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?’