The Mirror and the Light

‘This looks black for Pole’s family,’ says Lord Chancellor Audley. ‘It looks black for all the ancient blood. The Courtenay family too.’

‘Exeter is off the council. You’re on, Riche.’

‘What, me?’

‘Hold him up, Fitzwilliam.’

‘Jesus! Thank you!’ Riche says. ‘Thank you, Lord Cromwell.’

‘It was the king’s idea. I think he liked what you said, about Absalom.’

‘What?’ the Lord Chancellor says. ‘King David’s son? He that hangs in the tree by his hair? What did Riche say about him? When did he say it?’

Someone takes Lord Audley aside, and explains it all to him.

Riche looks dazed. Fitzwilliam says, ‘Crumb, you had warning of this book.’

‘I have entered into the mind of Reginald like a worm into an apple.’

‘When? When did you know?’ Fitzwilliam’s mind is busy.

Riche says, ‘No wonder you dealt so boldly these last weeks. With that card in your hand. No danger now the king will revert to Rome.’

‘The lad is getting an education,’ he says to Fitz.

I have been watching Pole for a year, he admits – as in Italy the young man procrastinates. Tortured by his own prose Reginald scribbles, then erases. He amends, and then he writes more and does worse. But the day must come, the letter be signed at last – the ink blotted, the papers rolled and tied, and the messenger summoned to carry it to England. Anne Boleyn’s death would speed the matter: for Pole would think, ‘Now Henry’s resolve is weakened, now he is ready to repent, now I will threaten him with damnation and scare him back to Rome.’ So he might, if he had modulated his argument. But Reginald does not understand Henry, not as a man: still less does he comprehend the mind and will of a prince.

‘I have met him,’ he says. ‘Pole.’ He remembers a fledgling scholar, body neither tall nor short nor stout nor lean; fairish hair, broad pleasant countenance. Reginald’s plain exterior gives no idea of the elaborate, useless nature of his mind, with its little shelves and niches for scruples and doubts. ‘One time I believe I laughed at him,’ he says. The boy had prated about how virtue should rule nations. I do not disagree, he had said; but read some books to bolster your scant practical experience. The Italians understand these matters.

Since then Reginald has been frightened of him. He speaks ill of him: says he is a devil, and you can’t speak worse than that. And yet, when a travelling scholar calls on him, or a noble young Italian wishing to improve his English, Pole never thinks to ask, ‘Could this be an emissary of Satan, alias Cromwell?’ Time was, Reginald was tempted by Luther’s teachings; we know how he wobbled onto that course, and wobbled off again. Time was, he doubted the Pope’s authority; his doubts were recorded. Pole’s folly is, that he thinks aloud. Some apprentice phrase, modelled on Cicero, trembles in the air; he believes no one hears. He writes, and he thinks no one reads; but friends of Lucifer look into his book. At dusk he locks his manuscript in a chest, but the devil has a key. Demons know every crossing-out and every blot. His ink betrays him. The fibres in his paper are spies. When he lies down at night, the horsehair in his mattress and the feathers in his bolster are eavesdropping on England’s behalf, as he supplicates, in hedging, quibbling terms, whatever form of God he believes in that day.

Fitz says, ‘You could bring the Poles down now. The whole family.’

‘Except for Reginald,’ Riche chips in. ‘He is out of the jurisdiction.’

Lord Audley says, ‘A good point, Mr Speaker. But you leave one singing bird in the cage, to lure another home.’

Riche says, ‘How is that on the point, Lord Chancellor? It is rather the opposite, do you not think? Pole being free, his song lures out the others. We see treason on the wing.’

‘Oh,’ Audley says. ‘Yes, I suppose you are right.’

He says, ‘I could have brought them down two years ago.’

‘The prophetess,’ Fitz says, ‘Eliza Barton, there was a great traitor. That was like them, to shelter behind the skirts of some deluded little nun who thought God talked to her. Only – tell me if I am wrong – did not Barton favour the Courtenay claim over the Poles?’

‘The difference between the families kept eluding her,’ Riche says. ‘That was my view. I believe Master Secretary is right. Let their designs play out. We should stay our hand. They will hang themselves.’

‘By God, a councillor already,’ Fitz says. He snatches Riche’s hat off and lopes the length of the chamber, throwing it up to the Tudor roses in the ceiling. Is that a stray HA-HA lurking up there? The Lord Chancellor, loyal soul, is squinting up and craning his neck.

L’Erber, the Pole house: Margaret, the countess, looks up at his entrance, but does not speak.

What’s she doing? Needlework, like any beldame. Her hawk’s profile is lowered over her work, as if she is pecking it.

Margaret’s son, Henry Lord Montague, winces visibly at the sight of him. ‘Master Secretary. Please sit.’