And besides, the shopping! Just step out of your door and you can get a diamond or a broom, you can get knives, candlesticks and keys, ironwork to suit the expert eye. They make soap and glass, they cure fish and they deal in alum and promissory notes. You can buy pepper and ginger, aniseed and cumin, saffron and rice, almonds and figs; you can buy vats and pots, combs and mirrors, cotton and silk, aloes and myrrh.
Already he had friends in the city. On the day he first sailed from England, a boy, he had met a merchant family with their samples of wool, and they had seen the marks of his father’s boot on his face. We shall not forget you, they said, there is a bed for you whenever God brings you to our town. The years rolled by: ‘Good Lord!’ they said, when he knocked at the door. ‘It’s Thomas! He is grown up! He is an Italian now!’
In Antwerp, the more tongues you could master, the more you could succeed. If he lacked a phrase in one language, he had it in another, and his earnest vehemence made up for any gaps. He sought out, as he had in Italy, the company of sober elders, whose table talk was refined and who would give away their wisdom to a young foreigner who admired them, one who asks questions, questions, and looks impressed by the replies. Such dignitaries always need a repository for their secrets, just as they need a man who will take a confidential dispatch and be back with an answer before you notice he’s gone. The drawback is that one must consent to their indoor lives: no calcio, just polite archery on a Sunday. The courtyards where one trades in wool and money may be open to the sky, yet they cannot help but smell of tallow, ink and dinners, seeped into the wool of dark winter garments: he would walk, and under the shadow of the Steen with its warehouses take a breath of river air, and imagine the great world beyond. There were some hundred of his countrymen – Englishmen, that is – dwelling in or around their English House; they lived side by side with the Castilian nation, the Portuguese and the Germans, but they were cherished by the city because they paid so well for their privileges. When their ships came in they had first use of the crane at the docks, powered by a man treading inside a wheel. He asked one of the Antwerpers, ‘Does it have a name?’
A baffled look. ‘We call it the crane.’
He thought, if a cannon has a name, if a bell has a name, the crane should have a name too.
‘It is not unreasonable,’ he said coolly.
The Flemish fellow said, laughing, ‘We can call it Thomas if you like.’
‘By the way,’ he muttered, as he walked away, ‘it would work a lot better if you had men treading the outside, not the inside.’
No use trying to disturb the fixed notions of a strange city. But he is a man who thinks about lifting heavy weights, about winches, beams and pulleys, and about joints, how to make them frictionless.
Of course they gossiped about him, when he moved into Anselma’s house. She undertook to show him the country and introduce him to people who could do him good, relatives of hers. One day they went to Ghent together and stepped into the church of John the Baptist to say a prayer. It is only on a feast of the church that they open the doors of the great altarpiece to show you the crowds of angels and prophets flocking to the Lamb of God. Instead they saw the donors of the piece, portrayed on the outer doors. They were a careworn couple, she purse-featured, he bald: but no doubt full of grace. He thought, give it thirty years, and that could be us. I would have forgotten my English and be entirely a Fleming: a stout burger, persuading younger legs to run to the wharves for me, or climb up to high places to see if my ships are coming in.
The church was bustling and noisy, but they could hear each other whisper: their heads close, her fingers sliding into his palm. Their breath mingled; she leaned against him, soft and warm. He said, ‘Make me good, O Lord, but not yet.’
She laughed, and he said, ‘Not me. Augustine.’
Yet the day came when she told him, ‘Time to sail, Thomas. You are my past now, and I am yours.’
He goes to the Tower to interview Robert Kendall, the vicar of Louth, the first begetter of the trouble in Lincolnshire: the pardon does not extend to such principal offenders as he. Clouds stack over the town in grey-blue fortresses of air, battered by the wind as if by cannon-fire. Mr Wriothesley attends him. He misses Rafe, but Rafe is heading to Newcastle, to await his safe-conduct over the border.
Reginald Pole has left Rome, in his new cardinal’s hat. Now that peace has broken out, he has missed his chance to invade and lead the English, though the Scots have made clear they would have been ready to come to his aid. When Lord Cromwell hears Pole is en route to Paris, Francis Bryan crosses the Narrow Sea with a demand for his extradition. Reginald reaches the French capital to find the king is elsewhere. Thwarted and scanted, blocked and barred, he skulks off towards Imperial territory: but our man in Brussels has already persuaded the Emperor’s regent not to receive him.
The new cardinal’s relations – his mother Lady Salisbury, his brother Lord Montague – still protest they abhor his foolery. All they want is to see Reginald conformable and loyal to the Tudors, as they are and ever shall be. To hear them talk, if they saw Reginald in his red hat, they would snatch it off and spit in it.
Mr Polo, the Spanish call him. It makes my lord Privy Seal laugh.
‘I hear you have had a visitor, Cromwell,’ the Imperial ambassador says.
‘Oh yes? Why don’t you tell me all about it, Eustache?’
The ambassador waves a hand. ‘Naturally the neighbours talk. It is not every day they see the Queen of Sheba’s daughter with her travelling bag.’
Their dinner comes in: in deference to the cold, a thick ragout of mutton, and an ox-tongue pie heavy with mace. ‘Ça va, Christophe?’ the ambassador enquires, but Christophe only grunts; he is wondering how much of the pie they might chance to leave.
‘I wish it were spring,’ Chapuys says. ‘I am like the Israelites in the desert, I long for the melons and cucumbers of Egypt.’ He sighs. ‘Mon cher, you must not blame me if your amours are of interest to all Europe. Hitherto, observers have been frustrated by your extreme discretion.’
‘It is a stale sin,’ he says. ‘If it was ever a sin at all.’
Chapuys serves himself a little ragout. The scent of dried sage fills the room. ‘You think your Lutheran God will understand?’
‘I tire of telling you I am not a Lutheran.’
‘Rest from your labours, for I shall never believe it,’ Chapuys says cheerfully. ‘Certainly you are a sectary of some sort. Perhaps one of those who oppose the baptism of infants?’
He chews a little, his eyes on Chapuys. This is the rumour young Surrey has spread, and other ill-wishers; it is the way to ruin him with Henry, and the ambassador knows it. ‘Christophe,’ he calls, ‘where’s that capon?’ He puts down his napkin. ‘Is it likely?’ he says to Chapuys. ‘How could I profess such a creed, and remain the servant of a Christian commonwealth? Those people oppose the payment of taxes. They oppose the taking of oaths. They oppose books and writing and music.’
‘Yet they say this sect has crept in everywhere in Calais. And Lord Lisle cannot do much against it.’
Christophe bears in the capons, the flesh cubed and seethed in red wine, the sauce thickened with breadcrumbs.
‘This is a very brown repast,’ Chapuys says, ‘but it tastes better than it looks.’
‘Soon it will be Lent. Then you will be crying for the fleshpots of Egypt, and never mind the melons and cucumbers.’
The ambassador dabs his mouth. ‘What will you do with your new daughter? Marry her quietly, I suppose, with a good dowry. You will confess to the world who she is?’