Margaret says, ‘You are stouter, Thomas. You look as if you don’t get any fresh air.’
‘Sometimes I try to get out with my falcons,’ he says. ‘But the king might call me back at any time. The Venetians, you know, they draw a line on their ships to see that they don’t overload them. I have no load line. Or none that the king can see.’
‘You don’t have enough help? All these boys …’
He thinks, no one can help. It’s just Henry and Cromwell, Cromwell and Henry. ‘Once I took Michaelmas Day off, because it is a lawyers’ holiday, but the king objected. His reasoning is, he doesn’t get a day off, every day he has to rule. I say, but Majesty, you are divinely anointed, you are granted a special grace that means you are never tired. He says, it’s thirty years since I was crowned. It must have run out.’
‘You ought to have a wife.’
‘Well, get me one. If you know a comfortable woman, send her my way. I do not want for fortune so she need not bring a penny, she needs no great wit and she need not be young. All I stipulate is that she not be a papist, and subvert my household.’
Margaret laughs. ‘What a pity, because soon there will be a pack of young women turned out of their cloister, but I fear some of them cleave to Rome. Not I. I took my oath to the king and meant it.’
He says, ‘I think the king will not allow a woman to marry, if she has been a nun. Not if she was sworn and professed.’
‘So where would he have my sisters live? Southwark, in the stews?’
He wants to beg her, don’t be angry. Angry people fill my life. ‘You should go and see Gregory. If you want a home, he would welcome you. I am sure he would be pleased for you to teach his son as you taught him.’
She shakes her head. ‘I shall set up housekeeping with some of my sisters. We shall be unruly women, with no master.’
‘You will give scandal,’ he says.
‘We are too old for it. Folk will pity us, and leave apples on our doorstep. They will come to us for poultices and lucky charms. All the same,’ her face softens, ‘I should like to see my little boy.’
‘My wife – Elizabeth – she used to be jealous of you.’
Margaret says calmly, ‘There was no need.’
He thinks, if it could be held that Katherine of Aragon was no wife, if it could be held that Anne Boleyn was no wife, might it not be discovered that Margaret Vernon was no nun? Could we not find an error in the paperwork? Then she would be free.
But what’s the point? he thinks. She would die and leave me. Or I would die and leave her. It’s not worth it. Nobody’s worth it.
In the first week of November he arrests Lord Montague and the Marquis of Exeter. He detains Constance, Geoffrey’s wife, and Gertrude, the marchioness, and some other of the king’s old friends. He sends Fitzwilliam down to Margaret Pole at her castle in Sussex. Keep at it, he says: question her day and night if you have to.
But Fitz gets nothing from the countess. Her answers, he says, are earnest, vehement and precise. She denies any wrongdoing or intent to do wrong. When Fitzwilliam calls her son Reginald an ingrate bastard, she says, not a bastard, no: I was ever true to my lord husband, I was a wife beyond reproach.
She admits that when she knew Reginald had evaded harm, she expressed relief: she is his mother, after all. Yes, she knows that he despises her for keeping faith with the Tudors. Does she know he has said he will tread her under his feet? She purses her lips. ‘I know, and must abide it.’
Fitzwilliam tells Margaret Pole to pack her bags. He means to bring her on a litter to his own house at Cowdray. When he tells her that her household goods are to be inventoried, she knows her long run of good fortune is over; the wheel has turned, and she is going down. For the first time, Fitz says, dismay shows on her face. But that is nothing to the dismay on the face of Lady Fitzwilliam, when he tells her the Countess of Salisbury will be living with them, for how long no one knows.
He himself, at the Tower, questions Margaret’s eldest son. Detached, disdainful, Montague often declines to reply. ‘My lord, witnesses have heard you say you never liked the king, not from boyhood.’
Montague shrugs: as if to say, that is my privilege.
‘False reports have come out of your household, that parish churches are to be pulled down. You know there is no rumour more calculated to bring simple people out under arms. Why did you not intervene?’
‘It is hard to stop rumours,’ Montague says. ‘If you can do it, let me know your method. I assure you, it was not I who started them.’
‘Did you say …’ he consults his papers, ‘… that the king killed his first wife by unkindness? That he next married a harlot? That he bred a bastard?’
‘Women’s things.’
‘Did you say the Turk is a better Christian than the king?’
‘Did Geoffrey tell you that?’ Montague laughs.
He presses on: has Montague conferred with Lord Exeter, as to how many men they can raise between them? Has he said it is not enough to kill the king’s councillors, one must also aim at their head? And is this not plain treason?
‘I suppose it would be,’ Montague says.
He goes to the Marquis of Exeter. He has fewer cards in his hand, and Exeter knows it. But both the Poles and the Courtenays, in recent years, have dismissed any servants they suspected of favouring the new learning, or of Bible reading. They have dug, therefore, a deep well of resentment on which he may draw. It takes just a little time to fetch up the bucket.
He says, ‘Lord Exeter, you have been in company where the king has been called a beast.’
Exeter sighs. ‘Is this the best poor Geoffrey can do?’
‘You have said, the king and Cromwell are alike, they disdain the whole realm to get what they want.’
Exeter rolls his eyes.
‘Have you not said, “All the king’s pretensed authority cannot cure his sore leg”? Have you not said, “His leg will kill him one day”? Have you not said, “When Henry dies, then goodnight Master Cromwell”?’
Exeter makes no reply.
‘Have you not said, “We may have a prince but he will soon be dead, the whole Tudor line is accursed”?’
Exeter bridles: ‘I do not deal in curses.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Women’s things. Perhaps your wife does?’
Richard Cromwell steps in. Has Lord Exeter not taken abbey lands?
Yes.
Accepted them of his own free will?
Yes.
Excused himself, saying God will forgive him, as they will all be restored to the monks one day?
Silence.
‘How could that be?’ Richard asks.
‘By a reversal of policy,’ Exeter says. ‘The king might repent.’
‘Or join again with Rome?’
‘You cannot rule it out.’
He smashes his hand down on the table. ‘Believe me, I can.’
He talks to Gertrude, Exeter’s wife. She is the man of the household, a bold and enterprising woman, constantly seeking to advance the family she has married into. Her stepmother was Spanish, one of Katherine’s ladies; no wonder she is drawn, he observes, to the company of the Emperor’s ambassador, Chapuys. No wonder they confide in each other.
It is hard to abash Gertrude. He has let her go free before, so she thinks he is soft-hearted. ‘I beg the king to stay his hand,’ he tells her. ‘God knows, my lady, he has been merciful in your case. Myself, I always hope folk will amend.’ He looks at her, sorrowful. ‘I am often disappointed.’
He walks out. Says to his people, ‘We must lay hold of the child. I mean, Exeter’s son.’
They stare at him. He says, ‘When have you known the king harm a child? But all the same, fetch him.’
Richard Cromwell says, ‘We cannot risk Exeter’s heir being taken out of the country, to gather supporters abroad.’
‘And bring in Montague’s son too,’ he says. ‘Henry Pole is of like age.’
It is a cataclysm. They are down, the great families, falling like skittles when a giant bowls; swept from the shelves like jugs in an earthquake.