The Courier's Tale (36 page)

‘Me?’ I said in amazement. ‘This is not what I foresaw. It was your patron, Gardiner, who led us down this path.’

‘Well, perhaps Pole is not wholly to blame,’ said Courtenay. ‘It is a terrible thing to be in the favour of the great. The Queen clings to him – with the King gone, she won’t let him out of her sight. She adores him, and takes no notice of him, which is something only a woman could do. Yet he allows her to get away with it. Here is the man famous for telling kings the truth, and now he devotes himself to church problems – finances and liturgy and so on. He is like a priest performing a wedding who refuses to see the Angel of Death is also in the aisle.’

‘But what can he do?’ I said. ‘The laws are in place. He is forbidden from interfering. In any case, how can he save these people? They are not hunted down. They huddle together and then come forward to declare themselves openly. They go to the justices and proclaim their opinions. They walk into the fires joyfully. In fact, they choose their own deaths.’

When I heard myself say that, I was reminded of something I could not quite place, a voice from long ago which had once seemed terrible to me.

‘They choose their own deaths!’ said Courtenay, looking at me in amazement. Then he proceeded to tell me a long story about a tailor from Clerkenwell who had been denounced by his wife as a heretic as he would not go to mass. He was arrested and taken to the Lollards’ Tower and held there a fortnight.

His son, a boy of eight, then went to Bishop Bonner’s house to look for him. One of the Bishop’s chaplains met him and asked what he wanted.

‘I want to see my father,’ he said.

‘And who is your father?’

The boy pointed towards the Lollards’ Tower across the river and said his father was in there.

‘Why, your father is a heretic!’ cried the priest.

‘He is no heretic,’ said the child. ‘You are a heretic, for you have Balaam’s mark.’ Balaam was the false prophet who went to curse Israel and the way was barred by an angel. At that, the priest took the child by the hand and led him into the house where he was whipped until he was bloody. After he was whipped, the boy was taken by the summoner over the river to the Lollards’ Tower.

Seeing the boy covered in blood, the father cried: ‘Alas, Will, who has done this to you?’

‘A priest with Balaam’s mark,’ said the boy. Then the summoner seized the boy and carried him back to the Bishop’s house, where he was kept three days. Fearing that his servants had gone too far, Bonner let both father and son go, but the boy died a few days later.

‘And did he
choose his own death
?’ said Courtenay. ‘And remember: the Lollards’ Tower is at Lambeth. It is a part of Pole’s own palace. This cruelty took place almost under his own roof. I know he is hardly ever there for the Queen keeps him by her side, yet how can he avoid responsibility for such a crime? A child, whipped to death . . .’

This conversation made me most uncomfortable. I had that unpleasant sensation which everyone tries to avoid: a guilty conscience. The fact was, I had been hearing such stories for many months, but I had put them out of my mind or minimised the cruelty or justified them in one way or another. In short, I had become cold-hearted. I had lost my human sympathy.

And that, in my view, means one is something less than a man. My conscience could see this – I did not want to see it myself. And that was the state of affairs as we scudded into calm water and the prow touched sand.

The boatman set us down and immediately lay down to sleep under his awning. Courtenay and I went ashore. That island is really only a sand-bar between the lagoon and the sea – a few miles long, half a mile wide, a great solitude except for a few parched vineyards at one end. There is never much game; a few teal are sometimes seen on rainwater ponds in the centre, and here and there the footprints of a hare might be noticed. We went on inland and climbed to the highest point, a dune where a single tree grows, which they call a parasol pine, and we set up camp in its shade. The sun by then was high in the sky and you could hear the boom of the waves from the open sea.

We let the birds sit barefaced for a while, then went out and sent them up. Courtenay was singing the Heywood song he claimed he disliked:
All a green willow, a willow, a willow
. His hawk liked the boisterous weather – she was a well-mettled bird, but ‘hard of hearing’, as we say, and uneasy at being reclaimed. Mine were more loving but less venturous.

After a few flights I brought my birds in and went back to the shade of the pine. I ate some bread and cheese and drank a little wine, and began to feel sleepy, which was unusual for me in the middle of the day. I watched Courtenay’s hawk hover and stoop and I heard his cry ‘Hey gar gar’ becoming fainter and fainter. And then, just as I was falling asleep, I saw that only a few yards away there was a walled courtyard that I had not noticed before. Curious about this, I got up and walked to the entrance and looked in.

There I saw a seated figure with his back turned to me. I took a step into the court. At that the figure seemed to wake, he stood up, he came towards me and walked straight past. I had only a brief glimpse of the face of this stranger, yet it was a very remarkable one, as far as I was concerned. Although younger, and more resolute, and in fact more noble in appearance in every way, he was identical to myself.

He went off out into the world without a glance, while I took his place on the chair and fell asleep. Some time later I woke up, still – of course – lying under the shade of the pine.

Chapter 8

Circulating in Venice that summer was a remarkable letter, so absurd and painful at the same time that no one knew whether to laugh over it or cry. It had been sent from Poland to a Venetian gentleman with high connections, begging for his help. The sender was a certain Lewis Lippomano, who had been sent as papal legate to Vienna and Poland.

This Lippomano, seeing religious controversies erupt in those places, had advised the Emperor and his brother, the King of the Romans, who ruled in Vienna, and, then, similarly, the King of Poland, to seize the Lutheran leaders and chop off their heads:

I, according to instructions, gave counsel to the Emperor and his most noble brother, the King of the Romans, that they should cause these men’s heads to be openly cut off as the ringleaders and maintainers of heretics.

For by this means, and with this terror, an end should have been made of all heresy in Germany. But their Majesties thought it best not to follow such counsel.

And, having the like commission from our most Holy Father Pope Paul IV, I have often given counsel to this most noble King of Poland exhorting him that he would cause to be cut off the heads of the chief of those that go about to stir up the doctrine of the Lutherians.

Now such a matter of so great importance, which should have been kept a secret as ever any one was, lest it should have bred envy and hatred of the most holy vicars of Christ’s church – such a matter, I say, I fear has been disclosed and opened abroad in every corner . . .

Consider how I stand . . . What think you they will do to me if I remain in their sight? I can look for no other than to be cursed, railed, cried out upon . . . And they will go about and spread horrible tales abroad against our Holy Father’s Holiness, and they say that these be the counsels that His Holiness will make, and that is with chopping off of heads and other such like violence: yea, I understand they speak it already and wonderfully blow it abroad . . . All men are against me, none will hear me, all minds are alienated from me, and I cannot tell where to save my life, they speak such evil against me.

All over Venice, as I say, people were shaking their heads over this performance, firstly, because Lippomano was a Venetian and it was feared he might have damaged Polish–Venetian trade; and, secondly, for its manifest absurdity. Lippomano wept over the tales being told about him, having just stated they were true.

When a copy of the letter came into my hands I was already brooding over what Courtenay had told me about events in England. I could not get rid of the thought of Pole and the charges against him that Courtenay had made – namely, that he averted his eyes from great cruelty and bloodshed. I was very unhappy. There is nothing so captious, I suppose, as a newly wakened conscience. But I could see no course of action to take. I had no one even to talk to about these things. Agnes is a poor antagonist, she tends to agree with whatever I say. Portaleone has no interest in the disputes amongst those of our religion.

Having no one to talk to, I therefore found myself in want of solitude and for the first time since coming to live in Mantua I went in search of it. But this is difficult to find in the neighbourhood. The woods are not deep, the fields are flat, open and busy. Still, there is good hunting in the marshes, and I went out with my dog and an arquebus, taking a little boat into the deepest recesses of the reeds, with these thoughts in my mind.

A few days after reading the Lippomano letter, I went out hunting as usual and in the course of the afternoon I happened to emerge from the reeds near an old church, called Maria della Grazie, a few leagues from Mantua. I had heard of the place, and went in to look around. It was very curious within: ancient, august in atmosphere, with dark red walls, and cluttered with innumerable images, statues of stone, of tow, rags and paper, waxworks in niches, wooden hearts, breasts, babies, garlands and boils, votive offerings and crutches – objects of every size, shape and age, and yet strangely all of a piece, like things cast up by the sea.

Among them I noticed the tomb of Castiglione, the author of the famous book
Il Curtigiane
, or
The Courtier
. Lord Bembo had composed the tomb inscription.

Here lies a Mantuan adorned with all

the gifts of nature and of art.

In Latin, Greek and in Tuscan learned,

a poet known to all, in Toledo he died.

This summary, I knew, had been criticised as frigid and flat. Almost as soon as he wrote it, Bembo followed his subject into eternity. One should be more fulsome to the dead, people said, as you are bound to run into them shortly. For me the effect was different. Standing in front of that scroll of cold marble, I suddenly became resolute. For years I had heard Pole refer to
The Courtier
: ‘
Here is the great difficulty for princes . . . They lack above all what they need more than anyone else, namely, someone to tell them the truth
.’

And at that moment I saw that this applied to no one more urgently than to Pole himself. It is true that he was not exactly a prince – although the Venetian ambassador said that, with King Philip away, Pole was now more or less the King of England, being always at the Queen’s side. In any case, whether he was a prince or not, he surely now had greater need of a courtier who would put the truth before his eyes than ever before in his life.

In short, standing at the tomb of Catstiglione I decided that that was my task, the duty clearly fell to me, who had for so many years served and protected Pole. And there and then I decided to translate Lippomano’s absurd letter into English and publish it in my name, with the hope that this might make Pole see what was happening under his own eyes in England.

Leaving the church I noticed a group of young people who had gone there for what purpose I don’t know – to meet, to whisper, flirt, make love. One of them, a young woman of exceptional beauty, slim and straight-backed as Minerva, was sitting slightly apart from the others. As I passed she lifted her head and looked at me with a full gaze. Her eyes were blue. For a moment it seemed that I too, there in Maria della Grazie, was lifted up by a wave of the sea.

I took this as a good sign for my project. It was remarkably easy to carry out. I had a copy of the letter. I translated it in half a day. Portaleone knew all about publishing, and could send it off to Germany in no time. The only thing that took some effort was the dedication.

There I was harsh and violent in my language. I remembered what Pole himself had said of Henry long ago. ‘He must be made to
see
what he has done’ and ‘Flattery is the source of all the problems’ and ‘Lift up your voice like a trumpet!’

Well – my voice is no trumpet. Lippomano’s letter in any case spoke for itself. But I tried my best: I spoke as bitterly as I could. I felt my rage rise as I thought of those churchmen, puffed up with pride, whose titles and robes themselves seem to have driven them mad and made them cruel. How was Pole any different, I asked, from such prelates? ‘
You will go on as you have begun, in chopping off the heads and hanging up for holidays the favourers of the gospel? . . . Your handling of the Pope’s affairs has brought misery and dissension to the realm . . . Beware lest the visor of hypocrisy is plucked off and your bribery and blood-letting come to light . . .
’

I wrote all this – it was a page and a half – with Portaleone chafing at the door. Then I sent it off. The title page was as follows:

A copy of a very fine and

witty letter sent from the right

reverend Lewes Lippomane

translated out of the Italian lang

uage by Michael