gate. When he had rode back from his visit to Katherine, the usual press of Londoners had gathered outside Austin Friars. They might not know him up-country, but they know him here. They come to stare at his servants, at his horses and their tack, at his colours flying; but today he rides in with an anonymous guard, a bunch of tired men coming from nowhere. ‘Where’ve you been, Lord Cromwell?’ a man bawls: as if he owes the Londoners an explanation. Sometimes he sees himself, in his mind’s eye, dressed in filched cast-offs, a soldier from a broken army: a starving boy, a stranger, a gawper at his own gate.
They are about to pass into the courtyard, when he says, wait; a wan face bobs by his side; a little man has weaselled through the crowd, and catches at his stirrup. He is weeping, and so evidently harmless that no one even raises a hand to him; only he, Cromwell, feels his neck bristle: this is how you are trapped, your attention snared by some staged incident while the killer comes behind with the knife. But the men at arms are a wall at his back, and this bowed wretch is shaking so much that if he whipped out a blade he would peel his own knees. He leans down. ‘Do I know you? I saw you here before.’
Tears trickle down the man’s face. He has no visible teeth, a state that would upset anyone. ‘God bless you, my lord. May he cherish you and increase your wealth.’
‘Oh, he does.’ He is tired of telling people he is not their lord.
‘Give me a place,’ the man begs. ‘I am in rags, as you see. I will sleep with the dogs if it please you.’
‘The dogs might not like it.’
One of his escort closes in: ‘Shall I whip him off, sir?’
At this, the man sets up a fresh wailing. ‘Oh, hush,’ he says, as if to a child. The lament redoubles, the tears spurt as if he had a pump behind his nose. Perhaps he cried his teeth right out of his head? Is that possible?
‘I am a masterless man,’ the poor creature sobs. ‘My dear lord was killed in an explosion.’
‘God forgive us, what kind of explosion?’ His attention is riveted: are people wasting gunpowder? We may need that if the Emperor comes.
The man is rocking himself, his arms clasped across his chest; his legs seem about to give way. He, Cromwell, reaches down and hauls him up by his sagging jerkin; he doesn’t want him rolling on the ground and panicking the horses. ‘Stand up. Give your name.’
A choked sob: ‘Anthony.’
‘What can you do, besides weep?’
‘If it please you, I was much valued before…alas!’ He breaks down entirely, wracked and swaying.
‘Before the explosion,’ he says patiently. ‘Now, what was it you did? Water the orchard? Swill out the privies?’
‘Alas,’ the man wails. ‘Neither of those. Nothing so useful.’ His chest heaves. ‘Sir, I was a jester.’
He lets go of his jerkin, stares at him, and begins to laugh. A disbelieving snigger runs from man to man through the crowd. His escort bow over their saddles, giggling.
The little man seems to bounce from his grip. He regains his balance and looks up at him. His cheeks are quite dry, and a sly smile has replaced the lineaments of despair. ‘So,’ he says, ‘am I coming in?’
Now as Christmas approaches Anthony keeps the household open-mouthed with stories of the horrors that have come to people he knows, round and about the time of the Nativity: assault by innkeepers, stables catching fire, livestock wandering the hills. He does different voices for men and women, can make dogs talk impertinently to their masters, can mimic ambassador Chapuys and anyone else you name. ‘Do you impersonate me?’ he asks.
‘You grudge me the opportunity,’ Anthony says. ‘A man could wish for a master who rolls his words around his mouth, or is always crossing himself and crying Jesu-Maria, or grinning, or frowning, or a man with a twitch. But you don’t hum, or shuffle your feet or twirl your thumbs.’
‘My father had a savage temper. I learned as a child to be still. If he noticed me, he hit me.’
‘As for what is in there,’ Anthony looks him in the eye, taps his forehead, ‘as for what’s in there, who knows? I may as well impersonate a shutter. A plank has more expression. A water butt.’
‘I’ll give you a good character, if you want a new master.’
‘I’ll get you in the end. When I learn to imitate a gatepost. A standing stone. A statue. There are statues who move their eyes. In the north country.’
‘I have some of them in custody. In the strong rooms.’
‘Can I have the key? I want to see if they are still moving their eyes, in the dark without their keepers.’
‘Are you a papist, Anthony?’
‘I may be. I like miracles. I have been a pilgrim in my time. But the fist of Cromwell is more proximate than the hand of God.’
On Christmas Eve Anthony sings ‘Pastime With Good Company’, in the person of the king and wearing a dish for a crown. He expands before your eyes, his meagre limbs fleshing out. The king has a silly voice, too high for a big man. It’s something we pretend not to notice. But now he laughs at Anthony, his hand covering his mouth. When 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
