Walter’s face grew dark. But he said in a tone mild in the circumstances, ‘Listen, son, this is what I know: right is what you can get away with, and wrong is what they whip you for. As I’m sure life will instruct you, by and by, if your father’s precept and example can’t get it through your skull.’
The thief Edwin had said, while he sucked his knuckles, ‘Be glad of that, boy, a gift from me. You may go begging for a beating hereafter: Satan himself wouldn’t soil his paws.’
On 16 October the rebels enter York. York is the second city in the realm. England is collapsing in on herself, like a house of straw.
When the news comes he is in London, scraping together ten thousand pounds so Norfolk can pay his troops. A message comes from Wriothesley: the king wants him, wants to see him as soon as humanly possible. Another letter follows, another …
When he arrives at Windsor a knot of councillors surges around him, long-faced. The king is at prayer. In his private closet? No, he is addressing God from a grander place, the chapel of St George’s.
Bishop Sampson says, ‘Cromwell, he waits on you.’
‘But you have told him? That York is lost?’ Only in that moment does it strike him that they might have held back the news for him to break.
But it appears Rafe Sadler has done it: Rafe is with him now. Oxford says, ‘I doubt the king will blame you too much, my lord.’
For the fall of York? How could he be to blame? But someone must be …
Lord Audley says, ‘I doubt even Wolsey could have changed the wind these last weeks.’
No? Wolsey would not have fled York, like the present archbishop. He says, ‘No rebel would have dared to rise within a hundred miles of my lord cardinal. Active force would have met him, if he did.’
To St George’s, then. He pushes through the councillors. ‘Come on, Call-Me.’
Wriothesley says, striding beside him, ‘Death has made the cardinal invincible, sir?’
‘So it appears.’ Though Wolsey never speaks to him now. Since he came back from Shaftesbury he is without company or advice. The cardinal bounces in the clouds, where the Faithful Departed giggle at our miscalculations. The dead are magnified in our eyes, while we to them appear as ants. They look down on us from the mists, like mystic beasts on spires, and they sail above us like flags.
The king is in the chantry chapel, high above the Garter stalls. He climbs, and on the tight spiral of the stair the chambers of his heart squeeze small. From here, he knows, the king looks down on his ancestors, at the murdered King Henry – sixth of that name – in his tomb.
He ducks into the low doorway. The king is kneeling, back rigid, seemingly at prayer. Rafe Sadler is kneeling behind him, as far away as the space will allow. Rafe turns up his face, imploring; as he, Lord Cromwell, passes him, he flips his cap over his eyes.
There is a cushion; it’s better than the bare boards. For some time he kneels in silence, directly behind his monarch.
In Florence, he thinks, I played at
He can hear the king’s breath, his sigh. Henry knows he is there: he gives himself away by a twitch of the muscles at the back of his neck.
Ten minutes into the game you would be bloodied, the ball itself basted in snot and sand and gore, your breath short, your long bones juddering, your feet stamped to a paste and your hair yanked out in handfuls: but you never noticed or cared, once you got hold of the ball. Forward you charged, ball tucked against you, a whoop of triumph sailing over the rooftops; but when you had run ten paces, some bellowing lunatic would hack you behind the knees.
Henry puts his hand to his nape, like someone who has been brushed by a gnat. His sacred head half-turns; he lifts his gaze, wary. ‘Crumb?’ he says. As if it were the start of a prayer: though one with no particular efficacy.
He waits. The king heaves a deeper sigh: a groan.
Mother of Sorrows, the game hurt when it stopped. Though when you were playing, you never felt a thing.
Henry crosses himself, and begins to struggle to his feet. Would a hand to help him be welcome, or bitten?
‘York? How can York fall?’ When the king turns his face it is dismayed: as if somebody has cut a gash in it, opened his brain to the light.
Rafe, in the shadows, stands behind him.
He scoops up his cushion. It is embroidered gold on crimson: ‘HA HA’, it says.
Rafe takes it from him as if it were hot.
If this were Florence, he thinks, I would boot that cushion over Santa Croce. Her memory with it.
The king says, ‘Tonight I shall dine in the great hall.’
‘Majesty,’ he says.
‘I must appear in great …’ the king falters … ‘glory, you understand me? Where is the Mirror of Naples?’
‘Whitehall, sir.’
