‘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 Cromwelclass="underline" 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?’