He inclines his head. There is a sarcophagus of black touchstone, in which the cardinal never lay. All the parts are preserved, laid up in store. They await use, by someone who values himself in the sight of God and man, and wishes his name continued. Wolsey brought the artist over. Benedetto worked on it year after year, but as soon as he put in his account, the cardinal thought of something else. There are twelve bronze saints, and putti bearing shields emblazoned with the Wolsey arms. There are sober angels who bear in their hands pillars and crosses, and dancing angels with curly hair, their garments floating about them as they caper and skip.
‘You should be glad, Crumb,’ Henry says. ‘You always want to save money.’
‘Only if it sits with your Majesty’s honour.’
‘The angel who bears the cardinal’s hat,’ Henry says, ‘he will bear a crown instead. The griffins at the feet – I thought they might be wreathed in roses. Golden roses.’
‘I’ll talk to Benedetto.’
The artist has never gone home. Perhaps he has been expecting the cardinal to rise from the dead, with fresh suggestions? By now one of the skipping angels has developed a crack, between the fingers of his left hand. Benedetto says, no one will know, Tommaso. Not when he’s gilded and dancing up there on his pillar. But I’ll know, he says.
The king tells him, ‘Erasmus is dead.’
‘So I hear.’
‘I saw him first when he came to Eltham when I was a child. You would have seen him at Thomas More’s house, no doubt.’
The great man’s eyes passed over him, over Thomas Cromwell: saw him and forgot him. He says, ‘He civilised us.’
The king says, ‘Then he died with work to do.’
Henry seems frightened of himself, frightened of what he might say or do next. He seems weary, as if he might leave off being king, and just walk out into the street and take his chances.
The knowledge of this collapse of morale must be kept from the court. William Fitzwilliam catches him, outside the king’s door. ‘Before we left London,’ Fitz says, ‘he told me he thought he would have no more children.’
‘Hush,’ he says. ‘He is ashamed of himself. He thinks he is done for, only because he cannot follow the chase as he did when he was young.’
This summer, the king will not hunt on horseback. The game will be driven to him as he stands in the butts, crossbow loaded, poised to shoot. He can ride well enough, keeping an ambling pace, but not across rough country, because of the jolting to his leg.
‘It seems to me,’ Fitzwilliam says, ‘that he has some principle of rotation in his head, by which he humiliates his councillors in turn.’
‘True. At the moment it is Norfolk’s turn.’
‘At the council board he walks about behind us. He hovers like a cutpurse. If I met such a man in Southwark, I would turn and knock the felon down.’
He laughs. ‘But what would you be doing in Southwark, Fitz?’
‘When he gets himself behind us, we must rise and kick our stools away and turn and face him, which throws us off, makes us forget what we were saying – and then, if we address him, is it kneeling or standing?’
‘Kneeling is safest.’
‘You don’t.’ Fitz sounds accusing. ‘Or not so much as you did.’
‘I have too much business with him. He knows not to cripple me.’
‘Even the cardinal knelt.’
‘A churchman. He was trained to it.’
The cardinal, in his days as master of the realm, had spoken of God as if He were a distant policy adviser from whom he heard quarterly: gnomic in his pronouncements, sometimes forgetful, but worth a retainer on account of his experience. At times he sent Him special requests, which the less well-connected call prayers; and always, until the last months of his life, God fell over Himself to make sure Tom Wolsey had what he wanted. But then he prayed, Make me humble; God said, Sir, your request comes too late.
His servant John Gostwick has been checking the inventories of the Duke of Richmond. Among Fitzroy’s effects he finds a doll: no wooden mammet for a common child to play with, but the lively image of a prince.
Gostwick had called him to see it: he stood looking down at the likeness of the dead boy. ‘Wolsey gave him this. Keep it carefully, in case the king wishes to have his son in remembrance.’ The infant, he recalled, did not know his own father; the king gave me titles, Richmond had said, but the cardinal gave me a striped silk ball.
