Wolf Hall (96 page)

“Fisher gives me no anxiety,” he says, “his offense is clear. In More's case . . . morally, our cause is unimpeachable. No one is in doubt of his loyalty to Rome and his hatred of Your Majesty's title as head of the church. Legally, however, our case is slender, and More will use every legal, every procedural device open to him. This is not going to be easy.”

Henry stirs into life. “Do I retain you for what is easy? Jesus pity my simplicity, I have promoted you to a place in this kingdom that no one, no one of your breeding has ever held in the whole of the history of this realm.” He drops his voice. “Do you think it is for your personal beauty? The charm of your presence? I keep you, Master Cromwell, because you are as cunning as a bag of serpents. But do not be a viper in my bosom. You know my decision. Execute it.”

As he leaves, he is conscious of the silence falling behind him. Anne walking to the window. Henry staring at his feet.

So when Riche comes in, quivering with undisclosed secrets, he is inclined to swat him like a fly; but then he takes hold of himself, rubs his palms together instead: the merriest man in London. “Well, Sir Purse, did you pack up the books? And how was he?”

“He drew the blind down. I asked him why, and he said, the goods are taken away, so now I am closing the shop.”

He can hardly bear it, to think of More sitting in the dark.

“Look, sir.” Riche has a folded paper. “We had some conversation. I wrote it down.”

“Talk me through it.” He sits down. “I am More. You are Riche.” Riche stares at him. “Shall I close the shutter? Is this better played out in the dark?”

“I could not,” Riche says, hesitant, “leave him without trying once again—”

“Quite. You have your way to make. But why would he talk to you, if he would not talk to me?”

“Because he has no time for me. He thinks I don't matter.”

“And you Solicitor General,” he says, mocking.

“So we were putting cases.”

“What, as if you were at Lincoln's Inn after supper?”

“To tell the truth I pitied him, sir. He craves conversation and you know he rattles away. I said to him, suppose Parliament were to pass an act saying that I, Richard Riche, were to be king. Would you not take me for king? And he laughed.”

“Well, you admit it is not likely.”

“So I pressed him on it; he said, yes, majestic Richard, I so take you, for Parliament can do it, and considering what they have done already I should hardly be surprised if I woke up in the reign of King Cromwell, for if a tailor can be King of Jerusalem I suppose a lad from the smithy can be King of England.”

Riche pauses: has he given offense? He beams at him. “When I am King Cromwell, you shall be a duke. So, to the point, Purse . . . or isn't there one?”

“More said, well, you have put a case, I shall put you a higher case. Suppose Parliament were to pass an act saying God should not be God? I said, it would have no effect, for Parliament has no power to do it. Then he said, aye, well, young man, at least you recognize an absurdity. And there he stopped, and gave me a look, as if to say, let us deal in the real world now. I said to him, I will put you a middle case. You know our lord the king has been named by Parliament head of the church. Why will you not go with the vote, as you go with it when it makes me monarch? And he said—as if he were instructing some child—the cases are not alike. For one is a temporal jurisdiction, and Parliament can do it. The other is a spiritual jurisdiction, and is what Parliament cannot exercise, for the jurisdiction is out of this realm.”

He stares at Riche. “Hang him for a papist,” he says.

“Yes, sir.”

“We know he thinks it. He has never stated it.”

“He said that a higher law governed this and all realms, and if Parliament trespassed on God's law . . .”

“On the Pope's law, he means—for he holds them the same, he couldn't deny that, could he? Why is he always examining his conscience, if not to check day and night that it is in accord with the church of Rome? That is his comfort, that is his guide. It seems to me, if he plainly denies Parliament its capacity, he denies the king his title. Which is treason. Still,” he shrugs, “how far does it take us? Can we show the denial was malicious? He will say, I suppose, that it was just talk, to pass the time. That you were putting cases, and that anything said in that wise cannot be held against a man.”

“A jury won't understand that. They'll take him to mean what he said. After all, sir, he knew it wasn't some students' debate.”

“True. You don't hold those at the Tower.”

Riche offers the memorandum. “I have written it down faithfully to the best of my recollection.”

“You don't have a witness?”

“They were in and out, packing up the books in a crate, he had a lot of books. You cannot blame me for carelessness, sir, for how was I to know he would talk to me at all?”

“I don't blame you.” He sighs. “In fact, Purse, you are the apple of my eye. You'll stand behind this in court?”

Doubtful, Riche nods. “Tell me you will, Richard. Or tell me you won't. Let's have it straight. Have the grace to say so now, if you think your courage might fail. If we lose another trial, we can kiss goodbye to our livelihoods. And all our work will be for nothing.”

“You see, he couldn't resist it, the chance to put me right,” Riche says. “He will never let it drop, what I did as a boy. He uses me to make his sermon on. Well, let him make his next sermon on the block.”

The evening before Fisher is to die, he visits More. He takes a strong guard with him, but he leaves them in the outer chamber and goes in alone. “I've got used to the blind drawn,” More says, almost cheerfully. “You don't mind sitting in the twilight?”

“You need not be afraid of the sun. There is none.”

“Wolsey used to boast that he could change the weather.” He chuckles. “It's good of you to visit me, Thomas, now that we have no more to say. Or have we?”

“The guards will come for Bishop Fisher early tomorrow. I am afraid they will wake you.”

“I should be a poor Christian if I could not keep vigil with him.” His smile has seeped away. “I hear the king has granted him mercy as to the manner of his death.”

“He being a very old man, and frail.”

More says, with tart pleasantness, “I'm doing my best, you know. A man can only shrivel at his own rate.”

“Listen.” He reaches across the table, takes his hand, wrings it: harder than he meant. My blacksmith's grip, he thinks: he sees More flinch, feels his fingers, the skin dry as paper over the bones. “Listen. When you come before the court, throw yourself at that instant on the king's mercy.”

More says, wonderingly, “What good will that do me?”

“He is not a cruel man. You know that.”

“Do I? He used not to be. He had a sweet disposition. But then he changed the company he kept.”

“He is susceptible always to a plea for mercy. I do not say he will let you live, the oath unsworn. But he may grant you the same mercy as Fisher.”

“It is not so important, what happens to the body. I have led in some ways a blessed life. God has been good and not tested me. Now he does I cannot fail him. I have been vigilant over my heart, and I have not always liked what I have found there. If it comes into the hands of the hangman at the last, so be it. It will be in God's hands soon enough.”

“Will you think me sentimental, if I say I do not want to see you butchered?” No reply. “Are you not afraid of the pain?”

“Oh yes, I am very much afraid, I am not a bold and robust man such as yourself, I cannot help but rehearse it in my mind. But I will only feel it for a moment, and God will not let me remember it afterward.”

“I am glad I am not like you.”

“Undoubtedly. Or you would be sitting here.”

“I mean, my mind fixed on the next world. I realize you see no prospect of improving this one.”

“And you do?”

Almost a flippant question. A handful of hail smacks itself against the window. It startles them both; he gets up, restless. He would rather know what's outside, see the summer in its sad blowing wreckage, than cower behind the blind and wonder what the damage is. “I once had every hope,” he says. “The world corrupts me, I think. Or perhaps it's just the weather. It pulls me down and makes me think like you, that one should shrink inside, down and down to a little point of light, preserving one's solitary soul like a flame under a glass. The spectacles of pain and disgrace I see around me, the ignorance, the unthinking vice, the poverty and the lack of hope, and oh, the rain—the rain that falls on England and rots the grain, puts out the light in a man's eye and the light of learning too, for who can reason if Oxford is a giant puddle and Cambridge is washing away downstream, and who will enforce the laws if the judges are swimming for their lives? Last week the people were rioting in York. Why would they not, with wheat so scarce, and twice the price of last year? I must stir up the justices to make examples, I suppose, otherwise the whole of the north will be out with billhooks and pikes, and who will they slaughter but each other? I truly believe I should be a better man if the weather were better. I should be a better man if I lived in a commonwealth where the sun shone and the citizens were rich and free. If only that were true, Master More, you wouldn't have to pray for me nearly as hard as you do.”

“How you can talk,” More says. Words, words, just words. “I do, of course, pray for you. I pray with all my heart that you will see that you are misled. When we meet in Heaven, as I hope we will, all our differences will be forgot. But for now, we cannot wish them away. Your task is to kill me. Mine is to keep alive. It is my role and my duty. All I own is the ground I stand on, and that ground is Thomas More. If you want it you will have to take it from me. You cannot reasonably believe I will yield it.”

“You will want pen and paper to write out your defense. I will grant you that.”

“You never give up trying, do you? No, Master Secretary, my defense is up here,” he taps his forehead, “where it will stay safe from you.”

How strange the room is, how empty, without More's books: it is filling with shadows. “Martin, a candle,” he calls.

“Will you be here tomorrow? For the bishop?”

He nods. Though he will not witness the moment of Fisher's death. The protocol is that the spectators bow their knee and doff their hats to mark the passing of the soul.

Martin brings a pricket candle. “Anything else?” They pause while he sets it down. When he is gone, they still pause: the prisoner sits hunched over, looking into the flame. How does he know if More has begun on a silence, or on preparation for speech? There is a silence which precedes speech, there is a silence which is instead of speech. One need not break it with a statement, one can break it with a hesitation: if . . . as it may be . . . if it were possible . . . He says, “I would have left you, you know. To live out your life. To repent of your butcheries. If I were king.”

The light fades. It is as if the prisoner has withdrawn himself from the room, leaving barely a shape where he should be. A draft pulls at the candle flame. The bare table between them, clear now of More's driven scribblings, has taken on the aspect of an altar; and what is an altar for, but a sacrifice? More breaks his silence at last: “If, at the end and after I am tried, if the king does not grant, if the full rigor of the penalty . . . Thomas, how is it done? You would think when a man's belly were slashed open he would die, with a great effusion of blood, but it seems it is not so . . . Do they have some special implement, that they use to pith him while he is alive?”

“I am sorry you should think me expert.”

But had he not told Norfolk, as good as told him, that he had pulled out a man's heart?

He says, “It is the executioner's mystery. It is kept secret, to keep us in awe.”