The Mirror and the Light

Norfolk looks as if he has been congratulated. By the living God, he thinks, I do not know which is greater: Norfolk’s vanity, or his stupidity. Of course the French prefer a minister who they can bewilder and trick and – if it comes to it – purchase.

‘I want to take us back …’ Riche says.

‘I am sure you do,’ he says. ‘You had better change the subject, because you are in danger of proving how bad a minister I have been for François.’

Riche is leafing through an old letter-book. ‘You made a great deal of money in the cardinal’s day.’

‘Not so much from Wolsey. From my legal practice, yes.’

‘How did you do that?’

‘Long hours.’

‘Wolsey commonly enriched his servants,’ Wriothesley says.

‘He did – as Stephen here can testify. But one had expenses. The cardinal fell from grace before his debts could be paid. His enemies fell on his assets. He cost me money, in the end.’

‘When you say his enemies, you mean the king?’

‘Oh, give me some credit, Gardiner. Am I likely to gratify you by calling the king a thief?’

‘You adhered to Wolsey,’ Riche says, ‘even when he was a proven traitor.’

‘What you call “adherence” is what the king called loyalty.’

‘He does,’ Wriothesley says. He sounds almost tearful. ‘I have heard him.’

He looks up at Call-Me. I don’t care how you cry. You’ve picked your side. He says, ‘The king regrets the cardinal. He misses him to this day.’

Gardiner says, ‘Can we leave the cardinal out of this? It is a living traitor we seek.’

Riche says testily, ‘I want to get on, I want to get on to Lady Mary, but I cannot do that without mentioning …’

Gardiner sighs. ‘If you must.’

Riche says, ‘You wore a ring, which Wolsey gave you. It was said to possess certain properties …’

‘You covet it, Ricardo? I can have it sent to you. It will save you from drowning.’

‘You see!’ Norfolk says. ‘It is a sorcerer’s ring. He admits it.’

He smiles. ‘It preserves the wearer from wild beasts. It also secures the favour of princes. It doesn’t seem to be working, does it?’

‘It also …’ Riche is embarrassed. He rubs his upper lip. ‘It also, allegedly, makes princesses fall in love with you.’

‘I’m turning them away daily.’

Wriothesley says, ‘You didn’t turn the Lady Mary away.’

Riche says, ‘You presumed, and the king knows it, you presumed to practise upon her, to insinuate yourself with her, to ingratiate yourself, so that she referred to you as,’ he consults his notes, ‘my only friend.’

‘If we are speaking of the days after the death of Anne Boleyn, then I think it is true, I was her only friend. Mary would be dead now, if I had not persuaded her to obey her father.’

‘And why were you so interested in saving her life?’ Gardiner asks.

‘Perhaps because I am a Christian man.’

‘Perhaps because you hoped she would reward you.’

‘She was a powerless girl. How could she reward me?’

Norfolk says, ‘It was your dreadful presumption, offensive to Almighty God, to attempt to marry her.’

‘For instance,’ Riche says, ‘upon a certain occasion, you were her Valentine and made her a gift.’

He is impatient. ‘You know how that works. We draw lots.’

‘Yes,’ Wriothesley says, ‘but you rigged the ballot. You have boasted of your ways to manipulate elections of any sort. Even the draw at a tournament – I offer this, and my recollection is perfectly clear – the day your son made his debut in the field, you told him, never fear, I can get you on the king’s team, then you will not have to run against his Majesty.’

‘Gregory told you that?’

‘He told me that very day. You hurt his pride.’

‘He spoke in innocence. And to you, Call-Me, because he took you for his friend. But I suppose you must use what you have. Valentines? Sorcerers? Any jury would laugh you out of court.’

But, he thinks, there will be no jury. There will be no trial. They will pass a bill to put an end to me. I cannot complain of the process. I have used it myself.

Riche is frowning. ‘There was a ring,’ he says. ‘I think you offered Mary a ring, summer of 1536.’

‘It was not a lover’s ring. And in the end it was not a ring at all, it was a piece to wear at her girdle.’ He closes his eyes. ‘Because it was too heavy. There were too many words.’

‘What words?’ Norfolk says.

‘Words enjoining obedience.’

Gardiner affects to be startled. ‘You thought she should obey you?’

‘I thought she should obey her father. And I showed the object to his Majesty. I thought it a wise precaution, against the kind of insinuation you make now. He liked it so well that he took it for himself, to give to her.’

Wriothesley drops his eyes. ‘That’s true, my lord. I was there.’

Riche gives his colleague a poisonous glance. ‘All the same, the volume of your correspondence with the lady, your manifest influence with her, the nature of the information she confides to you, information that concerns her bodily –’

‘You mean she told me she had toothache?’

‘She confided things proper for a physician to know. Not a stranger.’

‘I was hardly a stranger.’