Rafe says, ‘Edward Seymour went at once to the king, to speak for Gregory.’
‘Did he speak for me?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did anyone speak for me?’
‘Yes. But I was not heard.’
‘Not Cranmer?’
‘Cranmer is writing the king a letter.’
‘Try and get me its content.’ He lowers his head. ‘When I think of Call-Me … I wonder what inducement … I suppose I expected it of Riche. Though I have been good to them both.’
Rafe would be justified in saying, I told you at the first not to trust Call-Me. Instead he says, ‘All the years we have known him, I think he has been trying to show us his own unhappy nature. How fretful he is, how ill-at-ease, how envy eats away at him. He was trying to warn us about himself.’
‘It is my vanity, really. I did not suppose anyone would prefer Gardiner’s service to mine.’
‘Gardiner has threatened him. But you know that. As for Purse, he runs to the day’s winner.’
‘Tell Gregory,’ he says, ‘to be as humble as he finds it necessary. He will be questioned, and he should say what they want to hear. Richard too.’
‘Richard is enraged. He wanted to go straight to the king and break in on him.’
‘Tell him to do no such thing. He should rest quiet, and keep away from Gregory, and both should keep away from you. Do nothing that could be called conspiracy. I know how Henry’s mind works.’
Even as he says it, he thinks, that can’t be true, or I wouldn’t be here. Separation from his friends will not save my son. Money abroad will not save him. All he can do is to comply with Henry exactly, till his killing fit passes. ‘How did he take it, Gregory?’ He pictures his boy inconsolable, crying like a child.
‘He is pensive, sir.’
Pensive? But then, if they had come to him when he was a boy to say, ‘They’re hanging your old dad tomorrow,’ he wouldn’t have been pensive. He’d have said, ‘I’ll be there early! Are they selling pies?’
He asks, ‘Has the king let fall a word about what charges to expect? Or Audley has, perhaps?’
Rafe looks away. ‘It appears to be about Mary as much as anything. The stories of how you meant to marry her. The king has decided to hear them at last. He has written to François about it – in his own hand, I am told. He has sent for Marillac, to explain your arrest to him. Though I think it is Marillac who will explain it to the king, because the French were active in those rumours.’
‘Chapuys started them.’
‘Perhaps. Who knows where it began? Perhaps in Mary’s head. I would not be surprised. She is a very strange woman.’
‘No,’ he says, ‘she is innocent in this, I swear.’
‘You have always thought better of her than she deserves. I doubt she will stir for you, sir, though we all know you saved her life. Henry believes – but I do not know how he can believe it – that you meant to wed her and then thrust him aside and become king yourself.’
‘That is ludicrous. How could he think that? How could I? How could I even imagine it? Where is my army?’
Rafe shrugs. ‘He is frightened of you, sir. You have outgrown him. You have gone beyond what any servant or subject should be.’
It is the cardinal over again, he thinks. Wolsey was broken not for his failures, but for his successes; not for any error, but for grievances stored up, about how great he had become.
He asks, ‘Did they take my books?’
‘Tell me what you want and I will get it.’
‘Will you find my Hebrew grammar? Nicolas Clendardus of Leuven. I have it at Stepney. I have wanted to study it. I lacked leisure.’
Clendardus advises, grasp the basic rules before you advance to detail. They say with his help you can learn the rudiments in three months. I might not live that long, he thinks, but I can make a start.
12 June, first interrogation: ‘We might begin with the purple satin doublet,’ Richard Riche says.
Riche sits at one end of the long table, with Gardiner and Norfolk established in the places of honour; and Master Secretary Wriothesley, restless and unhappy, at the other end. ‘You know,’ he says, as Norfolk and Gardiner take their seats, ‘I never knew you as such great comrades, till lately. More likely to abuse each other roundly, than sit together as friends.’
‘We have not always seen eye to eye,’ Norfolk says. ‘But one thing we have in common, Winchester and I – when we scent the truth, we stick on the trail. So beware, Cromwell. Whatever we suspect, we will have out of you, one way or the other.’
It is as crude a threat as ever made. He says, ‘I will tell you the truth, as I know and believe it. There is nothing for you beyond that.’
Gardiner sharpens his pen. ‘They say Truth is the daughter of time. I wish time bred like rabbits. We would arrive at a reckoning sooner.’
A clerk comes in. He greets him in Welsh. ‘Give you good morning, Gwyn. Nice sunny weather.’
‘None of that,’ Norfolk growls. ‘Get this fellow out and send another scribe.’
Gwyn gathers his gear and exits. It takes time to locate a clerk that suits Thomas Howard, and one Thomas Cromwell does not know. At length they are settled. Wriothesley says, ‘Will you go on, Riche? The doublet?’
Riche lays a hand on his papers, like one putting it on the gospels. ‘You understand, sir, that it is my duty to put these questions to you, and that I bear you no ill-will in the doing of it.’
He recognises a disclaimer. Riche thinks Henry might recall him. He says, ‘Can I see the king?’
‘No, by God,’ Norfolk says.
Wriothesley says, ‘That is the last thing –’
Riche says, ‘Whatever gave your lordship that idea?’
He takes his ruby ring from his finger. ‘The King of France gave me this.’
‘Did he?’ Norfolk cries out to the clerk. ‘Make a note, you!’
‘And when he did so, I took it to our king. Who in time was pleased to return it to me, saying it would be a token between us, and that if I were to send it him, even if I did not have my seal, even if I were not able to write, he would know it came from me. So I send it him now.’
‘But what is the point?’ Gardiner says.
‘A good question,’ Riche says. ‘The king knows where you are. He knows who and what you are.’
‘It will remind him how I have served him, to the best of my capacities and to the utmost of my strength. As I hope to do for many years yet.’
‘That is what we are here to determine,’ Riche says. ‘Whether you have served him or no. Whether you have abused his confidence, as he believes, and whether you plotted against his throne.’
Riche must somehow be assured, he thinks, and Wriothesley too, that if Henry frees me I will not revenge: or they will kill me in a panic. ‘How, plotted?’ He asks civilly, as if it were a matter of passing interest.
‘Letters have been discovered at Austin Friars,’ Gardiner says. ‘Highly prejudicial to your claims to be a loyal and quiet subject.’
‘Clear proof of treason,’ Norfolk says.
‘I am waiting for you to tell me what they are. I cannot guess what you might forge, can I?’
‘They are Lutheran letters,’ Riche says. ‘Letters from Martin himself and his heretic brethren.’
‘Melanchthon?’ he asks. ‘The king writes to him.’
Gardiner glares. ‘And also from German princes, urging on you a course most injurious to king and commonwealth.’
‘There are no such letters,’ he says, ‘they never existed, and even if they did –’
‘Lawyer’s logic,’ Norfolk says.
‘– and even if they did, and if they contained seditious matter, would I keep them in my house for you to find? Ask Wriothesley what he thinks.’
Gardiner looks at Call-Me. ‘What I think …’ he hesitates, ‘what I truly …’ He stops.
‘Pass on,’ he says. ‘Or are you waiting for me to set the agenda and run the meeting? I think you wanted to know about my wardrobe.’