The Mirror and the Light

He no longer trusts Lord Chancellor Audley. He no longer trusts Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam. Count up the bishops and perhaps ten of them are sound. This is how the king has been able to put through a bill that, among other measures, requires married priests to abandon their wives, on pain of hanging. The measure is deferred a week or two, to allow farewells.

‘What will you and Grete do?’ he asks.

‘Part. What else can we do?’

‘And your daughter?’

‘Grete will take her back to Germany.’

It would be thought a sin, in other circumstances, to put a family asunder. Cranmer says, ‘We begged the king, put the question to the universities – we begged him to search the scriptures, and find where it is forbidden, for a man to have a life companion. I cannot understand him. It is he who insists, marriage is a very high sacrament, in existence since the world began. Then why does he deny it to so many of us? Does he think we are not men, as he is a man? And also, once the bill is passed, none of us will preach on the Blessed Sacrament, its nature. We dare not. We would not know what it is safe to say, without being tripped by the law and cited for heresy.’

This is what the king calls concord: an enforced silence. Bishop Latimer and Bishop Shaxton have openly opposed the king; they cannot continue in office. Cranmer says, ‘I have thought of resigning myself. What is the use of me? Perhaps I should pack my bags and go with Grete.’

‘You told me, in a similar case, I should take heart and take the long view.’

‘How long?’ Cranmer is shaken into bluntness. ‘Till he dies? Because for all that has been said and done these ten years, if we have lost Henry now, we have lost him for ever.’

‘He is not constant in error, is he? What is written on parchment may have no effect in practice. Any ordinance, any measure, I can delay, I can –’ he hesitates over the word ‘frustrate’ – ‘I can work with it,’ he says. ‘There is scope to walk all around these new articles of faith, and ease them in this direction or that –’

‘Except one,’ Cranmer says. ‘My wife and child are not subject to loose interpretation. They are either here, or in Nuremberg. They cannot hover between.’

‘You may see Grete again. If I can get the king his bride, we may be able to hold our heads up in Europe.’

‘I doubt the marriage will be made. We are alienating our friends.’

He shrugs. ‘I am running out of ladies. And in Cleves they are not Lutherans, after all. They may find it possible to live with this new order.’

‘What about your daughter?’ Cranmer says. ‘She cannot come here now, can she? Not and keep her religion?’ He does not wait for an answer: but before the eyes of the Vicegerent, as he paces, Canterbury starts to talk himself around. He is like a man retreating from a cliff edge: in despair he thinks he will throw himself down on the rocks, but then he feels the blue air bouncing him along to perdition, he feels the wind in his lungs, he sees the gulls flying below, he is blown like a feather to the brink, and then he digs his heels in, he grabs at the sparse bent shrubs, screws up his eyes and holds tight for his life. He says, ‘You will not hear me speak against the king.’

‘No one asked you to.’ He feels cold. He wants to put his head down on the desk.

‘I cannot think he means ill, or to distress his subjects. It must be his qualms, his scruples, are genuine, and they have tormented him, perhaps, more than we know.’

‘Perhaps,’ he says.

‘He has carried knowledge that has been a burden to him. He has looked the other way. He has spared me, for one.’

‘Our rulers count up our derelictions,’ he says. ‘They may say nothing, but they keep a secret book.’

‘We know what Christ requires of us,’ Cranmer says. ‘We know what charity is, and what obedience, and we know His teaching, blessed are the peacemakers. Much though I mislike it, I see that peace is what the king intends. All good subjects will follow him.’

‘Naturally,’ he says. ‘Or suffer.’

His ill-wishers say Hugh Latimer will be hanged before Christmas. He means to prevent that. But Cranmer’s wife will be on a boat before the week is out, and there is nothing he can suggest to hold her here.

Just in case there should be any mistake – in case any fool should take the king for a papist – we have a Water Triumph. A burning June day and, well wrapped up, he stands beside the new French ambassador, explaining the spectacle. Before the eyes of king and court, a galley full of Romans fights true-born English sailors. Cardinals are cast into the Thames, splashing and screaming, while drummers beat out a victory tattoo. The sun dances, the pipes blare, the papal tiara goes bobbing downstream. ‘By St Jude!’ Marillac exclaims. ‘I trust those fellows can swim?’

‘They were handpicked,’ he says, ‘at my request.’ He sighs. ‘One has to tell people every little thing.’

The king is cheering from beneath his canopy. The dukes are thundering their appreciation. Gallants are throwing money in the Thames.