The Courier's Tale (17 page)

In the end he sent no answer to Morison. He wasn’t worth the trouble, he said. I think that in fact there was a further difficulty: the charge he made against Morison – of base ingratitude – was exactly that made by the King against him. He laid down his pen for several weeks, as if he needed to think, and when he took it up again he wrote instead to the Emperor, telling the whole story of his relations with Henry and the murder of those learned men, Reynolds and others, in whose blood, he said, he saw God’s finger, writing a terrible judgement on the King . . .

Meanwhile, Brancetor and I roamed about the countryside, filling in time. To tell the truth we were at a loose end. Pole and the household had left Carpentras and retired to a little monastery where he was perfectly safe. We had nothing to do. It is strange to say but when I look back at all the scenes of my life, that first half of the summer in Carpentras seems the worst – not the most tragic or cruel or puzzling, but the dreariest. The sun beat down. There was famine and drought in the countryside. Carpentras was papal territory and therefore home to many Jews who fled there over the years to escape the cruel French. But now there was famine, a war broke out between the peasants, who had eaten all the seed grain, and the Jews to whom they owed money. Cries of rage were heard in the town; the villages were silent and hungry.

Brancetor rode up and down looking as from a great distance at this quarrel over bread and money. We had no part in it.

‘Don’t intervene,’ said Brancetor, as I turned one day without thinking towards the sound of shouting. ‘What do you know about these troubles? Why should you join in the yapping?’

He was a strange man, at times full of human sympathy, otherwise cut off from all concerns but his own. I never knew what was being considered within that great head with its poll of white wool. How he passed through the midst of several million Turks unquestioned I never understood. Perhaps it was simple: he did not see danger. He did in fact have poor eyesight, but I mean something other than that: he did not consider that trouble had any claims on him. And so we rode on, and climbed up to the ridges and looked down on the villages where pinched faces watched us from black doorways.

After a while we began to travel further afield, staying away for a few nights, sleeping in inns or barns. On one occasion we came to that mountain near Aix where there is a cavern of incredible height, spacious and echoing, and where, it is said, Mary Magdalene ended her days. Beyond the cave, a path leads up through the juniper and aromatic bushes to the top of the mountain. I was feeling gloomier than usual that day. The latest news from England was as delightful as the last. We learnt that we had been formally declared traitors and condemned to death by act of parliament. It was the strangest legislation ever passed: the dead and the living were all mixed up together in the bill, as if Montagu and Exeter and the others had been or could be brought back from the next world in order to be sent there again, along with Pole, his mother, Brancetor and me and various others.

This was Cromwell’s doing. It was a new form of law he had invented. There was no longer any need for judge or jury or evidence or any chance for the accused to hear and answer the charges. All that was needed was a list. The names of bad people, the worst of the worst, were collected and sent to parliament, which obediently declared their lives forfeit. I don’t know why this new burden oppressed me so much. Perhaps it was the thought of Cromwell’s power: not only were men’s lives now easily destroyed, but so were their laws. No worse calamity, Pole used to say, can befall a country than to be ruled by a ‘circle of the scornful’. I said nothing about this as we took the path to the summit, but perhaps Brancetor guessed what was troubling me. At any event, he began to talk.

Until then, he had told me nothing about his famous journey to Persia, but as we took the path upwards in the heat and then, sitting among the lichen-covered rocks on the summit of Mt Pilon, he told me the whole story, how he had been on a pilgrimage to Mt Sinai and from there, using a false passport, had travelled all the way to Babylon. He described the deserts of burning sands which he crossed alone, the language of the inhabitants which is close to the original tongue of mankind before Babel. Then he came to the Persian camp and was led to their king. He described the marvellous courtesy of the Persians, who live among their rose gardens and guard the tomb of the prophet Daniel, and the infinite condescension of their king, the Sophy, who with his own hand shaved ice into Brancetor’s cup of wine. Then he described how, when the time came to leave Persia and he could not go back through Turkish territory, he set off for home by the new route, sailing with the Portuguese around a very distant cape where the men can outrun deer and at night a cross is seen among the stars.

As he talked, I could just see the sea like a blue porch away to the south, and for the first time I realised how small my own travels had been, what a tiny portion of the globe I had seen, and how slight, by comparison, were the dangers I had faced so far. And it was there on the summit of Pilon, above the cliffs where the falcons were breeding, that I felt my courage come back to me.

Perhaps in turn I transmitted some of this to Pole. When we came to leave Provence and go back to Rome, I persuaded him, at any rate, to turn off the road and visit the cavern, which is called St Beaumes.

I waited outside among the globe flowers and white rocks while he was in the cave.

When he came out I saw at once that he was changed. His step was firmer, his eye clear. We rode on a few miles before he cared to tell me what had happened. There is a little altar at the far end of the cave, and on going towards it he felt his despondency with renewed force. All his sorrows resolved into one image – that of the King as a young man, his cousin whom he had always loved, who had committed so many savage acts without remorse. Tears pricked his eyes. At that moment, from somewhere far away – either from within him or beyond him, it was not clear – it seemed that he heard a voice, a somewhat peremptory voice, saying:
Why do you waste tears over one I have cast aside?

No answer was required. At that moment, it seems, Pole came to himself. He had in the last few weeks been stumbling with his letter to the Emperor. But now, after leaving St Beaumes, he completed it in a few days and gave it to Brancetor to deliver to the Emperor, who was then on his way to visit the King of France. Then we said our farewells. Pole and I and the others departed for northern Italy, while Brancetor rode off alone to Paris.

BOOK II

Chapter 1

I was always pleased to be back in Padua, and even when Pole stayed in Verona or Treviso or with Bembo at Noniano I would jump at the opportunity to go there ‘on business’ – to look at a horse or buy linen or whatever it might be, but really to wander the streets for a few hours among the students who were my own age. This gave me a strange sensation, as if I was walking back into my own past, into the life which I had left suddenly and without warning, and which I pretended to myself I might resume just as abruptly one day, rejoining those students, whom I partly envied and partly pitied. What did they know about the world? Who else in that throng in the streets of Padua had had an act of parliament passed against their very existence? The English students I avoided, however, partly because, when they realised who I was, they would draw back in alarm, and who could blame them? And I too drew back. Which of them could I trust?

I did have one or two English friends, though, in Padua, the closest being Tom Theobald. We became friends, it seemed, by chance, or destiny. Our paths crossed just at the moment I stood in need of ordinary companionship. I knew Thomas slightly already, and liked him; he had an open, cheerful, yet always somewhat rueful expression, which amused me; he was sandy, thin as a whippet, a good horseman, a poor fencer. He was thoughtful: he studied theology and law and knew bawdy verses in several languages. One afternoon, I saw him approaching and gave him a nod and walked on by, having determined not to have any more contact with my countrymen. This was up on the walls of the city where I liked to go to look out over the plains, especially when the crops were green and flowing in the wind like a river. Now on this occasion I happened to turn back and see Tom gazing after me with a certain fixity of expression. He then came after me and asked me to stop and then, with great simplicity, pointed out that there was no need for us to be enemies.

‘I have known you now for a year or two,’ he said. ‘Here we are, from the same country and far from home. We should be able to be friends. I know the problems that arise with the others, but here’s what I propose. If neither you or I ever mention any of
those matters
’ – by which he meant politics, Pole, the King and so on – ‘then we are on safe ground.’

I saw at once what was being proposed under these rules: if he was ever questioned by the English authorities about me, he could swear in all truth that he knew nothing of importance. For my part, I could be confident he was not gathering information which could be handed on. In my heart I immediately assented. I was moved by this proof of a clear and thoughtful nature. From that moment on, we became friends. Once or twice I tested him: I invited him to come to Nonianao or Treviso and meet Pole. Any agent of Cromwell would have leapt at the chance, but Theobald laughed at me.

‘What would I say to him? No, let’s stay here in Padua where there’s a bit of life.’ He would ask me to join him at dinners with his friends, sometimes including young ladies, or we would go to his lodging and have ham and pea soup and drink that black wine called— well, whatever it is called, I never can remember. Once, with Pole safely installed at Trevsio, I went off with Theobald to Ferrara and Forli where he had some business and then we came back along the coast, and raced each other through the pine forest with its red-carpeted floor. For me such moments were more rare and delightful than entry to a royal palace. No one knew where I was. I had no dangerous duties. I almost forgot the death threat always hanging over my head, the painful loss of Judith, and family, and country. With Tom Theobald as company, I had a glimpse of that magnificent thing, despised by many young men: an ordinary life.

But the time soon came when Pole had to return to Rome. I farewelled my carefree friend in Padua and took up my duties again as bodyguard, chief minister and master of horse for Mr Pole. It was early summer when we got back to the city. We had been away more than a year. And we were not back there long before astounding news came from England. Cromwell had fallen from power!

He was charged, as far as could be seen, with imaginary offences. My brother George, by then long since out of the Tower and back at home, was called on to provide some evidence against him.

‘Why, yes,’ said George, pleased to assist. ‘He once said to me: “
I am sure of the King
.” ’

This was a most detestable crime – a man as low-born as Cromwell, whose father made a living fulling cloth at Putney, to say he was ‘sure of’ his sovereign.

From his prison cell Cromwell wrote plaintive letters to the King:

If it were in my power to make your Majesty live for ever young, God knows I would, and so rich and powerful that all the world would be forced to obey you, Christ he knows I would . . .

God forgive my accusers. I never spoke to Throckmorton, your Grace knows what sort of man he is . . .

Written with the quaking hand and most sorrowful heart of your most sorrowful subject . . .

Most gracious Prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy.

But there was to be no mercy. There was to be no hearing. Cromwell never met his accusers. No lawyers, judge or jury were called upon. He was convicted by attainder, by act of parliament, the process which he had himself devised; indeed I think he was the very first to go to his eternal home, wherever that might be, by this new route.

Cromwell’s fall caused a sensation in Rome, as in every other city, and occasioned much debate and speculation. What did it mean? What did it portend? The Marchioness was convinced that it signalled a change of heart in the King.

‘Surely,’ she said, ‘now that the teacher is gone, the pupil will mend his ways.’

‘Perhaps the teacher is gone because he is no longer needed,’ said Pole. ‘Perhaps by killing him, the pupil shows him how well he has grasped the teacher’s doctrine.’

‘But surely your King would like to regain the good opinion of others,’ said the Marchioness. ‘I know that the King of France has already written to congratulate him on being rid of that unhappy instrument, whose
malversation
turned him against the best of his subjects.’

Pole did not answer at once, as if he was unwilling to dispute the point.

‘I would like to agree with you,’ he said finally. ‘And after all nothing is impossible. But I don’t see how such a change can come about. It is too late. Even if Henry wished to change, I don’t see how he could. He has convinced himself that his subjects secretly hate him, and he is wise to think so – his avarice, his blasphemies, his cruelty mean that they must regard him as an enemy. “Tyranny is a fine place,” the Greeks used to say, “but there’s no way down.” It’s an old story.’

We were sitting that afternoon in the garden of Faenza’s house on the Quirinale. Faenza was away from Rome at the time but he was a great friend of Pole’s and gave him the use of the garden whenever he wanted to escape the heat of the city below. It was the first time, I think, that Pole had met his circle of friends since the fall of Cromwell. The Marchioness was there, with her two attendants; M. Michelangelo came, with his faithful Urbino, the colour-grinder; Flamminio was present, and M. Donato, and Bembo arrived – by this time he had been made a cardinal. With him, I remember, was a shock-headed youth named Ulisse, whose father was a friend of Bembo’s and had sent the son to Rome for some reason or other, and who, from the moment he arrived in the garden, managed to irritate and upset me with his peering everywhere and roaming about and lifting things and snatching at lizards on the wall. I had a sense that he was going to cause me some great trouble that day, which indeed he did, although not of a kind I imagined.