The Mirror and the Light

He thinks, how profoundly wrong you are. Riche falters, lingers, bows himself out. Fitzroy says, ‘The hammering has stopped.’

‘I bribed them with bread and cheese.’

‘They cannot work quick enough for me. I want her gone, that woman. All traces. At least, everything visible.’ The boy casts a glance at the window, as if someone were signalling him from outside. ‘Cromwell, are there such things as slow poisons?’

He is startled. ‘God save your lordship.’

‘I thought perhaps, having been in Italy –’

‘You suspect the late queen has poisoned you?’

‘My father said she would have done it if she could.’

‘But your lord father was in a state of …’ Of what? ‘He was shocked by the discovery of the late queen’s crimes.’

‘And those crimes are greater, are they not, than common report? My lord Surrey tells me he was made privy to evidence that was never given in court. Worse was done, than was ever admitted. I would have punished her more straitly.’

How? he wonders. What would you have done, sir? Hacked her head off with a rusty kitchen knife? Burned her with green wood?

‘And,’ Richmond says, ‘she was a witch.’ His fingers, restless, tug at the string of his cap. ‘Some people do not believe in witches. Though St Thomas Aquinas makes mention of them. I have heard they can sour milk, and cause cattle to abort. They can cause a horse to shy in his path – always at the same place, to the injury of the rider.’

He thinks, if it’s always at the same place, the rider should keep a grip.

‘They can wither a man’s arm. Did not the usurper Richard suffer that fate?’

‘So he maintained, and yet it was as good an arm after the curse as before.’

‘Sometimes they harm children. They can do it with prayers, which they say backward. Or with poison. Do you not think it was Anne Boleyn who poisoned my lord cardinal?’

He had not expected that. Truthfully he answers, ‘No.’

‘Yet his end was not natural. I have been told it by wise and discreet gentlemen.’

‘It may be someone bribed his physicians.’ He thinks of Dr Agostino, taken from Cawood a prisoner, his feet bound under his horse. Where did he vanish to? Straight into Norfolk’s custody. He cannot tell the boy that, if there is a poisoner in the case, it is likely to be his own father-in-law.

Fitzroy says, ‘When I was a little child – I believe I told you once – the cardinal brought me a doll. It was an image of myself, in a robe all broidered over with the arms of England and France. I do not know where it is now.’

‘I can make a search, sir. You do not think your lady mother has it?’

The boy had not thought of that. ‘I do not think so. It was after we parted. She has other children now, and I suppose never thinks of me.’

‘On the contrary, sir. You are the origin of her fortune, of her present honourable marriage and rank. I am sure you she remembers you every day in her prayers.’

For six or seven years, male children live with the women. Then without choice or discussion, one day they are plucked away, their hair cropped so their ears are always cold, and thrust into the sullen world where everyone finds fault and visits punishment, and until you are married there is no kindness unless you pay for it. It was not how he had been reared, of course. When he was five he was foraging for items for the smithy’s scrap pile. At six he was with his father’s apprentices, under their feet, accustoming himself to the white-hot sparks that leap and arc, to the ringing pitch of the anvil and the thud, thud that goes on in your brain when the day’s work is done. At seven, able to curse but barely read, he was running wild like a tinker’s son.

Richmond says, ‘I did not know when I was a child that Wolsey was of low birth. He seemed to me a very splendid man. Well, his end was miserable. He was fortunate not to die by the axe. They tell me that his heart broke on the road, and that is what killed him.’

There is that possibility. Those who think a heart cannot break have led blessed and sheltered lives. The boy shifts in his chair. ‘Do you think Jane the queen will bear a son?’

‘All England knows, my lord, she comes from fertile stock.’

‘Yes, but if it is true what was claimed in court, that the king cannot please a woman or serve her as he ought –’

‘I recommend, sir – I earnestly recommend – drop this matter.’

But Richmond is a king’s son, and he sails on. ‘My brother Surrey tells me –’ he means his brother-in-law – ‘my brother Surrey says the Parliament has done ill, in framing the new bill of succession. They have left the king to choose his own heir, when they should have named me foremost.’

Thank God the boy had the sense to send Riche out of the room. If Riche heard that, he would be straight to Henry with the tale.