The Mirror and the Light полностью

Christophe comes behind with the evidence. It is not stained bed sheets, but something nastier. The poems – Tom Truth’s and Meg’s mixed with others – have come to him in sheaves – some found, some left, some handed over by third parties. The papers are curled at the edges, and some are folded many times; they are written in divers hands, annotated in others; scribbled, blotted and smudged, they vary in skill of construction, but not in content. I love her, she loves not me. O she is cruel! Ah me, I shall die! He wonders if any of Henry’s poems have got mixed in. It was alleged, against the recently dead gentlemen, that they had laughed at the royal verses. But the king’s handwriting, fortunately, is unlike any other hand. He would know it in the dark.

In his upper room, Tom Truth is staring at the wall. ‘I wondered when you would get here.’

He – Lord Cromwell – takes off his coat. ‘Christophe?’

The boy produces papers. They look more crumpled than he remembers. ‘Have you been chewing them?’

Christophe grins. ‘I eat anything,’ he tells Tom Truth. As he, Lord Cromwell shuffles through the papers and prepares to read aloud, Truth becomes irate and tense, like any author whose work is under scrutiny.

‘She knoweth my love of long time meant,

She knoweth my truth, nothing is hid,

She knoweth I love in good intent,

As ever man and woman did.’

He looks at Tom Truth over the paper. ‘Nothing is hid?’

‘Have you tupped her?’ Mr Wriothesley asks.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Tom Truth says. ‘What opportunity? With your eyes on us?’

Many-eyed Argus. He holds the paper at arm’s length. ‘Can you go on, Mr Wriothesley? I cannot. It’s not the handwriting,’ he assures Truth. ‘It’s that my tongue refuses to do it.’

Mr Wriothesley takes the paper by one corner.

‘What helpeth hope of happy hap

When hap will hap unhappily?’

‘Perhaps it sounds better if you sing it,’ Mr Wriothesley says. ‘Shall we have Martin fetch a lute?

‘And thus my hap my hope has turned

Clear out of hope into despair.’

‘Pause there,’ he tells Wriothesley. He accepts the paper back, between finger and thumb. ‘It seems you declared yourself, even at the risk of a rebuff. She knoweth my truth, nothing is hid. At this date she does not seem amenable. Though it is usual, is it not, to say that you love the lady more than she loves you?’

‘It is considered polite,’ Wriothesley assures him.

‘And yet she loved you well enough to give you a diamond.’

Tom Truth says, ‘I do not know if I wrote this verse.’

‘You have forgot it,’ he says. ‘As would any man of sense. Yet in the fifth stanza you write, Pardon me, your man, Tom Truth. Which you rhyme, unfortunately, with growth.’

Christophe sniggers. ‘Even I know better, and I am French.’

‘There is many a Thomas at court,’ the accused man says, ‘and not all of them tell the truth, though I am sure they all claim to.’

‘He’s looking at us,’ he says to Thomas Wriothesley. ‘I hope you aren’t saying one of us wrote it?’

Call-Me says, ‘All the world knows you go by that name, so you may as well stand to it. You have married her, her servants say.’

Tom Truth opens his mouth, but leafing through the pages he cuts in: ‘You ask her to ease you of your pain.’

‘Would that be the pain in your bollocks?’ Christophe says.

He quells him with a look; but he cannot help laughing. ‘You have been in love for a certain space – Although I burn and long have burned – and then you make some pledge – why would you do that, unless to make her think it is lawful to go to bed?’

Wriothesley says, ‘The lady tells us there are witnesses to the pledge.’

When the pause prolongs, he says, ‘You need not reply in verse.’

Tom Truth says, ‘I know what you do, Cromwell.’

He raises an eyebrow. ‘I do nothing, unless with the king’s permission. Without that, I don’t swat a fly.’

‘The king will not permit you to ill-use a gentleman.’

‘Agreed,’ Wriothesley advises, ‘but don’t try Lord Cromwell’s patience. He once broke a man’s jaw with a single blow.’

Did I? He is astonished. He says, ‘We are tenacious. In time you will confess you meant to do ill, even if you did not achieve your purpose. You will acknowledge your error to the king, and beg his pardon.’ Though I doubt it will forthcome, he thinks. ‘We understand your situation. You come of a great family, but all you younger Howards are poor. And being of such exalted blood, you cannot soil your hands with any occupation. If you want to make your fortune you must wait for a war, or you must marry well. And you say to yourself, here I am, a man of great qualities – yet I have no money, and no one regards me, except to confuse me with my elder brother. So I know what I’ll do – I’ll marry the king’s niece. Odds-on I’ll be King of England one day.’

‘And till then I can borrow against my expectations,’ Wriothesley adds.