Hilary Mantel Collection - Hilary Mantel

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monasteries, tempted – for all he knows – across the river, to be snuggled to the bosoms of whores, slack breasts rubbed with rose petals and ambergris; he imagines Marlinspike lolling, purring, declining to come home again. He says to Christophe, ‘I wonder how I can be Master of the Rolls, if I am not master of a cat.’

      ‘The Rolls have not paws to go walking.’ Christophe is kicking a skirting. ‘My foot go through it,’ he says, demonstrating.

      Will he leave the comforts of Austin Friars, for the tiny windows with their warped panes, the creaking passages, the ancient draughts? ‘It will be a shorter journey to Westminster,’ he says. His aim is bent there – Whitehall, Westminster and the river, Master Secretary's barge down to Greenwich or up to Hampton Court. I shall be back at Austin Friars often, he says to himself, almost every day. He is building a treasure room, a repository secure for any gold plate the king entrusts to him; whatever he deposits can quickly be turned into ready money. His treasure comes through the street on ordinary carts, to attract no attention, though there are vigilant outriders. The chalices are fitted into soft leather cases made for them. The bowls and dishes travel in canvas bags, interleaved with white woollen cloth at seven pence the yard. The jewels are swaddled in silk and packed into chests with new and shiny locks: and he has the keys. There are great pearls which gleam wet from the ocean, sapphires hot as India. There are jewels like the fruit you pick on a country afternoon: garnets like sloes, pink diamonds like rosehips. Alice says, ‘For a handful of these I would, myself, overthrow any queen in Christendom.’

      ‘What a good thing the king hasn't met you, Alice.’

      Jo says, ‘I would as soon have it in export licences. Or army contracts. Someone will make a fortune in the Irish wars. Beans, flour, malt, horseflesh …’

      ‘I shall see what I can do for you,’ he says.

      At Austin Friars he holds the lease for ninety-nine years. His great-grandchildren will have it: some unknown Londoners. When they look at the documents his name will be there. His arms will be carved over the doorways. He rests his hand on the banister of the great staircase, looks up into the dust-mote glitter from a high window. When did I do this? At Hatfield, early in the year: looking up, listening for the sounds of Morton's household, long ago. If he himself went to Hatfield, must not Thomas More have gone up too? Perhaps it was his light footstep he expected, overhead?

      He starts to think again, about that fist that came out of nowhere.

      His first idea had been, move clerks and papers to the Rolls, then Austin Friars will become a home again. But for whom? He has taken out Liz's book of hours, and on the page where she kept the family listed he has made alterations, additions. Rafe will be moving out soon, to his new house in Hackney; and Richard is building in the same neighbourhood, with his wife Frances. Alice is marrying his ward Thomas Rotherham. Her brother Christopher is ordained and beneficed. Jo's wedding clothes are ordered; she is snapped up by his friend John ap Rice, a lawyer, a scholar, a man he admires and on whose loyalty he counts. I have done well for my folk, he thinks: not one of them poor, or unhappy, or uncertain of their place in this uncertain world. He hesitates, looking up into the light: now gold, now blue as a cloud passes. Whoever will come downstairs and claim him, must do it now. His daughter Anne with her thundering feet: Anne, he would say to her, couldn't we have felt mufflers over those hooves of yours? Grace skimming down like dust, drawn into a spiral, a lively swirl … going nowhere, dispersing, gone.

      Liz, come down.

      But Liz keeps her silence; she neither stays nor goes. She is always with him and not with him. He turns away. So this house will become a place of business. As all his houses will become places of business. My home will be where my clerks and files are; otherwise, my home will be with the king, where he is.

      Christophe says, ‘Now we are removed to the Rolls House, I can tell you, cher maître, how I am happy that you did not leave me behind. For in your absence they would call me snail brain and turnip head.’

      ‘Alors …’ he takes a view of Christophe, ‘your head is indeed like a turnip. Thank you for attracting my attention to it.’

      Installed at the Rolls, he takes a view of his situation: satisfactory. He has sold off his two Kent manors, but the king has given him one in Monmouthshire and he is buying another in Essex. He has his eye on plots in Hackney and Shoreditch, and is taking in leases on the properties around Austin Friars, which he intends to enfold in his building plans; and then, build a big wall around the lot. He has surveys to hand of a manor in Bedfordshire, one in Lincolnshire, and two Essex properties he intends to put in trust for Gregory. All this is small stuff. It's nothing to what he intends to have, or to what Henry will owe him.

      Meanwhile, his outgoings would frighten a lesser man. If the king wants something done, you have to be able to staff the enterprise and fund it. It is hard to keep up with the spending of his noble councillors, and yet there are a crew of them who live at the pawn-shop and come to him month by month to patch the holes in their accounts. He knows when to let these debts run; there is more than one kind of currency in England. What he senses is a great net is spreading about him, a web of favours done and favours received. Those who want access to the king expect to pay for it, and no one has better access than he. And at the same time, the word is out: help Cromwell and he will help you. Be loyal, be diligent, be intelligent on his behalf; you will come into a reward. Those who commit their service to him will be promoted and protected. He is a good friend and master; this is said of him everywhere. Otherwise, it is the usual abuse. His father was a blacksmith, a crooked brewer, he was an Irishman, he was a criminal, he was a Jew, and he himself was just a wool-trader, he was a shearsman, and now he is a sorcerer: how else but by being a sorcerer would he get the reins of power in his hand? Chapuys writes to the Emperor about him; his early life remains a mystery, but he is excellent company, and he keeps his household and retainers in magnificent style. He is a master of language, Chapuys writes, a man of most eloquent address; though his French, he adds, is only assez bien.

      He thinks, it's good enough for you. A nod and a wink will do for you.

      These last months, the council has never been out of harness. A hard summer of negotiating has brought a treaty with the Scots. But Ireland is in revolt. Only Dublin Castle itself and the town of Waterford hold out for the king, while the rebel lords are offering their services and their harbours to the Emperor's troops. Among these isles it is the most wretched of territories, which does not pay the king what it costs him to garrison it; but he cannot turn his back on it, for fear of who else might come in. Law is barely respected there, for the Irish think you can buy off murder with money, and like the Welsh they cost out a man's life in cattle. The people are kept poor by imposts and seizures, by forfeitures and plain daylight robbery; the pious English abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays, but the joke runs that the Irish are so godly they abstain every other day as well. Their great lords are brutal and imperious men, treacherous and fickle, inveterate feuders, extortionists and hostage takers, and their allegiance to England they hold cheap, for they are loyal to nothing and prefer force of arms to law. As for the native chiefs, they recognise no natural limit to their claims. They say that on their land they own every ferny slope and lake, they own the heather, the meadow grass and the winds that riffle it; they own every beast and every man, and in times of scarcity they take the bread to feed their hunting dogs.

      No wonder they don't want to be English. It would interrupt their status as slave-owners. The Duke of Norfolk still has serfs on his land, and even if the law courts move to free them the duke expects a fee from it. The king proposes to send Norfolk to Ireland, but he says he's spent enough futile months over there and the only way he'll go back is if they build a bridge so he can get home at the end of the week without getting his feet wet.

      He and Norfolk fight in the council chamber. The duke rants, and he sits back and folds his arms and watches him ranting. You should have sent young Fitzroy to Dublin, he tells the council. An apprentice king – make a show, stage a spectacle, throw some money about.

      Richard says to him, ‘Perhaps we should go to Ireland, sir.’

      ‘I think my campaigning days are over.’

      ‘I would like to be in arms.

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