The Courier's Tale Read Online Free Page B

and closed again and saying, ‘Time to shut up shop!’ As usual, this made Judith go pink with amusement, and thus we parted and went to our beds. But before we did, she gave me the loop of silk thread to keep and practise with.
    The next day, the time came for me to leave. I had promised Dr Starkey and Cromwell that I would be back in London after three days, to see what message I might take back to Mr Pole in Italy. Now a whole week had passed. I suddenly became alarmed. Perhaps I had let this show of carelessness go too far. It is hard to make these calculations. In any event, I left the next day, as I say. Just before I mounted my horse, I had a word alone with Judith.
    ‘I will be back,’ I said. ‘There is some information which I need, and only you possess.’
    I looked straight into her eyes as I spoke. Naturally, just at that moment, she became inscrutable and gave no sign that she knew what I meant or what her answer might be.
    I rode away just before dusk. A few miles down the road, Rutter came out of the hedgerow and we went together to Weethley Wood. There we dismounted. Rutter whistled softly into his fist. After a pause, an owl hooted. Soon his brother appeared. They cuffed each other about the head for a little while and then the younger one led us into the depths of the wood, to the foot of the tree where the goshawks nested. He was slighter in build than Tom and he went up that tree as easily as a man goes up his own stairs in the dark, and then he came down with two fledglings in his shirt. I slipped a hood on each and put them in a wicker cage and we went back to the horses.
    Then I rode on to Inkberrow where we had a farm and I slept there the night. I left the next day and rode away for London feeling strangely solitary and sad. Of course I had no idea then that I would not see Coughton for many years.

Chapter 3
    Cromwell, although then not yet an earl or even baron of Wimbledon, was, after the King, the most powerful man in the country and nobody cared to cross or disappoint him. Yet when I, five days in arrears, presented myself at his house, for some reason I was quite calm and unafraid. I was led in to see him at once – leapfrogging, as it were, over many ladies and gentlemen waiting outside who, to judge from their very long faces, had been there the same amount of time. I felt conscious only of my distinction: I was more important than they. Even on the step of the gallows I suppose men take pleasure in precedence. Cromwell was indeed angry with me. I could tell that at once from a glint in his eye. Yet it was the glint of restraint. Think of a big sleek house cat that will not pounce until the mouse comes forward another inch. No, that’s not right either: Cromwell had no intention of pouncing. He did not want to kill me or even alarm me. On the contrary, I was necessary to him alive, and at liberty and in good spirits. I suppose I knew that as well as he did. All the same, the dignity of his high office made remonstrance necessary. A frown deepened on his brow.
    ‘Young Throckmorton!’ he said. ‘You have given me several sleepless nights. I was about to send the officers to beat the bushes and hedges to find you. “Has he fallen into harm’s way?” I asked myself. “Or is it some young man’s business he has run off on, which we older men have forgotten?” ’
    ‘O my lord,’ I said, ‘forgive me. Five years I have been away from home, and I had forgotten – I don’t know how – how excellent the hunting and the hawking is in that corner of the country, much better than anywhere else in England or in Italy, for that matter. I could not bring myself to leave. As well as that, there was my family to see, and I had to go and stand at my mother’s grave . . .’
    Cromwell was watching me closely, thinking, no doubt, ‘How great a fool is he?’ But I could also see that he was interested in what I was saying. Remember: the father made his living fulling cloth in Putney, and