The Mirror and the Light

He overhears a young courtier – it is a Howard of course, the young Culpeper: ‘If the king cannot manage it with the new queen, Cromwell will do it for him. Why not? He does everything else.’

His friend laughs. What alarms him is not their mockery. It is that they take no care to keep their voices low.

When the council meets they should, he feels, put down sand to soak up the blood. It is like the champ clos for a tournament, sturdily fenced to stop the spectators getting in or the combatants getting out. The king stands in a watchtower, judging every move.

That night he writes to Stephen Vaughan. He tells him what he tells everyone abroad: the king and queen are merry, and all here believe the marriage a great success.

I am lying even to Vaughan, he thinks.

Richard Riche asks him, ‘What do you hear from your daughter in Antwerp?’

‘Nothing,’ he says.

Riche says, ‘It may be as well. The king has a sharp nose for heresy. Of course, my lord, since you have been such a traveller in this world, you may have other offspring, unknown to you. Do you ever think of that?’

‘Yes, Wolsey mentioned it a time or two.’ He thinks, if Jenneke made a claim on me now, I don’t know if I could meet it. He ushers Riche out as Wriothesley comes in. Clearly he has been eavesdropping on Riche, because his face is flushed. He says, ‘That man has no feeling at all. He is a tissue of ambition.’

He thinks, but that is what Riche tells me about you. But while I rule, you do your best for me, and your best is very good. I must place my trust, even if I have misgivings. I cannot work alone. The Seymour boys have their own interests at heart, why would they not? In these strange times Suffolk is my well-wisher, but Suffolk is stupid. I cannot count on Fitzwilliam for support, he is busy defending his own position, and blames me because he is blamed. Cranmer is frightened, he is always frightened. Latimer is disgraced. Robert Barnes I would not trust with his own life, let alone mine. Manuals of advice tell us you should fear weak men more than strong men. But we are all weak, in the presence of the king. Even Thomas Wyatt, who can face down a lion.

A realm’s chief councillor should have a grand plan. But now he’s pushing through, hour to hour, not raising his head from his business. The city is full of Germans – official, unofficial – who believe that he will make the king a fit ally for Luther. Lord Cromwell, they coax, we know that it is you who day by day softens the force of last summer’s laws. ‘We know in your heart you wish a more perfect reformation. You believe what we believe.’

He indicates the king, standing at a distance: ‘I believe what he believes.’

At Austin Friars he goes out to see his leopard. Dick Purser knows the beast’s habits, her sullen whims, her episodes of dangerous friskiness. ‘Dick,’ he says, ‘you mustn’t think you can get friendly with her. You mustn’t think you can let her out.’

He looks at the brute and she looks back at him. Her golden eyes blink. She yawns, but all the time she is thinking of murder. She gives herself away by the twitching of her tail.

Dick says, ‘What would she say if she could speak?’

‘Nothing we would understand.’

‘I never thought I would be keeper of such a beast, that day you came to get me from More’s house.’

He puts his arm around the boy’s shoulders. Dick Purser is an orphan; it was More and Bishop Stokesley who hunted and hounded his father, setting him in the pillory and shaming him as a heretic, and it was their ill-treatment, he is sure, that killed him. More wanted credit for taking in the boy; and credit again, for whipping heresy out of him. Sir Thomas bragged he had never struck his own children, not even with a feather. But he did not extend the courtesy to the children of others.

He himself had turned up, dry-mouthed with rage, on More’s doorstep. He would not send a servant to do it, nor would he wait in the outer hall for More to be at leisure. ‘I’ve come for Purser’s son. Give him to me, or I’ll lay a complaint against you for assault.’

‘What?’ More said. ‘For correcting a child of the house? People will laugh at you, Master Cromwell. Anyway, the rascal has vanished. Fortunately he took only what he stood up in. Or charges would lie.’

‘I hear he took your blessing. You could see the marks.’

‘He’s probably run to your house,’ More said. ‘Where would he seek shelter, but a heretic roof?’

‘Beware an action for slander,’ he said: one lawyer to another.

‘Bring one,’ More said. ‘The facts would be aired. Your book trade connections. Your dubious associates. Antwerp, all that. No … you go home, you’ll find the wretch at your gate. Where else would he go?’

To the wharves, he thinks, to the docks. To take ship. To do what I did. He could do worse. Or then again perhaps he couldn’t.

Now he pays Dick Purser twelve pounds a year. He gets fourpence daily for the leopard’s keep.