He is silent on that. ‘You would not like to go to France instead? To replace Gardiner? I mean to put some friend as ambassador in his place.’
Wyatt smiles, as if puzzled. ‘I am that friend?’
There is a tap at the door. It is Dick Purser. He pulls off his cap. ‘Master, the present from Danzig is here.’
He slaps his hands on the desk. ‘Alive?’
‘Three alive. Let us hope not all of them after one kind. None of us are minded to pick them up and see if they have pintles.’
‘I’m coming,’ he says. And to Wyatt, ‘We are done?’
‘If you knew the long empty days when I talk to you in my head …’
‘Then stay to supper.’
‘And the long empty nights,’ Wyatt says.
The presents from Danzig are sad huddles of fur, their eyes bright hostile points; they shiver as if they have a fever. ‘Get them in the pond,’ he says, dismayed.
Wyatt peers down at them. ‘What are they? Beaver?’
‘Not seen since our grandfathers’ time. I want to breed them. Fishermen will be against it.’
He shrugs. It’s always the wrong bits of the past people want back. With their dams, these busy animals can divert and slow the waters of streams likely to flood. No human ingenuity can match theirs, and it is a pity they were ever hunted. Wyatt says, ‘What else will you bring back? Wolves?’
We do not need more predators. We do not need wild boar, though they make good sport. But we need to keep our rivers in their courses, and we need to plant trees, if we are going to cut them down at the present rate: for timber frames for merchants’ houses, for palaces for princes; for ships to sail against the Pope and the Emperor, and all the world in league against us.
In the long twilight Wyatt says to him: ‘I have learned one thing in Spain. They have a poison so virulent that one drop on an arrowhead can kill. I wonder if I should get some for our purpose.’
‘Oh, I would sooner an honest murder,’ he says. He pictures Pole felled on the highway, his minions fleeing like piglets from the butcher. ‘I think of cleaving his cardinal’s hat in twain. Slicing his pate, as Becket’s was sliced.’
Outside the window rises an English moon, yellow as a slice of Banbury cheese. Wyatt says, ‘I must get down to Allington and see about my affairs. I do not have your skill in choosing deputies to guard my interests. My son is fifteen now, and if the worst befell, what have I to leave him?’
‘On paper you are rich.’
‘Oh, paper,’ Wyatt says. ‘I think it was not by a serpent, but by paper and ink that evil came into the world. Such lies are written of me, in and out of cipher, that I think, this time Thomas Cromwell will show me the door. But you do not.’
He does not answer. Wyatt says abruptly, ‘I want to see Bess Darrell.’
‘If the Courtenays were to be at their house in Horsley, the king’s business might take you that way. She has wit enough to meet you day or night.’
Wyatt has never mentioned the phantom child who saved his life. But its absence hovers, a mild haze, behind Wyatt’s shoulder where his guardian angel skulks.
He stands up. ‘I shall not see you again before you sail. I wish you a swift passage. I hold you in my prayers.’
They walk out together into a warm misty evening. At the gate Anthony is sitting with the porters. He is a melancholy sight, his hollow chest, his bowed head, his spindly legs stuck out in front of him.
‘Anthony, I thought you were in Stepney.’ To Wyatt he says, unnecessarily, ‘This is my fool.’
Anthony is wearing his working suit of stripes and patches. Wyatt passes him with a glance, and as the fool raises an arm in salutation, his silver bells chime.
Wyatt leaves to resume his embassy just after the feast of Corpus Christi. On 21 June he writes from the dockside at Hythe. No ship can leave, the winds are so stiff. All day it has been blowing, and it means to blow all night, but tomorrow, the mariners say, it will have blown itself out. Early, he hopes to set sail.
He, Lord Cromwell, thinks back to their parting: Wyatt’s eyes begged him to say, you need not go back to Spain, I will plead you have done your utmost. But Henry would answer, ‘I will be the judge of that.’ The king knows Wyatt’s uses. He is able to read sighs, construe by contraries. His word is just what a diplomat’s word should be: as clear as glass and as unstable as water.
Wyatt thinks himself shrewd, but he does not grasp what friendship is, as the world goes now. Friendship swears it will stand and never alter, but when the weather changes men change their coat. Not every man has a price in money: some will betray you for a kind word from a great man, others will forswear your company because they see you limp, or lose your footing, or hesitate once in a while. He says to Rafe and to Call-Me, I urge you both, undertake no course without deep thought: but learn to think very fast.
The Emperor and François, in the absence of the English envoy, have made what they call a Ten-Year Truce. It is well into July before he, Cromwell, can obtain a copy of the terms. Then he and all the councillors see how little England has been regarded. Wyatt writes to him, ‘The king has been left out of the cart’s arse.’ That makes him laugh, the thought of Henry sacked and tied for market, forgotten in a farmyard and forlorn in the rain.
Our official reaction to the treaty is disbelief. Instead of the Ten-Year Truce we call it the Ten-Minute Truce. Henry says, ‘Why does Charles think the King of France will keep faith with him, when he does not keep faith with me? He has broken every ancient agreement between his realm and ours. The King of France and the King of England have always delivered up each other’s rebels. So why has he not delivered up Pole?’
He, Lord Cromwell, sighs. ‘Gardiner has ill-served us in that regard. It is high time he came home.’
‘When he does, send him to his diocese,’ the king says. ‘We do not want him near our person.’
All my envoys have let me down, Henry complains. They know how peace threatens our interests, and yet they could not stop it. ‘Francis Bryan said he would trap Pole. But he has disappointed me. Like you, Cromwell.’
If the treaty lasts our peril is extreme. Charles has always seen himself as conqueror of Constantinople. But quicker would be conquest of England, and with France as his ally it would be simple enough and cheap. Only consider the friends he has waiting for him, as soon as he sets foot on our soiclass="underline" the old Plantagenet families, with their retainers armed and ready. Pole’s people, the Courtenays.
Wyatt has been deceived by the Emperor. England has been deceived by both Emperor and France. Henry is furious. Nothing will console him but theology.
A delegation comes from the German princes, with high hopes of friendship, of compromises that will allow our churches to make common cause against the devil and the Pope. The king’s team of negotiators includes Robert Barnes, who is familiar with the Germans and with whom they make good cheer. But also it includes the Bishop of Durham, Cuthbert Tunstall, fetched down from his see in the north to strengthen the hand of those who say, ‘Slowly, slowly, sometimes no change is best.’
Tunstall is a subtle man, experienced, congenial. It is dismaying how the king favours him, conferring with him as he rides from house to house; he does not let the godly Germans get in the way of his hunting. Dr Butts says, I suppose we should allow the king to ride, while he is able. But at every house where he intends a stay, Butts situates a surgeon.
The Lutherans tell Henry, your Majesty well knows we have made a League; it is not to attack anyone, only to secure us against the Emperor. If you will take part, you can be our head, we will make you Protector of our confederacy.
Through the summer the teams are locked in conference. Rafe Sadler takes minutes and relays them to the king. He himself, Thomas Cromwell, keeps a distance from their unsuccess. He knows the king will never agree that clergy may marry, or that laymen should receive Christ as both bread and wine. We cannot agree on the nature of Christ’s body, what is fact and what is allegory, what is human and what is divine. Can God be baked into bread? When we consume the host, why do we not hear the cracking of his bones? Is he still God, when he churns in our guts? And what if a dog eats him, is he still God then?