C. Sansom - Lamentation

Guy smiled sadly. ‘I remember when I was at the monastery at Malton, we had a steward such as that. But he was a fine fellow. Just brought up to believe he must never be presumptuous with his superiors.’

‘How are things at St Bartholomew’s?’ I asked. The old hospital, one of the few for the poor in London, had been closed when the King dissolved the monasteries, but a few volunteers had reopened it, to provide at least some service. Guy was one of the volunteers there. I recalled guiltily that when my friend Roger Elliard had died three years ago I promised his widow to continue his work to open a new hospital. But then the war came, everyone suffering from the taxes and fall in the value of money, which had continued ever since, and no one was willing to donate.

He spread his hands. ‘One does what one can, though Jesu knows it is little enough. There is talk of the city authorities taking it over, with a grant of money from the King, but nothing ever seems to happen.’

‘I see more driven into poverty in the city every day.’

‘Poverty and illness both.’

We were silent a moment. Then, to raise our mood, I said, ‘I have some good news. Tamasin is pregnant again. The baby is due in January.’

He smiled broadly, a flash of good white teeth. ‘Thanks be to God. Tell her I shall be delighted to attend her during her pregnancy again.’

‘We are both invited to a celebration on George’s first birthday. The twenty-seventh.’

‘I shall be glad to go.’ He looked at me. ‘A week on Tuesday. And this coming Monday will be — ’ he hesitated — ‘the anniversary of. .’

‘The day the Mary Rose went down. When all those men died, and I so nearly with them.’ I lowered my head, shook it sadly. ‘It seems a peace treaty has been signed. At last.’

‘Yes. They say the King will get to keep Boulogne, or what is left of it, for ten years.’

‘Not much to show for all the lives lost, or the ruination of the coinage to pay for it.’

‘I know,’ Guy agreed. ‘But what of you? Do you ever get that feeling of the ground shifting beneath you, that you had after the ship went down?’

I hesitated, remembering that moment at the burning. ‘Very seldom now.’ He looked at me sharply for a moment, then said, more cheerfully, ‘Young George is a merry little imp. Having a new brother or sister may put his nose out of joint.’

I smiled wryly. ‘Brothers and sisters,’ I said. ‘Yes, they do not always get on.’ I told Guy, without naming names, something of the Slanning case. He listened intently, his dark eyes shining in the candlelight as the dusk deepened. I concluded, ‘I have thought this woman actually takes pleasure in her hatred of her brother, but after what she said this afternoon I think there may be more to it.’

Guy looked sad. ‘It sounds as though this quarrel goes back a very long way.’

‘I think so. I have thought of talking quietly about it with my opponent — he is a reasonable man — see if we can work out some way to get them to settle. But that would be unprofessional.’

‘And may do no good. Some quarrels go so deep they cannot be mended.’ The sadness in Guy’s face intensified. Martin and Agnes brought in the next course, platters of chicken and bacon and a variety of vegetables in bowls.

‘You are not usually so pessimistic,’ I said to Guy when we were alone again. ‘Besides, only recently I was offered an olive branch by the last person I would expect to do such a thing.’ I told him the story of Bealknap’s note, and the money.

He looked at me sharply. ‘Do you trust him? Think of all he has done in the past.’

‘It seems he is dying. But — ’ I shrugged my shoulders — ‘no, I cannot bring myself to trust Bealknap, even now.’

‘Even a dying animal may strike.’

‘You are in a dark humour tonight.’

‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I am. I think of what happened at Smithfield this morning.’

I put down my knife. I had avoided discussing religion with Guy during these recent months of persecution, for I knew he had remained a Catholic. But after a moment’s hesitation I said, ‘I was there. They made a vast spectacle of it, Bishop Gardiner and half the Privy Council watching from a great covered stage. Treasurer Rowland made me go; Secretary Paget wanted a representative from each of the Inns. So I sat and watched four people burn in agony because they would not believe as King Henry said they should. At least they hung gunpowder round their necks; their heads were eventually blown off. And yes, when I was there, I felt the ground shift beneath me again, like the deck of that foundering ship.’ I put a hand up to my brow, and found it was shaking slightly.

‘May God have mercy on their souls,’ Guy said quietly.

I looked up sharply. ‘What does that mean, Guy? Do you think they need mercy, just for saying what they believed? That priests cannot make a piece of bread turn into the body of Christ?’

‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I believe they are wrong. They deny the Mystery of the Mass — the truth that God and the church has taught us for centuries. And that is dangerous to all our souls. And they are everywhere in London, hiding in their dog-holes: sacramentarians and, worse, Anabaptists, who not only deny the Mass but believe all society should be overthrown and men hold all goods in common.’

‘There have only ever been a few Anabaptists in England, just some renegade Dutchmen. They have been raised up into a bogey.’ I heard the impatience in my voice.

Guy answered sharply, ‘Well, the Askew woman boasted herself that she was a sacramentarian. Askew was not even her name; her married name was Kyme and she left her husband and two little children to come and harangue the people of London. Is that a right thing fora woman to do?’

I stared at my old friend, whose greatest quality had always been his gentleness. He raised a hand. ‘Matthew, that does not mean I think they should have been killed in that horrible way. I don’t, I don’t. But they were heretics, and they should have been — silenced. And if you want to talk of cruelty, think of what the radical side has done. Think what Cromwell did to those who refused to accept the Royal Supremacy ten years ago, the monks eviscerated alive at Tyburn.’ His face was full of emotion now.

‘Two wrongs do not make a right.’

‘Indeed they do not. I hate the cruelties both sides have carried out as much as you. I wish I could see an end to it. But I cannot. That is what I meant when I said some quarrels go so deep they are impossible to mend.’ He looked me in the eye. ‘But I do not regret that the King has taken us halfway back to Rome and upholds the Mass. I wish he would take us all the way.’ He continued, eagerly now. ‘And the old abuses of the Catholic Church are being resolved; this Council of Trent which Pope Paul III has called will reform many things. There are those in the Vatican who would reach out to the Protestants, bring them back into the fold.’ He sighed. ‘And everyone says the King grows sick. Prince Edward is not yet nine. I believe it wrong that a monarch should make himself head of a Christian church and declare that he instead of the Pope is the voice of God in making church policy. But how can a little boy exercise that headship? Better that England take the opportunity to return to the Holy Church.’

‘To the Church that burns people, in France, in Spain under the Inquisition? Many more than here. And besides, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles is making fresh war on his Protestant subjects.’

Guy said, ‘You have turned radical again?’

‘No!’ My own voice rose. ‘Once I hoped a new faith based on the Bible would clearly show God’s Word to the people. I hate the babble of divisions that has followed; radicals using passages from the Bible like black-headed nails, as insistent they alone are right as any papist. But when I see a young woman taken to the stake, carried in a chair because she has been tortured, then burned alive in front of the great men of the realm, believe me I look with no longing for the old ways either. I remember Thomas More, that indomitable papist, the people he burned for heresy.’