CHAPTER 7

ALL THE KING’S MEN

 

 

 

Qui tacet consentire videtur

 

Silence presumes consent

 

 

 

Pacificus has agreed to nothing yet, though he will stay on for an extra day, dine with Rugge, Cromwell, Cranmer and Norfolk at the palace that evening. He is surprised at the invitation but perhaps Rugge wants to break him into his new scene, and have his opinion on the men.

The abbot has ever been one for ruling by consent, then somehow getting his own way on all things. And every man in power needs enforcers; Cromwell was Wolsey’s strong arm and now the king’s. Men would have rules, or else rulers – it is regrettable but these are the times. “We should know what we are dealing with, weigh up the players,” he’d said. Perhaps Rugge thought to revive il gladiatore in Pacificus; perhaps rouse him by luxuries, or perchance the pride of being with great men. To be what he had been would be too easy; it was weakness surely to bully and shed blood. It was to go back, and was this what God required of him? These things he ponders during his afternoon in the town.

He has business to transact on behalf of the abbey with a merchant called John Toppes on King Street. Toppes and others from Saint George’s guild are driving down the price of worsted cloth, which they export to the lowlands, and in so doing are bringing some of the abbey tenants to penury. Pacificus is indignant at it. The merchant class has grown so strong, so insolent even in his own lifetime. King Street is heaving as usual, many of the great mercantile families are holding court in their yards; Pastons and Heydens among them – the new families. He draws near the entrance of Toppes’ “palace”, the grand exchange where they are all inordinately proud of being seen – these busy men and their trade. Pacificus is focusing on its inner ogee arch as he approaches the entrance. He has not noticed its shallow, inverse curve before – how cosmopolitan. He knows the shape well from Venice and beyond; it is Moorish influence, when we were on better terms – how strange to be touched by such things so far from the war.

And it is just as he is thinking this when, from the Augustinian priory – which stands adjacent to the trade hall – an enormous, black, cloud-like form passes to the corner of his eye and then behind him down the street, and with it a chill down his spine. He wheels round and sees none other than the prior from the soon-to-be-dissolved Hickling Priory, striding up the street as if he had a good dinner before him and the bailiff after. Robert Aeyns, they called him – that much he had got out of the cellarer – not a local name. Wonder why he could not find lodgings for his six monks here in Norwich? Something in Pacificus withers at the sight of him. And this he cannot credit; perhaps it is his size, nearly seven feet, or is it the mass of black habit? For though it is the same as his own, somewhere further back in his memory perhaps he will always instinctively spring to battle readiness at the sight of black robes, that being so often the garb of the elite Janissaries of the Saracens. Fearless, merciless, they captured Christian children, they indoctrinated and brutalised like Spartans, then turned loose on their own kind – a sight of them pouring over the battlements was the stuff that still woke Pacificus up in cold sweats.

He thinks of this when waiting upstairs for his interview. He also examines the dragons carved into the wooden ceiling vaults of the great hall. He thinks of amendments he might make in his painting of Michael trampling down Satan on the Ranworth rood screen. These dragons have something intentional and malevolent in the eyes, or perhaps it is the whole facial expression. Perhaps the artist had seen the devil or had someone like that nun Elizabeth Barton to tell him? Either way, they are better than his. He sighs and consciously tries to capture these in his memory, which is hard amidst the din and bustle. He disdains them, these merchants, their peascod and peplum doublets, their gaudy silk sleeves, their meanness, their single pursuit of Mammon. Look at the coins they vaunt: a king’s head where there used to be a cross.

Never trust a man whose whole eye is prudence – where self-interest alone is the bottom line – his mother had always said, and she was right. He knows that some of these upstanding pillars of the community will be secret usurers, many whoremongers. He has heard that Cromwell is a usurer of old, that he fornicates with half the moneyed men of Europe, that he acts as banker to many a great family in England too. He tries to imagine the end of all things, where the church is replaced by the men of commerce and usury. What a thought! Perhaps banks will set the holy days in the future – call them bank holidays perhaps; not too many, for that would affect trade, but even so their new serfs would no doubt be grateful.

Is that the utopia Cromwell imagines? Lord knows, the king has scaled down the feast days to a mere handful. Saint George’s is still allowed, so they’ll be happy here in Norwich. On George’s day the guilds turn out with a life-size dragon and players; this he remembers indelibly from his own childhood. It was his very dream to be Saint George, to slay the dragon – any dragon. In those days he had never doubted dragons existed beyond England, nor that they could be overcome by good knights, but that was a long time ago, before Rhodes fell to the Saracens.

But these holy days – why deprive the working men of so many? What manner of new world are they thinking to build in, cancelling all but a very few from July to September? And then it comes to him: they – he’s even thinking like Rugge now – they hate men’s rest. Yes, that’s it. They hate it, for a man at rest is a creature of God, not a slave as they are to Mammon. In resting, a man is rest-ored to his creatureliness before God, the Imago Dei common to all humanity, God’s thumbprint on the human soul; what a defiance of Mammon is that!

He watches an apprentice cuffed and scolded near the stairway, then looks round at the faces of the merchants sitting nonchalantly behind their money at tables, all dukes and earls in the making. He visited Florence on his way home, saw where this all ends – those Medicis, extortioners and brigands in one generation, usurers and king-makers in the next. Venetians, Genoese, Lombardians, Florentines – they’d sell their mothers for half a crown. When Constantinople fell – and that only by the guns sold to Mehmet by Hungarian Christians – the Venetian ships made port to trade with the Mohammedans before the gunpowder had scarce left the air. The Great Whore that trades upon many waters!

Presently he is drawn out of his morose meanderings by the sight of Alderman Toppes on the hall stairs, remonstrating vehemently with wool-mercer Isaac Timms; so much so that others begin to look their way.

Toppes is shouting, “You cannot do this. We had an agreement – well, an understanding at least – between men of discretion!”

Timms is unmoved. “Fellingham says his four-master is quicker and I need this business transacted with haste, without delay.”

People are interested now; the competition between Fellingham and Toppes is a standing joke. Fellingham’s new ship the Genoese could cripple Toppes’ Antwerp run, and they all know it. In the past he has blamed the winds and tides, but next Thursday they sail together, so the matter will be known once and for all.

Seeing the other merchants gather, Toppes disputes no further, but rather takes the man by the arm, gently leading him to a quiet corner. It is the same corner where Pacificus sits and listens.

“But Fellingham’s rates are so much more. Be reasonable. I would not lose your business and send out my Pelican half empty for a few marks; let’s talk terms, my fellow.”

Timms is shamefaced now, but Pacificus sees he has caught the modern way. “I’m sorry for it, Toppes. We have dealt a long time, you and I, and our fathers. You would perhaps do well to invest in newer vessels yourself…”

“Fellingham is in this with Cromwell, as you very well know. Not just in the finance but a cut of the profits too. I cannot work like that, and I won’t.”

“Well, there you have it. Perhaps another time, then.” Timms bows. “As you would say yourself, business is business.”

“Aye, and when they have cleared the competition, your children and grandchildren will not find their rates so competitive, I fancy.”

Timms does not trouble to reply as he retires. Toppes gives a long sigh. He catches sight of Pacificus as he turns, and this provokes a further sigh. “Oh. You again, brother. What is it now? More alms for the needy?”

And so begins the begrudged interview. Toppes will not hear that he has taken advantage of the poor over the price of worsted cloth, though the reddening at the top of his loose cheeks says he is a liar. Pacificus lets him know it, too, by a hard stare. Then, being led beyond his brief by the snobbish pride that will get the better of him, he even tells him what would be a just price this summer. Toppes’ eyes nearly drop from sockets already loosened by too many hours picking over his ledgers – no doubt all done in the new Italian double-accounting system; oh, so modern. He removes his cap and runs inky fingers through his grey thatch. “We cannot compete at those rates.”

“And they cannot fill their bellies. You must charge a fair price.”

Toppes looks fit to burst, those reddening cheeks and flared nostrils, but he won’t cross the abbey, not when the prior and abbot are in the habit of buying so many of those little luxuries he hauls back from Flanders. After all, there are plenty of merchants to choose from in Norwich and Yarmouth with silks and spiced wines for sale. Toppes has heard about the abbot’s turn of affairs; that he will now be bishop. He says he will act as a Christian in this matter and hope that, when Rugge is bishop, His Lordship will think kindly of him. Pacificus smiles. He gets to his feet, wishing with all his heart that money everywhere could come from fishes’ mouths and not from business done like this. He is glad to be leave of the place.

 

That evening, the fires bristle to capacity in every fireplace at the palace; even so Rugge’s comment about the damp air proves true. The dismal miasma is impossible to ignore. Pacificus notes the pomanders of dried thyme and lavender hanging on every spare nail in an effort to freshen the space and somewhat dispel the fetid pall. He takes one from a hook by the chimney breast to his nose, and the smell takes him straight back to the fields of Aquitaine. He closes his eyes briefly, never doubting in that moment that such fragrances ward off plague and other airborne maladies. He catches the aroma of oakmoss on the burning logs, and the scent of that too takes him miles away, conjuring a thousand Ottoman spices, and so many memories. He hangs the bag on its nail again, but the beautiful sweetness stays with him.

He is waiting for a servant to take his cloak but the lad seems too flustered to remember. Would he like ale or spiced wine while he waits for the others? Was he hungry? No, take my coat first, he thinks. By Saint Agnes, it must have been a long time since they’d had guests here! And no wonder the lad was a bag of nerves, considering tonight’s pretty company. The boy takes his coat eventually and Pacificus tries to bless him with a thin smile. The lad must be about the same age as Piers Fenton and then he wonders how the children get on with that eel-catcher. He takes his spiced wine by the fire, all alone. It is a very rare luxury. His toes are stretched towards the flame while no one is watching. How alluring these temporal blessings appear on cold nights. In the abbey the cold is seen as part of their purgation – to mortify their earthly members. If he capitulates to Rugge, it could be like this every night; he should think on that. He does, but there is much to consider besides. He wishes his brother were here to talk things through with.

Rugge has already been in private conference with Cranmer, Cromwell and Norfolk before dinner and so the group is already formed when Pacificus first sees them. They stand in the linenfold panelled dining hall, in a semicircle round the fire, half orange, half black in the firelight. They have stayed on to see the heretics dispatched on the morrow. There is nothing like the sight of their duke in town to bring the crowds to the Lollards’ Pit for the spectacle – and to have an archbishop and Master Secretary too; they will be spoilt for choice.

They do not see Pacificus approach but he sees Norfolk’s head and face well, so bony and shrunken amongst the magnificent roundness of his ermine-edged velvet cloak that it looks like the stalk on a furry apple. Frail, skeletal fingers massage some holy amulet, the sort of thing Cromwell abhors. Being nearest, Norfolk turns first to see him approach but does not appear to recognise his face – which is good – even though Pacificus must look like his father by now. First duke and earl of the realm, the Lord Marshall of England does not deign to acknowledge this lowly monk – just make sure he wipes his knees on the way in. He looks him over and leaves Rugge to make any introductions. But the abbot is deeply embroiled with Cranmer on some theological minutiae regarding predestination and “that heretic in Geneva”, so it is Cromwell who speaks first.

“Brother Pacificus!” He extends a hand like a shovel; warm even for a devil, he grants him that. Introductions are made and Pacificus bows where necessary, which tonight is almost everywhere. Cranmer is ill at ease, his froggy eyes reddened, intermittently looking away from conversations to the fire or to the window, his effeminate fingers pinching and tapping, sighing from time to time, as restless and uncomfortable as a sheep with colic.

Over dinner they exchange pleasantries. Cromwell wants to know where the monk has been, what the traders are saying. He knows them all, keeps them in his head, and their continental partners. He escaped the fists and boots of his blacksmith father for the Antwerp trade at sixteen, thence to Italy. The king’s secretary has been all things necessary for the times, even a mercenary, before ever he came back to these shores to study the law. He has the jowls of a butcher, but not the redness of cheek. No, that deathly pallor is reserved for lawyers, and other condemned men who see no light from their dungeons.

Those eyes, Pacificus thinks; had ever a man such small eyes for such a head? Hard as cannonballs, they are, only the man’s glance darts as quick as a lizard’s tongue, missing nothing. He appears to descry everything.

Norfolk picks over his venison like a fussy buzzard. “Physician says I should stay away from venison; brings on melancholia,” he observes pessimistically. He mutters Paternosters, Aves and Credos between every mouthful to counter the bad effects. Rugge muses on the events of the morrow; Norfolk resents having to attend, and says so.

Cranmer says nothing as their host strings them along, so adroit in articulating why this type of Lollardy should be stamped out, that Norfolk murmurs into his wine, “He’ll prove a better inquisitor than Nykke ever was – and he used to say he could smell hell’s flames on an Anabaptist – ils sentent de fagots.”¹²

“He’ll need to now.” Cromwell eyes Rugge carefully, then picks his teeth with a thumbnail.

Rugge pretends not to notice. “Yes, these radicals are a worse scourge than any Lollard. They’ll have Norwich as ankle deep in blood as Munster, you mark my word.”

“They hold everything in common, these bigamists – wives and all,” Norfolk says. His manner changes and he waxes ebullient, seems to grow and almost come alive as the thought of the bloodshed takes hold of him. “No respect for private property, secret conventicles in caves and dark woods at night – you can’t reason with ’em, they only quote Scripture at you. What did Pope Leo say? – sorry Cromwell, Bishop of Rome – ‘anyone who touches the mountain should be thrust through with a dart.’ Saint Louis said the same; thrust the hilt in up to the belly, he said; don’t argue with them.”

Cranmer is trying to enter the conversation but Norfolk has the wind in his sails now and carries on over the top of him. “I wondered whether Gonville Hall might turn a few of them out some years back – you were with ’em at Cambridge, weren’t you, Archbishop? When you were not wenching with that barmaid. By my oath, England has seen some strange happenings, I’ll say!”

Content to have exercised his position to cause maximum offence, the duke diverts his purple lips back to the venison, but not before telling Cranmer not to take his past so seriously, nobody else did, and would he stop hogging the wine, drinking as he does like a man happy to be away from his wife. Norfolk hits close here; Cranmer frets daily that the foreign woman he secretly married will be used against him with the king – who probably already knows, but pretends not to in order to keep things straightforward.

Cromwell stirs to protect his vexed friend, but Pacificus is already there, which seems to please Master Secretary a great deal.

“H-how many, Your Grace?” Pacificus asks.

“What?” Norfolk barks, resenting the interruption.

“How many die tomorrow?” He sounds more confident this time.

“I’m sure I know not, nor care less. Rugge?”

“I am told it is just the one: a farmer from up our way, right under the nose of the abbey, would you believe it? He could not be persuaded to give the names of others, I hear. They hold the wife over, hoping that her husband’s ordeal will persuade her to see sense. No one wishes to be inclement in these matters.”

“Indeed not. The king would not desire it, if it can be avoided,” Cromwell says. “She could say she was misled, confess before the sacrament, amend her ways and return to her children. Are there children?”

“Yes, there are,” Rugge says, his face now alight. “They disappeared on the day this farmer Fenton was taken, only to turn up feral a month later, attack the incumbent tenants, steal what they could, and cover the rest of the property with – well, you know – the contents of the farm privy! Can you imagine, Pacificus?”

While Pacificus tries to look the picture of shocked innocence, Norfolk almost chokes on his food. “I told you! What did I say?” Brandishing his knife, he bellows, “Heretics’ spawn! No respect for property! They should be found and made an example of! Ils sentent de fagots.”

Cromwell brings his fist down hard, and then a second time more gently, on the table. He raises an admonishing finger at Norfolk. “They are children!” He is affected, then, which is to his credit. Perhaps he is not a demon after all; perhaps only half devil? Pacificus hears the news with sinking heart.

The lute player returns to playing in his shadowy corner. He purports to have been trained in the court of Urbino. No one believes him, but it sounds good to tell important guests, which is what Rugge is doing now until Cromwell cuts across him. “Many of these people merely groan for a Bible in English; they resent the condescensions of some.” He glowers at Norfolk and then at Rugge. “But my lord Archbishop will have one for them soon; one we trust will not be outlawed for its seditious inaccuracies like Tyndale’s.”

“Oh, yes. Cranmer, how is your Bishops’ Bible coming along?” Norfolk only asks because he knows the bishops are all unwilling and have not filed their papers when required.

“Like a goodly many worthwhile things, Your Grace: slowly.” Cranmer has had to accept it is a project that will need Cromwell’s force to drive it. Besides, he has enough on already; things are at breaking point between the king and Queen Anne. She miscarried a male child after the shock of Henry’s jousting accident in January. Edward Seymour has been given an apartment near the king’s so that he might visit his sister Jane privily – things do not look good.

Pacificus is surprised Cromwell and Norfolk can seem so at ease in such a time. Norfolk has nieces to spare, he supposes, and some of those Howards are very fair. He knew their families, particularly those ambitious Boleyns – Blickling Hall being not four miles from their own estate. He’d a liking for Mary Boleyn since early childhood, though their father had his sights set higher than the son of one of yesterday’s old families. He’d raised his sights high, Boleyn had; let her and then her sister be the king’s whores and now they are all to fall, like lightning from heaven: incest, adultery, sedition. Cromwell will see to it – stitch up the body bags, make it legal, no loose ends. And Cromwell himself? Perhaps not so easily disposed of, he thinks. He alone has the cunning to break the monasteries and lay their wealth at the feet of their new Peter. But after that? Maybe even he, the fixer, will have nothing to offer. Pacificus hates being here. He has so much to say, to accuse them all with, but he is bound in secrets. Rugge looks at him every now and again, such delicious pleasure in his smile to know all the play, able to create possibilities for the future under their very noses. He’d have me as Samson in the camp of the Philistines, Pacificus thinks; bring the roof down on the lot of them. Can’t help admiring the rascal. But I’m not yours yet, Rugge – not by a long shot.

Cranmer calls for his retainers before the evening is out. He is plainly out of sorts, and Norfolk has not helped. Cromwell is not long after – he has work to do and eighteen-hour days don’t happen by supping wine, even this Italian wine which he likes. Norfolk alone stays for a private conference with his new bishop. Pacificus, taking the hint, retires.