The merchant Antonio Bonvisi used to send food to Thomas More, dishes fragrant with spice. But More would push them aside, and say to his servant, ‘John, can you find me a milk pudding?’
The Duke of Urbino, Federigo di Montefeltro, was asked what it took to rule a state. ‘Essere umano,’ he said: to be human. He wonders if Henry will reach the standard.
There is no reply to his letter. No direct reply, at least. Beginning early, in tender summer dawns, the interrogations proceed into the hot afternoons, when the broad light in the chamber grows dusty. Sometimes the sessions are quiet and industrious, sometimes they are more like exchanges of insults than any proceeding of state. Like Fitzwilliam, Call-Me cannot look at him. He says, ‘He did this,’ and ‘He did that,’ as if Thomas Essex were not in the room. When Gardiner graces them with his presence he is grave, dry, judicious, careful to suppress the bubbling anticipation he must feel.
The clerk Gwyn sneaks back a time or two. Norfolk does not notice him because a clerk is beneath his notice, unless he offends. The clerk entertains him – the prisoner – by sometimes casting up a glance to Heaven, or turning down his mouth in disbelief at what he must record. Till Riche bursts out, ‘I am not content with this clerk. He keeps looking at the prisoner.’
‘So do you keep looking at me,’ he says. ‘I am not content with you, Richard Riche. You speak as if I have been a traitor all the years you have known me. Where has your evidence been till now? Did it fall out through a hole in your pocket?’
Riche says, ‘It is no small thing, to indict a man so close to the king. I sought guidance. I prayed about it.’
‘And your prayers were answered?’
Riche says coldly, ‘Oh, yes.’
Once again Gwyn packs up his penknives and quills without demur, though not without a backward glance. Another clerk comes in and ahems over how to continue, until Norfolk snarls at him to start anywhere. In this way the hours pass, marked off by the bells from St Peter ad Vincula and from the city outside the walls. The questions never make more sense than they did on the first day, nor does the picture of his life ever reflect the reality as he sees it. The mirror presents an alien face, eyes askew, mouth gaping. Lord Montague, and Exeter, and Nicholas Carew suffered this estrangement from self; and Norris and George Boleyn before them. Montague had said, ‘The king never made a man but he destroyed him again.’ Why should Cromwell be an exception?
Florence made me, he thinks. London unmade me. In Florence the bell called Leone announces the dawn even to the blind. Then rings Podestà, then Popolo. At Terce, when the law courts open, Leone and Montarina summon litigants and advocates to their business.
When he was an infant, his sister Kat used to tell him the bells made the time. When the hour strikes, and the music shivers in the air, you have the best of it; and what’s left is like a sucked plumstone on the side of a plate.
Lord Audley shows his face: shifty, ashamed. I created you, Audley, he thinks. I promoted you above your deserts, to have a compliant chancellor: and you have grown rich. ‘I thought you were with me, my lord. You always posed as valiant for the gospel, but I think you were only valiant for my favour. You swore to be my friend for life.’ He adds, ‘I have it in writing.’
Fitzwilliam absents himself. Perhaps he has said to the king, I know Crumb is no traitor, I cannot do it?
‘He is busy,’ Wriothesley says.
Riche says, ‘He is appointed Lord Privy Seal in your place.’
Norfolk says, ‘There is more matter than your arrest, for trusted men to deal with. There are more men in this realm, than Cromwell.’
‘But none so necessary to the commonweal,’ he says. ‘I am surprised your son Surrey is not here to gloat.’
He thinks, if they let that spider in, I shall put my boot heel on him.
He is suspicious of Gardiner’s absence: what is he working at? Charles Brandon comes in, and confirms that Cromwell said that if he were king he would spend more time in Woking. He remembers another occasion: ‘The king gave Crumb a ring from his own finger. And Crumb said, “It fits me exactly, it needs no adjustment.”’
‘And what do you draw from that?’ he asks. ‘That I am the right size for king? What is the right size, my lord Suffolk? Are you not nearer it than me?’
He is saddened by Brandon. To Norfolk, a Cromwell is just a blot to be erased, like a discrepancy in book-keeping. But Brandon’s family made their name by audacity. He hoped there might be some fellow-feeling. Charles cannot settle to his questions, but walks about, and in time walks out of the room, calling sharply to his folk to accompany him, as one whistles to a dog.
Wriothesley says, ‘You are aware that Lord Hungerford is arrested?’
‘Hungerford?’ He thinks that, in dwelling on Brandon, he has missed something. ‘What has Hungerford to do with me?’
‘That is something we mean to find out,’ Riche says. ‘He has written you many letters, and you have written him many replies, copies of which Master Secretary Wriothesley has extracted from your files.’
Hungerford is a West Country gentleman: a good enough lieutenant, active in his district’s affairs. He is a wife-beater too, and his lady wants to be free of him; only a few days before his arrest, he, Thomas Essex, had set in train a process of official separation. He says, ‘One must use such people. The king cannot be served only by saints.’
‘An old woman has laid grave accusations against him,’ Wriothesley says. ‘She is called Mother Huntley.’
Christ help him, he thinks. We all have a Mother Huntley in our lives. Mine is called Richard Riche.
‘The charges involve sorcery,’ Norfolk says. ‘Well, Cromwell here, he knows all about that! Conjurers’ books in his cellar, were there not? When the wax doll was found, of our little prince, Cromwell could not wait to lay his hands on the culprits and their villain texts. And yet he told young Richmond, God rest him, that there were no such things as witches! When we all know that witches have done the king harm.’
‘I remember that day,’ Riche said. ‘It was at St James’s, at the time Fitzroy fell ill. Cromwell sent me out of the room, and I often wondered what passed. That is how it has always been – Wriothesley, you will bear me out? He seems to confide in you, then suddenly excludes you from his councils.’
‘Now we see why,’ Wriothesley says.
‘However, to the matter in hand,’ Riche says. ‘Lord Hungerford has employed a conjurer to find out the date of the king’s death.’
He thinks, Henry does not fear a false horoscope. He fears a true one: a fate that he must walk towards. He says, ‘A man like Hungerford makes enemies among his neighbours. It is an easy thing to allege.’
‘Do not take it lightly,’ Lord Audley says. ‘I assure you, the king does not.’
Hungerford may be a brute, but he is hardly a danger to the commonweal. Two weeks ago he would have been sweeping such charges off his desk and onto some lesser desk.
Riche says, ‘He is also charged with violating a member of his household. Per anum.’
‘God save us – not Lady Hungerford?’
‘A servant,’ Norfolk says. ‘Luckily his own, not some other gentleman’s. He will die for it.’
‘But more to the point,’ Wriothesley says, ‘he is detected as a papist. A chaplain in his household had contact with the rebels in the north. We have it documented.’
‘Why did you not know?’ Riche says.
‘Because he lied to me?’ he says. ‘If I could detect every lie, I could set up in a temple as an oracle.’ He pictures himself in an olive grove. ‘Far away from you.’
It is past dinner time and he is hungry. The duke is hungry too, but those days are gone when they might have shared a table. Christophe comes in with a chicken. A half-hour passes, in which he eats heartily enough. When his guests return, Riche follows the others with an affected dawdle that means he has something to say. He takes time in setting his papers down, squaring them up. ‘Wyatt is much enriched.’