Work Text:
It occurs to him that when he is dead, other people will be getting on with their day; it will be dinner time or nearly, there will be a bubbling of pottages, the clatter of ladles, the swift scoop of meats from spit to platter; a thousand dogs will stir from sleep and wag their tails; napkins will be unfurled and twitched over the shoulder, fingers dipped in rosewater, bread broken. And when the crumbs are swept away, the pewter piled for scouring, his body will be broken meat, and the executioner will clean the blade.
- "Light", The Mirror and the Light
1
She worried she would forget the day, when it came, for in Antwerp it is like any other morning. But when she rises, and sees the first rays turning the floor of her bedroom from dark brown to golden, her first thought is: soon my father will see this sunrise, and it will be the last one he sees.
She stands there for a moment, trying to imagine her father being brought forth from the Tower, in prisoner’s garb she supposes, warmed by this sun as he is led to the scaffold. But she cannot get him to look like a condemned man going to his death; she can only picture him as she saw him, striding around his great household, half a king himself.
Still, perhaps he has been humbled by his ordeal. It is possible. Perhaps he has suffered, perhaps he is frightened of death, or of what will come after. She includes him in her prayers, wishing him a merciful end.
After that, there is nothing to do but go about her business for a few hours. Master Vaughan told her the English hold their executions in the morning. Nine o’clock, perhaps. When the time comes, she thinks no one will begrudge her this hour, so she retreats to her own room.
She does not know what to do with herself. She does not believe in a purgatory after death, but if there is a purgatory, it must be here on earth, now: in this time between the walk to the scaffold and the swing of the axe, when her father is alive or dead, or both at once, and she cannot know when he passes from the one to the other.
If he were being burned, she could put him in Tyndale’s place in her mind, and feel his pain with him. His death would be a real thing in her body. But a beheading—it must be so quick, the life gone before the mind even knows what is happening. It hardly feels real. She cannot hold it inside her, she cannot carry it with her.
She sits at her desk, trying to experience her father’s death, but he will not settle in her mind. He will only dissolve from one ghostly form to another—now dead, now alive, now surrounded by his great household, now a young man with her mother in his arms, now a corpse on the scaffold, all changeable, all unknowable. As he has always been to her.
When she was in London, she watched him every moment, trying to understand who he was beyond his titles and his accomplishments. She learned these things: He was pained at the news of Tyndale’s death. He needed her to know that he would not have ignored her if he knew of her existence. He treats his son with a wary sort of affection. He does not say that he loved his wife, but he did.
She could try to assemble these bits of knowledge into a father, but she would fail. It is like building a man out of spare parts: a lock of hair here, a patch of skin there. You can make a serviceable figure. It can walk around and sit and speak with you. But when you try to put its heart in, all you can find is a brick wall.
She went to England to see her father while he lived, in case the rebels killed him. She left thinking, I have seen all I will see of him, even if he lives another fifty years.
Now, she takes out a little sheaf of papers. A letter from her father, telling her of Gregory’s marriage. A few more from Gregory, informing her of his children’s births. It is so hard to imagine, sweet silly Gregory with a wife and children—her nephews, she supposes, and cousins to the prince. (She is reminded that Gregory’s eldest is called Henry. She wonders if he regrets that now.)
But those are not the letters she looks at. Those letters brought news of life. Today, she needs to understand death.
At the bottom of the pile, the last received, are two letters from Thomas Avery. The first: Your father is made an earl. You will receive money from his new incomes. The second: Your father is to be executed. You will receive money from funds he has set aside. Her two windfalls. Her father’s greatest height and his inescapable fall. Three months apart.
They had first heard of her father’s fall through rumors from across the sea, which they mostly discounted. The first version you hear is always wrong. They learned the truth in a rushed letter from Rafe Sadler to Master Vaughan, but it still felt unreal to her, just another bit of business between the men. The only communication she, Jenneke, received personally was this letter from Thomas. She read it over and over, trying to get a sense of what really happened from Thomas’s few words, but it was no more revealing than the one announcing her father’s ascension to earl.
Now, she places the two letters on the table, side by side, nearly identical in Thomas’s precise hand. She lays a hand on each letter and touches her thumbs together, trying to bridge the space between them. But there is a gap there that she cannot comprehend.
A knock at the door, and Master Vaughan comes in. “Jenneke. It is ten o’clock,” he says gently.
She raises her head from the letters. “It will be over by now, I suppose.”
“I pray it is.”
She nods, closes her eyes, consults her heart. When her mother died, it ripped a hole in her. She feels that loss to this day. But this—when she thinks of her father, there is a sense of emptiness, a sense of missing. But that has always been there. Has it grown? She cannot say.
When she opens her eyes, Master Vaughan is standing over her, looking at the letters. “Master Avery?”
She almost smiles. She was fond of Thomas, it is true. He is the only person in her father’s orbit who she got to know here, on her own terms. To see him again there, among all those strangers at Austin Friars, was a great comfort. But of course, he is wed now. No matter—what would she have done, gone to England? It is impossible to imagine. England and Antwerp, they are different worlds.
She thinks of it sometimes, if her mother had sent her to her father’s household, and she had been raised an Englishwoman. Would she be on the run now, hiding with Gregory under some green English hill? Or, if her mother had not hidden her condition, and her father had stayed here, had wed her mother, had become a great merchant of Antwerp. Would they be together now, mourning her mother?
So many other lives. Other worlds. And she hardly understands this one.
“I am trying to make sense of this. What happened here.” She runs her finger down the strip of desk that separates the two letters. “The king thought he was plotting to marry his daughter Mary, yes? I asked my father why he did not remarry. I ask myself again now. It seems it was a dangerous choice.”
Master Vaughan frowns. “Well…it might have helped, yes, if he had not remained unwed. But I can’t say it would have saved him. Nothing would have, I think. There were too many causes. He could have done this or that differently, avoided angering this one or that one. But a lover of the gospel could not survive long in that court.”
She thinks of Tyndale again. Her mouth tightens. “Yes. He loved the gospel well. But he did not believe as I do, did he?”
Master Vaughan is silent.
“He was no papist, I know,” she says. “But he was not burned, as a heretic would be.”
Vaughan shrugs. “Henry is fickle. Vindictive one moment, merciful the next.”
“But not merciful enough.”
“No.”
It is quiet. Her eyes move to the second letter. “Thomas says my father had funds set aside somewhere. Everything else was seized, yes?”
“Yes. An attainted traitor’s property becomes the king’s.”
She nods. “When I first saw him, when I told him who I was, do you know what he did, nearly the first thing? He turned to the wall.”
Master Vaughan looks pained. “Jenneke, I know he seems a hard man, but he was glad to learn of you, I know—”
She holds up a hand. “Yes. That is not what I meant. He turned his back to look at the wall, but it was not a bare wall. There was a tapestry hanging there. A tapestry of my mother. I don’t know how it came about, but it was her, there is no question in my mind. And so I ask myself, was he turning away from me, or turning toward my mother?” She looks up at Master Vaughan. “I suppose Henry has it now.”
Vaughan looks at her sadly. “Master Sadler saved what he could. He wrote me that he was able to get your father’s portrait. Perhaps he has the tapestry as well. Or Gregory, or Richard.”
Why would Gregory want a tapestry of the woman who predated his mother? Still, she imagines her mother, rolled up in some storeroom, her father shoved in beside her. It is some little comfort.
And after all, she does not need more than a little comfort, for there is no cause for wallowing. There is plenty to do. She should see what Mistress Margaret needs. Little Anne will want a lesson soon—already at seven, Master Vaughan’s daughter is the cleverest child she, Jenneke, has seen, and they can sit for hours talking of the gospel. And Willem will surely be by later, on some business for Master Vaughan. Perhaps he will have time for her. He usually does.
To her surprise, she thinks: perhaps I will tell him about my father. He will understand. And why not? Willem is kind, and always seems to know what she means, and they ought to speak freely if they are to be—well. Nothing of that sort is certain, of course. But she has sufficient funds now. There is no reason she should not have her own household. She and Willem get on well. He is not especially handsome, but then, he is not ugly either. And besides, she is no great beauty herself.
You are blessed with your father’s mind and cursed with his looks, Master Vaughan has told her. She has always thought she got her mind from her mother. But now, as she pushes herself to her feet, holding her losses deep inside her, looking about for the next task, she thinks: there is something of him in me. Let it live on.
2
It is not his first time at this, of course. They would not be so careless as to give him such a public execution for his first. Still, though. He is not such an old hand, and he must admit, he dreads separating this head from these shoulders. He has not had a crowd anything like this before, nor such a great man as the condemned.
No, he reminds himself, his thoughts fuzzy in his aching head as the crowd roars and the sun beats down. Do not think of him as a great man. They tell you that, when you’re starting out: don’t think of them as living men, don’t think of yourself as killing them. They were dead the moment the sentence was passed against them, and you’re just a tool, a blade. They are bodies.
But even so, this is no ordinary body.
He drank too much last night, he knows. For no good reason, just the usual ones: quarreled with the neighbor, quarreled with his wife, quarreled with himself. He woke with his head pounding, and drank some more to silence it. His hands were shaking as he honed his axe. They are still shaking now. But perhaps no one will notice. When you have an axe in your hands, that is all people tend to see.
The dead man is in front of him. He does not like to look them in the eye, but something about this man forces you to look, wondering: Who is he? What is he? Will there ever be another like him? So his eyes land on the face.
That was a mistake. In an instant, it is clear: the dead man sees right through him. What are you doing here, his face seems to say. Why do you think you are capable of this. He feels withered under the glare of the dead man’s competence. Exposed, shrunk down to nothing.
No, he tells himself. He cannot judge me. I am the king’s justice, and he is just a body.
Coins are passed over, forgiveness is granted. All standard. But all the while, there are eels roiling in his belly, and his hands never stop shaking.
The body is on the block now. He raises his axe. Its shadow darkens the dead man’s face.
As soon as he swings, he knows it will not land true. If the cut is not true, your only hope is its force, so he puts all his strength in it, grunting with the effort. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes it makes it worse.
This time, it makes it worse.
Everyone hears it, but only he feels it: the sickening sensation of the blade lodging in muscle, fat, bone. Die, he prays quickly, in the instant when life hangs in the balance. Let that be enough. Die, damn you.
But the body does not want to die. It jerks, it makes sounds. Its arms—he will never forget this—they scrabble at the ground as if it is trying to push itself up. He wrenches his axe out and swings again, again, again, he does not know how many times. The crowd are supposed to keep their eyes averted, but some of them are looking, he is certain, their hot horrified gaze boring into him.
Swing. Jerk. Swing. Twitch. Swing.
Finally, finally, it is done. The body does not quiet, exactly, but it stops. He lowers his axe, hot with shame. He does not look at the head; he looks at the site of his failure, the neck, the ragged cut, where the blood pours out.
The sound of the crowd reaches him. It is not a reverent, somber silence, as it should be, but a murmur of disquiet. He pushes it away. It is not for him to comfort them, or to apologize. He had a task to do, and it is done.
He steps back, turns away. There is still another dead man who must be turned into meat. He must clean his blade, gather himself, prepare for the next. He will do better with this one, he swears to himself, though it hardly matters. No one will care what happens to the depraved lunatic. Once you give up your dignity, you cannot get it back on the scaffold.
You can lose it, though. One such as him can steal it from you, and it will pour out of you with your lifeblood. As he walks away, his stomach is still pitching and rolling like a tossed ship. He must step carefully to keep his balance, for the scaffold is slick with blood. Soon, it will turn dark and congeal, thick and black and tacky, but just now it is scarlet and it flows like a river.
3
He kneels with everyone else, as if he is just another man in the crowd, as if this is just another execution, and not the end of the life he has known since he was seven.
It should not feel so momentous, he thinks. His master has been dead for weeks now. He has seen him, has wept for him, has said his farewells, has heard his last words of advice. This is almost a formality. A cut with a tool, that’s all. Making the legal reality a physical one.
But still. The physical reality—the state of his master’s person, his mundane needs, his comfort or pain—he, Rafe, cares about these things, as few others do. (Who else? Gregory and Richard, of course. And Christophe, perhaps more than anyone—but he cannot think of Christophe now.) All morning, he has been praying for a clean death, the best they can hope for at this stage.
Now, it is in the executioner’s hands. He removes his hat, looks down, and prays for his master’s soul. The sunlight is so strong, the cobbles are almost sparkling.
Beside him he feels Richard’s presence, barely keeping himself together. They have rarely been with one another in public these weeks, the danger is too great, but this morning Richard looked at him and said, “Do not even think about avoiding me today. I don’t care. I will be beside you.” He is glad he did not resist.
He senses—perhaps hears it, perhaps sees its shadow at the corner of his vision, or the sunlight reflected off it—the axe being raised and swung. He holds his breath. He thinks, the next time I breathe, he will be dead. His last mad thought is: What more could I have done to save him, there must have been something—
An instant passes, and he tells himself, it is over.
But then the sound comes: not the clean sigh of separation, but metal and flesh, locked in battle. His stomach lurches. The people around him moan, gasp, whisper.
So it will take two cuts, he thinks. So be it. We always said it would be hard to separate that head from those shoulders.
But the second cut is no better: that same sound, and no sigh of relief from the crowd.
For once in his life, he does something entirely without intending to. He looks up.
It is a horror. It will haunt his nights. His master—his master’s body, whatever is left of him—is moving, struggling, suffering. His hand covers his mouth and he looks away, closing his eyes now. All prayers are gone from his mind, replaced by: let it be over, let it be over, let it be over.
It continues, on and on, the revolting, blood-chilling sounds. He thinks of Gregory, thanks God he took his advice and stayed away. He thinks how Norfolk must be enjoying this, and truly thinks he will be sick.
Finally, finally, the butchery ceases. There is the murmur of the crowd as they rise, the shuffle of hats being replaced on heads. He remains on his knees in darkness, reeling. He feels as if he has suffered with his master, has felt every blow of the axe, has died with him. Grief and rage swirl inside him, threatening to burst forth.
But he has already wept for his master. If he must weep again, he will do it tonight, with only Helen to see.
A hand lands on his shoulder, gripping firmly. Richard. He must open his eyes now and rejoin the world. It seems impossible. But he tells himself, my master is gone. There is nothing more I can do for him. I am my own man now.
Richard’s arm is there in front of him. He grasps it. He gets up, into an emptier world.
Richard looks thunderous with rage. Arrange your face, he wants to tell him, but he cannot speak the words.
“Damn them,” Richard says. “Damn all of them—”
He shakes his head. “Peace, Richard.” His own anger is settling. Not reduced, but stable, held for when he can put it to use.
“How could they let it happen like that,” Richard continues. “A man of his standing, a great man…”
He glances around. He cannot focus on the faces around him, but whoever they are, there are too many of them. “Richard. Hush. You’re no better than Christophe. Do you want to earn yourself the same fate?”
For a moment, Richard looks as if he might say, Yes, or at least, Why not? But he closes his mouth.
“Come,” he, Rafe, says. He leads them at a right angle to the crowd, around a corner, to a forgotten little alley. Alone now, he leans against the brick wall, lets himself tremble, lets his face do what it will.
The wall faces the sun, high in the clear sky and still climbing, and he feels it hot on his face. If it continues like this, he will be red before dinner.
He closes his eyes, and now he is at Wolf Hall, just returned from hunting with the king’s party. They had ridden all day with their hats off, in deference to the king, and he burned terribly. The king teased him, one red-haired man to another, and he, Rafe, teased his master, whose pallor was untouched. But his master, the king said, has the skin of a lily. The only particular in which he resembles that or any other blossom. He remembers the casual affection in the king’s voice. He remembers thinking: Henry likes us. We are safe.
The king was right in one respect, though: his master is nothing like a flower. When you remove a flower’s petals, they come right off.
That was not him up there on the scaffold, he tells himself, not truly. That fighting, suffering thing, that was just the dumb twitch of nerves and muscles. Just a body. Surely, his mind knew none of that, his spirit felt none of it. That was not the last moment of his master’s life, and he does not need to remember it.
After all, he does not need that image to recall his master in pain. He saw him after the cardinal’s daughter wounded him, saw him twisting Helen’s kerchief over and over in his hands, saw his face as he said, How could she think I did not stand by my master?
He himself swore to Henry that his master had forgiven him for bringing down the cardinal, though it sickened him to say it. Now he thinks, Henry will demand the same of me. He will ask: Do you hold your master’s fall against me? But if I lied to Henry to save my master, I can lie to save myself.
“Rafe!” He opens his eyes, jolted by Richard’s voice. Christ, he is becoming his master already, drifting off into memory at the slightest cue. Richard is pacing in the dirt. “Who do you think did this? Gardiner? Norfolk?” He spits the names like curses, as they have these past weeks, as they will for the rest of their lives. “Did they select a headsman who doesn’t know his business, or pay him off to botch the job?”
He sighs. “No, Richard. I think it was mere incompetence. You know how Kingston is.” He thinks of Anne Boleyn, stuffed into an arrow chest.
Richard considers. “You know, that’s almost worse.”
He nods. Forget Norfolk, forget Gardiner. To be, in the end, a victim of incompetence, that is what would truly rankle him.
“Do you know,” he says, surprising himself by smiling. “If they’d let him arrange his own execution, this never would have happened.”
Richard huffs a laugh. “True. He’d have tracked down the best headsman in England.”
“He’d lesson the man himself.” He puts on his master’s low voice. “Now see here, be sure you get a good edge on that blade. And don’t be afraid to put your back into it. I won’t be easy to kill.”
Richard slaps the wall, but it is not in anger. “He’d arrange the dinner himself, too. ‘I won’t have such a poor showing as at Anne’s death.’”
“Of course,” he says, laughing now. “He’d have poor Thurston up all night. He’d be in the kitchens with him, arranging fruits.”
Richard continues: he’d get Hungerford in line, he’d order up a few clouds to give some shade. No, it was only the cardinal could command the weather, he thinks, but he lets Richard go on, laughing until he must bend over and clutch his knees.
Soon, he knows, he will have to put his courtier’s face on and face Henry again. He will have to try to sleep with that image in his mind, that horrible twitching body. He will think what his master would do, and then do the next most cautious thing. He will stand there, year after year, decade after decade, impassive as they insult his master to his face.
But just now, he arranges nothing. He collapses against the wall with Richard and laughs until he can’t breathe. Any moment, he thinks, Gregory will come along asking what the joke is, and Richard will tell him he wouldn’t understand anyway, and it will descend to blows between them, the good-natured scuffling of friends and brothers. And then—he allows himself to think it, just for a moment, before the world moves on—his master will come barreling around the corner, breaking them up, brandishing papers, for they have business to attend to.
4
He is baking in the heat of the sun. Everyone around him rises, but he cannot, not possibly. He is melting, merging into the ground below his knees, sinking into that spot. He feels that it is him up on the scaffold, and well it should be, for God knows he has done enough to be executed. God knows he does not deserve to get up.
He has no choice, though. We must keep up appearances. We must be Henry’s faithful servant (or is it Master Gardiner’s?). We must give no hint of doubt, because of course, we feel no doubt. Doubt is death. (Or is it certainty that is death? The dead man never doubted, and look what it got him: butchery.)
“Call-Me!”
He looks up, startled. Riche.
He, Wriothesley, is on his feet before he knows it.
Riche nods at him. From his face, you would think he just watched a game of bowls. “All right?”
He can only shake his head. “That was ill done,” he says tightly.
Riche shrugs. “He died as he lived.”
“No. He lived with dignity.”
Riche looks at him, equal parts surprised and smug. Christ. What is wrong with him? He must stop thinking that sort of thing, let alone saying it. He must get hold of himself.
“With the pretense of dignity, I mean,” he, Wriothesley, says quickly. “As all he did was pretense.”
“Of course.”
He is no longer melting into the ground—now he is being roasted alive. He can feel the sweat trickling down his neck, under his doublet, starting a chilly path down his spine. It’s that damned sun, beating down, exposing him, illuminating every nook and cranny. Riche is striding across the courtyard and he has no choice but to keep pace, looking around for some means of escape.
Instead, he finds doom: Master Gardiner, dead ahead.
No. No. Gardiner is not his doom. Gardiner is escape, or at least refuge. It was Gardiner who raised him up, Gardiner who showed him how his other master misused him, Gardiner who offered to restore him to honor.
Now Gardiner’s face is a mask, but he, Wriothesley, knows him well enough to see he is displeased. That is little comfort, though. Gardiner might dislike the manner of the death, but he has no qualms about the death itself, nor what comes next.
The bishop certainly has seen them, but it is not for him to acknowledge them. Riche raises his hand in greeting. “Good morning, sir.”
He, Wriothesley, echoes him. Gardiner nods. He looks anywhere but his master’s eyes, praying he will not have to speak on what has happened.
It is Norfolk who saves him, his nasally voice cutting through the crowd: “Give you good morning, gentlemen!” Here he is, prancing toward them, clapping his hands together lustily. “What an end, eh? What a beginning!”
He wonders which is more thrilling to Norfolk: the execution, or the marriage. Norfolk has no qualms about the manner of the execution, that much is obvious. He is out for blood. If he could be there with the king tonight, he would be, watching for his niece’s blood on the royal bedsheets.
“A fitting end,” Riche says.
Norfolk nods. “I’ll tell you, when I saw him up there, jerking around like an animal—well, mother Mary forgive me, but not an ounce of pity in me, not a one. I don’t know who slipped that headsman the coin to botch the thing, but I wish I’d done it myself! Eh, Stephen?”
Gardiner shakes his head tightly. “This was a travesty.”
Norfolk laughs. “Come now, Stephen, don’t tell me you’ve second thoughts? He deserved that and worse!”
“It would have been correct to burn him for his heresy. That suffering would have been warranted. But our king was inclined to be merciful. This…butchery, this gross slaughter…” Gardiner shakes his head again. “It does not serve. It reflects ill on our king.”
“Gone soft in your old age, eh, Stephen?” Norfolk cackles. “Well, if Henry is offended, he can take it out on that little French savage. What in the name of Christ was that, hm? Think he paid his boy off to make the speech? I didn’t think the brute knew so much English.”
His stomach lurches at the thought of Christophe. He forces himself to keep walking beside the others, his legs moving stiffly, like a puppet.
To his surprise, Riche’s face darkens as well. “He would not do that,” Riche says.
“Christophe spoke from the heart,” he agrees, before he can stop himself. His and Riche’s eyes meet. What are they doing? For a moment, he thinks they understand each other. But then Riche’s face is dispassionate again. He, Wriothesley, tries to force his own into the same shape.
Norfolk, between them, gives them both a slap on the back. He flinches, almost stumbles. “Whose side are you lads on, anyway?”
He does not miss Gardiner’s glance, always searching, always judging. The tension in his stomach becomes a solid thing. The sun is beating, beating, beating.
Riche does not break stride. “Come, my lord. You know I am no fool. Surely I can admit to feeling for the boy’s loyalty. His master picked him out of the depths of France and led him astray. How was he to know he had got himself in the service of a devilish brute?”
Gardiner nods. “The boy was loyal to the last, that is true. And I will always praise loyalty. A virtue we are sadly short of, these days.” He stops and turns, and then they are all looking at him, Wriothesley, pointedly.
“My lord bishop. Are you questioning my loyalty?”
“I question any man who would sell his soul to the highest bidder.”
He is baking, roasting, burning. Guilt and anger boil within him. He wants to scream, or retch, or haul off and punch the judgement right off Gardiner’s face.
Instead, he cracks open, and the words pour out.
“What do you want from me, sir?” He starts slow, but before he knows it his speech has run away with him. “For half my life, you have pushed me away and pulled me back, you have raised me up and broken me. You have used me as a spy, when you weren’t allowing me to spy in your own household. You—and him—you split me in two—the both of you, you did it together, and all the while you asked why I was never fully yours. You set me up as a betrayer, and now you question my loyalty?” He takes a breath. Gardiner has not moved. “Well, sir, he is dead. You have won. I am yours. So what more do you want? Shall I fall at your feet? Shall I say you are my father and my creator?” With a trembling hand, he shoves his sleeve up. “Shall I make you a blood oath?”
He has run out of words; he stands, grasping his bare wrist before him, swaying on his feet. Norfolk is grinning. He dares not look at Riche. For a moment, Gardiner is still. Then, the slightest smile flits across his face.
“For God’s sake, Wriothesley,” he says calmly. “Don’t be vulgar.”
Gardiner turns on his heel and walks away, Norfolk and Riche trailing him.
His breath escapes him in a great spasm. For a moment he thinks he will collapse, but his legs won’t let him. There is nothing to do but follow.
He hurries across the cobbles. They are hot as an oven, but he feels like he is walking on ice. Any moment, he could plunge through to the freezing, churning, deadly river below.
5
It is a magnificent day. The air is perfectly clear, and the sun illuminates every leaf, every petal, every jewel, as if the world were made just for him to see it in its glory. And why not? Of course the sun should shine on the king’s wedding day.
In fact, it is the fairest day he can remember in…well, in quite some time. One could almost forget one is in England. Though he, the king, could never forget his realm, of course.
And his bride—Katherine is a vision. A perfect flower. She gazes at him as they say the vows, rapt with love, the sweetest little smile on her face. As they seal the marriage, he thinks, how could I ever have loved another? How could anyone compare to this sweet girl?
Well, besides Jane, of course. His perfect dove. He feels guilty for a moment, for leaving Jane in the past, Jane who gave him his son (Katherine will give him more, of course, but still, they cannot replace his heir). Still, Jane was so perfect, so pure, she was almost not of this world. Katherine has a life to her. A vitality. He has never had anyone like her before; surely, this time, he has got it right.
He is so certain of this, as he takes his new bride’s arm and leads her, that he could nearly dance. If it were not for his cursed leg, which has been paining him terribly all day. Still, his new queen will help him feel young again, he is sure. Even now, if he is limping slightly, surely no one can see it. Surely the spasm of pain that shoots up his leg with each step does not show on his face. And even if they can, even if it does, no one will be paying him any attention, when there is Katherine to admire.
As they make their way along the path, leading the small procession, Master Riche appears at his side. What is he doing here? This is not according to plan.
He slows, looks at Riche. Riche leans in and says in his ear, “Majesty, it is done.” He, the king, nods curtly, and Riche is gone, as smoothly as he appeared. He continues on, feeling vaguely annoyed with Riche, for marring this day with that other matter, that unpleasantness.
“Is aught amiss, my lord?” Katherine asks. For a moment he frowns. Why would she think it her place, to ask such a thing? He pushes the spasm of irritation aside. She is young, he reminds himself. It is a great opportunity, really, to guide her, as a prince must guide his subjects.
He smiles at his queen. “Darling, no need to trouble yourself with my business.”
Her smile only grows. “Oh, but I wish to ease your worries!” she chirps, like a little bird. “It is my duty to take on what I can of your concerns. To lighten the weight of the kingdom on your shoulders.”
He stops, signals a pause to the courtiers behind them. He takes his queen’s tiny hands in his. “Sweetheart. You will lighten my load by being my own loving bride. The business of ruling is my concern, and mine alone. We wish it could always be a pleasant, easy affair, but our kingdom is full of sinners. I will not mar your innocence with these foul matters.”
He keeps his voice light as he speaks, for a king does not need to raise his voice, certainly not to his own queen. His office brings him all the power he needs.
Sure enough, Katherine dips her head demurely. “As you say, my lord,” she murmurs. He feels a rush of affection for her. How could he ever have doubted her?
They continue toward the hall where they will celebrate the marriage with food and music and masques. It is a small affair, modestly decked out—it would not do to be extravagant, given—well, given the various circumstances. The state of the treasury, the state of the various delicate alliances.
But he puts all that aside. Today is not a day for the burdens of state. Today he is a man in love. Today he will sing, and recite poetry, and bask in the beauty of his bride and of the world. And tonight…perhaps it is improper to think of such things in the light of day, in front of his subjects, but how could he not? Given the perfection of the woman beside him, the sweet promise in her little hand resting on his arm, her shy glance. Given his own terrible history in that arena, which any man would sympathize with, how could he not wait eagerly for it all to be rectified tonight? It will be the perfect consummation, he is certain, more comfortable and sure than with Jane—he could never fault Jane’s modesty, but Katherine will have an enthusiasm that he has missed—and nothing, nothing, like last time.
Not that he bears Anne any ill will, really. It is not her fault she was misrepresented. It is not her fault she was used against him, to deceive him, for evil ends. And she accepted his decision with a refreshing grace. He hopes she is comfortable, up at Richmond.
There will be several properties coming into the crown’s possession now—perhaps he should grant one to her. As a token of his appreciation. It seems fitting. He will have to ask—well, no. He almost laughs. He will ask Gardiner to deal with it, he supposes.
Now they are come to Oatlands Palace itself. The great doors are opened, and they step from the warm glow of the sun to the cool darkness of the foyer. But it is not a relief, to be out of the heat. In fact, he feels a sudden—what? A melancholy. A disquiet. Like all the light has gone out of the world.
The girl beside him is no longer glowing like an angel, but looks pale and terribly human in the gloom. He is distressingly aware of how his own hair, without the sun to illuminate its red-gold fire, must be ceding ground to the ever encroaching greys.
Shadows, everywhere. And who is there to light the way?
He shudders to a halt. Before him are the doors to the great hall, with the feast laid out behind them. Guards stand in their places, at the ready to open them and usher the royal couple through. But he signals them to wait. He shrugs his queen’s hand off his arm and closes his eyes.
Alone in the dark, he draws himself up to his full height. The glory of his presence is radiating from him, he knows, and soon he will step through those doors and share it with his subjects. This gloom is a passing delusion; there is nothing wrong; the darkness cannot touch him. He is the King of England, and England needs him, now more than ever.
He does not depend on the sun for illumination. He is the mirror and the light of all princes. (He can’t recall where he heard that, but he quite likes it.) I am not faded yet, he thinks, preparing himself. There is still glory in me, and I shine with its light.
1
They are rough with him as they drag him away, a guard on either side and two more in front and behind—he takes pride in it, that they think they need four men to keep him at bay—striding quickly, so he, being of no greater stature than his master, must nearly run to keep up. It hurts, their armored fingers digging into his shoulders, his ankle when he twists it stumbling, and most of all his arm, which he cradles against his body at a sickening angle. To distract from the pain, he looks back over his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of his master’s death, but all he can see is the crowd, jostling and muttering, out for blood, eager to see a great man killed. He hates them. There is a noise, a murmuring, a jumble of emotion, but he can’t tell what it means—is it over? Surely, it must be.
He cannot see his master’s last moments, but he can live them with him, in his mind. Now he is mounting the scaffold. Now he is greeting the headsman, courteous as ever. Now he is handing over his payment. Now he is granting forgiveness. Now he is speaking his last eloquent words. Now he is kneeling. Now he is making his last prayer. Now he is on the block. Now he is breathing his last.
Swing. Cut. Sigh.
Now he is dead.
Now he, Christophe, is alone on this earth. But not for long.
The cell they put him in is bare and dirty, nothing like the fine rooms of his master’s imprisonment. But he does not mind; it is no worse than how he lived before his master found him. He sits against the wall, tenderly holding his broken arm. It still throbs with pain. He closes his eyes against it and says a prayer for his master. He, Christophe, still believes in saints and relics, and he imagines all the souls his master tore out of the ground returning to haunt him, Becket and his friends holding him in purgatory or dragging him down to hell. You leave him alone, you old dead saints, he tells them. He is better than any of you. Besides, he has his—Christophe’s—mother’s medal. Surely that will be protection enough.
He wants to stay there in the dark, looking out for the dead man’s soul, but he is woken by a kick in the side. Quoi, he grunts, and opens his eyes to see several men standing over him, one with linen and a splint to wrap up his arm. He is not exactly gentle, but he is not as rough as he could be. This confuses him. Why tend to a dead man? For a moment he wonders, are they to let him go? Has Master Rafe worked some magic?
No, that is madness. Rafe could not save the most useful man in England. He will not do anything for his master’s French brute. He has his own head to look out for. They are only doing what they must, the both of them.
It does not take them long to question him. There is no doubt as to what he said. There were a hundred witnesses, a thousand, and if they did not hear it all, he would repeat every word, and gladly. But they only want to know why he did it: Was he paid off? Did the dead man tell him to do it? Or his son? His nephew? Master Sadler? Archbishop Cranmer?
No. No. No, no, no, none of them.
They look at him, baffled. Then why did you say it?
Because it is the truth, he says. I know it is hard for you English to imagine, but sometimes people speak the truth.
They hit him again, they kick him. Not out of anger, they would not stoop to be insulted by such as him. They want a confession, so they can arrest his master’s friends. But they are wasting their time.
Then they leave him there in the dark, and he knows the next time they come, it will be to hang him.
On the last evening of his master’s life, he’d sent him, Christophe, out to the courtyard of the Tower. “Sit out there with the other boys,” he’d said, “and drink my health.” He did not do so. He wandered the courtyard alone, wondering that it should be him, of all people, with his master on his last night. Where were the famous Austin Friars boys? He could have been angry at them, but his thoughts turned instead to their false colleagues. Call-Me, who dared to smash Austin Friars to bits, the best home he ever had. And even worse—Riche. Who was there at Shaftesbury, who saw their master weeping like a child. His hands curled into fists at the memory. Did Riche not know what that meant? To see a great man, open and bleeding before you? To be trusted with that knowledge? The next time I see Riche, I will kill him, he had thought, there in the courtyard. But then he thought: how do I know I will see him again? How do I know I can kill him? Surely he will go about with guards now, he is that sort of coward.
No, his master would want him to be useful, he had decided. His anger must find a target it can hurt. And then he thought: what would my master do? Aim high. Aim the very highest of all. If you cannot use your fists, use your words.
He is no great speaker, but he can curse with the best of them. Men like Call-Me or Riche or even Norfolk are surely beneath God’s notice. But Henry. All England knows that the king’s fate rests in God’s hands.
And so, there in the courtyard, glowing in the sideways light of his master’s last sunset, he knew what he had to do. His master probably thought he was drunk when he stumbled back in, but it was only on the knowledge of his own fate.
Now, on his own last evening, he feels suddenly lonely. His hand goes to his mother’s medal around his neck, and then he remembers: he gave it up. He thought, my master needs it more than me. I will give it to him, as he gave me his knife. His knife rests over my heart now, and that is all the protection I need.
They took the knife, though. When they put him in here, they patted him down. First they took his own knife, which he wore at his hip. That neither surprised nor bothered him. But then they found his master’s knife, worn against his heart, and they took that too. He screamed and cursed them for that, but they took it all the same, and gave him a blackened eye for his trouble. And now his heart is unarmored.
So be it. Let his heart be open to the world. He has nothing to hide, and the world cannot hurt him now.
His master slept on his last night, so he will sleep too. He closes his eyes, but rather than darkness, there is his master, as he last saw him: mounting the scaffold, his calm broken for a moment as he looks at him, Christophe, hearing his curse. What was that on his face? Shock? Horror?
Does he dare think it was pride?
Yes. Why wouldn’t his master be proud of him? He spoke the truth. He was his man til the last. And if God truly hears our prayers, he doomed Henry to the slow, painful death he deserves.
But his master, there on the steps of the scaffold, shakes his head frantically. No, you turniphead, he says. This is not what I want. Go get yourself to Gregory’s household. Tell them to get you a wife. Live.
And now time stops, the crowd goes silent, the guards’ mailed fists freeze in midair, and only he and his master can speak. No sir, he says. I know what I must do. Why did you give me your knife, if not to kill and die for you?
That is not all I gave you, his master says. I gave you English. I taught you to arrange your face. I gave you my card trick, so that you could always earn your bread. I showed you an easier way to be.
He grins, though he is in agony. My lord Essex has gone soft in his old age, he says. Have you forgotten what you are? You’re mud and thieving fingers and a knife in the belly. You’re me.
No, his master says. You are me, but I am so much more than you. I am you and Rafe and Richard and Gregory and Jenneke, all at once. And I want all of you to live.
He swallows. It’s too late, he says. But I’ve killed Henry for you, at least.
His master looks so sad then, he can hardly bear to look at him, but nor can he look away. You stupid French brute, he says, but it is not an insult. Die with dignity, then.
I will if you will, he says.
And when he wakes, he does not fear at all, until they are walking him to the scaffold.
Then, when his legs tremble and his heart quakes, he busies his mind with his master’s last gift. He rehearses the pattern in his mind; his hands ghost the movements. The fingers of his broken arm are clumsy, but it is close enough. He slides and shuffles and flips the invisible cards, tracking the lady with his mind’s eye. She is here and there, everywhere at once, flitting about too fast to follow, unless you already know where she is. Holding her down is like catching a cat in a net.
Do not be nervous, his master told him. They can smell your fear. Keep your hands steady, your face still, and your mind focused, and you will never lose.
That is what he remembers, now, as he prepares to die. His master died with dignity—he must believe he did—and he will do the same. He has spoken the truth. He has named himself the son of the man who raised him. He has nothing to fear.
His master once told him that his life began when he took ship across the narrow sea. He, Christophe Cromwell, said: the same for me. Perhaps that is where they will meet again, on a ship, on some endless sea. As he closes his eyes to die, he thinks: Sir, do not drift away just yet. Wait a moment, and I will follow.