He stops. He is appalled. That is not at all what he meant to say.
She is staring at him. You cannot take back such a word. ‘I’ll marry you, mistress, if you’ll have me. I am, you may not know this, I am a long time a widower. I lack graces of person, but I lack nothing else. I am rich and likely to grow richer, so your want of fortune is no obstacle to me. I have good houses. You would find me generous. I look after my family.’ He hears his own voice, recommending himself as if he were a servant, urging his merits on this shocked young woman. ‘I have no children to burden you, except Gregory, who is almost grown and will be married himself soon. I would like more children. Or not, as you wished. If you want a marriage in name only, so you have a place in the world, then for your father’s sake I would be prepared …’ He falters.
She crosses to the small window, and stares out of it furiously. There is nothing to see but a wall. ‘In name only? I do not understand you. Are you offering to marry me or not?’
‘You are alone in the world, and so am I. For your father’s sake I would cherish you. Who knows, you might grow fond of me. And if you did not, then – you would still have a home and a protector, and I would make no other demand on you.’
‘That is because you have a mistress?’
He does not answer.
‘Several, perhaps,’ she says, as if to herself. ‘It is true you have everything to commend you – if you were a buyer and I were for sale. You have money to buy any article, thanks to my father, who gave you your start in life.’
My start in life, he thinks: madam, you cannot imagine it. He feels bereft, injured, cold. Why should she have a stony heart towards him? Many times, that long winter at Esher, he had settled the cardinal’s debts. They were sums you would pay out of your pocket, but still: there were butchers, bargemen, rat-killers, men who make poultices for horses, purveyors of horoscopes and salt fish. And there had been other disbursements, that never went through the books: buying off the spies, for instance, that Norfolk had put in the household. ‘Your father was a liberal master,’ he says. ‘I owe him much that cannot be cast into figures. It was he who explained to me the king’s business. How things really work, not how people say they work. Not the custom, but the practice.’
‘Certainly,’ she says, ‘it was he who brought you to the king’s notice. With the result that we see.’
He thinks, she does not like my proposal, she does not. I should never have spoken, I know in my bones it is wrong; I am too old, and besides, so close to her father as I was, perhaps it seems to her we are related, almost as if she is my sister. He says, ‘Dorothea, tell me what it needs, to make you safe and comfortable. Forget I spoke of marriage.’ Despite himself, he smiles. He can’t stop himself trying to charm her. ‘There is still a way forward. Though you find my person defective.’
‘Your person is not defective,’ she says. ‘At least, not so defective as your nature and your deeds.’
He is still smiling. ‘You do not like my proceedings against the religious. I can understand that.’
‘Many of my sisters are keen to cast off their habits. If the house were dissolved they would go tomorrow. Dame Elizabeth does not speak ill of you. She says you are fair in your dealings.’
‘Well, then … I think it is my religion itself you do not like. I love the gospel and will follow it. Your father understood that.’
‘He understood everything,’ she says. ‘He understood you betrayed him.’
He gapes at her. He, Lord Cromwell. He who is never surprised.
‘When my father was in exile, and forced to go north, he wrote certain letters, out of his desperation to have the king’s favour again – letters begging the King of France to intercede for him. And he appealed to the queen – I mean Katherine, the queen that was – to forgive their differences and stand his friend.’
‘So much is true, but –’
‘You saw to it that those letters reached the Duke of Norfolk. You put upon them an evil construction, which they should never have borne. And Norfolk put them into the hand of the king, and so the damage was done.’
He cannot speak. Till he says, ‘You are much mistaken.’
She is shaking with rage. ‘You had your men in my father’s household in the north, do you deny it?’
‘They were there to serve him, to help him. Madam –’
‘They were there to spy on him. To goad him, to provoke him into rash actions and rash statements, which your master the duke then shaped into treason.’
‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘You think Norfolk is my master? I was no man’s servant but Wolsey’s.’
Be calm, he says to himself: not like a hasty gardener, who tugs out the weed but leaves the root in the ground. He asks her, ‘Who told you this, and how long have you believed it?’
‘I have always believed it. And always shall, whatever denial you make.’
‘If I were to bring you proofs that you are wrong? Written proofs?’
‘Forgery is among your talents, I hear.’
‘You hear too much. You listen to the wrong people.’
