The Mirror and the Light

‘The Courtenays’ house, in Surrey. As I think you know well.’

‘Mathew came to me from Wolf Hall,’ he explains.

‘I am more concerned with where he has been since. And how a waiting-boy comes to speak French, though with such a countryman’s accent I can hardly understand him.’

‘He is a quick learner,’ he says easily. ‘I am sending him to Calais soon, where he may polish himself up a little.’

Mathew is so shocked he treads on Christophe’s foot. ‘Oaf,’ Christophe mutters. ‘Bon voyage.’

‘You mean, you are sending him to Calais where he may spy on Lord Lisle.’ Chapuys sighs. ‘Well, I must …’ He crosses himself, murmuring a Latin grace. Painfully he levers himself to his feet, and gathers his gown as if he feels a draught.

He, Lord Cromwell, extends his hand. ‘I trust that when you reach the other side you will not complain of your treatment?’

He thinks of Eustache in his garden tower at Canonbury; the thundery evening when, quibble by quibble, a hair’s-breadth at a time, they edged the Lady Mary from wreckage to salvage. He remembers Christophe squatting at the base of the tower, his knife in his hand.

Richard Cromwell comes in. ‘Ambassador, your people are here.’

Chapuys hesitates. ‘Mon cher, I do not know when I shall return. Should we by some mischance, never again …’

‘Oh, none of that,’ he says. ‘We are stout of heart, Eustache, if not sound in limb.’

They embrace. The ambassador goes out, dispensing largesse to the household. He sits down at his desk. There is a letter from Carew’s widow Eliza, asking him to sort out her affairs. He owes her gratitude, he feels. Carew’s death has opened up opportunities to promote his own folk. When Richard comes back he asks him, ‘You would not like to go into the privy chamber, nephew? The king is sending Rafe to Scotland again, and I need people as close as I can get them.’

A clerk puts his head around the door. ‘Nothing from Wriothesley.’

‘We will not hear tonight.’ Any messenger on the road will be storm-lashed into shelter. Call-Me is in transit, we trust. He is at an inn: tallow candles, a cold bed; strangers’ faces; Imperial guards on the door.

‘I feel sorry for Chapuys,’ he says to Richard. ‘Going out into the rain.’

He feels someone has attached a weight to his heart. Not a big weight: just a small leaden bob, so he feels the drag. He turns back to his paperwork. He is occupied in setting up a new council, the Council of the West, to govern the parts beyond Bristol. He says to Wolsey – le cardinal pacifique – trust me, your Grace, I keep my mind on what I shall do come the peace. I am going to secure this German alliance for the king, and a bride.

Surely that will tempt the old ghost out? But the cardinal shows no sign of listening at all. He doesn’t even ask, what about Duke Wilhelm in Cleves? Is he dead of papal poison, as your man Wriothesley says?

He is not. He is alive and willing to talk.

The dukedom of Cleves-Mark-Jülich-Berg lies on both sides of the Rhine. Its ruler Wilhelm is twenty-two years old, and through his mother has a claim, which he is pressing, to the land and seacoast of Guelders: a claim which the Emperor disputes. Duke Wilhelm shows great independence of mind. He is a reformer, but not a Lutheran. His church is under his own control. He guards some of Europe’s vital trade routes.

He, Cromwell, sits down with the king’s council and lays before them certain facts. He introduces them to the substance called alum, without which we cannot dye cloth.

In our grandfathers’ time we bought alum from the Turk, who would never take cash alone, he wanted arms – thus equipping himself for war on Christians, using their own money. Then sixty years back a deposit was found at Tolfa near Rome, a deposit so rich that they say it will never run out till the Day of Judgement. The Vatican brought in the Medici to run the trade and invented a new and grave sin: trading in alum without a licence. Later it was Agostino Chigi, that prince of bankers, who ran the monopoly: and you should see the villa he built, on Tiber’s shores.

Now the Pope has us under his bale and ban. We need a source, we need a conduit, if our industries are not to collapse. We use alum in tanning, we use it in the manufacture of glass; doctors use it to heal wounds. The Spanish have a small supply. It is low-grade and anyway they will not sell it to heretics. But the ruler of Cleves, who has two sisters who want husbands, also has reserves of this treasure, which at its finest takes the form of crystals, huge clear crystals like jewels for a giant.

Perhaps alum is not the foundation for a love match. But members of the king’s council agree: you have reason on your side, Lord Cromwell.