The Mirror and the Light

And now he is awake, in his own house. George recedes, and the taste of his tears. There are footsteps in the room. He pulls aside the bedcurtains: heavy brocade, embroidered with acanthus leaves. It is half-light. I have hardly slept, he thinks. Sometimes, if you think of money as it flows in, flows out, you can drowse; the river brings it, you comb it from the shore. But then persons step into his dream: Sir, if you require clerks for the king’s new enterprise, my nephew is exact with numbers … It is no easy matter, to break up the monasteries. It is only the small houses, and even so. Some of them have land in ten counties. Real property and movables add themselves, assets for the king’s treasury … but then out of those sums subtract the monks’ debts and liabilities, the pensions, settlements, annuities. He has had to start up a new department to handle the work of survey and audit, collection and disbursement. Sir, my son is learning Hebrew and seeks a post where he can also employ his Greek … He has thirty-four boxes stuffed with papers, left over from when he did such work for Wolsey. He must arrange their carriage. Can your son shift heavy weights? Perhaps Richard Riche should keep the boxes at his house. Freshly appointed, he is Chancellor of Augmentations, and there are no premises yet for the new court, just some space in the Palace of Westminster he must contest with mice. It won’t do, he thinks. I shall build us a house.

On the sword of the Calais headsman, a prayer was written. ‘Show me,’ he said. He remembered the incised words, their feel under his fingers. Anne’s lovers died by the axe, and when they were dead they were stripped. Five linen shrouds. Five bodies in them. Five severed heads. On the day the dead rise, they hope to recognise themselves. What kind of blasphemy would it be, to mismatch heads and bodies? The sheer ineptitude of these people at the Tower, you would not believe it. When the sodden load was tumbled from a cart, bare of any badge of rank, they found they had no note of who was who. He was not there – he was at Lambeth, with the archbishop – so they turned to his nephew Richard: ‘What do we do now, sir?’

He thinks, I would have opened the shrouds and looked at their hands. Norris had a scar in his palm. Mark’s fingers were calloused from the lute-strings. Weston had torn nails, like the child he was. George Rochford … George still wore his wedding ring. And the one remaining, that must be Brereton – unless, in error, they had severed the head of some passer-by?

What I need, he thinks, are men who can count. Keep track of five heads and five bodies, thirty-four boxes of papers. Can your son count? Does he mind being out in all weathers? Will he ride the winter roads? Officers have been appointed for Augmentations, honest and able men: Danaster and Freeman, Jobson and Gifford, Richard Paulet, Scudamore, Arundell, Green. Did he appoint Waters, so he could introduce him to Spillman? Then his friend Robert Southwell, and Bolles and Morice and – who? Who’s missing?

When Anne was cut in two pieces the man from Calais showed him the sword and he passed his fingers over the prayer. The steel is cold and his fingers numb; when I am cold, I shall slide off this wedding ring. He walks towards, always towards the king, his naked hands held out, no weapon. Three silken gentlemen, in his dream, turn to watch him pass, Howard faces stamped with Howard sneers. Thomas Howard the Greater, Thomas Howard the Lesser. Half-waking he asks himself, what is the Lesser for? What does he do with his time? It is he who is the bad poet. His lines go thump and flop. Me/see. Too/do. Thing/bring. Flip-flap, they go, pit-pat.

Don’t count Howards, he thinks. Count clerks. Beckwith, I did forget Beckwith. Southwell and Green. Gifford and Freeman, Jobson and Stump – William Stump. Who could forget Stump?

Me. Evidently.