thinks I have not done well by you. But,’ he says, in the tone of one misunderstood, ‘I am a prince known for my munificence.’ The whole thing seems to puzzle him. ‘You are to be Master Secretary. Rewards shall follow. I do not understand why I have not done this long ago. But tell me: when it was put to you, about the lords Cromwell that once were in England, you said you were nothing to them. Have you thought further?’
‘To be honest, I never gave it another thought. I wouldn't wear another man's coat, or bear his arms. He might rise up from his grave and take issue with me.’
‘My lord Norfolk says you enjoy being low-born. He says you have devised it so, to torment him.’ Henry takes his arm. ‘It would seem convenient to me,’ he says, ‘that wherever we go – though we shall not go far this summer, considering the queen's condition – you should have rooms provided for you next to mine, so we can speak whenever I need you; and where it is possible, rooms that communicate directly, so that I need no go-between.’ He smiles towards the courtiers; they wash back, like a tide. ‘God strike me,’ Henry says, ‘if I meant to neglect you. I know when I have a friend.’
Outside, Rafe says, ‘God strike him … What terrible oaths he swears.’ He hugs his master. ‘This has been too long in coming. But listen, I have something to tell you when we get home.’
‘Tell me now. Is it something good?’
A gentleman comes forward and says, ‘Master Secretary, your barge is waiting to take you back to the city.’
‘I should have a house on the river,’ he says. ‘Like More.’
‘Oh, but leave Austin Friars? Think of the tennis court,’ Rafe says. ‘The gardens.’
The king has made his preparations in secret. Gardiner's arms have been burned off the paintwork. A flag with his coat of arms is raised beside the Tudor flag. He steps into his barge for the first time, and on the river, Rafe tells his news. The rocking of the boat beneath them is imperceptible. The flags are limp; it is a still morning, misty and dappled, and where the light touches flesh or linen or fresh leaves, there is a sheen like the sheen on an eggshell: the whole world luminous, its angles softened, its scent watery and green.
‘I have been married half a year,’ Rafe says, ‘and no one knows, but you know now. I have married Helen Barre.’
‘Oh, blood of Christ,’ he says. ‘Beneath my own roof. What did you do that for?’
Rafe sits mute while he says it all: she is a lovely nobody, a poor woman with no advantage to bring to you, you could have married an heiress. Wait till you tell your father! He will be outraged, he will say I have not looked after your interests. ‘And suppose one day her husband turns up?’
‘You told her she was free,’ Rafe says. He is trembling.
‘Which of us is free?’
He remembers what Helen had said: ‘So I could marry again? If anybody wanted me?’ He remembers how she had looked at him, a long look and full of meaning, only he did not read it. She might as well have turned somersaults, he would not have noticed, his mind had moved elsewhere; that conversation was over for him and he was on to something else. If I had wanted her for myself, and taken her, who could have reproached me for marrying a penniless laundress, even a beggar off the street? People would have said, so that was what Cromwell wanted, a beauty with supple flesh; no wonder he disdained the widows of the city. He doesn't need money, he doesn't need connections, he can afford to follow his appetites: he is Master Secretary now, and what next?
He stares down into the water, now brown, now clear as the light catches it, but always moving; the fish in its depths, the weeds, the drowned men with bony hands swimming. On the mud and shingle there are cast up belt buckles, fragments of glass, small warped coins with the kings' faces washed away. Once when he was a boy he found a horseshoe. A horse in the river? It seemed to him a very lucky find. But his father said, if horseshoes were lucky, boy, I would be the King of Cockaigne.
First he goes out to the kitchens to tell Thurston the news. ‘Well,’ the cook says easily, ‘as you're doing the job anyway.’ A chuckle. ‘Bishop Gardiner will be burning up inside. His giblets will be sizzling in his own grease.’ He whisks a bloodied cloth from a tray. ‘See these quails? You get more meat on a wasp.’
‘Malmsey?’ he suggests. ‘Seethe them?’
‘What, three dozen? Waste of good wine. I'll do some for you, if you like. Come from Lord Lisle at Calais. When you write, tell him if he sends another batch, we want them fatter or not at all. Will you remember?’
‘I'll make a note,’ he says gravely. ‘From now on I thought we might have the council meet here sometimes, when the king isn't sitting with us. We can give them dinner before.’
‘Right.’ Thurston titters. ‘Norfolk could do with some flesh on his twiggy little legs.’
‘Thurston, you needn't dirty your hands – you have enough staff. You could put on a gold chain, and strut about.’
‘Is that what you'll be doing?’ A wet poultry slap; then Thurston looks up at him, wiping pluck from his fingers. ‘I think I'd rather keep my hand in. In case things take a down-turn. Not that I say they will. Remember the cardinal, though.’
He remembers Norfolk: tell him to go north, or I will come where he is and tear him with my teeth.
May I substitute the word ‘bite’?
The saying comes to him, homo homini lupus, man is wolf to man.
‘So,’ he says to Rafe after supper, ‘you've made your name, Master Sadler. You'll be held up as a prime example of how to waste your connections. Fathers will point you out to their sons.’
‘I couldn't help it, sir.’ ‘How, not help it?’
Rafe says, as dry as he can manage, ‘I am violently in love with her.’
‘How does that feel? Is it like being violently angry?’
‘I suppose. Maybe. In that you feel more alive.’
‘I do not think I could feel any more alive than I am.’
He wonders if the cardinal was ever in love. But of course, why did he doubt? The all-consuming passion of Wolsey for Wolsey was hot enough to scorch all England. ‘Tell me, that evening after the queen was crowned …’ He shakes his head, turns over some papers on his desk: letters from the mayor of Hull.
‘I will tell you anything you ask,’ Rafe says. ‘I cannot imagine how I was not frank with you. But Helen, my wife, she thought it was better to be secret.’
‘But now she is carrying a child, I suppose, so you must declare yourselves?’
Rafe blushes.
‘That evening, when I came into Austin Friars looking for her, to take her to Cranmer's wife … and she came down,’ his eyes move as if he were seeing it, ‘she came down without her cap, and you after, with your hair sticking up, and you were angry with me for taking her away …’
‘Well, yes,’ Rafe says. His hand creeps up and he flattens his hair with his palm, as if that would help matters now. ‘They were all gone out to the feasts. That was the first time I took her to bed, but it was no blame. By then she had promised herself to me.’
He thinks, I am glad I have not brought up in my house a young man without feeling, who only studies his advancement. If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy; under my protection, impulses are a thing Rafe can afford. ‘Look, Rafe, this is a – well, God knows, a folly but not a disaster. Tell your father my promotion in the world will ensure yours. Of course, he will stamp and roar. It is what fathers are for. He will shout, I rue the day I parted with my boy to the debauched house of Cromwell. But we will bring him around. A little and a little.’
Till now the boy has been standing; he subsides on to a stool, hands on his head, head flung back; relief washes through his whole body.