Now, Norris gapes at him: ‘And that is why? It was a play. It was an entertainment, as you said yourself. The cardinal was dead, he could not know. And while he was alive, was I not good to him in his trouble? Did I not, when he was exiled from court, ride after him, and come to him on Putney Heath with a token from the king’s own hand?’
He nods. ‘I concede that others behaved worse. But you see, none of you behaved like Christians. You behaved like savages instead, falling on his estates and possessions.’
He sees he need not continue. The indignation on Norris’s face is replaced by a look of blank terror. At least, he thinks, the fellow has the wit to see what this is about: not one year’s grudge or two, but a fat extract from the book of grief, kept since the cardinal came down. He says, ‘Life pays you out, Norris. Don’t you find? And,’ he adds gently, ‘it is not all about the cardinal, either. I would not want you to think I am without motives of my own.’
Norris raises his face. ‘What has Mark Smeaton done to you?’
‘Mark?’ He laughs. ‘I don’t like the way he looks at me.’
Would Norris understand if he spelled it out? He needs guilty men. So he has found men who are guilty. Though perhaps not guilty as charged.
A silence falls. He sits, he waits, his eyes on the dying man. He is already thinking what he will do with Norris’s offices, his Crown grants. He will try to oblige the humble applicants, like the man with fourteen children, who wants the keeping of a park at Windsor and a post in the administration of the castle. Norris’s offices in Wales can be parcelled out to young Richmond, and that will bring the posts in effect back to the king and under his own supervision. And Rafe could have the Norris estate at Greenwich, he could house Helen and the children there when he has to be at court. And Edward Seymour has mentioned he would like Norris’s house in Kew.
Harry Norris says, ‘I assume you will not just lead us out to execution. There will be a process, a trial? Yes? I hope it will be quick. I suppose it will. The cardinal used to say, Cromwell will do in a week what will take another man a year, it is not worth your while to block him or oppose him. If you reach out to grip him he will not be there, he will have ridden twenty miles while you are pulling your boots on.’ He looks up. ‘If you intend to kill me in public, and mount a show, be quick. Or I may die of grief alone in this room.’
He shakes his head. ‘You’ll live.’ He once thought it himself, that he might die of grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But the pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.
Norris touches his ribs. ‘The pain is here. I felt it last night. I sat up, breathless. I durst not lie down again.’
‘When he was brought down, the cardinal said the same. The pain was like a whetstone, he said. A whetstone, and the knife was drawn across it. And it ground away, till he was dead.’
He rises, picks up his papers: inclining his head, takes his leave. Henry Norris: left forepaw.
William Brereton. Gentleman of Cheshire. Servant in Wales to the young Duke of Richmond, and a bad servant too. A turbulent, arrogant, hard-as-nails man, from a turbulent line.
‘Let’s go back,’ he says, ‘let’s go back to the cardinal’s time, because I do remember someone of your household killed a man during a bowls match.’
‘The game can get very heated,’ Brereton says. ‘You know yourself. You play, I hear.’
‘And the cardinal thought, it is time for a reckoning; and your family were fined because they impeded the investigation. I ask myself, has anything changed since then? You think you can do anything because you are the Duke of Richmond’s servant, and because Norfolk favours you –’
‘The king himself favours me.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Does he? Then you should complain to him. Because you are ill-lodged, are you not? Sadly for you, the king is not here, so you must make do with me and my long memory. But let us not cast back for instances. Look, for instance, at the case of the Flintshire gentleman, John ap Eyton. That is so recent you have not forgot it.’
‘So that is why I am here,’ Brereton says.
‘Not entirely, but leave aside now your adultery with the queen and concentrate on Eyton. The facts of the case are known to you. There is a quarrel, blows exchanged, one of your household ends up dead, but the man Eyton is tried in due form before a London jury, and is acquitted. Now, having no respect for either law or justice, you swear revenge. You have the Welshman abducted. Your servants hang him out of hand, all this – do not interrupt me, man – all this with your permission and contrivance. I give this as one instance. You think this is only one man and he doesn’t matter, but you see he does. You think a year or more has passed and no one remembers, but I remember. You believe the law should be what you would like it to be, and it is on that principle that you conduct yourself in your holdings on the marches of Wales, where the king’s justice and the king’s name are brought into contempt every day. The place is a stronghold of thieves.’
‘You say I am a thief?’
‘I say you consort with them. But your schemes end here.’
‘You are judge and jury and hangman, is that it?’
‘It is better justice than Eyton had.’
And Brereton says, ‘I concede that.’
What a fall this is. Only days ago, he was petitioning Master Secretary for spoils, when the abbey lands in Cheshire should be given out. Now no doubt the words run through his head, the words he used to Master Secretary when he complained of his high-handed ways: I must tutor you in realities, he had said coldly. We are not creatures of some lawyers’ conclave at Gray’s Inn. In my own country, my family upholds the law, and the law is what we care to uphold.
Now he, Master Secretary, asks, ‘Do you think Weston has had to do with the queen?’
‘Perhaps,’ Brereton looks as if he hardly cares, one way or the other. ‘I barely know him. He is young and foolish and good-looking, isn’t he, and women regard these things? And she may be a queen but she is only a woman, who knows what she might be persuaded to?’
‘You think women more foolish than men?’
‘In general, yes. And weaker. In matters of love.’
‘I note your opinion.’
‘What about Wyatt, Cromwell? Where is he in this?’
‘You are in no place,’ he says, ‘to put questions to me.’ William Brereton; left hindpaw.
George Boleyn is well past thirty, but he still has the sheen we admire in the young, the sparkle and the clear gaze. It is hard to associate his pleasant person with the kind of bestial appetite of which his wife accuses him, and for a moment he looks at George and wonders if he can be guilty of any offences, except a certain pride and elation. With the graces of his person and mind, he could have floated and hovered above the court and its sordid machinations, a man of refinement moving in his own sphere: commissioning translations of the ancient poets, and causing them to be published in exquisite editions. He could have ridden pretty white horses that curvet and bow in front of ladies. Unfortunately, he liked to quarrel and brag, intrigue and snub. As we find him now, in his light circular room in the Martin Tower, we find him pacing, hungry for conflict, we ask ourselves, does he know why he is here? Or is that surprise still to come?
‘You are perhaps not much to blame,’ he says, as he takes his seat: he, Thomas Cromwell. ‘Join me at this table,’ he directs. ‘One hears of prisoners wearing a path through stone, but I do not believe it can really happen. It would take three hundred years perhaps.’
Boleyn says, ‘You are accusing me of some sort of collusion, concealment, concealing misconduct on my sister’s part, but this charge will not stand, because there was no misconduct.’
‘No, my lord, that is not the charge.’
‘Then what?’
‘That is not what you are accused of. Sir Francis Bryan, who is a man of great imaginative capacities –’
‘Bryan!’ Boleyn looks horrified. ‘But you know he is an enemy of mine.’ His words tumble over each other. ‘What has he said, how can you credit anything he says?’
