‘I haven’t a family.’
‘No,’ Martin says. ‘Begging your pardon. I know you haven’t.’
‘Although,’ he says, remembering, ‘I am a grandfather now.’
‘I’ve seen people hung up,’ Martin says.
‘Sooner or later, you see everything.’ He feels a weight in his chest; it is dull, the shape of the hammer head. He wishes he were back in time, before Geoffrey started to talk. He wants to swing the hammer again. The head was large and it diffused the impact, so it barely jarred.
‘When they’re hung by their wrists their own weight does it,’ Martin says. ‘You might say, they torment themselves.’
The manacles get you a result within twenty minutes. The cold sweat starts out of the man as if from a faucet. If you’re short of time you can hang weights on his feet. You’re across the room, your pen poised, when he breaks; no point being awash in other people’s body fluids. Once you’ve taken down the first, virgin words of his confession, words that are green and sweet, the gaolers come and swab the snot, the tears, the loose stools that creep down his legs.
‘There is a rack.’ Martin indicates with his head. ‘It is used. I’ve been in earshot.’
It is a nice question. Do you let the fellow scream? Some men who are used to the work say it is the prisoner’s own wails that drive up the terror and make him speak. Others feel it’s not worthwhile, for it agitates those who overhear; there are always clerks on hand, or gentlemen councillors, who may be sickened by the racket. In these cases, some means may be used, short of suffocating the prisoner, to stifle the noise. He says, ‘The Spanish, when they burn what they call a heretic, they parade the poor soul through the streets. They sheet him in white, and shave his head and sometimes his eyebrows, so that he looks more like a puppet than a human.They put a taper in his hand, as if he were lighting the fire for himself. They promenade him across the cobbles with his feet bleeding and papers pinned to him proclaiming his heresy, and the monks process behind him with their silver crosses and their psalms. And the people line the streets to see it, the market squares. But when the whole city has viewed the spectacle, they burn him in private in some prison yard, with a gag in his mouth.’
‘You have been in Spain, sir?’
‘No, but Thomas Wyatt has told me, and when Wyatt tells you, it is as good as witnessing.’
Martin looks respectful. ‘If your lordship recalls, I had the privilege to serve Master Wyatt when he was last in ward. Generous and open-handed.’
‘Generous to a fault,’ he says. ‘Look, do not let Geoffrey injure himself again. Turn his clothes inside out and make sure he has not so much as a pin. He will give us no trouble now. The king will not inflict pains on any man from a noble house. I cannot think it has ever been done, not in his reign. But can they rely on that? The king has done a number of things that have never been done before.’
‘He has not done the dungeon work,’ Martin says.
Or mopped the floor afterwards. Or, on the execution ground, shaken adherent flesh from chains. He asks, ‘What persuaded you into this trade?’
‘A man must get a living.’
‘You could have been an honest farmer.’
‘And kill pigs?’
Sow seed, that’s what he was thinking. Harvest the grain. There is a pure, clean world, where men subsist on milk and apples, and bread so white and soft it is like eating light. He says, ‘William Fitzwilliam is on his way. And Richard Riche, and Richard my nephew. Now Geoffrey is babbling, they will be able to fill in the grid. And we can do as we like hereafter with his kin. A good day’s work, I call it.’ And all from smashing a mallet against a wall. ‘When they’re done, take Geoffrey upstairs. Give him his supper, if he can eat it. Cut up his meat for him.’
Martin looks chastened. ‘When we took his knife away, he threatened to hang himself from a beam.’
‘I am not afraid of that.’ It would take a resolution he doubts Geoffrey could summon. ‘Still, if he does, it is no great matter. Though it must be clear it is by his own hand.’
‘Do you want me to give him a rope?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
Soon reinforcements arrive, with a brace of clerks carrying ink-horn and paper. ‘You boys stay out in the fresh air,’ he tells the clerks. ‘Or do you follow Martin here, he will get you some ale. Richard Riche will write for us, won’t you? I have another sixty-two questions for Geoffrey. If we get tired we’ll whistle for you.’
The clerks look grateful. He watches them out of the passage and waits till they mount the twisting stair. He says, ‘Geoffrey will talk around the point. He will blizzard you with “I swear it was October but it could have been March,” and “I believe it was in Sussex or else it was in Yorkshire,” and “It might have been my mother or it might have been the Wife of Bath.” Nail him down on threats to the king himself – threatening his councillors, that is no news, we know his brother Montague hates us. Chapuys is one of the chief doers in their plots, and that is no news either. But I think the King of France is deeper in this than a brother monarch should be.’
‘If François invaded,’ Richard Cromwell says, ‘I believe he would put the King of Scots on our throne.’
‘Yes. But Exeter’s people don’t know that. Or the Poles. They have such pride of their persons. They think they will all be kings.’
‘I fear we lack proof against Exeter,’ Fitzwilliam says. ‘He is a cautious man, he destroys his traces. Geoffrey will give us enough on his own family, but –’
‘But it will stretch,’ Riche says. ‘They are known confederates, the two houses.’
‘You recall I have a woman with the Courtenays,’ he says.
Riche says, ‘What, some laundrymaid?’
Fitz laughs: ‘Leave Cromwell to his devices.’
Riche says, ‘I do not see how the Lady Mary can be left out of it this time. Surely, if they were planning to make use of her, she cannot be ignorant of that?’
‘That were great pity,’ Fitzwilliam says. ‘To see a princess destroyed, on suspicion.’
He says, ‘They abuse her trust. She would never strike down her own father.’
‘We have been here before,’ Riche says. ‘You are too lenient. You do not see her nature, sir.’
‘What did you do to Geoffrey?’ Fitzwilliam asks.
He bundles his papers under his arm. They are strung with twine, Margaret Vernon’s note with the rest. He had run her figures in his head, while Pole was confessing. ‘I made a noise,’ he says.
He thinks, I took up residence in the pit of his stomach. What do I ever do?
A week on, he will hear what the people of London are saying: that Gregory Pole was tortured at the Tower: that he was strapped to a grid, and it was heated, so he was grilled like St Lawrence the martyr. That Thomas Cromwell did it all.
He is shocked when he sees Margaret Vernon. It is disconcerting to see her dressed like a burgess’s wife, although he himself has recommended nuns lay aside their habits. Fashion is shifting. Women are showing their hair again. Margaret’s is silver. He asks her, ‘What colour was it before?’
‘No especial colour. Mouse.’
They are at Austin Friars in the parlour. She has been waiting for him. He feels he should have changed his own clothes. He feels there might be blood on them, though no blood has been shed at the Tower. Geoffrey has admitted he planned to go abroad, with a band of men to join his brother Reginald. He speaks of confederacies in closets and in garden arbours, plots over supper and after Mass. He reports dubious talk overheard: from Thomas More’s family, from Bishop Stokesley. The ripples spread wider, wider with each whispered phrase. Signing off his statement for the day, he begs the king’s mercy. At the foot of the page he scribbles, Geoffrey Pole your humble slave.