He grins. ‘Well, Call-Me, who will you back in a fight, Thomas Cromwell or Mistress Seymour?’
But of course Call-Me is right. His new allies hold him cheap. They take their triumph as natural, and for a mere promise of forgiveness he is to follow them and work for them and repent everything he has done. He says, ‘I do not claim I can tell the future, but I do know one or two things such folk are ignorant of.’
One can never be sure what Wriothesley is reporting to Gardiner. Hopefully, matter that will cause Gardiner to scratch his head in puzzlement, and quiver in alarm. He says, ‘What do you hear from France? I understand there is much talk of the book that Winchester wrote, justifying the king’s supremacy. The French believe he wrote it under duress. Does he allow people to think that?’
‘I am sure –’ Wriothesley begins.
He cuts him off. ‘No matter. I find I like the picture it puts in my head, Gardiner whining how he is crushed.’
He thinks, let’s see if that gets back. It is his contention that Call-Me forgets for weeks at a time that he is the bishop’s servant. He is an edgy young man, tense, and Gardiner’s bellowing makes him ill; Cromwell is a congenial master, and easy day-to-day. He has said to Rafe, I quite like Call-Me, you know. I am interested in his career. I like watching him. If I ever broke with him, Gardiner would send another spy, who might be worse.
‘Now,’ he says, turning back to the company, ‘we had better get poor Mark to the Tower.’ The boy has shrunk to his knees, and is begging not to be put back with Christmas. ‘Give him a rest,’ he says to Richard, ‘in a room clear of phantoms. Offer him food. When he is coherent, take his formal statement, and have it well witnessed before he leaves here. If he proves difficult, leave him to Christophe and Master Wriothesley, it is business more fit for them than for you.’ Cromwells do not exhaust themselves on menial work; if they once did, that day has passed. He says, ‘If Mark tries to renege once he is out of here, they will know what to do at the Tower. Once you have his confession secure, and all the names you need, go down to the king at Greenwich. He will be expecting you. Trust the message to no one. Drop the word in his ear yourself.’
Richard pulls Mark Smeaton to his feet, handling him as one might handle a puppet: and with no more ill-will than one would spare for a marionette. Through his mind darts, unprompted, the image of old Bishop Fisher tottering to the scaffold, skeletal and obstinate.
It is already nine in the morning. The dews of May Day have burned from the grass. All over England, green boughs are carried in from the woods. He is hungry. He could eat a cut of mutton: with samphire, if any has been sent up from Kent. He needs to sit down for his barber. He has not perfected the art of dictating letters while being shaved. Perhaps I’ll grow my beard, he thinks. It would save time. Only then, Hans would insist on committing another portrait against me.
At Greenwich by this time, they will be sanding the arena for the jousts. Christophe says, ‘Will the king fight today? Will he fight the Lord Norris and slay him?’
No, he thinks, he will leave that to me. Past the workshops, the store rooms and the jetties, the natural haunt of men such as himself, the pages will be placing silk cushions for the ladies in the towers that overlook the tilt yard. Canvas and rope and tar give way to damask and fine linen. The oil and stench and din, the smell of the river, give way to the perfume of rosewater and the murmurings of the maids as they dress the queen for the day ahead. They sweep away the remnants of her small meal, the crumbs of white bread, the slices of sweet preserves. They bring her petticoats and kirtles and sleeves and she makes choice. She is laced and tied and trussed, she is polished and flounced and studded with gems.
The king – it would be three or four years back and to justify his first divorce – put out a book called A Glass of the Truth. Parts of it, they say, he wrote himself.
Now Anne Boleyn calls for her glass. She sees herself: her jaundiced skin, lean throat, collarbones like twin blades.
1 May 1536: this, surely, is the last day of knighthood. What happens after this – and such pageants will continue – will be no more than a dead parade with banners, a contest of corpses. The king will leave the field. The day will end, broken off, snapped like a shinbone, spat out like smashed teeth. George Boleyn, brother to the queen, will enter the silken pavilion to disarm, laying aside the favours and tokens, the scraps of ribbon the ladies have given him to carry. When he lifts off his helmet he will hand it to his squire, and see the world with misted eyes, falcons emblazoned, leopards couchant, claws, talons, teeth: he will feel his head on his shoulders wobbling as soft as jelly.
Whitehalclass="underline" that night, knowing Norris is in custody, he goes to the king. A snatched word with Rafe in an outer room: how is he?
‘Well,’ Rafe says, ‘you would expect him to be storming about like Edgar the Peaceable, looking for someone to stick with a javelin.’ They exchange a smile, remembering the supper table at Wolf Hall. ‘But he is calm. Surprisingly so. As if he knew, long ago. In his heart. And by his express wish he is alone.’
Alone: but who would he be with? Useless to expect Gentle Norris whispering towards him. Norris was keeper of the king’s private purse; now one imagines the king’s money loose and rolling down the highway. The angels’ harps are slashed, and discord is general; purse strings are cut, and the silk ties of garments snapped to spill flesh.
As he stands on his threshold, Henry turns his eyes: ‘Crumb,’ he says heavily. ‘Come and sit.’ He waves away the attentions of the groom who hovers by the door. He has wine and pours it himself. ‘Your nephew will have told you what passed at the tilting ground.’ He says softly, ‘He is a good boy, Richard, is he not?’ His gaze is distant, as if he would like to wander off the point. ‘I was among the spectators today, not an actor at all. She of course was as ever: at ease among her women, her countenance very haughty, but then smiling and stopping to converse with this gentleman or that.’ He sniggers, a flat, incredulous sound. ‘Oh yes, she has had some conversation.’
Then the bouts began, the heralds calling out each rider. Henry Norris had some ill-luck. His horse, startled by something, jibbed and laid back its ears, danced and tried to shed its rider. (Horse can fail. Boys can fail. Nerve can fail.) The king sent a message down to Norris, advising him to retire; a substitute would be sent to him, one of the king’s own string of fighting horses, still kept trimmed and tacked in case it should be his sudden pleasure to take the field.
‘It was a usual courtesy,’ Henry explains; and shifts in his chair, like one called to justify himself. He nods: of course, sir. Whether Norris did in fact return to the lists, he is unsure. It was mid-afternoon when Richard Cromwell made his way through the crowds to the gallery, and knelt before the king; and at a word, approached to whisper in his ear. ‘He explained how the musician Mark was taken,’ the king says. ‘He had confessed all, your nephew said. What, confessed freely? I asked him. Your nephew said, nothing was done against Mark. Not a hair of his head harmed.’
He thinks, but I shall have to burn the peacock wings.
‘And then…’ the king says. For a moment he baulks, as Norris’s horse did: and falls silent.
He will not continue. But he, Cromwell, already knows what occurred. Upon hearing the word from Richard, the king rose from his place. His servants eddied about him. He signed to a page, ‘Find out Henry Norris, and tell him I ride to Whitehall, now. I want his company.’
He gave no explanation. He did not tarry. He did not speak to the queen. But covered the miles back, Norris beside him: Norris puzzled, Norris astonished, Norris almost slipping from the saddle with fright. ‘I taxed him with the matter,’ Henry says. ‘With the boy Mark’s confession. He would say nothing, but of his innocence.’ Again that flat, scornful little laugh. ‘But since then, Master Treasurer has questioned him. Norris admits it, he says he loved her. But when Fitz put it to him that he is an adulterer, that he desired my death so he could marry her, he said no, no and no. You will put questions to him, Cromwell, but when you do, tell him again what I told him as we rode. There can be mercy. There may be mercy, if he confesses and names the others.’