Dissolution

'Now I have to go to Hampton Court; I must try to persuade the king to attend to business. Matthew, make sure no word gets out, censor letters from the monastery.'

He rose and, coming round the desk, put his arm round my shoulder as I got to my feet. It was a recognized sign of favour.

'Find the culprit quickly, but above all quietly.' He smiled, then reached over and handed me a tiny golden box. Inside was another phial, a tiny circular one containing a gobbet of thick pale liquid that slopped against the glass. 'What do you think of this, by the way? You might be able to work out how it's done. I can't.'

'What is it?'

'It's stood in Bilston Nunnery four hundred years. Said to be the milk of the Virgin Mary.'

I exclaimed with disgust. Cromwell laughed.

'What amazes me is how they imagined anyone would get milk from the Virgin Mary. But look, it must have been replaced recently to stay liquid like that; I was expecting to see a hole in the back like that other, but it seems quite sealed in. What do you think? See, use this.' He passed me a jeweller's glass and I examined the box, peering for a tiny hole, but I could see nothing. I pushed and prodded for a secret hinge, then shook my head.

'I can't fathom it. It appears completely sealed.'

'Pity. I wanted to show it to the king, it would amuse him.' He walked me to the door and opened it, his arm still round me so that the clerks should see I was favoured. But as I left the chamber my eye fell again on the two grinning skulls, the candlelight playing about their ancient eye sockets. My master's arm still round me as it was, I had to suppress a shiver.

CHAPTER 2

Mercifully the rain had stopped when I left Westminster. I rode home slowly as dusk fell. Lord Cromwell's words had frightened me. I realized I had grown used to being in favour; the thought of being cast out chilled me, but more than that I was frightened by his questions about my loyalty. I must take care what I said around the courts.

Earlier that year I had bought a spacious new house in Chancery Lane, the broad avenue bearing the name of His Majesty's court and of my horse. It was a fine stone property with fully glassed windows, and had cost a great deal. Joan Woode, my housekeeper, opened the door. A kindly, bustling widow, she had been with me some years and greeted me warmly. She liked to mother me, which I did not find unwelcome even if sometimes she exceeded her place.

I was hungry, and though it was early I told her to prepare supper, before going through to the parlour. I was proud of the room, whose panelling I had had painted with a classical woodland scene at some expense. Logs burned in the fireplace and beside it, on a stool, sat Mark. He made a strange sight. He had taken off his shirt, baring a white muscular chest, and was sewing buttons of agate embossed with an elaborate design onto the neck. A dozen needles, each trailing a length of white thread, were stuck into his codpiece, one of the exaggerated ones then in fashion. I had to check myself from laughing.

He smiled his habitual broad grin, showing good teeth a little too large for his mouth.

'Sir. I heard you arrive. A messenger from Lord Cromwell brought a package and said you were back. Forgive me not rising, but I would hate one of these needles to slip.' Despite his grin, his eyes were guarded; if I had seen Cromwell, his disgrace was likely to have been mentioned.

I grunted. I noticed his brown hair was cut short; King Henry, following the close cutting of his own hair to hide his growing baldness, had ordered all at court to wear cropped hair and it had become the fashion. The new style became Mark well enough, though I had decided to keep mine long as it better suited my angular cast of features.

'Could Joan not do your sewing?'

'She was busy preparing for your arrival.'

I picked up a volume from the table. 'You have been reading my Machiavelli, I see.'

'You said I might, for a pastime.'

I dropped into my cushioned armchair with a sigh. 'And how do you like him?'

'Not well. He counsels his prince to practise cruelty and deception.'

'He believes these things are necessary to rule well, and that the calls to virtue of the classical writers ignore life's realities. 'If a ruler who wants to act honourably is surrounded by unscrupulous men his downfall is inevitable.''

He bit off a piece of thread. 'It is a bitter saying.'

'Machiavelli was a bitter man. He wrote his book after being tortured by the Medici prince to whom it was addressed. You had better not tell people you have read it if you go back to Westminster. It is not approved of there.'

He looked up at the hint. 'I may go back? Has Lord Cromwell-'

'Perhaps. We will talk more at dinner. I am tired and would rest a little.' I heaved myself out of the chair and went out. It would do Mark no harm to stew a little.

***

Joan had been busy; there was a good fire in my room and my feather bed had been made up. A candle had been lit and set on the desk beside my most prized possession, a copy of the newly licensed English Bible. It soothed me to see it there, lit up, the focus of the room, drawing the eye. I opened it and ran my fingers across the Gothic print, whose glossy surface shone in the candlelight. Next to it lay a large packet of papers. I took my dagger and cut the seal, the hard wax cracking into red shards and falling onto the desk. Inside was a letter of commission in Cromwell's own vigorous hand, a bound volume of the Comperta and documents relating to the Scarnsea visitation.

I stood a moment, looking through the diamond-paned window into my garden with its walled lawn, peaceful in the gloom. I wanted to be here, in the warmth and comfort of home, as winter came on. I sighed and lay down on the bed, feeling my tired back muscles twitch as they slowly relaxed. I had another long ride tomorrow, and those were becoming more difficult and painful every year.

My disability had come upon me when I was three; I began to stoop forward and to the right, and no brace could correct it. By the age of five I was a true hunchback, as I have remained to this day. I was always jealous of the boys and girls around the farm, who ran and played, while I could manage nothing more than a crab-like scuttle they mocked me for. Sometimes I would cry out to God at the injustice of it.

My father farmed a good acreage of sheep and arable land near Lichfield. It was a great sorrow to him that I could never work the farm, for I was his only surviving child. I felt it all the more because he never reproached me for my infirmity; he simply said quietly one day that when he grew too old to work the farm himself he would appoint a steward, who perhaps could work for me when he was gone.

I was sixteen when the steward arrived. I remember biting back a flood of resentment when William Poer appeared in the house one summer's day, a big, dark-haired man with a ruddy open face and strong hands which enveloped mine in a horny grip. I was introduced to his wife, a pale pretty creature, and to Mark, then a sturdy, tousle-headed toddler who clung to her skirts and stared at me with a dirty thumb in his mouth.

By then it had already been decided that I was to go to London to study at the Inns of Court. It was the coming thing, if one wished financial independence for a son and he had a modicum of brains, to send him to law. My father said that not only was there money to be made, but legal skills would one day help me in supervising the steward's running of the farm. He thought I would return to Lichfield, but I never did.

I arrived in London in 1518, the year after Martin Luther posted his challenge to the pope on the door of Wittenberg Castle church. I remember how hard it was at first to get used to the noise, the crowds – above all, the constant stench – of the capital. But in my classes and lodgings I soon found good company. Those were already days of controversy, the common lawyers arguing against the spreading use of the Church courts. I sided with those who said the king's courts were being robbed of their prerogative – for if men dispute the meaning of a contract, or