Read The Courier's Tale Online
Authors: Peter Walker
Halfway across the Channel, I had discovered that the piece of silk I bought in Padua was no longer in my bag. I thought then I must have left it in Calais. But now I also remembered the disappearance of my father’s ring which somehow had gone from my finger while I was lying delirious in Calais.
I hung my head.
‘And to this –
fellow
,’ said Cromwell, ‘you entrusted documents of the greatest importance, which the King himself was asking for every day.’
Cromwell rose and went away, ordering me to write an account of my journey. I did so, and then nothing happened. Days passed and no one came to speak to me. I understood my offence: I was unlucky; I was in disgrace with the stars. All the setbacks I suffered on the road led to suspicions against my character and, under the new laws in England, to be suspected was itself a crime.
Finally one afternoon Cromwell reappeared. This time he had an even grimmer countenance. He had just received news, he said, that Pole had been made a cardinal in Rome.
I stared at him in disbelief, and then I flew into a rage. The thought of the peril in which Pole had left me, there at the mercy of the King and Cromwell, quite infuriated me. I snatched my hat off my head and dashed it on the floor and trampled on it and damned Pole as a villain and a beast.
Now this had a most wonderful effect on the Lord Privy Seal. His expression softened. He even tried to soothe my rage, and began patting my shoulder.
‘Now, Michael,’ he said, ‘your master – or former master – has taken a very foolish step. We must remain calm, and consider how to proceed from here.’
In short, I was freed of all suspicion and soon was on my way back to Italy, but this time in the employment of Cromwell. He had decided to send me back to keep a close watch on all Pole’s doings, to listen to everything that was said and to report back to him and Morison whenever I heard anything of importance.
I agreed to this.
‘But of course I will have to tell him,’ I said.
Cromwell looked at me as if I was mad.
‘I am not skilled in deception,’ I said. ‘It would be far better to tell him that you have engaged my services and have it over and done with,’ I said.
‘You mean you will tell him, and yet continue working for me?’
‘Yes.’
‘And be my eyes and ears?
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘And he meanwhile thinks you are even more loyal to him than before?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, Michael, I have some difficulty with you at times. I cannot decide whether you are too simple or rather too cunning for your own good, or at least for my service. But either way – why, I have decided to trust you!’
I was furnished with new letters to Pole, I will not describe them. They were in the same vein as before, accusing Pole of incredible ingratitude and wickedness and so forth. I was sent off at once. I did not even think of asking to go to Coughton, and rode to Dover very pensively. I was heading for a great unknown city, in service to two men, who were enemies, and I was in love with a girl I could never manage to see. Almost without noticing, I had journeyed far into the labyrinth, just as my brother George described it, and I had no idea where the exit lay.
Thus, in the first dark days of February I rode down the Italian peninsula towards Rome and one day, late in the afternoon, I arrived under the great Aurelian walls, which I had never seen before.
On the way to Rome, in the town of Certaldo, I fell in with four Frenchmen, or rather three and half of them – a barber, a comb-maker, a cutler and his boy – and we rode on together and got on well enough, although, being French, they were naturally suspicious and looked down their noses at everything they saw in Italy, from the pastry upwards. Still, it is always better to travel in a group, especially when among those devils in Certaldo who will happily rob you of your last penny, and we agreed to go to Rome together, and so we finally came in sight of those famous walls which were just then beginning to kindle and turn red in the light of the setting sun. Then a great squall of rain came in and hid the city. At the same time, a ray of sunlight lit up the foreground and about half a mile away I saw a group of ten or fifteen horsemen, half on one side of the road behind a barn, and the rest sheltering at the side of a church on the other.
‘Oho!’ I said to my companions, ‘I believe there is a welcoming committee waiting for us ahead.’
I pointed out the brigands, but at that moment the rain closed in and they were hidden from sight again.
‘We must be wary,’ I said. ‘Remember: Rome was founded by infants suckled by a wolf, and the inhabitants have never rid themselves of their great-great-grandmama’s cruel nature. I am as brave as any of you, and better able to defend myself, but there are more than a dozen men up there. I suggest we avoid them entirely. The walls of this city are in the shape of a ring. If we go a little further round the circumference we may get inside the gates without having our throats cut.’
Now the French hate to be led by any other nation, especially the English, and the barber and the comb-maker, who were extremely stupid men, rubbed their chins and contemptuously rejected my advice. The cutler, however, was shrewd and fat, and said that he had made many hundreds of knives but had no intention of being sliced up by one, and he therefore chose to come with me, bringing the boy along.
At this the barber and comb-maker shouted an insult or two and went off laughing at us and were never seen again (by me, at least – I admit they may have arrived in perfect safety) while we went in another direction. And then – how it happened exactly I don’t know – we lost our way. What with turning into by-ways and crossing cow byres and pig-sties and dung heaps guarded by baying dogs, we travelled halfway round the circumference of the walls before finally, just as the sun went down – at which moment the gates are shut – we came through the portal of St Sebastian. I suppose I must be the only man in history who, coming directly from England, has entered Rome on the most famous road in the world, the Appian Way, which stretches away to the south and east, and which, lined with ancient tombs, even in broad daylight seems to lead down into the distant past.
Once inside the city, I looked all around in amazement. There within those famous walls was the last thing I had expected: ahead and on either side was nothing but a great wilderness.
The road led down through a dark wood. At the bottom of the hill we came out on an open moor. On one side, beyond thickets of brambles, rose some mighty ruins of brick. On the other side, an owl called from a wooded slope. Ahead, here and there among ruins, I saw the flicker of campfires, which I chose to avoid, for this was the hour when not only Minerva’s bird comes forth and sees all things but so do the robbers and madmen and no doubt the demoniacs who live among the tombs. So we went on cautiously, staying in the middle of the road, and looking all around in wonder. The snow had begun to sift down again. Nearing the Capitol, I looked up and saw, carved on a marble frieze high above my head:
a skull a ewer a trowel an axe a spoon a plate
This was a temple of Jupiter, built by some emperor who long ago escaped a lightning bolt. I did not know that then: all I thought was that that frieze, picked out with snow, on a building half thrown down by age and almost sunk into the earth, seemed higher than all the steeples of Haseley and Honiley, and any other church for twenty miles round Coughton, added up together.
On we went, wandering, as it seemed, in circles, and still without a sign of human life until, coming down a steep lane, and round another corner, I heard a murmur in the distance: a light or two shone, and then, quite suddenly, we found ourselves in the ‘theatre of the world’. One moment a dark lane – and then: such a swarm of mankind – coxcombs, wenches, pettifoggers, whores, infants, pork-butchers, sergeants, dotards, glove-makers, grandmas, ticket-peddlers, swaggerers, mincers, chambermaids, buggers, carters, scribes, tatterdemalions, salt-merchants, matchmakers, pharmacists, pot-boys, monks, varnishers, lunatics, lamp-lighters, drummers, fiddlers, priests and lackeys – all hurrying this way and that, and arguing, embracing, expostulating, demanding and rejecting; such a swarm, as far as the eye could see (this was on the Corso), that we reined in our horses and stood there like statues for half an hour. It was not that I had not seen representatives of these noble callings before, nor that they were in greater numbers in Rome than elsewhere, but they had appeared so suddenly they were like a theatre troupe that is kept hidden until a signal is given, at which they all swarm out together and fill the dell. As I was gazing, I felt a tap on my arm. It was the cutler. He gave me a nod and then abruptly turned and went away. That was his farewell. It struck me as odd to end five days’ companionship so sharply, but then I reflected that he was right: we had done our duty to each other as strangers on the road, and in the end all companionship comes to that, and now we should part. And so we did, he off into the world of cutlery and I to the sacred palace of St Peter, which was quite easy to find in the darkness as the stream of pilgrims was still running strongly to and away from it. In due course, though not entirely without difficulty (the coat I was wearing was sheepskin and still reeked of its first mortal owner; unshaven and smelling strongly of ram I myself must have looked like a brigand to the haughty doormen and porters I met) I arrived, deep within the palace, at the door of the apartment of
il Signor d’Inghilterra
.
I knocked. A servant appeared, lights were brought, I was ushered into a room of some splendour, and there, looking somewhat sheepish himself in the robes of a cardinal, was my master.
‘I beg your pardon,’ I said. ‘I was looking for a Mr Pole who was to wait for me, but I see that no such person is here.’
The next day I wrote to Morison and Cromwell:
Arrived here at noon yesterday – and found my master in a foul array and very strange apparel. I was sorry to see it, but where there is no remedy ’tis folly to be sorry. He will have great trouble with his red hat . . . He means well, but as for these people here they shall never persuade me that they do anything except for their own profit, cloak it as craftily as they do. I wish he had some of my own jealous and suspicious nature in him. I am grateful to my lord, and to you, for so loving a stomach in such a strange and dangerous time. I rejoice, Master Morison, I once showed you a little kindness. Follow the loving instinct of your nature – where other men get money, you get men’s hearts.
Pole, I added, intended to travel north again soon, in order to be near England; I asked what I should do, seeking Cromwell’s excellent counsel.
I did not mention the fact that I had forgiven Pole for breaking his promise to me. As soon as he saw me the night before, he had come forward and seized my hand.
‘You think I have done you a great wrong,’ he said, ‘and perhaps I have. But I assure you, it was not intentional. I accepted all this’ – he gestured at his red robe – ‘only when I was sure you had left England.’
‘It is quite true,’ his secretary told me later. ‘I was there throughout. For weeks he refused the promotion, which has probably not happened in this city in a thousand years. And His Holiness appeared to give way. But then one night, very late, there was a great hammering at the door – that very door, there – and I went and opened it, and there was the secret chamberlain, with a message commanding that he submit. And behind the chamberlain stood the barber. I think it was that that did it. There’s nothing more absolute than a barber at your door, at midnight, with his scissors. And so
il Signor
received the tonsure, but he submitted without joy, like the sheep before the shearer.’
‘But why did the Pope change his mind?’ I asked.
‘No one is sure,’ said the secretary. ‘They say many messages came from England imploring his help. Others say the Emperor was behind it. He fears that one day Princess Mary will come to the throne of England and marry Pole, but he wants her for one of his own family. What better place to keep Pole out of the way – on the shelf, as it were – than the college of cardinals? But if that is the case, then Pole out-foxed him: he accepted the red hat, but refused to take holy orders. He is as free to marry as you are. Perhaps one day he will indeed marry Mary and be King of England. In any case, let me assure you,
nostro Michele
’ – ‘our Michael’ as they all called me in those days – ‘if he had known you were still in England he would never have agreed to his elevation, barber or no barber.’
Of all the aspects of this story, I confess that this one pleased me most: that I should have played a minor part in these high-altitude calculations, that and the way Pole came forward and seized my hand when we met again. Until then he had always seemed far above me. Now, having risen even higher, he seemed to look at me almost as a friend. Upon his promotion, I think, he felt a certain cold wind beat about him: congratulations had poured in from every quarter of the world, except one: his native land. That fact alone, I think, gave me more value in his eyes.
I told him I had been taken into Cromwell’s employment. Pole immediately wrote angrily to the Lord Privy Seal, accusing him of
suborning
his servant. Thus both my masters, each believing I was loyal to him alone, were happy, which I always think is the best policy. Only I myself remained baffled as to where all this was leading; with every step, in fact, I felt myself moving even deeper into the labyrinth.