He leans forward: ‘You know different, do you?’
Along the board, knives are set down; guests stop chewing to listen. Gardiner turns to Wriothesley; he’s young, he doesn’t know these things. ‘They arrested a priest, name of Rinaldo. They crushed his legs till the marrow seeped out – which does throw doubt on the coherence of his confession.’
He – the Lord Privy Seal – sits back and surveys Gardiner. He knows he is baiting him, and that he must not take the bait. ‘It’s twenty-five years, Stephen. Most of the people who know about it are dead.’
‘Bainbridge took ill at the dinner table,’ Gardiner says. ‘A powder in his broth.’
‘Yes,’ Norfolk says helpfully. ‘Like when Bishop Fisher was poisoned. When the cook was boiled alive.’
A murmur of distaste runs around the table. ‘We are losing our appetites,’ the Lord Chancellor objects.
‘The powder was bought in Spoleto,’ Stephen says. ‘I know the shop.’
He laughs. ‘And does the shop know you?’
Norfolk says, ‘What would be the rate for a murder among the Romans? Because this priest, Rinaldo … I suppose somebody fee’d him?’
‘Naturally,’ Gardiner says. ‘Bishop Gigli.’
He can see Norfolk’s memory working. He’s chewing the name, as if it were overcooked: Gigli, Silvestro Gigli. ‘Bishop of Worcester,’ Norfolk bursts out. ‘Wolsey’s crony.’
‘Exactly,’ Stephen says. ‘Wolsey’s chief friend in Rome. Once Bainbridge was removed, Wolsey was clear to be the next English cardinal.’
There is a silence: which he breaks, signalling to a boy for more wine. ‘Half the city wanted Bainbridge dead. The French hated him. The Florentines hated him. And he was in debt.’
‘You saw the books?’ Gardiner says. ‘Who let you in?’
The capons come in and the carvers do their office. In Rome, at the Pope’s table, the carver holds the meat skewered and swipes slices from it in mid-air; it lends an air of crisis to the mildest repast. He, Lord Cromwell, puts down his cup and turns to the guests, opening his hands, smiling: ‘I always assumed the Pope’s master of ceremonies killed Bainbridge. He hated him because he was English and was always genuflecting out of his place, or turning up with the wrong type of crozier. The Curia thought he was a barbarian.’
Cranmer, at the head of the table, is fidgeting. ‘How were you in Rome, my lord Cromwell?’
‘Private business. I didn’t know Wolsey then.’
Gardiner says balefully, ‘You always knew Wolsey.’
It was Corpus Christi, 15 June, when Bainbridge ate the broth and was seized with colic. The doctors purged him, and he was well enough to go out to supper that night. Would he want to miss the Cretan wine, the caviar, at Cardinal Carretto’s house?
Next day Bainbridge was raging about as usual and kicking the servants. It was not till 14 July he collapsed and died. They arrested the priest Rinaldo because Bainbridge was known to have struck him in public, and they saw he had a grievance.
After three days of torment in the papal dungeons, Rinaldo managed to get hold of a knife. He stabbed himself ineptly, though he did a better job than Geoffrey Pole. It took him a day or two to die, and then the Romans hanged his corpse in public. Before they quartered it, he saw it dangling – he, Cremuello the oltramarino, giovane inglese. Rinaldo had labels tied to his feet stating his crime. He had confessed that Gigli gave him fifteen ducats to kill his master, but that detail was not written on the labels. It would have blown a hole in the Vatican’s wall of secrecy. Bishops and cardinals slay each other, and humble men suffer for their crimes.
That summer was hot even by the Roman standard. At nightfall the very stones seemed to sweat, breathing out the day’s accumulation of lies. He himself moved through the heat, smooth and silent and untroubled. Since the snake bit him, something of its nature had entered his blood, and he could lie coiled till needed.
Norfolk says, ‘I was never at Rome. I knew Bainbridge, of course. He was choleric.’
‘Yes, and he was fifty or more,’ Cranmer says. ‘And he drove himself. Such men perish in the heat. Besides, I always heard the priest retracted his confession before he died.’
‘So who was the murderer?’ Stephen says.
Call-Me says, ‘You are seriously accusing Lord Cromwell?’
‘He was no lord in those days,’ Norfolk says.
No more was he. He can see himself now, at twilight, lurking in the Piazza Navona. Since he got his red hat, Bainbridge took himself seriously as a future pope, and set his stall out in fine style. He took a lease on Francesco Orsini’s palace, with easy access to the Vatican and the English Hospice where his countrymen lodged. The front was imposing, loggias, terraces; Bainbridge fitted it out with money from the Sauli bankers, and he owed the Grimaldi as well. Any number of people would have employed Cremuello to watch Bainbridge’s back gate, and several did; he split the intelligence between them, with attention to what they wanted to hear.
While lurking there he fell into talk with a street girl, teasing her about her hair. She had bleached it, but now it was grown out by a hand’s span. Your sable locks are just as good, he said, a novelty for Englishmen; we have enough of tow-heads. You’re English? she said. Jesu, one would not know it. So that is why you are watching the house of the English cardinal. Are you homesick for the sounds of your countrymen carousing? Watch presently, and some of them will come out and spew in the street.
Later that night she said to him, now I’ll tell you a thing. Romans, Tuscans, Frenchmen, English, Germans: all pay out for blondes. It is a shame for me and my sisters in the trade; we are born wrong. I would bleach it again, but after a certain point it falls out, and no man of any nation wants a woman who is bald.
She yawned. Well, that was nice, she said, you would like to do it again in a different position? By the way, if you want a job in the palace among your countrymen, I can get you in there. My cousin works in the kitchen.
She mistook him for a clerk fallen on hard times. After all, he dressed like one. He turned to her and negotiated the new position and its price. How had one the energy, in that heat? But you don’t feel it so much when you are young.
‘My lord?’ Wriothesley says
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘My lord bishop, I forget what you were saying?’
‘Wolsey,’ Stephen says deliberately, ‘had scarcely the grace to hide his hand in the murder. He and Bishop Gigli were fast friends, till they scrapped about who got Bainbridge’s vestments after he was dead. Wolsey wanted them packed up and sent to London for his use. When I was his secretary, I saw the letters in the files.’
‘You know what I think?’ Norfolk says. ‘We’re better off without cardinals, and proud old prelates such as we used to have. Now the archbishop here,’ he jerks his thumb at Cranmer, ‘at least he conducts himself humble-wise. You can tell by his countenance he spends his time at prayer, instead of browbeating noblemen and plotting their downfall and wrangling and cheating and embezzling. All of which were daily proceedings with Thomas Wolsey.’
‘My lord Norfolk,’ he says.
‘Yes, and promoting false knaves to positions of trust, and soliciting bribes, falsifying deeds, bullying his betters, and consorting with conjurers and generally thieving, lying and cheating –’
He rises from his place.
‘– to the detriment and ruin of the commonweal and the shame of the king.’
He has the duke in his grasp. He holds him at arm’s length. He could easily jerk him forward then kick his feet from under him.
Cranmer shoots to his feet. ‘For shame, Thomas, he’s an old man.’ He takes a grip on Norfolk’s coat and tries to pull him free, as if he were a pike on a gaff and he wants to put him back in the stream.
It is only when sweat starts out of the archbishop – or possibly tears – that he, Cromwell, drops the duke. Thomas Howard swears at him, a horrible oath like a gunner.