‘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 hair. ‘It’s going fast, Rich. By the time I am forty no woman will look at me except to try to crack my skull with an egg spoon.’
Wyatt could as 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.’