The story so far…
Week 11: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 2) / Early Mass
He is serving food and drink in a “low sort of place” where alchemists meet. What do you suggest? “Drink somewhere else?”
When Cromwell leaves, he tells the boy he should learn to read. “Meanwhile use your eyes. If anyone else comes to talk to them, if they bring out any drawings, parchments, scrolls, anything of that kind, I want to know.”
Week 12: Anna Regina (Part 1)
The boy comes looking for “milord Cremuel.” He wants to work for the Englishman. He gives Cromwell a name: Christophe, but no family name and no age. With an invisible knife he lets Cromwell know he killed a man. Shadows on a wall. “You understand me, monsieur.”
“Christ, of course I do. You could be my son.”
He keeps Christophe with him at Westminster and when he is away on business. Christophe makes him laugh. And he’s ready to fight. “I will kill a Pole when you require it, it will be my pleasure.”
Week 13: Anna Regina (Part 2)
At the coronation, he brings a message from Cranmer to visit him alone. “He says not to bring any person.” Cromwell says: “Well, you can come, Christophe. You’re not a person.”
Week 15: Supremacy
Cristophe is training up the boys of Austin Friars. Teaching them how to use a knife.
Only you and me, master, and Richard Cremuel, we know how to stop some little fuckeur in his tracks, so that’s the end of him, and he doesn’t even squeak.
15 April 1534. Cristophe is drunk, sprawled on Cromwell’s “wide and lonely bed.” He has been celebrating Rafe and Helen’s marriage. He has been dreaming he is a pastry.
“My life is ridiculous,” thinks Thomas Cromwell.
Week 16: The Map of Christendom (Part 1)
Christophe comes with him to Chancery Lane to inspect the Rolls House. “I expect a hundred men have died here, Jews and Christians both.”
On Rolls and cats: “The Rolls have not paws to go walking.”
When Cromwell falls in, he mentions Giulio Camillo. This is fantasy, says Dr Butts. No, says Christophe, “I assure you, there is a man in Paris who has built a soul.”
Christophe tells Cromwell he once robbed Wolsey in France. And Wolsey gave him dinner. “I tasted apricots, which I never had before.”