The Mirror and the Light

He closes the door of his chamber, shutting the day out. Christophe says, ‘Like when we went up to Kimbolton, in secret to see the old queen. When we stopped at the inn, and the bold wife of the innkeeper –’

‘Yes. Enough.’

‘– jumped into your bed. And next morning you said to me, “Christophe, pay the reckoning,” and gave me your purse. And then when we got to Kimbolton we went to the church. You remember I whistled, and the priest appeared?’

He remembers the stone devil, his serpentine coils; the archangel Michael, his wings with teal-coloured feathers, his sword raised to hack.

‘We all thought you would make confession. We hoped to hear it. But you did not. Besides, even if we are sorry for a thing, we cannot be forgiven if we fully mean to do it again.’

He sees himself in the glass, stripped to his shirt, a startling flash of white. Out of his brocade and velvet, his person is broad, a graceless slab of muscle and bone. His greying hair is cropped, so nothing softens the features with which God has punished him – small mouth, small eyes, large nose. He wears linen shirts so fine you can read the laws of England through them. He has a green velvet coat that was made for him last year and sent down to Wolf Hall; he has a riding coat of deep purple; he has his robe from the last coronation, a darkish crimson in which, said one of Anne’s ladies, he looked like a travelling bruise. If clothes make the man, he is made; but no one ever said, even when he was young, ‘Tommaso looks handsome today.’ They only said, ‘You’ve got to be up early to get ahead of that squat English bastard.’ You can’t even say he looks well on a horse. He just looks useful on a horse. He gets in the saddle and he goes somewhere. He sets an ambling pace, but he is there before anyone else.

The night is warm, but Christophe has lit a small, crackling fire, and set the perfume pan to burn. Sweet herbs, frankincense: these drive off contagion in any season. A bank of beeswax candles, ready for the touch of a taper; ink at his hand, his day-book ready on the table, turned to a blank leaf in case he wakes and remembers something for tomorrow’s list. I think I shall rest tonight, he says to Christophe, and Christophe says, the ambassador has long departed, even Call-Me is turned out, Master Richard is at home with his wife, the king is saying his prayers, or perchance he labours with the queen to please her; birds have tucked their heads beneath their wings, the prisoners of London are snoring in the Tower and the Marshalsea, the Clink and the Fleet. In the precincts of Austin Friars, Dick Purser has loosed the watchdogs. God is in His Heaven. The bolts are on the gates.

‘And I,’ he says, ‘am at home in my own chamber for once.’ Seven years back, when Florence was besieged by the Emperor and begging for French aid, the burgesses went to the merchant Borgherini’s house: ‘We want to buy your bedroom.’ There were fine painted panels, rich hangings and other furnishings they thought might make a bribe for King François. But Margherita, the merchant’s wife, stood her ground and threw their offer back in their faces. Not everything in life is for sale, she said. This room is my family’s heart. Away with you! If you want to take away my bedroom, you will have to carry your loot over my corpse.

He would not die for his furniture. But he understands Margherita – always supposing the story to be true. Our possessions outlast us, surviving shocks that we cannot; we have to live up to them, as they will be our witnesses when we are gone. In this room are the goods of people who can no longer use them. There are books his master Wolsey gave him. On the bed, the quilt of yellow turkey satin under which he slept with Elizabeth, his wife. In a chest, her carved image of the Virgin is cradled in a quilted cap. Her jet rosary beads are curled inside her old velvet purse. There is a cushion cover on which she was working a design, a deer running through foliage. Whether death interrupted her or just dislike of the work, she had left her needle in the cloth. Later some other hand – her mother’s, or one of her daughters’ – drew out the needle; but around the twin holes it left, the cloth had stiffened into brittle peaks, so if you pass your finger over the path of her stitches – the path they would have taken – you can feel the bumps, like snags in the weave. He has had the small Flanders chest moved in here from next door, and her furred russet gown is laid up in spices, along with her sleeves, her gold coif, her kirtles and bonnets, her amethyst ring, and a ring set with a diamond rose. She could stroll in and get dressed. But you cannot make a wife out of bonnets and sleeves; hold all her rings together, and you are not holding her hand.

Christophe says, ‘You are not sad, sir?’

‘No. I am not sad. I am not allowed to be. I am too useful to be sad.’