Free The Courier's Tale by Peter Walker Page A

astounded that my opinion should matter, or that I should have one at all.
    I then gave the matter some thought. ‘Well,’ I said simply, ‘ I ’m here.’
    Then, to my amazement, Cromwell laughed. It was not a full laugh, more a sort of brief bark, yet his teeth showed. As he himself had framed the new laws, perhaps he could observe them with more latitude than anyone else. It seemed I escaped the danger. After all, I was still useful. Nothing would be gained by chopping off my head, at least for the meantime. I was still his best connection to Pole.
    I again heard a little sound behind me. This time it was not a hiss but a puff. Morison faintly blew air out over his lips like a horse in a stall.
    After that, the mood of the meeting changed. They all became reflective: what was to be done? I was dismissed and told to return in two days. I begged for longer. I had urgent business, I said, in Gloucester.
    Why did I say that? It was to Coughton in Warwickshire that I had to go. Yet all the way back from Italy to England, I was thinking ‘Gloucester, Gloucester’ – for some reason the name of Judith’s home always had a strong effect on me, just those two syllables made some hidden wheel in my heart give a turn. By then I had decided the time had come to set all the wheels turning. In other words, I had ridden all the way back to England thinking of Judith, and marriage and no doubt the marriage bed.
    ‘You are not to leave London,’ said Cromwell.
    ‘I must,’ I said. ‘I have a most urgent business to attend to.’
    ‘What business?’
    ‘I mean to take a wife.’
    ‘No,’ said the Lord Privy Seal flatly. ‘You’re not going to disappear on me a second time. You may be needed at a moment’s notice. In any case, there’s no hurry for that business you mention. No married man ever thinks he stayed single too long.’
    He meant this as a pleasantry, but at the same time shot me such a sparkle of malignity that I was shocked. It was not, I think, even intended for me personally. I always had the impression that Cromwell liked me. That sudden glare was the expression of power that will brook no opposition. I saw then why he frightened people.
    I bowed and went away, and later raged at this prohibition.
    ‘Why do I have to obey him?’ I said. ‘He is not my master as far as I know. I am in service to Pole.’
    ‘And to the King,’ said Morison. ‘We are all in service to the King. And Cromwell is the voice of the King. Be sensible. Don’t fly against the wind. Wait till things settle down. Who’s the lucky girl? If it was up to me, of course, I would let you go, but this is a high matter, a matter of State.’
    Morison was deputed to keep watch over me. This was no great hardship for we were good friends. Several times we went over to Lewisham to hunt partridges – there were still partridges there in those days though they seem to have all flown away today. So off we rode together, side by side. It was almost like old times, although of course we were not in Venice but crossing English fields, I had a gun and dog at heel and Morsion was very well dressed.
    He had been changed, I noticed, by his three months’ proximity to power. He now pursed his lips and looked up at the sky with a frown when he stepped out of doors in his fur-lined cloak. But he spoke very candidly about the situation: quite apart from the fury that Pole’s book occasioned, he said, there was great dread that he would publish it. Pole’s reputation was so high both in England and abroad that this thought haunted the King.
    ‘You don’t think he will publish, do you?’ said Morison. ‘I know you scarcely know him – you were the baby of the house, he was barely aware of your existence – but you have seen him more recently than any of us.’
    ‘I don’t think he will,’ I said. ‘He made it plain that I was to hand it only to the King.’
    ‘Then what’s all this “O, England” and “O, my native land!” in there