The Mirror and the Light

Christophe says, ‘They threw your papers in boxes to carry away. Call-Me directed where to go – look in this chest, open that. But he did not find all he expected, so then he shouted. Thomas Avery said, “I have suspected Call-Me for months – why did my master entertain him?”’

‘Christ entertained Judas. Not that I force the comparison.’

‘Then Richard Riche came. He also shouted. “Look in the yellow chest in the window.”’ Christophe grins. ‘The yellow chest is gone.’

Gone with it are his letters from the Swiss divines: which would injure him. They may choose to say he is a heretic who denies that God is in the host. But they will have no evidence. And he has no difficulty in saying that God is everywhere.

‘All look for your restoration,’ Christophe says. ‘You will walk back in and all will be as it was. Meanwhile, I am here to serve you.’ He gazes up at the gilded ceiling. ‘I feared to find you in a dungeon.’

‘Have you not been here before?’

He rebuilt these rooms himself, seven years back, for Anne Boleyn to lodge before her coronation. It was he who reglazed them, and ordered the goddesses on the walls; who had their eyes changed from brown to blue, when Jane Seymour came in. You enter through a great guard chamber. There is a presence chamber, where he now sits in a large light space; there is a dining room, a bedroom, and a small oratory. ‘It is not for my comfort,’ he says, ‘so much as for those who will come to put questions to me. I expect them soon.’

For the king’s councillors were prepared for my arrest, if I was not. How did they work it? What backhand whispers, what lifts of the eyebrow, what nods, winks? And what conferences with the king, their informants greasing in as I went out? No wonder Henry turned his back on me when last we spoke. No wonder he addressed himself to the wall. He says, ‘Tell Thurston not to hang up his apron. I want him to send in my meals.’

‘When you get out,’ Christophe says, ‘we nail down Norferk, pull his head off and toss it to the dogs. Riche, I’m spiking him to the floor and rats can nibble him, he can die slow as he likes, I am cheering. Call-Me, I am cutting his legs off and watch him crawl around the courtyard till he bleeds to death.’

He puts his head in his hands. He feels weakened by Christophe’s agenda.

‘It is to me entirely enjoyable,’ Christophe says. ‘I look forward. As for Henri, I shall kick him down Whitehall like a pig’s bladder. Once he is exploded, we shall see who is king. When he is a smear on the cobbles, we shall see who is the last man standing.’

That first night, left alone, he tries to pray. Chapuys had asked him once, what will you do when one day Henry turns on you? He had said, arm myself with patience and leave the rest to God.

There are books which say, contemplate your final hour: live every day as if, that night, you go not to your bed but to your bier. The divines recommend this not just for the prisoner or invalid, but for the man in his pride and pomp, prosperity and health: for the merchant on the Rialto, for the governor in the senate.

But I am not ready, he thinks. Let me see the foe. And the king is mutable. Everybody knows that. We complain of it all the time.

Yet is there an instance – he cannot think of one – where, having turned his face away, Henry turns it back? He left Katherine at Windsor and he never saw her again. He rode away from Anne Boleyn, gave directions to kill her, and left her to strangers.

He has read a library of those volumes called Mirrors for Princes, which state the wise councillor must always prepare for his fall. He should embrace death as a privilege; does not St Paul say, I covet to be dissolved with Christ? But he covets nothing more than to be in his garden on this soft evening, now fading unused beyond the window: where a strong guard stands, in case Cromwell decides on a breath of air.

He puts his hand to his heart. He feels something alien inside his chest – as if the organ has been forced out of shape, stretched at one point and squeezed at another. How many days left? My enemies will try to rush Henry. In case they cannot keep him in this destructive frame of mind, they will want me killed this week. But if the king wants to be free of Anna, he should keep me alive to help him, and perhaps it will not be a simple matter or short. If I can survive two months, by then Henry will have quarrelled with Gardiner, and when he turns to Norfolk what will he find, but obstinacy and incapacity and spleen? So who will govern for him? Fitzwilliam? Tunstall? Audley? They are good enough men – good enough to be a chief minister’s assistant. Three months, and his affairs will be in such disarray that he will be beseeching me to come back.

And I shall say, ‘Not me, sir: I’ve had enough of you, I’m going to Launde.’

But next moment, within a heartbeat, I would snatch the seals from his hands: now, Majesty, where shall I begin?