Bring Up the Bodies (22 page)

One drink in, the old knight talked as if everybody had followed his trade. You should set your squires, he said, at each end of the barrier, to make your horse swerve wide if he tries to cut the corner, or else you may catch your foot, easy done if there's no end-guard, bloody painful: have you ever done that? Some fools collect their boys in the middle, where the atteint will occur; but what's the use? Indeed, he agreed, what use at all: and wondered at that delicate word,
atteint
, for the brutal shock of contact. These spring-loaded shields, the old man said, have you seen them, they jump apart when they're hit? Babies' tricks. The old-time judges didn't need a device like that to tell them when a man had got a touch – no, they used their eyes, they had eyes in those days. Look, he said: there are three ways to fail. Horse can fail. Boys can fail. Nerve can fail.

You have to get your helmet on tightly so that you have a good line of sight. You keep your body square-on, and when you are about to strike, then and only then turn your head so that you have a full view of your opposer, and watch the iron tip of your lance straight on to your target. Some people veer away in the second before the clash. It is natural, but forget what is natural. Practise till you break your instinct. Given a chance you will always swerve. Your body wants to preserve itself and your instinct will try to avoid crashing your armoured warhorse and your armoured self into another man and horse coming at full gallop the other way. Some men don't swerve, but instead they close their eyes at the moment of impact. These men are of two kinds: the ones who know they do it and can't help it, and the ones who don't know they do it. Get your boys to watch you when you practise. Be neither of these kinds of men.

So how shall I improve, he said to the old knight, how shall I succeed? These were his instructions: you must sit easily in your saddle, as if you were riding out to take the air. Hold your reins loosely, but have your horse collected. In the
combat à plaisance
, with its fluttering flags, its garlands, its rebated swords and lances tipped with buffering coronals, ride as if you were out to kill. In the
combat à l'outrance
, kill as if it were a sport. Now look, the knight said, and slapped the table, here's what I've seen, more times than I care to count: your man braces himself for the atteint, and at that final moment, the urgency of desire undoes him: he tightens his muscles, he pulls in his lance-arm against his body, the tip tilts up, and he's off the mark; if you avoid one fault, avoid that. Carry your lance a little loose, so when you tense your frame and draw in your arm your point comes exactly on the target. But remember this above all: defeat your instinct. Your love of glory must conquer your will to survive; or why fight at all? Why not be a smith, a brewer, a wool merchant? Why are you in the contest, if not to win, and if not to win, then to die?

The next day he saw the knight again. He, Tommaso, was coming back from drinking with his friend Karl Heinz, and when they spotted the old man he was lying with his head on
terra firma
, his feet in the water; in Venice at dusk, it can so easily be the other way around. They pulled him on to the bank and turned him over. I know this man, he said. His friend said, who owns him? Nobody owns him, but he curses in German, therefore let us take him to the German House, for I myself am staying not at the Tuscan House but with a man who runs a foundry. Karl Heinz said, you are dealing in arms? and he said, no, altar cloths. Karl Heinz said, you are as likely to shit rubies as learn an Englishman's secrets.

As they were talking they were hauling the old man upright, and Karl Heinz said, they have cut his purse, look. A wonder they did not kill him. In a boat they took him to the Fondaco where the German merchants stay, and which was just then rebuilding after the fire. You can bed him down in the warehouse among the crates, he said. Find something to cover him, and give him food and drink when he wakes. He will live. He is an old man but tough. Here is money.

A whimsical Englishman, Karl Heinz said. He said, I myself have benefited from strangers who were angels in disguise.

There is a guard on the water gate, not set by the merchants but by the state, as the Venetians wish to know all that goes on within the houses of the nations. So more coins are passed, to the guard. They pull the old man out of the boat; he is half-awake now, flailing his arms and speaking something, perhaps Portuguese. They are dragging him in, under the portico, when Karl Heinz says, ‘Thomas, have you seen our paintings? Here,' he says, ‘you, guard, give us the benefit of holding up your torch, or must we pay you for that too?'

Light flares against the wall. Out of the brick blossoms a flow of silk, red silk or pooled blood. He sees a white curve, a slender moon, a sickle cut; as the light washes over the wall, he sees a woman's face, the curve of her cheek edged with gold. She is a goddess. ‘Hold up the torch,' he says. On her blown and tangled hair there is a gilded crown. Behind her are the planets and stars. ‘Who did you hire for this?' he asks.

Karl Heinz says, ‘Giorgione is painting it for us, his friend Tiziano is painting the Rialto front, the Senate is paying their fees. But by God, they will milk it from us in commissions. Do you like her?'

The light touches her white flesh. It falters away from her, patching her with dark. The watchman lowers his torch and says, what, you think I am standing here all night for your pleasure in the gnawing cold? Which is an exaggeration, to get more money, but it is true that mist creeps over the bridges and walkways, and a chill wind has got up from the sea.

Parting from Karl Heinz, the moon herself a stone in the waters of the canal, he sees an expensive whore out late, her servants supporting her elbows, teetering over the cobbles on her high chopines. Her laughter rings on the air, and the fringed end of her yellow scarf snakes away from her white throat and into the mist. He watches her; she does not notice him. Then she is gone. Somewhere a door opens for her and somewhere a door is closed. Like the woman on the wall, she melts and is lost in the dark. The square is empty again; and he himself only a black shape against the brickwork, a fragment cut out of the night. If I ever need to vanish, he says, this is where I shall do it.

But that was long ago and in another country. Now Rafe Sadler is here with a message: he must return suddenly to Greenwich, to this raw morning, the rain just holding off. Where is Karl Heinz today? Dead probably. Since the night he saw the goddess growing on the wall, he has intended to commission one himself, though other purposes – making money and drafting legislation – have taken up his time.

‘Rafe?'

Rafe stands in the doorway and does not speak. He looks up at the young man's face. His hand lets go his quill and ink splashes the paper. He stands up at once, wrapping his furred robe about him as if it will buffer him from what is to come. He says, ‘Gregory?' and Rafe shakes his head.

Gregory is intact. He did not run a course.

The tournament is interrupted.

It is the king, Rafe says. It is Henry, he is dead.

Ah, he says.

He dries the ink with dust from the box of bone. Blood everywhere, no doubt, he says.

He keeps at hand a gift he was given once, a Turkish dagger made of iron, the sheath engraved with a pattern of sunflowers. Until now he had always thought of it as an ornament, a curio. He tucks it away amongst his garments.

He will recall, later, how difficult it was to get through the doorway, to turn his steps to the tilting ground. He feels weak, the backwash of the weakness that had made him drop the pen when he thought that Gregory was hurt. He says to himself, it is not Gregory; but his body is dazed, slow to catch up with the news, as if he himself had received a killing blow. Whether, now, to go forward to try to seize command, or to seize this moment, perhaps the last moment, to quit the scene: to make good an escape, before the ports are blocked, and to go where? Perhaps to Germany? Is there any principality, state, in which he would be safe from the reach of Emperor or Pope, or the new ruler of England, whoever that may be?

He has never backed off; or once, perhaps, from Walter when he was seven years old: but Walter came on. Since then: forward, forward,
en avant!
So his hesitation is not long, but afterwards he will have no recollection of how he arrived in a lofty and gilded tent, embroidered with the arms and devices of England, and standing over the corpse of King Henry VIII. Rafe says, the contests had not begun, he was running at the ring, the point of his lance scooped the eye of the circle. Then the horse stumbled under him, man and rider down, horse rolling with a scream and Henry beneath it. Now Gentle Norris is on his knees by the bier, praying, tears cascading down his cheeks. There is a blur of light on plate armour, helms hiding faces, iron jaws, frog mouths, the slits of visors. Someone says, the beast went down as if its leg were broke, no one was near the king, no one to blame. He seems to hear the appalling noise of it, the horse's roar of terror as it pitches, the screams from the spectators, the grating clatter of steel and hooves on steel as one huge animal entangles with another, warhorse and king collapsing together, metal driven into flesh, hoof into bone.

‘Fetch a mirror,' he says, ‘to hold to his lips. Fetch a feather to see if it stirs.'

The king has been manhandled out of his armour, but is still laced in his tournament jacket of wadded black, as if in mourning for himself. There is no evident blood, so he asks, where was he hurt? Someone says, he knocked his head; but that is all the sense he can glean from the wailing and babbling that fills the tent. Feathers, mirrors, they intimate it has been done; tongues clam-our like bell tongues, their eyes are like pebbles in their heads, one shocked and vacant face turns to another, oaths are uttered and prayers, and they move slowly, slowly; no one wants to carry the corpse inside, it is too much to take on oneself, it will be seen, it will be reported. It is a mistake to think that when the king dies his councillors shout, ‘Long live the king.' Often the fact of the death is hidden for days. As this must be hidden…Henry is waxen, and he sees the shocking tenderness of human flesh evicted from steel. He is lying on his back, all his magnificent height stretched on a piece of ocean-blue cloth. His limbs are straight. He looks uninjured. He touches his face. It is still warm. Fate has not spoiled him or mangled. He is intact, a present for the gods. They are taking him back as he was sent.

He opens his mouth and shouts. What do they mean, leaving the king lying here, untouched by Christian hand, as if he were already excommunicate? If this were any other fallen man they would be enticing his senses with rose petals and myrrh. They would be pulling his hair and tweaking his ears, burning a paper under his nose, wrenching open his jaw to trickle in holy water, blowing a horn next to his head. All this should be done and – he looks up and sees Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, running at him like a demon. Uncle Norfolk: uncle to the queen, premier nobleman of England. ‘By God, Cromwell!' he snarls. And his import is clear. By God, I've got you now; by God, your presumptuous guts will be drawn: by God, before the day is over your head will be spiked.

Perhaps. But in the next seconds he, Cromwell, seems to body out and fill all the space around the fallen man. He sees himself, as if he were watching from the canvas above: his girth expands, even his height. So that he occupies more ground. So that he takes up more space, breathes more air, is planted and solid when Norfolk careers into him, twitching, trembling. So he is a fortress on a rock, serene, and Thomas Howard just bounces back from his walls, wincing, flinching, and blethering God knows what about God knows who. ‘MY LORD NORFOLK!' he roars at him. ‘My lord Norfolk, where is the queen?'

Norfolk is panting hard. ‘On the floor. I told her. I myself. My place to do it. My place, am her uncle. Fallen in a fit. Fell down. Dwarf trying to pull her up. Kicked it away. Oh God Almighty!'

Now who governs, for Anne's unborn child? When Henry purposed to go to France, he said he would leave Anne as regent, but that was more than a year ago, and besides he never did go, and so we don't know if he would have done it; Anne had said to him, Cremuel, if I am regent, watch yourself, I will have your obedience or I will have your head. Anne as regent would have made short work of Katherine, of Mary: Katherine is passed beyond her reach, but Mary there for the killing. Uncle Norfolk, lurched down by the corpse for a quick prayer, has stumbled up again: ‘No, no, no,' he is saying. ‘No woman with a big belly. Such cannot rule. Anne cannot rule. Me, me, me.'

Gregory is pushing through the crowd. He has had the sense to fetch Fitzwilliam, Master Treasurer. ‘The Princess Mary,' he says to Fitz. ‘How to get her. I must have her. Or the realm is done for.'

Fitzwilliam is one of Henry's old friends, a man of his own age: too capable by nature, thank God, to panic and gibber. ‘Her keepers are Boleyns,' Fitz says. ‘I don't know if they'll yield her.'