‘Go and change,’ he says. ‘I don’t like it.’ He lifts Master Wriothesley’s veil. ‘You’re not very convincing, with that beard.’
Call-Me drops a curtsey. ‘But I must have a disguise, sir.’
‘We have a worm costume left,’ Anthony says. ‘Or you could be a giant striped rose.’
‘St Uncumber was a virgin and grew a beard,’ Gregory volunteers. ‘The beard was to repulse her suitors and so guard her chastity. Women pray to her if they wish to be rid of their husbands.’
Call-Me goes to change. Worm or flower? ‘You could be the worm in the bud,’ Anthony suggests.
Rafe and his nephew Richard have come in; he sees them exchange a glance. He lifts Wriothesley’s child in his arms, asks after her baby brother and admires her cap. ‘Mistress, I have forgot your name.’
‘I am called Elizabeth,’ the child says.
Richard Cromwell says, ‘Aren’t you all, these days?’
I will win Call-Me, he thinks. I will win him away from Stephen Gardiner completely, and he will see where his true interest lies, and be loyal only to me and to his king.
When Richard Riche comes in with his wife he admires her new sleeves of russet satin. ‘Robert Packington charged me six shillings,’ she says, her tone outraged. ‘And fourpence to line them.’
‘Has Riche paid him?’ He is laughing. ‘You don’t want to pay Packington. It only encourages him.’
When Packington himself arrives, it’s with a grave face; it’s clear he has something to say, and it’s not just ‘How do you?’ His friend Humphrey Monmouth is by his side, a stalwart of the Drapers’ Guild. ‘William Tyndale is still in prison, and likely to be killed as I hear.’ Packington hesitates, but clearly he must speak. ‘I think of him in durance, as we enjoy our feast. What will you do for him, Thomas Cromwell?’
Packington is a gospel man, a reformer, one of his oldest friends. As a friend, he lays his difficulties before him: he himself cannot negotiate with the authorities in the Low Countries, he needs Henry’s permission. And Henry will not grant it, as Tyndale would never give him a good opinion in the matter of his divorce. Like Martin Luther, Tyndale believes Henry’s marriage to Katherine is valid, and no consideration of policy will sway him. You would think he would bend, to suit the King of England, to make a friend of him; but Tyndale is an obdurate man, plain and stubborn as a boulder.
‘So must our brother burn? This is what you are telling me? A merry Christmas to you, Master Secretary.’ He turns away. ‘They say money follows you these days like a spaniel his master.’
He puts a hand on his arm: ‘Rob –’ Then pulls back, says heartily, ‘They’re not wrong.’
He knows what his friend thinks. Master Secretary is so powerful that he can move the king’s conscience; and if he can, why does he not, unless he is too busy lining his pocket? He wants to ask, give me a day off, in Christ’s name.
Monmouth says, ‘You have not forgot our brothers whom Thomas More burned? And those he hounded to death? Those broken by months in prison?’
‘He didn’t break you. You lived to see More come down.’
‘But his arm reached out of his grave,’ Packington says. ‘More had men everywhere, all about Tyndale. It was More’s agents who betrayed him. If you cannot move the king, perhaps the queen can?’
‘The queen needs help herself. And if you want to help her, tell your wives to curb their poisoned tongues.’
He moves away. Rafe’s children – his stepchildren rather – are crying out to him to come and see their disguises. But the conversation, broken off, leaves a sour taste in his mouth that persists throughout the festival. Anthony pursues him with jokes, but he turns his eyes to the child dressed as an angel: it is Rafe’s step-daughter, the elder child of his wife Helen. She is wearing the peacock wings he made long ago for Grace.
Long ago? It is not ten years, not nearly ten. The feathers’ eyes gleam; the day is dark, but banks of candles pick out threads of gold, the scarlet splash of holly berries bound on the wall, the points of the silver star. That night, as snowflakes float to earth, Gregory asks him, ‘Where do the dead live now? Do we have Purgatory or not? They say it still exists, but no one knows where. They say we do no good by praying for the suffering souls. We cannot pray them out, as once we could.’
When his family died, he had done everything as was the custom in those days: offerings, masses. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘The king will not allow preaching on Purgatory, it is so contentious. You can talk to Archbishop Cranmer.’ A twist of his mouth. ‘He’ll tell you the latest thinking.’
‘I take it very hard if I cannot pray for my mother. Or if they let me pray but say I am wasting my breath because nobody hears me.’
Imagine the silence now, in that place which is no-place, that anteroom to God where each hour is ten thousand years long. Once you imagined the souls held in a great net, a web spun by God, held safe till their release into his radiance. But if the net is cut and the web broken, do they spill into freezing space, each year falling further into silence, until there is no trace of them at all?
He takes the child to a looking glass so she can see her wings. Her steps are tentative, she is in awe at herself. Mirrored, the peacock eyes speak to him. Do not forget us. As the year turns, we are here: a whisper, a touch, a feather’s breath from you.
Four days later, Eustache Chapuys, the ambassador of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, arrives in Stepney. He comes in to a warm welcome from the household, who approach him and wish him well in Latin and French. Chapuys is a Savoyard, speaks some Spanish but English hardly at all, though he is beginning to understand more than he speaks.
Back in the city their two households have been fraternising since a gusty autumn night when a fire started at the ambassador’s lodging, and his wailing attendants, soot-blackened and carrying all they could salvage, came banging at the gates of Austin Friars. The ambassador lost his furniture and his wardrobe; one could not help laughing at the sight of him, wrapped in a scorched curtain with only a shirt beneath. His entourage spent the night on pallets on the floor of the hall, brother-in-law John Williamson having quit his chamber to allow the unexpected dignitary to occupy it. Next day the ambassador suffered the embarrassment of going into company in borrowed clothes too large for him; it was either that, or take the Cromwell livery, a spectacle from which an ambassador’s career could never recover. He had set tailors to work at once. ‘I don’t know where we will replicate that violent flame-coloured silk you favour. But I’ll put the word out in Venice.’ Next day, he and Chapuys had walked over the ground together, under the blackened beams. The ambassador gave a low moan as he stirred with a stick the wet black sludge that had been his official papers. ‘Do you think,’ he had said, glancing up, ‘that the Boleyns did this?’
The ambassador has never acknowledged Anne Boleyn, never been presented to her; he must forgo that pleasure, Henry has decreed, till he is ready to kiss her hand and call her queen. His allegiance is to the other queen, the exile at Kimbolton; but Henry says, Cromwell, sometime we will practise to bring Chapuys face to face with the truth. I should like to see what he would do, the king says, if he were put in Anne’s path and could not avoid her.
Today the ambassador is wearing a startling hat. More like the sort that George Boleyn sports, than a hat for a grave councillor. ‘What do you think, Cremuel?’ He tilts it.
‘Very becoming. I must get one of those.’
‘Allow me to present you…’ Chapuys removes it from his head with a flourish, then reconsiders. ‘No, it would not fit your big head. I shall have one made for you.’ He takes his arm. ‘Mon cher, your household is a delight as always. But may we talk apart?’
In a private room, the ambassador attacks. ‘They say that the king will command priests to marry.’
He is caught off-guard; but he does not mean to be jolted out of his good humour. ‘There is some merit in it, for the avoiding of hypocrisy. But I can be clear with you, th
at will not happen. The king will not hear of it.’ He looks closely at Chapuys; has he perhaps heard that Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, has a secret wife? Surely he cannot know. If he did, he would denounce and ruin him. They hate Thomas Cranmer, these so-called Catholics, almost as much as they hate Thomas Cromwell. He indicates the best chair to the ambassador. ‘Will you not sit and take a glass of claret?’
But Chapuys will not be diverted. ‘I hear you are going to put all the monks and nuns out on the road.’
‘From whom did you hear that?’
‘From the mouths of the king’s own subjects.’
‘Listen to me, Monsieur. As my commissioners go about, I hear little from the monks but petitions to be let go. And nuns too, they cannot endure their bondage, they come to my men weeping and asking for their liberty. I have it in hand to pension the monks, or find them useful posts. If they are scholars they can be given stipends. If they are ordained priests, the parishes will use them. And the money the monks are sitting on, I should like to see some of that go to the parish priests. I do not know how it may be in your country, but some benefices only bring a man four or five shillings a year. Who will take on a cure of souls, for a sum that won’t pay for his firewood? And when I have got the clergy an income they can live on, I mean to make each priest mentor to a poor scholar, so he helps him through the university. The next generation of priests will be learned, and they will instruct in their turn. Tell your master this. Tell him I mean good religion to increase, not wither.’
But Chapuys turns away. He is plucking nervously at his sleeve and his words fall over each other. ‘I do not tell my master lies. I tell him what I see. I see a restless population, Cremuel, I see discontent, I see misery; I see famine, before the spring. You are buying corn from Flanders. Be thankful to the Emperor that he allows his territories to feed yours. That trade could be stopped, you know.’
‘What would he gain by starving my countrymen?’
‘He would gain this, that they would see how evilly they are governed, and how opprobrious are the king’s proceedings. What are your envoys doing with the German princes? Talk, talk, talk, month after month. I know they hope to conclude some treaty with the Lutherans and import their practices here.’
‘The king will not have the form of the Mass varied. He is clear on it.’
‘Yet,’ Chapuys stabs a finger in the air, ‘the heretic Melanchthon has dedicated a book to him! You cannot hide a book, can you? No, deny it as you will, Henry will end by abolishing half the sacraments and making common cause with these heretics, on purpose to upset my master, who is their emperor and overlord. Henry begins by mocking the Pope, and he will end up embracing the devil.’
‘You appear to know him better than I do. Henry, I mean. Not the devil.’
He is amazed by the turn the conversation has taken. It is only ten days since he enjoyed a genial supper with the ambassador, and Chapuys assured him that the Emperor’s only thought was for the realm’s tranquillity. There was no talk of blockades then, no talk of starving England. ‘Eustache,’ he says, ‘what has happened?’
Chapuys sits down abruptly, slumps forward with his elbows on his knees. His hat sinks lower, till he removes it altogether, and puts it on the table; not without a glance of regret. ‘Thomas, I have heard from Kimbolton. They say the queen cannot keep her food down, she cannot even take water. In six nights she has not slept two hours together.’ Chapuys grinds his fists into his eyes. ‘I fear she cannot live more than a day or two. I do not want her to die alone, without anyone who loves her. I fear the king will not let me go. Will you let me go?’
The man’s grief touches him; it comes from the heart, it is beyond his remit as envoy. ‘We’ll go to Greenwich and ask him,’ he says. ‘This very day. We’ll go now. Put your hat back on.’
On the barge he says, ‘That’s a thaw wind.’ Chapuys seems not to appreciate it. He huddles into himself, wrapped in layers of lambskin.
‘The king intended to joust today,’ he says.
Chapuys sniffs, ‘In the snow?’
‘He can have the field cleared.’
‘No doubt by toiling monks.’
He has to laugh, at the ambassador’s tenacity. ‘We must hope the sport went forward, then Henry will be in a good humour. He has just come from the little princess at Eltham. You must ask after her health. And you must make her a New Year’s gift, have you thought of it?’
The ambassador glowers at him. All he would give Elizabeth is a knock on the head.
‘I am glad we are not iced up. Sometimes we cannot use the river for weeks. Have you seen it when it’s frozen over?’ No reply. ‘Katherine is strong, you know. If there is no more snow and the king permits, you can ride tomorrow. She has been ill before and she has regained her ground. You will find her sitting up in bed and asking why you’ve come.’
‘Why are you chattering?’ Chapuys says gloomily. ‘It is not like you.’
Why indeed? If Katherine dies it will be a great thing for England. Charles may be her fond nephew but he will not keep up a quarrel for a dead woman. The threat of war will vanish. It will be a new era. Only he hopes she does not suffer. There would be no point in that.
They tie up at the king’s landing stage. Chapuys says, ‘Your winters are so long. I wish I was still a young man in Italy.’
The snow is banked up on the quay, the fields are still blanketed. The ambassador received his education in Turin. You don’t get this sort of wind there, shrieking around the towers like a soul in torment. ‘You forget the swamps and the bad air, don’t you?’ he says. ‘I’m like you, I only remember the sunshine.’ He puts a hand under the ambassador’s elbow to steer him on to dry land. Chapuys himself keeps a firm hold on his hat. Its tassels are damp and drooping, and the ambassador himself looks as if he might cry.
Harry Norris is the gentleman who greets them. ‘Ah, “gentle Norris”,’ Chapuys whispers. ‘One could do worse.’
Norris is, as always, the pattern of courtesy. ‘We ran a few courses,’ he says, in answer to enquiry. ‘His Majesty had the best of it. You will find him cheerful. Now we are getting dressed for the masque.’
He never sees Norris but he remembers Wolsey stumbling from his own home before the king’s men, fleeing to a cold empty house at Esher: the cardinal kneeling in the mud and gibbering his thanks, because the king by way of Norris had sent him a token of goodwill. Wolsey was kneeling to thank God, but it looked as if he were kneeling to Norris. It doesn’t matter how Norris oils around him now; he can never wipe that scene from his mind’s eye.
Inside the palace, a roaring heat, stampeding feet; musicians toting their instruments, upper servants bawling brutish orders at lower. When the king comes out to greet them, it is with the French ambassador at his side. Chapuys is taken aback. An effusive greeting is de rigueur; kiss-kiss. How smoothly, easily, Chapuys has slipped back into his persona; with what a courteous flourish he makes his reverence to His Majesty. Such a practised diplomat can even cajole his stiff knee joints; not for the first time, Chapuys reminds him of a dancing master. The remarkable hat he holds by his side.
‘Merry Christmas, ambassador,’ the king says. He adds hopefully, ‘The French have already made me great gifts.’
‘And the Emperor’s gifts will be with Your Majesty at New Year,’ Chapuys boasts. ‘You will find them even more magnificent.’
The French ambassador eyes him. ‘Merry Christmas, Cremuel. Not bowling today?’
‘Today I am at your disposal, Monsieur.’
‘I take my leave,’ the Frenchman says. He looks sardonic; the king has already linked his arm with Chapuys’s. ‘Majesty, may I assure you in parting that my master King François has knit his heart to yours?’ His glance sweeps over Chapuys. ‘With the friendship of France, you may be assured you will reign unmolested, and need no longer fear Rome.’
‘Unmolested?’ he says: he, Cromwell. ‘Well, ambassador, that’s gracious of you.’
The Frenchma
n skims by him with a curt nod. Chapuys stiffens as French brocade grazes his own person; snatches his hat away, as if to save it from contamination. ‘Shall I hold that for you?’ Norris whispers.
But Chapuys has fastened his attention on the king. ‘Katherine the queen…’ he begins.
‘The Dowager Princess of Wales,’ Henry says sternly. ‘Yes, I hear the old woman is off her food again. Is that what you’re here about?’
Harry Norris whispers, ‘I have to dress up as a Moor. Will you excuse me, Mr Secretary?’
‘Gladly, in this case,’ he says. Norris melts away. For the next ten minutes he has to stand and hear the king lying fluently. The French, he says, have made him great promises, all of which he believes. The Duke of Milan is dead, both Charles and Francis claim the duchy, and unless they can resolve it there will be war. Of course, he is always a friend to the Emperor, but the French have promised him towns, they have promised him castles, a seaport even, so in duty to the commonweal he must think seriously about a formal alliance. However, he knows the Emperor has it in his power to make offers as good, if not better…
‘I will not dissemble with you,’ Henry tells Chapuys. ‘As an Englishman, I am always straight in my dealings. An Englishman never lies nor deceives, even for his own profit.’
‘It seems,’ Chapuys snaps, ‘that you are too good to live. If you cannot mind your country’s interests, I must mind them for you. They will not give you territory, whatever they say. May I remind you what poor friends the French have been to you these last months while you have not been able to feed your people? If it were not for the shipments of grain my master permits, your subjects would be corpses piled from here to the Scots border.’
Some exaggeration there. Lucky that Henry is in holiday humour. He likes feasts, pastimes, an hour in the lists, a masque in prospect; he likes even more the idea that his former wife is lying in the fens gasping her last. ‘Come, Chapuys,’ he says. ‘We will have private conference in my chamber.’ He draws the ambassador with him and, over his head, winks.