Erasmus has gone into the flames. What kind of devils would burn the gentle Erasmus? But no doubt, no doubt,’ More nods, ‘Münster will be restored to order. Philip the prince of Hesse, Luther's friend, I have no doubt he will lend the good bishop his cannon and his cannoneers, and one heretic will put down another. The brethren fall to scrapping, do you see? Like rabid dogs drooling in the streets, who tear out each other's entrails when they meet.’
‘I tell you how Münster will end. Someone inside the city will surrender it.’
‘You think so? You look as if you would offer me odds. But there, I was never much of a gambler. And now the king has all my money.’
‘A man like that, a tailor, jumps up for a month or two –’
‘A wool merchant, a blacksmith's son, he jumps up for a year or two …’
He stands, picks up his cape: black wool, lambskin lining. More's eyes gleam, ah, look, I have you on the run. Now he murmurs, as if it were a supper party, must you go? Stay a little, can't you? He lifts his chin. ‘So I shall not see Meg again?’
The man's tone, the emptiness, the loss: it goes straight to his heart. He turns away, to keep his reply calm and trite. ‘You have to say some words. That's all.’
‘Ahh. Just words.’
‘And if you don't want to say them I can put them to you in writing. Sign your name and the king will be happy. I will send my barge to row you back to Chelsea, and tie up at the wharf at the end of your own garden – not much to see, as you say, at this time of year, but think of the warm welcome within. Dame Alice is waiting – Alice's cooking, well, that alone would restore you; she is standing by your side watching you chew and the minute you wipe your mouth she picks you up in her arms and kisses away the mutton fat, why husband I have missed you! She bears you off to her bedchamber, locks the door and drops the key in her pocket and pulls off your clothes till there you are in your shirt and nothing but your little white legs sticking out – well, admit it, the woman is within her rights. Then next day – think of it – you rise before dawn, shuffle to your familiar cell and flog yourself, call for your bread and water, and by eight o'clock back in your hair shirt, and over it your old woollen gown, that blood-coloured one with the rent in … feet up on a stool, and your only son bringing in your letters … snapping the seal on your darling Erasmus … Then when you have read your letters, you can hobble out – let's say it's a sunny day – and look at your caged birds, and your little fox in its pen, and you can say, I was a prisoner too, but no more, because Cromwell showed me I could be free … Don't you want it? Don't you want to come out of this place?’
‘You should write a play,’ More says wonderingly.
He laughs. ‘Perhaps I shall.’
‘It's better than Chaucer. Words. Words. Just words.’
He turns. He stares at More. It's as if the light has changed. A window has opened on a strange country, where a cold wind from childhood blows. ‘That book … Was it a dictionary?’
More frowns. ‘I'm sorry?’
‘I came up the stairs at Lambeth – give me a moment … I came running up the stairs, carrying your measure of small beer and your wheaten loaf, to keep you from being hungry if you woke in the night. It was seven in the evening. You were reading, and when you looked up you held your hands over the book,’ he makes the shape of wings, ‘as if you were protecting it. I asked you, Master More, what is in that great book? You said, words, words, just words.’
More tilts his head. ‘This was when?’
‘I believe I was seven.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ More says genially. ‘I didn't know you when you were seven. Why, you were …’ he frowns, ‘you must have been … and I was …’
‘About to go to Oxford. You don't remember. But why would you?’ He shrugs. ‘I thought you were laughing at me.’
‘Oh, very probably I was,’ More says. ‘If indeed such a meeting took place. Now witness these present days, when you come here and laugh at me. Talking about Alice. And my little white legs.’
‘I think it must have been a dictionary. You are sure you don't remember? Well … my barge is waiting, and I don't want to keep the oars out in the cold.’
‘The days are very long in here,’ More says. ‘The nights are longer. My chest is bad. My breathing is tight.’
‘Back to Chelsea then, Dr Butts will visit, tut-tut Thomas More, what have you been doing to yourself? Hold your nose and drink off this foul mixture …’
‘Sometimes I think I shall not see morning.’
He opens the door. ‘Martin?’
Martin is thirty, wiry, his fair hair under his cap already sparse: pleasant face with a crinkly smile. His native town is Colchester, his father a tailor, and he learned to read on Wycliffe's gospel, which his father hid in their roof under the thatch. This is a new England; an England where Martin can dust the old text down, and show it to his neighbours. He has brothers, all of them Bible men. His wife is just now confined with her third child, ‘crawled into the straw,’ as he puts it. ‘Any news?’
‘Not yet. But will you stand godfather? Thomas if it's a boy, or if it's a girl you name her, sir.’
A touch of palms and a smile. ‘Grace,’ he says. A money gift is understood; the child's start in life. He turns back to the sick man, who now slumps over his table. ‘Sir Thomas says at night his breath comes short. Bring him some bolsters, cushions, whatever you can find, prop him up to ease him. I want him to have every opportunity to live to rethink his position, show loyalty to our king, and go home. And now, bid you both good afternoon.’
More looks up. ‘I want to write a letter.’
‘Of course. You shall have ink and paper.’
‘I want to write to Meg.’
‘Then send her a human word.’
More's letters are beyond the human. They may be addressed to his daughter, but they are written for his friends in Europe to read.
‘Cromwell …?’ More's voice calls him back. ‘How is the queen?’
More is always correct, not like those who slip up and say ‘Queen Katherine’. How is Anne? he means. But what could he tell him? He is on his way. He is out of the door. In the narrow window a blue dusk has replaced the grey.
He had heard her voice, from the next room: low, relentless. Henry yelping in indignation. ‘Not me! Not me.’
In the antechamber, Thomas Boleyn, Monseigneur, his narrow face rigid. Some Boleyn hangers-on, exchanging glances: Francis Weston, Francis Bryan. In a corner, trying to make himself inconspicuous, the lutenist Mark Smeaton; what's he doing here? Not quite a family conclave: George Boleyn is in Paris, holding talks. An idea has been floated that the infant Elizabeth should marry a son of France; the Boleyns really think this is going to happen.
‘Whatever can have occurred,’ he says, ‘to upset the queen?’ His tone is astonished: as if she were the most placid of women.
Weston says, ‘It's Lady Carey, she is – that is to say she finds herself –’
Bryan snorts. ‘With a bellyful of bastard.’
‘Ah. Didn't you know?’ The shock around him is gratifying. He shrugs. ‘I thought it a family matter.’
Bryan's eyepatch winks at him, today a jaundiced yellow. ‘You must watch her very closely, Cromwell.’
‘A matter in which I have failed,’ Boleyn says. ‘Evidently. She claims the child's father is William Stafford, and she has married him. You know this Stafford, do you?’
‘Just about. Well,’ he says cheerfully, ‘shall we go in? Mark, we are not setting this affair to music, so take yourself off to where you