The Mirror and the Light

In the first access of the fever, it is George Boleyn who is lurking behind the door. There is a noise, low conversation or insects, perhaps a fly banging its head and cannot get out, buzz buzz against the pane. He sees the door is ajar. George will slide through it: perhaps on the bolster, already soaked with sweat, he will lay his blind and weeping head.

The doctors say, ‘You know the procedure, my lord. Bed rest and small beer.’

And the pungent remedies, that never do any good, but when you are lucid and can hold yourself up, you swallow them, because it cheers up the people around you.

‘I want Wriothesley,’ he says, ‘where is he?’

‘He has gone down to Hampshire, sir, to prepare for his election.’

‘Norfolk will be back for the Parliament. He will make speeches. What shall I do?’

‘Sir, this fever was, before parliaments were thought of.’

This fever was before the Bible was written, in English, Latin or Greek. It was before the Table was round, before Troy burned. It destroyed folk before the Flood, and afflicted the first men when they were exiled from paradise. Abel was weak from a bout, and that is how Cain slew him.

His whole body aches. His eyes swim. He hears timbers creaking about him, like the timbers of a ship under sail, and he thinks he is back at Austin Friars, and his wife is still alive. He thinks of himself flying through the hours of darkness, reassembling himself on his bed: as they say the home of the Virgin Mary flew to Italy, and rebuilt itself among people who appreciate it.

But when morning comes and they open the shutter – the light in his eyes like a knife – they say, no, you are still here at St James’s. But anything you want, we can go and fetch it.

He thinks, where did I go? I was travelling all night.

He sits up. ‘Today I shall work.’ One day the fever rages, next it abates, next it rises. Soon he will have gone through the full cycle. He can sit up in a chair, but he has no illusions, he has not seen the worst. If I am going to die, he thinks, there are papers that ought to be destroyed. But then if I live, inconvenience will ensue. Surely death will give me notice. We have met before. He should not be churlish like a stranger.

The doctors say, ‘In extremity, who would you like?’

He stares. ‘Who would I like?’

‘The Bishop of Worcester? The Archbishop of Canterbury?’

‘Oh, I see. A confessor. Not Gardiner. If he saw me on my deathbed he would tip me out of it, so I should die on the floor.’

He goes through his work at double speed. Instructions for Mr Sadler, soon to lead a mission to Scotland. A letter to Wyatt, to say the king has named his replacement. He asks his French secretary to come in. ‘Nothing from Paris today? Letters from Edmund Bonner?’

He signals for a basin and vomits neatly. He stares at what his body has produced. ‘What do we hear of the Venetians?’

The fleet is manoeuvring, was the last information; they are preparing a power against the Turk. The German princes are meeting in Frankfurt: any dispatches?

Sir, they say, we will bring you every letter as soon as it comes in, but you must go back to bed now. Your malady rushes on you fast.

When he was a boy in Putney he used to pick up coins from the mud of the foreshore. They were thin and worn and bore the features of monarchs almost erased. You could not spend the money; it was not even good to clink in your hand. All you could do was put it in a box and wonder about it. If so many coins are washed up, how many does the river conceal, in its channels and deeps? A treasury of princes, squinting up at the hazy light, each with a spoiled single eye, like Francis Bryan. He lifts his head. ‘How is Francis? Is he still alive? I forget.’

‘Oh yes, my lord,’ they say. ‘Sir Francis is still with us, he made a recovery both from his illness and the king’s displeasure. As we trust you will too.’

His displeasure! I am sure I have displeased him, he thinks. Look how he steamed and glared, that day I took a holiday. Look how he pawed the ground and rolled his eyes. This is what Henry does. He uses people up. He takes all they give him and more. When he is finished with them he is noisier and fatter and they are husks or corpses.

He is not sure if he has spoken aloud. But he knows that he is in his barge, his flag flying. He can feel the river moving beneath, and Bastings conveying him to some further shore. In his fever he thinks Becket is back in his niche above the water at Lambeth Palace. Bastings says, I told you he would return. Man and boy I have been saluting him, my father before me.

Nonsense, he says. Becket is in the cellar locked in a box. If I die, fire my bones from a cannon. I should like to see Gardiner’s face!