The Mirror and the Light

George was eager. ‘We have everything needful. We have a pope’s hat, and croziers and stoles, we have bells, scrolls, and asses’ ears for the monks to sport. One of my company, he plays at Robin Goodfellow, he comes with broom and sweeps before the actors. Then comes again with candle, to signify the play is done. Here, sir.’ He thrust papers at him. ‘The king gets everything, my debts too – but these small people who owe me, I don’t want them harassed.’

He took the papers. ‘Never too late to consider your fellow man.’

George flushed. ‘I know you think me a great sinner. And so I am.’

George, he saw, was not well. The skin beneath his eyes was bruised, and he was ill-shaven, as if he could not sit still for the barber. He sank down into his chair; his hand gripped the chair arm, to control its shaking, and he looked down at it as if it were strange to him, and it was true it appeared shockingly naked. ‘I have given my rings into safekeeping.’ He held up his other hand. ‘But my wedding ring, I can’t …’

It will come off later, when your hands are cold. Who will wear George’s jewels? His wife will sell them. ‘Do you want anything, my lord? Kingston does all he should?’

‘I wish I could see my sister, but I suppose you would not permit it. Better she should settle her mind and frame herself to meet God. The truth is, Master Secretary’ – he gave a little laugh – ‘I cannot imagine meeting God. I am already dead by the law, but I do not seem to know it. I wonder how I am still breathing. I need to write myself a letter, perhaps, to explain it, or … can you explain it to me, Master Cromwell? How I am alive and dead at the same time?’

‘Read your gospel,’ he said. He thought, I should have sent Rafe after all. He would have been too proud to break down in front of Rafe.

‘I have read the gospel, but not followed it,’ George said. ‘I think I have hardly understood it. If I had done so, I would be a living man as you are. I should have lived quiet, away from the court. And disdained the world, its flatteries. I should have eschewed all vanities, and laid aside ambition.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but we never do it. None of us. We have all read the sermons. We could write them ourselves. But we are vain and ambitious all the same, and we never do live quiet, because we rise in the morning and we feel the blood coursing in our veins and we think, by the Holy Trinity, whose head can I stamp on today? What worlds are at hand, for me to conquer? Or at the least we think, if God made me a crewman on his ship of fools, how can I murder the drunken captain, and steer it to port and not be wrecked?’

He was not sure if he had spoken aloud. George did not seem to think so. He had put a question, and was waiting for an answer, leaning forward, hands joined on the table. ‘Did Tom Wyatt claim he had tupped my sister?’

‘His evidence was private. It was not given in court.’

‘But it reached the king. I don’t know how Wyatt can make such claims, and live. Why Henry does not strike him dead on the spot.’

‘After a certain point, the king was not concerned with her chastity.’

‘You mean, what’s one man more?’ George flushed. ‘Master Secretary, I do not know what you call this, but you cannot call it justice.’

‘I don’t call it anything, George. Or if I must, I call it necessità.’

He was aware of George’s pisspot in the corner. As if noting his delicate attention to it – as if his nostrils had twitched – George said, ‘I would empty it myself, but they will not let me out.’ He opened his hands. ‘Master Secretary, I will not dispute with you. Neither verdict nor sentence. I know why we are dying. I am not the fool you have always thought me.’

To that, he had said nothing. But George pushed back his chair and followed him to the door: ‘Master, pray to God to strengthen me on the scaffold. I must give an example if, as I think, we observe order of rank –’

‘Yes, my lord, you will be first.’

Viscount Rochford. Then the gentlemen. Then the lute player. ‘It would have been better to send Mark before us,’ George said. ‘Being a common man, he is the most likely to give way. But I suppose the king would not have the order broken.’

And at this, he burst into tears. He threw out his arms, a swordsman’s arms, young, strong, springing with life, and locked them around Thomas Cromwell as if grappling with Death. His body trembled, his lower limbs shook, he sagged and staggered as he rehearsed what he would never let the world see, his fear, his incredulity, his hope that this was a dream from which he might wake: his eyes slitted by tears, his teeth chattering, his hands blindly grasping, his head seeking a shoulder where it might rest.

‘God bless you,’ he had said. And he had kissed Lord Rochford, as one gentleman might, leaving another. ‘You will soon be past your pain.’ Going out, he had said to the guards, ‘Empty his pisspot, for God’s sake.’