Free The Courier's Tale by Peter Walker

than they seem, and may be solved with a little goodwill and patience and, if necessary, evasive action.
    The question under consideration that afternoon was this: did a loyal subject, such as Pole, have the right ever to disobey his sovereign who orders him to come home and stand before him? At length, Contarini related this fable: ‘A great number of beasts visited a sick lion, but the fox alone avoided going to see him. The lion wrote him a kind letter, telling him earnestly that he longed to see him, that a visit from him would surely revive his heart. He assured the fox there could be no danger in his coming, since he neither would hurt him if he could, nor could if he would.
    ‘The fox sent word that he would pray and supplicate the gods for the lion’s recovery, but humbly begged to be excused the visit.
    ‘In fact he insisted on it, he said, for this reason: he had seen the footprints of many animals going into the royal den, but could see no tracks going out.’
    And that was the answer I took back to England. It was framed slightly differently. Pole wrote to the King:
     
    As I learn from Your Grace’s letter, and more from Mr Secretary’s stirring me vehemently, but most of all from the bearer [that was me] the most fervent of all, I should repair at once to your presence. There is nothing I would rather do . . . I would rise from a sickbed, I would run though fire and water. But there is an obstacle in the way, which you have put there yourself. It is a new law we never had in England before. Since you cast your love and affection on her who never bore any love and affection to you, everyone is a traitor who will not agree to make you Head of the Church. Yet that is the whole argument of my book. If I came, this law would make me a traitor to my own life, which I am bound to keep at the Lord’s pleasure and not cast temerariously away . . . And yet here is all the difficulty for a prince. Who will tell him when he is at fault? And who has more need to hear it, with a thousand more occasions to fall?
     
    This letter I took back to London in August. Pole showed it to me before I left. I was rather taken with ‘ temerariously ’ – a very fine word, I thought. There was not, however, a syllable about sick lions and foxes.
    What then induced me to bring them up I will never know.
    There were four persons present: myself and Cromwell, behind me Morison, and, still looking somewhat abject but pleased not to be beheaded, Dr Starkey. Cromwell read over Pole’s letter to himself, then read it once aloud, then laid it down and looked at me.
    ‘So he is not coming?’ he said. It was a strange question, I thought, considering the clarity of Pole’s language. And Cromwell looked angrily at me, as though it was my fault he was not coming back – which I suppose it was, now that I think about it, but at the time I felt aggrieved at the imputation.
    ‘Well,’ I said, ‘there was once this fox, you know, which . . .’ and off I went. As soon as I embarked on the tale, I realised it was a mistake. I heard a faint hiss behind me. It was Morison, drawing in breath through his teeth.
    He meant me to hear this as a warning, but it was too late: I had set forth with the lion and the fox and could see no way to stop until the matter was concluded. There was deathly silence when I came to the end of the narration. By that time, you must remember, it was forbidden by law to make any criticism of the King or the new laws. Only ardent praise of Henry was deemed acceptable, and indeed was all that was heard. ‘We are the grass, you are the sun which makes us grow’; ‘You have the wisdom of Solomon, the beauty of Absalom’, that was the sort of thing which was required. And there was I, babbling about a cave, and footprints going in and none coming out . . .
    ‘And what,’ asked Cromwell, ‘do you think, Michael, of this interesting fable?’ He enunciated his words very evenly, like a lawyer.
    ‘I?’ I said as if