The Mirror and the Light. Hilary Mantel

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СКАЧАТЬ easily laugh as cry this morning, and it would mean nothing either way. Still alive when five other men are dead, still alive and astonished to be so, he is poised on the edge of devastating pain – like a man who is teetering on a spike, a toehold his only support. It is a sort of interrogation method he has heard of, though never had need to perform. You rope the prisoner to a beam, his arms crossed behind his back: his body hangs in space, supported by this one exquisite inch. If he moves, or you jerk his foot away, his whole weight drops onto his arms and his shoulders are dislocated. That part of the procedure should be unnecessary. You don’t want to disable him; you just want to keep him there, balanced, till he has satisfied you with answers.

      ‘We have had our breakfast, anyway,’ he says. ‘Constable Kingston is such a blunderer that we expected mouldy bread.’

      ‘It is a novelty for him,’ Wyatt says. ‘A queen of England to behead, and five of her lovers. A man does not do it every week.’

      He is swaying, he is swaying, on the spike: soon he will slip and cry out. ‘So it’s done, I suppose? Or you would not be here with me.’

Richard crosses the room. He stands over Wyatt and looks down at the nape of his bent neck; he rubs his shoulder, friendly and firm like a man with his favourite dog. Wyatt is unmoving, his face in his hands. Richard glances up: are you going to tell it, sir?

      He inclines his head to his nephew: you tell it.

      ‘She made a brave end,’ Richard says. ‘She spoke short and to the point, asking forgiveness, praising the king’s mercy, and offering no extenuation.’

      Wyatt looks up. His face is dazed. ‘She accused no one?’

      ‘It was not for her to accuse,’ Richard says gently.

      ‘But you know Anne’s spirit. And she was kept here long enough, she had time to think and plan. She must have thought,’ his blue eyes flick sideways, ‘here I lie a prisoner, and where is the evidence against me? She must have prayed for the five men who went out to die, and she must have wondered, why is Wyatt not one of them?’

      ‘Surely,’ he says, ‘she would not have wanted to see your head in the street? I know all love was lost between you, and I know she was a creature of supreme malice, but surely she would not have wished to add to the number of men she has ruined?’

      ‘I did not assume that,’ Wyatt says. ‘She might have thought it was justice.’

      He wants Richard to lean forward, and place his hand firmly over Wyatt’s mouth.

      ‘Tom Wyatt,’ he says, ‘let us have an end of this. You may think confession would ease your mind, and if that is what you think, send for a priest, say what you must, get your absolution and pay him for silence. But do not for God’s sake confess to me.’ He adds, softly, ‘You have come so far. You have done the difficult thing. You spoke when you should speak. Now speak no more.’

‘You must not indulge yourself,’ Richard says. ‘It would be at our expense. My uncle has walked a knife-edge for you. The king’s suspicion of you was such that no one but my uncle could have dispelled it, for the king would not have listened, but killed you with the rest. Besides …’ He looks up. ‘Sir, may I tell him? The court did not need the evidence you gave us. Your name did not arise. The lady’s brother convicted himself out of his own mouth, sniggering at the king in the very face of the court, and saying that despite the valour he claims, Henry lacks all skill and vertu to do the deed with a woman.’

      ‘Yes,’ he says, to Wyatt’s incredulous face, ‘this is the fool George Boleyn was, and I had to deal with him for years.’

      ‘And George’s wife,’ Richard says, ‘made a written deposition against him, testifying she had seen him kiss his sister with his tongue in her mouth. Describing the hours they were alone together, behind a closed door.’

      Wyatt has edged his stool back from the table. He raises his face to the sun and the light washes away all expression.

      ‘And Anne’s women,’ Richard says, ‘gave statements against her. All the comings and goings in the dark. So it was enough, without your help. They have witnessed her tricks these two years and more.’

      Oh, Jesus, he thinks, let’s stop this now. He takes a wad of folded papers out of his jacket and drops them on the table. ‘Here is your testimony. Do you want to destroy it yourself, or shall I do it?’

      ‘I will,’ Wyatt says.

      He thinks, Wyatt doesn’t trust me: still, even now. God knows, I have not played him false. This last week, hour by hour, he has traded for Wyatt’s life. What he has offered Henry is Wyatt’s knowledge of the accused queen. Whether the knowledge was carnal – he has never asked Wyatt that, and never will. He assured the king it was not – though not in so many words. If he has misled Henry, better not to know. He says to Wyatt, ‘I told your father I’d look after you. I have.’

      ‘Indebted,’ Wyatt says.

      Outside, the red kites are skimming over the Tower walls. The king did not choose to display the heads of Anne’s lovers on London Bridge; in case he decides to ride through with his new wife, he wants to keep his capital tidy. The kites, therefore, are cheated of their prey; no doubt, he says to Richard, that’s why they’re yearning for Tom Wyatt.

Richard says, ‘You see how it is. A very proper man, Wyatt. Even his gaolers are in love with him. His pisspot admires him, for deigning to use it.’

      ‘Martin was angling to know what will happen to him.’

      ‘Aye,’ Richard says, ‘before he becomes too attached. And what will?’

      ‘He is safe where he is for now.’

      ‘Are the arrests finished? Was he the last?’

      ‘Yes, I think so.’

      ‘Is it over, then?’

      ‘Over? Oh, no.’

      Thomas Cromwell is now fifty years old. The same small quick eyes, the same thickset imperturbable body; the same schedules. He is at home wherever he wakes: the Rolls House on Chancery Lane, or his city house at Austin Friars, or at Whitehall with the king, or in some other place where Henry happens to be. He rises at five, says his prayers, attends to his ablutions and breaks his fast. By six o’clock he is receiving petitioners, his nephew Richard Cromwell at his elbow. Master Secretary’s barge takes him up and down to Greenwich, to Hampton Court, to the mint and armouries at the Tower of London. Though he is a commoner still, most would agree that he is the second man in England. He is the king’s deputy in the affairs of the church. He takes licence to enquire into any department of government or the royal household. He carries in his head the statutes of England, the psalms and the words of the Prophets, the columns of the king’s account books and the lineage, acreage and income of every person of substance in England. He is famous for his memory, and the king likes to test it, by asking him for details of obscure disputes from twenty years back. He sometimes carries a sprig of dried rosemary or rue, and crumbles it in his palm as if inhaling the scent would help him. But everyone knows it is only a performance. The only things he cannot remember are the things he never knew.

His chief duty (it seems just now) is to get the king new wives and dispose of the old. His days are long and arduous, packed with laws to be drafted and ambassadors to beguile. He goes on working by candlelight through summer dusks, through winter sunsets when it is dark by half СКАЧАТЬ