‘Please,’ the ambassador signals to his people, ‘a glass of this excellent Rhenish?’
‘Put it on a sponge,’ he says. ‘I’ll have it when I’m nailed above London.’
‘You blaspheme,’ Chapuys says pleasantly. He hands a goblet. ‘I have only reported what I have heard from honourable and good men – that the king means to bestow his daughter on an Englishman, and has chosen you. But I have said to the Emperor, I believe Cromwell will decline the honour. He admits he is a blacksmith’s son, and is not lost to all sense.’
‘I could hardly deny my father.’ He thinks of Walter plunging his head in a water butt at the end of the day: coming up spitting, and spluttering for air. Why did he do it? He was no less filthy afterwards.
‘Of course, if the king did make the offer, face to face,’ Chapuys says, ‘how could you refuse him?’
‘He has not. He will not. He could not. He would rather see Mary dead. His pride would not allow such a match.’
‘Ah yes,’ the ambassador says, ‘his pride. I know from my own observation that the Lady Mary blushes when your name is mentioned.’
‘She blushes with rage,’ he says. ‘She is thinking how she will kill me when she has the power. Crucifixion would be a mercy.’ He downs the Rhenish. ‘She will hate me worse now. By the way, I like your cap badge. That is ingenious work.’
He could swear Chapuys pales. His hand goes to it: a marigold, a petal tipped with a pearl. But he is not a seasoned diplomat for nothing. He removes his cap, and begins to unpin the jewel. ‘
He almost laughs. ‘You are gracious.’ The traitorous emblem rolls into his palm. He puts it in his pocket. ‘I shall fix it on later,’ he says. ‘Before a mirror.’
At home Rafe is waiting for him. ‘It is a sorry tale against Chapuys. After our amity in my garden.’
‘Oh, Chapuys is not our friend.’ He thinks, should I show him the cap badge? But does not.
‘And now?’ Rafe says.
‘Now let us visit the French ambassador and see what he knows.’
‘Monseigneur is from home,’ says the usher. Then, as if he might not understand, he says in English, ‘He is out.’
‘Really?’ He removes his hat. ‘Not just playing at being out? He didn’t spy me from the window? If I were to lift the lid of that chest, I would not find him crouching there with his knees under his chin?’
The ambassador in residence is Antoine de Castelnau, Bishop of Tarbes; and at the thought of a bishop crammed into this ridiculous posture, the usher cannot help but smile. Or perhaps it is because Cremuel rewards well, that he is so affable? ‘But milord, another friend of yours is within. Come …’
Jean de Dinteville is sitting by a good fire. Outside the birds hang listless on the bough, and lawns are baking to straw. ‘You!’ he says.
‘Alas, Thomas: your manners. “Welcome back, ambassador,” is the usual greeting.’
‘We shall have the pleasure of a long visit?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘But what brings you?’ You are on the scent of disaster, he thinks. Nothing else would fetch you. ‘Have you heard of my forthcoming nuptials?’
The ambassador does not smile. ‘My king said, get over there, Jeannot, bring Cremuel our felicitations in person. It will mean all the more, he said, coming from an old friend.’
He snorts. ‘He wants me dead, not wed.’
‘He lives in hope.’
‘If these ludicrous rumours take hold in France, I trust our own ambassador to pour scorn on them.’
‘Well, certainly, Bishop Gardineur does not see you as a fit spouse for a princess. He sees you more as – how does he put it? – fit to shoe horses.’ Dinteville turns his sad dark eyes on him. ‘You seem disconcerted, Thomas? You were not prepared for treachery? What do you expect, of Chapuys?’
He, Cromwell, edges away from the hearth. ‘Are you really cold? You can’t be cold,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what I expected. Not this.’
The ambassador stirs crossly inside his furs. ‘You think the Emperor and his people will be grateful to you, because you kept a promise to Catalina. I assure you, Cremuel, they think it is some trick you worked, at the bedside of a dying queen. They hold you a man of no honour nor compunction. But then, they think the same of Henry, so they would not be surprised at anything he did. Nor are we surprised.’
‘I don’t know what else I can do,’ he says. ‘I dealt fairly with the girl. Henry would have killed her. I saved him from a great crime.’
‘I don’t doubt. And now you must save him from another. I mean the Queen of Scotland’s daughter. What will you do there? If they say you preserved Mary for your own usage, they will say the same again. I have seen the Scottish princess. She is a sweeter morsel than the king’s daughter, is she not?’
He sees himself, coughing, labouring through the smoke.
‘You know,’ he says, ‘if you walked about, ever? Get some air? Stir your blood? When Parliament rises, come out to the country with me.’
