suppose he’s tired of churchmen. He wants to know what he can learn from … whatever it is you call yourself, these days.’
‘A person,’ he says placidly. ‘The Duke of Norfolk says I’m a person.’
‘Master Wriothesley has his eye on his advantage.’
‘I hope we all have that. Or why did God give us eyes?’
‘He thinks of making his fortune. We all know that money sticks to your hands.’
Like the aphids to More’s roses. ‘No,’ he sighs. ‘It passes through them, alas. You know, Stephen, how I love luxury. Show me a carpet, and I’ll walk on it.’
The fool scolded and ejected, More rejoins them. ‘Alice, I have told you about drinking wine. Your nose is glowing.’ Alice’s face grows stiff, with dislike and a kind of fear. The younger women, who understand all that is said, bow their heads and examine their hands, fiddling with their rings and turning them to catch the light. Then something lands on the table with a thud, and Anne Cresacre, provoked into her native tongue, cries, ‘Henry, stop that!’ There is a gallery above with oriel windows; the fool, leaning through one of them, is peppering them with broken crusts. ‘Don’t flinch, masters,’ he shouts. ‘I am pelting you with God.’
He scores a hit on the old man, who wakes with a start. Sir John looks about him; with his napkin, he wipes dribble from his chin. ‘Now, Henry,’ More calls up. ‘You have wakened my father. And you are blaspheming. And wasting bread.’
‘Dear Lord, he should be whipped,’ Alice snaps.
He looks around him; he feels something which he identifies as pity, a heavy stirring beneath the breastbone. He believes Alice has a good heart; continues to believe it even when, taking his leave, permitted to thank her in English, she raps out, ‘Thomas Cromwell, why don’t you marry again?’
‘No one will have me, Lady Alice.’
‘Nonsense. Your master may be down but you’re not poor, are you? Got your money abroad, that’s what I’m told. Got a good house, haven’t you? Got the king’s ear, my husband says. And from what my sisters in the city say, got everything in good working order.’
‘Alice!’ More says. Smiling, he takes her wrist, shakes her a little. Gardiner laughs: his deep bass chuckle, like laughter through a crack in the earth.
When they go out to Master Secretary’s barge, the scent of the gardens is heavy in the air. ‘More goes to bed at nine o’clock,’ Stephen says.
‘With Alice?’
‘People say not.’
‘You have spies in the house?’
Stephen doesn’t answer.
It is dusk; lights bob in the river. ‘Dear God, I am hungry,’ Master Secretary complains. ‘I wish I had kept back one of the fool’s crusts. I wish I had laid hands on the white rabbit; I’d eat it raw.’
He says, ‘You know, he daren’t make himself plain.’
‘Indeed he dare not,’ Gardiner says. Beneath the canopy, he sits hunched into himself, as if he were cold. ‘But we all know his opinions, which I think are fixed and impervious to argument. When he took office, he said he would not meddle with the divorce, and the king accepted that, but I wonder how long he will accept it.’
‘I didn’t mean, make himself plain to the king. I meant, to Alice.’
Gardiner laughs. ‘True, if she understood what he said about her she’d send him down to the kitchens and have him plucked and roasted.’
‘Suppose she died? He’d be sorry then.’
‘He’d have another wife in the house before she was cold. Someone even uglier.’
He broods: foresees, vaguely, an opportunity for placing bets. ‘That young woman,’ he says. ‘Anne Cresacre. She is an heiress, you know? An orphan?’
‘There was some scandal, was there not?’
‘After her father died her neighbours stole her, for their son to marry. The boy raped her. She was thirteen. This was in York-shire … that’s how they go on there. My lord cardinal was furious when he heard of it. It was he who got her away. He put her under More’s roof because he thought she’d be safe.’
‘So she is.’
Not from humiliation. ‘Since More’s son married her, he lives off her lands. She has a hundred a year. You’d think she could have a string of pearls.’
‘Do you think More is disappointed in his boy? He shows no talent for affairs. Still, I hear you have a boy like that. You’ll be looking for an heiress for him soon.’ He doesn’t reply. It’s true; John More, Gregory Cromwell, what have we done to our sons? Made them into idle young gentlemen – but who can blame us for wanting for them the ease we didn’t have? One thing about More, he’s never idled for an hour, he’s passed his life reading, writing, talking towards what he believes is the good of the Christian commonwealth. Stephen says, ‘Of course you may have other sons. Aren’t you looking forward to the wife Alice will find you? She is warm in your praises.’
He feels afraid. It is like Mark, the lute player: people imagining what they cannot know. He is sure he and Johane have been secret. He says, ‘Don’t you ever think of marrying?’
A chill spreads over the waters. ‘I am in holy orders.’
‘Oh, come on, Stephen. You must have women. Don’t you?’
The pause is so long, so silent, that he can hear the oars as they dip into the Thames, the little splash as they rise; he can hear the ripples in their wake. He can hear a dog barking, from the southern shore. The Secretary asks, ‘What kind of Putney enquiry is that?’
The silence lasts till Westminster. But on the whole, not too bad a trip. As he mentions, disembarking, neither of them has thrown the other in the river. ‘I’m waiting till the water’s colder,’ Gardiner says. ‘And till I can tie weights to you. You have a trick of resurfacing, don’t you? By the way, why am I bringing you to Westminster?’
‘I am going to see Lady Anne.’
Gardiner is affronted. ‘You didn’t say so.’
‘Should I report all my plans to you?’
He knows that is what Gardiner would prefer. The word is that the king is losing patience with his council. He shouts at them, ‘The cardinal was a better man than any of you, for managing matters.’ He thinks, if my lord cardinal comes back – which by a caprice of the king’s he may, any time now – then you’re all dead, Norfolk, Gardiner, More. Wolsey is a merciful man, but surely: only up to a point.
Mary Shelton is in attendance; she looks up, simpers. Anne is sumptuous in her nightgown of dark silk. Her hair is down, her delicate feet bare inside kidskin slippers. She is slumped in a chair, as if the day has beaten the spirit out of her. But still, as she looks up, her eyes are sparkling, hostile. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Utopia.’
‘Oh.’
