Work Text:
“I have a son,” he says. “You know that, of course. God forgive me. A weakness of the flesh.”
- Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
my disrespectful teen son somehow got hold of a gluten product and now he wants to become a cat girl
- dril
I.
Rafe overhears, once, a conversation between two of the women of Austin Friars concerning his master’s son. The women are gossiping as they sew, needles darting like tongues in and out of the fine cambric they hold restrained and white in their red fingers. Rafe has learned already that information can be better than ready money, and although he doubts the value of this particular exchange he stands in the shadows against the wall to hear it, for practice. The matter at hand is whether the infant Gregory is perhaps a changeling. For all that he’s bonny and fat, the women say, there is something about him. Their mood is hushed and giggling. As if they wouldn’t get their ears boxed, if Liz Wykys happened to hear them.
That Sunday Rafe wishes that Gregory were older. No changeling can eat the body of God; if he could only see Gregory take communion he could be certain. Or if he could see him eat. The women said that changelings, unable to abide mother’s milk, must suck gruel from a rag. Not that you’d find a rag in this house, they said, even the child’s napkins are fine. If Rafe were more in the house he might know, but he is always with his master.
II.
Rafe is more concerned about Gregory’s starting school than Gregory is, and indeed Gregory’s own unconcern feeds Rafe’s worry. There is a paternal shape to his fretting; he is not Gregory’s father, but he is older, and more alike Master Cromwell than Gregory is. Cromwell himself cannot, of course, imagine that there might be any dragons lurking in Cambridge. Having seen war, his sensitivity to lesser brutality is vitiated.
“If anyone should question who your father is and claim not to know of him,” Rafe says, pacing, his hands thrust into his armpits, “you must look careless and say oh, he is very much at court. Or if they insinuate that you are not really your father’s child, and perhaps a clerk got you on your mother, you must bow slightly and say, ‘No clerk, but your own mother did serve that office, making us in some kind brothers.’ But you must not appear too interested, and then you must turn the conversation. After a decent pause. Not immediately.”
Gregory is staring at the floor, boredom incarnate. Only an effort of will keeps him from squirming. “I won’t remember half of this,” he says. “Do you really think, Rafe, that there will be so many boys eager to make sport of me?”
Rafe considers him: his handsome want-free face, and the embroidery on his shirt as fine as any king's. “Perhaps not,” he says.
III.
Christophe and Gregory have too little in common to dislike each other, but manage anyway. To imagine them reaching any sort of understanding or state of amity is to imagine England befriending France. Nevertheless they have their little enjoyments. One day Christophe tells Gregory that his father is planning to marry again; or rather he asks Gregory, so what do you think, about this new step-mother you will be having? Me, I do not think much of Master Cremuel’s taste, but you Englishmen… Gregory, appalled, begins tabulating all the unmarried women he knows, sorting through them, putting them into frantic piles: acceptable and not, dangerous and not. Although in this case all wives are dangerous. Cromwell’s will is known and presently it disposes very well in Gregory’s favour. It is only when Christophe lets out a bestial roar of laughter that Gregory realises.
“Tell me, milord Gregory, who you were thinking,” Christophe begs. “Your face! I must know. The Princess Mary, perhaps. You imagined to have her as your mother and were frightened, you do not like her dry little prune mouth. You think when she is Mistress Cremuel she will kiss you.”
Gregory’s hand goes to the ornamental dagger at his belt, which affords Christophe further amusement.
“Oh, stab me,” he says. “I would so much like to see it. I do not believe you have even fucked a woman ever. I believe you eat only with a spoon, and if you cannot cut your meat you leave it for the dogs.”
Gregory, grandson of Walter, says, “You’re nothing more than a servant. If I asked my father to he would throw you out of his house.” He doesn’t know if this is true; his gentlemanly face beseeches plainly, please stop. If it were a real fight Christophe would at this point leap to deliver a coup de grâce, bloody and satisfying. Instead, of his charity, he spits on the ground and walks away.
IV.
Cromwell, dreaming, sees his daughter Jenneke step out of a tapestry. He reaches for her, and she backs away; he follows, and footsteps sound behind him. He turns to look at his pursuers and they duck their faces, hiding, but he knows the ruffled shape of their wings. Anne and Grace, his daughters. His bird-girls. They are shy and do not speak. Anne looks up at him, at last, and he tries to read from her face whether she has learned Greek. He should have sent them away but he did not and now he cannot, it is too late.
Jenneke gathers the little girls to her side. She gestures to the figures gathered around her and says, did you think to have so many? At her shoulder stands Gregory, solemn and judgemental, and next to him Rafe and Richard, Alice and Jo, Christophe, even little Dick Purser. Other shadowy shapes besides, whom he does not recognise but knows to be the children he got against a wall and never met. Cromwell’s children and not-children, his nieces and nephews, his foundlings. He says, come back with me. There is space enough, money enough. He is dreaming, he is not dreaming. He thinks of Walter: of Walter’s boot. God save you all, he says. God save you.