The Mirror and the Light

‘It will remind him how I have served him, to the best of my capacities and to the utmost of my strength. As I hope to do for many years yet.’

‘That is what we are here to determine,’ Riche says. ‘Whether you have served him or no. Whether you have abused his confidence, as he believes, and whether you plotted against his throne.’

Riche must somehow be assured, he thinks, and Wriothesley too, that if Henry frees me I will not revenge: or they will kill me in a panic. ‘How, plotted?’ He asks civilly, as if it were a matter of passing interest.

‘Letters have been discovered at Austin Friars,’ Gardiner says. ‘Highly prejudicial to your claims to be a loyal and quiet subject.’

‘Clear proof of treason,’ Norfolk says.

‘I am waiting for you to tell me what they are. I cannot guess what you might forge, can I?’

‘They are Lutheran letters,’ Riche says. ‘Letters from Martin himself and his heretic brethren.’

‘Melanchthon?’ he asks. ‘The king writes to him.’

Gardiner glares. ‘And also from German princes, urging on you a course most injurious to king and commonwealth.’

‘There are no such letters,’ he says, ‘they never existed, and even if they did –’

‘Lawyer’s logic,’ Norfolk says.

‘– and even if they did, and if they contained seditious matter, would I keep them in my house for you to find? Ask Wriothesley what he thinks.’

Gardiner looks at Call-Me. ‘What I think …’ he hesitates, ‘what I truly …’ He stops.

‘Pass on,’ he says. ‘Or are you waiting for me to set the agenda and run the meeting? I think you wanted to know about my wardrobe.’

‘Yes, the doublet,’ Riche says. ‘We will begin there, and return to the treasonous correspondence when Mr Wriothesley is more himself. In the cardinal’s day you owned, and were seen to wear, a doublet of purple satin.’

He does not laugh, because he sees where this is tending.

Norfolk demands, ‘What gave you the right to wear such a colour? It is the preserve of royal persons and high dignitaries of the church.’

Riche says, ‘Was it perhaps violet? If violet, it can be excused.’

Wriothesley says, ‘I saw it myself. It was purple. And moreover, you had sables.’

He thinks, not like the beautiful sables I have bought since. ‘I feel the cold. Besides, they were a gift. From a foreign client who did not know our rules.’

Riche’s brow furrows. This answer takes him in so many promising directions he hardly knows which to follow. ‘When you say a client, you mean a foreign prince?’

‘Princes did not send me gifts. Not at that date.’

‘Still,’ Gardiner says, ‘if your client did not know the rules, you knew them.’

Norfolk sticks to his point: ‘It was above your rank and station, to dress as if you were an earl already.’

‘True,’ he says, ‘but why would your lordship object, if the king did not? He would not like to see his ministers go in homespun.’

Norfolk says, ‘The doublet is only a single example, of your insensate ungodly pride. It’s not just your attire that offends. It’s the way you talk. The way you put yourself forward. Interrupt the king’s discourse. Interrupt me. Scorn ambassadors, the envoys of great princes. They come to your house, and you give out you’re not in, when you are in. Then they hear you in the garden playing bowls! They know when they are held in contempt.’

‘Speaking of ambassadors …’ Riche says.

Gardiner snaps, ‘Not yet.’

Norfolk says, ‘The king has entrusted you with high office. And you scant the procedures that are laid down. You reach across and put your signature to some scrap of paper, and thousands are paid out without a warrant. There is no part of the king’s business you do not meddle in. You override the council. You pull state policy out of your pocket. You read other men’s letters. You corrupt their households to your own service. You take their duties out of their hands.’

‘I act when they should act,’ he says. ‘Sometimes government must accelerate.’ He thinks, I cannot wait for the slow grindings of your brain. ‘We must move in anticipation of events.’

‘I do not see how,’ Riche says. ‘Unless you consult sorcerers.’

The gentlemen glance at each other. He says, ‘Are you done about the doublet?’

Messengers come in and whisper in Gardiner’s ear. A paper is given him, and shuffled surreptitiously to the duke, but not before he, Thomas Essex, catches a glimpse of the seal of the King of France. Norfolk seems pleased by what he reads – so pleased he cannot keep it to himself. ‘François congratulates our king on his initiative.’

‘Your putting down,’ Gardiner clarifies. ‘The French have much to tell us, regarding your ambitions. Not to mention your methods of discharging our sovereign’s trust.’

It is then he grasps what has eluded him: the timing, the personnel. It must have been in early spring, when Norfolk was so keen to cross the sea, that François first hinted at an alliance and named his price. The price was me, and the king baulked at it: until now.

He says, ‘The French like to deal with you, my lord Norfolk.’