Sometimes he needs to imagine how it would have been, if the Cornish had come to Putney, bellowing and drooling and trampling everything in their path. Sion Madoc’s dad had told him, ‘They’ll take a child like you and roast him on a spit.’ He had laughed and said, ‘I’ll spit their arses.’ In his black heart he wished for them, he wanted to hear their tread. Hear it, and you don’t have to imagine it. Let the face of their giant crest the rise; or just see the crown of his head, and then you don’t have to think about him any more, you don’t have to picture him, you know the worst: walk with him one red mile, as he tears apart the neighbours and tosses their limbs into ditches.
And what then? Either he kills you, or you are one of those left, picking up remnants of Putney and gathering it into baskets.
Do not turn your back on the king. This is not just a matter of protocol.
He is about to close the book, but he dips his pen, adds a final line:
Try and keep cheerful.
PART THREE
I
The Bleach Fields
When you become a great man, you meet kinsfolk you never knew you had. Strangers turn up at your door claiming to know more about you than you know yourself. They say that your father helped them in their misfortunes – unlikely – or that your mother, God rest her, knew their mother well. Sometimes they claim you owe them money.
So when among a crowd of petitioners he sees a woman who looks familiar, he takes her for a Cromwell of some sort. Seeing her again next day, and it appearing she has no protector, he has her fetched in.
She is a young woman, robust, sober. Good wool, he thinks, looking at her gown. He does not look at her, as looking at women gets him into trouble. ‘I am sorry you had to come back for a second day. As you see, half of England is out there.’
‘It has been a longer wait than you know, sir.’ Her English is fluent, her accent Antwerp. ‘I have come from over the sea, from Meester Vaughan’s household.’
‘You should have said so, they would have brought you in at once. You have a letter?’
‘No letter.’
Messages that can’t be put in writing are usually bad news. But she seems unperturbed: her eyes sweep over his coat of arms painted on the wall, and the set of pictures made by Holbein’s apprentices. ‘Who are those?’
‘Princes of England.’
‘You recall so many?’
He laughs. ‘They are long gone. We have invented them.’
‘Why?’
‘As a reminder that men become dust, but the realm is continued.’
‘You like to think about old days?’
‘I suppose I do.’ I prefer the common history, he thinks: in my own life and times, certain themes must be elided.
Her questions are simple ones, her manner open, and surely her message is nothing – snippets of Antwerp gossip too trivial for a courier. Still, he is interested to sweep them up. ‘Christophe, wine for this young lady – will you take some wafers and spices, some raisins? An apple?’
‘It was by eating of an apple that sin came into the world.’ But she smiles as she says it, and as she takes her seat, raises her eyes to the Queen of Sheba, behind him on the wall: where she with her kindly expression and modest diadem offers a cup to the wisest of kings.
Her eyes flit to his face. She looks shocked. ‘Where did you get that tapestry?’
‘Our king gave it to me. For my services.’
Her glance moves back. ‘And where did he get it?’
‘From my patron, Wolsey.’
‘And where did he get it?’
‘Brussels.’
She looks as if she is calculating its value. ‘So you did not have it made yourself?’
‘It would have been beyond my means. I was not always a rich man. You see that it is Sheba and Solomon. You know your scriptures, I venture.’
She says, ‘Also I know my mother.’
The cup in his hand is part-way to his lips.
She says, ‘I am Anselma’s child. I do not know how she is in this tapestry, but we can ask ourselves that some other day.’
He rises to his feet. ‘You are welcome. I did not even know that lady had a daughter. I also have asked myself how it came about that her picture is in this weave. It is for her sake I always coveted it. I would look and look, and one day the king said to me, “Thomas, I think this lady should go and live with you.” He turns back to her, smiling. ‘So your father must be –’
He knows who Anselma married, after he left her to return to London. He knows the man’s banking house, his family. Yet his name has always stuck in his throat.
She says, ‘I know the gentleman you mean. My mother married him after I was born.’
He frowns. ‘So he is not your father?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘You are.’
He puts down his cup.
‘Look at me,’ she says. ‘Do you not see yourself?’
Her sectioned apple lies on her plate; he studies its green peel; he studies the plate beneath it, blue and white, Italian, the design half-hidden by the fruit. His mind completes the hidden picture.
She says, ‘I came because I heard from Meester Vaughan there was revolt here, and that you were in danger from certain pilgrims. I wanted to see you, even if it was only once.’
