The Mirror and the Light

The knife is next to your heart: ready for use. Though you could lie down and slumber. You could fall at his feet: Father, I have sinned …

‘Walt!’ some dolt roars. ‘Come back in!’ Out rolls the squinting knave and claps his father’s shoulder, lays hold of him by the collar. The door slams. He watches the place where his father isn’t. From behind the door, a flurry of shrieks, as the maiden cries for her mother.

One day soon he will be indefeasible. One day he will drag Walt into the light of day, and fell him in common view, the good folk of Putney watching: and if they care to come from Mortlake and Wimbledon, they will find it worth their while.

‘Father, I am ready,’ says Noah’s son in the play. Axe have I, by this crown, as sharp as any in all this town. I have a hatchet, wonder keen, To bite well, as may be seen …

Then Noah and his sons make a ship. And sail forth, on God’s tide.

In his fever, he thinks the Archbishop of Canterbury arrives. Cranmer, not Becket: even so, it might have been a dream. When he sits up, ‘John Husee is without,’ they say. He groans. He has a band of negotiators working on the purchase of Lisle’s property at Painswick. Lisle bleats they have neither heart nor conscience, but what does he expect? They’re lawyers.

Lisle wants special treatment, from high and low. He has owed the king money for ten years, and humble men too. He owes his grocer, Blagge. The drapers Jasper and Tong supply him no longer. People in the city complain to him about Lord Lisle’s debts, as if he ought to pay them.

Help me out of bed, he says. He sits in a chair, wrapped up against April. ‘Give out that I am better. Is Norfolk back for the Parliament? And Suffolk? Is Mr Wriothesley come up? And is Gregory here?’

‘Master Gregory has been and gone away again.’

He has missed St George’s Day, the chapter of the Garter. The recent executions have opened vacancies among the knights. They tell him William Kingston has been elected, an honour long deserved.

He says, how stands Bishop Gardiner? Has he fallen in with the king, or out with the king, these few days while I have been lying sick?

Christophe says, ‘Gardineur – what does he know, sir?’

‘Less than he thinks.’

‘You are sharp this morning,’ Christophe says. ‘But in your fever you groaned and said, “Stephen Gardineur knows.”’

Stephen went down to Putney. He truffled about in the mud. He said, Cromwell, I know more of you than your mother knows. I know more about your past than you know yourself.

‘And is Thomas Boleyn truly dead?’ he asks. ‘Or did I dream it?’

‘As dead as his daughter.’

In the access of his fever he had seen Anne the queen, walking to the scaffold, the wind pawing her. He heard her final prayer, ripped away from her lips, and he saw the veiled women who steadied her for the headsman: saw them step away, and lift the hems of their garments clear.

Gregory comes back once he hears he is awake. Gregory Cromwell, member of Parliament: grass-green velvet with a curling black feather in his cap. He says, ‘Father, the new French ambassador and the new Imperial ambassador visit each other every day. They walk with their arms linked, billing like turtle doves. But what we hear is, the traitor Pole finds cold entertainment with the Emperor.’

Reginald Pole cannot understand why Charles does not place the conquest of England at the top of his list. Charles tells him wearily, I am only human. And there is only one of me. And I can only lead one army at a time. Any season, I must be ready against the Turks.

But the Turks are the enemy without, Pole pleads. And the English the enemy within. Should they not be dealt with first?

Charles says, ‘Bless you, Monsieur Polo: if we wake tomorrow and the Turk is at the gates of Vienna, will you say the enemy is within, or without?’

In this Parliament we will have a bill of attainder against Pole’s mother and against Gertrude Courtenay. They will be named traitors without need of further trial. He, the Lord Privy Seal, limps to the Parliament house and shows the silent assembly a figured vestment found in the possession of Margaret, Countess of Salisbury. It quarters the arms of England with a pansy for Pole and a marigold for the Lady Mary, signifying their union; between them grows a Tree of Life. It was turned out of Margaret’s coffers, he asserts, by those sent to search her houses. He says, I always maintained that embroidery would get her into trouble.

Margaret Pole is moved to the Tower. The king is pleased to spare her life, for now. He thinks of all the times Margaret neglected to give him his title, making him plain Master Cromwell. She sees who is the master now.

He dreams of a disembodied self walking in deep woods. There are mirrors set among the trees.