it pleases your master to spend his money,’ Henry says. ‘He is not a sorcerer, is he, this Guido? I should not like Francis to fall into the hands of a sorcerer. By the way, Cromwell, I am sending Stephen back to France.’
Stephen Gardiner. So the French do not like doing business with Norferk. Not surprising. ‘His mission will be of some duration?’
De Selve catches his eye. ‘But who will do Master Secretary's job?’
‘Oh, Cromwell will do it. Won't you?’ Henry smiles.
He is hardly down into the body of the hall before Master Wriothesley intercepts him. This is a big day for the heralds and their officers, their children and their friends; fat fees coming their way. He says so, and Call-Me says, fat fees coming your way. He edges back against the screens, voice low; one could foresee this, he says, because Henry is tired of it, Winchester's grinding opposition to him every step of the way. He is tired of arguing; now he is a married man he looks for a little more douceur. With Anne? he says and Call-Me laughs: you know her better than me, if as they say she is a lady with a sharp tongue, then all the more he needs ministers who are kind to him. So devote yourself to keeping Stephen abroad, and in time he will confirm you in the post.
Christophe, dressed up for the afternoon, is hovering nearby and making signals to him. You will excuse me, he says, but Wriothesley touches his gown of crimson, as if for luck, and says, you are the master of the house and the master of the revels, you are the origin of the king's happiness, you have done what the cardinal could not, and much more besides. Even this – he gestures around him, to where the nobility of England, having already eaten their words, are working through twenty-three dishes – even this feast has been superbly managed. No one need call for anything, it is all at his hand before he thinks of it.
He inclines his head, Wriothesley walks away, and he beckons the boy. Christophe says, one tells me to impart nothing of confidence in the hearing of Call-Me, as Rafe says he go trit-trot to Gardineur with anything he can get. Now sir, I have a message, you must go quick to the archbishop. When the feast is done. He glances up to the dais where the archbishop sits beside Anne, under her canopy of state. Neither of them is eating, though Anne is pretending to, both of them are scanning the hall.
‘I go trit-trot,’ he says. He is taken with the phrase. ‘Where?’
‘His old lodging which he says you know. He wishes you to be secret. He says not to bring any person.’
‘Well, you can come, Christophe. You're not a person.’
The boy grins.
He is apprehensive; does not quite like the thought of the abbey precincts, the drunken crowds at dusk, without somebody to watch his back. Unfortunately, a man cannot have two fronts.
They have almost reached Cranmer's lodging when fatigue enwraps his shoulders, an iron cloak. ‘Pause for a moment,’ he says to Christophe. He has hardly slept these last nights. He takes a breath, in shadow; here it is cold, and as he passes into the cloisters he is dipped in night. The rooms around are shuttered, empty, no sound from within. From behind him, an inchoate shouting from the Westminster streets, like the cries of those lost after a battle.
Cranmer looks up; he is already at his desk. ‘These are days we will never forget,’ he says. ‘No one who has missed it would believe it. The king spoke warm words in your praise today. I think it was intended I should convey them.’
‘I wonder why I ever gave any thought to the cost of brick-making for the Tower. It seems such a small item now. And tomorrow the jousts. Will you be there? My boy Richard is listed for the bouts on foot, fighting in single combat.’
‘He will prevail,’ Christophe declares. ‘Biff, and one is flat, never to rise again.’
‘Hush,’ Cranmer says. ‘You are not here, child. Cromwell, please.’
He opens a low door at the back of the chamber. He dips his head, and framed by the doorway in the half light he sees a table, a stool, and on the stool a woman sitting, young, tranquil, her head bowed over a book. She looks up. ‘Ich bitte Sie, ich brauch' eine Kerze.’
‘Christophe, a candle for her.’
The book before her he recognises; it is a tract of Luther's. ‘May I?’ he says, and picks it up.
He finds himself reading. His mind leaps along the lines. Is she some fugitive Cranmer is sheltering? Does he know the cost if she is taken? He has time to read half a page, before the archbishop trickles in, like a late apology. ‘This woman is …?’
Cranmer says, ‘Margarete. My wife.’
‘Dear God.’ He slams Luther down on the table. ‘What have you done? Where did you find her? Germany, evidently. This is why you were slow to return. I see it now. Why?’
Cranmer says meekly, ‘I could not help it.’
‘Do you know what the king will do to you when he finds you out? The master executioner of Paris has devised a machine, with a counterweighted beam – shall I draw it for you? – which when a heretic is burned dips him into the fire and lifts him out again, so that the people can see the stages of his agony. Now Henry will be wanting one. Or he will get some device to tease your head off your shoulders, over a period of forty days.’
The young woman looks up. ‘Mein Onkel –’
‘Who is that?’
She names a theologian, Andreas Osiander: a Nuremberger, a Lutheran. Her uncle and his friends, she says, and the learned men of her town, they believe –
‘It may be the belief in your country, madam, that a pastor should have a wife, but not here. Did Dr Cranmer not warn you of this?’
‘Please,’ Cranmer begs, ‘tell me what she is saying. Does she blame me? Is she wishing herself at home?’
‘No. No, she says you are kind. What took hold of you, man?’
‘I told you I had a secret.’
So you did. Down the side of the page. ‘But to keep her here, under the king's nose?’
‘I have kept her in the country. But I could not refuse her wish to see the celebrations.’
‘She has been out on the streets?’
‘Why not? No one knows her.’
True. The protection of the stranger in the city; one young woman in a cheerful cap and gown, one pair of eyes among the thousands of eyes: you can hide a tree in a forest. Cranmer approaches him. He holds out his hands, so lately smeared with the sacred oil; fine hands, long fingers, the pale rectangles of his palms crossed and recrossed by news of sea voyages and alliances. ‘I asked you here as my friend. For I count you my chief friend, Cromwell, in this world.’
So there is nothing to do, in friendship, but to take these bony digits in his own. ‘Very well. We will find a way. We will keep your lady secret. I only wonder that you did not leave her with her own family, till we can turn the king our way.’
Margarete is watching them, blue eyes flitting from face to face. She stands up. She pushes the table away from her; he watches her do it, and his heart lurches. Because he has seen a woman do this before, his
