He does not write to the cardinal to tell him that everybody in England is saying that the king means to marry Anne Boleyn. He doesn't have the news the cardinal wants, so he doesn't write at all. He gets his clerks to do it, to keep the cardinal updated on his legal affairs, his finances. Tell him we are all well here, he says. Tender him my respects and my duty. Tell him how much we would like to see his face.
No one else in their household falls sick. This year London has escaped lightly – or at least, everyone says so. Prayers of thanksgiving are offered in the city churches; or prayers of appeasement, perhaps one should call them? In the little conclaves that meet at night, God's purpose is interrogated. London knows that it sins. As the Bible tells us, ‘A merchant shall hardly keep himself from doing wrong.’ And elsewhere it is stated, ‘He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.’ It is a sure sign of troubled minds, the habit of quotation. ‘Whom the Lord loveth he correcteth.’
By early September, the plague has run its course and the family is able to gather to pray for Liz. Now she can have the ceremonies that were denied her when she left them so suddenly. Black coats are given to twelve poor men of the parish, the same mourners who would have followed her coffin; and each man in the family has pledged seven years of Masses for her soul. On the day appointed, the weather clears briefly, and there is a chill in the air. ‘The harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.’
The small child Grace wakes in the night and says that she sees her mother in her shroud. She does not cry like a child, noisy and hiccupping, but like a grown woman, weeping tears of dread.
‘All the rivers run into the sea, but the seas are not yet full.’
Morgan Williams shrinks year by year. Today especially he looks small and grey and harassed, as he grips his arm and says, ‘Why are the best taken? Ah, why are they?’ Then, ‘I know you were happy with her, Thomas.’
They are back at Austin Friars, a swarm of women and children and robust men whom mourning hardly takes out of their customary black, the garb of lawyers and merchants, of accountants and brokers. There is his sister, Bet Wellyfed; her two boys, her little daughter Alice. There is Kat; his sisters have their heads together, deciding who shall move in to help out Mercy with the girls, ‘until you marry again, Tom.’
His nieces, two good little girls, still clutch their rosary beads. They stare around them, unsure what they must do next. Ignored, as the people talk over their heads, they lean against the wall, and flick their eyes at each other. Slowly, they slide down the wall, straight-backed, till they are the height of two-year-olds, and balancing on their heels. ‘Alice! Johane!’ someone snaps; slowly they rise, solemn-faced, to their proper heights. Grace approaches them; silently they trap her, take off her cap, shake out her blonde hair and begin to plait it. While the brothers-in-law talk about what the cardinal is doing in France, his attention strays towards her. Grace's eyes grow wide as her cousins draw her hair back tight. Her mouth opens in a silent gape, like a fish's mouth. When one squeak escapes her, it is Liz's sister, the elder Johane, who crosses the room and scoops her up. Watching Johane, he thinks, as he often has, how alike the sisters are: were.
His daughter Anne turns her back on the women, slides her arm into her uncle's. ‘We're talking about the Low Countries trade,’ Morgan tells her.
‘One thing's for sure, Uncle, they won't be pleased in Antwerp if Wolsey signs a treaty with the French.’
‘That's what we're saying to your father. But, oh, he will stick by his cardinal. Come, Thomas! You don't like the French any more than we do.’
He knows, as they do not, how much the cardinal needs the friendship of King François; without one of the major powers of Europe to speak for him, how will the king get his divorce?
‘Treaty of Perpetual Peace? Let's think, when was the last Perpetual Peace? I give it three months.’ It is his brother-in-law Wellyfed who speaks, laughing; and John Williamson, who is Johane's husband, asks will they take bets on it: three months, six? Then he remembers they're at a solemn occasion. ‘Sorry, Tom,’ he says, and breaks into a spasm of coughing.
Johane's voice cuts across it: ‘If the old gamester keeps coughing like this, the winter will finish him off, and then I'll marry you, Tom.’
‘Will you?’
‘Oh, for sure. As long as I get the right piece of paper from Rome.’
The party smile and hide their smiles. They give each other knowing looks. Gregory says, why is that funny? You can't marry your wife's sister, can you? He and his boy cousins go off into a corner to talk about private subjects – Bet's boys Christopher and Will, Kat's boys Richard and Walter – why did they call that child Walter? Did they need a reminder of their father, lurking around after his death, to remind them not to get too happy? The family never meet but he thanks God that Walter's not with them any more. He tells himself he should have more kindness towards his father, but his kindness extends only to paying for Masses for his soul.
In the year before he came back to England for good, he had crossed and recrossed the sea, undecided; he had so many friends in Antwerp, besides good business contacts, and as the city expanded, which it did every year, it seemed more and more the right place to be. If he was homesick, it was for Italy: the light, the language, Tommaso as he'd been there. Venice had cured him of any nostalgia for the banks of the Thames. Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home. But something pulled at him – curiosity about who was dead and who'd been born, a desire to see his sisters again, and laugh – one can always laugh somehow – about their upbringing. He had written to Morgan Williams to say, I'm thinking of London next. But don't tell my father. Don't tell him I'm coming home.
During the early months they tried to coax him. Look, Walter's settled down, you wouldn't know him. He's eased back on the drink. Well, he knew it was killing him. He keeps out of the law courts these days. He's even served his turn as churchwarden.
What? he said. And he didn't get drunk on the altar wine? He didn't make off with the candle funds?
Nothing they said could persuade him down to Putney. He waited more than a year, till he was married and a father. Then he felt safe to go.
It was more than twelve years he'd been out of England. He'd been taken aback by the change in people. He left them young and they had softened or sharpened into middle age. The lissom were lean now and dried out. The plump were plumper. Fine features had blurred and softened. Bright eyes were duller. There were some people he didn't recognise at all, not at first glance.
But he would have known Walter anywhere. As his father walked towards him he thought, I'm seeing myself, in twenty, thirty years, if I'm spared. They said that drink had nearly done for him, but he didn't look half-dead. He looked as he had always looked: as if he could knock you down, and might decide to do it. His short strong body had broadened and coarsened. His hair, thick and curling, had hardly a thread of grey. His glance was skewering; small eyes, bright and golden-brown. You need good eyes in a smithy, he used to say. You need good eyes wherever you are, or they'll rob you blind.
‘Where've you been?’ Walter said. Where once he would have sounded angry, he now sounded merely irritated. It was as if his son had been on a message to Mortlake, and had taken his time over it.
‘Oh … here and there,’ he said.
‘You look like a foreigner.’
‘I am a foreigner.’
‘So what have you been doing?’
He could