He recalls that day: the ice-light in the chamber, the enticements laid before Henry: a velvet dog collar, a pair of strawberry sleeves and, for him, Lord Cromwell, the murrey-colour silk. Call-Me said, ‘Be careful sir.’ He remembers the strain on Call-Me’s face. He didn’t think he meant, be careful of me.
Edmund Walsingham comes in every day or so, and stays only long enough to witness his prisoner is still sound in mind and limb: it is as if he fears conversation will contaminate him. Kingston has his duties as councillor, and is at the Tower only on days of portent. So he has no one to talk to, except Christophe and his turnkey and the dead; and with daylight the ghosts melt away. You can hear a sigh, a soufflation, as they disperse themselves. They become a whistling draught, a hinge that wants oil; they subside into natural things, a vagrant mist, a coil of smoke from a dying fire.
He lives in dread that the king will stop Rafe’s visits. But it appears that the king still wishes him to have some news. Lord Hungerford is under sentence of death, Rafe says. ‘The French ambassador is spreading the rumour he has raped his daughter. But no such charge has been brought. There is enough with the sorcery and the sodomy.’
‘Marillac is emboldened,’ he says, ‘after all the rumours he has spread about me. There seem to be no consequences.’
He cannot find it in his heart to be sorry for Hungerford: except he is sorry for any confined creature, who knows his next outing will be his death. He would like Wolsey to come in so they could have a game of chess: though you should never play chess with a prelate, they always have a pawn in their sleeves. He craves the sight of Thomas More, with his grey stubble of beard and his tired eyes, sitting at the table as he used to do: that table which had taken on the aspect of an altar, the candle flame tugged by a draught. In the wet spring of 1535, More had a trick of absenting himself from the scene, so that what sat before you appeared already dead, a carcass, like the silvery corpse that you find in a spider’s web when the spider has died at home.
They speak of More as a martyr now, instead of a man who miscalculated the odds. He had said to Chapuys, More thought he could manipulate Henry, and perhaps he was right; but then he met what he had not reckoned on, he met Anne Boleyn. We councillors think we are men of vision and learning, we gravely delineate our position, set forth our plans and argue our case far into the night. Then some little girl sweeps through and upsets the candle and sets fire to our sleeve; leaves us slapping ourselves like madmen, trying to save our skin. It rankles with me, that some sneak thief like Riche should best me; that a fool like Polo should hole my boat, and a dolt like Lisle should drown me. Perhaps some people will say I have died for the gospel, as More died for the Pope. But most will not think me a martyr for anything, except the great cause of getting on in life.
By mid-month, the king is a single man again. Convocation first, then Parliament has acted to free him. Anna has agreed to everything proposed to her, and given back her wedding ring. Rafe says, ‘Parliament will petition the king to marry again. For the safety and comfort of the realm. However disinclined he feels, personally.’ He sighs. Master Secretary’s chain weighs heavy.
No rain falls. The heat does not falter. It seems Henry means to kill his slave through sheer disuse. The Visconti in Milan devised a torture regime that lasted for forty days, and on the fortieth day, though not before, the prisoner died. On the first day, you might cut off the man’s ear. Next day he rests. On the third day, gouge out an eye. He rests; he has another eye, but he does not know when you will choose to blind him. On day five, you will begin to tear off his skin in strips. This is not for any information he might give you. This is merely to make a spectacle, to overawe the city.
The third week in July his interrogators return, bringing fresh charges of corruption. There is a case that has been dragging on two years now, about a ship belonging to the brother of the Constable of France. He has the facts in his head, and he is sure he is clear in the matter, but he sees there is no defence against the version the French present. François is intent on hurrying him to the scaffold. ‘I don’t die quick enough for his liking,’ he says to Gardiner.
‘I doubt it will be long now,’ the bishop says. ‘Any day now the king will sign your attainder into law. Parliament will be rising. His Majesty will want to leave London for the summer.’
‘How is Norfolk’s niece?’
Gardiner looks gloomy. ‘Very pleased with her great fortune. A giddy little creature. Still, not for me to question the king’s choice.’
‘Bear that in mind,’ he says, ‘and you’ll go far, boy.’ He smiles. ‘Of course she is giddy. What else, at that age? You would not want her to think too much. History is against her.’
Gardiner looks pensive: ‘I fear it’s against us all.’
It is a busy day at the Bell Tower; Norfolk comes after, with more papers about the French ship. ‘You are to write to the council about it.’
‘Not to the king himself?’
‘Write by all means. I do suppose, though, he will be too occupied with my niece to read it.’
‘Has he said how I am to die, my lord?’
Norfolk does not answer. ‘My son Surrey says, if you had been left to run your course, you would have left no nobleman alive. He says, now is Cromwell stricken by his own staff. Now it is with him as it has been with many a man who has crossed him, both simple and grand.’
‘I do not dispute it,’ he says. ‘But it might give my lord Surrey pause, to imagine how he would order himself were he to find himself a prisoner here. Fortune and the king have raised him high, but he should not trust to that, the ground beneath our feet is slippery.’
‘I’ll tell him,’ Norfolk says. ‘By God, you wax sententious! Wise men have no need of such warnings. They wash their eyes clean every day. You think the king ever loved you? No. To him you were an instrument. As I am. A device. You and me, my son Surrey, we are no more to him than a trebuchet, a catapult, or any other engine of war. Or a dog. A dog who has served him through the hunting season. What do you do with a dog, when the season ends? You hang it.’
Norfolk ambles out. He can hear him talking to Martin outside the door, but he cannot make out what he says. ‘Christophe,’ he calls. ‘Paper and ink.’
Christophe is surprised. ‘Once again?’
He writes to the council. He denies he profited from the misfortune of the constable’s brother or his ship. Norfolk knows, he writes, he was present when the matter was aired; Fitzwilliam knows about it, and Bishop Bonner, he was envoy in France, he will remember the whole affair. For an hour, thinking and writing, he is taken out of himself, as if he were back at the council board. Straight away, he begins a letter to Henry. He has a good deal to say, but he knows that if the letter strays outside the conventions of supplication, Henry will not be able to hear it – not three times, not even once. Is it possible for a man to abase himself more than he has already? By mid-afternoon, he is weary. He gives it up. He puts down the pen and allows his mind to range. Chapuys is back in London, reappointed ambassador. Back at the old game, he thinks. Henry makes a bow to the French, then a genuflection to the Emperor. The cardinal would recognise it all.
That night when Wolsey comes blinking in, he says to him, ‘Be my good father. Stay with me till this is over.’
‘I’d like to stay,’ the old man says, ‘but I don’t know if I have the strength.’ He seems, muttering in the corner, to be preoccupied with his own end. He talks about the candles around his deathbed, George Cavendish gripping his hand. He describes the drawn faces of the monks at Leicester Abbey, peering down at him. He talks of his hasty burial, which he seems to know all about. ‘Why do I not have my right tomb,’ he says, ‘when I paid so much to that Italian of yours? Where are my great candlesticks? My dancing angels, where did they go?’