you will hear it –’

But the duke will not. ‘I have followed the Tudor’s words in every matter – as ever I shall, so help me God. Yet what fortune falls to me? The monasteries are pulled down, and every little jack and knave is paid. But where is my reward?’

‘If you want abbeys,’ Gregory says, ‘you must apply to Richard Riche. The Master of Augmentations.’

‘Apply?’ The duke fairly spits the word. ‘Why should I apply for what should be granted as of right?’

‘It reminds me,’ he says, ‘I have a letter from my lady your duchess. She says it is four years now since you separated.’

‘Aye. Best years of my life,’ the duke says.

‘She complains of scant living.’

‘Her choice.’

‘You don’t want her back, but you don’t want to maintain her?’

‘Let her family keep her.’

‘Sir, it is shameful,’ Rafe says. His face flushes. ‘Forgive me, but I cannot fail to speak, when I hear of a woman misused.’

The duke shoves his face into Rafe’s. ‘We all know about your woman, Sadler. We know you bought her out of a brothel, and so well-used they handed her over for the pence in a pauper’s pocket.’

Rafe says, ‘If you were not an old man, I would strike you.’

He, Lord Cromwell, steps between them. The duke says, ‘I’ll stick you, Sadler. I’ll spit you like a pullet.’

‘My lord,’ he says, ‘if there is anything I can do, to hasten your return to favour – count on me.’

The duke whirls away, cursing. ‘You know in the north parts they use your name to frighten children? Be quiet, they say, or we’ll fetch Cromwell.’

‘Do they?’ he says. ‘Lord Cromwell would be more polite.’

‘Your title is still a novelty,’ the duke says, ‘and change is slow up there. Their view is, the fellow will be dead before we have to use it.’

As they cross the river on his barge, rain drives into their faces, and the flag with his coat of arms whips about its pole; the statue of Becket on the wall of the archbishop’s palace is barely visible through the spray, but Bastings his bargemaster salutes the saint just the same.

‘I’ll have that traitor down,’ he says. ‘One day soon.’

‘But sir, the rivermen hold him lucky.’

‘You make your own luck,’ he says.

They sit under the canopy. ‘That was ill-considered,’ he tells Rafe. ‘Face-and-brace with the duke?’

‘I have only done one foolish thing in my life,’ Rafe says. ‘I mean, in marrying Helen. And since those who have seen her know I was truly wise, I have not even that to set in my account. Therefore while I am still young enough, I am looking to run into danger. So I know how it feels.’

‘Because we are not fighting men,’ Wriothesley says, laughing. ‘We must try our manhood where we find the opportunity.’

‘Give me notice of the next time,’ he says. ‘And keep Uncle Norfolk out of it.’

He broods. He will stand up each one of his men against Norfolk’s – cooks or clerks or masons. He will stand up himself, against the duke. Norfolk has tenants, but he has cash. If the duke has ancient blood, he has stomach. If the duke is an impregnable fortress, then he is a siege engine, he is God’s catapult, he is the Warwolf; he is the trebuchet and the mangonel, crashing boulders into the walls and chucking body parts over them. People will tell him that the duke’s walls are unbreachable, like the walls of Caerphilly, like Maynooth. But he believes there is no fortress that cannot be undermined or betrayed from within. He doesn’t want Norfolk dead. He wants him alive and conformable. He wants him grateful.

He says to Wriothesley, ‘Tell Riche. Treat with the duke for his requirements. Find out what abbeys he has in view.’

‘I believed he maintained the old ways,’ Wriothesley says. ‘I hear he hates the scriptures. Now he is asking for profit from the monks’ fall?’

‘The Howards were merchants once,’ he says.

Wriothesley says, ‘I suspect we were all merchants once.’

‘One hears,’ Rafe says, ‘that in Lincolnshire monks have come out with battle-axes, and are leading the rebel columns. The king says their vows will not save them, when the broil is over he will hang them up in their habits.’

They disembark. The steps are half under water, it threatens to lap over their boots. Richard will be lucky if he can get his cannon north of Enfield, he thinks, before he is bogged down. The rebels are now advancing on Lincoln. They are said to be ten thousand men mounted and armed, with another thirty thousand behind them, and their ranks increasing by five hundred every day.

‘Let me go with Richard,’ Gregory begs. ‘For the honour of our house. Or with Fitzwilliam – he will have me in his train. He is keen to be killing rebels, he says he will eat them with salt.’

‘You apply to your book, Master Gregory,’ Richard says. ‘You are not done learning yet. And look after your father.’

He has to get back to Windsor to the king. Government must still go forward, it does not stop because we are raising an army. Henry insists he will go up to Ampthill to the muster, and all must try to dissuade him. For the next weeks – who knows, perhaps for ever – he, Thomas Cromwell, will be on the sodden road west of London, or on the swollen river, while his carpenters and spit-boys and glaziers fight north and east through their own morass. He thinks of all the roads of the kingdom swilling into trackless mud, into drench and mire.

He goes out to say goodbye to Thurston. His chief cook is resolved to go with Master Richard to pepper some traitors, but he is tearful as he stands polishing a knife, turning it about, a glint on the blade. ‘I remember your little lass Anne,’ he says, ‘when she came looking for eggs to paint. I offered her a brown egg from the bantam, and she says to me, “Thurston,” – or rather, “Master Thurston,” she says – “I want to paint the cardinal in his scarlet hat, and you give me this egg? Do you say to me he has a head the size of a thumbnail, and a complexion like a Moor? You must do better,” she says. “Only a good-sized egg will answer, and a milk-white shell.” You could not have put it better yourself.’ Thurston blows his nose on his apron. ‘God rest her. A milk-white shell.’

When he thinks of his daughters now it is as very little girls, clinging to their mother’s skirts. He eases them away from him, to wherever the dead live now. He sits alone, under a blue ceiling newly painted with stars, in a chamber suited to the head of a house: lofty, airy, draughty. He closes the shutter, pulls his chair to the fire. He knows these eastern towns. Horncastle, Louth itself, Boston where he did much business when he was young, going to Rome once to represent their pious guild. He knows people in Lincoln who will report to him, and he has advance notice, from the rebels’ camp, of their demands. He remembers Norfolk saying to him once, ‘Give a pike to some tosswit and he is more dangerous than the greatest general, because he has nothing to lose.’ If his informants are correct, the rebels are writing lists of demands, and what they demand – along with the restoration of the Golden Age – are amendments of certain laws that bear on inheritance, how they can dispose of their goods in their wills. These are not the concerns of simple people. What has Hob or Hick to leave behind him, but some bad debts and broken shoes? No: these are the complaints of small landowners, and men who don’t like to pay their taxes. Men who want to be petty kings in their shires, who want the women to curtsey as they pass through the marketplace. I know these paltry gods, he thinks. We had them in Putney. They have them everywhere.

From the fireplace wall, there is a scrape and scratch. The spaniel at his feet scrambles up and shakes herself, her nose raised and twitching, her eyes shining in merriment; the marmoset is stirring in his night-box, and the dog hopes he will venture out. He remembers a lightless November afternoon: Anne Boleyn, her moue of distaste as she pulled her sleeve away from the tiny paw reaching for her hand. ‘Who sent it? I don’t want it. Because Katherine coveted such creatures does not mean I do.’

Someone in pity had made it a little wool jacket, and like a nervous petitioner the creature was shredding it with its nails: it shrank and twitched under the lady’s hostile glance. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said. ‘It will thrive with me, I keep my houses warm.’

‘Do you? How?’ Anne was shivering even in her ermine.

‘Smaller rooms, madam. You would not want those.’

She made a wry face. Cranmer had once said, she is afraid of what she has begun. ‘Perhaps I shall give it all up,’ she said. She pulled at the fur of her cuff, tugging gently as if to show what she would lose. ‘Perhaps the king can never marry me, and I am a fool to think he can. Perhaps I shall give it all up, Cremuel, and come and live in your warm house with you.’

The town of Beverley is the first place north of the Humber to join the rebel cause. Thomas Percy, who is the Earl of Northumberland’s brother, brings five thousand rebels down from the north-east. A one-eyed lawyer called Aske is leading the commons of Yorkshire. First he said he was loath to do it, he said he was pressed – but that is what such chancers say. It is Aske who calls the rebellion a pilgrimage to the king: sometimes he calls it a pilgrimage for grace. He gives the rebels their emblem, raising over their ranks a banner of the Five Wounds. This is how Christ died: two nails in the hands and two in the feet, heart pierced by a lance.

The web of treason is sticky in the palm, and leaves its bloody smear: the pukers on the Louth cobbles, the fat confederates in the north, the abbots wiping their grease on their napkins and raising a glass of gore: the Scots, the French, Chapuys mon cher, Gardiner plotting in Paris, Pole at his dusty prie-dieu. When this is done, who will be master and who will be man? He pictures Norfolk in his armoury, polishing the plate: diligent he rubs, till he can see his swimming face. The king’s companions are prepared to march. So scented, the courtiers, so urbane: the rustle of silk, the soundless tread of padded shoes. But slaughter is their trade. Like butchers in the shambles, it is what they were reared for. Peace, to them, is just the interval between wars. Now the stuff for masques, for interludes, is swept away. It is no more time to dance. The perfumed paw picks up the sword. The lute falls silent. The drum begins to beat.

By mid-October, the king’s hand falls on Lincolnshire. Richard Cromwell writes to him from Stamford, where Charles Brandon has arrived with his power, and Francis Bryan with three hundred horse. The commons sue for pardon, and will hand over their ringleaders. Captain Cobbler is stripped of his borrowed coat. But can we send Charles north, to meet the next onslaught? Not unless we want trouble to break out again behind him.

Meanwhile, the storm-lashed King of Scotland has made landfall among the French. He has been seen at twilight in a lodging near Dieppe, his gentlemen about him, his manners so easy and free that no one knows who is gentleman and who is king: ‘I do not think,’ Henry says, ‘that anyone could entertain a similar doubt in my case, and even if I were to dissemble’ – he laughs – ‘I doubt I would pass as a common fellow, unless I were to assume some disguise, and even then …’ Scotland’s ships lie at anchor in the bay, while James himself takes the Paris road, with the intention of marrying a French princess and thereby doing mischief to his English neighbour.

It is a pity James did not linger in Dieppe. It might have killed him. The townsfolk complain of a pest brought over from Rye. Contagion and false news cannot be stayed by officers of the excise.

Wriothesley says, ‘Bishop Gardiner applies for instructions: how shall he bear himself if, as our ambassador, he should meet the King of Scots?’

He says, ‘He should congratulate James on escaping the dangers of the deep. He has been on his voyage a good while.’

The king says, ‘Tell Gardiner to do James no more honour than he must. I am, as all know, the rightful ruler of Scotland.’

Behind the king’s back he makes a sign to Call-Me: you can leave that out of your letter.

‘And if the French ask about the commotion in our shires,’ the king says, ‘let Gardiner assure them that I have an army at my command that is ready to humble any prince in Europe, and then have puissance remaining, for a second battle and a third.’

He can imagine with what shrugging, grimacing and eye-rolling this news will be received by François. ‘Though the Tudor claims he has a hundred thousand men, all know he has but a fraction of that, and cannot trust his own commanders: or if he can trust some of them, he does not know which.’

And when you think about it, François will say, what did it take, fifty years back, to invade England and overthrow Crookback? A rabble of two thousand mercenaries, led by a man whose name no one knew.

Henry says, ‘You can tell Gardiner, and any other person who enquires, that I will go against the rebels with the whole armed might of England, and so reduce them that their heirs will have to creep over the earth where they lie, and puzzle out their fragments with a magnifying glass.’

But meanwhile, what will he do? He will negotiate.

At Windsor, the king picks through his Italian songbook. The autumn rain beats at the glass. Dead leaves whisk through the air. A la guerra, a la guerra, Ch’amor non vol più pace …

The king says, ‘Where is Thomas Wyatt?’

‘In Kent, sir. Raising his tenants.’

‘How many can he fetch?’

‘A hundred and fifty. Perhaps two hundred.’

A la guerra … Love wants no more peace.

‘How is Sir Henry Wyatt?’

‘Dying, sir.’

‘Will he leave me anything?’

‘His son, sir. Begging as his last request that you will favour him.’

Tom Wyatt: his ardour, his faith, his verse.

The king says, ‘Will Lord Montague bring his people to the muster?’

‘He needs only a day’s warning, sir.’ He thinks, it will be interesting to see if he takes the field himself.

‘Where is his brother Reginald?’

‘Just left Venice.’

‘For?’ The king finishes his thought. ‘Perhaps for Rome. In Rome they will be triumphing over me now.

‘Questa guerra è mortale,’ the king sings. ‘Cromwell, I have forgot the words.

‘Io non trovo arma forte

Che vetar possa morte …’

What weapon is strong enough, to shield me from death? He leafs through the manuscript, which is illuminated with larkspur, vine leaves and leaping hares. ‘I am the tree the wind casts down, because it has no roots …’ And Scaramella goes to war, boot and buckler, lance and shield.

Five wounds. Wife. Children. Master. Dorothea with her needle, straight between his ribs. One withheld? A man might survive them if they were evenly spaced, and he knew the direction from which they would come.

The king says, ‘How many can Edward Seymour turn out?’

‘Two hundred, sir.’

‘And the Courtenays? My lord Exeter?’

‘Five hundred, sir.’

‘Richard Riche?’

‘Forty.’

‘Forty,’ the king says. ‘He is only a lawyer, of course.’

‘I have ordered every coastal district to keep a strait watch for alien ships.’

The king plucks his lute string. ‘Perché un viver duro e grave, Grave e dur morir conviene …’ My life hard, my death bitter, a ship that is wrecked upon a rock.

Prophets – and we are awash with them, though their better forecasts are made after the event – have assured us that this year the waters of Albion will run with blood. When he closes his eyes he can see the flow: not a river tumbling and bursting its banks, not a torrent roaring over stones, but a channel that is oily, crimson, a narrow slick rivulet, boiling beneath its surface: a slow, seeping, unstoppable flood.

In Yorkshire they sing that old complaint from John Ball’s day:

Now pride reigns in every place, and greed not shy to show its face,

And lechery with never shame, and gluttony with never blame.

Envy reigns with reason, and sloth is ever in season.

God help us for now is the time.