the bolt on his door. If he had an itch I never knew it, he was perforce to scratch it himself. Well, whatever, it was between the two of them, and me no part of it.’
‘Alice –’
‘Don't think I have no tenderness for him. He didn't marry me to live like a eunuch. We have had dealings, one time or another.’ She blushes, more angry than shy. ‘And when that is true, you cannot help feeling it, if a man might be cold, if he might be hungry, his flesh being one with yours. You feel to him as you might a child.’
‘Fetch him out, Alice, if it is within your power.’
‘More in yours than mine.’ She smiles sadly. ‘Is your little man Gregory home for the season? I have sometimes said to my husband, I wish Gregory Cromwell were my boy. I could bake him in a sugar crust and eat him all up.’
Gregory comes home for Christmas, with a letter from Rowland Lee saying he is a treasure and can come back to his household any time. ‘So must I back,’ Gregory says, ‘or am I finished being educated now?’
‘I have a scheme for the new year to improve your French.’
‘Rafe says I am being brought up like a prince.’
‘For now, you are all I have to practise on.’
‘My sweet father …’ Gregory picks up his little dog. He hugs her, and nuzzles the fur at the back of her neck. He waits. ‘Rafe and Richard say that when my education is sufficient you mean to marry me to some old dowager with a great settlement and black teeth, and she will wear me out with lechery and rule me with her whims, and she will leave her estate away from the children she has and they will hate me and scheme against my life and one morning I shall be dead in my bed.’
The spaniel swivels in his son's arms, turns on him her mild, round, wondering eyes. ‘They are making sport of you, Gregory. If I knew such a woman, I would marry her myself.’
Gregory nods. ‘She would never rule you, sir. And I dare say she would have a good deer park, which would be convenient to hunt. And the children would be in fear of you, even if they were men grown.’ He appears half-consoled. ‘What's that map? Is it the Indies?’
‘This is the Scots border,’ he says gently. ‘Harry Percy's country. Look, let me show you. These are parcels of his estates he has given away to his creditors. We cannot let it continue, because we can't leave our borders to chance.’
‘They say he is sick.’
‘Sick, or mad.’ His tone is indifferent. ‘He has no heir, and he and his wife never come together, so it is not likely he will. He has fallen out with his brothers, and he owes a deal of money to the king. So it would make sense to name the king his heir, would it not? He will be brought to see it.’
Gregory looks stricken. ‘Take his earldom?’
‘He can keep the style. We'll give him something to live on.’
‘Is this because of the cardinal?’
Harry Percy stopped Wolsey at Cawood, as he was riding south. He came in, keys in his hand, spattered with mud from the road: my lord, I arrest you for high treason. Look at my face, the cardinal said: I am not afraid of any man alive.
He shrugs. ‘Gregory, go and play. Take Bella and practise your French with her; she came to me from Lady Lisle in Calais. I won't be long. I have to settle the kingdom's bills.’
For Ireland at the next dispatch, brass cannon and iron shot, rammers and charging ladles, serpentine powder and four hundredweight of brimstone, five hundred yew bows and two barrels of bowstrings, two hundred each of spades, shovels, crowbars, pickaxes, horsehides, one hundred felling axes, one thousand horseshoes, eight thousand nails. The goldsmith Cornelys has not been paid for the cradle he made for the king's last child, the one that never saw the light; he claims for twenty shillings disbursed to Hans for painting Adam and Eve on the cradle, and he is owed for white satin, gold tassels and fringes, and the silver for modelling the apples in the garden of Eden.
He is talking to people in Florence about hiring a hundred arquebusiers for the Irish campaign. They don't down tools, like Englishmen do, if they have to fight in the woods or on rocky terrain.
The king says, a lucky new year to you, Cromwell. And more to follow. He thinks, luck has nothing to do with it. Of all his presents, Henry is most pleased with the Queen of Sheba, and with a unicorn's horn, and a device to squeeze oranges with a great gold ‘H’ on it.
Early in the new year the king gives him a title no one has ever held before: Vicegerent in Spirituals, his deputy in church affairs. Rumours that the religious houses will be put down have been running about the kingdom for three years and more. Now he has the power to visit, inspect and reform monasteries; to close them, if need be. There is hardly an abbey whose affairs he does not know, by virtue of his training under the cardinal and the letters that arrive day by day – some monks complaining of abuses and scandals and their superiors' disloyalty, others seeking offices within their communities, assuring him that a word in the right quarter will leave them forever in his debt.
He says to Chapuys, ‘Were you ever at the cathedral in Chartres? You walk the labyrinth,’ he says, ‘set into the pavement, and it seems there is no sense in it. But if you follow it faithfully it leads you straight to the centre. Straight to where you should be.’
Officially, he and the ambassador are barely on speaking terms. Unofficially, Chapuys sends him a vat of good olive oil. He retaliates with capons. The ambassador himself arrives, followed by a retainer carrying a parmesan cheese.
Chapuys looks doleful and chilly. ‘Your poor queen keeps the season meagrely at Kimbolton. She is so afraid of the heretic councillors about her husband that she has all her food cooked over the fire in her own room. And Kimbolton is more like a stable than a house.’
‘Nonsense,’ he says briskly. He hands the ambassador a warming glass of spiced wine. ‘We only moved her from Buckden because she complained it was damp. Kimbolton is a very good house.’
‘Ah, you say that because it has thick walls and a wide moat.’ The scent of honey and cinnamon wafts into the room, logs crackle in the hearth, the green boughs decorating his hall diffuse their own resinous scent. ‘And the Princess Mary is ill.’
‘Oh, the Lady Mary is always ill.’
‘The more cause to care for her!’ But Chapuys softens his tone. ‘If her mother could see her, it would be much comfort to them both.’
‘Much comfort to their escape plans.’
‘You are a heartless man.’ Chapuys sips his wine. ‘You know, the Emperor is ready to stand your friend.’ A pause, heavy with significance; into which, the ambassador sighs. ‘There are rumours that La Ana is distraught. That Henry is looking at another lady.’
He takes a breath and begins to talk. Henry has no time for other women. He is too busy counting his money. He is growing very close, he doesn't want Parliament to know his income. I have difficulty getting him to part with anything for the universities, or to pay his builders, or even for the poor. He only thinks of ordnance. Munitions. Shipbuilding. Beacons. Forts.
Chapuys turns down his mouth. He knows when he's being spun a line; if he didn't, where would be the pleasure in it? ‘So I am to tell my master, am I, that the King of England is so set on war he has no
