Thomas Cromwell 1-3

I

Ascension Day

Spring–Summer 1539

‘Call-Me wants a picture of the king,’ Rafe says. ‘We must get one on the first boat. He needs to show it to Christina.’

Does Call-Me know his business? It seems perilous, to open a gap between a young girl’s fantasy and a man who is past his prime. But then, she must have heard Henry described, by those whose pleasure it is to rip up her dreams.

He sits with Rafe and goes through a sheaf of drawings. Sometimes a child emerges from behind the king’s eyes: an alert little boy, who expects the world to do him pleasure. Henry owns more than a hundred looking-glasses. If they had a memory, we could send one that reflected the prince as he was at Christina’s age: tumbling curls, broad shoulders, damask skin.

Henry rides up to Waltham to see his little prince. Edward’s limbs are firm and sturdy. No spells or conjurations have withered him. His pallor he gets from his mother, his shy blue eyes and pointed chin. His coats are of tawny and crimson, his winter gowns lined with miniver and trimmed with ermine. He makes full use of his Christmas present from the old Earl of Essex – a rattle combined with a bell. The Earl of Essex is stone deaf.

Every dispatch from Wriothesley reassures us that yes, he knows his business. He visits Christina in her chambers hung with damask and black velvet. The atmosphere is hushed: our handsome envoy whispers to her, enticing. The king’s character, he tells her, is naturally benevolent. In all his reign, few have heard angry words fall from his lips.

Christina’s colour rises, Call-Me says. She looks as if someone has tickled her.

Majesty, he advises, take her on any terms: you cannot do better.

But Call-Me is chagrined that the courtiers in Brussels do not understand his lineage. They imply that anyone who serves Cromwell must be of base degree himself. He assures them that he is proud to walk behind the Lord Privy Seal, carrying his pen, ink and paper. He doesn’t mind their aspersions, he says.

Rafe says, ‘He does mind, really.’ Call-Me has always been touchy, quick to take offence; easily rattled, and proud of his good blood. But the new year has begun well for him, because he has laid hands on that coveted master-spy, Harry Phillips.

How did this happen? Phillips has simply walked into our embassy and handed himself over. He craves Henry’s pardon for anything he has done or seemed to do against England and Englishmen. Now he is ready to tell the truth about his life, and is able to lead us straight to Master Traitor Pole. And then, Wriothesley believes, Phillips can be interrogated and turned, sent back into Europe to work our will – drawing the king’s enemies gradually towards him, then spilling them into the hands of the executioner.

Call-Me’s dispatch has scarcely been read at Westminster when he is obliged to write a follow-up. Though placed under guard, Harry Phillips has absconded in the night, taking with him a bag of money belonging to our English delegation.

Call-Me has spent four futile months standing in anterooms and absorbing insults, and now a trickster has gulled him. He is eaten up with humiliation, gnawed with anxiety till he knows if the king and council blame him. He should bear the blame, of course. But his fellow envoys write home on his behalf: for God’s sake, comfort him, my lord Cromwell – he will be ill if you do not give him a good word. Never was son so anxious to please his father, as Mr Wriothesley is to please you.

Perhaps it will be a lesson to him, Rafe says, not to think he has the most penetrating wit in Europe: to realise he can be as big a fool as the rest of us.

It is a cold winter. No sooner have floods abated than the first snows blanket us. In the warmth of Toledo, the Emperor and the King of France ratify their treaty. They mean this concord to last their lifetimes, they say, and they swear to make no agreement with England – marital, military – without the support of the other. Which will not, of course, forthcome. Who can deal with an excommunicate king? No Christian man can give him bread if he is starving – let alone provide him with a wife.

Henry’s subjects are now released from their obedience to him. The Pope reminds the faithful that for sectaries and schismatics, the normal rules are suspended. You may break your contracts with them and seize their goods. All Englishmen abroad, whether students, merchants or ambassadors, are at risk of arrest. It is true there has been no formal declaration of hostilities. But it feels like war. The King of Scots is preening himself; he thinks that if France invades, they will partition the kingdom and give him the north, if not the whole.

The men around our king live by what they call honour: skill in arms, prowess on the battlefield. Their appetite is not slaked by the cutting up of northern rebels, or the attrition of border feuding. Norfolk calls war business. ‘If we have business with the French,’ he says, or ‘Should some business with Charles ensue …’ Now church bells are cast into cannon, ploughshares beaten into swords, the cross of Christ becomes a bludgeon, a club to beat out the brains of the opposition. What’s ink in Whitehall is blood in the borderlands, what’s a quibble in the law courts is a stabbing in the streets. Mild monkish blessings are turned to curses, and the giggling of courtiers tails off into an uneasy hush. Each man is watching the other, for signs of treason, signs of weakness. You cannot greet the world in the morning with anything less than ferocity, or by evening you will be destroyed.

It is not our custom in England to maintain a standing army. Using former church revenues, we could raise one. But then Henry would want to use it, as monarchs do, to carry war beyond the seas: which, Master Secretary says, is a thing I will never permit. For our defence we can mobilise swiftly. Ready cash oils the wheels. The best men are appointed in every region, to draw up muster rolls, build beacons, recruit gunners, captain ordnance. Can our friends in Cleves, the king asks, send a hundred expert cannoneers?

The king’s ships stand in the Thames: the Jesus and the John Baptist, the Peter, the Minion, the Primrose and the Sweepstake, the Lyon, the Trinity, the Valentine; the Mary Rose and the Mary Boleyn. The king’s tabletop is papered with charts and plans. He draws forts and blockhouses, and he, Cromwell, sends out surveyors to map the coastline. All the maps are to be sent to the king. He dreams of laying them out in Westminster Hall, a pattern of these islands.

The message to the world is: we can withstand a sudden invasion, and we can sustain a long war. He, Cromwell, writes letters into Europe, explaining the recent executions. Every prince will understand that the dead men were dynasts; Henry is keeping his line safe. Within a year our country will be a giant fortress, guns trained on the sea lanes: more like a castle than a realm.

A castle is a world in little. Everyone inside it must work together. If it falls it is because it is betrayed from within. The Duke of Norfolk rides north, to stamp out sedition where the king’s writ is weakest: a querulous old man, taking to the winter roads. ‘Take your time,’ he advises: he, Lord Cromwell.

‘I’ve no choice, have I?’ Norfolk snarls. But then he turns, relenting: ‘Look here. When you write to me, you need not address me as “your Grace”. It doesn’t seem fitting these days. You being what you are.’

He bows. Perhaps Norfolk has received a prompt from the king? ‘Most humbly I acknowledge your lordship’s condescension.’

But, he thinks, I won’t start calling you Tom. He never sees the duke with a sword at his side, without imagining himself run through: ‘Beg pardon, Lord Cromwell, was that your heart?’

The king says, ‘Ask the German princes what they will do for us, if we find ourselves under attack. Ask them to send engineers. If they must send more scholars, naturally we will receive them, but our need is for fighting men.’

You can hire soldiers, of course. The king’s father hired the army that knocked the throne from under Crookback. They will fight as long as they are paid or rewarded with plunder, but they will not stir one foot unless they hear the chink of coin. He, Cromwell, puts out scouts through Germany and Italy. He is not interested in a poxy rabble of Irishmen or Scots, only in proven captains from nations where war is a science.

This winter the council sits every day. The king presides, except when he rides off in person to inspect the Channel ports. The exigency has given him a new briskness, a vigour. ‘My lords, I am weary of reading long letters. You must digest them for me. Unless they come from my brother kings, when I shall read them entire.’

The King of Scotland sends his compliments, and asks for a lion. A lion! ‘The temerity of the man!’ the councillors exclaim. ‘The presumption!’

‘I have plenty of lions, I suppose,’ the king says mildly, ‘in the cages at the Tower. I would not refuse to do him pleasure. My lord Cromwell, will you see to that?’

Someone laughs, and stifles the laugh. Any odd tasks, the king always says they are Cromwell business. And they always are.

The king’s council is smaller now. It is compacted to an effective body, so there are no makeweights. But every man who sits has a strong will and strong interests. The king begs for concord amongst his advisers. But Henry himself cannot walk a line: he leans violently one way, then violently the other, and it takes a robust man to support him. Intemperate councillors fail. We have all seen Gardiner flouncing from the royal presence, looking like a plaice, with his mouth turned down and his underlip thrust out.

The king’s temper is no mystery. The astrologers say it is his moon in Aries that makes him explosive, confrontational – but really what matters is the state of his leg. Some days it hurts more, some days less, but there are no days it does not hurt at all. As the king’s doctors remark, the ailments of great men have too little credit, when their lives are passed in view. They inherit thrones, but so much else. When the Emperor speaks, his words rattle like pebbles in the cavern of his overshot jaw. François is paying for his sins: he has lost so many teeth to the mercury cure that his wishes are expressed as spit, and his parts are ulcerated in a fashion that would repulse the lowest whore.

He is repulsed by François himself. In Paris his new Bibles have been seized and his printers warned off. He thought he had bribed enough people to keep the Inquisitors at bay. Now, perhaps, they expect him to pay a ransom for the type? Perhaps he will, as he has paid out so much already. He calls in Ambassador Castillon, and asks that François, as a favour, release the unbound sheets. Perhaps the day may come when François wants a favour in turn?

In letters home Castillon begs for his recall. He is afraid that, if hostilities break out, Henry and Cromwell will kill him. He refers to ‘the king and his milord’ – as if there is only one milord in England.

Meanwhile he, the Vicegerent, arranges to set up his print shop at Greyfriars, where he can walk in and see what is done day by day. It will be safer, if slower. In one bad week, he says to Rafe, your life’s work can be shot out of the water.

Around Candlemas, coming in to the king, he finds him sitting at twilight over his books; Henry raises his head and looks at him with a faint puzzlement, as if he has never seen him before. Then the king seems to shake himself and says, ‘You look cold, Thomas, come to the fire. I was thinking that sometimes we should pray together. How do you pray, my lord? Do you begin with your Pater Noster, or do you repeat a psalm, or do you say words of your own devising?’

He looks closely at the king and sees the question is not a trap. He says, ‘I praise God as master of our ship. No tempest will sink us.’

The king grants licence for one John Misseldon, alchemist, to return to England from his stay beyond the seas. He may practise his craft as long as he does not resort to the dark arts. ‘Sooner or later,’ he warns the king, ‘all such men grow desperate, and then they turn to necromancy.’

I also, he thinks. I sit at my desk day after day, waiting for the cardinal to whisper in my ear.

Before February ends we are locked into crisis. Only Lord Lisle does not seem to know it. John Husee, salt-sprayed from the crossing, drips into his waiting chamber. ‘Husee,’ he says, ‘since Edward Seymour has been in Calais, I begin to form a picture of how your master falls short.’

‘You know he is not well,’ Husee says awkwardly.

‘Ill enough to be replaced?’

‘No, no, please …’ Husee says.

He takes pity on the man. ‘I shall send over my nephew Richard to help him.’

‘If it please you,’ Husee says, ‘Lord Edward, Master Richard – they would be described as gospellers –’

‘Lord Lisle objects to that?’

If war breaks out, Calais is the first place the enemy will attack. I should go myself and take charge, he thinks. But I don’t want to find that, in my absence, the king has panicked and called Norfolk back from the borders, or put a plaice in my seat at the council board.

France and the Emperor give notice that they are withdrawing their ambassadors. Chapuys comes to see him privately, twitching with tension. ‘Do not take it as an act of war, I beg you. The Emperor is recalling me only because I know your English manners, and can advise the Duchess Christina – how she should order herself, when she comes over to England to be crowned.’

When he, Lord Cromwell, conveys this to the councillors, the whole table bursts into laughter. Only Call-Me, and perhaps the king, still believe Christina will ever be his bride. Officially, talks are still open. But the Emperor is imposing conditions that make the match impossible. When the duchess’s servants visit Wriothesley these days, they flit in by owl-light.

He says, ‘The Emperor wants Chapuys back so he can report on our war preparations. But before we release the ambassador, we should make sure we get Wriothesley home safe.’

‘Hostages!’ the Lord Chancellor says. ‘Oh, Mother Mary! What about Wyatt in Spain? I hear the Inquisitors are at his back.’

He has Wyatt’s letter in his pocket. Our ambassador writes, I am at the wall. I cannot endure till March.

He goes home. His leg is aching and his people have made a special stool to set it on. ‘Decrepit,’ he says to his nephew Richard.

He sees himself from without, a miniature on vellum: Lord Cromwell in his Later Years. A Flemish tiled floor, a chequerboard of blue and gold; a red velvet gown and inside it a hunched invalid. Richard leans over his chair, a hand on his shoulder. ‘What if you are not in your first youth? I shall be glad if at your age I am as sound.’

Christophe says, ‘Compare with the king! My lord Admiral, he has been ill since Christmas. Norferk, he is shrivelled like a dried bean.’

Richard says, ‘Christophe, respect your betters.’

Christophe says, ‘One fears for Call-Me. Suppose they kill him? Or drop him in a deep dungeon?’

This has occurred to him. They could lock the boy in Vilvoorde where they kept Tyndale. Richard Cromwell says, ‘You used to have a plan of that fortress. Would we send a troop of men to break him out?’

They glance at each other, turn away again. Probably not.

He limps along to the Tower, where in a broad and pleasant room, a pale fire in the hearth, he converses with Gertrude, Courtenay’s widow. For a woman who has just lost her husband to the headsman, she is self-possessed: dry-eyed, and eating almonds from a platter. ‘No doubt you fortified yourself with prayer?’ he says. ‘You cannot have been surprised. You knew everything my lord Exeter said and did against the king. You were in his inner councils.’

‘A woman has her own soul to save,’ Gertrude says. ‘Her husband will not do it for her.’

‘Do you know the traitor Pole is now in Spain?’

She offers him an almond. ‘Why would I know?’

‘He is with the Emperor, urging a crusade against his native land. Then he will go to France again, urging the same. So he turns about and about, snared in his treason.’

Her gaze drifts over his shoulder, as if the wall is more interesting.

‘Our ambassador in Spain has begged to return home, but they say, “Tarry, Mr Wyatt.” The Inquisitors have begun a process against him. You would not like to be in Wyatt’s place.’

‘Why would I be? I am not a heretic.’

‘Once they detain a suspect he cannot answer to the charge, because he is not allowed to know what it is. Nor is he told who has laid information. He is tortured by methods – well, my lady, I would not sully your ears. In Castile these days, every soul lives in fear.’

‘They have nothing to fear from the Holy Office,’ she says. ‘Not if they are good livers, and go to Mass.’

‘They fear their neighbours. Old enemies bring each other down.’

Her eyes move over him. She sees the king’s councillor: a genial man, comfortable in his skin. She doesn’t see the other man, whom he keeps short-chained to the wall: the man for whom the work of forgetting is strenuous, who dreams of dungeons, cavities and oubliettes. Such men are subject to uprushes of fear which wake them in the night; when they are frightened, they laugh.

‘My lord,’ she says, ‘where is Bess Darrell?’

Judging by her tone, she does not know Bess’s evidence helped to ruin her family. He says, ‘She is in a happier place.’

Her hand flies to her throat. ‘God forgive you – you have not killed her?’

‘Do you think I am a brute?’

He is interested in her answer. She says, ‘I have wondered why I am still alive myself. They say you do not like killing women, but you killed Anne Boleyn.’

‘You do not quarrel with me for that, I suppose?’

‘If you are trying to bargain – if you were thinking of trading me, for Mr Wyatt – I am afraid that the Emperor might not …’

‘Perhaps you and Margaret Pole?’ he says. ‘You are right, madam. You make little weight on the scales. Your son is of more interest.’

She looks up. ‘Please do not take him from me.’

‘When the Emperor decides on his policy to England, we hope that he will consider your welfare, and that of your boy. He says he is always solicitous for the old blood of England.’

She says, ‘The Holy Maid – you remember her? You blame me still, because I had dealings with her. I swore then and will swear now, I meant no malice.’

She begins to cry. He gives her a handkerchief. ‘You know I have lost little children. My lord husband used to fault me – “Heirs frail as they are, the times so cruel, one son is not enough.” She, the Maid – she said she would speak to Our Blessed Lady. She claimed her prayers were heard.’

He remembers Barton on a public scaffold, her broad countrygirl’s face chafed by the wind, and a crowd of Londoners gaping up at her. He remembers Thomas More by his side, huddled into a cape and rubbing his raw blue hands; it must have been a winter like this. He says gently, ‘Well, they weren’t, were they? But thank you for telling me this. The king may think better of you than he does now. A mother’s heart. He will understand.’

She blows her nose. He says, ‘If you have anything else to tell me, I think confession would ease your soul. About Thomas More, for instance. Or Bishop Fisher.’

‘Why? They are dead.’

‘In Rome they talk about them as if they had just left the room.’

They take a cup of wine together, served in silver as befits their rank. He takes a courteous leave. A guard takes his arm and guides him down a twisted stair to where an Irish monk squats on straw. Taken on the sea with letters to the Emperor, the prisoner is waiting for the pains of Purgatory to commence. If invaders come, the king’s Irish subjects will let them in by the back door.

He asks the gaoler, ‘Is he talking?’

‘He cracks on he only speaks Irish.’

‘Send to Austin Friars. We have interpreters.’

He takes a breath. He walks in on the prisoner, holding the letters salvaged from his purse. Lucky he did not think to cast them into the sea.

If Wriothesley were here he would break the cipher in ten minutes. Wyatt, no doubt, would do it in less. But while they are in the Emperor’s hands, it is quicker to break men.

By an order from Brussels, English ships are detained in Lowland ports. But Spanish merchants are leaving London, and he knows how quickly panic spreads among traders; they may speak in different tongues, but money talks to them all.

The king says, if they hold my ships, I will hold theirs; I will board any Spanish vessel in our waters.

There is another way, he says; not better than your Majesty’s, but supplementary. He issues a fiat to lift dues and taxes on resident foreigners – put them on par with Englishmen. That, he believes, will induce aliens to see out this storm in harbour, and not to pack their wives and chattels on the next boat.

Call-Me reports a rumour that the young Duke of Cleves has been poisoned by agents of Rome. For God’s sake, Mr Wriothesley writes, implore our royal master to be careful who comes into his company or near his person. And you, sir, you be careful too.

Ambassador Chapuys is limping. ‘You. Me. Your king,’ he says. ‘You would think it was a nation of cripples, Thomas. It’s the climate.’

‘It rains as much in Brussels.’

Eustache concedes that. ‘I will not be capable of riding to Dover. I must arrange a horse litter –’

‘Allow me to take care of it. And your baggage too.’

The ambassador bows. They sit down to Lenten fare. Chapuys has little appetite. England has never been a popular posting: the barbarous tongue and, as Chapuys says, the weather. But when he imagined the end of his embassy, he imagined an orderly withdrawal, and the customary present from the king. ‘What do you hear of young Wriothesley?’ he asks. ‘I have written most earnestly – and Thomas, I am telling you the truth here – I have said to Brussels, “Do not for God’s sake mistreat this young man, who is a great favourite both with the King of England and with my lord Cremuel.” I trust they will heed me and your boy will soon be on the road.’

The aim is to have Call-Me pass through the gates of Calais as the ambassador’s ship docks. At some point, unseen, the two should pass each other. ‘Just as long as you do not steal away by night,’ he says to Chapuys. ‘I do not want to have to put soldiers outside your house.’

The ambassador holds up his hands. ‘I would not be sitting here, if I intended any such practice. Only I would not have chosen to leave before my successor is inducted. There is such scope for misunderstanding.’

Chapuys is to be replaced by the Dean of Cambrai: a good fellow, coarse-fibred and plain-spoken. He will probably misunderstand everything, and certainly misunderstand the king. ‘I have often pitied you, Cremuel,’ Chapuys says. ‘Henry is a man of great endowments, lacking only consistency, reason and sense. But at least you can meet him face to face. You can see what he makes of what you are telling him. With my master at such a distance, I always fear I will be misunderstood. Or that those who have the good fortune to come into the Emperor’s presence will exercise the art of interpretation against me. You lack old friends. I mean, men of great family. I do not come from a place as low as yours. But you know how it is – I am the boy who always had to send the money home. I have had a little luck, and I have striven to the utmost of my talent. But in the end I cannot help but feel that much of my career has been like yours, Thomas.’ He folds his napkin. ‘Accidental.’

Christophe and Mathew come in and clear dishes. Chapuys stares at Mathew. ‘Boy, did I not see you at Horsley?’

‘Horsley, sir?’

‘The Courtenays’ house, in Surrey. As I think you know well.’

‘Mathew came to me from Wolf Hall,’ he explains.

‘I am more concerned with where he has been since. And how a waiting-boy comes to speak French, though with such a countryman’s accent I can hardly understand him.’

‘He is a quick learner,’ he says easily. ‘I am sending him to Calais soon, where he may polish himself up a little.’

Mathew is so shocked he treads on Christophe’s foot. ‘Oaf,’ Christophe mutters. ‘Bon voyage.’

‘You mean, you are sending him to Calais where he may spy on Lord Lisle.’ Chapuys sighs. ‘Well, I must …’ He crosses himself, murmuring a Latin grace. Painfully he levers himself to his feet, and gathers his gown as if he feels a draught.

He, Lord Cromwell, extends his hand. ‘I trust that when you reach the other side you will not complain of your treatment?’

He thinks of Eustache in his garden tower at Canonbury; the thundery evening when, quibble by quibble, a hair’s-breadth at a time, they edged the Lady Mary from wreckage to salvage. He remembers Christophe squatting at the base of the tower, his knife in his hand.

Richard Cromwell comes in. ‘Ambassador, your people are here.’

Chapuys hesitates. ‘Mon cher, I do not know when I shall return. Should we by some mischance, never again …’

‘Oh, none of that,’ he says. ‘We are stout of heart, Eustache, if not sound in limb.’

They embrace. The ambassador goes out, dispensing largesse to the household. He sits down at his desk. There is a letter from Carew’s widow Eliza, asking him to sort out her affairs. He owes her gratitude, he feels. Carew’s death has opened up opportunities to promote his own folk. When Richard comes back he asks him, ‘You would not like to go into the privy chamber, nephew? The king is sending Rafe to Scotland again, and I need people as close as I can get them.’

A clerk puts his head around the door. ‘Nothing from Wriothesley.’

‘We will not hear tonight.’ Any messenger on the road will be storm-lashed into shelter. Call-Me is in transit, we trust. He is at an inn: tallow candles, a cold bed; strangers’ faces; Imperial guards on the door.

‘I feel sorry for Chapuys,’ he says to Richard. ‘Going out into the rain.’

He feels someone has attached a weight to his heart. Not a big weight: just a small leaden bob, so he feels the drag. He turns back to his paperwork. He is occupied in setting up a new council, the Council of the West, to govern the parts beyond Bristol. He says to Wolsey – le cardinal pacifique – trust me, your Grace, I keep my mind on what I shall do come the peace. I am going to secure this German alliance for the king, and a bride.

Surely that will tempt the old ghost out? But the cardinal shows no sign of listening at all. He doesn’t even ask, what about Duke Wilhelm in Cleves? Is he dead of papal poison, as your man Wriothesley says?

He is not. He is alive and willing to talk.

The dukedom of Cleves-Mark-Jülich-Berg lies on both sides of the Rhine. Its ruler Wilhelm is twenty-two years old, and through his mother has a claim, which he is pressing, to the land and seacoast of Guelders: a claim which the Emperor disputes. Duke Wilhelm shows great independence of mind. He is a reformer, but not a Lutheran. His church is under his own control. He guards some of Europe’s vital trade routes.

He, Cromwell, sits down with the king’s council and lays before them certain facts. He introduces them to the substance called alum, without which we cannot dye cloth.

In our grandfathers’ time we bought alum from the Turk, who would never take cash alone, he wanted arms – thus equipping himself for war on Christians, using their own money. Then sixty years back a deposit was found at Tolfa near Rome, a deposit so rich that they say it will never run out till the Day of Judgement. The Vatican brought in the Medici to run the trade and invented a new and grave sin: trading in alum without a licence. Later it was Agostino Chigi, that prince of bankers, who ran the monopoly: and you should see the villa he built, on Tiber’s shores.

Now the Pope has us under his bale and ban. We need a source, we need a conduit, if our industries are not to collapse. We use alum in tanning, we use it in the manufacture of glass; doctors use it to heal wounds. The Spanish have a small supply. It is low-grade and anyway they will not sell it to heretics. But the ruler of Cleves, who has two sisters who want husbands, also has reserves of this treasure, which at its finest takes the form of crystals, huge clear crystals like jewels for a giant.

Perhaps alum is not the foundation for a love match. But members of the king’s council agree: you have reason on your side, Lord Cromwell.

So what about the young ladies themselves? They are of great lineage, descended from the royal line of France and from our own King Edward I. They are good girls, from whom their mother will be sorry to part. It is true that our visiting envoys have never been allowed to see them. They have been in their presence, but the virgins of Cleves are modest by custom; throughout the interview the sisters sit in silence under their veils.

When he arrives in the privy chamber the doctors are on their way out, the foremost carrying a flask of urine. The man wears an expression of pious gratification, as if he’s found the Holy Grail.

‘Come in,’ the king says. ‘I am exhausted from my travels, my lord.’

Over his embroidered nightshirt the king wears a jerkin lined with lambskins. His cap is pinned with a vast spinel, a purple stone with a glow soft as velvet. By his elbow stands a white basin containing his blood. The king’s eyes flit to the basin, then to his; he looks apologetic. Henry is a fastidious man and would probably not like to encounter a bowl of gore. But he, Cromwell, is as indifferent as a butcher.

‘Writs have gone out for the new Parliament, sir. I intend it will be a tractable one.’

He takes papers out of his bag, and a package. Henry’s eyes light on it. ‘What have you brought me?’

It is a work is called The Solace and Consolation of Princes, written by an adviser to the princes of Saxony. Henry turns it over in his hands. ‘A wife would be a consolation.’

‘If she brought us good allies, sir.’

The king falls to reading the book. But he interrupts him. ‘My friends at the Fuggers’ bank tell me Charles is raising cash.’

‘For soldiers?’

‘Yes. But to send into Barbary. They say he will not leave Spain himself. The Empress is having a child and he is concerned about her. She is subject to fevers, as your Majesty knows.’

The king is silent. No doubt his mind has slid elsewhere, to those worrying days of women’s confinements: to Katherine, to Anne, to Jane. At last he says, ‘Did you hear the Earl of Wiltshire is dead?’

Thomas Boleyn. ‘God assoil him. I hear he made a good Christian end.’ He pauses. ‘Will your Majesty bestow his title elsewhere?’

‘Well, he leaves no son.’ Henry barks with laughter and shuts the book. ‘George Boleyn is forgot.’

Not by me, he thinks. I sometimes dream of him, as I saw him last in the Martin Tower: his seeping tears, and his hands shaking, naked without their rings. He says, ‘Cleves agrees to send pictures of the young ladies. But their painter is sick, so there may be a delay. From what I hear, it is no wonder they keep the Lady Anna veiled. They say in beauty she excels the Duchess Christina as the golden sun excels the silver moon.’

‘Steady,’ the king says. He laughs.

‘I think if we send new envoys, the ladies will show their faces.’

‘I am sending Dr Carne. And Nicholas Wotton.’

He is surprised. He did not know the king had planned so far. Neither man could be called a friend of his. Henry is watching him. ‘I am glad of it, sir. They will not be partial. We can all trust their reports.’

He stops, because the young fellow Culpeper is oozing in, Howard ears pricked. ‘May it please your Majesty,’ Culpeper says, ‘the doctors have sent me. May I take the basin of blood?’

Outside, Jane Rochford is waiting for him. ‘Any nearer to a queen?’ She has a bag with her. ‘This is for you. From my lord father.’

‘A book?’

‘Of course, a book. What does my father ever send, but a book?’

‘It might have been a venison pasty. The older I get, the more I hate Lent.’

He glances at her face, as he takes out the present: her discontented mouth. She says, ‘We want to know which of the sisters he will choose. Unless he means to have them both?’

She is waiting. He turns over the leaves. It is Niccolò Machiavelli’s book, and inside is a note from Lord Morley, suggesting he shows it to the king; he has marked the most interesting passages, he says, by drawing a hand in the margin.

‘Well?’ she says.

‘I read it years ago, when it was still in manuscript. I shall write and thank your lord father, of course.’

‘Not “Well?” about the book,’ she says. ‘“Well?” about the princesses. Which one will he take? They say one has brown hair and one blonde.’

‘I hope I shall not be called on for the Judgement of Paris.’

‘Go for the blonde, is my advice.’

He hands the book to Christophe. ‘His tastes may have changed.’

She looks at him as if he is simple. ‘I do not think blondes go out of style. By the way, the Howards sent a little lass called Katherine, to see if we would have her among the new queen’s maids. Succulent and plump, and I doubt she has passed her fifteenth year.’

‘Send her away.’

‘As you wish. Though I think you could win her from Uncle Norfolk if you winked at her and gave her an apple. I never saw a simpler maid – a little rosebud mouth hanging open, like a suckling at the teat. What shall I say to the Howards?’

‘Put them off. Make sure she does not show her face till I have the marriage contracts signed.’

‘I hear the Duke of Cleves has asked for the Lady Mary’s portrait. It is time she made herself useful. And from what I hear, the most useful thing she could do is marry a German.’

‘We do not send pictures of our princesses abroad. It is not our custom.’

She tilts her head. ‘You invent customs very readily.’

He bows, as if she were complimenting him. It is the only thing to do, as he cannot well give her a slap. He says, ‘Duke Wilhelm’s envoys know Mary’s virtues and qualities. They have seen her.’

‘But not when she has toothache,’ Rochford says gaily.

He tucks Lord Morley’s gift under his arm. The king has nothing to learn from Niccolò’s book. But it may pass an hour for him, when his leg is giving him pain.

When Mary is asked whether she would like to marry into Cleves, she says she will do as her father tells her, but that given her choice, she would rather stay in the land of her birth and remain a virgin. It is a modest answer, which no one can fault.

When he gets home Richard Riche is waiting. ‘Ricardo,’ he says, ‘I shall want your help preparing for the Parliament. We shall be working long hours.’

‘When do we not?’ Riche says, like a man rising to the challenge. ‘I hear Wriothesley is to sit for Hampshire?’

‘I think he deserves it, after his travails abroad. I look for his return every day.’

‘A pity he did not have better success, and bring back a bride. And Bishop Gardiner is the king’s man in Hampshire – it will offend him, to have a rival.’

He nods: that’s the idea.

‘And young Gregory to sit – do you think he is ready? Forgive me, but your ill-wishers are bound to raise the point.’

‘The business is great. The hours are long. I do not see it as an occupation for old men.’

Riche offers papers. ‘Would you cast an eye? It is the pension list for the surrender at Shaftesbury. You always said the abbess would fight till the last ditch. But we have found a sum to buy her off.’

We should not begrudge. It is a rich house. He runs a dry quill down the list. There is the name he is looking for: Dorothea Clancey. ‘Do you know if the ladies have decided their future?’

‘Not our business, sir.’ But then Riche softens. ‘I look back fondly on our ride to Shaftesbury. I always think it a pleasure to be in your company for a day, my lord – and a privilege too. I relish to see how your lordship transacts business among all sorts and conditions of people. I am the better instructed, and I profit by it.’

Pleasure and profit. What could be more fitting for Richard Riche? The door is flung open. Christophe erupts into the room. ‘Look who!’

‘Call-Me!’ He opens his arms wide. The traveller, muddy from the Dover road, falls into them.

‘We lost sight of you!’ He hugs him. ‘Chapuys wrote to me from Calais – I think it was to say you were on the seas, but his words were all washed by salt water.’

‘As mine,’ Call-Me says. With his glove of red Spanish leather, he knocks a tear from his cheek; plucks off his hat, with its sweeping ostrich plume, and throws it down on the desk. ‘Sir, I cannot tell you how glad I am to see your face. Twice or thrice I made sure I was dead. I did not know what to wish for – that the king would fall in love with Chapuys and hold him till my escape, or that he would boot him into a boat, so I might start for home.’

‘It was the time between that we feared.’ Rafe is standing in the doorway. ‘When you were dissolved – neither here, nor there, nor in Heaven nor on earth.’ He crosses the room, and kisses the hero’s cheek. ‘Welcome home, Call-Me.’

Riche is looking at them puzzled: as if they were a tribe of Indians, at some feast of theirs.

‘Oh, and the knave Phillips!’ Call-Me exclaims: as if he must get it over. ‘Sir, you could not reproach me more than I reproach myself.’

‘Be at ease,’ he says. ‘A man like Phillips is an affront to God and reason. If I had been on embassy at your age, I am sure I should have been deceived, if only out of zeal for my country’s good.’

Riche says peevishly, ‘My lord would rather have Wyatt safe home than you. Wyatt has things to tell him.’

‘Oh?’ Wriothesley says.

‘Schemes for how we might set Italy in a roar,’ Riche says. ‘In Toledo he has the envoys of all nations in and out of his lodging and he spins them like a whipping top. Venice goes out of the back door, Ferrara comes in the front, while Mantua hides under the table and a Florentine up the chimney. He hears so many intrigues he says his skull is splitting. But he will not spill the facts except in secret to my lord.’

‘Oh,’ Wriothesley says. Richard Cromwell comes bounding in, hallooing like a houndmaster, and pounds him with his fist. Call-Me pounds him back, till Rafe says, ‘Wriothesley, go home to your wife!’

‘I should.’ Call-Me blushes. He glows. He picks up the ostrich-feather hat and sweeps the air, and catches a candle in its arc.

It is Richard Riche who steps forward and pinches out the damage. ‘Digits of iron,’ he says diffidently.

The papers from Shaftesbury lie unattended. When the boys have gone, he stands over them, moving his forefinger over the name of the cardinal’s daughter. The air smells of burning plumes. He picks up his pen and signs her off.

Within a week he hears that Mr Wriothesley has bribed or frightened one of the cipher clerks, and got the key to Wyatt’s letters. It is Rafe who tells him: sheepish, ashamed of what Call-Me has done. He himself is more amused than angry. Good luck to him, if he can disentangle the Italian schemes. Wyatt says, start fires in the Pope’s backyard. Use your money and your expertise to fan the sparks of conflict between states, then keep Rome busy quenching the blaze. It might work, he thinks. It might just as easily blow back in our faces.

He says to Rafe, ‘In the cardinal’s day, when I was his man of business and Stephen Gardiner was his secretary, I would have opened Stephen’s letters if I could.’

And where I could, I did. And I would still. And I do.

He calls in Hans: ‘Paint the Lady Mary. I need to send her likeness to the Duke of Cleves.’

‘You want this match?’ Hans says.

‘Certainly.’

‘Listen, I do not flatter.’

‘Not in my case, certainly. But you made Thomas More look congenial.’

‘I do not flatter because I dare not. The king relies on me. But if I paint our little shrew faithfully, Wilhelm will take fright. Therefore I cannot see the advantage for me in this commission, or how it could end well.’

‘You would not refuse to paint the king’s daughter, surely? You will find a way, Hans.’

‘People say, when all offers for Mary have failed, she will turn to Cromwell.’

‘That is nonsense.’ He thinks, she hates me: can Hans not see this? ‘You speak as if she is an ancient lady. She is, what, twenty-two, twenty-three?’

‘She looks more. Her prospects oppress her.’ Hans laughs.

It is true it would not be easy for a stranger to guess Mary’s age. Sometimes she looks like a pallid child, sometimes like an old woman. There will be a sweet moment, he thinks, half an hour on some ordinary afternoon, when she looks like herself.

At Greenwich this Easter he watches Mary; he knows the court is watching him, watching her. She has recently bought a hundred pearls, and has spent three hundred pounds on clothes for the feast. In yellow damask and purple taffeta, she plays with the little prince. She takes a hand at cards, plays the virginals, gossips with her ladies, and rides out into the fresh air as the winter relaxes its grip.

When the Courtenays and Poles were arrested, the king had his daughter’s household questioned. She was asked to hand over her letters from Chapuys, and was able to supply a bundle, empty in content; the ambassador had written them specially, at a hint from him, and lent them various dates. If Mary had claimed to have received no letters, the king would have suspected she had burned them. Which he is quite sure she has.

Mary can play such a game as this, needing no explanations. But the week of the beheadings, the king had to send her Dr Butts, who found her so faint she could hardly stand.

She will miss Chapuys, no doubt. But it is spring, and at court her father makes a fuss of her. He, Lord Cromwell, escorts her to watch the tennis play. He says, looking sideways at her, ‘I hear Duke Wilhelm is very handsome.’

‘That does not weigh,’ she says equably.

‘No, but better than the other thing. By the way, do not let people tell you he is a Lutheran.’

The balls whistle across the court. ‘My lord Cromwell,’ she says, ‘I don’t let anybody tell me anything.’

The king’s Easter pieties are as fervent as any papist could wish. Good Friday saw him shuffling to the crucifix on his knees. The German envoys are aghast. If this is what he does at Easter, what will he do on Ascension Day? As Christ rises bodily to Heaven, will your king have himself hoisted on a rope and pulley? Will he bask among the goddesses on his ceiling, till at Whitsuntide he descends in the form of a dove?

He, Lord Cromwell, is planning his own Ascension Day. He has devised a new order of precedence for the realm, to be enacted by Parliament. From now on, it is not your noble and ancient blood that will place you in the hierarchy. It is what job you do for the king. The king’s Vicegerent – that’s him – outranks the bench of bishops. The king’s Secretary, once created a baron, outranks all barons. If the Lord Privy Seal was born a commoner, he can still sit higher than a duke. Christophe says, ‘If all your offices were counted, you should have a ladder on a chair, and a ladder on that, and a throne perched up in the clouds, to look down on Norferk and the foes, and spit on them.’

Thomas Howard does not lose under the new scheme, but he can still grumble about the elevation of others. ‘As for Gardineur,’ Christophe says, ‘who is only a little bishop, he will gnash his teeth right out of his head.’

Under a painted ceiling, under a hard marbled sky, he sits putting together his programme for Parliament. The last of the monasteries will go down and the king will begin to found colleges and cathedrals in their stead. There will be devices for poor relief and the defence of the realm, and a device for unity in religion: what form it will take, he hardly knows, but the king wants it.

His daughter writes at last from Antwerp. Things are difficult here, I might come to England if you will receive me? He writes to her, trust to Stephen Vaughan for help. Though our ambassadors have come home, Vaughan stays in Antwerp as head of the English merchants. He will arrange your passage.

If she comes she will be in danger, and a source of danger too. The king has made it clear that certain sectaries must avoid his realm. He can ask for her discretion. Can he ask her to dissimulate? He has asked it of others. He says to himself, if Cranmer can hide a wife, surely I can hide a daughter. He has many houses, and is always getting more. When you look at him these days you think of Jupiter, planet of increase.

One morning after Easter he wakes with a heavy, aching head, his neck stiff. He cannot eat, goes out on an empty stomach to the council meeting. The king will not preside today. Henry is at his manor house at Oatlands, which he is planning to rebuild. Then perhaps he will go on to Nonsuch, to see what progress Rafe is making.

The council is waiting. He drops his papers at his place. ‘Couldn’t you get on without me?’

Fitzwilliam says, ‘It is more that we dare not.’

‘You are out of humour, my lord Southampton. Is your guest tormenting you? Lady Salisbury cannot be easy. I promise I will take her away to the Tower.’

‘I have been asking you to do that since Christmas. And you need not guess at the cause of my humour. I am not a woman. Ask me and I will tell you.’

Perhaps Fitz is jealous of his new offices? Captain of the Isle of Wight. Constable of Leeds Castle. Or perhaps someone has dropped a word of poison in his ear: Lord Cromwell doubts your commitment to the gospel.

Lord Audley says, ‘Shall we get to the agenda? Letters come from my lord Norfolk –’

He lets Audley thrash through the duke’s latest complaints, while he pins Fitzwilliam with his gaze. You would think Fitz is doing well enough: an earl, and Lord Admiral. Perhaps, he thinks, he is jealous because I have a son I can put into the Parliament. And Fitz has not.

Presently, under his scrutiny, Fitzwilliam grows upset and spills his papers. A little clerk has to fall to his knees and weave around their feet like a cat. Gardiner laughs out loud. He says, ‘Glad to see you merry, Winchester.’

His head is pounding. As the meeting rises, Audley says, ‘Now don’t be late again, my lord. We are the fellowship of the Round Table, you know, and that chair of yours is the Siege Perilous. It stood empty for ten thousand years, till Lord Cromwell came to fill it.’

Next day he cannot get out of bed. He tries to say his prayers, but all he can recall is a sermon Latimer preached, on a hot July day, it would be the summer Anne Boleyn came down. But God will come, God will come, he will not tarry long away. He will come upon such a day as we nothing look for him, and such an hour as we know not. He will come and cut us in pieces.

By the time Dr Butts arrives, he is able to give an account of himself. He has been at the Sadlers’ house, and the children have come out with measles, is it possible …? Old women claim you only have it once.

Butts frowns. ‘If it is the measles we will soon know, but you must stay away from court.’

This infection kills children but he does not think it will kill him. He has his papers brought in. By noon he is working. By next day he is ready to go out, his entourage assembled, his papers in hand. But then he sits down, and does not feel he will get up again. He is transfixed, watching his old enemy emerge from the mist. You would think he would recognise his Italian fever by now. ‘Parliament will be meeting,’ he says, ‘and I must …’ His sentence tails off. Already weakness like tepid water is trickling through his limbs. He hands his papers to Richard. ‘Will you get a message to the king? No – go in person. Ride where he is. Tell him I will see him soon.’

The shivering begins. He has a clerk follow him to his room, and dictates letters until the trembling means he has to clench his jaw: and even then, between spasms, he is able to dictate.

Anne Boleyn used to say to him, ‘You are only ill when you want to be.’ How wrong she was.

In the first access of the fever, it is George Boleyn who is lurking behind the door. There is a noise, low conversation or insects, perhaps a fly banging its head and cannot get out, buzz buzz against the pane. He sees the door is ajar. George will slide through it: perhaps on the bolster, already soaked with sweat, he will lay his blind and weeping head.

The doctors say, ‘You know the procedure, my lord. Bed rest and small beer.’

And the pungent remedies, that never do any good, but when you are lucid and can hold yourself up, you swallow them, because it cheers up the people around you.

‘I want Wriothesley,’ he says, ‘where is he?’

‘He has gone down to Hampshire, sir, to prepare for his election.’

‘Norfolk will be back for the Parliament. He will make speeches. What shall I do?’

‘Sir, this fever was, before parliaments were thought of.’

This fever was before the Bible was written, in English, Latin or Greek. It was before the Table was round, before Troy burned. It destroyed folk before the Flood, and afflicted the first men when they were exiled from paradise. Abel was weak from a bout, and that is how Cain slew him.

His whole body aches. His eyes swim. He hears timbers creaking about him, like the timbers of a ship under sail, and he thinks he is back at Austin Friars, and his wife is still alive. He thinks of himself flying through the hours of darkness, reassembling himself on his bed: as they say the home of the Virgin Mary flew to Italy, and rebuilt itself among people who appreciate it.

But when morning comes and they open the shutter – the light in his eyes like a knife – they say, no, you are still here at St James’s. But anything you want, we can go and fetch it.

He thinks, where did I go? I was travelling all night.

He sits up. ‘Today I shall work.’ One day the fever rages, next it abates, next it rises. Soon he will have gone through the full cycle. He can sit up in a chair, but he has no illusions, he has not seen the worst. If I am going to die, he thinks, there are papers that ought to be destroyed. But then if I live, inconvenience will ensue. Surely death will give me notice. We have met before. He should not be churlish like a stranger.

The doctors say, ‘In extremity, who would you like?’

He stares. ‘Who would I like?’

‘The Bishop of Worcester? The Archbishop of Canterbury?’

‘Oh, I see. A confessor. Not Gardiner. If he saw me on my deathbed he would tip me out of it, so I should die on the floor.’

He goes through his work at double speed. Instructions for Mr Sadler, soon to lead a mission to Scotland. A letter to Wyatt, to say the king has named his replacement. He asks his French secretary to come in. ‘Nothing from Paris today? Letters from Edmund Bonner?’

He signals for a basin and vomits neatly. He stares at what his body has produced. ‘What do we hear of the Venetians?’

The fleet is manoeuvring, was the last information; they are preparing a power against the Turk. The German princes are meeting in Frankfurt: any dispatches?

Sir, they say, we will bring you every letter as soon as it comes in, but you must go back to bed now. Your malady rushes on you fast.

When he was a boy in Putney he used to pick up coins from the mud of the foreshore. They were thin and worn and bore the features of monarchs almost erased. You could not spend the money; it was not even good to clink in your hand. All you could do was put it in a box and wonder about it. If so many coins are washed up, how many does the river conceal, in its channels and deeps? A treasury of princes, squinting up at the hazy light, each with a spoiled single eye, like Francis Bryan. He lifts his head. ‘How is Francis? Is he still alive? I forget.’

‘Oh yes, my lord,’ they say. ‘Sir Francis is still with us, he made a recovery both from his illness and the king’s displeasure. As we trust you will too.’

His displeasure! I am sure I have displeased him, he thinks. Look how he steamed and glared, that day I took a holiday. Look how he pawed the ground and rolled his eyes. This is what Henry does. He uses people up. He takes all they give him and more. When he is finished with them he is noisier and fatter and they are husks or corpses.

He is not sure if he has spoken aloud. But he knows that he is in his barge, his flag flying. He can feel the river moving beneath, and Bastings conveying him to some further shore. In his fever he thinks Becket is back in his niche above the water at Lambeth Palace. Bastings says, I told you he would return. Man and boy I have been saluting him, my father before me.

Nonsense, he says. Becket is in the cellar locked in a box. If I die, fire my bones from a cannon. I should like to see Gardiner’s face!

Next day he sends courteous messages to the new Frenchman, Marillac. Ambassador Castillon is back home, but the new man has already seen the king at Greenwich. He is uneasy about what has passed while he has been in the grip of his malady; besides, he would like to hear any news from Persia or the east, which the French always get before we do.

On the day when the fever abates, you measure the hours and you live in dread; it is coming, inexorable as nightfall. Shuddering, stricken, he is helped back to bed, just as they are bringing in word that envoys have arrived from Cleves: they are here in London, they are asking for Cromwell right now. He is burning with heat like an armourer’s shop; he is in the forge, he is ash. His father Walter comes in and shouts, you fool of a boy, if you don’t caulk the bellows how am I to get a blaze?

You fool of a father, he shouts back. Don’t you think it’s hot enough?

But once you have been in Italy you can never really get warm. The English sun has half a heart, it flickers and lurks, it sinks when you least expect it: then comes the autumn, the warm and smoky rain.

Once he was at Launde Abbey, in the cardinal’s service. Launde is lush pastureland, it is quiet, only the murmur of bees over the herb garden and the drone of prayer. It is summer, and he sits at ease in an arbour, talking with the brethren. Brother Urban holds a gillyflower. He speaks of the Holy Ghost. Fleecy clouds sail above.

Now he is at Launde in winter. The trees are silver, and a cold sun shines from a clear sky. He is tramping, Brother Thomas Frisby at his side, the snow crunching under his boots, his blood singing in his veins. All around, scattering from the misted eye, the tracks of small birds and animals, cut into white like some code or lost alphabet. God sees them, two black figures under enamelled blue.

Then with a yell, Frisby disappears. In a hollow on his back he thrashes, and he, the cardinal’s man, plunges to the rescue. He shouts and heaves, the world sliding under his feet, and snow flies about him like feathers. Frisby’s shape cuts deep into the white, his habit spread; he stretches out his arms, his feet scrabble for purchase, he grunts, flounders, curses – then he, Thomas, has him on his feet, the monk’s eyes screwed up against the glare, his nose red, his laughter ringing in the air. They embrace, snow sliding from their cloaks; grace seeps through them like aqua vitae, as they haul each other towards the abbey and the sound of bells.

The Prior of Launde is standing over him, with the face of Dr Butts. ‘By the Mass,’ he says, ‘I have never known a living man so chilled.’ Another minute, and he will be a block of ice. He thinks, they will be able to put me in a cellar and chip from me all summer. They can stir me into crushed strawberries with elderberry wine.

He wakes: tentative at first, his hand creeping over the sheets. He is not at Launde at all. They have piled so many blankets on him that he resembles a blockhouse or fortification. I could stop the Turks, he mutters.

He sits up. He signals for a drink. They have lit candles. He thinks, I wonder what happened to Frisby? He cannot be any great age. I will have Launde, when the abbot surrenders it: Launde for myself. I shall go and live there when all this is over. I shall be Lord Cromwell at home. In summer I shall sit in the arbour. In winter I shall walk on the ice.

There is a letter from Melanchthon. There is another from the Duke of Saxony. They come in and say, ‘My lord, Master Gregory is here, ridden hard from Sussex.’

Gregory comes and stands at the foot of his bed. He looks at his father. ‘Christ,’ he says.

He says, ‘Oh, God help us Gregory, don’t tell me I am wasted and wan. It will take more than a bout of this ague to part me from my life. They should not have disturbed you.’

Gregory says, ‘I was coming up anyway. For the Parliament.’

He says, ‘Richard Riche was right. You are too young.’

‘He said that?’ Gregory is amused.

He says, ‘Gregory, after Jane died, you asked me, who will you let the king marry next?’

Our sweet Jane. A tear rolls from his cheek. His folk run about in a panic. ‘My lord is crying!’ Naturally, they have not seen it before.

He wipes the tear away. ‘I have letters out of Germany. My clerks are making translations now. The princes have given their word in our favour. For a marriage into Cleves, for the king. Now bring me, will you, ink and paper?’

‘You are not able,’ his son says.

He says, ‘Gregory, I must use my time. I have less than twenty-four hours.’ Before my bargemaster rows me again, and dips me in the river Styx.

But it is some time till he returns to business: a night, a day, a night. He has gone down to Putney. For some time – now he is fourteen, fifteen – he has been hanging about at the Williamses’ house in Mortlake. His sister Kat has married into these respectable folk, and they say, ‘Young Thomas, he’s a clean biddable lad: writes a fair hand, good with figures, steady around horses, and not too proud to chop firewood or swill out the yard. Anybody would have him apprentice, and be glad of him.’

They talk about him as if they were selling him.

‘Poor little lad,’ a woman says. ‘Walter knocks him about. But then you know what Walter is.’

The Williamses know nothing of the imperatives of your life, as you lead it now. They know nothing of the tangle of Putney feuds, the network of obligations to fight and win that has ensnared you since you could walk: sure as any duke, you have honour, honour must be served. The Williamses are good people, and that protects them from the need that gnaws you: the need for everything you haven’t got and they’ll never want.

The Williamses say, ‘We could get the boy a place. There’s Arthur Whatyoucallit, over Esher way. He wants a lad.’

He cannot bear it, this place he will get. He cannot be Arthur’s lad, over Esher way. He has to be some other lad, that would make Esher quake.

The time he spends with his sister, it gets him out of Walter’s way, but then again it allows the eel boy to arm his band. Since he was seven years old the eel boy has been his enemy. He does not know how the feud began. But he remembers dipping the eel boy’s head in a barrel, holding him under till the bugger nearly drowned.

Now when he goes swaggering home, the eel boy and his friends are waiting. ‘Oy,’ they call. ‘Oy, Put-an-edge-on-it.’

They call him that because Walter grinds knives. They sing when they see him:

‘I lay ten year in Newgate

Methought I lay too long:

My whoreson fetters hurt me sore,

My fetters were too strong.’

They call out, ‘You Irish bastard, that go in a bald dogskin!’

Is Walter Irish? He denies it, but you wouldn’t put it past him.

They shout, ‘You killed your mother when you were born. She couldn’t stand to look at you, out you slid and she cut her throat.’

His sister Kat says, ‘Don’t listen to them. That’s not what occurred.’

He calls back, ‘You devil’s turd, eel boy, are you tired of life?’

Eel boy calls, ‘I’ll dint you, craphead.’

‘When?’ he says.

‘Saturday night?’

‘I’ll skin and salt you, and fry you in a pan.’

So then he has to do it.

Saturday night you chased him uphill. By then you had created a deep fear in his heart, by messages transmitted through acquaintances of yours. If eel boy thinks (and he has had days to think) he will recall that he has lost every bout he has fought with you. He can’t fight history, so he runs, because what else can he do? He could stand on the high road, and offer his hand: but then, Thomas Craphead would slice his fingers off.

If he runs to his uncle’s warehouse, eel boy believes, he’ll escape you. He’ll go charging past the watchman at the gate, who will bustle up and strong-arm you, ‘Crummel, what do you here?’

But there is no watchman tonight, as you well know. When you issued out, Walter and his mates were an hour into strong ale. He’s a beast of a brewer, but he keeps back the best for his crew. And it’s Wilkin the Watch who sticks his face out of the room: ‘Drink with us, Thomas?’

He says, ‘I’m going to church.’

Wilkin retreats, withdraws his slack glistening face. From behind the door, rollicking song: By Cock, ye make me spill my ale …

You walk, under the waning moon. Only when you sight eel boy do you break into a trot, an easy pace that will take you unwinded to your destination. When you enter the yard he is not in sight. But there is no one to stop you following him into the darkness, into the undercroft, where under deep vaulting, behind chests and boxes stamped with the devices of alien cities and their trading guilds, eel boy has burrowed in.

You think of the home you left. You wonder where Walter and his mates have got to with their song. With its refrains and variations they can draw it out an hour or more. Walter likes to take the lass’s part, squealing as she is backed against the wall: Let go I say …

Then the men chorus: Abide awhile! Why have ye haste? and mime pulling their breeches down.

Luckily, when they sing this song, there is never an actual woman in the room.

Down in the cellars your eyes have adjusted to the gloom. You want to laugh. You can hear the rasp of the boy’s breath. You move towards him, and you let him know that you know exactly where he is. ‘You might as well wave a flag,’ you call.

You halt. If you stand longer (and you have the patience) he will begin to cry. Beg.

Let go I say …

And if you stand longer still, he might die of fright: which would save a mess on the floor. You take the knife out. Can he see you? The only light is from a high barred window, and it is not so much light as an alleviation of the murk. Not much point his uncle barring the window, is there, if Wilkin rolls out and leaves the door unlocked? You remark on this. ‘Go on,’ you call, ‘agree with me.’ His breath now sounds like three cats in a sack.

Eel boy was only ever brave with his cousins and brothers about him. ‘Now you shit yourself,’ you tell him: his calm instructor, his guide.

When you move the crate (you are strong, as the Williamses say) you see his face, blank and white as a sheet stretched on a hedge. It must provide its own pallid light, because you look straight into his eyes. You are surprised by his expression. ‘You look glad to see me,’ you say. He steps forward, as if in greeting, and in one smooth unhesitating action, offering his soft belly, he impales himself on the blade.

It’s the sudden heat that shocks you, the contaminating swill across the stone. You bend and pull out the knife. Something comes with it: a loop of his tripes. Your first thought is for the blade. You wipe it on your own jerkin, an efficient action, one-two. You don’t look down: but you feel him at your feet, a lumpen mess. At once you offer a prayer.

You bend down stiffly, like an old man. Perhaps you accede too readily to the idea that he is dead, but you close his eyes, reaching down into the pool of darkness. You do it delicately, as a virgin might finger fruit. If the pool of gore appears modest, it is because his bulk is hiding it. But when you shift him, flopping him over, you see the neatness with which he is pierced.

You cannot guess later what makes you decide to move him. Perhaps you thought he was not dead but pretending. Though what quality of pretence does it take, to let your eyelids be pressed shut?

Later you comprehend nothing of your choices that night. Thomas Craphead was in charge, his arms and legs working independently of his soul. So you dragged eel boy, his red head bumping along, sedate. Your pace is necessarily slow: Abide awhile, why have ye haste? Outside, it is warmer than in the cellar. The street is empty, till you see the watchman, heading home. His walk is the purposeful sway of a man in drink, still hoping to pass as an upright citizen: ask him, and he’ll say he’s swaying like that just for fun. ‘Straight as a …’ the old sot shouts. He has baffled himself; he can’t think what is straight. ‘Put-an-edge-on-it! You’re out late.’

He’s forgotten he saw you earlier. That he invited you to a bench at his song school.

Wilkin blinks: ‘Who’s yon?’

‘Eel boy,’ you say. No point pretending.

‘By Cock, he’s had a skinful! Taking him home? Good lad. Got to look out for your friends. Want a hand?’

Wilkin heaves, and vomits at his own feet. ‘Clean that up,’ you say. ‘Go on, Wilkin, or I’ll rub your head in it.’

Suddenly you are outraged: as if the only thing that matters is to keep the streets clean.

‘Shog off,’ Wilkin says. Glassy-eyed, he lurches away. You watch him go. He is heading in the direction, vaguely, of his place of work. You can’t resist it: you shout after him, ‘Don’t forget to lock up.’

You could, if you had a friend to help you, put the boy in the water. If dead he will sink, if alive he will … sink. It is a still night, there is no sound from the river, and you feel he would slip down the bank, frictionless, unresisting as if oiled, and go into the Thames with a whisper. You can see it: how the surface simply slides away from him, like a bored glance.

But you can’t do that. It’s not compunction. It’s that strength has flowed out of you. You take out your knife from its sheaf. You give it another wipe on your sleeve. Truly, you would not know it had seen action. You put it back. You feel a powerful impulse to lie down beside eel boy and sleep.

When you get back, Walter and his boys are still bellowing. You are astonished. You thought it was three in the morning. You expected dowsed lights, shutters, padlocks. But there they are, still roaring away: Come kiss me! Nay! By God ye shall …

The door opens. ‘Thomas? Where been?’

You don’t answer.

Walter sounds as outraged as you were, when Wilkin fouled the highway. ‘Don’t you turn your back on me!’

‘Christ, no,’ you say. ‘He’d be a fool and short-lived, that did that.’

Walter raises his hand. But something – perhaps his own unsteadiness, perhaps something in your eye – makes him back off. ‘I’ll be right with you, lads,’ he shouts.

They’ve reached the part where they rape the maid. Walter will be required to imitate her cries. Now have ye laid me on the floor …

Walter’s eyes are bulging. He points. ‘Thee, Thomas, in the morning.’

‘Thee anytime. Now?’

The knife is next to your heart: ready for use. Though you could lie down and slumber. You could fall at his feet: Father, I have sinned …

‘Walt!’ some dolt roars. ‘Come back in!’ Out rolls the squinting knave and claps his father’s shoulder, lays hold of him by the collar. The door slams. He watches the place where his father isn’t. From behind the door, a flurry of shrieks, as the maiden cries for her mother.

One day soon he will be indefeasible. One day he will drag Walt into the light of day, and fell him in common view, the good folk of Putney watching: and if they care to come from Mortlake and Wimbledon, they will find it worth their while.

‘Father, I am ready,’ says Noah’s son in the play. Axe have I, by this crown, as sharp as any in all this town. I have a hatchet, wonder keen, To bite well, as may be seen …

Then Noah and his sons make a ship. And sail forth, on God’s tide.

In his fever, he thinks the Archbishop of Canterbury arrives. Cranmer, not Becket: even so, it might have been a dream. When he sits up, ‘John Husee is without,’ they say. He groans. He has a band of negotiators working on the purchase of Lisle’s property at Painswick. Lisle bleats they have neither heart nor conscience, but what does he expect? They’re lawyers.

Lisle wants special treatment, from high and low. He has owed the king money for ten years, and humble men too. He owes his grocer, Blagge. The drapers Jasper and Tong supply him no longer. People in the city complain to him about Lord Lisle’s debts, as if he ought to pay them.

Help me out of bed, he says. He sits in a chair, wrapped up against April. ‘Give out that I am better. Is Norfolk back for the Parliament? And Suffolk? Is Mr Wriothesley come up? And is Gregory here?’

‘Master Gregory has been and gone away again.’

He has missed St George’s Day, the chapter of the Garter. The recent executions have opened vacancies among the knights. They tell him William Kingston has been elected, an honour long deserved.

He says, how stands Bishop Gardiner? Has he fallen in with the king, or out with the king, these few days while I have been lying sick?

Christophe says, ‘Gardineur – what does he know, sir?’

‘Less than he thinks.’

‘You are sharp this morning,’ Christophe says. ‘But in your fever you groaned and said, “Stephen Gardineur knows.”’

Stephen went down to Putney. He truffled about in the mud. He said, Cromwell, I know more of you than your mother knows. I know more about your past than you know yourself.

‘And is Thomas Boleyn truly dead?’ he asks. ‘Or did I dream it?’

‘As dead as his daughter.’

In the access of his fever he had seen Anne the queen, walking to the scaffold, the wind pawing her. He heard her final prayer, ripped away from her lips, and he saw the veiled women who steadied her for the headsman: saw them step away, and lift the hems of their garments clear.

Gregory comes back once he hears he is awake. Gregory Cromwell, member of Parliament: grass-green velvet with a curling black feather in his cap. He says, ‘Father, the new French ambassador and the new Imperial ambassador visit each other every day. They walk with their arms linked, billing like turtle doves. But what we hear is, the traitor Pole finds cold entertainment with the Emperor.’

Reginald Pole cannot understand why Charles does not place the conquest of England at the top of his list. Charles tells him wearily, I am only human. And there is only one of me. And I can only lead one army at a time. Any season, I must be ready against the Turks.

But the Turks are the enemy without, Pole pleads. And the English the enemy within. Should they not be dealt with first?

Charles says, ‘Bless you, Monsieur Polo: if we wake tomorrow and the Turk is at the gates of Vienna, will you say the enemy is within, or without?’

In this Parliament we will have a bill of attainder against Pole’s mother and against Gertrude Courtenay. They will be named traitors without need of further trial. He, the Lord Privy Seal, limps to the Parliament house and shows the silent assembly a figured vestment found in the possession of Margaret, Countess of Salisbury. It quarters the arms of England with a pansy for Pole and a marigold for the Lady Mary, signifying their union; between them grows a Tree of Life. It was turned out of Margaret’s coffers, he asserts, by those sent to search her houses. He says, I always maintained that embroidery would get her into trouble.

Margaret Pole is moved to the Tower. The king is pleased to spare her life, for now. He thinks of all the times Margaret neglected to give him his title, making him plain Master Cromwell. She sees who is the master now.

He dreams of a disembodied self walking in deep woods. There are mirrors set among the trees.

When he drags himself to where the king is, papers in hand, he finds Gardiner there first. Gardiner says, ‘You look very ill, Cromwell. There is a rumour flying around that you are dead.’

‘Well,’ he says modestly. ‘As you see, Stephen.’

The king says, ‘I am feeling better myself. Is this inconvenience over, do you suppose?’

The fever, he means: the waves of nausea, the racking aches, the raging headache. ‘Majesty, I have some news from Cleves.’

He waits for the king to dismiss Stephen. But Henry only says, ‘Yes?’

‘I know the Bishop of Winchester has much in hand. Perhaps he would like to continue his day?’

But Henry makes no sign. Stephen seems to puff up, like a toad.

Deliberately he turns away from him, to address the king. ‘Duke Wilhelm would like to be assured of the dower arrangements for his sister and,’ he hesitates, ‘how she would be left, if your Majesty were to pre-decease her.’

‘Why does he think that likely?’ Gardiner asks.

He keeps his eyes averted. ‘Such arrangements are comprehended in any marriage contract. You cannot be so ignorant of the wedded state that you do not know that.’

Stephen says, ‘I imagine the lady would be struck to the heart. She would care more about the loss of the king’s person, than for any worldly advantage.’

He flicks a glance at Henry: he sees he is entranced by the bishop’s words. ‘That is why a bride’s kin make the contract, and in advance. So when she is new-widowed she does not weep herself out of her rights.’

Henry says, ‘I am known for generosity. Duke Wilhelm will find nothing to complain of.’

‘There is another matter,’ he says, reluctant. ‘Our man Wotton is writing to your Majesty. A little over ten years ago, a marriage was proposed between the Lady Anna and the heir of the Duke of Lorraine. Now –’

‘But that business was raised last year,’ Henry says. ‘When the contract was drawn the parties were but ten and twelve years old. No contract holds good until they affirm it, having reached a fit age. Therefore I see no impediment to our union. Why is the matter brought up again? I see the Emperor’s hand in it. He is determined I shall not wed.’

‘All the same, we had better see the paperwork,’ Gardiner says.

‘It seems to me,’ he says, ‘that Cleves would never have offered the Lady Anna if she were not completely free.’

Gardiner is stubborn. ‘I would like to see articles of revocation.’

‘It is my understanding that the marriage contract was written into a larger text, which was not formally revoked because it was part of a treaty of friendship and mutual aid …’ He closes his eyes. ‘I will ask someone to write it all down for you, Gardiner.’

‘And bring it before the whole council. Or it would be unsafe to go any further.’

‘Unsafe?’ Henry stares at him. He seems to be disputing his choice of word.

‘Unwise,’ Gardiner concedes.

‘In any event,’ he says, ‘though the king prefers Lady Anna, as being the elder and of meeter age, if there did prove to be an impediment, there is nothing against the Lady Amelia. And – here is good news – they are able to provide likenesses.’

Gardiner says, ‘I wonder where they found those, all of a sudden. I thought Cranach was ill.’

‘Perhaps he has powers of recovery,’ he says, ‘like me.’

‘How old are they?’

‘The princesses?’

‘The portraits,’ Gardiner says.

‘Recent, I am assured.’

‘But if our envoys have not seen either lady, how shall they swear to the likeness?’

‘They have in fact seen them,’ he says. ‘But they were somewhat cloaked and veiled.’

‘I wonder why?’

Henry says, ‘You see! Would not this delight the Emperor? Division among my councillors? Contention and strife?’

He and Gardiner face each other. The bishop is not there to discuss the king’s marriage. He’s there on God’s business, or so he would claim. The king wishes to make an act of Parliament to abolish diversity in opinion: by which he means, the expression of opinion. Gardiner has come to push him on six articles of faith laid before Convocation: to persuade the king to the Roman line, body and blood.

There is no doubt, his sickness has set back the cause of the gospel – his brothers too afraid and too disunited, without him, to present a firm front. Norfolk has placed a sycophant in the Commons as Mr Speaker. In the Lords, the duke himself crusades, bringing to the table these six articles and wrangling about them with every confidence – though he knows as much theology as a gatepost. Gardiner has whipped in the bishops who stick by ancient doctrine, and they conspire together from breakfast to supper, talking like rank papists and raising their glasses to toast old times. While the Lord Privy Seal is sweating in his sickbed, while he is writing letters all over Europe searching out allies and friends, while he is occupied in finding nearly fifteen hundred pounds a day to pay and victual the mariners who man the ships at Portsmouth – his enemies have stolen past him, and by the end of the Parliament, they will have six articles passed into law.

The king says, ‘My lord Cromwell, if that is all –?’

He bows himself out. Culpeper is attending; the boy slides up to him: ‘You need a seat, my lord? A cup of wine?’

He needs to hit somebody. He waves the boy back. When he gets home he is shaking with fatigue. He has forgotten how much bruising energy it takes to confront Stephen Gardiner. He throws his papers down. ‘Ask the German guests to come and see me. We will plan a feast. Send Thurston up.’

He talks as if his illness is behind him, but he knows it has not run its course. He prays the fever will weaken itself through successive bouts. It is vital that this summer he is by the king’s side, so he must be fit for long days of hunting. Every absent day he loses advantage. If kings do not see you they forget you. Even though nothing in the realm is done without you, kings think they do it all themselves.

Still: I am Vicegerent, he tells himself. I, not Stephen, am Chief Secretary and Lord Privy Seal. I am first in the king’s council and first in his estimation, and I am well able to wimble holes in the bottom of papist boats. Every day now is Ascension Day. However much Thomas Howard mislikes the scriptures, there will soon be Bibles enough for every parish: and I standing at the king’s side, handing them out. As for Gardiner, what does he truly understand, of the king’s mind and temper? What does he know of the revenue? What does he know of the defence of the realm?

On a fine day in May, assembling at dawn, the armed might of London passes before the king at Whitehall. There are some sixteen thousand men in array, and of them he has furnished fully one-tenth himself. He had intended to ride at their head, but weakness confines him to St James’s, where he watches from the back gate: but to bear him company the king sends John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain. Gregory and Richard on their white horses ride together: faces intent, armour blazing, the Cromwell flag rippling.

In Italy, he thinks, when I was a soldier, I picked up a snake for a bet. My comrades counted slowly, one to twenty, while I tightened my grip. The snake twisted in my hand and sank its venom deep into my wrist. But I gripped the noxious beast till I pleased to let it go. I took the poison and I never died. The witnesses stuffed my pockets with their money. And God damn the man who says I didn’t earn it.

When the days are fine, and the air sweet after Evensong, the king cruises up and down the river in the royal barge and shows himself to the people, his gold pilot’s whistle around his neck, on his face a beaming smile; his musicians follow in a second barge, playing drums and fifes. The people line the bank and cheer. Whit Sunday is observed with great ceremony, as in papist days. Richard Riche spends the holiday drawing up a huge list of the king’s debts.

News comes from Spain that the Empress is dead, with her new baby. The king orders full court mourning. St Paul’s is hung with black drapes and the banners of the Holy Roman Empire. The dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk lead the ceremonies. He stands as far from Norfolk as he can, without losing sight of him, or losing precedence.

Ten bishops attend, and Stokesley leads the requiem. Stokesley looks ill, he thinks: though since he is an old crony of More’s, he should have felt invigorated by those six pernicious articles in the bill. Every parish in London tolls its bells for the Empress, the unknown lady who has never set foot here. Far into the night they clang. Bats and demons whirl in the air.

Wyatt writes from Toledo that his bags are packed, and the Inquisitors, though reluctant, will part with him. But the Emperor has gone into seclusion in a monastery, to mourn his wife, so he must wait – he means to take formal leave, not scuttle away like some churl in debt. ‘Though he probably is,’ Rafe says. ‘In debt.’

Bess Darrell writes from Allington: Cromwell, where is Wyatt? Each hour seems like a year to me.

From Italy come reports of two comets seen on one day. Suppose one comet stands for the end of the Empress: what else does He have up his sleeve, the creator of the moon and stars?

Cranmer comes to see him. ‘I am clean amazed,’ he says, ‘I am perplexed, that Parliament could set back the cause of good religion. God’s ways are very strange, to have stricken you down just at this time.’

‘You can’t fault Gardiner’s timing,’ he says. ‘Or Thomas Howard’s.’

‘I am not sure …’ Cranmer struggles. ‘That is … one cannot wholly blame …’

‘You’re not going to blame the king, are you?’

Better blame Norfolk, and bishops Gardiner, Stokesley and Sampson, than wonder aloud whether Henry is weak or duplicitous or incapable of seeing his own interest.

‘Our friends from Germany are appalled,’ Cranmer says. ‘I have to defend our master to them.’

‘How do you do that?’ he asks, interested.

‘Where was Lord Audley in this? Opening and shutting his mouth like one of those wooden idols worked by strings. And Fitzwilliam – I thought he stood your friend.’

He no longer trusts Lord Chancellor Audley. He no longer trusts Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam. Count up the bishops and perhaps ten of them are sound. This is how the king has been able to put through a bill that, among other measures, requires married priests to abandon their wives, on pain of hanging. The measure is deferred a week or two, to allow farewells.

‘What will you and Grete do?’ he asks.

‘Part. What else can we do?’

‘And your daughter?’

‘Grete will take her back to Germany.’

It would be thought a sin, in other circumstances, to put a family asunder. Cranmer says, ‘We begged the king, put the question to the universities – we begged him to search the scriptures, and find where it is forbidden, for a man to have a life companion. I cannot understand him. It is he who insists, marriage is a very high sacrament, in existence since the world began. Then why does he deny it to so many of us? Does he think we are not men, as he is a man? And also, once the bill is passed, none of us will preach on the Blessed Sacrament, its nature. We dare not. We would not know what it is safe to say, without being tripped by the law and cited for heresy.’

This is what the king calls concord: an enforced silence. Bishop Latimer and Bishop Shaxton have openly opposed the king; they cannot continue in office. Cranmer says, ‘I have thought of resigning myself. What is the use of me? Perhaps I should pack my bags and go with Grete.’

‘You told me, in a similar case, I should take heart and take the long view.’

‘How long?’ Cranmer is shaken into bluntness. ‘Till he dies? Because for all that has been said and done these ten years, if we have lost Henry now, we have lost him for ever.’

‘He is not constant in error, is he? What is written on parchment may have no effect in practice. Any ordinance, any measure, I can delay, I can –’ he hesitates over the word ‘frustrate’ – ‘I can work with it,’ he says. ‘There is scope to walk all around these new articles of faith, and ease them in this direction or that –’

‘Except one,’ Cranmer says. ‘My wife and child are not subject to loose interpretation. They are either here, or in Nuremberg. They cannot hover between.’

‘You may see Grete again. If I can get the king his bride, we may be able to hold our heads up in Europe.’

‘I doubt the marriage will be made. We are alienating our friends.’

He shrugs. ‘I am running out of ladies. And in Cleves they are not Lutherans, after all. They may find it possible to live with this new order.’

‘What about your daughter?’ Cranmer says. ‘She cannot come here now, can she? Not and keep her religion?’ He does not wait for an answer: but before the eyes of the Vicegerent, as he paces, Canterbury starts to talk himself around. He is like a man retreating from a cliff edge: in despair he thinks he will throw himself down on the rocks, but then he feels the blue air bouncing him along to perdition, he feels the wind in his lungs, he sees the gulls flying below, he is blown like a feather to the brink, and then he digs his heels in, he grabs at the sparse bent shrubs, screws up his eyes and holds tight for his life. He says, ‘You will not hear me speak against the king.’

‘No one asked you to.’ He feels cold. He wants to put his head down on the desk.

‘I cannot think he means ill, or to distress his subjects. It must be his qualms, his scruples, are genuine, and they have tormented him, perhaps, more than we know.’

‘Perhaps,’ he says.

‘He has carried knowledge that has been a burden to him. He has looked the other way. He has spared me, for one.’

‘Our rulers count up our derelictions,’ he says. ‘They may say nothing, but they keep a secret book.’

‘We know what Christ requires of us,’ Cranmer says. ‘We know what charity is, and what obedience, and we know His teaching, blessed are the peacemakers. Much though I mislike it, I see that peace is what the king intends. All good subjects will follow him.’

‘Naturally,’ he says. ‘Or suffer.’

His ill-wishers say Hugh Latimer will be hanged before Christmas. He means to prevent that. But Cranmer’s wife will be on a boat before the week is out, and there is nothing he can suggest to hold her here.

Just in case there should be any mistake – in case any fool should take the king for a papist – we have a Water Triumph. A burning June day and, well wrapped up, he stands beside the new French ambassador, explaining the spectacle. Before the eyes of king and court, a galley full of Romans fights true-born English sailors. Cardinals are cast into the Thames, splashing and screaming, while drummers beat out a victory tattoo. The sun dances, the pipes blare, the papal tiara goes bobbing downstream. ‘By St Jude!’ Marillac exclaims. ‘I trust those fellows can swim?’

‘They were handpicked,’ he says, ‘at my request.’ He sighs. ‘One has to tell people every little thing.’

The king is cheering from beneath his canopy. The dukes are thundering their appreciation. Gallants are throwing money in the Thames.

‘Still, it is a good show,’ the Frenchman says generously. A barge is fishing up the combatants from the water. ‘Their costumes I think will not be able to be used again.’ He chuckles. ‘But what does Henry care? You have made him rich, have you not?’

‘You see our navy is building,’ he says. ‘I myself will be pleased to escort you on a tour of our southern ports, if you care to ride out now the weather is better.’

A diplomatic pause. He eyes the new ambassador sideways. He is not above thirty but said to be astute: shrewd enough to quit his country some years back, when there were whispers that he favoured Luther. He went east with his cousin, who was ambassador to the Turk, and was presently made ambassador in his turn; now, whether he regards his sympathy with reform as a youthful folly, or whether François has picked him as likely to get on with Cremuel … who knows? He says, ‘We English have to put on a show for you. We do not want to be overshadowed by your last posting.’

The gallants are surging away, in the king’s wake. They are going to cross to Southwark to see a bear baited.

‘They remember you well, in Constantinople,’ Marillac says. ‘You are spoken of.’

He stifles his surprise. It will be some random Englishman, another rover called Thomas.

‘By the way,’ Marillac says, ‘officially I am not here. I have stayed away in protest.’

‘I understand. I am often in two places, or no place. And I agree it is not a seemly spectacle, though you will admit it is entertaining. You know, I miss your countryman Dinteville, he was always so gloomy he made me laugh. I thought your king might send him again.’ He adds hastily, ‘We are glad to have you, of course, that goes without saying.’

Marillac turns to look at him, astonished. ‘You have not heard? Of the great disgrace?’

He thinks back, to when the late dauphin was poisoned. ‘I understood there was some slander spoken – but the family were cleared, surely?’

‘Oh yes, as far as that goes. But there was a further scandal. The whole house is undone. Sodomy, I fear.’

His heart sinks. ‘Where is Dinteville now?’

Marillac shrugs: who cares? ‘Italy, I think.’

Murder first, then sodomy. It sounds like something Gardiner would dream up, to ruin a foe. He thinks of the ambassador, muffled in his furs, splendid as Hans painted him: the broken lute string, the skull badge he retained in his cap. He says, ‘If he were here with us today, he would be shivering, and hastening home to a good fire and spiced wine.’

Marillac laughs. ‘We are well able for the weather. So, shall we row across and see the bear?’

When Parliament closes and before the court disperses, the king orders a dinner. Cranmer is to give it: he is to hold it at Lambeth Palace; Norfolk is to attend, and Stephen Gardiner; Cranmer is to do his office as archbishop, and reconcile all parties, sitting them down in amity and feeding them junkets.

It is the beginning of a hot summer, much drier than in recent years – you would say almost a drought, if it did not tempt Heaven to drench you. It seems sometimes as if it has been raining ever since the cardinal came down.

They are not far into the dinner when Gardiner accuses him of murder. The talk has turned to Rome, and to the city’s monuments and squares, its faded glories. ‘You were there when Cardinal Bainbridge died,’ Gardiner says, wiping his mouth. ‘Interesting, that.’ He says to the guests at large, ‘It was given out that one of the cardinal’s household poisoned him.’

He leans forward: ‘You know different, do you?’

Along the board, knives are set down; guests stop chewing to listen. Gardiner turns to Wriothesley; he’s young, he doesn’t know these things. ‘They arrested a priest, name of Rinaldo. They crushed his legs till the marrow seeped out – which does throw doubt on the coherence of his confession.’

He – the Lord Privy Seal – sits back and surveys Gardiner. He knows he is baiting him, and that he must not take the bait. ‘It’s twenty-five years, Stephen. Most of the people who know about it are dead.’

‘Bainbridge took ill at the dinner table,’ Gardiner says. ‘A powder in his broth.’

‘Yes,’ Norfolk says helpfully. ‘Like when Bishop Fisher was poisoned. When the cook was boiled alive.’

A murmur of distaste runs around the table. ‘We are losing our appetites,’ the Lord Chancellor objects.

‘The powder was bought in Spoleto,’ Stephen says. ‘I know the shop.’

He laughs. ‘And does the shop know you?’

Norfolk says, ‘What would be the rate for a murder among the Romans? Because this priest, Rinaldo … I suppose somebody fee’d him?’

‘Naturally,’ Gardiner says. ‘Bishop Gigli.’

He can see Norfolk’s memory working. He’s chewing the name, as if it were overcooked: Gigli, Silvestro Gigli. ‘Bishop of Worcester,’ Norfolk bursts out. ‘Wolsey’s crony.’

‘Exactly,’ Stephen says. ‘Wolsey’s chief friend in Rome. Once Bainbridge was removed, Wolsey was clear to be the next English cardinal.’

There is a silence: which he breaks, signalling to a boy for more wine. ‘Half the city wanted Bainbridge dead. The French hated him. The Florentines hated him. And he was in debt.’

‘You saw the books?’ Gardiner says. ‘Who let you in?’

The capons come in and the carvers do their office. In Rome, at the Pope’s table, the carver holds the meat skewered and swipes slices from it in mid-air; it lends an air of crisis to the mildest repast. He, Lord Cromwell, puts down his cup and turns to the guests, opening his hands, smiling: ‘I always assumed the Pope’s master of ceremonies killed Bainbridge. He hated him because he was English and was always genuflecting out of his place, or turning up with the wrong type of crozier. The Curia thought he was a barbarian.’

Cranmer, at the head of the table, is fidgeting. ‘How were you in Rome, my lord Cromwell?’

‘Private business. I didn’t know Wolsey then.’

Gardiner says balefully, ‘You always knew Wolsey.’

It was Corpus Christi, 15 June, when Bainbridge ate the broth and was seized with colic. The doctors purged him, and he was well enough to go out to supper that night. Would he want to miss the Cretan wine, the caviar, at Cardinal Carretto’s house?

Next day Bainbridge was raging about as usual and kicking the servants. It was not till 14 July he collapsed and died. They arrested the priest Rinaldo because Bainbridge was known to have struck him in public, and they saw he had a grievance.

After three days of torment in the papal dungeons, Rinaldo managed to get hold of a knife. He stabbed himself ineptly, though he did a better job than Geoffrey Pole. It took him a day or two to die, and then the Romans hanged his corpse in public. Before they quartered it, he saw it dangling – he, Cremuello the oltramarino, giovane inglese. Rinaldo had labels tied to his feet stating his crime. He had confessed that Gigli gave him fifteen ducats to kill his master, but that detail was not written on the labels. It would have blown a hole in the Vatican’s wall of secrecy. Bishops and cardinals slay each other, and humble men suffer for their crimes.

That summer was hot even by the Roman standard. At nightfall the very stones seemed to sweat, breathing out the day’s accumulation of lies. He himself moved through the heat, smooth and silent and untroubled. Since the snake bit him, something of its nature had entered his blood, and he could lie coiled till needed.

Norfolk says, ‘I was never at Rome. I knew Bainbridge, of course. He was choleric.’

‘Yes, and he was fifty or more,’ Cranmer says. ‘And he drove himself. Such men perish in the heat. Besides, I always heard the priest retracted his confession before he died.’

‘So who was the murderer?’ Stephen says.

Call-Me says, ‘You are seriously accusing Lord Cromwell?’

‘He was no lord in those days,’ Norfolk says.

No more was he. He can see himself now, at twilight, lurking in the Piazza Navona. Since he got his red hat, Bainbridge took himself seriously as a future pope, and set his stall out in fine style. He took a lease on Francesco Orsini’s palace, with easy access to the Vatican and the English Hospice where his countrymen lodged. The front was imposing, loggias, terraces; Bainbridge fitted it out with money from the Sauli bankers, and he owed the Grimaldi as well. Any number of people would have employed Cremuello to watch Bainbridge’s back gate, and several did; he split the intelligence between them, with attention to what they wanted to hear.

While lurking there he fell into talk with a street girl, teasing her about her hair. She had bleached it, but now it was grown out by a hand’s span. Your sable locks are just as good, he said, a novelty for Englishmen; we have enough of tow-heads. You’re English? she said. Jesu, one would not know it. So that is why you are watching the house of the English cardinal. Are you homesick for the sounds of your countrymen carousing? Watch presently, and some of them will come out and spew in the street.

Later that night she said to him, now I’ll tell you a thing. Romans, Tuscans, Frenchmen, English, Germans: all pay out for blondes. It is a shame for me and my sisters in the trade; we are born wrong. I would bleach it again, but after a certain point it falls out, and no man of any nation wants a woman who is bald.

She yawned. Well, that was nice, she said, you would like to do it again in a different position? By the way, if you want a job in the palace among your countrymen, I can get you in there. My cousin works in the kitchen.

She mistook him for a clerk fallen on hard times. After all, he dressed like one. He turned to her and negotiated the new position and its price. How had one the energy, in that heat? But you don’t feel it so much when you are young.

‘My lord?’ Wriothesley says

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘My lord bishop, I forget what you were saying?’

‘Wolsey,’ Stephen says deliberately, ‘had scarcely the grace to hide his hand in the murder. He and Bishop Gigli were fast friends, till they scrapped about who got Bainbridge’s vestments after he was dead. Wolsey wanted them packed up and sent to London for his use. When I was his secretary, I saw the letters in the files.’

‘You know what I think?’ Norfolk says. ‘We’re better off without cardinals, and proud old prelates such as we used to have. Now the archbishop here,’ he jerks his thumb at Cranmer, ‘at least he conducts himself humble-wise. You can tell by his countenance he spends his time at prayer, instead of browbeating noblemen and plotting their downfall and wrangling and cheating and embezzling. All of which were daily proceedings with Thomas Wolsey.’

‘My lord Norfolk,’ he says.

‘Yes, and promoting false knaves to positions of trust, and soliciting bribes, falsifying deeds, bullying his betters, and consorting with conjurers and generally thieving, lying and cheating –’

He rises from his place.

‘– to the detriment and ruin of the commonweal and the shame of the king.’

He has the duke in his grasp. He holds him at arm’s length. He could easily jerk him forward then kick his feet from under him.

Cranmer shoots to his feet. ‘For shame, Thomas, he’s an old man.’ He takes a grip on Norfolk’s coat and tries to pull him free, as if he were a pike on a gaff and he wants to put him back in the stream.

It is only when sweat starts out of the archbishop – or possibly tears – that he, Cromwell, drops the duke. Thomas Howard swears at him, a horrible oath like a gunner.

The servants come in. The meats are cleared. They sit glaring at each other over the ginger comfits.

‘Well,’ Stephen says, ‘I don’t know when I enjoyed a peace conference as much as I enjoyed this one.’

It is time for the king to quit London for the summer. He will go as soon as Parliament rises. The entourage will first lodge at Beddington, the pleasant house that belonged to Nicholas Carew. Then 7 July to Oatlands, from there to Woking.

Months, years have gone by, when Lord Cromwell has never thought of his early life; when he has pushed the past into the yard and barred the door on it. Now it is not Gardiner’s questions about Italy that trouble him: Italy keeps its secrets. It is Putney that works away at him, distant but close. When he was weak from fever the past broke in, and now he has no defence against his memories, they re-capitulate themselves any time they like: when he sits in the council chamber, words fall about him in a drizzling haze, and he finds himself wrapped in the climate of his childhood. He is a monk who descends the night stair, still wrapped in dreams, so that the shuffling feet of his brethren are transformed to the whisper of leaves in the forests of infancy: and like a hidden creature stirring from a leaf-bed, his mind stirs and turns, on a restless circuit. He tries to tether it (to now, this time, this place) but it will roam: scenting the staleness of soiled straw and stagnant water, the hot grease of the smithy, horse sweat, leather, grass, yeast, tallow, honey, wet dog, spilled beer, the lanes and wharves of his childhood.

He picks up his quill: the king could spend perhaps six days in Woking, where he, Lord Cromwell, could join him? Then to Guildford …

It is the night of the waning moon. He can smell the river, and the odour of the eel boy, who has beshitten himself. Eel boy slumps at his feet, too heavy to drag further. Thomas Craphead no longer knows what to do. A great and mortal weariness has overtaken him, a lassitude that trickles through him from brain to feet. So Craphead, clueless, had crawled home.

Walter and the boys went on drinking till his father fell snoring across a trestle table and at some dark hour woke and stumbled upstairs. You would expect he would lie snorting and sweating till noon. Perhaps Thomas Craphead counted on that and thought, while good folk are still abed, I will go out to the river and see if eel boy is alive or dead. See if he lies where I left him, or if someone has picked him up with the morning’s flotsam, returned him whence he came or fed him to swine.

But God knows what he thought. He woke hollow, shaking, empty of logic or plan. In the daylight he cleaned his knife again, but he left it down when he went into the brewery yard.

Never underestimate Walter, his violence and cunning. The first blow came from nowhere and stunned him. There was blood in his eyes and after that Walter could do what he liked. He did it with his feet and he did it with his fists, till he, Thomas, was a bleeding jelly on the cobblestones, and his father stood over him and roared, ‘So now get up!’

There is a stir in the air. My lord Privy Seal looks up from the king’s itinerary. Call-Me-Risley is here, flitting against the light in yellow. He throws himself into a chair and shouts for small ale. He fans himself with his hat. ‘Gardiner,’ he says. ‘Jesus! To accuse you of murder! Though if you did rid the world of a cardinal, what of it? It was in another jurisdiction, and a long time ago now.’

He says, ‘I’ll pull Stephen down. Just watch me.’

Call-Me eyes him. ‘Yes, I believe you.’

‘I’m doing these,’ he says. ‘Excuse me.’ He turns back to the paper. After Guildford, Farnham. Every town must be certified clear of plague before the king enters the neighbourhood. At the slightest suspicion, his route must be changed, so there must be extra hosts standing by, their silverware polished, their feather beds aired. ‘Farnham to Petworth? How far is that?’

‘Scant twenty miles cross-country,’ Call-Me says. ‘But more if it rains and you go round about.’

Twenty miles is what the king can ride, at present. ‘Do you know the king is planning a visit to Wolf Hall?’

Call-Me considers. ‘It is small, for his train.’

‘The Seymours will move out. Edward has it planned.’ He thinks of the shade of Jane, walking in the young lady’s garden; he thinks of her alive under the green trees, in her new carnation-coloured dress.

He frowns over the papers. ‘Suppose he rides from Petworth to Cowdray, to William Fitzwilliam? Then to Essex … Ah, here comes Mathew.’

Mathew carries in a bowl of plums and sets them down reverently. ‘The fruits of success,’ Wriothesley says, smiling. ‘I congratulate you, sir.’

He used to think that the plums in this country weren’t good enough, and so he has reformed them, grafting scion to rootstock. Now his houses have plums ripening from July to late October, fruits the size of a walnut or a baby’s heart, plums mottled and streaked, stippled and flecked, marbled and rayed, their skins lemon to mustard, russet to scarlet, azure to black, some smooth and some furred like little animals with lilac or white or ash; round amber fruits dotted with the grey of his livery, thin-skinned fruits like crimson eggs in a silver net, their flesh firm or melting, honeyed or vinous; his favoured kind the perdrigon, the palest having a yellow skin dotted white, sprinkled red where the sun touches it, its perfumed flesh ripe in late August; then the perdrigon violet and its black sister, favouring east-facing walls, yielding September fruits solid in the hand, their flesh yellow-green and rich, separating easily from the stone. You can preserve them whole to last all winter, eat them as dessert, or just sit looking at them in an idle moment: globes of gold in a pewter bowl, black fruit like shadows, spheres of cardinal red.

He says to Mathew, ‘You remember when we hunted at your old master’s house? The day the king lost his hat?’

Mathew grins. Who could forget the hunting party riding home, their faces baked like hams?

When the wind takes off a gentleman’s hat, his companions at once take off theirs. The courteous man says, put on your hats again, do not suffer for my sake. But the king, though he would not accept another man’s hat, never thought to tell them to cover; so they came home blistered and striped. He says, ‘You should have seen Rafe Sadler. His eyes were boiled in his head.’

Mathew says, ‘My friend Rob led a search after the king’s hat, but we found naught. He had St Hubert in his cap badge, and his eyes were real sapphires, so I doubt not we would have been rewarded had we found it.’

He picks up his pen. Returns to the royal summer. The king will go to Stansted, then Bishop’s Waltham, presently to Thruxton; then leaving Hampshire, he will ride west. In Savernake, Hubert squints down, entangled in branches. In high summer we will ride the same paths and he will see us as we are now: girth thickened, sins multiplied.

‘Mid-August,’ he writes. ‘Five days. Wolf Hall.’