The Mirror and the Light. Hilary Mantel

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СКАЧАТЬ will she take as queen, and what motto? When may we notify the painters and artificers and set them to work? Will there be a coronation soon? What present can we make her, that will find favour in her eyes?

‘A bag of money is always acceptable,’ he says. ‘I do not think we will see her in public till she and the king are married, but that will not be long. She is pious in the old style and any banners or painted cloths depicting the angels and saints, and the Holy Virgin, will be well-accepted by her.’

      ‘So,’ says the Lord Mayor, ‘we can look out what we have had in store since Queen Katherine’s time?’

      ‘That would be prudent, Sir John, and save the city’s funds.’

      ‘We have the life of St Veronica in panels,’ an elderly guildsman says. ‘On the first, she stands weeping by the route to Calvary, as Christ bears his cross. On the second –’

      ‘Of course,’ he murmurs.

      ‘– on the second, the saint wipes the face of our Saviour. On the third, she holds up the bloody cloth, and there we may see the image of Christ, printed clearly in his precious blood.’

      ‘My wife observed,’ says Constable Kingston, ‘that this morning the lady left aside her usual head-dress, and chose the style the late Katherine favoured. She wonders what she meant by it.’

      Perhaps it was a courtesy, he thinks, from a dying queen to a dead one. They will be meeting this morning in another country, where no doubt they will have much to tell.

      ‘Would that my niece had imitated Katherine in other particulars,’ Norfolk says. ‘Had she been obedient, chaste and meek, her head might still be on her shoulders.’

      Gregory is so amazed that he takes a step back, into the Lord Mayor. ‘But my lord, Katherine was not obedient! Did she not defy the king’s will year after year, when he told her to go away and be divorced? Did you yourself not go down to the country to enforce her, and she slammed into her chamber and turned the key, so you were obliged to spend the twelve days of Christmas shouting through a door?’

      ‘You’ll find that was my lord Suffolk,’ the duke says shortly. ‘Another useless dotard, eh, Gregory? That’s Charles Brandon over there – the mighty fellow with the big beard. I am the stringy fellow with the bad temper. See the difference?’

‘Ah,’ Gregory says, ‘I remember now. My father enjoyed the tale so much, we performed it as a play at Twelfth Night. My cousin Richard played my lord Suffolk, wearing a woolly beard to his waist. And Mr Rafe Sadler put on a skirt and played the queen, insulting the duke in the Spanish tongue. And my father took the part of the door.’

      ‘I wish I had seen it.’ Norfolk rubs the tip of his nose. ‘No, I tell you, Gregory, I honestly do.’ He and Charles Brandon are old rivals, and enjoy each other’s embarrassments. ‘I wonder what you’ll play this Christmas?’

      Gregory opens his mouth and closes it again. The future is a curious blank. He, Cromwell, intervenes, before his son attempts to fill it. ‘Gentlemen, I can tell you what the new queen will take as her motto. It is Bound to Obey and Serve.’

      There is a murmur of approbation that runs right around the room. Brandon’s big laugh booms out: ‘Better safe than sorry, eh?’

      ‘So say we all.’ Norfolk tips back his canary wine. ‘Whoever crosses the king in the years ahead, gentlemen, it will not be Thomas Howard here.’ He stabs a finger into his own breastbone, as if otherwise they might not know who he is. Then he slaps Master Secretary on the shoulder, with every appearance of comradeship. ‘So what now, Cromwell?’

      Don’t be deceived. Uncle Norfolk is not our comrade or our ally or our friend. He is slapping us to appraise how solid we are. He is eyeing the Cromwell bull-neck. He is wondering what sort of blade you’d need, to slice through that.

      It is ten when they break away from the company. Outside, sunlight is dappling the grass. He walks into shadow, his nephew Richard Cromwell by his side. ‘Better see Wyatt.’

      ‘You are well, sir?’

      ‘Never better,’ he says flatly.

It was Richard himself who, a few days back, had walked Thomas Wyatt to the Tower, without display of force, without armed men: taking him into custody as easily as if they were taking a riverside stroll. He had requested the prisoner be shown every courtesy, and be kept in a pleasant gatehouse chamber: to which the gaoler Martin now leads the way.

      ‘How is this prisoner?’ he asks.

      As if this prisoner were just anyone, instead of what Wyatt is – as dear to him as any person now living.

      Martin says, ‘It seems to me, sir, he is in much disquiet of mind about those five gentlemen who lost their heads the other day.’

      The gaoler makes it sound incidental, like losing a hat. ‘I dare say Master Wyatt wonders why he was not among them. And so he paces, sir. Then he sits, a paper before him. He looks as if he will write, but not a word goes down. He doesn’t sleep. Up in the dead hour, calling for lights. Pulls up his stool to the table, sharpens his pen; six o’clock, broad day, you fetch in his bread and ale and there’s his paper blank and the candle still burning. Wasteful, that.’

      ‘Let him have lights. I will pay for what he needs.’

      ‘Though I say this – he is a very gentleman. Not proud like those we had over the other side. Henry Norris – “Gentle Norris”, they called him, but he spoke to us as if we were dogs. That’s how you can tell a true gentleman – when he is in peril of his life, he still speaks you fair.’

      ‘I’ll remember, Martin,’ he says gravely. ‘How’s my god-daughter?’

      ‘Rising two – can you believe it?’

      The week Martin’s daughter was born he had been at the Tower to visit Thomas More. It was early days in their contest; he still hoped More would concede a point to the king and save his life. ‘You’ll stand godfather?’ Martin had asked him. He chose the name Grace: after his youngest daughter, dead some years now.

      Martin says, ‘We cannot watch a prisoner every minute. I am afraid Mr Wyatt might destroy himself.’

Richard laughs merrily. ‘What, Martin, have you never had a poet in your prison? One who sighs heavy and sleeps short hours, and when he prays he prays in verse? A poet may be melancholy but I tell you, he will look after himself as well as the next man. He must have food and drink to tempt his appetite, and if he has an ache or a twinge you will hear about it.’

      ‘He writes a sonnet if he stubs a toe,’ he says.

      ‘Poets prosper,’ Richard says. ‘It is their friends who sustain the hurt.’

      Martin announces them with a discreet tap, as if they were in a lord’s private suite. ‘Visitors, Mr Wyatt?’

      The room is full of dancing light, and the young man sits at a table in full sun. ‘Move, Wyatt,’ Richard says. ‘The rays illuminate your scalp.’

      He forgets how ruthless the young are. When the king says, ‘Am I going bald, Crumb?’ he says, ‘The shape of your Majesty’s head would please any artist.’

      Wyatt runs his palm across his fine fair СКАЧАТЬ