students of Gray’s Inn? For if not you, then who?
In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or the living Christ, or an old enemy of yours; or a new enemy, one you do not know until you see his face appear between the rustling leaves, and see the glint of his dagger. You may find a woman asleep in a bower of leaves. For a moment, before you don’t recognise her, you will think she is someone you know.
At Austin Friars, there is little chance to be alone, or alone with just one person. Every letter of the alphabet watches you. In the counting house there is young Thomas Avery, whom you are training up to take a grip on your private finances. Midway through the letters comes Marlinspike, strolling in the garden with his observant golden eyes. Towards the end of the alphabet comes Thomas Wriothesley pronounced Risley. He is a bright young man, twenty-five or so and well connected, son of York Herald, nephew to Garter King-at-Arms. In Wolsey’s household he worked under your direction, then was carried away by Gardiner, as Master Secretary, to work for him. Now he is sometimes at court, sometimes at Austin Friars. He’s Stephen’s spy, the children say – Richard and Rafe.
Master Wriothesley is tall, with red-blond hair, but without the propensity of others of that complexion – the king, let’s say – to grow pink when gratified, or mottled when crossed; he is always pale and cool, always his handsome self, always composed. At Trinity Hall he was a great actor in the students’ plays, and he has certain affectations, a consciousness of himself, of how he appears; they mimic him behind his back, Richard and Rafe, and say, ‘My name is Wri-oth-es-ley, but as I wish to spare you effort, you can call me Risley.’ They say, he only complicates his name like that so he can come here and sign things, and use up our ink. They say, you know Gardiner, he is too angry to use long names, Gardiner just calls him ‘you’. They are pleased with this joke and for a while, every time Mr W appears, they shout, ‘It’s you!’
Have mercy, he says, on Master Wriothesley. Cambridge men should have our respect.
He would like to ask them, Richard, Rafe, Master Wriothesley call me Risley: do I look like a murderer? There is a boy who says I do.
This year, there has been no summer plague. Londoners give thanks on their knees. On St John’s Eve, the bonfires burn all night. At dawn, white lilies are carried in from the fields. The city daughters with shivering fingers weave them into drooping wreaths, to pin on the city’s gates, and on city doors.
He thinks about that little girl like a white flower; the girl with Lady Anne, who manoeuvred herself around the door. It would have been easy to find out her name, except he didn’t, because he was busy finding out secrets from Mary. Next time he sees her … but what’s the use of thinking of it? She will come of some noble house. He had meant to write to Gregory and say, I have seen such a sweet girl, I will find out who she is and, if I steer our family adroitly in the next few years, perhaps you can marry her.
He has not written this. In his present precarious situation, it would be about as useful as the letters Gregory used to write to him: Dear father, I hope you are well. I hope your dog is well. And now no more for lack of time.
Lord Chancellor More says, ‘Come and see me, and we’ll talk about Wolsey’s colleges. I feel sure the king will do something for the poor scholars. Do come. Come and see my roses before the heat spoils them. Come and see my new carpet.’
It is a muted, grey day; when he arrives at Chelsea, Master Secretary’s barge is tied up, the Tudor flag limp in the sultry air. Beyond the gatehouse, the red-brick house, new-built, offers its bright facade to the river. He strolls towards it, through the mulberry trees. Standing in the porch, under the honeysuckle, Stephen Gardiner. The grounds at Chelsea are full of small pet animals, and as he approaches, and his host greets him, he sees that the Chancellor of England is holding a lop-eared rabbit with snowy fur; it hangs peacefully in his hands, like ermine mittens.
‘Is your son-in-law Roper with us today?’ Gardiner asks. ‘A pity. I hoped to see him change his religion again. I wanted to witness it.’
‘A garden tour?’ More offers.
‘I thought that we might see him sit down a friend of Luther, as formerly he was, yet come back to the church by the time they bring in the currants and gooseberries.’
‘Will Roper is now settled,’ More says, ‘in the faith of England and of Rome.’
He says, ‘It’s not really a good year for soft fruit.’
More looks at him out of the tail of his eye; he smiles. He chats genially as he leads them into the house. Lolloping after them comes Henry Pattinson, a servant of More’s he sometimes calls his fool, and to whom he allows licence. The man is a great brawler; normally you take in a fool to protect him, but in Pattinson’s case it’s the rest of the world needs protection. Is he really simple? There’s something sly in More, he enjoys embarrassing people; it would be like him to have a fool that wasn’t. Pattinson’s supposed to have fallen from a church steeple and hit his head. At his waist, he wears a knotted string which he sometimes says is his rosary; sometimes he says it is his scourge. Sometimes he says it is the rope that should have saved him from his fall.
Entering the house, you meet the family hanging up. You see them painted life-size before you meet them in the flesh; and More, conscious of the double effect it makes, pauses, to let you survey them, to take them in. The favourite, Meg, sits at her father’s feet with a book on her knee. Gathered loosely about the Lord Chancellor are his son John; his ward Anne Cresacre, who is John’s wife; Margaret Giggs, who is also his ward; his aged father, Sir John More; his daughters Cicely and Elizabeth; Pattinson, with goggle eyes; and his wife Alice, with lowered head and wearing a cross, at the edge of the picture. Master Holbein has grouped them under his gaze, and fixed them for ever: as long as no moth consumes, no flame or mould or blight.
In real life there is something fraying about their host, a suspicion of unravelling weave; being at his leisure, he wears a simple wool gown. The new carpet, for their inspection, is stretched out on two trestle tables. The ground is not crimson but a blush colour: not rose madder, he thinks, but a red dye mixed with whey. ‘My lord cardinal liked turkey carpets,’ he murmurs. ‘The Doge once sent him sixty.’ The wool is soft wool from mountain sheep, but none of them were black sheep; where the pattern is darkest the surface has already a brittle feel, from patchy dyeing, and with time and use it may flake away. He turns up the corner, runs his fingertips over the knots, counting them by the inch, in an easy accustomed action. ‘This is the Ghiordes knot,’ he says, ‘but the pattern is from Pergamon – you see there within the octagons, the eight-pointed star?’ He smooths down the corner, and walks away from it, turns back, says ‘there’ – he walks forward, puts a tender hand on the flaw, the interruption in the weave, the lozenge slightly distorted, warped out of true. At worst, the carpet is two carpets, pieced together. At best, it has been woven by the village’s Pattinson, or patched together last year by Venetian slaves in a backstreet workshop. To be sure, he needs to turn the whole thing over. His host says, ‘Not a good buy?’
It’s beautiful, he says, not wanting to spoil his pleasure. But next time, he thinks, take me with you. His hand skims the surface, rich and soft. The flaw in the weave hardly matters. A turkey carpet is not on oath. There are some people in this world who like everything squared up and precise, and there are those who will allow some drift at the margins. He is both these kinds of person. He would not allow, for example, a careless ambiguity in a lease, but instinct tells him that sometimes a contract need not be drawn too tight. Leases, writs, statutes, all are written to be read, and each person reads them by the light of self-interest. More says, ‘What do you think, gentlemen? Walk on it, or hang it on the wall?’
‘Walk
