change a decade brings! Riche was once the worst kind of law student, the kind with a file of pleas in mitigation to set against his sins; the kind who seeks out low taverns where lawyers are called vermin, and so is obliged in honour to start a fight; who arrives back at his lodgings in the Temple in the small hours stinking of cheap wine and with his jacket in shreds; the kind who halloos with a pack of terriers over Lincoln’s Inn Fields. But Riche is sobered and subdued now, protégé of the Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley, and constantly to and fro between that dignitary and Thomas Cromwell. The boys call him Sir Purse; Purse is getting fatter, they say. The cares of office have fallen on him, the duties of the father of a growing family; once a golden boy, he looks to be covered by a faint patina of dust. Who would have thought he would be Solicitor General? But then he has a good lawyer’s brain, and when you want a good lawyer, he is always at hand.
‘Bishop Gardiner’s book is not to your purpose,’ Riche begins. ‘Sir.’
‘It is not wholly bad. On the king’s powers, we concur.’
‘Yes, but,’ Riche says.
‘I was moved to quote to Gardiner this text: “Where the word of a king is, there is power, and who shall say to him, what doest thou?”’
Riche raises his eyebrows. ‘Parliament shall.’
Mr Wriothesley says, ‘Trust Master Riche to know what Parliament can do.’
It was on the questions of Parliament’s powers, it seems, that Riche tripped Thomas More, tripped and tipped him and perhaps betrayed him into treason. No one knows what was said in that room, in that cell; Riche had come out, pink-faced, hoping and half-suspecting that he had got enough, and gone straight from the Tower of London to him, to Thomas Cromwell. Who had said calmly, yes, this will do; we have him, thank you. Thank you, Purse, you did well.
Now Richard Cromwell leans towards him: ‘Tell us, my little friend Purse: in your good opinion, can Parliament put an heir in the queen’s belly?’
Riche blushes a little; he is nearly forty now, but because of his complexion he can still blush. ‘I never said Parliament can do what God will not. I said it could do more than Thomas More would allow.’
‘Martyr More,’ he says. ‘The word is in Rome that he and Fisher are to be made saints.’ Mr Wriothesley laughs. ‘I agree it is ridiculous,’ he says. He darts a look at his nephew: enough now, say nothing more about the queen, her belly or any other part.
For he has confided to Richard Cromwell something at least of the events at Elvetham, at Edward Seymour’s house. When the royal party was so suddenly diverted, Edward had stepped up and entertained them handsomely. But the king could not sleep that night, and sent the boy Weston to call him from his bed. A dancing candle flame, in a room of unfamiliar shape: ‘Christ, what time is it?’ Six o’clock, Weston said maliciously, and you are late.
In fact it was not four, the sky still dark. The shutter opened to let in air, Henry sat whispering to him, the planets their only witnesses: he had made sure that Weston was out of earshot, refused to speak till the door was shut. Just as well. ‘Cromwell,’ the king said, ‘what if I. What if I were to fear, what if I were to begin to suspect, there is some flaw in my marriage to Anne, some impediment, something displeasing to Almighty God?’
He had felt the years roll away: he was the cardinal, listening to the same conversation: only the queen’s name then was Katherine.
‘But what impediment?’ he had said, a little wearily. ‘What could it be, sir?’
‘I don’t know,’ the king had whispered. ‘I don’t know now but I may know. Was she not pre-contracted to Harry Percy?’
‘No, sir. He swore not, on the Bible. Your Majesty heard him swear.’
‘Ah, but you had been to see him, had you not, Cromwell, did you not trail him to some low inn and haul him up from his bench and pound his head with your fist?’
‘No, sir. I would never so mistreat any peer of the realm, let alone the Earl of Northumberland.’
‘Ah well. I am relieved to hear that. I may have got the details wrong. But that day the earl said what he thought I wanted him to say. He said that there was no union with Anne, no promise of marriage, let alone consummation. What if he lied?’
‘On oath, sir?’
‘But you are very frightening, Crumb. You would make a man forget his manners before God. What if he did lie? What if she made a contract with Percy amounting to a lawful marriage? If that were so, she cannot be married to me.’
He had kept silence, but he saw Henry’s mind running; his own was darting like a startled deer. ‘And I much suspect,’ the king had whispered. ‘I much suspect her with Thomas Wyatt.’
‘No, sir,’ he said, vehement even before he had time to think. Wyatt is his friend; his father, Sir Henry Wyatt, had charged him to make the boy’s path smooth; Wyatt is not a boy any more, but never mind.
‘You say no.’ Henry leaned towards him. ‘But did not Wyatt avoid the realm and go to Italy, because she would not favour him and he had no peace of mind while her image was before him?’
‘Well, there you have it. You say it yourself, Majesty. She would not favour him. If she had, no doubt he’d have stayed.’
‘But I cannot be sure,’ Henry insists. ‘Suppose she denied him then but favoured him some other time? Women are weak and easily conquered by flattery. Especially when men write verses to them, and there are some who say that Wyatt writes better verses than me, though I am the king.’
He blinks at him: four o’clock, sleepless; you could call it harmless vanity, God love him, if only it were not four o’clock. ‘Majesty,’ he says, ‘put your mind at rest. If Wyatt had made any inroads on that lady’s immaculate chastity, I feel sure he could not have resisted boasting about it. In verse, or common prose.’
Henry only grunts. But he looks up: Wyatt’s well-dressed shade, silken, slides across the window, blocks the cold starlight. On your way, phantom: his mind brushes it before him; who can understand Wyatt, who absolve him? The king says, ‘Well. Perhaps. Even if she did give way to Wyatt, it would be no impediment to my marriage, there can be no question of a contract between them since he himself was married as a boy and so not free to promise anything to Anne. But I tell you, it would be impediment to my trust in her. I would not take it kindly to have any woman lie to me, and say she came a virgin to my bed if she did not.’
Wolsey, where are you? You have heard all this before. Advise me now.
He stands up. He is easing this interview to an end. ‘Shall I tell them to bring you something, sir? Something to help you sleep again for an hour or two?’
‘I need something to sweeten my dreams. I wish I knew what it was. I have consulted Bishop Gardiner in this matter.’
He had tried to keep the shock off his face. Gone to Gardiner: behind my back?
‘And Gardiner said,’ Henry’s face was the picture of desolation, ‘he said there was doubt enough in the case, but that if the marriage were not good, if I were forced to put away Anne, I must return to Katherine. And I cannot do it, Cromwell. I am resolved that even if the whole of Christendom comes against me, I can never touch that stale old woman again.’
‘Well,’
