could envy him,’ Dr Cranmer murmurs.
Country life. Rural felicity. A temptation he has never known. ‘How long were you at Cambridge, before the king called you up?’
Cranmer smiles. ‘Twenty-six years.’
They are both dressed for riding. ‘You are going back to Cambridge today?’
‘Not to stay. The family’ – the Boleyns, he means – ‘want to have me at hand. And you, Master Cromwell?’
‘A private client. I can't make a living from Lady Anne's black looks.’
Boys wait with their horses. From various folds of his garments Dr Cranmer produces objects wrapped in cloth. One of them is a carrot cut carefully lengthways, and another a wizened apple, quartered. As if he were a child, fair-minded with a treat, he gives him two slices of carrot and half the apple, to feed to his own horse; as he does so, he says, ‘You owe much to Anne Boleyn. More than perhaps you think. She has formed a good opinion of you. I'm not sure she cares to be your sister-in-law, mind …’
The beasts bend their necks, nibbling, their ears flicking in appreciation. It is a moment of peace, like a benediction. He says, ‘There are no secrets, are there?’
‘No. No. Absolutely none.’ The priest shakes his head. ‘You asked why I would not come to your college.’
‘I was making conversation.’
‘Still … as we heard it in Cambridge, you performed such labours for the foundation … the students and Fellows all commend you … no detail escapes Master Cromwell. Though to be sure, this comfort on which you pride yourselves …’ His tone, smooth and unemphatic, doesn't change. ‘In the fish cellar? Where the students died?’
‘My lord cardinal did not take that lightly.’
Cranmer says, lightly, ‘Nor did I.’
‘My lord was never a man to ride down another for his opinions. You would have been safe.’
‘I assure you he would have found no heresy in me. Even the Sorbonne could not fault me. I have nothing to be afraid of.’ A wan smile. ‘But perhaps … ah well … perhaps I'm just a Cambridge man at heart.’
He says to Wriothesley, ‘Is he? At all points orthodox?’
‘It's hard to say. He doesn't like monks. You should get on.’
‘Was he liked at Jesus College?’
‘They say he was a severe examiner.’
‘I suppose he doesn't miss much. Although. He thinks Anne is a virtuous lady.’ He sighs. ‘And what do we think?’
Call-Me-Risley snorts. He has just married – a connection of Gardiner's – but his relations with women are not, on the whole, gentle.
‘He seems a melancholy sort of man,’ he says. ‘The kind who wants to live retired from the world.’
Wriothesley's fair eyebrows rise, almost imperceptibly. ‘Did he tell you about the barmaid?’
When Cranmer comes to the house, he feeds him the delicate meat of the roe deer; they take supper privately, and he gets his story from him, slowly, slowly and easily. He asks the doctor where he comes from, and when he says, nowhere you know, he says, try me, I've been to most places.
‘If you had been to Aslockton, you wouldn't know you were there. If a man goes fifteen miles to Nottingham, let him only spend the night away, and it vanishes clear from his mind.’ His village has not even a church; only some poor cottages and his father's house, where his family has lived for three generations.
‘Your father is a gentleman?’
‘He is indeed.’ Cranmer sounds faintly shocked: what else could he be? ‘The Tamworths of Lincolnshire are among my connections. The Cliftons of Clifton. The Molyneux family, of whom you will have heard. Or have you?’
‘And you have much land?’
‘If I had thought, I would have brought the ledgers.’
‘Forgive me. We men of business …’
Eyes rest on him, assessing. Cranmer nods. ‘A small acreage. And I am not the eldest. But he brought me up well. Taught me horsemanship. He gave me my first bow. He gave me my first hawk to train.’
Dead, he thinks, the father long dead: still looking for his hand in the dark.
‘When I was twelve he sent me to school. I suffered there. The master was harsh.’
‘To you? Or others as well?’
‘If I am honest, I only thought of myself. I was weak, no doubt. I suppose he sought out weakness. Schoolmasters do.’
‘Could you not complain to your father?’
‘I wonder now why I did not. But then he died. I was thirteen. Another year and my mother sent me to Cambridge. I was glad of the escape. To be from under his rod. Not that the flame of learning burnt bright. The east wind put it out. Oxford – Magdalen especially, where your cardinal was – it was everything in those days.’
He thinks, if you were born in Putney, you saw the river every day, and imagined it widening out to the sea. Even if you had never seen the ocean you had a picture of it in your head from what you had been told by foreign people who sometimes came upriver. You knew that one day you would go out into a world of marble pavements and peacocks, of hillsides buzzing with heat, the fragrance of crushed herbs rising around you as you walked. You planned for what your journeys would bring you: the touch of warm terracotta, the night sky of another climate, alien flowers, the stone-eyed gaze of other people's saints. But if you were born in Aslockton, in flat fields under a wide sky, you might just be able to imagine Cambridge: no further.
‘A man from my college,’ Dr Cranmer says tentatively, ‘was told by the cardinal that as an infant you were stolen by pirates.’
He stares at him for a moment, then smiles in slow delight. ‘How I miss my master. Now he has gone north, there is no one to invent me.’
Dr Cranmer, cautious: ‘So it is not true? Because I wondered if there was doubt over whether you were baptised. I fear it could be a question, in such an event.’
‘But the event never took place. Really. Pirates would have given me back.’
Dr Cranmer frowns. ‘You were an unruly child?’
‘If I'd known you then, I could have knocked down your schoolmaster for you.’
Cranmer has stopped eating; not that he has tasted much. He thinks, at some level of his being this man will always believe I am a heathen; I will never disabuse him now. He says, ‘Do you miss your studies? Your life has been disrupted since the king made you an ambassador and had you tossed on the high seas.’
‘In the Bay of Biscay, when I was coming from Spain, we had to bale out the ship. I heard the sailors' confessions.’
‘They must have been something to hear.’ He laughs. ‘Shouted over the noise of the storm.’
After that strenuous journey – though the king was pleased with his embassy – Cranmer might have dropped back into his old life, except that he had mentioned, meeting Gardiner in passing, that the European universities might be polled on the king's case. You've tried the canon lawyers; now try the theologians. Why not? the king said; bring me Dr Cranmer and put him in charge of it. The Vatican said it had nothing against the idea, except that the divines should not be offered money: a merry caveat, coming from a Pope with the surname of de' Medici. To him, this initiative seems nearly futile – but he thinks of Anne Boleyn, he thinks of what her sister had said: she's not getting any younger. ‘Look, you've found a hundred scholars, at a score of universities, and some say the king is right –’
‘Most –’
‘And if