The Mirror and the Light

He would rather stand. ‘I take it you know what’s in the book, more or less? The king keeps it close. He will treat you to some extracts, but he would like you to write to your brother in Italy, to tell him he is not offended.’

Montague stares at him. ‘Not offended?’

‘Your brother is welcome to return to England to put his case.’

‘I ask you,’ Montague says, ‘would you come, if you were Reynold?’

Reynold: that’s what his family call him. A name with a liquid, subtle nature.

‘The king would offer him a safe-conduct. And you have always found the king a man of his word.’

Montague says, ‘We, his family – I tell you, Cromwell, we are amazed by my brother’s proceedings. I think you knew more of this than we did.’

‘Shall I tell the king that you repudiate him?’

Montague hesitates. ‘That is strong …’

‘Deprecate.’ Margaret Pole speaks. ‘You may say we deprecate his writings and are dismayed.’

‘Astonished,’ he suggests. ‘Struck by sorrow and frozen with horror, to find he sets up his judgement against the king’s. That he belies his prince, slanders him, threatens him with invasion, and tells him he is damned.’

‘I am not my brother’s keeper,’ Montague says.

‘Someone must be. If not you, then me. Reginald needs to be locked away for his own protection. At present, I stand between you and the king’s displeasure.’

‘Good of you,’ Montague says.

‘I stand also between the king and his daughter. You must see that, before this book arrived, the Lady Mary was in jeopardy through her own foolish pride. But now, because the king suspects she is complicit in this, her position is graver still. And it is your family who has put her in danger.’

Montague is a languid man, hard to arouse, hard to bait. It is Margaret Pole who puts down her work and speaks. ‘We helped you pull down the Boleyns, when they were threatening your life.’

‘I took the risks of that enterprise. Not you.’

‘You owe us a debt,’ she says, ‘and now you do not have to pay it. You knew the book was in preparation. You knew all that would occur.’

‘Can you explain that to Nicholas Carew? He doesn’t seem to take it in. I owe him nothing. I owe you nothing, madam. The obligation is on the other side. And whether Mary lives or dies – I will not say it is in my hands, but it may be in yours. I look for your aid to keep her in the land of the living. Where I think she can do most good.’

‘Her mother, God rest her soul, made me her Lady Governor,’ Margaret Pole says. ‘How would I repay Katherine’s trust, if I advised the princess to act against her own conscience?’

Montague says, ‘I do not see, Cromwell, what is your interest in this. You appear to want to save Mary from herself, and save her from her friends too. But you cannot imagine she will favour you thereafter?’

‘Should she become queen,’ Margaret Pole says, ‘and I hope and pray she never has that misfortune, then she will at once, surely –’

What? Put me in the Tower? Strike off my head? Make me Lord Chancellor?

‘My lady mother …’ Montague warns.

‘Ah, I see the Treason Act,’ Margaret says gaily. ‘I see its trip-wire. It is a crime to envisage the future. We are trapped in the hour we occupy.’

‘In past months,’ he says to Montague, ‘you have spoken with the Emperor’s man Chapuys, and assured him that England is ready to rise against the king.’ He holds up a hand: do not interrupt me. ‘Only two, three weeks ago, in the West Country, we saw simple people in arms.’

‘That is Courtenay land,’ Montague says. ‘So tax them with it.’

No loyalty among thieves, he thinks. ‘It is lucky for you no great harm is done, and the country now quiet. But any repetition – any further breach of the king’s peace, in any part of the realm – it will be hard for you to show you are not the instigator.’

‘But could you show that he is?’ Margaret puts in. ‘Because in my poor understanding, it is for the accuser to demonstrate guilt.’

‘That should not be a matter of great difficulty. Besides, the common law provides ways to protect the realm from traitors. I mean an attainder, by which no trial is needed.’

Margaret is still. She glides her needle into her cloth. Her father died this way.

‘Madam,’ he says, ‘do not by your resistances and your evasions and your plots corrupt a good king who has done everything in his power to recompense your family for what it has suffered. Pray for concord, as all good Christians ought. And write the Lady Mary a letter.’

‘You will carry it?’ Montague says.

‘Give it to your friend Chapuys. That way, the young lady will not say it is forged.’

Margaret says, ‘You are a snake, Cromwell.’

‘Oh no, no, no.’ A dog, madam, and on your scent. He interposes his reassuring bulk between her person and the light. Margaret is sewing a border of flowers. It is the emblem of her family, the viola: known also as the pansy, or heart’s-ease. ‘I compliment you. I am surprised your sight is still sharp enough for that work.’

She reaches for her scissors. ‘I have seen other days, and better.’