A COMMISSION
Within a few days of Christopher’s departure to Lewes, Ralph also left
Overfield and went back to London.
He was always a little intolerant at home, and generally appeared there
at his worst--caustic, silent, and unsympathetic. It seemed to him that
the simple country life was unbearably insipid; he found there neither
wit nor affairs: to see day after day the same faces, to listen to the
same talk either on country subjects that were distasteful to him, or,
out of compliment to himself, political subjects that were unfamiliar to
the conversationalists, was a very hard burden, and he counted such
things as the price he must pay for his occasional duty visits to his
parents. He could not help respecting the piety of his father, but he
was none the less bored by it; and the atmosphere of silent cynicism
that seemed to hang round his mother was his only relief. He thought he
understood her, and it pleased him sometimes to watch her, to calculate
how she would behave in any little domestic crisis or incident that
affected her, to notice the slight movement of her lips and her eyelids
gently lowering and rising again in movements of extreme annoyance. But
even this was not sufficient compensation for the other drawbacks of
life at Overfield Court, and it was with a very considerable relief that
he stepped into his carriage at last towards the end of July, nodded and
smiled once more to his father who was watching him from the terrace
steps with a wistful and puzzled face, anxious to please, and heard the
first crack of the whip of his return journey.
He had, indeed, a certain excuse for going, for a despatch-rider had
come down from London with papers for him from Sir Thomas Cromwell, and
it was not hard to assume a serious face and announce that he was
recalled by affairs; and there was sufficient truth in it, too, for one
of the memoranda bore on the case of Elizabeth Barton, the holy maid of
Kent, and announced her apprehension. Cromwell however, did not actually
recall him, but mentioned the fact of her arrest, and asked if he had
heard much said of her in the country, and what the opinion of her was
in that district.
* * * * *
The drive up to London seemed very short to him now; he went slowly
through the bundle of papers on which he had to report, annotating them
in order here and there, and staring out of the window now and again
with unseeing eyes. There were a dozen cases on which he was engaged,
which had been forwarded to him during his absence in the country--the
priest at High Hatch was reported to have taken a wife, and Cromwell
desired information about this; Ralph had ridden out there one day and
gossipped a little outside the parsonage; an inn-keeper a few miles to
the north of Cuckfield had talked against the divorce and the reigning
Consort; a mistake had been made in the matter of a preaching license,
and Cranmer had desired Cromwell to look into it; a house had been sold
in Cheapside on which Ralph had been told to keep a suspicious eye, and
he was asked his opinion on the matter; and such things as these
occupied his time fully, until towards four o’clock in the afternoon his
carriage rolled up to the horse-ferry at Lambeth, and he thrust the
papers back into his bag before stepping out.
On arriving at his own little house in Westminster, the rent of which
was paid by his master, he left his other servants to carry up the
luggage, and set out himself again immediately with Morris in a hackney
carriage for Chancery Lane.
As he went, he found himself for the hundredth time thinking of the
history of the man to whom he was going.
Sir Thomas Cromwell was beginning to rise rapidly from a life of
adventure and obscurity abroad. He had passed straight from the
Cardinal’s service to the King’s three years before, and had since then
been knighted, appointed privy-councillor, Master of the Jewel-house,
and Clerk of the Hanaper in the Court of Chancery. At the same time he
was actively engaged on his amazing system of espionage through which he
was able to detect disaffection in all parts of the country, and thereby
render himself invaluable to the King, who, like all the Tudors, while
perfectly fearless in the face of open danger was pitiably terrified of
secret schemes.
And it was to this man that he was confidential agent! Was there any
limit to the possibilities of his future?
Ralph found a carriage drawn up at the door and, on enquiry, heard that
his master was on the point of leaving; and even as he hesitated in the
entrance, Cromwell shambled down the stairs with a few papers in his
hand, his long sleeveless cloak flapping on each step behind him, and
his felt plumed cap on his head in which shone a yellow jewel.
His large dull face, clean shaven like a priest’s, lighted up briskly as
he saw Ralph standing there, and he thrust his arm pleasantly through
his agent’s.
“Come home to supper,” he said, and the two wheeled round and went out
and into the carriage. Mr. Morris handed the bag through the window to
his master, and stood bare-headed as the carriage moved off over the
newly laid road.
It would have been a very surprising sight to Sir James Torridon to see
his impassive son’s attitude towards Cromwell. He was deferential, eager
to please, nervous of rebuke, and almost servile, for he had found his
hero in that tremendous personality. He pulled out his papers now, shook
them out briskly, and was soon explaining, marking and erasing. Cromwell
leaned back in his corner and listened, putting in a word of comment now
and again, or dotting down a note on the back of a letter, and watching
Ralph with a pleasant, oblique look, for he liked to see his people
alert and busy. But he knew very well what his demeanour was like at
other times, and had at first indeed been drawn to the young man by his
surprising insolence of manner and impressive observant silences.
“That is very well, Mr. Torridon,” he said. “I will see to the license.
Put them all away.”
Ralph obeyed, and then sat back too, silent indeed, but with a kind of
side-long readiness for the next subject; but Cromwell spoke no more of
business for the present, only uttering short sentences about current
affairs, and telling his friend the news.
“Frith has been burned,” he said. “Perhaps you knew it. He was obstinate
to the end, my Lord Bishop reported. He threw Saint Chrysostom and Saint
Augustine back into their teeth. He gave great occasion to the funny
fellows. There was one who said that since Frith would have no
purgatory, he was sent there by my Lord to find out for himself whether
there be such a place or not. There was a word more about his manner of
going there, ‘Frith frieth,’ but ’twas not good. Those funny fellows
over-reach themselves. Hewet went with him to Smithfield and hell.”
Ralph smiled, and asked how they took it.
“Oh, very well. A priest bade the folk pray no more for Frith than for a
dog, but Frith smiled on him and begged the Lord to forgive him his
unkind words.”
He was going on to tell him a little more about the talk of the Court,
when the carriage drove up to the house in Throgmorton Street, near
Austin Friars, which Cromwell had lately built for himself.
“My wife and children are at Hackney,” he said as he stepped out. “We
shall sup alone.”
It was a great house, built out of an older one, superbly furnished with
Italian things, and had a large garden at the back on to which looked
the windows of the hall. Supper was brought up almost immediately--a
couple of woodcocks and a salad--and the two sat down, with a pair of
servants in blue and silver to wait on them. Cromwell spoke no more word
of business until the bottle of wine had been set on the table, and the
servants were gone. And then he began again, immediately.
“And what of the country?” he said. “What do they say there?” He took a
peach from the carved roundel in the centre of the table, and seemed
absorbed in its contemplation.
Ralph had had some scruples at first about reporting private
conversations, but Cromwell had quieted them long since, chiefly by the
force of his personality, and partly by the argument that a man’s duty
to the State over-rode his duty to his friends, and that since only talk
that was treasonable would be punished, it was simpler to report all
conversations in general that had any suspicious bearing, and that he
himself was most competent to judge whether or no they should be
followed up. Ralph, too, had become completely reassured by now that no
injury would be done to his own status among his friends, since his
master had never yet made direct use of any of his information in such a
manner as that it was necessary for Ralph to appear as a public witness.
And again, too, he had pointed out that the work had to be done, and
that was better for the cause of justice and mercy that it should be
done by conscientious rather than by unscrupulous persons.
He talked to him now very freely about the conversations in his father’s
house, knowing that Cromwell did not want more than a general specimen
sketch of public feeling in matters at issue.
“They have great faith in the Maid of Kent, sir,” he said. “My
brother-in-law, Nicholas, spoke of her prophecy of his Grace’s death. It
is the devout that believe in her; the ungodly know her for a fool or a
knave.”
“_Filii hujus saeculi prudentiores sunt_,”--quoted Cromwell gravely.
“Your brother-in-law, I should think, was a child of light.”
“He is, sir.”
“I should have thought so. And what else did you hear?”
“There is a good deal of memory of the Lady Katharine, sir. I heard the
foresters talking one day.”
“What of the Religious houses?”
Ralph hesitated.
“My brother Christopher has just gone to Lewes,” he said. “So I heard
more of the favourable side, but I heard a good deal against them, too.
There was a secular priest talking against them one day, with our
chaplain, who is a defender of them.”
“Who was he?” asked Cromwell, with the same sharp, oblique glance.
“A man of no importance, sir; the parson of Great Keynes.”
“The Holy Maid is in trouble,” went on the other after a minute’s
silence. “She is in my Lord of Canterbury’s hands, and we can leave her
there. I suppose she will be hanged.”
Ralph waited. He knew it was no good asking too much.
“What she said of the King’s death and the pestilence is enough to cast
her,” went on Cromwell presently. “And Bocking and Hadleigh will be in
his hands soon, too. They do not know their peril yet.”
They went on to talk of the friars, and of the disfavour that they were
in with the King after the unfortunate occurrences of the previous
spring, when Father Peto had preached at Greenwich before Henry on the
subject of Naboth’s vineyard and the end of Ahab the oppressor. There
had been a dramatic scene, Cromwell said, when on the following Sunday a
canon of Hereford, Dr. Curwin, had preached against Peto from the same
pulpit, and had been rebuked from the rood-loft by another of the
brethren, Father Elstow, who had continued declaiming until the King
himself had fiercely intervened from the royal pew and bade him be
silent.
“The two are banished,” said Cromwell, “but that is not the end of it.
Their brethren will hear of it again. I have never seen the King so
wrathful. I suppose it was partly because the Lady Katharine so
cossetted them. She was always in the church at the night-office when
the Court was at Greenwich, and Friar Forrest, you know, was her
confessor. There is a rod in pickle.”
Ralph listened with all his ears. Cromwell was not very communicative
on the subject of the Religious houses, but Ralph had gathered from
hints of this kind that something was preparing.
When supper was over and the servants were clearing away, Cromwell went
to the window where the glass glowed overhead with his new arms and
scrolls--a blue coat with Cornish choughs and a rose on a fess between
three rampant lions--and stood there, a steady formidable figure, with
his cropped head and great jowl, looking out on to the garden.
When the men had gone he turned again to Ralph.
“I have something for you,” he said, “but it is greater than those other
matters--a fool could not do it. Sit down.”
He came across the room to the fireplace, as Ralph sat down, and himself
took a chair by the table, lifting the baudkin cushion and settling it
again comfortably behind him.
“It is this,” he said abruptly. “You know that Master More has been in
trouble. There was the matter of the gilt flagon which Powell said he
had taken as a bribe, and the gloves lined with forty pound. Well, he
disproved that, and I am glad of it, glad of it,” he repeated steadily,
looking down at his ring and turning it to catch the light. “But there
is now another matter--I hear he has been practising with the Holy Maid
and hearkening to her ravings, and that my Lord of Rochester is in it
too. But I am not sure of it.”
Cromwell stopped, glanced up at Ralph a moment, and then down again.
“I am not sure of it,” he said again, “and I wish to be. And I think you
can help me.”
Ralph waited patiently, his heart beginning to quicken. This was a great
matter.
“I wish you to go to him,” said his master, “and to get him into talk.
But I do not see how it can be managed.”
“He knows I am in your service, sir,” suggested Ralph.
“Yes, yes,” said Cromwell a little impatiently, “that is it. He is no
fool, and will not talk. This is what I thought of. That you should go
to him from me, and feign that you are on his side in the matter. But
will he believe that?” he ended gloomily, looking at the other
curiously.
There was silence for a minute, while Cromwell drummed his fingers
softly on the table. Then presently Ralph spoke.
“There is this, sir,” he said. “I might speak to him about my brother
Chris who, as I told you, has gone to Lewes at the Maid’s advice, and
then see what Master More has to say.”
Cromwell still looked at him.
“Yes,” he said, “that seems reasonable. And for the rest--well, I will
leave that in your hands.”
They talked a few minutes longer about Sir Thomas More, and Cromwell
told the other what a quiet life the ex-Chancellor had led since his
resignation of office, of his house at Chelsea, and the like, and of the
decision that he had apparently come to not to mix any further in public
affairs.
“There is thunder in the air,” he said, “as you know very well, and
Master More is no mean weather-prophet. He mis-liked the matter of the
Lady Katharine, and Queen Anne is no friend of his. I think he is wise
to be quiet.”
Ralph knew perfectly well that this tolerant language did not represent
Cromwell’s true attitude towards the man of whom they were speaking, but
he assented to all that was said, and added a word or two about Sir
Thomas More’s learning, and of the pleasant manner in which he himself
had been received when he had once had had occasion to see him before.
“He was throwing Horace at me,” said the other, with a touch of
bitterness, “the last time that I was there. I do not know which he
loves best, that or his prayers.”
Again Ralph recognised an animus. Cromwell had suffered somewhat from
lack of a classical education.
“But it is a good thing to love the classics and devotion,” he went on
presently with a sententious air, “they are solaces in time of trouble.
I have found that myself.”
He glanced up at the other and down again.
“I was caught saying our Lady matins one day,” he said, “when the
Cardinal was in trouble. I remember I was very devout that morning.”
He went on to talk of Wolsey and of his relations with him, and Ralph
watched that heavy smooth face become reminiscent and almost
sentimental.
“If he had but been wiser;” he said. “I have noticed again and again the
folly of wise men. There is always clay mixed with gold. I suppose
nothing but the fire that Frith denied can purge it out; and my lord’s
was ambition.”
He wagged his head in solemn reprobation, and Ralph did not know whether
to laugh or to look grave. Then there fell a long silence, and Cromwell
again fell to fingering his signet-ring, taking it off his thumb and
rolling it on the smooth oak, and at last stood up with a brisker air.
“Well,” he said, “I have a thousand affairs, and my son Gregory is
coming here soon. Then you will see about that matter. Remember I wish
to know what Master More thinks of her, that--that I may know what to
think.”
* * * * *
Ralph understood sufficiently clearly, as he walked home in the evening
light, what it was that his master wanted. It was no less than to catch
some handle against the ex-chancellor, though he had carefully abstained
from saying so. Ralph recognised the adroitness, and saw that while the
directions had been plain and easy to understand, yet that not one word
had been spoken that could by any means be used as a handle against
Cromwell. If anyone in England at that time knew how to wield speech it
was his master; it was by that weapon that he had prevailed with the
King, and still kept him in check; it was that weapon rashly used by his
enemies that he was continually turning against them, and under his
tutoring Ralph himself had begun to be practised in the same art.
Among other causes, too, of his admiration for Cromwell, was the
latter’s extraordinary business capacity. There was hardly an affair of
any importance in which he did not have a finger at least, and most of
them he held in the palm of his hand, and that, not only in the mass but
in their minutest details. Ralph had marvelled more than once at the
minutiæ that he had seen dotted down on the backs of old letters lying
on his master’s table. Matters of Church and State, inextricably
confused to other eyes, were simple to this man; he understood
intuitively where the key of each situation lay, and dealt with them one
after another briefly and effectively. And yet with all this no man wore
an appearance of greater leisure; he would gossip harmlessly for an
hour, and yet by the end had said all that he wished to say, and
generally learnt, too, from his companion whoever he might be, all he
wished to learn. Ralph had watched him more than once at this business;
had seen delicate subjects introduced in a deft unsuspicious sentence
that roused no alarm, and had marvelled at his power to play with men
without their dreaming of what was going forward.
And now it was Master More that was threatened. Ralph knew well that
there was far more behind the scenes than he could understand or even
perceive, and recognised that the position of Sir Thomas was more
significant than would appear, and that developments might be expected
to follow soon.
For himself he had no shrinking from his task. He understood that
government was carried on by such methods, and that More himself would
be the first to acknowledge that in war many things were permissible
that would be outrageous in times of peace, and that these were times of
war. To call upon a friend, to eat his bread and salt, and talk
familiarly with him, and to be on the watch all the while for a weak
spot through which that friend might be wounded, seemed to Ralph,
trained now and perfected in Cromwell’s school, a perfectly legitimate
policy, and he walked homewards this summer evening, pleased with this
new mark of confidence, and anxious to acquit himself well in his task.
* * * * *
The house that Ralph occupied in Westminster was in a street to the west
of the Abbey, and stood back a little between its neighbours. It was a
very small one, of only two rooms in width and one in depth, and three
stories high; but it had been well furnished, chiefly with things
brought up from Overfield Court, to which Ralph had taken a fancy, and
which his father had not denied him. He lived almost entirely in the
first floor, his bedroom and sitting-room being divided by the narrow
landing at the head of the stairs that led up to the storey above, which
was occupied by Mr. Morris and a couple of other servants. The lower
storey Ralph used chiefly for purposes of business, and for interviews
which were sufficiently numerous for one engaged in so many affairs.
Cromwell had learnt by now that he could be trusted to say little and to
learn much, and the early acts of many little dramas that had ended in
tragedy had been performed in the two gravely-furnished rooms on the
ground floor. A good deal of the law-business, in its early stages,
connected with the annulling of the King’s marriage with Queen Katharine
had been done there; a great canonist from a foreign university had
explained there his views in broken English, helped out with Latin, to a
couple of shrewd-faced men, while Ralph watched the case for his master;
and Cromwell himself had found the little retired house a convenience
for meeting with persons whom he did not wish to frighten over much,
while Ralph and Mr. Morris sat alert and expectant on the other side of
the hall, with the door open, listening for raised voices or other signs
of a quarrel.
The rooms upstairs had been furnished with considerable care. The floors
of both were matted, for the plan involved less trouble than the
continual laying of clean rushes. The sitting-room was panelled up six
feet from the floor, and the three feet of wall above were covered with
really beautiful tapestry that Ralph had brought up from Overfield.
There was a great table in the centre, along one side of which rested a
set of drawers with brass handles, and in the centre of the table was a
deep well, covered by a flap that lay level with the rest of the top.
Another table stood against the wall, on which his meals were served,
and the door of a cupboard in which his plate and knives were kept
opened immediately above it, designed in the thickness of the wall.
There were half-a-dozen chairs, two or three other pieces of furniture,
a backed settle by the fire and a row of bookshelves opposite the
windows; and over the mantelpiece, against the tapestry, hung a picture
of Cromwell, painted by Holbein, and rejected by him before it was
finished. Ralph had begged it from the artist who was on the point of
destroying it. It represented the sitter’s head and shoulders in
three-quarter face, showing his short hair, his shrewd heavy face, with
its double chin, and the furred gown below.
Mr. Morris was ready for his master and opened the door to him.
“There are some letters come, Mr. Ralph, sir,” he said. “I have laid
them on your table.”
Ralph nodded, slipped off his thin cloak into his servant’s hands
without speaking, laid down his cane and went upstairs.
The letters were very much what he expected, and dealt with cases on
which he was engaged. There was an entreaty from a country squire near
Epping Forest, whose hounds had got into trouble with the King’s
foresters that he would intercede for him to Cromwell. A begging letter
from a monk who had been ejected from his monastery for repeated
misconduct, and who represented himself as starving; Ralph lifted this
to his nostrils and it smelt powerfully of spirits, and he laid it down
again, smiling to himself. A torrent of explanation from a schoolmaster
who had been reported for speaking against the sacrament of the altar,
calling the saints to witness that he was no follower of Frith in such
detestable heresy. A dignified protest from a Justice of the Peace in
Kent who had been reproved by Cromwell, through Ralph’s agency, for
acquitting a sturdy beggar, and who begged that he might in future deal
with a responsible person; and this Ralph laid aside, smiling again and
promising himself that he would have the pleasure of granting the
request. An offer, written in a clerkly hand, from a fellow who could
not sign his name but had appended a cross, to submit some important
evidence of a treasonable plot, on the consideration of secrecy and a
suitable reward.
A year ago such a budget would have given Ralph considerable pleasure,
and a sense of his own importance; but business had been growing on him
rapidly of late, as his master perceived his competence, and it gave him
no thrill to docket this one, write a refusal to that, a guarded answer
to another, and finally to open the well of his table and drop the
bundle in.
Then he turned round his chair, blew out one candle carefully, and set
to thinking about Master Thomas More.