Chapter Text
There is a mirror at Mortlake as tall as the Duke of Suffolk. The King, of course, has many such mirrors — though he likes them less than he did — but to Lord Cromwell such a thing is still a wonder. He had it from the French peddlers who sold Henry the pavonazzo and does not think he paid too much for such a marvel of Venetian skill. The King hangs his great glasses in his bedroom and privy chamber, but that is too much for his minister. He has no desire to see a second Cromwell busy writing letters or reading by candlelight in his furred gown. He might start talking to him out of sheer fellow feeling.
So the mirror hangs in the hall, doubling the turkey carpets and fine arras, where everyone in the household can visit it. Most come cautiously, separately, like little birds wanting to drink and splash in a big enough puddle, afraid someone will catch them staring and call it vanity. He, Lord Cromwell, doesn’t look at himself very often. If he has a new coat, perhaps, or if he is tired and wants to know if it shows.
But today he feels the need to examine his outer self, that half-stranger other people know better than he does. Yet it is not the world’s judgement that interests him. He is thinking: what does Lady Oughtred see when she looks at me? Who was the man she gazed at so warmly yesterday evening?
He looks like Walter, of course. Walter as the lord he always claimed he should have been. But Bess Seymour doesn’t know that. Bess has never been to Putney. It’s several years since Hans painted him and since then he has grown fatter and cut his hair. ‘Well, Father,’ he hears Liz say, ‘you didn’t pick him for his looks.’ Only he doesn’t hear her. He remembers her words. He pictures her walking down the stairs towards him. But he can’t hear her voice.
He bows, trying to meet the stout figure in the glass as he would any man.
So. Lord Cromwell. How do you, sir?
He does very well, judging by his satin doublet and fine velvet gown lined with sable. How much did all that cost? Thirty pounds, would you say? No, look at his boots. The belt. Those weren’t made by an Englishman. Italian, surely. Are we counting the rings? Both gifts, our new friend explains, I wear them for sentimental reasons. Very well. We shall not count them. A little over thirty-six pounds, then? Yes.
Rich, one must conclude, or in debt. His eyes, sharply assessing, suggest a man who knows how to manage his affairs. I can arrange a loan, he offers amicably, if you’re in need of money. The sable says lord, the gown says lawyer, the conversation says banker. A tradesman come up in the world. Much travelled. But what about his looks? We haven’t mentioned those. Unimportant, some might say, but if you were asked to describe him to an eligible young widow…?
Oh well, there is the difficulty. On paper such a man has everything to recommend him, but even his son thinks he looks like a murderer. They say Cardinal Wolsey once compared him to a fighting dog. One of those square-faced jowly animals used to bring down bears. The sort you wouldn’t pet if you met it in passing, even if its owner swore it was the mildest creature in Christendom. But I think, madam, that his bearbaiting days are done. He looks comfortable, he fills out his gown, his hands are smooth and plump. There’s an ink stain on his thumb. His hair is turning grey. In short, he is exactly the sort of common fat fellow you picture when someone mentions a wealthy merchant.
He thinks of Lord Lisle and the Duke of Suffolk. He thinks of the King and the late Lord Oughtred. Widowed noblemen with new wives young enough to be their daughters. He feels as though he’s standing on the edge of a cliff and might pitch forward into his reflection and never be seen again.
‘It could be worse.’ His jester Anthony peers around him, flashing bare gums at the glass. ‘At least you have your teeth.’
‘True,’ he acknowledges, ‘but…’
But what? But Lady Oughtred is twenty and the perfect match for Gregory. He thinks of her hand on his arm, her eyes on the path, as shy as her sister. My lord, you may indulge me and I shall indulge you…
‘Jesus!’ Anthony exclaims, silver bells jingling. ‘My lord, you mustn’t frown at the mirror like that. It will splinter in fear. It will explode into a million tiny pieces!’ When this doesn’t raise a smile, he pats his shoulder. ‘Be reasonable, sir. God must leave us poor fellows something. What does it matter if Cromwell is rich, we say, or more cunning than the devil? Am I not better looking? How would we hold our heads up if the good Lord, in his mercy, hadn’t given you a face like a boot?’
‘Thank you, Anthony,’ he says drily.
‘You’re very welcome, my lord.’
Would it be different if Jenneke had stayed? He would have his Antwerp daughter to keep house for him. He would be finding her a husband. One who wouldn’t mind living with his father-in-law. Thomas Avery, perhaps? But what will happen to Oughtred’s children, will they stay with his people in Yorkshire or live with Bess? Her daughter Margery is with the nuns at Wilberfoss, which has been valued at twenty-two pounds a year. He suspects the figure is too low. He makes a note. What about her son?
‘You are not so very old,’ Bess had said, ‘I had hoped to have your children.’ How could he do it all again? How could he bear it? ‘We did suppose, myself and Jane, that you were fond of your wife.’
He sits down. Picks up his spaniel. Fondles her ears.
He remembers the stunned look on the King’s face on that first visit to Wolf Hall. A veal calf struck with a mallet. Does he look like that? (He’s not going back to the mirror to check.) The world has not altered. He feels no urge to write verses in praise of her beauty. Though, of course, she is beautiful. He likes her warm brown hair, her neat little face, and the way the Seymour women have of surveying a room with one covert glance. He likes her wit and good Latin. Bess is the younger sister, but she seems older than the Queen. At least, she did before Jane married Henry. Growing up with rough old Sir John and then married to Oughtred so young… well, that would grant any girl wisdom beyond her years.
And now, surely, she deserves a handsome young husband? Pretty, sensible, the Queen’s sister. What could be more perfect for Gregory?
There had been such a long pause after he’d asked her if she was relieved to be marrying Gregory. It had panicked him, that pause, scattered his thoughts like a flock of startled gulls. Bess dipped her chin, denying him her eyes, and he’d filled her silence with praise of his son, fumbling through Gregory’s merits as wretchedly as he’d proffered his own to Wolsey’s daughter.
As he talked, one of his thoughts settled on a ledge somewhere above him, perhaps on the sill of the Queen’s privy chamber — the place from which someone dropped poor Purkoy — and called down that just as the King’s praise of Jane Seymour had been a black portrait of Queen Anne, so was his talk of Gregory a black portrait of himself. I am old, he might as well have said, and I cannot dance or joust. I am neither good nor handsome and never have been. I have a limp and a belly. I have done things you cannot imagine. My past piles up behind me. I am so soiled from life’s battle, so seamed and scarred, so numb, so unwanted, so cold.
‘I should like,’ Lady Oughtred said when he’d run out of words, ‘a husband I can talk to.’
You may talk to Gregory, he’d almost said, Gregory is a great talker.
But that wasn’t what she’d meant. She meant: I want a husband who understands what I say.
Does he? Turned about, like a boat in the fog, he’d tried to look at it from her perspective. If he were Bess Seymour, who would he prefer? The old Earl of Oxford made her a good offer, but brother Edward has found another buyer and in today’s economy Vere blood is worth less that Cromwell might and Cromwell cash.
So what do we think, the younger or the elder? Gregory Cromwell cuts a fine figure, but what does a dreamer like him have in common with a sensible widow looking to get on in the world? A young man like that, so graceful, might he not be tempted by other women? Besides, she will forever be explaining things to him and like Lord Rochford he will always be known as Cromwell’s son.
It slipped in like a dagger. Stopped his breath. He felt George Boleyn’s embrace. His fear, his tears, his shaking limbs. Can you explain it to me, Master Cromwell, how I am alive and dead at the same time?
‘My lord?’ Bess looked at him then, dark eyes direct, and he thought about the letter she wrote to him after her husband died. Her bold secretary hand, as neat as any of his clerks, and her request for an abbey. He had not been able to oblige her, but what if that was not the goal? What if it was bring herself to his attention?
The setting sun had turned her neatly parted hair to copper and part of him wanted to ask her to remove her hood so he could run his fingers through that auburn glow before it vanished with the light.
That night he dreams of Venetian goddesses, the scent of roses in the Queen’s privy garden, and the mermaid at Kimbolton who lives so far from the sea. You may find your bride in the forest, old Seymour had said, and she comes to him with warm brown hair and fingers that curl like leaves. You thought there’d be nothing to do except the usual business, she reproves him with Bess Seymour’s gift for précis, you thought it would be only acts of Parliament and dispatches to ambassadors and revenue and Wales and monks and pirates and traitorous devices and Bibles and oaths and trusts and wards and leases and the price of wool and whether we should pray for the dead. But now I am standing in front of you. I am looking at you. And you must consider.
Bess Seymour, he wants to ask, can you read my mind?
He thinks perhaps she can.