That seems reasonable. ‘I am encouraged that you decided to come in.’
‘Who would not be curious to see such a great household? Especially if your father is in it.’
He feels he ought to make some statement, some apology – some lengthy explanation, why all is not as it seems – but already he hears footsteps and voices outside his door, his people will be thinking this young woman has taken enough of his time. He says, ‘When you work for Henry Tudor you have no choice in how you appear. You must be a courtier, you cannot look like a clerk. And the common people, outside the gate, you must show them you have the king’s favour. They only understand what they see plain. If you put on no show, they take you for nothing.’
He wants her to know, I was happy in my lawyer’s black. But is that true? He thinks, I used it for concealment. That does not mean I was content. Did I not have a doublet of purple satin, long before the cardinal came down?
The door opens. It is Thomas Avery. He stares at the visitor. ‘Christ in Heaven, Jenneke, what are you doing here?’
‘Thomas Avery, this is my daughter.’
The young man stands with a folio slapped to his chest, his eyes on Jenneke. ‘I know.’
When Jenneke has gone he calls Avery in and bids him sit; he would give him an apple if he wanted one, and they are good Charterhouse apples too. ‘I am not angry,’ he says. ‘Come, Thomas Avery, you are a Putney boy, my people knew your people, we should deal straight with each other.’
‘None of that follows,’ Thomas Avery says warily. ‘Putney people are as crooked as anywhere. Worse.’
‘I mean, we should be at ease with each other.’
Avery looks at him as if to say, do you have any idea how impossible that is?
‘You saw her, did you not, at Stephen’s house, when I sent you over to learn his trade? You came back and talked about her. Jenneke, you said. The name so often on your lips, I thought you were in love with her.’
Avery says nothing. His hands lie still, unoccupied.
‘I thought, we will make this work for Avery – even if she is an orphan with no money, Stephen and I will manage it between us. But then you ceased to speak of the girl and I thought – God help me – I thought perhaps she had died, and so I did not speak of her either. I waited for news. And now …’
He feels he is reaching for the truth but failing to grasp it. A dead thing has proved quick: it is as if Anselma is one of those statues monks keep, that moves its eyes, jerking them in their orbits; or reaches out a wooden hand, and adjusts its cerulean robe.
Avery says, ‘Sir, I came home from Antwerp with Jenneke’s picture in my mind as clear as if she stood before me, and in this very room I took your measure, I studied your features, I crossed the sea again and studied hers. You can see she resembles you, and I could not miss it. I put the question to Mr Vaughan. He said, Avery, you have it right, but be very secret. I saw I had trespassed in private business. Vaughan said, I will not ask you to take an oath, for that should not be done except in the gravest cases, and I suppose it will come out one day – but let it not be through you.’
‘And you kept my secret. That I did not know myself.’ He considers Avery. ‘Well, if you can keep one secret, you can keep another.’ The boy stirs, reaching for paper, but he raises a palm: ‘Sit still and listen. I am going to tell you where my money is.’
Avery is surprised. ‘Well, sir, I talk to your receivers and your surveyors. Your officers are all confidential with me. If they were hiding anything, I would know.’
‘I applaud your diligence. But there are other funds.’
‘Ah.’ Avery thinks about it. ‘Abroad?’
He inclines his head.
‘Why?’
‘Against the day.’
‘But has not the king said – you will pardon me, sir, but the whole city talks of it – “I will not part from my Lord Privy Seal, not for no man on earth”?’
‘That is what he has said.’
Avery looks down at his feet. ‘We know the love his Majesty bears you. We see the fruits of it daily. But we fear the country will rise again, and who knows how the world will turn? Not that we doubt our sovereign, his word – but who was in greater favour than my lord cardinal in his day?’
‘His example is before me.’ Though not his ghostly person: not since Shaftesbury. ‘So if one day the Duke of Suffolk and the Duke of Norfolk storm in here, breaking my locks and splintering my chests, and wrecking like the devils at the sack of Rome, I want you, Thomas Avery, halfway down the street, and not so much as “What do you?” Do not even stop to curse them, just run. As soon as you can get a letter abroad, send to those names I shall tell you. Then if Henry lays hands on what is mine, he will think he has the whole, but he will be – let us not say he will be deceived, for I would not deceive my king – let us say he will be less than fully informed.’ He watches Avery. ‘You can do it? Or the task lies too heavy?’
The boy nods.
‘Good.’ Because Richard is of too hot a temper for such a post-mortem task. And Rafe is assumed to know all my business, he thinks, and I should not like his loyalty divided, as he is the king’s servant now and must answer to him. He says, ‘Gregory is still young. He would need help. And now it seems I have a young woman to provide for as well.’
‘Where has she gone, sir?’
‘To seek Vaughan. I wonder what she will tell him.’
He would be glad to have Avery in his family. But he is no longer free – he is pledged to the daughter of Thacker, the steward. They keep close, the Austin Friars boys: perhaps there will be one of them spare for his daughter to wed. Though something in Jenneke’s manner tells him that she has not come to stay. She came to satisfy her curiosity and set eyes on the father who is a great man. Perhaps as a child she watched for his ship coming up the Scheldt. But those days are long gone and childhood is over.
Aske’s safe-conduct is good till Twelfth Night. At Greenwich during the Christmas season, the king has asked the rebel leader to write an account of the outrages in the north – from the first hint of trouble in the autumn, to his winter journey under flag of truce.
Aske is two or three days about his task, sustained by prime beef, claret and banked fires. The product is conveyed to my lord Privy Seal. He is spending his holiday dealing with letters from Calais, where the population has been swelled by an influx from beyond the Pale of men and their families pressing to become English denizens. Grain is short this winter and herring go four for a penny, therefore some plan will have to be made to feed the town. No use waiting for the governor to do it. Lisle can’t boil an egg.
My lord Privy Seal lays aside his letters to read Aske’s tale of the Pilgrims. ‘What a marvellous little book,’ he says at last. ‘I wonder that a lawyer should be so free with the ink.’ Aske talks about himself like a man in a storybook. ‘The said Aske’, he calls himself. He says what he did in the rebellion, but he doesn’t say why.
‘Aske has seen the king,’ says my lord Privy Seal. ‘The king has seen Aske. He has served his purpose. Now get him back to Yorkshire.’
Aske must be conveyed promptly, with the king’s offer of a general pardon, in order to quash rumours that on the one hand he has been hanged, and on the other hand promoted to high office. No loyal subject could turn down Christmas with his king. But the visit has compromised him: it will be easy for the Yorkshiremen to say the court has bought him. In any event, it is futile to believe Aske alone can command the towns and shires. The banner of the Five Wounds has even been seen in Cornwall, where they say it was brought back by some real pilgrims, who had walked right across the country to the shrine at Walsingham in Norfolk.
Does this not show the nature of the pilgrim trade? In my lord Privy Seal’s view, nothing comes of trailing from shire to shire to pray. You can pray at home. It costs you less, you don’t get robbed on the road, and you don’t spread diseases or carry them back to your native country. Besides, Walsingham is useless, the king says. ‘I went there to pray for my son I had with Katherine, but he only lived two months. Still, Jane wanted to go. Women are fanciful and set store by shrines. She prayed for her womb to quicken but … There you are,’ the king says. ‘Nothing’s happened yet.’