Dissolution

I arrived in London in 1518, the year after Martin Luther posted his challenge to the pope on the door of Wittenberg Castle church. I remember how hard it was at first to get used to the noise, the crowds – above all, the constant stench – of the capital. But in my classes and lodgings I soon found good company. Those were already days of controversy, the common lawyers arguing against the spreading use of the Church courts. I sided with those who said the king's courts were being robbed of their prerogative – for if men dispute the meaning of a contract, or slander each other, what business is that of an archdeacon? This was no mere cynical desire for business; the Church had become like a great octopus, spreading its tentacles into every area of the nation's life, all for profit and without authority in Scripture. I read Erasmus, and began to see my callow thraldom to the Church of my youth in a new light. I had reasons of my own to be bitter against the monks especially, and now I saw that they were good ones.

I completed my schools and began to make contacts and find business. I discovered an unexpected gift for disputation in court, which stood me in good stead with the more honest judges. And in the late 1520s, just as the king's problems with the papacy over the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon began to make a public stir, I was introduced to Thomas Cromwell, a fellow lawyer then rising high in the service of Cardinal Wolsey.

I met him through an informal debating society of reformers, which used to meet in a London inn – secretly, for many of the books we read were forbidden. He began to put some work from departments of state my way. And so I was set on my future path, riding behind Cromwell as he rose to supplant Wolsey and became the king's secretary, commissioner general, vicar general, all the time keeping the full extent of his religious radicalism from his sovereign.

He began to seek my assistance with legal matters affecting those who enjoyed his patronage – for he was building a great network – and I became established as one of 'Cromwell's men'. So when, four years ago, my father wrote to ask if I could find William Poer's son a post in one of the expanding departments of state my master controlled, it was something I was able to do.

Mark timed his arrival for April 1533, to see the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn. He much enjoyed that great celebration for the woman we were later taught to believe was a witch and fornicator. He was sixteen then, the same age I was when I had come south; not tall but broadly built, with wide blue eyes in a smooth angelic face that reminded me of his mother's, although there was a watchful intelligence in his pale-blue eyes that was his distinctively.

I confess when he first arrived in my house I wanted him out of it again as soon as possible. I had no wish to act in loco parentis for this boy, who I had no doubt would soon be slamming doors and sending papers to the floor, and whose face and form stirred all the feelings of regret I associated with home. I had imaginings of my poor father wishing Mark were his son instead of me.

But somehow my wish to be rid of him eased. He was not the country boor I had expected; on the contrary he had a quiet, respectful demeanour and the rudiments of good manners. When he made some mistake of dress or table etiquette, as he did in the early days, he showed a self-mocking humour. He was reported as conscientious in the junior clerking posts I obtained for him, first at the Exchequer and then at Augmentations. I let him come and go as he pleased and if he visited the taverns and bawd houses with his fellow clerks he was never noisy or drunken at home.

Despite myself I grew fond of him, and took to using his agile mind as a sounding board for some of the more puzzling points of law or fact I dealt with. If he had a fault it was laziness, but a few sharp words could usually rouse him. I went from resenting that my father might have wished him for a son to wishing he might have been my own. I was not sure now that I would ever have a son, for poor Kate had died in the plague of 1534. I still wore a death's head mourning ring for her, presumptuously, for had she lived Kate would certainly have married another.

***

An hour later Joan called me down to supper. There was a fine capon on the table, with carrots and turnips. Mark was sitting quietly at his place, in his shirt again and a jerkin of fine brown wool. I noticed the jerkin was adorned with more of the agate buttons. I said grace and cut a limb from the chicken.

'Well,' I began, 'it seems Lord Cromwell may have you back at Augmentations. First he wants you to aid me with a task he has set me, and then we shall see.'