It occurs to him that he has answered absently, as if to a child or a member of his own household. Henry is fretful, his mind hopping here and there, and when he is in this humour it is best to keep your head low, like a birdcatcher. ‘Do you know what I liked best this summer?’ the king says. He corrects himself: ‘I mean the summer before? I liked Wolf Hall. Once in a while every prince wishes he could lay aside his duties, and live for a year as a private gentleman. Because a gentleman bides content; he dances in the great barn decked with garlands, he sees the harvest home and knows every harvester by name.’
He says nothing. He has the boy Rob in his service, down in Wiltshire reporting on who comes and goes. Not that he suspects the Seymours, but it is no harm to have a source. The king says, ‘I was innocent in those days. I did not understand the Boleyns and their treason. But once I did understand it, and cleared them out of the court, I thought everything would be better. Yet here I am, one summer passed and one winter passing, my son Fitzroy is dead, I have bastardised both my daughters, I have no heir and, as far as I understand, no hope of one. My subjects are in rebellion, my coffers are empty, and my cradle empty too. So tell me, Thomas, how is this better? How am I better off than this time last year? Last year, my subjects were not shot down in the street.’
Still he says nothing. We must trust the gale of self-pity will blow itself out, and presently it does. Henry straightens up. ‘There are thirty thousand loyal men advancing on the town.’ Pontefract, he means. ‘Fear not, my lord. It will soon be back in our hands.’
Henry puts a hand on his shoulder. In that anointed palm there is
As they bow themselves out Mr Wriothesley says, ‘You were at a loss there, I think. You did not utter, sir.’
He says, ‘Leave the king long enough, and he will start to cheer himself up. You must not crowd him, Call-Me. Did he not tell you so?’
When he goes to the Tower to see Barnes, it is without the body armour: it will stop a dagger, but it would not have saved Packington, and why would it save him? No breastplate but Jesus, and Thomas Avery as clerk. It is another foggy day, and it has not lifted by afternoon: rain just holding off, but the air as damp as if the afternoon had been rubbed with snails.
Barnes is at his books, but at the sound of the key he jumps up in alarm: a volume skitters away from him, he tries to catch it, picks it up from the floor and comes upright with his face red.
‘Are they looking after you?’
Barnes falls back to his stool. ‘Every time I hear footsteps in the passage, my heart …’ He taps the table, a broken rhythm. He sees Lord Cromwell is not alone: ‘Who is this?’
‘A good Christian. So be at your ease.’
‘Ease?’ Barnes laughs.
Avery says, ‘This custody is for your protection.’
‘You think it is I who needs protection? What about Cromwell here? Perhaps we should all take each other into custody?’
‘As soon as my lord has the city quiet, you will be free.’
Barnes is himself again, tidying the papers before him. ‘Most men would not believe you. But your master said the same when he locked up Wyatt – you will soon be free. And he kept his word. Though why he would extend himself for such a saucy fellow, I cannot imagine. Wyatt is hardly a promoter of God’s cause.’
‘But he is no papist,’ Avery says. ‘He saw their manners in Italy.’
‘The Pope will unleash his terror now,’ Barnes says. ‘This is only the beginning. Where is that ingrate Pole? Or have you lost sight of him?’
‘Still in Rome. They say Farnese lodges him above his own chamber, and means to make him a cardinal.’
‘He should refuse,’ Barnes says.
‘Did anyone ever refuse to be made a cardinal?’
Barnes says, ‘I thought you would have worked him some mischief weeks back, when he was in Sienna. If Thomas More can reach out his hand to strike at Tyndale, being himself dead, then I think that you, being a quick and vigorous man, should be able to strike down Reginald.’
He says, ‘I like my life to be full of interest, Father Barnes. Nothing about killing interests me. And Reynold’s heart was not always cankered.’
As soon as he unravels the conspiracies of such people – unknotting them with a casual hand, and deliberately looking the other way – they insist on entangling themselves again, and whistling and shouting till they get his attention. Margaret Pole, the renegade’s mother, is in her castle at Warblington: too near the coast for his comfort. He imagines her in a tower with a mirror, signalling to boats at sea, which land and discharge the enemy. If it takes just one man to shoot dead a member of Parliament, it takes just one to shoot dead a king; his heart can burst like a common heart. The spot where Packington died is five minutes from the gate of Margaret Pole’s town house; for all we know, the killer issued from behind her wall.
