The Mirror and the Light

He wants to say, it is not contempt, it is the opposite, he loves and admires you, but fortune has made him harsh. When Henry Wyatt lay in this fortress, it was not in an airy chamber but fettered in a cell, his ears straining, waiting for the footsteps of his torturers and the rattle of their keys. Torturers do not need extraordinary means, or special instruments. Opportunities for pain lie all around, in items of common use. His gaolers pulled Wyatt’s head back and wedged a horse’s bit into his mouth. They poured mustard and vinegar into his nostrils, so he was half-drowned in the acrid brew, spewing out what he could, inhaling the rest. Richard the usurper came to watch him suffer, and he urged him to give up his allegiance to the Tudor, who then lay out of the realm, a man without hope or resource. ‘Wyatt, why art thou such a fool? Thou servest for moonshine in the water a beggarly fugitive. Forsake him and become mine, who can reward thee.’

He would not forsake. They dropped him bleeding on the straw, in the dark. His teeth were broken and he heaved up his guts on the filthy floor. His belly was empty, the corrosive at work in his throat; he had neither clean water nor, when he could eat, did they bring him bread. Wyatt says, ‘It is a pretty story, how a cat brought my father food. I never believed it, even when I was a child. I thought, it is a tale for children who are simpler than me. But now I see what it is to be locked away. Prisoners believe all sorts of things. A cat will come and save us. Thomas Cromwell will come with the key.’

‘I wonder, would Bess take the oath now? Katherine is dead and it cannot offend her.’

‘I have not asked her,’ Wyatt says. ‘Nor I would not. Surely Henry will not pursue her? He has enough people to tell him he is head of the church and stands next to God. And we hope that once the Lady Mary is back at court, she will help us. She must have a care for Bess – for a young woman alone in the world, who held her mother’s hand when she was dying.’

‘No doubt,’ he says. ‘But while you have been here with Petrarch, the world moves on. The king will require Mary to take the oath herself. If she says no, she will be in here with you.’

Wyatt looks away. ‘Then you must help us. It is my honour that is at stake.’

He thinks, where was honour when you lifted Bess Darrell’s skirts? He stands up from the stool and gives it a nudge with his foot. It’s a miserable seat for a king’s councillor. ‘I’ll talk to Bess. There must be a place for her somewhere. Take the king’s money, Tom. You need it.’

‘I will obey you,’ Wyatt says, ‘as my father said I should. I suppose you can err like other men, and God he knows, you may be heading for disaster. But for me all roads lead there. I reach the crossroads and I throw the dice, and whichever comes up, it is the same – it is the swamp, or the abyss, or the ice. So I shall follow you as the gosling its mother. Or as Dante followed Virgil. Even to the underworld.’

‘I doubt I’ll be going further than the south coast this summer. Perhaps down to the Isle of Wight.’ He picks up the book of verses. It is unbruised, though the binding is soft as a woman’s skin: a Venetian printing, the title set within a woodcut of tumbling putti, the printer’s mark a sea-monster. Suppose someone saved the scraps of Wyatt’s verse – the pastoral scratched on the back of an armourer’s bill, the lyric a woman lays to her naked breast? If an editor applied himself to this writer’s life, he would find a story to ruin many. Wyatt says, ‘She never leaves me, Anne Boleyn. I see her as I saw her last, here in this place.’

He thinks, I see her too, in her little hat with the feather. With her tired eyes.

He goes out: ‘Martin! Who gave Wyatt such beggarly furnishings?’

‘He’s not complained, sir. Mind you, a gentleman – he doesn’t.’

‘But I’m a lord,’ he says. ‘And I’m complaining.’

He thinks, I didn’t notice that whoreson stool when I visited the prisoner before. But I can be forgiven, as I had just come from watching the Calais executioner perform his trick.

At Austin Friars, Gregory is waiting: ‘You are sent for by Fitzroy.’

‘I saw Wyatt,’ he says.

‘And?’ Gregory is anxious.

‘I’ll tell you later.’ We shouldn’t keep the king’s son waiting.

‘Rafe supposes Fitzroy will ask you if you are going to make him king.’

‘Hush.’

‘I mean, one of these days,’ Gregory says. ‘It’s no treason to say all men are mortal.’

‘No, but it’s not your best idea either.’ He thinks, that was Anne Boleyn’s mistake. She took Henry for a man like other men. Instead of what he is, and what all princes are: half god, half beast.

Gregory says, ‘Richard Riche is here. He is writing a loyal address. Shall we go and look on? I love to watch him work.’

Sir Richard goes through paperwork like a raven through a rubbish heap. Stab, stab, stab – with his pen, not a beak – till everything before him is minced or crushed or shattered, like a snail-shell burst on a stone.

‘Hello, Mr Speaker,’ Gregory says.

‘Hello, Little Crumb,’ Riche says absently.