Montague is a languid man, hard to arouse, hard to bait. It is Margaret Pole who puts down her work and speaks. ‘We helped you pull down the Boleyns, when they were threatening your life.’
‘I took the risks of that enterprise. Not you.’
‘You owe us a debt,’ she says, ‘and now you do not have to pay it. You knew the book was in preparation. You knew all that would occur.’
‘Can you explain that to Nicholas Carew? He doesn’t seem to take it in. I owe him nothing. I owe you nothing, madam. The obligation is on the other side. And whether Mary lives or dies – I will not say it is in my hands, but it may be in yours. I look for your aid to keep her in the land of the living. Where I think she can do most good.’
‘Her mother, God rest her soul, made me her Lady Governor,’ Margaret Pole says. ‘How would I repay Katherine’s trust, if I advised the princess to act against her own conscience?’
Montague says, ‘I do not see, Cromwell, what is your interest in this. You appear to want to save Mary from herself, and save her from her friends too. But you cannot imagine she will favour you thereafter?’
‘Should she become queen,’ Margaret Pole says, ‘and I hope and pray she never has that misfortune, then she will at once, surely –’
What? Put me in the Tower? Strike off my head? Make me Lord Chancellor?
‘My lady mother …’ Montague warns.
‘Ah, I see the Treason Act,’ Margaret says gaily. ‘I see its trip-wire. It is a crime to envisage the future. We are trapped in the hour we occupy.’
‘In past months,’ he says to Montague, ‘you have spoken with the Emperor’s man Chapuys, and assured him that England is ready to rise against the king.’ He holds up a hand: do not interrupt me. ‘Only two, three weeks ago, in the West Country, we saw simple people in arms.’
‘That is Courtenay land,’ Montague says. ‘So tax them with it.’
No loyalty among thieves, he thinks. ‘It is lucky for you no great harm is done, and the country now quiet. But any repetition – any further breach of the king’s peace, in any part of the realm – it will be hard for you to show you are not the instigator.’
‘But could you show that he is?’ Margaret puts in. ‘Because in my poor understanding, it is for the accuser to demonstrate guilt.’
‘That should not be a matter of great difficulty. Besides, the common law provides ways to protect the realm from traitors. I mean an attainder, by which no trial is needed.’
Margaret is still. She glides her needle into her cloth. Her father died this way.
‘Madam,’ he says, ‘do not by your resistances and your evasions and your plots corrupt a good king who has done everything in his power to recompense your family for what it has suffered. Pray for concord, as all good Christians ought. And write the Lady Mary a letter.’
‘You will carry it?’ Montague says.
‘Give it to your friend Chapuys. That way, the young lady will not say it is forged.’
Margaret says, ‘You are a snake, Cromwell.’
‘Oh no, no, no.’ A dog, madam, and on your scent. He interposes his reassuring bulk between her person and the light. Margaret is sewing a border of flowers. It is the emblem of her family, the viola: known also as the pansy, or heart’s-ease. ‘I compliment you. I am surprised your sight is still sharp enough for that work.’
She reaches for her scissors. ‘I have seen other days, and better.’
He sends nephew Richard to the Tower with an order to free Thomas Wyatt. The arrival of Pole’s book, as news of its content seeps and leaks through the court, has caused such a stir that no one is looking Wyatt’s way. No one has seen the text, but when they guess at what is in it, their guesses are not bad enough; they cannot imagine its bitter prolixity, its heedless squandering of the favour of the living, its praise of dead men. Rumours of new arrests are flying. Lady Hussey, who once served in Mary’s household, is whisked into the Tower. He sends Wriothesley to talk to her. She admits that when, by the king’s grace, she had licence to visit Hunsdon at Whitsuntide, she addressed the Lady Mary as Princess.
‘She claims it was old habit,’ Wriothesley says. ‘She swears she did not mean, God strike her, to claim that Mary was Henry’s lawful successor. She spoke unthinkingly. She says.’
Richard Cromwell, banging in. ‘I told Wyatt, go down to Kent and never dwell on the dead. Stay there till he’s told. Constable Kingston wants to know, will he need lodgings for any other noble prisoners, and if so, can you say how many and specify their rank and sex and age, and tell him when they will be arriving? He wants to be ready.’
‘Is Kingston not always ready? You astonish me.’
‘Sir,’ Wriothesley says, ‘I know you pity the Lady Mary. But let her go now.’ He says to Richard, ‘She looks modest as any maid, she speaks low, she shrinks from men, but when Sadler and I went to Hunsdon – if she had a dagger I swear she would have stuck it in me, when I told her how neat a job the man from Calais made.’
She’s hard to like, he says. That’s all he will say.
As Henry takes his place at the council board, he rests a fist on the table to steady himself; he moves cautiously, steering himself so as not to knock or jolt. Courteous, he murmurs his thanks to his new councillor, as Riche eases back a chair to give clear passage to his bandaged leg. ‘Sworn in, Riche? Good.’ He falls into his seat with a little grunt, and grips the council board to drag himself towards it.
‘A cushion, Majesty?’ Lord Audley suggests.
Henry closes his eyes. ‘Thank you, no. Today there is only one matter –’
‘A more capacious chair perhaps?’
The king’s voice shakes, ‘– one salient matter … Thank you, Lord Audley, I am comfortable.’
He catches the Lord Chancellor’s eye, and presses a palm across his own mouth. But Richard Riche is not so easily suppressed. At the sight of Edward Seymour: ‘You here, sir? I did not think you were sworn?’
‘Well, it appears –’ Edward says.
‘It appears that I want his opinion,’ the king says. ‘In this instance at least. These are matters that come very near me. You understand, Riche?’
Edward is the king’s brother now; of course he wants his advice. But Edward sits awkwardly on a stool at the end of the table. He looks like a man who is on trial, to see if he gives satisfaction; perhaps his sister is in the same case.
Richard Riche cannot settle. He leans over to whisper: sir, is this truly a meeting of the council, or some other form of conference? He, Cromwell, whispers back: just sit still and listen. Fitzwilliam looks around. ‘Where is my lord of Norfolk?’
‘I have directed him,’ Henry says, ‘to avoid my sight.’
Good news for Fitz. His quarrels with the Howards go back a decade and more. ‘You should never have sent him to Mary, sir. You know what he is. He talks to a woman as if she were a town wall and he has to breach her.’
‘I do not think,’ the Lord Chancellor says, ‘that you should speak of the king’s daughter as “a woman”.’
‘Well, what else is she?’ Fitzwilliam says. ‘If I call her a lady, it does not alter the case. Norfolk was the last man to do anything with her.’
Henry says, ‘I admit, I chose ill. It is not likely she will yield to force.’ Is there a hint, in his tone, of perverse pride? ‘We must choose another messenger. Perhaps my lord archbishop, with his gentle persuasions …’
Fitz stares at him. ‘She hates Cranmer. How would she not? Cranmer divorced you from her mother. He called her the product of incest.’
‘And so she is.’ The king bows his head. ‘It was a great sin – committed, as you know, in ignorance.’
‘Majesty,’ Edward Seymour says, ‘we are all cognisant – there is no need – spare yourself –’