Edward looks at him, carefully expressionless. Incredible things are related of Cromwell’s memory. He smiles to himself. He could set up the board, with only a little guesswork; he knows the type of game a man like Seymour plays. ‘We should begin afresh,’ he suggests. ‘The world moves on. You are happy with Italian rules? I don’t like these contests that drag out for a week.’
Their opening moves see some boldness on Edward’s part. But then, a white pawn poised between his fingertips, Seymour leans back in his chair, frowning, and takes it into his head to talk about St Augustine; and from St Augustine moves to Martin Luther. ‘It is a teaching that brings terror to the heart,’ he says. ‘That God would make us only to damn us. That his poor creatures, except some few of them, are born only for a struggle in this world and then eternal fire. Sometimes I fear it is true. But I find I hope it is not.’
‘Fat Martin has modified his position. Or so I hear. And to our comfort.’
‘What, more of us are saved? Or our good works are not entirely useless in God’s sight?’
‘I should not speak for him. You should read Philip Melanchthon. I will send you his new book. I hope he will visit us in England. We are talking to his people.’
Edward presses the pawn’s little round head to his lips. He looks as if he might tap his teeth with it. ‘Will the king allow that?’
‘He would not let in Brother Martin himself. He does not like his name mentioned. But Philip is an easier man, and it would be good for us, it would be very good for us, if we were to come into some helpful alliance with the German princes who favour the gospel. It would give the Emperor a fright, if we had friends and allies in his own domains.’
‘And that is all it means to you?’ Edward’s knight is skipping over the squares. ‘Diplomacy?’
‘I cherish diplomacy. It’s cheap.’
‘Yet they say you love the gospel yourself.’
‘It is no secret.’ He frowns. ‘Do you really mean to do that, Edward? I see my way to your queen. And I should not like to take advantage of you again, and have you say I spoiled your game with small talk about the state of your soul.’
A skewed smile. ‘And how is your queen these days?’
‘Anne? She is at outs with me. I feel my head wobble on my shoulders when she stares at me hard. She has heard that once or twice I spoke favourably of Katherine, the queen that was.’
‘And did you?’
‘Only to admire her spirit. Which, anyone must admit, is steadfast in adversity. And again, the queen thinks I am too favourable to the Princess Mary – I mean to say, to Lady Mary, as we should call her now. The king loves his elder daughter still, he says he cannot help it – and it grieves Anne, because she wants the Princess Elizabeth to be the only daughter he knows. She thinks we are too soft towards Mary and that we should tax her to admit her mother was never married lawfully to the king, and that she is a bastard.’
Edward twiddles the white pawn in his fingers, looks at it dubiously, sets it down on its square. ‘But is that not the state of affairs? I thought you had made her acknowledge it already.’
‘We solve the question by not raising it. She knows she is put out of the succession, and I do not think I should force her beyond a point. As the Emperor is Katherine’s nephew and Lady Mary’s cousin, I try not to provoke him. Charles holds us in the palm of his hand, do you see? But Anne does not understand the need to placate people. She thinks if she speaks sweetly to Henry, that is enough to do.’
‘Whereas you must speak sweetly to Europe.’ Edward laughs. His laugh has a rusty sound. His eyes say, you are being very frank, Master Cromwell: why?
‘Besides,’ his fingers hover over the black knight, ‘I am grown too great for the queen’s liking, since the king made me his deputy in church affairs. She hates Henry to listen to anyone but herself and her brother George and Monseigneur her father, and even her father gets the rough side of her tongue, and gets called lily-liver and timewaster.’
‘How does he take that?’ Edward looks down at the board. ‘Oh.’
‘Now take a careful look,’ he urges. ‘Do you want to play it out?’
‘I resign. I think.’ A sigh. ‘Yes. I resign.’
He, Cromwell, sweeps the pieces aside, stifling a yawn. ‘And I never mentioned your sister Jane, did I? So what’s your excuse now?’
When he goes upstairs he sees Rafe and Gregory jumping around near the great window. They are capering and scuffling, eyes on something invisible at their feet. At first he thinks they are playing football without a ball. But then they leap up like dancers and back-heel the thing, and he sees that it is long and thin, a fallen man. They lean down to tweak and jab, to apply torsion. ‘Ease off,’ Gregory says, ‘don’t snap his neck yet, I need to see him suffer.’
Rafe looks up, and affects to wipe his brow. Gregory rests hands on knees, getting his breath back, then nudges the victim with his foot. ‘This is Francis Weston. You think he is helping put the king to bed, but in fact we have him here in ghostly form. We stood around a corner and waited for him with a magic net.’
‘We are punishing him,’ Rafe leans down. ‘Ho, sir, are you sorry now?’ He spits on his palms. ‘What next with him, Gregory?’
‘Haul him up and out the window with him.’
‘Careful,’ he says. ‘The king favours Weston.’
‘Then he’ll favour him when he’s got a flat head,’ Rafe says. They scuffle and push each other out of the way, trying to be the first to stamp Francis flat. Rafe opens a window and both stoop for leverage, hoisting the phantom across the sill. Gregory helps it over, unsnagging its jacket where it catches, and with one shove drops it head first on the cobbles. They peer out after it. ‘He bounces,’ Rafe observes, and then they dust off their hands, smiling at him. ‘Give you good night, sir,’ Rafe says.
Later, Gregory sits at the foot of the bed in his shirt, his hair tousled, his shoes kicked off, one bare foot idly scuffing the matting: ‘So am I to be married? Am I to be married to Jane Seymour?’
‘Early in the summer you thought I was going to marry you to an old dowager with a deer park.’ People tease Gregory: Rafe Sadler, Thomas Wriothesley, the other young men of his house; his cousin, Richard Cromwell.
‘Yes, but why were you talking to her brother this last hour? First it was chess then it was talk, talk, talk. They say you liked Jane yourself.’
‘When?’
‘Last year. You liked her last year.’
‘If I did I’ve forgot.’
‘George Boleyn’s wife told me. Lady Rochford. She said, you may get a young stepmother from Wolf Hall, what will you think of that? So if you like Jane yourself,’ Gregory frowns, ‘she had better not be married to me.’
‘Do you think I’d steal your bride? Like old Sir John?’
Once his head is on the pillow, he says, ‘Hush, Gregory.’ He closes his eyes. Gregory is a good boy, though all the Latin he has learned, all the sonorous periods of the great authors, have rolled through his head and out again, like stones. Still, you think of Thomas More’s boy: offspring of a scholar all Europe admired, and poor young John can barely stumble through his Pater Noster. Gregory is a fine archer, a fine horseman, a shining star in the tilt yard, and his manners cannot be faulted. He speaks reverently to his superiors, not scuffling his feet or standing on one leg, and he is mild and polite with those below him. He knows how to bow to foreign diplomats in the manner of their own countries, sits at table without fidgeting or feeding spaniels, can neatly carve and joint any fowl if requested to serve his elders. He doesn’t slouch around with his jacket off one shoulder, or look in windows to admire himself, or stare around in church, or interrupt old men, or finish their stories for them. If anyone sneezes, he says, ‘Christ help you!’
Christ help you, sir or madam.
Gregory raises his head. ‘Thomas More,’ he says. ‘The jury. Is that truly what happened?’
He had recognised young Weston’s story: in a broad sense, even if he didn’t assent to the detail. He closes his eyes. ‘I didn’t have a hatchet,’ he says.
He is tired: he speaks to God; he says: God guide me. Sometimes when he is on the verge of sleep the
