has Anthony seen the king? He seems to know his every gesture. I wouldn’t be surprised, he thinks, if Anthony has been bustling about the court these many years, drawing a
Christmas Day comes. The bells peal at Dunstan’s church. Snowflakes drift on the wind. Spaniels wear ribbons. It is Master Wriothesley who is first to arrive; he was a great actor when he was at Cambridge, and these last years he has been in charge of the plays in their household. ‘Give me just a small role,’ he had begged him. ‘I could be a tree? Then I need not learn anything. Trees have an impromptu wit.’
‘In the Indies,’ Gregory says, ‘trees can ambulate. They lift themselves up by their roots and if the wind blows they can move to a more sheltered spot.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘I’m afraid it was me,’ says Call-Me-Risley. ‘But he was so pleased to hear of it, I’m sure it was none harm.’
Wriothesley’s pretty wife is dressed as Maid Marion, her hair loose and falling to her waist. Wriothesley is simpering in skirts, to which his toddling daughter clings. ‘I’ve come as a virgin,’ he says. ‘They’re so rare these days that they send unicorns out looking for them.’
‘Go and change,’ he says. ‘I don’t like it.’ He lifts Master Wriothesley’s veil. ‘You’re not very convincing, with that beard.’
Call-Me drops a curtsey. ‘But I must have a disguise, sir.’
‘We have a worm costume left,’ Anthony says. ‘Or you could be a giant striped rose.’
‘St Uncumber was a virgin and grew a beard,’ Gregory volunteers. ‘The beard was to repulse her suitors and so guard her chastity. Women pray to her if they wish to be rid of their husbands.’
Call-Me goes to change. Worm or flower? ‘You could be the worm in the bud,’ Anthony suggests.
Rafe and his nephew Richard have come in; he sees them exchange a glance. He lifts Wriothesley’s child in his arms, asks after her baby brother and admires her cap. ‘Mistress, I have forgot your name.’
‘I am called Elizabeth,’ the child says.
Richard Cromwell says, ‘Aren’t you all, these days?’
I will win Call-Me, he thinks. I will win him away from Stephen Gardiner completely, and he will see where his true interest lies, and be loyal only to me and to his king.
When Richard Riche comes in with his wife he admires her new sleeves of russet satin. ‘Robert Packington charged me six shillings,’ she says, her tone outraged. ‘And fourpence to line them.’
‘Has Riche paid him?’ He is laughing. ‘You don’t want to pay Packington. It only encourages him.’
When Packington himself arrives, it’s with a grave face; it’s clear he has something to say, and it’s not just ‘How do you?’ His friend Humphrey Monmouth is by his side, a stalwart of the Drapers’ Guild. ‘William Tyndale is still in prison, and likely to be killed as I hear.’ Packington hesitates, but clearly he must speak. ‘I think of him in durance, as we enjoy our feast. What will you do for him, Thomas Cromwell?’
Packington is a gospel man, a reformer, one of his oldest friends. As a friend, he lays his difficulties before him: he himself cannot negotiate with the authorities in the Low Countries, he needs Henry’s permission. And Henry will not grant it, as Tyndale would never give him a good opinion in the matter of his divorce. Like Martin Luther, Tyndale believes Henry’s marriage to Katherine is valid, and no consideration of policy will sway him. You would think he would bend, to suit the King of England, to make a friend of him; but Tyndale is an obdurate man, plain and stubborn as a boulder.
‘So must our brother burn? This is what you are telling me? A merry Christmas to you, Master Secretary.’ He turns away. ‘They say money follows you these days like a spaniel his master.’
He puts a hand on his arm: ‘Rob –’ Then pulls back, says heartily, ‘They’re not wrong.’
He knows what his friend thinks. Master Secretary is so powerful that he can move the king’s conscience; and if he can, why does he not, unless he is too busy lining his pocket? He wants to ask, give me a day off, in Christ’s name.
Monmouth says, ‘You have not forgot our brothers whom Thomas More burned? And those he hounded to death? Those broken by months in prison?’
‘He didn’t break you. You lived to see More come down.’
‘But his arm reached out of his grave,’ Packington says. ‘More had men everywhere, all about Tyndale. It was More’s agents who betrayed him. If you cannot move the king, perhaps the queen can?’
‘The queen needs help herself. And if you want to help her, tell your wives to curb their poisoned tongues.’
He moves away. Rafe’s children – his stepchildren rather – are crying out to him to come and see their disguises. But the conversation, broken off, leaves a sour taste in his mouth that persists throughout the festival. Anthony pursues him with jokes, but he turns his eyes to the child dressed as an angel: it is Rafe’s step-daughter, the elder child of his wife Helen. She is wearing the peacock wings he made long ago for Grace.
Long ago? It is not ten years, not nearly ten. The feathers’ eyes gleam; the day is dark, but banks of candles pick out threads of gold, the scarlet splash of holly berries bound on the wall, the points of the silver star. That night, as snowflakes float to earth, Gregory asks him, ‘Where do the dead live now? Do we have Purgatory or not? They say it still exists, but no one knows where. They say we do no good by praying for the suffering souls. We cannot pray them out, as once we could.’
When his family died, he had done everything as was the custom in those days: offerings, masses. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘The king will not allow preaching on Purgatory, it is so contentious. You can talk to Archbishop Cranmer.’ A twist of his mouth. ‘He’ll tell you the latest thinking.’
‘I take it very hard if I cannot pray for my mother. Or if they let me pray but say I am wasting my breath because nobody hears me.’
