1On the evening of More's death the weather clears, and he walks in the garden with Rafe and Richard. The sun shows itself, a silver haze between rags of cloud. The beaten-down herb beds are scentless, and a skittish wind pulls at their clothes, hitting the backs of their necks and then veering round to slap their faces.

2Rafe says, it's like being at sea. They walk at either side of him, and close, as if there were danger from whales, pirates and mermaids.

3It is five days since the trial. Since then, much business has supervened, but they cannot help rehearse its events, trading with each other the pictures in their heads: the Attorney General jotting a last note on the indictment; More sniggering when some clerk made a slip in his Latin; the cold smooth faces of the Boleyns, father and son, on the judges' bench. More had never raised his voice; he sat in the chair Audley had provided for him, attentive, head tipped a little to the left, picking away at his sleeve.

4So Riche's surprise, when More turned on him, was visible; he had taken a step backwards, and steadied himself against a table. ‘I know you of old, Riche, why would I open my mind to you?’ More on his feet, his voice dripping contempt. ‘I have known you since your youth, a gamer and a dicer, of no commendable fame even in your own house …’

5‘By St Julian! ’ Justice Fitzjames had exclaimed; it was ever his oath. Under his breath, to him, Cromwell: ‘Will he gain by this?’ The jury had not liked it: you never know what a jury will like. They took More's sudden animation to be shock and guilt, at being confronted with his own words. For sure, they all knew Riche's reputation. But are not drinking, dice and fighting more natural in a young man, on the whole, than fasting, beads and self-flagellation? It was Norfolk who had cut in on More's tirade, his voice dry: ‘Leave aside the man's character. What do you say to the matter in hand? Did you speak those words?’

6Was it then that Master More played a trick too many? He had pulled himself together, hauling his slipping gown on to his shoulder; the gown secured, he paused, he calmed himself, he fitted one fist into the other. ‘I did not say what Riche alleges. Or if I did say it, I did not mean it with malice, therefore I am clear under the statute.’ He had watched an expression of derision cross Parnell's face.

7There's nothing harder than a London burgess who thinks he's being played for a fool. Audley or any of the lawyers could have put the jury right: it's just how we lawyers argue. But they don't want a lawyer's argument, they want the truth: did you say it, or didn't you? George Boleyn leans forward: can the prisoner let us have his own version of the conversation?

8More turns, smiling, as if to say, a good point there, young master George. ‘I made no note of it. I had no writing materials, you see. They had already taken them away. For if you remember, my lord Rochford, that was the very reason Riche came to me, to remove from me the means of recording.’

9And he had paused again, and looked at the jury as if expecting applause; they looked back, faces like stones.

10Was that the turning point? They might have trusted More, being, as he was, Lord Chancellor at one time, and Purse, as everybody knows, such a waster. You never know what a jury will think: though when he had convened them, of course he had been persuasive. He had spoken with them that morning: I do not know what his defence is, but I don't hold out hope we will be finished by noon; I hope you all had a good breakfast? When you retire, you must take your time, of course, but if you are gone more than twenty minutes by my reckoning, I will come in to see how you do. To put you out of doubt, on any points of law.

11Fifteen minutes was all they needed.

12Now, this evening in the garden, July 6, the feast day of St Godelva (a blameless young wife of Bruges, whose evil husband drowned her in a pond), he looks up at the sky, feeling a change in the air, a damp drift like autumn. The interlude of feeble sun is over. Clouds drift and mass in towers and battlements, blowing in from Essex, stacking up over the city, driven by the wind across the broad soaked fields, across the sodden pastureland and swollen rivers, across the dripping forests of the west and out over the sea to Ireland. Richard retrieves his hat from a lavender bed and knocks droplets from it, swearing softly. A spatter of rain hits their faces. ‘Time to go in. I have letters to write.’ ‘You'll not work till all hours tonight.’ ‘No, grandfather Rafe. I shall get my bread and milk and say my Ave and so to bed. Can I take my dog up with me?’ ‘Indeed no! And have you scampering overhead till all hours?’ It's true he didn't sleep much last night. It had come to him, the wrong side of midnight, that More was no doubt asleep himself, not knowing that it was his last night on earth. It is not usual, till the morning, to prepare the condemned man; so, he had thought, any vigil I keep for him, I keep alone.

13They hurry in; the wind bangs a door behind them. Rafe takes his arm. He says, this silence of More's, it was never really silence, was it?

14It was loud with his treason; it was quibbling as far as quibbles would serve him, it was demurs and cavils, suave ambiguities. It was fear of plain words, or the assertion that plain words pervert themselves; More's dictionary, against our dictionary. You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, in its strings, holds a concord. A shrivelled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts.

15Someone – probably not Christophe – has put on his desk a shining silver pot of cornflowers. The dusky blueness at the base of the crinkled petals reminds him of this morning's light; a late dawn for July, a sullen sky. By five, the Lieutenant of the Tower would have gone in to More.

16Down below, he can hear a stream of messengers coming into the courtyard. There is much to do, tidying up after the dead man; after all, he thinks, I did it when I was a child, picking up after Morton's young gentlemen, and this is the last time I will have to do it; he pictures himself in the dawn, slopping into a leather jug the dregs of small beer, squeezing up the candle ends to take to the chandlery for remelting.

17He can hear voices in the hall; never mind them: he returns to his letters. The Abbot of Rewley solicits a vacant post for his friend. The Mayor of York writes to him about weirs and fish traps; the Humber is running clean and sweet, he reads, so is the Ouse. A letter from Lord Lisle in Calais, relating some muddled tale of self-justification: he said, then I said, so he said.

18Thomas More stands before him, more solid in death than he was in life. Perhaps he will always be here now: so agile of mind and so adamant, as he appeared in his final hour before the court. Audley was so happy with the guilty verdict that he began to pass sentence without asking the prisoner if he had anything to say; Fitzjames had to reach out and slap his arm, and More himself rose from his chair to halt him.

19He had much to say, and his voice was lively, his tone biting, and his eyes, his gestures, hardly those of a condemned man, in law already dead.

20But there was nothing new in it: not new anyway to him. I follow my conscience, More said, you must follow yours. My conscience satisfies me – and now I will speech plainly – that your statute is faulty (and Norfolk roars at him) and that your authority baseless (Norfolk roars again: ‘Now we see your malice plain’). Parnell had laughed, and the jury exchanged glances, nodding to each other; and while the whole of Westminster Hall murmured, More proffered again, speaking against the noise, his treasonable method of counting. My conscience holds with the majority, which makes me know it does not speak false.

21‘Against Henry's kingdom, I have all the kingdoms of Christendom.

22Against each one of your bishops, I have a hundred saints. Against your one parliament, I have all the general councils of the church, stretching back for a thousand years. ’

23Norfolk said, take him out. It is finished.

24Now it is Tuesday, it is eight o'clock. The rain drums against the window. He breaks the seal of a letter from the Duke of Richmond.

25The boy complains that in Yorkshire where he is seated, he has no deer park, so can show his friends no sport. Oh, you poor tiny duke, he thinks, how can I relieve your pain? Gregory's dowager with the black teeth, the one he is going to marry; she has a deer park, so perhaps the princeling should divorce Norfolk's daughter and marry her instead?

26He flips aside Richmond's letter, tempted to file it on the floor; he passes on. The Emperor has left Sardinia with his fleet, sailing to Sicily. A priest at St Mary Woolchurch says Cromwell is a sectary and he is not frightened of him: fool. Harry Lord Morley sends him a greyhound. There is news of refugees pouring out of the Münster area, some of them heading for England.

27Audley had said, ‘Prisoner, the court will ask the king to make grace upon you, as to the manner of your death.’ Audley had leaned across: Master Secretary, did you promise him anything? On my life, no: but surely the king will be good to him? Norfolk says, Cromwell, will you move him in that regard? He will take it from you; but if he will not, I myself will come and plead with him. What a marvel: Norfolk, asking for mercy? He had glanced up, to see More taken out, but he had vanished already, the tall halberdiers closing rank behind him: the boat for the Tower is waiting at the steps. It must feel like going home: the familiar room with the narrow window, the table empty of papers, the pricket candle, the drawn blind.

28The window rattles; it startles him, and he thinks, I shall bolt the shutter. He is rising to do it when Rafe comes in with a book in his hand. ‘It is his prayer book, that More had with him at the last.’ He examines it. Mercifully, no blood specks. He holds it up by the spine and lets the leaves fan out. ‘I already did that,’ Rafe says.

29More has written his name in it. There are underlinings in the text: Remember not the sins of my youth. ‘What a pity he remembered Richard Riche's.’

30‘Shall I have it sent to Dame Alice? ’

31‘No. She might think she is one of the sins. ’ The woman has put up with enough. In his last letter, he didn't even say goodbye to her. He shuts the book. ‘Send it to Meg. He probably meant it for her anyway.’ The whole house is rocking about him; wind in the eaves, wind in the chimneys, a piercing draught under every door. It's cold enough for a fire, Rafe says, shall I see to it? He shakes his head. ‘Tell Richard, tomorrow morning, go to London Bridge and see the bridge-master.

32Mistress Roper will come to him and beg her father's head to bury it.

33The man should take what Meg offers and see she is not impeded. And keep his mouth shut. ’

34Once in Italy, when he was young, he had joined a burial party. It isn't something you volunteer for; you're just told. They had bound cloth across their mouths, and shovelled their comrades into unhallowed ground; walked away with the smell of putrefaction on their boots.

35Which is worse, he thinks, to have your daughters dead before you, or to leave them to tidy away your remains?

36‘There's something …’ He frowns down at his papers. ‘What have I forgotten, Rafe?’

37‘Your supper? ’

38‘Later. ’

39‘Lord Lisle? ’

40‘I've dealt with Lord Lisle. ’ Dealt with the river Humber. With the slanderous priest from Mary Woolchurch; well, not dealt with him, but put him in the pending pile. He laughs. ‘You know what I need? I need the memory machine.’

41Guido has quit Paris, they say. He has scuttled back to Italy and left the device half built. They say that before his flight for some weeks he had neither spoken nor eaten. His well-wishers say he has gone mad, awed by the capacities of his own creature: fallen into the abyss of the divine. His ill-wishers maintain that demons crawled out of the crannies and crevices of the device, and panicked him so that he ran off by night in his shirt with not even a crust and a lump of cheese for the journey, leaving all his books behind him and his magus's robes.

42It is not impossible that Guido has left writings behind in France.

43For a fee they might be obtained. It is not impossible to have him followed to Italy; but would there be any point? It is likely, he thinks, that we shall never know what his invention really was. A printing press that can write its own books? A mind that thinks about itself? If I don't have it, at least the King of France doesn't either.

44He reaches for his pen. He yawns and puts it down and picks it up again. I shall be found dead at my desk, he thinks, like the poet Petrarch. The poet wrote many unsent letters: he wrote to Cicero, who died twelve hundred years before he was born. He wrote to Homer, who possibly never even existed; but I, I have enough to do with Lord Lisle, and the fish traps, and the Emperor's galleons tossing on the Middle Sea. Between one dip of the pen, Petrarch writes, ‘between one dip of the pen and the next, the time passes: and I hurry, I drive myself, and I speed towards death. We are always dying – I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or block their ears; they are all dying.’

45He picks up the next batch of letters. A man called Batcock wants a licence to import 100 tuns of woad. Harry Percy is sick again. The authorities in Yorkshire have rounded up their rioters, and divided them into those to be charged with affray and manslaughter, and those to be indicted for murder and rape. Rape? Since when do food riots involve rape? But I forget, this is Yorkshire.

46‘Rafe, bring me the king's itinerary. I'll check that and then I'm finished here. I think we might have some music before we go to bed. ’ The court is riding west this summer, as far as Bristol. The king is ready to leave, despite the rain. They will depart from Windsor, then to Reading, Missenden, Abingdon, moving across Oxfordshire, their spirits lifting, we hope, with the distance from London; he says to Rafe, if the country air goes to work, the queen will return with a big belly. Rafe says, I wonder the king can stand the hope each time. It would wear out a lesser man.

47‘If we ourselves leave London on the eighteenth, we can aim to catch up with them at Sudely. Will that work? ’ ‘Better leave a day earlier. Consider the state of the roads.’ ‘There won't be any short cuts, will there?’ He will use no fords but bridges, and against his inclination he will stick to the main roads; better maps would help. Even in the cardinal's day he was asking himself, might this be a project we could undertake? There are maps, of a kind; castles stud their fields, their battlements prettily inked, their chases and parks marked by lines of bushy trees, with drawings of harts and bristling boar. It is no wonder Gregory mistook Northumbria for the Indies, for these maps are deficient in all practical respects; they do not, for example, tell you which way is north. It would be useful to know where the bridges are, and to have a note of the distance between them. It would be useful to know how far you are from the sea. But the trouble is, maps are always last year's. England is always remaking herself, her cliffs eroding, her sandbanks drifting, springs bubbling up in dead ground. They regroup themselves while we sleep, the landscapes through which we move, and even the histories that trail us; the faces of the dead fade into other faces, as a spine of hills into the mist.

48When he was a small child, six years old or about that, his father's apprentice had been making nails from the scrap pile: just common old flat-heads, he'd said, for fastening coffin lids. The nail rods glowed in the fire, a lively orange. ‘What for do we nail down the dead?’ The boy barely paused, tapping out each head with two neat strokes.

49‘It's so the horrible old buggers don't spring out and chase us. ’ He knows different now. It's the living that turn and chase the dead.

50The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives. Thomas More had spread the rumour that Little Bilney, chained to the stake, had recanted as the fire was set. It wasn't enough for him to take Bilney's life away; he had to take his death too.

51Today, More was escorted to the scaffold by Humphrey Monmouth, serving his turn as Sheriff of London. Monmouth is too good a man to rejoice in the reversal of fortune. But perhaps we can rejoice for him?

52More is at the block, he can see him now. He is wrapped in a rough grey cape that he remembers as belonging to his servant John Wood.

53He is speaking to the headsman, apparently making some quip to him, wiping the drizzle from his face and beard. He is shedding the cape, the hem of which is sodden with rainwater. He kneels at the block, his lips moving in his final prayer.

54Like all the other witnesses, he swirls his own cloak about him and kneels. At the sickening sound of the axe on flesh he darts one glance upwards. The corpse seems to have leapt back from the stroke and folded itself like a stack of old clothes – inside which, he knows, its pulses are still beating. He makes the sign of the cross. The past moves heavily inside him, a shifting of ground.

55‘So, the king,’ he says. ‘From Gloucester, he strikes out to Thornbury. Then Nicholas Poynz's house at Iron Acton: does Poynz know what he's letting himself in for? From there to Bromham …’ Just this last year a scholar, a foreigner, has written a chronicle of Britain, which omits King Arthur on the ground that he never existed.

56A good ground, if he can sustain it; but Gregory says, no, he is wrong.

57Because if he is right, what will happen to Avalon? What will happen to the sword in the stone?

58He looks up. ‘Rafe, are you happy?’

59‘With Helen? ’ Rafe blushes. ‘Yes, sir. No man was ever happier.’ ‘I knew your father would come round, once he had seen her.’ ‘It is only thanks to you, sir.’

60From Bromham – we are now in early September – towards Winchester. Then Bishop's Waltham, Alton, Alton to Farnham. He plots it out, across country. The object is to get the king back to Windsor for early October. He has his sketch map across the page, England in a drizzle of ink; his calendar, quickly jotted, running down it. ‘I seem to have four, five days in hand. Ah well. Who says I never get a holiday?’

61Before ‘Bromham’, he makes a dot in the margin, and draws a long arrow across the page. ‘Now here, before we go to Winchester, we have time to spare, and what I think is, Rafe, we shall visit the Seymours.’

62He writes it down.

63Early September. Five days. Wolf Hall.