On the evening of More's death the weather clears, and he walks in the garden with Rafe and Richard. The sun shows itself, a silver haze between rags of cloud. The beaten-down herb beds are scentless, and a skittish wind pulls at their clothes, hitting the backs of their necks and then veering round to slap their faces.
Rafe says, it's like being at sea. They walk at either side of him, and close, as if there were danger from whales, pirates and mermaids.
It is five days since the trial. Since then, much business has supervened, but they cannot help rehearse its events, trading with each other the pictures in their heads: the Attorney General jotting a last note on the indictment; More sniggering when some clerk made a slip in his Latin; the cold smooth faces of the Boleyns, father and son, on the judges' bench. More had never raised his voice; he sat in the chair Audley had provided for him, attentive, head tipped a little to the left, picking away at his sleeve.
So Riche's surprise, when More turned on him, was visible; he had taken a step backwards, and steadied himself against a table. ‘I know you of old, Riche, why would I open my mind to you?’ More on his feet, his voice dripping contempt. ‘I have known you since your youth, a gamer and a dicer, of no commendable fame even in your own house …’
‘By St Julian!’ Justice Fitzjames had exclaimed; it was ever his oath. Under his breath, to him, Cromwell: ‘Will he gain by this?’
The jury had not liked it: you never know what a jury will like. They took More's sudden animation to be shock and guilt, at being confronted with his own words. For sure, they all knew Riche's reputation. But are not drinking, dice and fighting more natural in a young man, on the whole, than fasting, beads and self-flagellation? It was Norfolk who had cut in on More's tirade, his voice dry: ‘Leave aside the man's character. What do you say to the matter in hand? Did you speak those words?’
Was it then that Master More played a trick too many? He had pulled himself together, hauling his slipping gown on to his shoulder; the gown secured, he paused, he calmed himself, he fitted one fist into the other. ‘I did not say what Riche alleges. Or if I did say it, I did not mean it with malice, therefore I am clear under the statute.’
He had watched an expression of derision cross Parnell's face. There's nothing harder than a London burgess who thinks he's being played for a fool. Audley or any of the lawyers could have put the jury right: it's just how we lawyers argue. But they don't want a lawyer's argument, they want the truth: did you say it, or didn't you? George Boleyn leans forward: can the prisoner let us have his own version of the conversation?
More turns, smiling, as if to say, a good point there, young master George. ‘I made no note of it. I had no writing materials, you see. They had already taken them away. For if you remember, my lord Rochford, that was the very reason Riche came to me, to remove from me the means of recording.’
And he had paused again, and looked at the jury as if expecting applause; they looked back, faces like stones.
Was that the turning point? They might have trusted More, being, as he was, Lord Chancellor at one time, and Purse, as everybody knows, such a waster. You never know what a jury will think: though when he had convened them, of course he had been persuasive. He had spoken with them that morning: I do not know what his defence is, but I don't hold out hope we will be finished by noon; I hope you all had a good breakfast? When you retire, you must take your time, of course, but if you are gone more than twenty minutes by my reckoning, I will come in to see how you do. To put you out of doubt, on any points of law.
Fifteen minutes was all they needed.
Now, this evening in the garden, July 6, the feast day of St Godelva (a blameless young wife of Bruges, whose evil husband drowned her in a pond), he looks up at the sky, feeling a change in the air, a damp drift like autumn. The interlude of feeble sun is over. Clouds drift and mass in towers and battlements, blowing in from Essex, stacking up over the city, driven by the wind across the broad soaked fields, across the sodden pastureland and swollen rivers, across the dripping forests of the west and out over the sea to Ireland. Richard retrieves his hat from a lavender bed and knocks droplets from it, swearing softly. A spatter of rain hits their faces. ‘Time to go in. I have letters to write.’
‘You'll not work till all hours tonight.’
‘No, grandfather Rafe. I shall get my bread and milk and say my Ave and so to bed. Can I take my dog up with me?’
‘Indeed no! And have you scampering overhead till all hours?’
It's true he didn't sleep much last night. It had come to him, the wrong side of midnight, that More was no doubt asleep himself, not knowing that it was his last night on earth. It is not usual, till the morning, to prepare the condemned man; so, he had thought, any vigil I keep for him, I keep alone.
They hurry in; the wind bangs a door behind them. Rafe takes his arm. He says, this silence of More's, it was never really silence, was it? It was loud with his treason; it was quibbling as far as quibbles would serve him, it was demurs and cavils, suave ambiguities. It was fear of plain words, or the assertion that plain words pervert themselves; More's dictionary, against our dictionary. You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, in its strings, holds a concord. A shrivelled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts.
Someone – probably not Christophe – has put on his desk a shining silver pot of cornflowers. The dusky blueness at the base of the crinkled petals reminds him of this morning's light; a late dawn for July, a sullen sky. By five, the Lieutenant of the Tower would have gone in to More.
Down below, he can hear a stream of messengers coming into the courtyard. There is much to do, tidying up after the dead man; after all, he thinks, I did it when I was a child, picking up after Morton's young gentlemen, and this is the last time I will have to do it; he pictures himself in the dawn, slopping into a leather jug the dregs of small beer, squeezing up the candle ends to take to the chandlery for remelting.
He can hear voices in the hall; never mind them: he returns to his letters. The Abbot of Rewley solicits a vacant post for his friend. The Mayor of York writes to him about weirs and fish traps; the Humber is running clean and sweet, he reads, so is the Ouse. A letter from Lord Lisle in Calais, relating some muddled tale of self-justification: he said, then I said, so he said.
Thomas More stands before him, more solid in death than he was in life. Perhaps he will always be here now: so agile of mind and so adamant, as he appeared in his final hour before the court. Audley was so happy with the guilty verdict that he began to pass sentence without asking the prisoner if he had anything to say; Fitzjames had to reach out and slap his arm, and More himself rose from his chair to halt him. He had much to say, and his voice was lively, his tone biting, and his eyes, his gestures, hardly those of a condemned man, in law already dead.
But there was nothing new in it: not new anyway to him. I follow my conscience, More said, you must follow yours. My conscience satisfies me – and now I will speech plainly – that your statute is faulty (and Norfolk roars at him) and that your authority baseless (Norfolk roars again: ‘Now we see your malice plain’). Parnell had laughed, and the jury exchanged glances, nodding to each other; and while the whole of Westminster Hall murmured, More proffered again, speaking against the noise, his treasonable method of counting. My conscience holds with the majority, which makes me know it does not speak false. ‘Against Henry's
