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He is kneeling, helpless, breathless, bloodless. Beneath him is the scaffold, and beneath that, the crowd, a heaving mass that strains desperately towards him. The air tastes thick with anticipation and he thinks that somewhere beyond his sight there is a woman, sobbing. Arrange your face, he wants to say, as though she is Gregory, as though she is Rafe: it does not do to mourn for a traitor so publicly.
Breath still moves through him, though that is strictly a formality: in every way that matters, he is dead. He has been dead since the attainder was passed, it is just his body that doesn’t seem to have understood. Behind him, his ghosts crowd, solid, inescapable. Flashes of the Cardinal’s crimson in his periphery, the rasp of More’s breath. A dark gaze: Anna Bolina. To the end, she had been casting that gaze about, hoping for Henry, for reprieve: he, Cromwell, harbours no such delusion. He will die with the dignity that is required of him.
Other men have done so, he can too.
He thinks he should close his eyes, as that is what condemned men do after all, but he cannot. He cannot, even as the footsteps of the headsman grow closer. They remain open, unseeing, as though he is already a corpse. He can smell his blood, taste the thickness in his mouth, though it is not real. Mark Smeaton’s narrow gaze bruises him. You cannot judge me, Mark, not now.
The headman is before him, now, and he, Cromwell prays his hands will not shake and the axe will strike true. He has seen a botched execution, he has seen how long it takes for a body to die.
Ahead, the woman is still wailing. Maybe she is Liz. It has been a decade, longer, and he wonders why she is crying. A decade has been enough time for the emptiness behind his heart to abate: maybe she is simply mourning his fate. He wants to tell her not to weep, but, like his eyes, his lips will not obey him.
It is happening now, he tracks the headsman’s shadow across the scaffold, feels as the crowd takes a collective breath. Now, he wants to close his eyes, but he fears missing the blow: he waits, he will follow the Cardinal, follow the flash of red.
He waits. He waits.
The moment recedes: the crowd falls into discontented murmuring. They want blood, they want his head, why have they not got it? The moment recedes, he is still breathing, and the air is sharp and painful against his lungs. A delay? This would not have happened if he had been the organiser.
The moment recedes, and his heart stutters into movement. Footsteps, rapid, hurried, shake the scaffold, furious words are exchanged above his head. Is this some new torture devised to torment him, to keep him in suspense? That would be ill done, he does not think that even Norfolk would stoop so low.
A hand is on his arm now, a command to rise, but he cannot. He cannot. He is a dead man trapped in a body that still thinks and breathes, but a dead man nonetheless. Dead men do not rise, they do not walk away.
More insistently, the hand tugs, his neck is pulled from the block and without instruction or cause, his knees unbend: he rises. The murmur of the crowd gives to a roar, and his gaze moves over the executioner.
Pardoned, the man says, and he, Cromwell, finds he cannot answer. He is struck dumb, reason slipping from him like ink. Henry did not pardon Anne, did not pardon More, did not pardon the Cardinal. It is a rule, as simple as the sky hanging above the earth: dead men die. And yet, he has not.
Kingston is before him, and he is ushered away. He feels though he should protest the proper order of things, but his eyes move over the block, and he finds that he is afraid. He does not want to die. He will not settle in the soil, down with his dead.
An armed escort encloses him, though he suspects that it has less to do with his status than with the mass of bodies beyond. There is a great roaring, he is jostled, things are thrown, and at once, he understands. They are trying to kill him. His majesty has appointed six hundred armed guards for the occasion, but for a moment, he, Cromwell, is afraid it will not be enough.
His body is braced for a melee. A guard beside him falls, and another fills his place. A gunshot: dear God, what fool has brought a pistol? He is thinking of Packington, the man shot outside Austin Friars: if he dies to the mob now, will there be enough of him to bury?
His hand wishes for a knife, to feel something solid beside the press of the earth against his heels, but there is none: of course there is none. Christophe owns it now, for what good it will do the boy. Great pain envelopes the space behind his heart. He will save the boy, if he is able.
Now, the pack of the crowd is easing, the metal of blood thickening the air. For a moment, he believes it his own, that he is still on that scaffold, the headsman before him. Only instead of a great angelic light on his back, there is only Norfolk’s burning gaze. He cannot turn to meet it, there will be time for that later, when he has rightened himself.
They are at the barge, and, in what feels like an instant, the Tower. It is not unlike a dream: the earth seems immaterial, as though one misstep will send him hurtling down through it. The yeomen will not look him in the eye: he understands. He is a perverse creature, now, something that is not dead, yet still should not live. There is no protocol for this, no procedure, he is simply a living wraith, a story to keep children in their beds. He himself does not even feel like a man, he is too cold, his head does not feel like his own.
More dances around his periphery, the eel boy squats in the shadows.
“My lord?” it is Kingston, eyes carefully averted. He, Cromwell, has stopped in the courtyard. Across the river, the woman who was wailing has finally abated. He thinks, wait for me Liz, I will come for you, but not today. Against his cheek, the breeze feels like a breath.
“My lord, do you need assistance?”
Is he still a lord? As a traitor, his titles were stripped from him. It is laughable how swift he plummeted, and how swift he is now raised up again. He gathers himself. He speaks.
“Am I to remain here?” Am I to remain imprisoned? It has not even been a half hour since he last uttered words, and yet it feels like days. His tongue feels foreign in his mouth.
Kingston looks disconcerted, it does not do for a goaler to be unsure around his prisoner, and he knows it.
“We have received no further instruction, my lord. You will be kept comfortably.”
An abrupt decision to spare him, then. He wonders why. Perhaps Henry has grown bored of Kathrine already.
“Christophe?”
Kingston shakes his head and the vice around his heart grows unbearable. He cannot breathe, the Cardinal’s fingers brush over his shoulder. The boy will be hung, if he has not been already. Will Christophe join his ghosts? He hopes not, he hopes he has found a place among the angels.
“Help my lord Cromwell inside, he is not well.”
He can only imagine how he looks, sallow, unshaven, hands trembling. Before long, he will have to steady himself, to face his enemies, but for now, grief has robbed him of even his breath, never mind his sense. There are hands on him now, gently shuffling him along. He has a mind to protest, but finds he cannot bring himself to. He is shown to his quarters. The air is sour and stale: he is shocked. He had believed he had lived those last days in a quiet dignity, but here is the evidence otherwise. Someone, perhaps Martin, has thrown open the windows, though the dilute morning sunlight does little to penetrate the air of disparity. The blue-eyed goddesses along the walls watch him in silent reproach.
His body does not want to move over the threshold, but he must. He must, or he will be hovering in this limbo between life and death forever. He must take this step and claim his place among the living once again.
He steps forward, and becomes solid.
“Do you require anything, sir?” It is not Kingston, he has gone: the business of the Tower will not stop for one man.
“Some lights.” The room is light enough already. “Paper and ink, if I am permitted to write.”
They bring him candles, but not paper: he is unsure how to interpret that. It is of little matter, though, his hands are shaking and his mind is untethered, and he is sure eloquence is beyond him.
Time unspools: dusk creeps in. He is glad of the candles. Sleep evades him, he cannot seem to hold a coherent thought and so sits by the window. Across the Thames, lanterns bob, weaving over the site of his aborted execution. He wonders who they are. Perhaps they are opportunists, like he himself was in his ruffian childhood, scouring the cobbles for abandoned coins and treasure. A splinter off his scaffold, real or fraudulent, is sure to sell.
He is thinking of the old loller woman, burnt before him, ash under his fingernails and fat on his skin. If she had been saved by an act of grace, would he have scooped up the tinder to sell? He is sure Walter would have. The lights across the water have captured him. Each marks the movement of a warm, breathing body, lives foreign to his own. He will never know them, and yet he feels a sense of loss.
He watches for so long that the lights cease to be familiar and instead seem the echoes of stars, earthly reflections. The world inverts: there is nothing but the void of space punctuated with occasional brilliance.
***
Dawn, there is a knock at the door. He has not been sleeping, yet he starts awake. It is Rafe. He is in disarray, face blotchy, and eyes restless. In his fingers, he crushes the black velvet of his cap, so he, Cromwell, can see his hair standing in spikes. Rafe’s hand reaches up, running through it, as if in explanation. Heaven direct me: boy or hedgehog?
“Sir! I wanted to come sooner but they would not allow me to see you.”
“Rafe,” he says. It is time to arrange his face, yet he cannot. “Come here.” They embrace. Rafe is holding him as one may hold an ancient book, as though he will crumble to dust without a moment's notice. He cannot protest it: age has crept into his bones, the wound in his leg from the Italian war aches.
Rafe is trembling. “Damn Kingston,” he swears, “the headsman was drunk, and I am sure the axe was in no better condition. To parade a man of your standing up there and then walk him back down through that mob as though trying to kill you twice. A perverse spectacle!”
“Peace, Rafe. I am well.” He is not, but words other than those will likely send the boy ablaze again. Rafe hurdles on: he has been spending too much time with Richard, though that is not something he, Cromwell, can begrudge.
“The fire is not even lit, it’s as cold as sin in here! They will not let you leave, yet keep you in this squalor.”
“What news, Rafe?” He is trying to gentle the boy. The flames are damped, Rafe sits.
“You are pardoned.” He sounds like he himself doesn’t even believe it.
“It is all I have been told.”
“His majesty summoned me the morning of his wedding. I was loath to go, sir, but I know my duty and acquiesced. He seemed disquieted, was asking after you. I explained your most sorry state, and he then had me read your letter aloud. I knew nothing more until the headsman was stopped and you were released back here.”
A striking pity, then. Henry’s moods have damned him as they have saved him.
He says, “it does not feel real. I keep thinking the axe still hangs above me.”
“It is the shock, sir. None of us can quite believe it. I had to stop Richard from bursting in when they denied us entry.”
“How is he?”
“With the King now, trying to secure your release. It is likely you will be placed in a bond and made to swear an oath.”
He nods, it is expected. “And Gregory?”
“Relieved, sir. I am told he wept when he heard the news. He is riding back to London as we speak.”
“He has taken precautions? An armed escort?” He does not trust that Norfolk would not strike at someone more accessible than himself.
“Yes, he is travelling back with Helen and the little ones, now the danger has passed.”
The danger has not passed. But he closes his eyes, and he is at Austin Friars. It is winter, but you would not know it by the warmth that infuses the sitting room. He is at the chair closest to the fire, the air is scented with cinnamon and cloves- a gift from Chapuys- and little Katherine Cromwell runs about, back adorned with Grace’s peacock feather wings. There is laughter. Music.
Rafe’s hand touches his sleeve, and he is back in the present.
“Norfolk?” He makes himself ask, with difficulty, “and Gardiner, and the rest?”
A lightness touches Rafe’s eyes, the first that he has seen in months.
“Spitting like cats. They are trying to accuse you of witchcraft now, that you have dealt with the devil to keep your life. Norfolk came by Austin Friars, I thought he would break in the door when we would not admit him.” A smile. “Gardiner is to be sent back to France.”
Henry grows tired of incompetence, then.
He says, “Gardiner will despise that.”
“Call-Me is- what did Christophe used to say- likely to go trit-trot after him. They are afraid of you.”
“And yet I am still in here, and they are not.”
“Not for long, sir.” Rafe is fierce. “Their slander is baseless, we will not rest until you are released and restored to your standing. We are all behind you.”
“I feel old, Rafe.” He stops. He should say more, to try to convey the frailty that has seized him, but finds the words are not there. How is he to express how much these last hours have undone him? He does not know. “You heard of Christophe?” He instead asks.
“I have. He did not deserve…” Rafe cannot finish.
A spasm of grief. “He was a good lad.” Then neither of them can speak.
Rafe’s gaze settles on him, as if checking that his master is still solid. “You need rest, sir.”
He needs more than that, but perhaps it will be a start. There is a mirror in this room, he knows how he looks: unshaven, unsteady.
Rafe rises. “I will inquire about moving you to a more suitable room.”
Do not, he almost says. If I am moved to Bell Tower, More will not grant me a moment of reprieve, and he haunts me enough already. But Rafe is trying to be kind, and those are not the words of a sane man.
Midnight: the stars remain resolutely in the sky. His dreams are restless. It is not the axe that hangs over him, but the sword of the Calais headsman. Speculum justitiae, ora pro nobis. There is no crowd, no press of bodies to watch him fall. He is apart. It is him, his breath, and the weapon.
***
31 July, he is released. He expected it to take longer, but since protocol has apparently broken down, he is unsure why he is surprised. Perhaps he is simply unused to the openness beyond the Tower’s walls. There is little pomp or ceremony as he is shown to his horse and ushered out: he is reminded of his childhood, shuffled from house to house until he found one where the work was tolerable and the beatings minimal.
Rafe and Richard are with him, and both are armed. He thinks, I can taste blood in the air. He wonders who’s. Is it his, Anne’s, More’s? Enough has been spilled that perhaps it has all crept down into the chalk of London, permeated, sat and stained the roots of this city. Perhaps the entire country is awash with it, and none of us are clean.
He certainly does not feel clean, or new, or any of the descriptors those who survive death are fond of. He hardly feels like a lord. He keeps expecting someone to yell after him, ‘oi, Put-An-Edge-On-It, get off that horse, Walter is after you!’ When he finds his father, Walter will give him a smack round the back of the head and put him to work the bellows.
But, of course, no one does. Why would they? He is a lord, he must strive to reclaim what was cleaved from him: he must, for what is he without his George, his chain of office. Without his king.
Ahead, Richard twists on his mount, gaze settling on him as if he still cannot believe his master is real. As if this dream will fracture with the first sunlight.
“You have been ill-kept, sir.” He looks as if he will say more, but does not know what.
“Kingston did as he could. The Tower is not a pleasant place for anyone.”
Rafe aims a good-natured slap at Richard. Their mounts make contact and then dance apart. “Quiet, this is a day of celebration. Our master is free and our enemies are scrambling. We are back in favour.”
Richard says, “Henry will likely call you to court before long, sir.”
He is aware. A day, two days, is courtesy, but then he will have to face his master. He will make his genuflection, and beg on his knees for forgiveness. I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy. And he will. He does not want to die. He will be indispensable, he will never outlive his use again, for how can he do otherwise? It is impossible not to forgive Henry, impossible not to love him. It is looking into the face of the sun: he will be blinded, as others have, but any action otherwise will diminish its light. He is Icarus: he is flying.
He is aware of how he sounds, aware of the hypocrisy that coats his thoughts. He has despised and chastised others for less. And yet.
Rafe says, “you will have to meet his new bride, Katherine. He is enamoured with her.”
As he was enamoured with the last four. “I can imagine uncle Norfolk is too.”
“The king has married both of them,” Richard says.
He is alarmed. “Hush, not here.”
He should have curtailed this conversation as soon as it began: when did his caution desert him? His horse spooks, he keeps his seat, soothes it.
Eager for an easier subject, Rafe says, “we sourced the best of your household now it has been dissolved and reinstated. Thomas Avery, Dick Purser. Thurston was poached by the Emperor's man, but we have poached him back. It will be as you left it.”
Nothing will ever be as he left it, but this thought he does not share. Not in the brightness of midday.
“The leopard?” He imagines the beast, slinking and white fanged, sinew and muscle.
Rafe shakes his head, “we are still looking.”
“It always seemed as if it was looking for the best way to shred me. With any luck, it will have found its way to Gardiner.” Christ. Now it is he who is saying dangerous things, but he can't bring himself to regret it, not as Richard’s eyes light up with equal parts glee and relief.
“Better if we don’t find it, then,” his nephew says.
Now, they are at Austin Friars. It is remarkable how much can occur in two months and how little the city of London will change. It is immortal: its marble, stone, and mud will deflect time better than any man. Fifty thousand souls will go about their lives no matter what the weather, no matter who is executed.
Outside Austin Friars, a crowd waits. All eyes turn to him. They are seeing if the rumours are true, if the brute Cromwell really did survive the impossible. Though, now they see that he has, he is sure a new sort of rumour will take hold. Cromwell murdered the headsman before he could lift the axe. Cromwell’s body got up and ran three times around the block before reattaching its head. Cromwell began speaking in tongues and the devil thickened his skin so that the blade could not penetrate. Gossip is as much a part of the city as the chalk itself.
He does not look at them. How many that he had fed outside his gates were present to watch him die? He is sure the number would disquiet him. They pass the gateway, and leave London behind.
Inside, Gregory is waiting. He cannot help but notice how his son’s eyes widen at the state of him: he supposes he is unrecognisable. Unkept, unbecoming, black velvet bruised from one too many wears without a wash. He dismounts. He thinks of the Cardinal, kneeling in the mud: he understands.
Gregory embraces him. “Father.” His voice is full of some emotion that he, Cromwell, cannot place, and then neither of them can speak. Certainly he does not feel the same man who was accosted in the council room all those months ago.
“Come inside,” Gregory says. They are treating him like an invalid, but he brushes their hands off. He will walk into his own home unaided.
Like him, Austin Friars is changed. It is a dream, one where the familiar is a shade unfamiliar until you yourself cannot help but feel like the stranger. On the walls, his livery still sits, though he can see the fresh white beneath where it has been hastily removed, and then restored.
A washbasin, a razor, a change of clothes. The stubble that falls from his chin is grey. At supper, he is sat at the head of the table, Gregory carves the beef. Rafe joins them, though Richard must return to the king. That will be him soon, he thinks, at beck and call. The thought does not fill him with the anticipation it once did.
There is music, later, his fool Anthony comes in and mimics Norfolk outrageously. The children come down, blink at him with wide eyes. Does he frighten them? He was frightened of Walter. His grandson Henry seizes the fabric of his hoes and babbles. His family has grown: he had not realised. Something in his chest eases.
The first day of the new month brings splintered sunlight, and a visitor. It is Master Secretary Wriothesley. He has a mind not to admit him, but with a change of clothes comes a change of pace. Wriothesley will doubtless spread gossip after, but the gossip will be that he is alive and kicking.
Wriothesley is admitted, and he, Cromwell, doesn’t stand to greet him. The boy is disquieted, his eyes dance about the room, darting to every surface as he cannot look at his former master.
“Sir.”
“I am a sir, now?”
Call-Me is cowed. It seems an emotion he is unused to of late.
“Say what you must, Call-Me, and then leave. It is too early in the day for lingering unpleasantness.”
He thinks, I could destroy you. It would be easy, it would not even take the rack.
“Sir, I would beg my humblest apologies for your treatment of late. We were simply acting as the king commanded. I am sure, in his judgement-”
“How is Riche?” Riche has gone north, as far and fast as his horse will take him. He knows this, Wriothesley knows this. It is not a clever threat, but it is an efficient one.
Call-me says, “we were following the due process of the law, as we all must as his majesty's subjects.”
The due process of the law? Christ in heaven. The law is mutable. The king is mutable. His fall and rise are nothing but politics.
But he says, “I understand the law, as you well know.” He understands it too well. It is why there was not a trial, simply an attainder.
“If the king says you are innocent, then you are innocent, sir. It was our duty, we bare you no ill will. I hope we can be cordial.”
He recognises Riche’s disclaimer from the first interrogation. Words, words, just words.
“I hope we can be too.” Though it is beyond us. He dismisses Wriothesley. No doubt he will see him before long, though he finds he has little stomach for revenge.
Besides, his garden is waiting: it should not go unappreciated on such a day. His orchard, his gravelled walkways, his turf starred by daisies. Occasionally, one may glimpse Marlinspike, the Cardinal’s cat. Occasionally, one may glimpse the Cardinal. Perhaps the children will be taking their lessons outside. He will not intrude though there is always more to learn, even for him, even now.
The years open before him. He is missing his Hebrew book- it was left at the Tower- but he can source another. He will meet with the scholar Nicolas Cleynaerts, he will learn Arabic, he will make Launde Abbey his home and walk its fields in spring with his grandchildren. Gregory will visit, as will Richard and Rafe: he would like to see Gregory fight in the martial ring once again. Perhaps he will even travel to Italy, to Frescobaldi’s household, if his travelling days are not behind him.
Each future branches out before him, as bright and fine as gossamer. He traces their gleaming paths, watches them unfurl their brilliance until their intricacy cannot be traced by his eye. He will live, and he will die, but it will not be by the axe, nor will it be at his desk, tallying numbers.
For myself, Launde. He will ride there tomorrow. The king will doubtless summon him, and he will doubtless answer, but that is not today. In the interregnum, he has time, and a summer’s day.