He says, ‘If my lord of Norfolk were here, he would tell your Majesty that, having no family, such men have no honour. They will do anything, without scruple.’
‘But they have souls to save,’ the king says. ‘So not
Bray must have been dead thirty years, more; how could he have known him? But the calculations of princes run beyond mortal span. He says, ‘I know his resting place, sir.’
Bray is buried here at Windsor, within St George’s, which his munificence helped build. (Though so is John Schorne, a priest who conjured the devil into a boot.) He has seen Bray’s emblem high in the air, his rebus frozen in stone and glass. I should find one at ground level, he thinks, and abase myself on it. Bray took over the king’s finances; he made money for himself by the way. Henry says, ‘The labourer is worthy of his hire. Bray went into battle against the Cornish rebels. He acquitted himself gallantly.’
For a clerk, he thinks. Is the king suggesting that he should put down his pen and pick up a sword? Despite all that has been said?
‘You remember the Cornish,’ Henry says.
He nods. ‘I was a boy then.’
‘My father took us to the Tower. He had faith in that fortress to stand, even if they looted the city.’
It is not just in the north they hate taxes. At the fringes of the kingdom they do not understand England to be one nation, with borders we all must pay to defend. When the Cornish broke out in rebellion they said they would not pay to secure the north against the Scots, for they did not know what a Scot was. They were led by a lawyer, one Thomas Flamank, and a blacksmith they called An Gof: ‘blacksmith’ is what it means, his name tells you what he was. Gathering forces as they rolled up-country, they marched towards London, and before them strode a giant, name of Bolster. Possibly he did not lead them but guarded their rear, for nobody saw him – he was always out in front or just behind.
At the Williamses’ house in Mortlake, where he ran errands in exchange for his dinner, they poured scorn on giants, roaring with laughter as they told the story of one of Bolster’s Cornish mates, a sad and lonely giant who played quoits on Sundays with his only friend, a spry lad called Jack. One day the giant patted Jack on his pate, and his fingers went through the bone as if it were piecrust. The giant’s cries made the welkin ring, while Jack’s brains ran down his chin like gravy.
He told his sister Bet, ‘Giants were descended from Cain, who killed his brother. There were hordes of them on the earth before they drowned in Noah’s flood. They were tall, but not so tall their heads came above the water.’
Bet said nothing.
He said, ‘Trojan Brutus fought those that survived, and put them to the sword. He was the mighty man who invented London.’
Bet said nothing again.
‘Bolster?’ he said. ‘Is that really his name? Because that’s ridiculous.’
Bet said, ‘Are you going to tell him that to his face?’
The more nobody saw Bolster, the more the fear of him grew. He was ten foot tall, or twelve foot, with arms like the sails of a windmill and iron-shod feet that could burst a head like a grape. In Putney, their homes stood in the path of the rebels; and he a boy, some twelve or thirteen years old, stood ready to knock hell out of Bolster’s kneecaps.
In that commotion time, Walter turned a shrewd penny, outfitting his friends in third-hand armour, bashing breastplates into shape. Privately he said he feared not, because he knew about the Cornishmen’s ale. It takes twenty-four hours to make, and they brew it wherever they camp. They down it by the pail, creamy brown and fizzing, and it gets you drunk like nothing else. Then it makes you spew all next day.
