Free The Courier's Tale by Peter Walker Page B

for?’
    As I had not read a word of it I kept silent. Morison was really only speaking his thoughts out loud as we went over the fields.
    ‘It’s a worry, a great worry,’ he said. ‘And, frankly, no one has any idea what to do.’

Chapter 9
    As soon as I saw I was trapped in London I wrote to Coughton, suggesting that my sisters come to town to see me and perhaps bring along – if she chose – our Gloucester cousin as well.
    A message came back to say they would arrive on a certain morning a few days later. I was very excited by this. Until then I had never spent a full minute in front of a looking glass, but now – this was in the old family house in town – I presented myself there and inspected the wayward figure I saw. He was hard to make out: I suppose we are always in the dark on some matters – how we are seen by others, for instance – and I’m not sure how much a mirror helps us, but off I went and had my hair cropped and even bought a cap of red ormesia, thinking that such no doubt were what lovers wore, and in fact that the human race could scarcely have multiplied without them.
    The party from Warwickshire was to arrive the next day.
    That same night a message arrived from Cromwell: I was to depart for Italy the following morning. I must leave instantly and without thought of delay, as soon as several urgent letters for Mr Pole were brought to me.
    At that I was almost in despair. Everything depended on who arrived first – the party from Warwickshire or a messenger from Whitehall. I slept badly. All night I imagined something being beaten out as thin as gold wire, I could hear the hammering in my sleep. Perhaps it was my own heart I overheard. Before dawn I was up and dressed and at the window watching the street.
    Morison arrived first. About an hour after sunrise he came sliding past below me as if on a wooden horse on a rail. With him were two archers. All three were to accompany me to Dover.
    I prepared to depart. I said nothing about my private disappointment. The State, even in the shape of a man who used to wear your green breeches, has no interest in such matters. So we set out. There was no sign of the other party. For half a mile I kept willing them to appear, and then, just as we turned towards the bridge, I caught sight of them far away down Cheapside, browsing along looking left and right at the shops and the hanging signs as if there was all the time in the world. Behind them Tom Rutter’s big red face rose like the harvest moon.
    Instantly I turned and dashed towards them. Morison came rushing after me, complaining and declaiming in my wake. The archers followed, looking nonplussed. They were there only for grandeur and had no notion about what was going on.
    I whirled around: ‘ One minute!’ I said to Morison, holding up my forefinger with such an absolute air that for a moment he was quelled.
    And so I stole a little time from the King and Privy Seal and donated it to the affairs of my own heart.
    I told the women I had only a few moments with them, being required by Cromwell to leave on urgent business abroad. My sisters cried out that it was a shame, they hoped that Lord Cromwell was ashamed of himself, taking away a brother so precipitately, especially since no one ever knew how long you might wait at Dover for a fair wind.
    But I could see they were impressed by the archers, and the importance of the events I was involved in.
    ‘I thought them two was going to nab you,’ said Rutter, who had come along as servant and protector of the family honour, and who was watching the archers with narrowed eyes.
    My cousin said nothing. She looked flushed. She sat in the saddle very erect and tense, alert to events, as if at that moment she had realised for the very first time that exterior forces have as great a say in our lives as our own wishes. I went to her side and took her hand and said very solemnly that I would be back to see her soon to discuss the great matter I had