He says, ‘No doubt Richmond would be a fine king. But I don’t like the thought of this Howard thumb.’
Mr Wriothesley’s eyes rest on him. ‘The Lady Mary’s friends are ready to bring her back to court. When Parliament is called they expect her to be named heir. They are waiting for you to keep your promise. They expect you to turn the king her way.’
‘Do they?’ he says. ‘You astonish me. If I made any promise, it was not that.’
Call-Me looks rattled. ‘Sir, the old families united with you, they helped you bring the Boleyns down. They did not do it for nothing. They did not do it so Richmond could be king and Norfolk rule all.’
‘So I must choose between them?’ he says. ‘It seems from what you say that they will fight each other, and one party will be left standing, either Mary’s friends or Norfolk. And whoever has the victory, they will come after me, don’t you think?’
The door opens. Call-Me starts. It is Richard Cromwell. ‘Who were you expecting, Call-Me? The Bishop of Winchester?’
Imagine Gardiner, rising through the floor with a sulphur whiff; lashing out with his cloven hooves, sending the ink flying. Imagine drool running from his chin, as he upturns the strongboxes, and snouts through the contents with a rolling, fiery eye. ‘Letter from Nicholas Carew,’ Richard says.
‘I told you,’ Call-Me says. ‘Mary’s people. Already.’
‘And by the way,’ Richard says, ‘the cat’s out again.’
He hurries to the window, letter in hand. ‘Where is she?’
Call-Me beside him: ‘What am I looking for?’
He breaks the seal. ‘There! She’s running up the tree.’
He glances down at the letter. Sir Nicholas seeks a meeting.
‘Is that a cat?’ Wriothesley is amazed. ‘That striped beast?’
‘She has come all the way from Damascus in a box. I bought her from an Italian merchant for a price you would not believe. She is supposed to stay indoors, or she will breed with the London cats. I must look out for a striped husband for her.’ He opens the window. ‘Christophe! She’s up the tree!’
What Carew proposes is a gathering of the dynasts: the Courtenay family, with the Marquis of Exeter leading them, and the Pole family, where Lord Montague will represent his kin. These are the families nearest the throne, descendants of old King Edward and his brothers. They claim to speak for the king’s daughter Mary, to represent her interests. If they cannot rule England themselves, as Plantagenets once did, they mean to rule through the king’s daughter. It is her bloodline they admire, the inheritance from her Spanish mother Katherine. For the sad little girl herself, they care much less; and when I see Mary, he thinks, I will tell her so. Her safety does not lie that way, with men who live on fantasies of the past.
Carew, the Courtenays, the Poles, they are papists every one. Carew was the king’s old comrade-in-arms, and Queen Katherine’s friend too, in the days when those positions were compatible. He sees himself as the mirror of chivalry, and a favourite of fortune. To Carew, to the Poles, to the Courtenays and their supporters, the Boleyns were a crass blunder, an error now cancelled by the headsman. No doubt they assume Thomas Cromwell can be cancelled too, reduced to the clerk he used to be: a useful man for getting money in, but dispensable, a slave that you trample as you stride up the stairway to glory.
‘Call-Me is right,’ he says to Richard. ‘Sir Nicholas is taking a lofty tone with me.’ He holds the letter up. ‘These people, they expect me to come to their whistle.’
Wriothesley says, ‘They expect your service. Or they will break you.’
Below the window, all the young persons at Austin Friars are milling, cooks and clerks and boys of every sort. He says, ‘I think my son has taken leave of his senses. Gregory,’ he calls down, ‘you cannot catch a cat in a net. She has seen you now – back away.’
‘Look at Christophe shaking the tree,’ Richard says. ‘Stupid little fucker.’
‘Take heed of this, sir,’ Call-Me begs. ‘Because this last week …’
‘It is natural she keeps escaping,’ he says to Richard. ‘She is tired of her celibate life. She wants to find a prince. Yes, Call-Me? This last week, what?’
‘People have been talking of the cardinal. They say, look at what Cromwell has wreaked, in two years, on Wolsey’s enemies. Thomas More is dead. Anne the queen is dead. They look at those who slighted him, in his lifetime – Brereton, Norris – though Norris was not the worst …’
Norris, he thinks, was good to my lord – to his face. A taker and a user, was Gentle Norris: a hypocrite. He says, ‘If I wanted revenge on Wolsey’s enemies, I would have to strike down half the nation.’
‘I only report what people are saying.’
‘Young Dick Purser’s here,’ Richard says. He leans out of the window. ‘Get hold of her, boy, before we lose her in the dark.’
‘They ask,’ Wriothesley says, ‘who was the greatest of the cardinal’s enemies? They answer, the king. So, they ask – when chance serves, what revenge will Thomas Cromwell seek on his sovereign, his prince?’
Below in the darkening garden, the cat-hunters raise their arms as if imploring the moon. High in the tree, the cat is a soft shape visible only to the educated eye: limbs dangling, she is perfectly at one with the branch on which she lies. He thinks of Marlinspike, the cardinal’s cat. He had brought him to Austin Friars when he was still small enough to carry in a pocket. But when Marlinspike came of age, he ran away to make his fortune.
I have risen above this, he thinks: this day, this waning light, these snares. I am the Damascene cat. I have travelled so far to get here, and nothing they do disturbs me now, nor disquiets me, high on my branch.
And yet Wriothesley’s question seeps into him, and leaves in his mind a chilly trickle of dismay, like water creeping into a cellar. He is shocked: first, that the question can be asked. Second, because of who asks it. Third, that he does not know the answer.
Richard turns back into the room: ‘Sir, what’s Christophe saying below?’
He translates: the boy’s argot is not easy. ‘Christophe swears that in France they always catch cats in a net, any child can do it, he will be pleased to demonstrate if we give him full attention.’ He says to Wriothesley, ‘This question of yours –’
‘Do not take it ill –’
‘– does it come from Gardiner?’
‘Because,’ Richard says, ‘who but the bloody buggering Bishop of Winchester would come up with a question like that?’
Call-Me says, ‘If I report Winchester’s words, that is all I do. I do not speak for him, or on his behalf.’