for the next thing. To Brereton he says, ‘You know where to find me. William.’
A nod, and he walks away. ‘Dr Cranmer, tell the Lady we did a good night's work for her.’ He throws his arm around his son's shoulder, whispers, ‘Gregory, those Merlin stories you read – we are going to write some more.’
Gregory says, ‘Oh, I didn't finish them. The sun came out.’
Later that day he walks back into a panelled chamber at Greenwich. It is the last day of 1530. He eases off his gloves, kidskin scented with amber. The fingers of his right hand touch the turquoise ring, settling it in place.
‘The council is waiting,’ the king says. He is laughing, as if at some personal triumph. ‘Go and join them. They will give you your oath.’
Dr Cranmer is with the king; very pale, very silent. The doctor nods, to acknowledge him; and then, surprisingly, a smile floods his face, lighting up the whole afternoon.
An air of improvisation hangs over the next hour. The king does not want to wait and it is a matter of which councillors can be found at short notice. The dukes are in their own countries, holding their Christmas courts. Old Warham is with us, Archbishop of Canterbury. It is fifteen years since Wolsey kicked him out of his post as Lord Chancellor; or, as the cardinal always put it, relieved him of worldly office, so allowing him the opportunity, in his last years, to embrace a life of prayer. ‘Well, Cromwell,’ he says. ‘You a councillor! What the world comes to!’ His face is seamed, his eyes are dead-fish eyes. His hands shake a little as he proffers the holy book.
Thomas Boleyn is with us, Earl of Wiltshire, Lord Privy Seal. The Lord Chancellor is here; he thinks in irritation, why can More never get a proper shave? Can't he make time, shorten his whipping schedule? As More moves into the light, he sees that he is more dishevelled than usual, his face gaunt, plum-coloured stains under his eyes. ‘What's happened to you?’
‘You didn't hear. My father died.’
‘That good old man,’ he says. ‘We will miss his wise counsel in the law.’
And his tedious stories. I don't think.
‘He died in my arms.’ More begins to cry; or rather, he seems to diminish, and his whole body to leak tears. He says, he was the light of my life, my father. We are not those great men, we are a shadow of what they were. Ask your people at Austin Friars to pray for him. ‘It's strange, Thomas, but since he went, I feel my age. As if I were just a boy, till a few days ago. But God has snapped his fingers, and I see my best years are behind me.’
‘You know, after Elizabeth died, my wife …’ And then, he wants to say, my daughters, my sister, my household decimated, my people never out of black, and now my cardinal lost … But he will not admit, for even a moment, that sorrow has sapped his will. You cannot get another father, but he would hardly want to; as for wives, they are two-a-penny with Thomas More. ‘You do not believe it now, but feeling will come back. For the world and all you must do in it.’
‘You have had your losses, I know. Well, well.’ The Lord Chancellor sniffs, he sighs, shakes his head. ‘Let us do this necessary thing.’
It is More who begins to reads him the oath. He swears to give faithful counsel, in his speech to be plain, impartial, in his manner secret, in his allegiance true. He is getting on to wise counsel and discreet, when the door flies opens and Gardiner swoops in, like a crow that's spied a dead sheep. ‘I don't think you can do this without Master Secretary,’ he says, and Warham says mildly, by the Blessed Rood, must we start swearing him all over again?
Thomas Boleyn is stroking his beard. His eye has fallen on the cardinal's ring, and his expression has moved from the shocked to the merely sardonic. ‘If we do not know the procedure,’ he says, ‘I feel sure Thomas Cromwell has a note of it. Give him a year or two, and we may all find ourselves superfluous.’
‘I am sure I shall not live to see it,’ Warham says. ‘Lord Chancellor, shall we get on? Oh, you poor man! Weeping again. I am very sorry for you. But death comes to us all.’
Dear God, he thinks, if that's the best you get from the Archbishop of Canterbury, I could do the job.
He swears to uphold the king's authorities. His preeminences, his jurisdictions. He swears to uphold his heirs and lawful successors, and he thinks of the bastard child Richmond, and Mary the talking shrimp, and the Duke of Norfolk showing off his thumbnail to the company. ‘Well, that's done,’ says the archbishop. ‘And amen to it, for what choice have we? Shall we have a glass of wine warmed? This cold gets into the bones.’
Thomas More says, ‘Now you are a member of the council, I hope you will tell the king what he ought to do, not merely what he can do. If the lion knew his own strength, it would be hard to rule him.’
Outside it is sleeting. Dark flakes fall into the waters of the Thames. England stretches away from him, low red sun on fields of snow.
He thinks back to the day York Place was wrecked. He and George Cavendish stood by as the chests were opened and the cardinal's vestments taken out. The copes were sewn in gold and silver thread, with patterns of golden stars, with birds, fishes, harts, lions, angels, flowers and Catherine wheels. When they were repacked and nailed into their travelling chests, the king's men delved into the boxes that held the albs and cottas, each folded, by an expert touch, into fine pleats. Passed hand to hand, weightless as resting angels, they glowed softly in the light; loose one, a man said, let us see the quality of it. Fingers tugged at the linen bands; here, let me, George Cavendish said. Freed, the cloth drifted against the air, dazzling white, fine as a moth's wing. When the lids of the vestments chests were raised there was the smell of cedar and spices, sombre, distant, desert-dry. But the floating angels had been packed away in lavender; London rain washed against the glass, and the scent of summer flooded the dim afternoon.
Whether it is through pain or fear, or some defect of nature; whether because of the summer heat, or the sound of hunting horns winding into the distance, or the spinning of sparkling dust in empty rooms; or whether it is that the child has lost sleep, while from dawn onwards her father's decamping household was packed up around her; for whatever reason, she is shrunken into herself, and her eyes are the colour of ditchwater. Once, as he is going through the preliminary Latin politenesses, he sees her grip tighten on the back of her mother's chair. ‘Madam, your daughter should sit.’ In case a contest of wills should ensue, he picks up a stool and places it, with a decisive thud, by Katherine's skirts.
The queen leans back, rigid inside her boned bodice, to whisper to her daughter. The ladies of Italy, seemingly carefree, wore constructions of iron beneath their silks. It took infinite patience, not just in negotiation, to get them out of their clothes.
Mary drops her head to whisper back; she hints, in Castilian, that it is her woman's disorder. Two pairs of eyes rise to meet his. The girl's glance is almost unfocused; she sees him, he supposes, as a bulky mass of shadow, in a space welling with distress. Stand up straight, Katherine murmurs: like a princess of England. Braced against the chair back, Mary takes a deep breath. She turns to him her plain pinched face: hard as Norfolk's thumbnail.
It is early afternoon, very hot. The sun casts against the wall shifting squares of lilac and gold. The shrivelled fields of Windsor are laid out below them. The Thames shrinks from its banks.
The queen speaks in English. ‘Do you know who this is? This is Master Cromwell. Who now writes all the laws.’
Caught awkwardly between languages, he says, ‘Madam, shall we go on in English, or Latin?’
‘Your cardinal would ask the same question. As if I were a stranger here. I will say to you, as I said to him, that I was first addressed as Princess of Wales when I was three