'Trick of the Light' 5/?
Title: Trick of the Light
Fandom: The Tudors
Part: 5/?
Pairing: Anne Boleyn/Thomas Cromwell
5.
Cromwell paces the sleek oak floor of his office, the surfaces of the surrounding desks lined with the condemnation warrants that must be completed by the week’s end. The clerks have been dismissed until further notice, and nothing can be done until the business is over with. The silence that he usually craves is unsettling him, and he jumps when the door creaks reflexively in the through-draft of the wind.
Brandon knows that he is keeping him waiting. He is having a marvellous time knowing that.
It’s largely redundant, he concludes, to even attempt going back to the beginning and trying to trace what went wrong, but he does anyway. What it was about him. They have never exactly been introduced. His rise through the ranks was a slow segue into Brandon’s own life, but the Duke himself had always, somehow, been there in his. Cromwell was polite every infrequent time their paths did cross on his way up, offering his senior courtier, His Grace, a respectful bow, straightening to see the other man’s eyes harden like two flat, burnished pennies every time. Perhaps it was from the moment Cromwell’s required obeisances became less of an abasement, when those around him began to flock and bob like pigeons in recognition of his own ascent. It is not, after all, his rightful place. His blood flows with the silt of Putney; his veins are not gilt-lined, his lineage does not carry the birthright of the Confessor. Somehow, over the years, Brandon’s gaze has soured to resentment whenever it comes to rest on the Chancellor. Cromwell can only wonder why. Is this not the New World, after all? Rabelais himself thinks that one day the revolution will be borne by the hands of bakers and washerwomen. Maybe one day the Duke of Suffolk will acknowledge his own rightful place - acceptance.
He does not come. Cromwell paces. The corridor outside his door mocks him with its silence.
It is, he must concede, entirely possible that the Duke will not come. It will not be the first time Brandon has done this, his time entirely expendable in the pursuit of the torment of those whose position in life should remain strictly beneath his own. Liaising with Brandon is the last thing Cromwell could ever have envisaged as a priority, but in this case it seems unfortunately essential. His Grace possesses connections in the north that far exceed any slender ties of concord Cromwell himself has managed to cultivate amongst the power of the old families. The laughable thing is that Brandon was neither born into it nor inherited it as right himself, but rather acquired it through his own association with His Majesty, an ennobling long in the gestation. There was once a time, Cromwell knows, somewhere preceding Brandon’s marriage to the Princess Margaret, God rest her soul, that his primary distinction in life among even his own peers had been as the son of a whore. Memories are surprisingly short amongst the new gentry, jealous of their power, snapping like dogs at the fingers of those who try to pluck it from them.
If His Grace will not come, then Cromwell must rein his mind back to the many and sundry other tasks in hand. He attempts something with one of the governmental warrants, not knowing precisely what it is that he will write as he searches impatiently for ink amongst the mess on his desk. The state that the office has been allowed to get into over the last few days of fevered activity is a disgrace, with books on the shelves rummaged into disorder, several reports from Lincolnshire piled haphazardly on the floor, slumping over onto their sides from where they have been thumbed through and abandoned for future reference, and those writs, endless piles of them, the futility of completing half a dozen nightmarish for the unlimited number that pile up in their wake. Professional success has restricted the time Cromwell can devote to housekeeping, his own and that of his clerks, but disorder bothers him just as it always has.
He is somewhere in-between this nervous agitation at the condition of his work environment, and his distracted attempts at focusing his mind to the task in hand around his simmering irritation at the timekeeping skills of His Grace, Suffolk, when someone shakes the handle of the door to the tradesmen’s entrance so hard that the lock is still swinging when Cromwell eventually manages to persuade himself to venture down the corridor to investigate. He tries the lock, then goes back to the office to locate the key. The handle resists, as usual, beneath his grasp, but when he gets the door open his breath smokes in the frigid air as he steps outside, looking beyond the entrance to the trees that run the full length of the chancellery; it is impossible to distinguish what could be recent footprints from the mingled tracks of tradesmen’s boots and the wheel-prints of carts brought right up to the door. Whoever has been there has already fled.
He listens to the rusted, years-old clink as he re-locks the door. Sometimes thieves, opportunists, the dregs of the city attempt to get in and steal whatever they can to sell on, ink and paper in particular being valuable commodities and liable to buy an enterprising miscreant a week’s worth of ale should he hike the price accordingly. Money is never kept on the premises overnight, but that doesn’t stop optimistic attempts on the building’s security. For some reason, that very security, or relative absence of it, never seems to unsettle anyone but Cromwell. It was he who ordered that the Sergeant-of-Arms place a sentry at the door to the building at all times, to be relieved at night on rotation. It makes him almost breathless with horror to think that prior to his instalment as Chancellor, there was precious little guarding the contents of the chancellery from the ill-intent of any vagabond who summoned enough clarity through the stupor of drink and poverty to try his luck with a door-handle. And to think they said More had turned vagrants off his land.
Whatever it was, it has made him so nervous that by the time he hears the outer door to the office being opened, he has a letter opener in his hand and is prepared to use it.
A moment later, Brandon appears.
“Did you attempt to get in through the tradesmen’s entrance a while ago?” is the first thing Cromwell asks him.
Brandon’s expression, never courteous at the best of times when directed at Cromwell, only tightens with annoyance. Clearly he detects a barb.
“And why would I do that, Cromwell?” Here, in privacy, there is no requirement for him to use Cromwell’s formal title, and not on account of mutual familiarity. “I would have thought that was more your territory?”
Cromwell smiles a little, devoid of amusement. His Grace has never been a stickler for originality.
“Somebody tried the door while I was working. An opportunist hoping chance was his fortune, I’m sure.”
Brandon’s gaze doesn’t flicker, nor does the contemptuous curl to his lip. He would clearly have rather had his privy parts pulled asunder from his person with hot pliers than be standing in this room.
“Something you would have good understanding of, I am sure.”
Cromwell isn’t in the mood for this. He goes back behind his desk and sits down, not bothering to invite the other man to do the same. He wouldn’t have accepted, anyway.
“I did ask to see you…” he begins. Brandon has remained by the desk nearest the door, as though he fears that Cromwell is the incubator of some pox or contagion that will fly on the breath of miasma and creep beneath the Duke’s own skin. For some reason, Cromwell has expected to be interrupted, and he hesitates, looking up at Brandon. He knows uncertainty is written on his features. Hatred is not something that comes easily to Cromwell; contrary to what he knows is believed of him, he neither holds grudges nor acts out of spite. He prefers to keep affairs strictly impersonal. The concerns of the heart and the conduct of business are perilous when allowed to interfere with one another, and yet there are times, before he can catch himself and talk sense back into his feelings, that he finds himself loathing Brandon…not because of who Brandon is, or how he treats Cromwell, but for how he makes Cromwell feel. He is a man whose most private heart is staunched the moment he walks through the gates of Westminster, who feels, if not pride, then a certain satisfaction with his ability to turn a neutral eye to even the most vitriolic of insults, and yet there is something about Brandon that shakes him to his core. Doubtless he is largely effective at disguising his unease, but there have been times when Cromwell has picked up a quill after an encounter with the Duke, and seen the slender arc of the feather tremble in his grasp.
“Am I supposed to guess what it is?” He meets Brandon’s eye as the other man speaks. The Duke looks, understandably enough, impatient.
“A have a - ” Cromwell considers, making a thoughtful gesture with his two hands, fingers splaying, then curling inward. “A small request, from His Majesty.”
“Oh?” In these moments, Brandon’s primary mode of resistance is monosyllabism. Cromwell may be able to summon him, but damn it all if he’ll persuade him to engage in conversation.
“Yes.” Cromwell evens the edges of a sheaf of paper, reassurance to be found in a regression to clerking duties. “You may already be aware that His Majesty desires to pay court to the Lady Jane Seymour.” He looks up again, questioning, ensuring that Brandon is, indeed, aware. The Duke returns his gaze frostily. That would be a yes, then.
“His Majesty has let it be known to me that he wishes that a certain place of secrecy might be found, somewhere private and discreet, so that he may meet with Mistress Seymour away from the danger of - shall we say? - prying eyes.” There is no need to mention the Queen by name.
“And what is this to me?” Brandon says flatly. Cromwell licks his lips.
“His Majesty desires that you, Your Grace, should find this place of secrecy.”
Brandon does not discernibly react. His eyes move exploratively across Cromwell’s face, perhaps searching for a qualification or a dupe. Cromwell holds his gaze, trying for earnestness. This is not the time for idle quarrelling, and the sooner he can convince His Grace of this, the better.
“Why is it that I should be tasked with this?” he eventually says. “Surely clerical matters of this nature are more your jurisdiction, Mr Secretary.” In Brandon’s mouth, the address becomes an obscenity, both slandering Cromwell’s impertinence in his hold of that position and disparaging his distinct inferiority of rank.
A pause. Cromwell taps the pads of his fingertips together, trying to regain diplomacy. “It is what the King wishes,” he says at last, his voice slow with his delicate choice of words. “And what the King wishes, he must have.”
“I see.” Brandon’s stance is still impeccable, his shoulders squared, his hands clasped behind him. He has not moved since he positioned himself by the door. “And this has nothing to do with you?”
Cromwell closes his eyes a moment, briefly ruing the obstinacy of the aristocratic mindset.
“I assure Your Grace that I am acting purely in the interests of His Majesty’s pleasure.” And how horribly true that is. “I would gladly take this task upon myself if it had been required of me, but alas - ” He cannot resist the jibe, a smile sliding sidelong onto his face - “The duty must fall to you.”
“And where does the King presume that I should find this place of secrecy?”
“I think we are both content to leave that to your own discretion. I will of course be willing to inspect it for its appropriateness.”
“How generous of you,” Brandon says dryly. Cromwell feels his smile sharpen at the edges.
“However,” he goes on, opening one of the drawers to his desk and taking out a small, leather-bound notebook, “there are a number of places that His Majesty has preference for, although he insists that this should in no way curtail your search.” He extends his hand, not standing, offering the book to Brandon. His Grace will have to re-discover his capacity for movement if this discussion is going to have anything resembling a productive outcome. “His only condition is that it should be somewhere north of the border.”
“Why the north?” Brandon demands sharply, looking at the notebook in Cromwell’s hand as though it is the original poisoned chalice itself. Cromwell’s shoulders move slightly in a shrug.
“I have no idea.”
He wonders why Brandon is so resistant to the proposal. For Brandon, the King’s dalliance with Mistress Seymour can only have a beneficial result, and His Grace has made no secret of his dislike of the Queen and all she represents - the hubris of the lowborn clinging to the backs of the powerful, the avarice of upward mobility…the peril of the educated woman. Seymour, with her country maid’s gaucheness and tentative grasp on her own lettering, is precisely the antidote to Brandon’s disquiet as much as it is to the King’s own growing weariness with the Queen’s flashing temper and jealous demands on his faithfulness. Surely His Grace should be leaping at the opportunity to potentially unseat the Boleyns, and to what end? Cromwell himself has followed the possibility through in his own mind; he knows very well what this could entail, not just for him, but for his Reformation. Try as he might to deny it, he knows full well that all that the Reformation stands for is bound up in the figure of that one woman, with her outlandish French mannerisms and fire-blue cat’s eyes. Henry Tudor outstretched the might of his hand to pluck Earth from the coat-tails of Heaven not through the zeal of his passion for change, but through the transient, all-consuming need to bed the one woman who resisted him. And Cromwell knows that without Anne, this precious new world, the bakers and the washerwomen lining up for their right of life, could easily fall back into darkness.
But he still feels her eyes on his throat…
“And I suppose that when…if I locate this place of secrecy - ” Brandon is still uttering the words as though they are as sour as corked wine - “then I am to report to you?”
Cromwell nods. “I am to approve it before it is presented to His Majesty.”
In three long, angry strides, Brandon is at Cromwell’s desk, and he snatches up the notebook. Cromwell regards him calmly. He prefers Brandon when he knows he has rankled him.
“I tell you, Mr Cromwell,” the Duke says through gritted teeth, his eyes so black with hatred that the fine hairs on the back of Cromwell‘s neck tingle. “If this little jaunt turns out to have all been some foolish wild goose chase, then your head will not be spared.”
Cromwell returns the stare, feeling the muscles in his face freeze into a mask of impassivity. “Good day, Your Grace,” he says.
For a moment, he almost thinks Brandon is going to hit him. But then the Duke’s mouth hardens into a sneer of disgust, he turns on his heel, and he makes the door in as many strides as it took him to reach Cromwell. The latch snaps home in his wake.
Cromwell gazes after him, the nerve-endings beneath the surface of his skin alive with adrenaline. Two threats to his life in one month. A small record, even by his standards.
He draws the quill from its holder, dousing its nib in the fresh ink. The long feather quivers where he holds it, but he has not yet written a line.
Fandom: The Tudors
Part: 5/?
Pairing: Anne Boleyn/Thomas Cromwell
5.
Cromwell paces the sleek oak floor of his office, the surfaces of the surrounding desks lined with the condemnation warrants that must be completed by the week’s end. The clerks have been dismissed until further notice, and nothing can be done until the business is over with. The silence that he usually craves is unsettling him, and he jumps when the door creaks reflexively in the through-draft of the wind.
Brandon knows that he is keeping him waiting. He is having a marvellous time knowing that.
It’s largely redundant, he concludes, to even attempt going back to the beginning and trying to trace what went wrong, but he does anyway. What it was about him. They have never exactly been introduced. His rise through the ranks was a slow segue into Brandon’s own life, but the Duke himself had always, somehow, been there in his. Cromwell was polite every infrequent time their paths did cross on his way up, offering his senior courtier, His Grace, a respectful bow, straightening to see the other man’s eyes harden like two flat, burnished pennies every time. Perhaps it was from the moment Cromwell’s required obeisances became less of an abasement, when those around him began to flock and bob like pigeons in recognition of his own ascent. It is not, after all, his rightful place. His blood flows with the silt of Putney; his veins are not gilt-lined, his lineage does not carry the birthright of the Confessor. Somehow, over the years, Brandon’s gaze has soured to resentment whenever it comes to rest on the Chancellor. Cromwell can only wonder why. Is this not the New World, after all? Rabelais himself thinks that one day the revolution will be borne by the hands of bakers and washerwomen. Maybe one day the Duke of Suffolk will acknowledge his own rightful place - acceptance.
He does not come. Cromwell paces. The corridor outside his door mocks him with its silence.
It is, he must concede, entirely possible that the Duke will not come. It will not be the first time Brandon has done this, his time entirely expendable in the pursuit of the torment of those whose position in life should remain strictly beneath his own. Liaising with Brandon is the last thing Cromwell could ever have envisaged as a priority, but in this case it seems unfortunately essential. His Grace possesses connections in the north that far exceed any slender ties of concord Cromwell himself has managed to cultivate amongst the power of the old families. The laughable thing is that Brandon was neither born into it nor inherited it as right himself, but rather acquired it through his own association with His Majesty, an ennobling long in the gestation. There was once a time, Cromwell knows, somewhere preceding Brandon’s marriage to the Princess Margaret, God rest her soul, that his primary distinction in life among even his own peers had been as the son of a whore. Memories are surprisingly short amongst the new gentry, jealous of their power, snapping like dogs at the fingers of those who try to pluck it from them.
If His Grace will not come, then Cromwell must rein his mind back to the many and sundry other tasks in hand. He attempts something with one of the governmental warrants, not knowing precisely what it is that he will write as he searches impatiently for ink amongst the mess on his desk. The state that the office has been allowed to get into over the last few days of fevered activity is a disgrace, with books on the shelves rummaged into disorder, several reports from Lincolnshire piled haphazardly on the floor, slumping over onto their sides from where they have been thumbed through and abandoned for future reference, and those writs, endless piles of them, the futility of completing half a dozen nightmarish for the unlimited number that pile up in their wake. Professional success has restricted the time Cromwell can devote to housekeeping, his own and that of his clerks, but disorder bothers him just as it always has.
He is somewhere in-between this nervous agitation at the condition of his work environment, and his distracted attempts at focusing his mind to the task in hand around his simmering irritation at the timekeeping skills of His Grace, Suffolk, when someone shakes the handle of the door to the tradesmen’s entrance so hard that the lock is still swinging when Cromwell eventually manages to persuade himself to venture down the corridor to investigate. He tries the lock, then goes back to the office to locate the key. The handle resists, as usual, beneath his grasp, but when he gets the door open his breath smokes in the frigid air as he steps outside, looking beyond the entrance to the trees that run the full length of the chancellery; it is impossible to distinguish what could be recent footprints from the mingled tracks of tradesmen’s boots and the wheel-prints of carts brought right up to the door. Whoever has been there has already fled.
He listens to the rusted, years-old clink as he re-locks the door. Sometimes thieves, opportunists, the dregs of the city attempt to get in and steal whatever they can to sell on, ink and paper in particular being valuable commodities and liable to buy an enterprising miscreant a week’s worth of ale should he hike the price accordingly. Money is never kept on the premises overnight, but that doesn’t stop optimistic attempts on the building’s security. For some reason, that very security, or relative absence of it, never seems to unsettle anyone but Cromwell. It was he who ordered that the Sergeant-of-Arms place a sentry at the door to the building at all times, to be relieved at night on rotation. It makes him almost breathless with horror to think that prior to his instalment as Chancellor, there was precious little guarding the contents of the chancellery from the ill-intent of any vagabond who summoned enough clarity through the stupor of drink and poverty to try his luck with a door-handle. And to think they said More had turned vagrants off his land.
Whatever it was, it has made him so nervous that by the time he hears the outer door to the office being opened, he has a letter opener in his hand and is prepared to use it.
A moment later, Brandon appears.
“Did you attempt to get in through the tradesmen’s entrance a while ago?” is the first thing Cromwell asks him.
Brandon’s expression, never courteous at the best of times when directed at Cromwell, only tightens with annoyance. Clearly he detects a barb.
“And why would I do that, Cromwell?” Here, in privacy, there is no requirement for him to use Cromwell’s formal title, and not on account of mutual familiarity. “I would have thought that was more your territory?”
Cromwell smiles a little, devoid of amusement. His Grace has never been a stickler for originality.
“Somebody tried the door while I was working. An opportunist hoping chance was his fortune, I’m sure.”
Brandon’s gaze doesn’t flicker, nor does the contemptuous curl to his lip. He would clearly have rather had his privy parts pulled asunder from his person with hot pliers than be standing in this room.
“Something you would have good understanding of, I am sure.”
Cromwell isn’t in the mood for this. He goes back behind his desk and sits down, not bothering to invite the other man to do the same. He wouldn’t have accepted, anyway.
“I did ask to see you…” he begins. Brandon has remained by the desk nearest the door, as though he fears that Cromwell is the incubator of some pox or contagion that will fly on the breath of miasma and creep beneath the Duke’s own skin. For some reason, Cromwell has expected to be interrupted, and he hesitates, looking up at Brandon. He knows uncertainty is written on his features. Hatred is not something that comes easily to Cromwell; contrary to what he knows is believed of him, he neither holds grudges nor acts out of spite. He prefers to keep affairs strictly impersonal. The concerns of the heart and the conduct of business are perilous when allowed to interfere with one another, and yet there are times, before he can catch himself and talk sense back into his feelings, that he finds himself loathing Brandon…not because of who Brandon is, or how he treats Cromwell, but for how he makes Cromwell feel. He is a man whose most private heart is staunched the moment he walks through the gates of Westminster, who feels, if not pride, then a certain satisfaction with his ability to turn a neutral eye to even the most vitriolic of insults, and yet there is something about Brandon that shakes him to his core. Doubtless he is largely effective at disguising his unease, but there have been times when Cromwell has picked up a quill after an encounter with the Duke, and seen the slender arc of the feather tremble in his grasp.
“Am I supposed to guess what it is?” He meets Brandon’s eye as the other man speaks. The Duke looks, understandably enough, impatient.
“A have a - ” Cromwell considers, making a thoughtful gesture with his two hands, fingers splaying, then curling inward. “A small request, from His Majesty.”
“Oh?” In these moments, Brandon’s primary mode of resistance is monosyllabism. Cromwell may be able to summon him, but damn it all if he’ll persuade him to engage in conversation.
“Yes.” Cromwell evens the edges of a sheaf of paper, reassurance to be found in a regression to clerking duties. “You may already be aware that His Majesty desires to pay court to the Lady Jane Seymour.” He looks up again, questioning, ensuring that Brandon is, indeed, aware. The Duke returns his gaze frostily. That would be a yes, then.
“His Majesty has let it be known to me that he wishes that a certain place of secrecy might be found, somewhere private and discreet, so that he may meet with Mistress Seymour away from the danger of - shall we say? - prying eyes.” There is no need to mention the Queen by name.
“And what is this to me?” Brandon says flatly. Cromwell licks his lips.
“His Majesty desires that you, Your Grace, should find this place of secrecy.”
Brandon does not discernibly react. His eyes move exploratively across Cromwell’s face, perhaps searching for a qualification or a dupe. Cromwell holds his gaze, trying for earnestness. This is not the time for idle quarrelling, and the sooner he can convince His Grace of this, the better.
“Why is it that I should be tasked with this?” he eventually says. “Surely clerical matters of this nature are more your jurisdiction, Mr Secretary.” In Brandon’s mouth, the address becomes an obscenity, both slandering Cromwell’s impertinence in his hold of that position and disparaging his distinct inferiority of rank.
A pause. Cromwell taps the pads of his fingertips together, trying to regain diplomacy. “It is what the King wishes,” he says at last, his voice slow with his delicate choice of words. “And what the King wishes, he must have.”
“I see.” Brandon’s stance is still impeccable, his shoulders squared, his hands clasped behind him. He has not moved since he positioned himself by the door. “And this has nothing to do with you?”
Cromwell closes his eyes a moment, briefly ruing the obstinacy of the aristocratic mindset.
“I assure Your Grace that I am acting purely in the interests of His Majesty’s pleasure.” And how horribly true that is. “I would gladly take this task upon myself if it had been required of me, but alas - ” He cannot resist the jibe, a smile sliding sidelong onto his face - “The duty must fall to you.”
“And where does the King presume that I should find this place of secrecy?”
“I think we are both content to leave that to your own discretion. I will of course be willing to inspect it for its appropriateness.”
“How generous of you,” Brandon says dryly. Cromwell feels his smile sharpen at the edges.
“However,” he goes on, opening one of the drawers to his desk and taking out a small, leather-bound notebook, “there are a number of places that His Majesty has preference for, although he insists that this should in no way curtail your search.” He extends his hand, not standing, offering the book to Brandon. His Grace will have to re-discover his capacity for movement if this discussion is going to have anything resembling a productive outcome. “His only condition is that it should be somewhere north of the border.”
“Why the north?” Brandon demands sharply, looking at the notebook in Cromwell’s hand as though it is the original poisoned chalice itself. Cromwell’s shoulders move slightly in a shrug.
“I have no idea.”
He wonders why Brandon is so resistant to the proposal. For Brandon, the King’s dalliance with Mistress Seymour can only have a beneficial result, and His Grace has made no secret of his dislike of the Queen and all she represents - the hubris of the lowborn clinging to the backs of the powerful, the avarice of upward mobility…the peril of the educated woman. Seymour, with her country maid’s gaucheness and tentative grasp on her own lettering, is precisely the antidote to Brandon’s disquiet as much as it is to the King’s own growing weariness with the Queen’s flashing temper and jealous demands on his faithfulness. Surely His Grace should be leaping at the opportunity to potentially unseat the Boleyns, and to what end? Cromwell himself has followed the possibility through in his own mind; he knows very well what this could entail, not just for him, but for his Reformation. Try as he might to deny it, he knows full well that all that the Reformation stands for is bound up in the figure of that one woman, with her outlandish French mannerisms and fire-blue cat’s eyes. Henry Tudor outstretched the might of his hand to pluck Earth from the coat-tails of Heaven not through the zeal of his passion for change, but through the transient, all-consuming need to bed the one woman who resisted him. And Cromwell knows that without Anne, this precious new world, the bakers and the washerwomen lining up for their right of life, could easily fall back into darkness.
But he still feels her eyes on his throat…
“And I suppose that when…if I locate this place of secrecy - ” Brandon is still uttering the words as though they are as sour as corked wine - “then I am to report to you?”
Cromwell nods. “I am to approve it before it is presented to His Majesty.”
In three long, angry strides, Brandon is at Cromwell’s desk, and he snatches up the notebook. Cromwell regards him calmly. He prefers Brandon when he knows he has rankled him.
“I tell you, Mr Cromwell,” the Duke says through gritted teeth, his eyes so black with hatred that the fine hairs on the back of Cromwell‘s neck tingle. “If this little jaunt turns out to have all been some foolish wild goose chase, then your head will not be spared.”
Cromwell returns the stare, feeling the muscles in his face freeze into a mask of impassivity. “Good day, Your Grace,” he says.
For a moment, he almost thinks Brandon is going to hit him. But then the Duke’s mouth hardens into a sneer of disgust, he turns on his heel, and he makes the door in as many strides as it took him to reach Cromwell. The latch snaps home in his wake.
Cromwell gazes after him, the nerve-endings beneath the surface of his skin alive with adrenaline. Two threats to his life in one month. A small record, even by his standards.
He draws the quill from its holder, dousing its nib in the fresh ink. The long feather quivers where he holds it, but he has not yet written a line.