Dacre's War (42 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

August 1525

London was dry as a withered leaf, and the dust his horse kicked up as he entered the city made Blackbird’s throat tighten. He plodded through the filthy streets, head held high as if by raising his nose it might not be offended by the stench that rose from the gutters, the river, the dark-eyed urchins who clutched at his boots, whimpering for a coin.

London was dry as a withered leaf, and the dust his horse kicked up as he entered the city made Blackbird’s throat tighten. He plodded through the filthy streets, head held high as if by raising his nose it might not be offended by the stench that rose from the gutters, the river, the dark-eyed urchins who clutched at his boots, whimpering for a coin.

Westminster broiled, its pallid stone and new-laid roofs reflecting the light as if to turn summer’s glare back upon the sun. The yards and alleys around the abbey teemed, though with only the lower sort, the court and its hangers-on having decamped some weeks earlier to the countryside. Blackbird’s horse clipped over the cobbles, weaving between packmen and beggars, merchants and whores, their clothes clinging to them in the heat, their cries half-hearted and dry. Despite the warmth, a shiver crawled up the butler’s spine. This place unsettled him.

The Star Chamber did no business at the height of the summer. At this season, the cardinal would often be found in his Yorkshire diocese, keeping cool under northern skies, but pressing affairs of state had called him back to the capital, and Blackbird had learned he was to be found at Westminster Palace, its long corridors and tapestried rooms entirely at his disposal while his king was out of town.

Wolsey received the butler with ill grace. His face was hot with summer and the disagreeable diplomatic crisis he was obliged to avert on Henry’s behalf. The king’s reckless liaisons and desires were proving more troublesome than a monarch’s usual dalliances, which harmed no one but the queen, and often not even her.

‘Well?’ he snapped, greeting Blackbird in the palace’s entrance, and expecting him to talk as they walked through the grand hallway and down a narrow passage to the small, picture-lined room he had commandeered as his own. Blackbird made no comment until they were closeted alone. ‘Well?’ the cardinal asked again, before noticing the grime on Blackbird’s jacket and grudgingly pouring him a mug of warm ale. The butler drank greedily, and slapped the tankard down.

‘As I informed you in my message,’ he said, his voice deepened by dust, ‘the baron and I have come by information we think relevant to his captivity, and the undue length of time you’ve been holding him.’

‘So you indicated,’ said Wolsey testily. He closed his eyes for a moment, appearing to will himself into a state of patience. Casting a thin smile on the butler, he refilled the northerner’s tankard before settling himself on a small stool that was completely lost under his skirts, so that it appeared it had been ingested, and he was merely squatting. ‘I am agog to know what it is you have to say to me.’

‘Ah, now, your eminence,’ said Blackbird, after the second pint pot was emptied, ‘it is not as simple as that.’ He flashed the cardinal a glimpse of stained, flagstone teeth, but there was nothing friendly about his smile. ‘It has come to the baron’s notice that certain affairs of state have been conducted beneath the king’s nose, which he feels his majesty should learn about. I could not divulge these affairs to you without first being sure that you will present them to his highness or, at the very least, use them to order the baron’s immediate release and reinstatement.’

‘Indeed?’ Wolsey seemed in no way put out by this disclosure. ‘I will not ask what this sensitive information consists of. Not yet, anyway.’

Blackbird pulled out a cloth and mopped his forehead and neck. ‘Devil of a journey, these past few days,’ he said conversationally. ‘Sun almost stewed me in my own juices.’

Wolsey glanced at the butler’s stained hose and limp shirt sleeves, but said nothing. Untroubled, Blackbird continued. ‘I have just this minute come from the Fleet, which, I might tell you, stinks worse than the Thames itself. I speak with his lordship’s authority when I tell you that he wants you to attend upon him this very day, to settle the matter. Should you fail to do so, he will have no alternative but to instruct me to take this information and lay it before Henry himself.’

‘But, my dear man, until I find out what this is all about, I am working in the dark. My jumping at the baron’s command might prove a waste of all our time. Perhaps he is entirely right to want whatever news he possesses placed before Henry, rather than me. I might myself advise that, if I were clear what this relates to. Otherwise, as it stands, at the moment . . .’ He spread his hands and shrugged, indicating helplessness.

Blackbird’s genial air faded. He walked to the window and looked out upon the river, its lazy waters dimmed by the thick bottle glass, yet bright enough still to set spangles dancing on the chamber’s walls. He spoke as if to the ferrymen. ‘Believe me, your eminence, that is not a course you want to take. It would be most injurious to your health. It is of little concern to Dacre which of you he informs. His life is already ruined, and he does not believe he has long to live. But in only one scenario do you continue to retain King Henry’s regard. I think you must by now have an inkling of what I am referring to.’

The cardinal put his hands on his knees and examined his rings. He sounded weary. ‘Very well, though the cloak of mystery you and your master relish throwing over everything is tiresome. But since I owe Dacre a visit in any case, I will pass by the prison this evening.’

‘You will be heartily glad you have done so,’ replied Blackbird, facing him once more. ‘Your neglect of him has been shameful, and you a man of God. If this is the justice meted out to peers of the realm, heaven help the little man. No wonder so many of them take the law into their own hands.’

‘Do not push me too far,’ said the cardinal, rising from his stool to plant himself before the butler. His voice shook with fury. ‘You are nothing more than a peasant with puffed-up airs, but you fool nobody. Like your master, you have low manners and even lower morals. I will not be given orders by the likes of you. Whatever it is you think you can threaten me with, it is as nothing – trust me – to what I could level against you in retaliation, were I of a vindictive disposition. Happily for you, I am neither cruel nor unjust. It would be beneath my dignity to stamp on a worm like you, simple – and amusing – though it would be.’

Blackbird laughed as he turned to leave. ‘Worms, your eminence, are all part of God’s good creation. They have their rightful place. My master knows only too well that it is as necessary to deal with low-life as with the high-born. He tells me that at the end, it is impossible to tell them apart. They all beg for mercy. They all bleed. They all disappear from the face of the earth like—’ He slapped dust from his gloves, and left the room, the motes of traveller’s grime dancing on the sunlit air, as if his words had taken shape.

For a second time, Dacre was led up to the small chamber in the prison where Wolsey was waiting. The baron shuffled into the room, his chained wrists were freed, and the guard took up his poker stance by the wall. ‘Be gone, man,’ said the cardinal, waving the guard off. ‘Close the door and wait outside.’

He indicated that Dacre should take a seat and, lowering himself, unsteadily, the baron did so. Wolsey examined him from beneath hooded lids, shocked at the change in him. The broad, commanding figure was now slack and bent. The pulp of a paunch still rolled under his belt but the baron’s shanks were bony, his face sunken, his hair, beneath its black woollen cap, now a wintry white.

‘So you found time to see me, eh?’ said Dacre softly.

‘You bade me present myself,’ replied Wolsey. ‘And, as befits a good friend, here I am.’

‘Friend?’ The word fell between them and lay, broken, on the earthen floor. Dacre shook his head, and looked out of the window, for a second seeming to forget why he was here. The sky was darkening, but he lingered on the sight, the view of ivied wall his first glimpse of the outdoors in a month. He began to rise for a closer look, then remembered the fatigue that any exertion brought on and sat back down. He swivelled his head towards the cardinal. ‘Blackbird did his work well, to get you here so fast. Scared the life out of ye, I expect.’

Wolsey leaned forward, and spoke in a tone whose anger was molten. ‘Enough of this posturing. Tell me what you think you know, and then we can talk.’

‘I do not think it,’ said Dacre. ‘I have proof that you have been told of my negotiations and association with the king’s sister. That you had the means to send me to the gallows, and yet kept silent. Friendship the reason for that?’ he scoffed. ‘I think not, eh? You leave me to languish here for a six-month, without a word, yet you save my skin by keeping these letters to yourself. Why would that be, I wondered. Why, of course!’ He slapped his knee. ‘They would alert Henry to the fact that you do not have control of the country and his council, as you assure him you do. That, on the contrary, your authority is not just incomplete, but blind. You have been caught out. Because of you, England was for a spell a more dangerous place.’

He cackled, and wiped spittle from the corner of his mouth with a shaking hand. ‘Not something he would wish to learn about his Lord Chancellor, I would have thought.’

Wolsey was motionless, his face rigid.

‘So then,’ Dacre continued, ‘I began to consider what I have to lose by telling Henry all about your negligence. Me, I am already as good as a dead man. And at least I have a purseful of memories to keep my old bones warm. Margaret Tudor is but one of them. Whether I go to meet my maker in this noxious prison, or on the scaffold, or at home in the north, I doubt I have long to live. I might as well leave this world safe in the knowledge that I have caused your utter ruin, as you have brought about mine.’ Again he laughed, like an old wheezing bellows, his mirth turning into a rich, hacking cough.

The cardinal, knowing the worst, leaned back against the wall. He too looked to the window. A sigh parted his lips, before he gathered his thoughts. ‘Your incarceration has led to feverish thoughts, my lord. Your head is addled, you are not thinking straight. I would never withhold information his majesty should know, not to benefit you, nor myself, nor anyone else in the kingdom. I do not think like that. I believe in transparency, in the prevailing power of the truth, as you should be well aware by now.’

He eyed the baron. ‘But what you tell me is troubling. You have been a fool, and perhaps something worse than that.’ Turning his gaze to the window, as if he could not bear the sight of him, he shook his head. ‘Whatever the truth of this business, Thomas, I find your apathy about your own mortality a cause for pity. You seem almost to wish yourself upon the gallows. Is that truly because of the treachery you claim to have committed with the old queen? Or is it, I wonder, guilt over a lifetime’s dirty work?’

Dacre said nothing, but rubbed his leg while he waited for Wolsey to finish.

The cardinal was silent for a minute, contemplating the sliver of sky visible from the room. When he turned to face the baron, he sounded brisker. ‘Had your case been brought before the Star Chamber when you were a younger man, you would have been outlawed, or dead, many years ago. I have been your great supporter, your mainstay at court, yet you think to repay me by attempting, in the most underhand manner, to destroy me.’ He silenced Dacre’s reply with a stern finger. ‘Enough. You can believe whatever it is you choose. I know the truth, and it pains me. My conscience is completely clear. Even so, I understand your tactics. I almost, I confess, admire them. You think you have outflanked me, and maybe you have. Be that as it may, whatever the facts, and regardless of your venom towards me, I will bring your situation before Henry, and urge clemency, with the greatest possible haste.’

His voice dropped, and he leaned forward. ‘Truth to tell, Thomas, I have been uneasy about the term of your incarceration. You may not consider me a friend, but that is what I have been to you. As you yourself indicate, you are an ailing man. To look at you is to know you are right. Your time is measured, no matter who holds the clock.’ He cast the baron a glance that held a morsel of charity. ‘I do not wish you to die here. Nobody should, and most certainly not a loyal servant of the crown who has given many years of excellent service, regardless of his indiscretions.’

Getting to his feet, he put a hand on the baron’s shoulder. ‘When the business I am attending to this week has been dealt with, I shall make it my duty to see the king, and press for your release. It should not be difficult to secure. His majesty has been hinting of late that your penitential period is drawing to a close.’

‘And have my title as Keeper of Carlisle restored?’

‘I shall see what I can do. It’s most likely, I should think, since Henry has appointed his son as Warden General. But if he cavils, that surely is of no great concern? What you most desire is a peaceful life, is it not?’

Dacre nodded. ‘I would keep that title, if I could, so my return is not one of absolute disgrace. But no, if I go back as the plain baron I am, so be it. I will at least be home.’