Portrait of an Unknown Woman (49 page)

           
I didn’t think George knew any more of my name than “Mistress Meg,” even now, but he’d long ago stopped being scared of me. When he wasn’t praying, he liked nothing better than a long chat about the latest events. I was interested to see, now we were dropping in on him regularly to change the poultices on his leg ulcer, that he seemed to have stopped being scared of anything. I was always catching his rheumy eyes dancing with mischief and a hope I’d never imagined seeing on a Bible man’s face.

 
          
It was through George I found out that Father was losing his battle against Thomas Cromwell—the rival royal servant who, unlike Thomas More, was willing to do whatever it took, even if that meant abandoning the Church of Rome, to marry the king to Anne Boleyn.

 
          
The story George whispered to us, pulling eagerly at our bread and honey on a glorious May morning, was this: a man Father had interrogated as a heretic—one of Cromwell’s men—had escaped abroad and was publicly denouncing Father as a torturer. Father realized he couldn’t work with Cromwell anymore. The rivalry between them was too open. He tried to resign. The king wouldn’t let Father go. Thomas More was too famous to be allowed to show public lack of confidence in royal policy.

           
But Cromwell was out to get him. Cromwell was too clever to attack Father directly; instead, he was pushing the king to abolish the ecclesiastical courts where Father’s friends, the bishops who supported Queen Catherine, dispensed Catholic justice. If Henry did that, and took all legal powers in the land for himself, he’d be able to push through his divorce. Almost more important for Father was that if there were no more ecclesiastical courts, there could be no more burnings. The bishops would no longer be able to make arrests for heresy, and Father’s entire career as chancellor and prosecutor of heresy would be undermined.

           
“Cromwell will have beaten bloody More fair and square,” as George put it, licking his fingers happily to get the last of the honey off, “and we’ll be safe forever.”

 
          
Hope was making the brethren as bold as hungry ravens, and fear was having the same effect on their opponents. At Greenwich the next Sunday, in front of the king, a preacher spoke openly in favor of the royal remarriage. That so infuriated the next preacher, Henry Elstow, that he lost his temper in the pulpit, making George and his daughter and all the others crammed inside gasp uneasily and crane their necks to see how the king would respond.

           
‘You’re trying to establish the royal succession through adultery,’ Elstow yelled. ‘And you’re betraying the king to eternal perdition by doing so!’

 
          
“You could have heard a pin drop,” George recalled pleasurably. “The king didn’t move a muscle. But the Earl of Essex was sitting next to him, and he got up and yelled back: ‘You shameless friar! Hold your tongue or you’ll be sewn up in a sack and thrown into the Thames!’

           
Elstow didn’t turn a hair. ‘Keep your threats for other courtiers,’ he said. ‘They don’t scare us friars. We know we can get to heaven by water as easily as by land.’ Bold as brass, he was.”

 
          
“Well I never,” Kate murmured, wrapping up yesterday’s poultice and dropping it into the basket. “They’re properly rattled, aren’t they?”

 
          
Davy woke us one May morning with a scream. “Even the king hates them! Even the king thinks they’re more Roman than English!” he was bawling, and the traders eddying around him were bawling raucously back.

 
          
I rushed to my window. John’s head pushed out of the next window at the same time, tousled and half asleep, ready to yell something cross and pithy to the unruly street people about keeping their noise down. Then he realized what Davy must be saying.

 
          
“What are you talking about, Davy?” he yelled down.

 
          
“The king’s order, Dr. John,” came Davy’s insolent, cracked voice. “He’s told the bishops to give up their independent courts. It’s good-bye to the princes of the church. And no more burnings. About bloody time too.”

 
          
John scratched his head and nodded it two or three times. “I see,” he said, smiling in a good imitation of calm. “Well, don’t do that with your cap too often or you’ll drop it in the sewer.”

 
          
But there was no smile on his face when he walked into my room, unbidden, just dread without words. I felt it too. It was enough to suspend the hostilities between us. We stumbled into our clothes and rushed downstairs.

           
We walked out of the house together in a daze and wandered down Cheapside and to St. Paul’s Cross.

           
There wasn’t a priest anywhere to be seen, but there were people pouring into taverns all along Cheapside and down Ludgate Hill, laughing and joking and shouting for joy and drinking. “Do you know what Anne Boleyn’s had embroidered on her linen?” I heard one market woman squawk cheerfully. “ ‘It’s going to happen whether you like it or not.’ She’s a clever little fortune-hunter all right.”

 
          
Davy saw me pass as we left the house and touched his cap ironically.

 
          
He had a beer in his hand.

           
John didn’t go to Dr. Butts. I didn’t go out with Kate. We stayed at home.

 
          
We sat in the garden, consumed with our separate anxieties, in what passed for companionship. We watched Tommy play under the apple blossoms and thought our two sets of parallel thoughts. At midday, after we’d watched him eat but not been able to manage much ourselves, a note was delivered from Father saying he would call later, on his way home to Chelsea.

 
          
While John went to his parlor and pretended to read, I spent a few hours in the kitchen, feeling unreal, supervising the preparation of supper. Happy summer food. Yesterday’s bird and leg of ham. Fresh greens. A dish of soft buttery egg. White soup with almonds. Junket. And I went out and bought Tommy a jumble from somewhere in the fizzing crowd.

 
          
He liked the hard, curly dough and the dusting of seeds. He was enjoying himself on what must, to him, genuinely seem a holiday.

 
          
It would be the first time I would see Father since James Bainham’s burning.

           
I’d spent the sunlight hours feeling stabs of pity for him finding himself in today’s impossible position; I’d been imagining him coming broken to the house, asking humbly for advice; I’d imagined myself pleading, with warm tears in my eyes, for him to resign, and him softly agreeing and taking me in the embrace of a true father. I’d been surprised at the warmth that these mental pictures brought unbidden to my heart.

 
          
But when Father turned up, his smile seemed as big and warm and all-embracing as ever, and his gestures as confident.

           
His apparent confidence lit us up as his man took his outer robe and John poured drinks—water for Father, wine for us—and led us into the garden. I couldn’t see what was in his heart. I was secretly relieved when, as soon as we were alone, the smile switched off.

 
          
“This is a terrible business,” John said sympathetically, putting an arm on Father’s back as I hung sullenly behind, watching.

 
          
Father nodded. He said nothing. He walked on, with John’s hand resting on him, looking straight ahead.

 
          
“Our Saviour says that the children of darkness are more politic in their way than are the children of light,” he said, in a quiet voice from which all emotion had been stripped out. “That’s how it seems to me now.”

           
“The court is full of traitors,” he added with more obvious bitterness. “And Convocation is full of fools. I’ve never seen so many bishops so negligent of their duty. I took this job thinking I could advance the affairs of Christendom. But now . . .” He paused, then seemed to lose heart. “But now.” And he stopped.

 
          
He composed himself and turned back toward the house, pacing himself so that John’s hand, which he hadn’t seemed to notice, nevertheless stayed lightly on his shoulder. But he didn’t even glance at either of us. I thought he might be struggling to make his voice stay even.

           
“I feel myself growing old.”

 
          
He wasn’t asking for a response from either of us, so we didn’t give one. We ate in silence. I felt every pair of servants’ eyes curiously on Father.

           
“Delicious,” he said mechanically, praising the bird and the ham. But he didn’t touch the meat on his plate.

 
          
John waited until we’d shut the parlor door on the eyes and ears before saying, with his face full of almost unbearable compassion, “You know we’ll support you whatever you decide to do.”

 
          
My lips tightened. I didn’t agree. There was only one thing I wanted Father to do, even if his defeat today meant he could no longer burn heretics, and that was to resign.

 
          
“There is still so much to do,” Father said. There was a gleam in his eye again, a gleam I hated. I could see he was going to ignore failure and stay on.

 
          
“You should resign,” I said into the silence, surprising myself almost as much as the other two. They turned to face me, with eyes wide open.

 
          
“You’ve done enough, Father. Your conscience should be telling you that.”

 
          
John stepped half in front of me, flashing me a warning look. But Father stepped round him to look me in the eye.

           
“Meg,” he said, with a hint of reproof, and the smile that didn’t reach his eyes touched his lips. “What do you know about politics?”

 
          
I said, stubbornly, ignoring my racing heart: “I don’t. I just know about burnings.”

 
          
John gasped. “Meg hasn’t been well,” he said hastily to Father.

 
          
“Yes. It made me ill to watch James Bainham die,” I snapped back, suddenly shaking with feeling I hadn’t managed to suppress. I felt my cheeks flush. I stepped forward to confront them.

 
          
They were wary now. Seeing me with new eyes, as the aggressor, the initiator. Their fear scared me. But I liked it too.

 
          
It was interesting seeing what they did next. John was still there, but it was as though he faded backward into the shadows while Father stepped forward. His jaw was out. He put his hands on his hips, mirroring my gesture. I wasn’t of his blood; it must have been the years we’d spent living together, but I could have sworn that the angry man in front of me looked, 
at this moment, uncannily like me. He was certainly as ready as I was to give fight.

 
          
“He had to die,” Father shot out. “He was spreading filth that would damn other people to hellfire.”

 
          
“It wouldn’t!” I shot back. “It was his own business what he believed! It’s you who’s risking hellfire by mistaking yourself for God!”

 
          
We stared into each other’s eyes at last. Father’s were slightly bloodshot. Neither of us moved. There was nowhere for us to move to.

 
          
“They jeered you when he said he was at the stake because of you,” I said. “Londoners. Your people. They’re coming to hate you.”

 
          
I was aware of John in the shadows making soft, helpless gestures with his hands, but there were only two people in this fight.

 
          
“And I don’t need to know much about politics to know that the king will come to hate you too. If he doesn’t already,” I rushed on. My heart was racing. My tongue was on fire. “You’re trying to stop him doing what he wants. You’ve stopped being his loyal servant. It was you who always said that the wrath of the king means death.” In the midst of my rage, I 
heard the pleading note come into my voice. “I don’t want you to die. You should resign while you’ve still got time.”

 
          
“The king doesn’t want me to go,” he said, with dull hostility. “I’ve tried.”

 
          
There was something in his voice for an instant that sounded like tiredness. But then I saw him straighten his back and assume his burden again. “And that’s as well,” he added stoutly. “Because I believe it’s God’s will for me to stay. Not just to fight heresy. Because of the other matter. Because of John.”