‘What words?’ Norfolk says.
‘Words enjoining obedience.’
Gardiner affects to be startled. ‘You thought she should obey you?’
‘I thought she should obey her father. And I showed the object to his Majesty. I thought it a wise precaution, against the kind of insinuation you make now. He liked it so well that he took it for himself, to give to her.’
Wriothesley drops his eyes. ‘That’s true, my lord. I was there.’
Riche gives his colleague a poisonous glance. ‘All the same, the volume of your correspondence with the lady, your manifest influence with her, the nature of the information she confides to you, information that concerns her bodily –’
‘You mean she told me she had toothache?’
‘She confided things proper for a physician to know. Not a stranger.’
‘I was hardly a stranger.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Riche says. ‘In fact, she sent you presents. She sent you a pair of gloves. That signifies, “hand-in-glove”. It signifies alliance. It signifies, matrimony.’
‘The King of France once sent me a pair of gloves. He didn’t want to marry me.’
‘It disgusts me,’ Norfolk says. ‘That a woman of noble blood should lower herself.’
‘Do not blame the lady,’ Gardiner says sharply. ‘Cromwell made her believe only his own person stood between herself and death.’
‘There you have it,’ he says. ‘My person. It was my purple doublet she could not resist.’
‘I remember well,’ Norfolk says, ‘though by the Mass I cannot swear to the date –’
He, Thomas Essex, rolls his eyes. ‘Let no scruple impede you, my lord …’
‘– but there were others standing by,’ Norfolk says, ‘so I dare say –’
‘Out with it,’ Gardiner says.
‘– I remember a certain conversation – could a woman rule, was the topic, could Mary rule – and you, bursting in, as is your habit, on the discourse of gentlemen, said, “It depends who she marries.”’
Gardiner smiles. ‘It was the autumn of 1530. I was present.’
‘And since that time,’ Riche says, ‘you have ensured that Lady Mary never makes a marriage. All her suitors are sent away.’
‘And I remember,’ Norfolk says, ‘when the king took his fall at the joust –’
‘24 January, 1536,’ Gardiner says.
‘– when the king was carried to a tent and lay on a bier either dead or dying, all your concern was, “Where is Mary?”’
‘I thought to secure her person. To protect her.’
‘From?’
‘From you, my lord Norfolk. And your niece, Anne the queen.’
‘And if you had laid hands on her,’ Gardiner says, ‘what would you have done?’
‘You tell me,’ he says. ‘What makes the best story? Do I seduce her, or enforce her?’ He throws out his hands. ‘Oh, come on, Stephen – I no more meant to marry her than you did.’
Gardiner is cold. ‘Kindly address me as what I am.’
He grins. ‘It never seemed likely to me you should be a bishop. But I beg your pardon.’
‘Leave aside marriage,’ Gardiner says. ‘There are other means of control. The king believes you meant to place Mary on the throne and rule through her. And to this end you cultivated your friendship with Chapuys, the Emperor’s man.’
‘He dined with you twice in the week,’ Call-Me says.
‘You would know. You were at the table.’
‘He was your friend. Your confidant.’
‘I have no confidants, and few friends. Though till yesterday, I put you among them.’
‘I was present at your house at Canonbury,’ Wriothesley says, ‘when you conferred with Chapuys in the garden tower. You made him certain promises. About Mary, her future estate.’
‘I made no promises.’
‘She thought you did. And Chapuys thought you did.’
He remembers the ambassador’s folio, on the grass among the daisies. The marble table, the envoy’s suspicion of the strawberries. The gradual clouding of the day, so that Christophe said that in Islington they feared thunder. Then Call-Me, at the foot of the tower in the twilight, a sheaf of peonies in his hand.
Gardiner promises, ‘Another day we will come to the bribes the Emperor gave you. For now let us pursue the matter of your marriage. The Lady Mary was not your only prospect. You took care that Lady Margaret Douglas was preserved, though guilty of wilful disobedience to the king.’
Wriothesley bursts out, ‘I uncovered that whole affair! And you talked it away, as if it were nothing.’
‘Not nothing,’ he says. ‘Her sweetheart died.’ He says to Norfolk, ‘I am sorry I could not save them both.’
Norfolk makes a sound of disgust. He has many brothers, he hardly misses Tom Truth. ‘You put her under a debt of gratitude,’ he says. ‘The king’s niece. What was she to you, but another path to the throne? “If I were king” is a phrase often in your mouth.’
Gardiner leans forward. ‘We have all heard you say it.’
He nods. It is a habit he should have checked. Once he said, ‘If I were the king, I’d spend more time in Woking. In Woking it never snows.’
‘You smile?’ Gardiner is shocked. ‘You, a manifest traitor, who offered to meet the king in battle?’
‘What?’ He is blank: still thinking of Woking.
‘Let me remind you,’ Riche says. ‘At the church of St Peter le Poor, near your own gate at Austin Friars, on or around …’ Riche has lost the date, but no matter, ‘… you were heard to pronounce certain treasonable words: that you would maintain your own opinion in religion, that you would never allow the king to return to Rome, and – these are the words alleged – if he would turn, yet I would not turn; and I would take the field against him, my sword in my hand. And you accompanied these words with certain belligerent gestures –’
‘Is this likely?’ he says. ‘Even if I had such thoughts, is it likely I would speak them out? In a public place? Surrounded by witnesses?’
‘One utters in a rage sometimes,’ Norfolk says.
‘Speak for yourself, my lord.’
‘You also stated,’ Riche says, ‘that you would bring new doctrine into England, and that – and here I quote your own words – If I live one year or two, it shall not lie in the king’s power to resist.’
‘What though you are a cautious man?’ Gardiner says. ‘I have seen you moved to mockery, and to wrath.’
‘I have seen you moved to tears,’ Riche says.
‘I could weep now,’ he says. He is thinking, yet I would not turn. Perhaps I may have spoken those words. Not in public. But in private. To Bess Darrell. I am not too old to take my sword in my hand. I will fight for Henry, I meant to say. But the god of contraries made me say the opposite. And I could have bitten out my tongue.
Riche has recovered a date. ‘Peter le Poor – last day of January –’
‘This year?’
‘Last.’
‘Last year? Where have the witnesses been since? Were they not culpable, in concealing treason? I look forward to seeing them in chains.’
He can see Riche thinking, look, now he is wrathful, now he is provoked. He might say anything.
‘You admit it is treason?’ Norfolk says.
‘Yes, my lord,’ he says patiently, ‘but I do not admit to saying it. How would I make good such threats? How could I overthrow the king?’
‘Perhaps with the help of your Imperial friends,’ Norfolk says. ‘Chapuys is not in the realm, but you have contact with him, do you not? He congratulated you, on your earldom. I hear he plans to return.’
‘He’ll have to go somewhere else for his dinner,’ he says.
‘Why do we trouble ourselves over Chapuys?’ Riche says. ‘It is much worse than that, as all will attest, who were in Sadler’s garden at Hackney, the night the king met his daughter.’
The apostle cups, he thinks. The great bowl buried in the earth to keep our wine cool. Riche says, ‘You had secret dealings with Katherine. And that night you confessed as much.’