II
‘Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?’
Spring 1532
Time now to consider the compacts that hold the world together: the compact between ruler and ruled, and that between husband and wife. Both these arrangements rest on a sedulous devotion, the one to the interests of the other. The master and husband protect and provide; the wife and servant obey. Above masters, above husbands, God rules all. He counts up our petty rebellions, our human follies. He reaches out his long arm, hand bunched into a fist.Imagine debating these matters with George, Lord Rochford. He is as witty a young man as any in England, polished and well read; but today what fascinates him is the flame-coloured satin that is pulled through his slashed velvet over-sleeve. He keeps coaxing the little puffs of fabric with a fingertip, pleating and nudging them and encouraging them to grow bigger, so that he looks like one of those jugglers who run balls down their arms.It is time to say what England is, her scope and boundaries: not to count and measure her harbour defences and border walls, but to estimate her capacity for self-rule. It is time to say what a king is, and what trust and guardianship he owes his people: what protection from foreign incursions moral or physical, what freedom from the pretensions of those who would like to tell an Englishman how to speak to his God.Parliament meets mid-January. The business of the early spring is breaking the resistance of the bishops to Henry's new order, putting in place legislation that – though for now it is held in suspension – will cut revenues to Rome, make his supremacy in the church no mere form of words. The Commons drafts a petition against the church courts, so arbitrary in their proceedings, so presumptuous in their claimed jurisdiction; it questions their jurisdiction, their very existence. The papers pass through many hands, but finally he himself works through the night with Rafe and Call-Me-Risley, scribbling amendments between the lines. He is flushing out the opposition: Gardiner, although he is the king's Secretary, feels obliged to lead his fellow prelates into the charge.The king sends for Master Stephen. When he goes in, the hair on his neck is bristling and he is shrinking inside his skin like a mastiff being led towards a bear. The king has a high voice, for a big man, and it rises when he is angry to an ear-throbbing shriek. Are the clergy his subjects, or only half his subjects? Perhaps they are not his subjects at all, for how can they be, if they take an oath to obey and support the Pope? Should they not, he yells, be taking an oath to
me?When Stephen comes out he leans against the painted panelling. At his back a troupe of painted nymphs are frisking in a glade. He takes out a handkerchief but seems to have forgotten why; he twists it in his great paw, wrapping it around his knuckles like a bandage. Sweat trickles down his face.He, Cromwell, calls for assistance. ‘My lord the bishop is ill.’ They bring a stool and Stephen glares at it, glares at him, then sits down with caution, as if he is not able to trust the joinery. ‘I take it you heard him?’Every word. ‘If he does lock you up, I'll make sure you have some small comforts.’Gardiner says, ‘God damn you, Cromwell. Who are you? What office do you hold? You're nothing. Nothing.’We have to win the debate, not just knock our enemies down. He has been to see Christopher St German, the aged jurist, whose word is respected all over Europe. The old man entertains him civilly at his house. There is no man in England, he says, who does not believe our church is in need of reform which grows more urgent by the year, and if the church cannot do it, then the king in Parliament must, and can. This is the conclusion I have come to, after some decades of studying the subject.Of course, the old man says, Thomas More does not agree with me. Perhaps his time has passed. Utopia, after all, is not a place one can live.When he meets the king, Henry rages about Gardiner: disloyalty, he shouts, ingratitude. Can he remain my Secretary, when he has set himself up in direct opposition to me? (This is the man whom Henry himself praised as a stout controversialist.) He sits quietly, watching Henry, trying by stillness to defuse the situation; to wrap the king in a blanketing silence, so that he, Henry, can listen to himself. It is a great thing, to be able to divert the wrath of the Lion of England. ‘I think …’ he says softly, ‘with Your Majesty's permission, what I think … The Bishop of Winchester, as we know, likes arguing. But not with his king. He would not dare to do that for sport.’ He pauses. ‘So his views, though mistaken, are honestly held.’‘Indeed, but –’ The king breaks off. Henry has heard his own voice, the voice he used to the cardinal when he brought him down. Gardiner is not Wolsey – if only in the sense that, if he is sacrificed, few will remember him with regret. And yet it suits him, for the moment, to have the snarling bishop still in his post; he has a care for Henry's reputation in Europe, and he says, ‘Majesty, Stephen has served you as an ambassador to the limit of his powers, and it would be better to reconcile him, by honest persuasion, than to force his hand by the weight of your displeasure. It is the more pleasant course, and there is more honour in it.’He watches Henry's face. He is alive to anything that concerns honour.‘Is that the advice you would always give?’He smiles. ‘No.’‘You are not wholly determined I should govern in a spirit of Christian meekness?’‘No.’‘I know you dislike Gardiner.’‘That is why Your Majesty should consider my advice.’He thinks, you owe me, Stephen. The bill will come in by and by.At his own house he meets with parliamentarians and gentlemen from the Inns of Court and the city livery companies; with Thomas Audley who is Mr Speaker, and his protégé Richard Riche, a golden-haired young man, pretty as a painted angel, who has an active, quick and secular mind; with Rowland Lee, a robust outspoken cleric, the least priestly man you would find in a long day's march. In these months, the ranks of his city friends are thinned by sickness and unnatural death. Thomas Somer, whom he has known for years, has died just after release from the Tower, where he was shut up for distributing the gospel in English; fond of fine clothes and fast horses, Somer was a man of irrepressible spirits, till at last he had his reckoning with the Lord Chancellor. John Petyt has been released but he is too sick to take any more part in the Commons. He visits him; he is confined to his chamber now. It is painful to hear him fighting for breath. The spring of 1532, the year's first warm weather, does nothing to ease him. I feel, he says, as if there is an iron hoop around my chest, and they are drawing it tighter. He says, Thomas, will you look after Luce when I die?Sometimes, if he walks in the gardens with the burgesses or with Anne's chaplains, he feels the absence of Dr Cranmer at his right-hand side. He has been away since January, as the king's ambassador to the Emperor; on his travels, he will visit scholars in Germany to canvass support for the king's divorce. He had said to him, ‘What shall I do if, while you are away, the king has a dream?’Cranmer had smiled. ‘You worked it by yourself, last time. I was only there to nod it through.’He sees the animal Marlinspike, his paws hanging as he drapes himself from a black bough. He points him out. ‘Gentlemen, that was the cardinal's cat.’ At the sight of the visitors Marlinspike darts along the boundary wall, and with a whisk of his tail disappears, into the unknown territory beyond.Down in the kitchens at Austin Friars, the