The Courier's Tale (14 page)

‘Have no fear, Sir Geoffrey,’ said Hugh, ‘wherever I am going, you are
bound to follow
.’

And that was the beginning of the great tragedy, which took away so many lives and ruined many others.

In point of fact, it had begun a little earlier, almost unnoticed and, as a play should, it commenced with music. There was a certain harper of Havant, named Laurence, who had heard gossip that Hugh Holland had gone overseas to see Pole. This harper, who was much in demand at weddings, roamed all over Hampshire and further afield, and wherever he went he spread gossip in the form of his songs. Thus the tale of Holland’s visit to the monastery of Anno gained currency. Finally it came to the ear of the authorities. Holland was then arrested.

Sir Geoffrey, as promised, soon followed. He was swiftly interrogated. He may have been tortured – at least he was shown the instruments – and at that dreadful sight, he lost his head and for a week he babbled everything he could think of to please his interrogators.

Then there followed a great wave of arrests. Pole’s elder brother Montagu, his cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, their wives and children, their friends, servants, all the households.

Finally they came for Pole’s mother, the Lady of Sarum.

She too was interrogated for many days, first in her own house at Warblington, then at the Lord Admiral’s house at Cowdrey. Admiral Fitzwilliam and the Bishop of Ely carried out the interrogations, which were brutal enough, in accordance with Cromwell’s wishes. But the Lady of Sarum came from a long line of kings and queens; she was not to be browbeaten by such nobodies.

‘She would confess nothing,’ they wrote to Cromwell. ‘We entreated her with both sorts, sometimes with dulcet and mild words, now roughly and asperly, traitoring her and her sons to the ninth degree, yet will she nothing utter but make herself clear . . .’

Item
. She said that when she spoke to the King, he showed her how her son Reynold had written against him. And upon this, when her son Montagu came home to her, she said to him ‘What hath the King shown me of my son? Alas, what a child I have in him!’ Then Lord Montagu counselled her to declare him a traitor to her servants. And so she called her servants and declared she took her said son for a traitor, and for no son, and she would never take him for otherwise.

Item
. Asked whether Sir Geoffrey ever told her the King went about to cause Sir Reynold Poole’s death, she said he did, and that she prayed God heartily to change the King’s mind.

Item
. Asked if she knew Peter Mewtas had gone over the sea for the killing of her son, and that both her other sons would go over to the Cardinal, she denies utterly she ever heard Mewtas should so and prays God she may be torn in pieces if ever she heard such a thing of her sons.

Item
. Examined who told her the Cardinal had escaped the danger, she said her sons did and for motherly pity she could not but rejoice.

None of this could be used to convict the lady in a court. Her interrogators became almost piteous.

‘We assure Your Lordship’ – they wrote to Cromwell – ‘we have dealt with such a one as men have not dealt withal to fore us; we may call her rather a strong and constant man than a woman. She has been so earnest, vehement and precise, we thought it a waste of time to press her further.’

In the end nothing of any use in court could be found against her. But she was not set free. Her goods, land and houses were seized, and, along with her grandchild, a boy of about ten, she was thrust into a dungeon, wearing the same clothes she had been arrested in months before. Then for a long time only vague rumours were heard about her, and no one was sure whether she was alive or dead.

Chapter 16

At the news of the arrests my blood ran cold to think how close I had come to destroying Judith and perhaps everyone at Coughton. It was clear that the least word sent to England by anyone in Pole’s household meant imprisonment and death to the recipient. I thanked my lucky stars – no, I thanked God Himself for giving Hugh Holland such a friendly and merry and trusting countenance, which had put me on my guard. Yet I was very sad as well. My sweet cousin had been saved because Hugh Holland was a fool. My brother had been saved because, I think, he himself was something of a fool. Whereas I, Michael, who outwitted everyone, had now lost everything. That, it seemed, was the exit from the labyrinth. I could not even tell Judith how close she had come to disaster. I could not write, or send a word.

I would never see her again.

What was I to do?

I must put her out of my thoughts.

‘What nonsense,’ said the Marchioness, Lady Vittoria, in whom I confided when I was back in Rome. ‘Your King may be a brute, but he can’t live for ever. You are young. How old is this girl?

‘Eighteen.’

‘There you are,’ she said, ‘morning has scarcely begun.’

‘But I never spoke to her plainly. I definitely never kissed her. Why should she wait for me? You see – I’ve lost her.’

‘Oh,
Michele nostro
!’ she said. ‘What do you know about these things? If she loves you, she will wait, precisely because the whole world is against you both. Women are very stubborn on this matter, which steels their hearts and they become far braver than men.’

The Marchioness was then, I think, about fifty-three. She was a widow. Her husband had died of wounds received in the battle at Pavia. By a strange coincidence my brother Anthony, whom I could hardly remember, had also died fighting at Pavia, and this fact gave us a kind of consanguinity.

The Marchioness dispensed much maternal advice. ‘How many people do you meet in a lifetime?’ she asked. ‘Ten thousand? Ten times that? And yet how often does one catch your heart with love, as with a silver hook, and cause you a pain you cannot bear to give up. Once? Twice? What do you think, Michael? Is God so cruel that this silver hook has no meaning? Of course not. You must bide your time and see the good that will come of it.’

The Marchioness spoke with a high, proud look as if remarking on a subject that was now remote from her own life. I listened dutifully, but I knew quite well that she was by then in love with my master.

Unfortunately, the Cardinal was not very combustible material in this respect. He was not yet forty, many years her junior; it was true that he was not in holy orders and was free to marry, but everyone expected that if he did marry it would be at some far-off time, and to the King’s daughter, Mary, far away in England.

No one spoke openly about Lady Vittoria’s bad luck in this matter. She bore herself upright, and carried on her life and business and friendship with fortitude. Only occasionally her feelings led her too far, even as far as verses, which she wrote to Pole, and which I once glanced at.

Though your first, real mother in prison lies

Her limpid spirit is not lost or bound,

Yet I, your second mother, while free as air,

Find her heart trapped in narrow ground.

But if Pole was too young to be her lover, he was also too old to be her son. In short, he was made uneasy by her devotion. Happily for all of us, here I could step in. I was the right age: there was no embarrassment between the lady and me. I often rode around Rome as her bodyguard, and listened to her advice, which changed quite frequently.

‘You must put this girl completely from your mind,’ she said to me a few days after our first talk about Judith. ‘I am convinced that thoughts can be overheard, as it were, by one’s enemy. Therefore do not think about her any more, but keep her
here
’ – she touched her heart – ‘which is a much safer place. And, after all, I don’t think you will have to wait long. From what I hear, your king is grossly overweight and has a terrible bad leg and flies into frequent rages, which are the best things imaginable to shorten a man’s life.’

Out of love for Pole, the Marchioness had made herself a great expert on English affairs. She talked about the King endlessly. It was Henry, after all, who had sent Pole into her life. Secretly, I think, she was grateful to him for that and, in order to disguise such a shameful feeling, she never ceased to find new terms in which to condemn him.

‘How is it,’ I heard her ask Pole one day, ‘that a young man so full of promise became the most strange and cruel ruler in all the world? Even here in Italy he was the object of so many hopes. Remember how he was described in
The Courtier
, written by our M. Baldassare. “The Lord Henry, Prince of Wales, grows under his noble father in all kinds of virtue, like a tender imp under the shadow of an excellent tree, to renew him in beauty and plenty when the time comes.” And what do we see now? Why, he is a byword for savagery, and – and this is very rare – he is especially cruel to those who most loved him, and indeed to those whom he most loved. There is Katherine, his wife of twenty years who, when she was dying, begged to be allowed to see her daughter for the last time, and give her blessing, as is customary for a mother on her deathbed. Yet Henry refused. And when the Princess asked the same thing, which not even the cruellest enemy would deny, he withheld his permission. And then there was the other girl whom he first married and then slaughtered, and his dearest friend, More, and that old bishop whom he most revered . . . Those he loves most he then murders! How can such a thing happen? What can take place within a personality to make it so ferocious? Was it the attack of a frenzy, or was he stricken by melancholia and then lost his mind?’

‘As it happens,’ said Pole, ‘I know exactly what happened to him, and when and how, and who was behind it. But this would take time to explain and I’m afraid I would vex you with matters that are so complicated and remote.’

‘On the contrary,’ said the Marchioness. ‘I think that you, who are close to the subject, do not realise the interest it holds to those who are far away from it. I know that M. Michelangelo is as curious as I am about these things and would be pleased to hear a clear account of it.’

This conversation took place outside Rome one afternoon about a year after we got back from Flanders. On this occasion Pole and the marchioness and one or two others, including Michelangelo, had ridden out of the city to the Quo Vadis to look at the site where my master planned to build a little chapel, hardly much more than a beehive or a dovecote as it turned out, for he had no money – after he escaped the assassins sent by the King. On the way back that afternoon we stopped in the garden of another church, the basilica of Nereus and Achilleus, very ancient, and somewhat ruinous in appearance, and built in the Syrian style. This was the church where Pole had been enthroned as a cardinal.

Strangely enough, it was the very place where the cutler and I had first stopped and peered about us and heard the owl call on the first night I ever came to Rome.

On this occasion, their Excellencies dismounted and sat down on some stone benches in the sun and had begun to speak on different matters, when the Marchioness put her question.

‘Very well,’ said Pole. ‘I will tell you. But now we are here we should make some provision for ourselves,’ and he asked me to send to the neighbouring house for a few refreshments. While this was being done I also took the chance to send out the attendants, including two archers who now accompanied Pole wherever he went, to keep a watch over the open ground so no one could approach us unseen. By then I had got to know that area quite well and often went out there to fly my two little hawks over the waste ground and the brambles that surround the towering ruins. I almost wished I had brought them with me to fly that afternoon while the others were talking. On the other hand, I was anxious to hear what Pole had to say, for he was naturally so taciturn that if it had not been for the Marchioness he might never have spoken on this subject. She had a way of inspiring candour in the most silent spirits. So I took up a position leaning on the pillar of the gate where I could look out on the road and at the same time listen to what was said within.

‘I believe I know exactly what happened to our Prince,’ said Pole again. ‘He had been thinking of divorce, as you know, for several years, but there came a time when he told his closest advisors that he had decided to take it no further, seeing the obstacles were greater than he had expected. This he said with a deep sigh, but everyone around him was overjoyed as they could see only calamities ahead. But then a certain counsellor approached him, and made a long address, blaming his other ministers for failing to find ways to satisfy his wishes. They were too timid, he told him, and applied the same standards to kings as to ordinary people. They did not understand that, since good and evil are different in every place, they must be decided by men, and change according to human wishes. In that case, who had a better right to change the laws than the Prince? If Rome agreed to the divorce, well and good, he said, but if not, why, then Henry should free himself from subjection to popes, which was really a bondage imposed on princes, and declare himself Head of the Church. And then, taking Henry, so to speak, to the pinnacle of the Temple, he showed him all the monasteries, the bishoprics, the schools and hospitals and chantries, and said to him: “All these shall be thine. Only call yourself what you are – the Head of the Church.” Any opposition, he said, would be treason. And what death did they not deserve who opposed his wishes?’