‘Perhaps I could say Mass for you,’ Dr Cranmer suggests, but Henry says, ‘No, you are tired. I've kept you from your beds, gentlemen.’
It is as easy as that, as peremptory. They find themselves turned out. They pass the guards. They walk in silence, back to their people, the man Brereton shadowing them. At last, Dr Cranmer says, ‘Neat work.’
He turns. Now he wants to laugh but he dare not laugh.
‘A deft touch, “and should your father appear to you …” I take it you don't like to be roused too often in the small hours.’
‘My household was alarmed.’
The doctor looks sorry then, as if he might have been frivolous. ‘Of course,’ he murmurs. ‘Because I am not a married man, I do not think of these things.’
‘I am not a married man, either.’
‘No. I forgot.’
‘You object to what I said?’
‘It was perfect in every way. As if you had thought of it in advance.’
‘How could I?’
‘Indeed. You are a man of vigorous invention. Still … for the gospel, you know …’
‘For the gospel, I count it a good night's work.’
‘But I wonder,’ Cranmer says, almost to himself. ‘I wonder what you think the gospel is. Do you think it is a book of blank sheets on which Thomas Cromwell imprints his desires?’
He stops. He puts a hand on his arm and says, ‘Dr Cranmer, look at me. Believe me. I am sincere. I cannot help it if God has given me a sinner's aspect. He must mean something by it.’
‘I dare say.’ Cranmer smiles. ‘He has arranged your face on purpose to disconcert our enemies. And that hand of yours, to take a grip on circumstance – when you took the king's arm in your grasp, I winced myself. And Henry, he felt it.’ He nods. ‘You are a person of great force of will.’
Clerics can do this: speak about your character. Give verdicts: this one seems favourable, though the doctor, like a fortuneteller, has told him no more than he already knew. ‘Come,’ Cranmer says, ‘your boys will be fretting to see you safe.’
Rafe, Gregory, Richard, cluster round him: what's happened? ‘The king had a dream.’
‘A dream?’ Rafe is shocked. ‘He got us out of bed for a dream?’
‘Believe me,’ Brereton says, ‘he gets one out of bed for less than that.’
‘Dr Cranmer and I agree that a king's dreams are not as other men's dreams.’
Gregory asks, ‘Was it a bad dream?’
‘Initially. He thought it was. It isn't now.’
They look at him, not understanding, but Gregory understands. ‘When I was small I dreamed of demons. I thought they were under my bed, but you said, it can't be so, you don't get demons our side of the river, the guards won't let them over London Bridge.’
‘So are you terrified,’ Richard says, ‘if you cross the river to Southwark?’
Gregory says, ‘Southwark? What is Southwark?’
‘Do you know,’ Rafe says, in a schoolmaster's tone, ‘there are times when I see a spark of something in Gregory. Not a blaze, to be sure. Just a spark.’
‘That you should mock! With a beard like that.’
‘Is that a beard?’ Richard says. ‘Those scant red bristles? I thought there was some negligence by the barber.’
They are hugging each other, wild with relief. Gregory says, ‘We thought the king had committed him to some dungeon.’
Cranmer nods, tolerant, amused. ‘Your children love you.’
Richard says, ‘We cannot do without the man in charge.’
It will be many hours till dawn. It is like the lightless morning on which the cardinal died. There is a smell of snow in the air.
‘I suspect he will want us again,’ Cranmer says. ‘When he has thought about what you have said to him and, shall we say, followed where his thoughts lead him?’
‘Still, I shall go back to the city and show my face.’ Change my clothes, he thinks, and wait for the next thing. To Brereton he says, ‘You know where to find me. William.’
A nod, and he walks away. ‘Dr Cranmer, tell the Lady we did a good night's work for her.’ He throws his arm around his son's shoulder, whispers, ‘Gregory, those Merlin stories you read – we are going to write some more.’
Gregory says, ‘Oh, I didn't finish them. The sun came out.’
Later that day he walks back into a panelled chamber at Greenwich. It is the last day of 1530. He eases off his gloves, kidskin scented with amber. The fingers of his right hand touch the turquoise ring, settling it in place.
‘The council is waiting,’ the king says. He is laughing, as if at some personal triumph. ‘Go and join them. They will give you your oath.’
Dr Cranmer is with the king; very pale, very silent. The doctor nods, to acknowledge him; and then, surprisingly, a smile floods his face, lighting up the whole afternoon.
An air of improvisation hangs over the next hour. The king does not want to wait and it is a matter of which councillors can be found at short notice. The dukes are in their own countries, holding their Christmas courts. Old Warham is with us, Archbishop of Canterbury. It is fifteen years since Wolsey kicked him out of his post as Lord Chancellor; or, as the cardinal always put it, relieved him of worldly office, so allowing him the opportunity, in his last years, to embrace a life of prayer. ‘Well, Cromwell,’ he says. ‘You a councillor! What the world comes to!’ His face is seamed, his eyes are dead-fish eyes. His hands shake a little as he proffers the holy book.
Thomas Boleyn is with us, Earl of Wiltshire, Lord Privy Seal. The Lord Chancellor is here; he thinks in irritation, why can More never get a proper shave? Can't he make time, shorten his whipping schedule? As More moves into the light, he sees that he is more dishevelled than usual, his face gaunt, plum-coloured stains under his eyes. ‘What's happened to you?’
‘You didn't hear. My father died.’
‘That good old man,’ he says. ‘We will miss his wise counsel in the law.’
And his tedious stories. I don't think.
‘He died in my arms.’ More begins to cry; or rather, he seems to diminish, and his whole body to leak tears. He says, he was the light of my life, my father. We are not those great men, we are a shadow of what they were. Ask your people at Austin Friars to pray for him. ‘It's strange, Thomas, but since he went, I feel my age. As if I were just a boy, till a few days ago. But God has snapped his fingers, and I see my best years are behind me.’
‘You know, after Elizabeth died, my wife …’ And then, he wants to say, my daughters, my sister, my household decimated, my people never out of black, and now my cardinal lost … But he will not admit, for even a moment, that sorrow has sapped his will. You cannot get another father, but he would hardly want to; as for wives, they are two-a-penny with Thomas More. ‘You do not believe it now, but feeling will come back. For the world and all you must do in it.’
‘You have had your losses, I know. Well, well.’ The Lord Chancellor sniffs, he sighs, shakes his head. ‘Let us do this necessary thing.’
It is More who begins to reads him the oath. He swears to give faithful counsel, in his speech to be plain, impartial, in his manner secret, in his allegiance true. He is getting on to wise counsel and discreet, when the door flies opens and Gardiner swoops in, like a crow that's spied a dead sheep. ‘I don't think you can do this without Master Secretary,’ he says, and Warham says mildly, by the Blessed Rood, must we start swearing him all over again?
Thomas Boleyn is stroking his beard. His eye has fallen on the cardinal's ring, and his expression has moved from the shocked to the merely sardonic. ‘If we do not know the procedure,’ he says, ‘I feel sure Thomas Cromwell has a note of it. Give him a year or two, and we may all find ourselves superfluous.’
‘I am sure I shall not live to see it,’ Warham says. ‘Lord Chancellor, shall we get on? Oh, you poor man!
