The Mirror and the Light

‘Perhaps not,’ Riche says. ‘In fact, she sent you presents. She sent you a pair of gloves. That signifies, “hand-in-glove”. It signifies alliance. It signifies, matrimony.’

‘The King of France once sent me a pair of gloves. He didn’t want to marry me.’

‘It disgusts me,’ Norfolk says. ‘That a woman of noble blood should lower herself.’

‘Do not blame the lady,’ Gardiner says sharply. ‘Cromwell made her believe only his own person stood between herself and death.’

‘There you have it,’ he says. ‘My person. It was my purple doublet she could not resist.’

‘I remember well,’ Norfolk says, ‘though by the Mass I cannot swear to the date –’

He, Thomas Essex, rolls his eyes. ‘Let no scruple impede you, my lord …’

‘– but there were others standing by,’ Norfolk says, ‘so I dare say –’

‘Out with it,’ Gardiner says.

‘– I remember a certain conversation – could a woman rule, was the topic, could Mary rule – and you, bursting in, as is your habit, on the discourse of gentlemen, said, “It depends who she marries.”’

Gardiner smiles. ‘It was the autumn of 1530. I was present.’

‘And since that time,’ Riche says, ‘you have ensured that Lady Mary never makes a marriage. All her suitors are sent away.’

‘And I remember,’ Norfolk says, ‘when the king took his fall at the joust –’

‘24 January, 1536,’ Gardiner says.

‘– when the king was carried to a tent and lay on a bier either dead or dying, all your concern was, “Where is Mary?”’

‘I thought to secure her person. To protect her.’

‘From?’

‘From you, my lord Norfolk. And your niece, Anne the queen.’

‘And if you had laid hands on her,’ Gardiner says, ‘what would you have done?’

‘You tell me,’ he says. ‘What makes the best story? Do I seduce her, or enforce her?’ He throws out his hands. ‘Oh, come on, Stephen – I no more meant to marry her than you did.’

Gardiner is cold. ‘Kindly address me as what I am.’

He grins. ‘It never seemed likely to me you should be a bishop. But I beg your pardon.’

‘Leave aside marriage,’ Gardiner says. ‘There are other means of control. The king believes you meant to place Mary on the throne and rule through her. And to this end you cultivated your friendship with Chapuys, the Emperor’s man.’

‘He dined with you twice in the week,’ Call-Me says.

‘You would know. You were at the table.’

‘He was your friend. Your confidant.’

‘I have no confidants, and few friends. Though till yesterday, I put you among them.’

‘I was present at your house at Canonbury,’ Wriothesley says, ‘when you conferred with Chapuys in the garden tower. You made him certain promises. About Mary, her future estate.’

‘I made no promises.’

‘She thought you did. And Chapuys thought you did.’

He remembers the ambassador’s folio, on the grass among the daisies. The marble table, the envoy’s suspicion of the strawberries. The gradual clouding of the day, so that Christophe said that in Islington they feared thunder. Then Call-Me, at the foot of the tower in the twilight, a sheaf of peonies in his hand.

Gardiner promises, ‘Another day we will come to the bribes the Emperor gave you. For now let us pursue the matter of your marriage. The Lady Mary was not your only prospect. You took care that Lady Margaret Douglas was preserved, though guilty of wilful disobedience to the king.’

Wriothesley bursts out, ‘I uncovered that whole affair! And you talked it away, as if it were nothing.’

‘Not nothing,’ he says. ‘Her sweetheart died.’ He says to Norfolk, ‘I am sorry I could not save them both.’

Norfolk makes a sound of disgust. He has many brothers, he hardly misses Tom Truth. ‘You put her under a debt of gratitude,’ he says. ‘The king’s niece. What was she to you, but another path to the throne? “If I were king” is a phrase often in your mouth.’

Gardiner leans forward. ‘We have all heard you say it.’

He nods. It is a habit he should have checked. Once he said, ‘If I were the king, I’d spend more time in Woking. In Woking it never snows.’

‘You smile?’ Gardiner is shocked. ‘You, a manifest traitor, who offered to meet the king in battle?’

‘What?’ He is blank: still thinking of Woking.

‘Let me remind you,’ Riche says. ‘At the church of St Peter le Poor, near your own gate at Austin Friars, on or around …’ Riche has lost the date, but no matter, ‘… you were heard to pronounce certain treasonable words: that you would maintain your own opinion in religion, that you would never allow the king to return to Rome, and – these are the words alleged – if he would turn, yet I would not turn; and I would take the field against him, my sword in my hand. And you accompanied these words with certain belligerent gestures –’

‘Is this likely?’ he says. ‘Even if I had such thoughts, is it likely I would speak them out? In a public place? Surrounded by witnesses?’

‘One utters in a rage sometimes,’ Norfolk says.

‘Speak for yourself, my lord.’