London (86 page)

During the first weeks that Rowland had worked for the chancellor, she had often thought about her meeting with the king. Had it been a mistake to hide it from Rowland? Was it right that they should be at court at all? Yet as time went by, these fears began to recede. No hint of trouble ever came: Rowland would return from Westminster, where he spent most of his time, with stories only of the kind treatment he received there. The house was delightful; their new income gave her a sense of ease she had never known before; the children were happy. Gradually, reassured, she began to put the whole business out of her mind.

The family had slipped easily into a natural rhythm of life. Her eldest daughter, Jane, now ten, was her chief helper in the house; but every day, without fail, while the two little girls played, she would make her sit down for three hours to work on her books, just as she had been made to do. Jane already had a good command of Latin, and if, sometimes, she complained to her mother that many of her friends could only just read and write English, Susan would tell her firmly: “I don’t want you to marry an ignorant man; and believe me, a happy marriage is a sharing of minds as well as of other things.”

But sweetest of all was to watch young Jonathan. The girls were all fair, but with his fine, dark hair and his pale, intense little face, he was clearly an eight-year-old version of his father. He had now started to go to school at Westminster. Often his father would take him in the mornings, and she would watch as the two of them set off to walk down the lane together, hand in hand; or sometimes, if he rode, Rowland would put the boy in the saddle in front of him. Once or twice, having seen them go off like this, she had felt such a wave of happiness and affection that it had brought a lump to her throat.

Peter was still away, and she missed his company and his wise counsel very much. Yet her brother Thomas stepped in to take his place. He and Rowland often met now, and Rowland would bring him home. These were happy evenings, when he would play with the children, who loved him, and tease everybody gently; and though she had always thought he was too worldly, she could not help laughing at some of the witty things he said and admiring his intelligence when he discussed his life at court.

Sometimes, as the three of them sat before the fire, the talk would turn to matters of religion; and here things would get especially lively, with both men on their mettle.

Susan sensed that behind Thomas’s bantering tone and worldliness, there was a concern for a simple faith that she had not realized before, and she liked him for it. Some of his views on the laxity and superstition that had crept in to the Church, she could almost share. Though sometimes he went too far.

“I cannot see by what right we deny the faithful an English Bible,” he would say. “I know,” he cut Rowland off, “you will cite the Lollards and say that left to their own the people will lead themselves astray. But I can’t agree.”

“Luther began as a reformer and ended a heretic. That’s what happens when people set themselves up against the wisdom and authority of the ages,” Rowland replied.

Susan could not help feeling that in the reformers, and especially those who went over to Protestantism, there was a certain arrogance. “They want everybody to be perfect,” she complained. “But God rewards us all for doing our best. The reformers want to force everyone to be like them and they think no one can be saved otherwise.”

But Thomas was still not to be swayed. “Reform will come in one way or another, sister,” he would reply. “It must.”

“At least one thing is sure,” Rowland would say with a smile. “There will be no Protestants in England if King Henry has his way. He hates them.”

Of that, Susan thought, there could be no possible doubt.

But if Thomas Meredith was glad to bring happiness to those around him, he was preoccupied by a rather different meeting. It had taken place two days before the royal christening. A very private meeting. With his master, Cromwell.

The royal secretary never ceased to fascinate Meredith. An expert courtier, closest adviser to the king, you would scarcely have guessed he was the son of a humble brewer. He had not risen, like Bull, through scholarship but by his ruthless grasp of affairs. And yet there was always something else about him – some secret reticence, perhaps a secret set of convictions. Only a very few men, Meredith guessed, even got a glimpse of these.

They had been alone in an upstairs chamber when the royal secretary had murmured to him that he had news from Rome. “The Pope,” he had informed the young man, “is about to excommunicate the king.” Thomas had expressed concern, but Cromwell had merely shrugged. “He has to really, to save face, after all Henry’s done.” Then he gave a wry smile. “Yet His Holiness still does not say who, in his opinion, is Henry’s true wife.”

It was clear, however, that the secretary had some purpose in telling him this. Cromwell’s eyes, though set very wide apart, were small and Meredith felt them upon him now like a pair of dividers. “Tell me,” he said quietly, “what you think of this news.”

How carefully he had answered. “I regret it when any man, even a pope, cannot agree with my master the king.”

“Good.” Cromwell looked thoughtful. “You were at Cambridge?” Thomas nodded. “Friends with Cranmer?” Nothing escaped the secretary. Thomas agreed that he was. Cromwell seemed satisfied; but he had not finished. “And tell me, my young friend,” he continued softly, “this news of excommunication: is it good or bad?”

Meredith looked him straight in the eye. “Perhaps it is good news,” he answered quietly.

Cromwell grunted, but both men knew that this had been an invitation. The secretary had given him his confidence, had referred to the secret which, though neither of them had ever spoken the thought aloud, they had long since guessed they shared. The secret which Meredith could not tell his family and Cromwell could not tell the king. The next few months, Thomas Meredith thought, would be interesting.

1534

Only once, during the first year at Chelsea, was Susan’s peace of mind threatened; and that problem, she thought proudly, she had handled rather well.

It had been an April day which had started poorly, with a messenger coming from the Charterhouse bearing a letter that had just arrived from Peter in Rome, and which announced that, having been ill there, he would not be returning to London for some months. It was sad news. But even this had been driven from her mind by the sight, in the middle of the afternoon, of her husband riding dejectedly towards her, ashen pale and accompanied by Thomas, who was looking unusually solemn. She ran out to meet them.

“What’s the matter? Are you in trouble?” she asked Rowland. “No,” Thomas replied. “But he may be tomorrow.” And he led the way inside.

In her determination to raise her family in an atmosphere of peace, Susan had deliberately kept her mind off the affairs of the world. The political events of recent months, though she regretted them, had not seemed alarming, partly because they were expected. Forced, at last, to choose between the mighty Habsburg monarch and the island King Henry, the Pope had reluctantly issued his excommunication. Then in March, still more regretfully, he had declared that Spanish Katherine, and not Anne Boleyn, was the English king’s true wife. Henry had been ready: an Act of Succession, already prepared, was presented to Parliament by Secretary Cromwell and was quickly passed. With it came an oath, recognizing Anne’s children as the rightful heirs, with a preamble which denied that the Pope had authority to change these arrangements.

“We cannot allow doubt about the succession now,” Henry declared. “My subjects must all take the oath.” In London, the aldermen were to administer the oath to each citizen and then report to Greenwich; elsewhere, Cromwell’s officials would see to it.

Susan thought the business distasteful but necessary. Better, she supposed, an agreed succession – even if it did prolong the embarrassment with the Pope – than a dispute over the Crown; and from what she heard, most people felt the same. The Londoners might grumble but none, so far as she knew, had refused to obey the king’s law. It was a shock to her therefore when, as soon as the two men got inside, Rowland blurted out: “It’s the oath. Three men have refused it. They’ve been sent to the Tower.” And seeing her still puzzled: “I’m to take it tomorrow.”

“And he thinks,” Thomas added, “that he should refuse it too.”

Susan suddenly felt weak, but she kept calm. “Which three men?” she asked. A certain Doctor Wilson, they told her: she had never heard of him. And old Bishop Fisher, too.

“That might have been expected,” she countered. Having been the one bishop who had originally refused to sanction Henry’s new marriage, the saintly old man could hardly change his mind now. It was the third name, however, which caused her heart to sink: “Sir Thomas More.”

For Rowland, she knew, the former chancellor – scholar, writer, lawyer and sternest of Catholics – was a man to be admired and followed.

“What will happen to them?” she asked.

“Fortunately, according to the Act, refusing the oath is not treason,” Thomas said. “But no doubt they’ll cool their heels in the Tower for a while. Anyone who follows their example . . .” he looked at Rowland and then grimaced. “The end of his position. The end of all this,” he indicated her beloved house. “Awkward for me too, as a brother-in-law.”

Rowland looked uncertain. “Yet More is a lawyer. He must have his reasons.”

At which Susan let out a snort of disgust. For, devout though she was, if there was one man in London whom Susan Bull had come thoroughly to dislike, it was Sir Thomas More.

History, not without cause, has often dealt kindly with Sir Thomas More. Yet, in his own day, the antipathy Susan felt was probably more common. In her own case, there were several reasons. Since his retirement two years before, he had spent almost all his time at his house by the river at Chelsea, not half a mile from their own. While she saw his bustling wife and members of his extensive family, the great man, busily writing, was rarely visible; and though people who knew him said he was kind and witty, on the few occasions when she had encountered him, she had found the pale figure with his greying hair to be remote, and also sensed that he had a rather poor opinion of women. Her real objections to him, however, dated back to the period when he was chancellor. For it was then that a more disturbing side of his character had become evident.

He had a passionate dislike of heretics. Though not in holy orders, he had more or less appointed himself as the king’s religious watchdog. A lawyer to his fingertips, he had seemed to like the role of prosecutor as well as judge. Time and again, suspected heretics had been taken by river to Chelsea for interrogations, which he often conducted in person. His integrity and intellect were never in doubt, but even Susan, devout though she was, thought him obsessive. “He’s not a bishop,” she had complained. “And besides, it isn’t English.” Unlike some countries, England had always been mercifully free of heresy-hunts. So now she protested: “More is a bigot.”

“Consider,” Thomas cut in. “This oath is not a matter of faith: it concerns only the succession. Now, does the Pope name the heir to the English Crown?”

“Of course not.”

“Very well then. Consider further: where does this oath come from – the king alone? No. It was enacted by Parliament.” He smiled. “Do you set yourself up against Parliament?” This, Thomas knew very well, was the key to the business – the key that his master Cromwell had so carefully used.

The Parliament of England was still essentially medieval. But for a strong king like Henry, it had one particular use. It could confirm the royal will, in a manner that could not be gainsaid. For who could deny that when the House of Lords, which included the bishops and abbots too, and the Commons spoke together, it was with the united voice, temporal and spiritual, of the whole realm?

“Let me put you a case,” Thomas drove his advantage home. “If the king and Parliament enacted that I, Thomas Meredith, should be the next king, could you or the Pope deny it?” Rowland shook his head. “Well then.”

“But it’s the preamble,” Rowland still objected. “Doesn’t it deny the Pope’s authority over the sacrament of marriage?”

“It’s arguable,” Thomas at once conceded. Indeed, the wording had been an elaborate compromise between Cromwell and the bishops, and the exact sense was deliberately unclear. “But the bishops accept it. And even,” he urged, “if the bishops are wrong, we all know the thing is necessary because of the impossible position the king and the Pope find themselves in.”

It was a strong argument, and seeing her husband hesitate, Susan now struck. “You must take the oath,” she said firmly. “You cannot destroy your career and family. Not for this. It isn’t enough.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He nodded, then smiled. “I know I can trust your judgement,” he said.

Did she, Susan wondered, truly believe she was right? Or did instinct tell her that Fisher and More had correctly seen to the heart of the matter? She remembered the Henry she had seen in the garden, then swiftly put the vision out of her mind, and thought of her children instead. She could not see them hurt.

All that evening, after Thomas had gone, though Rowland seemed outwardly calm enough, she knew from his pallor that his conscience was troubling him. Once or twice he remarked to her with a sad smile: “I wish Peter were here.” And she wished she could think of something she could say to put his mind at rest.

She was glad, early the following morning, when looking out from their chamber she saw a barge emerge out of the mist on the river, and a few moments later welcomed her brother at the door. He was grinning.

“I just thought I’d tell you,” he announced. “I went to the Charterhouse last night. They are all taking the oath.” In fact the strict Carthusians had only agreed with the gravest reservations, but he saw no need to go into that. “So,” he said cheerfully, “if the Charterhouse, where Peter is going, can do it, so can you.”

And now she saw Rowland’s face relax at last. Thank God, she thought, for Thomas.