Christophe

Cromwell's shadow

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.”

Week 20: Crows (Part 2)

Christophe comes with Cromwell to Kimbolton. At the church, he offers to ‘whistle for a priest’ and makes other clownish jokes.

Week 21: Angels

Christophe delivers Cromwell the word on the street: ‘They are saying on the streets that Katherine was murdered. They are saying that the king locked her in a room and starved her to death… They are saying that you sent two murderers with knives, and that they cut out her heart, and that when it was inspected, your name was branded there in big black letters.’

Week 22: The Black Book (Part 1)

It is Christophe who brings Cromwell news that the queen is on fire. ‘Quick, quick! She is totally incinderated.’

What happened to Anthony’s teeth? Anthony tells Christophe that ‘somebody put a spell on him and they all fell out. Christophe says, “I was told as a child about diabolists in England. There is a witch in every street. Practically.”’

Week 25: Master of Phantoms (Part 1/5)

Christophe waits on Lady Worcester and brings her cakes. When she is done picking off the petals, he devours the rest. ‘He craves honey, sugar. You can never mistake a boy who was brought up hungry.’

Week 26: Master of Phantoms (Part 2/5)

At Stepney, Christophe is there to block Mark’s escape. ‘Seat yourself, pretty boy.’ And to play the part of bully boy: ‘Would you like to spend ten minutes alone with him?’ Richard asks.

Christophe leads Mark away by the hand and locks him away with Christmas. ‘Well, it is dark in Christmas.’ In the morning, he flicks and slaps Mark a little until they get the answers out of him that they need.

Week 28: The Book of Phantoms (Part 4/5)

Christophe comes to the Tower with May flowers looking like ‘a bull garlanded for sacrifice.’

He serves Chapuys wine, and the Imperial ambassador calls him the ‘ruffian’ who tortured Mark.

Week 29: The Book of Phantoms (Part 5/5) / Spoils

At Anne’s execution, Christophe talks with the executioner: ‘Master, he has said to me, tell the women that she should wrap her skirts about her feet when she kneels, in case she falls bad and shows off to the world what so many fine gentlemen have already seen.’

Week 30: Wreckage (I)

At Austin Friars, Christophe is in the garden chasing an alarmingly big cat.

Week 31: Salvage (Part 1/3)

Christophe doesn’t remember his master’s orange coat. It was before his time. He claims to have caught the cat, but Gregory says he just stood and made hunting cries. He quips that one needs reversible garments these days: ‘One never knows, is it dying or dancing?’

Dick Purser caught the cat. There is some antipathy between the two young men. Christophe calls him a ‘heretic.’ He doesn’t like the new boy, Matthew, either. ‘The ridiculous Matthew.’ He reminds his master of the time they went to see the late queen in Kimbolton, and Cromwell spent a night with ‘the bold wife of the innkeeper.’

Week 32: Salvage (Part 2/3)

   Increasingly, he thinks Christophe's dull appearance an advantage. No one would be cautious in front of such a churl.

Week 33: Salvage (Part 3/3)

Christophe watches the stairs as Chapuys and Cromwell talk privately in the garden tower. At Hackney, he announces the arrival of Chapuys.

Week 34: Wreckage (II) (Part 1/2)

Christophe comes with Call-Me and Cromwell to interrogate Tom Truth in the Tower. He brings Truth’s poems. The verses look crumpled. ‘Have you been chewing them?’ he asks. ‘I eat anything,’ says Christophe. He is there to look menacing and make lewd jokes.

Week 35: Wreckage (II) (Part 2/2)

Christophe waits for his master outside the French ambassador’s door, talking to his compatriots. ‘I have been telling them … that you have the vigour of a bull, and very fit to get offspring on the Lady Mary. But they say, that is why the king chooses Cremuel — on purpose to dishonour the granddaughter of Spain. They say that if you have children, Henry will make them scrub his floors. They will scour out privies for a living and haul shit in carts by the light of the moon.’

Week 36: Augmentation

August, he is in Kent; his duties follow him, the boy Mathew bundling up his papers as he did at Wolf Hall, and Christophe riding at his elbow, a club slung at his saddle to beat off assailants.

He reminisces about Italy and ‘fire-pots’ for throwing at the enemy. Christophe agrees that ‘pig fat is king’ and wants to know when we will start making them.

Week 37: The Five Wounds

Christophe accompanies Cromwell to Shaftesbury Abbey. ‘What tricks do they do?’ He goes to the kitchens in search of ‘some young sister to feed him bread and honey.’ Later, he implores his master ‘do not weep any more. You said you would not.’

At Austin Friars, he is in the corner, issuing expletives.

They scarcely knew Christophe was in the room. But there he squats in the corner, like a gargoyle fallen off a church. he remembers the boy saying, that day when they rode up to Kimbolton, ‘I will kill a Pole for you. I will kill a Pole when you require it.’

Week 38: Vile Blood (1/2)

At the end of the great hall where servants sit and boast, he can see Christophe hard at work. Christophe tells people he has been to Constantinople, where he advised the Sultan. At his palace in the twisting lanes of that metropolis, perfumed fans would agitate the air, and plump women, in their skins as God made them, would lie about on divans, with nothing to do all day but work a curl around their forefinger and wait for Mustafa Cromwell to come home, and call for sherbet and virgins.

Week 39: Vile Blood (Part 2/2)

Christophe building a winter fire for Cromwell. And at Stepney, he brings Cromwell a goblet of Venetian wine. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘I am like you, I imagine other lives I might have had… I could have been a Frenchman like you.’ He asks Christophe to bring him The Book Called Henry.

Week 43: Nonsuch

Christophe asks to see the wax doll of the baby prince. ‘I can see the monster?’ He peers ‘into the sack. He makes a face.’

Week 44: Corpus Christi (Part 1/2)

Christophe accompanies Cromwell to Canterbury to destroy Becket’s shrine. He says the dogs sound like ‘roving demons’ and when a coat floats down from the scaffolding, he shouts, ‘Oh, by the thighs of Mary!’ Cromwell gives him a flask of aqua vitae. ‘I am on fire,’ he says. ‘Why did you not give me this before?’

Cromwell tells Christophe: ‘Get the bones to Austin Friars. If anyone asks where they are, they went on a cart and you never saw them after.’

Week 45: Corpus Christi (Part 2/2) / Inheritance

Christophe at Westminster to hear John Lambert debate with the king:

‘Bishop Gardineur will be with you,’ he reminds him. ‘Today he will enjoy himself, for surely this poor Lambert will burn? For who can deny baptism? Before St Christophe was baptised, he was a dog’s-head cannibal. His name was not Christophe, but Abominable. After he was baptised he was human, and could pray. Before, he could only bark.

Cromwell asks Christophe about his real name. ‘Christophe was my Calais name. On Calkwalk Street. Before Fabrice I was Benoît, a very good little boy. But it does not matter what I was christened. I have forgot.’

When Mathew says he has bought a nightingale for a mark, Christophe says, ‘You rustic dolt. My lord should send you back to Wiltshire. I suppose it is all the entertainment you are used to, down at Wolf Hall.’

Week 46: Ascension Day (Part 1/2)

Christophe defends his master. He is fine health compared to the king and ‘Norferk, he is shrivelled like a dried bean.’