‘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.