‘Heretic,’ Gardiner says.
He says, ‘Dr Barnes is the king’s chaplain. He has been deployed for some months in winning friends for us, in Denmark and among the Germans.’
‘So I am told,’ Gardiner says. The bishop’s nose is a beak, his hooded eyes gleam; the suffering man on his pectoral cross scowls at the company. ‘I suggest we look at a man’s friends, to know who he is. If Barnes is not a heretic himself, he is black with heretic pitch. Defiled.’
‘But he is my accredited envoy,’ Henry says. ‘If I find him sound, so must you. I defy anyone to show how or where I have departed from holy and catholic doctrine, or show where in this realm heresy is entertained.’
‘I’ll tell you where,’ the bishop says. ‘In the houses of the Lord Privy Seal. At his very table.’
Audley says, ‘But I have heard Cromwell say he wished Luther were dead.’
Gardiner flushes. ‘But since those days, Luther has praised him.’
‘I did not solicit the praise.’
Gardiner turns in the king’s direction, sweeping his paw across the table as if sweeping off dice. ‘I do not claim he is a Lutheran. That is not my complaint.’
‘What is he, then?’ Brandon says.
Gardiner turns to him. ‘You mean, my lord Suffolk, what other heresies are available, to such a man? Lord Cromwell has friends in Switzerland – can he deny it? – and like Luther they write to laud him, he is their great hope. We know what they believe. The Holy Sacrament is not holy. Corpus Christi is a piece of bread and may be bought at any stall.’
‘I am no sectary,’ he says.
‘No?’
‘I am no sacramentary.’
Gardiner leans towards him. ‘Perhaps you would like to say what you are? Instead of what you are not?’
Lord Audley says, ‘These sectaries, Stephen – do they not hold their goods in common?’ He grins. ‘I should not like to be the knave who tries to hold Cromwell’s goods in common. By God, he would get a buffet!’
The king leans forward. His voice shakes. ‘Winchester, you may leave us.’
‘Leave? Why?’
The king’s beard bristles. He looks like a hog’s pudding about to burst its skin. He, Cromwell, advises, ‘My lord bishop, go before the guard comes in.’
Gardiner has the sense to lurch to his feet, but he cannot forbear to give his stool a kick. It is an exit from the royal presence only Stephen would dare, he tells Wriothesley later: rude, churlish, possibly final?
‘But now he will be plotting out of sight,’ Call-Me says. ‘I’m not sure it’s better.’
Call Me had stood outside the council chamber; heard the king scream his opinion of the bishop; been dashed against the wall by Gardiner, with a shove and a snarl of ‘Get out of my way, Wriothesley, you damned traitor.’
Audley comes out. ‘By the Mass, gentlemen, I think one of these outbursts will land Winchester in the Tower. He can’t read the king, can he?’
Wriothesley re-adjusts the hang of his short cloak, resettles his cap. ‘My lord, did you receive word of Bishop Stokesley? He is ill.’ They turn to look at him. ‘Not likely to last the night.’
‘God have mercy,’ he says, grave and pious.
The season looks better already. Stephen off the council, Stokesley twitching his last. Clear skies.
He rides into Kent. At Leeds Castle, standing under the great walls and down by the moat, he talks to his son Gregory, air and water encircling them, the scudding clouds reflected in the blue, the whole world fluid and flickering. ‘I am expecting couriers from Cleves. Once the contract is signed here, Anna can set out. I do not like a long sea journey for her, not at this time of year. If Duke Wilhelm can get her a safe-conduct, I am going to bring her overland to Calais. The moment she touches English soil, I want you to be there, paying reverence on my behalf.’
‘In Calais? Shall I cross?’ Gregory’s eyes widen, as if he is looking at the sea.
‘And your Bess will be amongst her ladies when she arrives. I want Anna to look to us for anything she needs – for company, for advice –’
‘For interpreters,’ Gregory says. ‘I hope my French will suffice, when I am across the sea.’
‘You will thank me for your Latin too, and that I kept you to your books.’
‘Oh, the books,’ Gregory says. ‘I was oppressed by them. I thought you meant to have every volume printed, and to force the content into my head.’
He turns his head to look at his son. The stiff breeze ruffles Gregory’s hair, and whips the water into ridges. He drops his eyes to the water’s edge, where a scum of stalks and dead leaves heaves against the stonework, solid as a serpent’s back. ‘You cannot know too much. I meant it for your comfort.’
‘I was afraid of you.’
But of course, he thinks, it is usual for a son to fear his father, it is the way the world is made. ‘I tried to be a tender father to you. I never once struck you.’
‘You were too busy to strike me.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I suppose I could have delegated it. Come in. The wind is getting up.’
To the left of him, through two tall pointed arches, willow trees and a scudding sky. They duck through a doorway, turn sharp right to climb the stairs into the great hall. From the chapel you can look down into the water, shifting blue to grey and back to blue; it is a mirror to every change in the weather. It was Henry Guildford, God rest him, who put in the upper floors here, the wide windows and great fireplaces – before Anne Boleyn rousted him out of his offices and he went home to fade and die. A few pomegranates are left from the old days – Gregory shows him – and carvings of castles which, he tells his son, represent the turrets of Castile. Six queens have lived here at Leeds, and now it shelters the blacksmith’s great-grandsons: little Henry now toddling in his smocks, the baby Edward swaddled in the cradle. ‘There is a Mass book here,’ Bess says, ‘which they say belonged to Queen Katherine.’ She fetches it from its locked chest. He turns the pages in search of inscriptions.
He rides into Huntingdonshire, to see nephew Richard. After all, he will have no holidays till this time next year. All summer Lord Lisle has been sending over from Calais a procession of evangelicals, men whom he says should be examined in London, as he cannot deal with them. Once they disembark, Gardiner sets about them with relish, bullying them into swearing to every pernicious article he has pushed into the statute book. Stephen may be off the council, but he is still a power. Where does he find his boundless malice? Servants he has planted tell him, ‘What Winchester wants to force out of the Calais men is a connection to you, Lord Cromwell. He tries to goad them into naming you, into claiming your protection. If they have ever been in the same church as you, ever stood through the same sermon, Gardiner looks to make something of it.’
So what to do? It is half his work to protect the friends of the gospel from themselves, to keep them circumspect and keep them out of custody. Fevered brethren will fall foul of Parliament’s new articles. Then it will be, ‘Good Lord Cromwell, deliver us from prison!’ What if he cannot? If he, Cromwell, speaks boldly for the Calais men, it will be worse for him, and no better for them; so he must act, if he can, secretly, dexterously, to mitigate the damage Gardiner and his friends will do.
He is happy to ride away from Westminster, where everybody is watching everyone else. Richard is building his new house at Hinchingbrooke. A little convent has been closed, that has been there time out of mind, its numbers dwindling. Workmen, breaking up an old floor, have come to him, mattocks in their hands, dismayed: ‘Mr Richard, see what we have turned up …’
He goes to see. The workmen kneel and pray while the bones are lifted. At first it is hard to tell how many of God’s creatures are jumbled here. Two sets of bones, as Richard thinks, but they are not two nuns, as you might expect: one of them has a huge jawbone and giant-killer’s shoulders. Already the builders are making up stories about them. They are a runaway lord and lady, absconding for love of each other, whose flight has been arrested by a jealous count, or earl, or petty king. Standing hand in hand, they have been slain by their pursuers. No one can stop them mingling their persons now.