1He arrives early at York Place. The baited gulls, penned in their keeping yards, are crying out to their free brothers on the river, who wheel screaming and diving over the palace walls. The carmen are pushing up from the river goods incoming, and the courts smell of baking bread. Some children are bringing fresh rushes, tied in bundles, and they greet him by name. For their civility, he gives each of them a coin, and they stop to talk. ‘So, you are going to the evil lady. She has bewitched the king, you know? Do you have a medal or a relic, master, to protect you?’

2‘I had a medal. But I lost it. ’

3‘You should ask our cardinal,’ one child says. ‘He will give you another.’

4The scent of the rushes is sharp and green; the morning is fine. The rooms of York Place are familiar to him, and as he passes through them towards the inner chambers he sees a half-familiar face and says, ‘Mark?’

5The boy detaches himself from the wall where he is leaning. ‘You're about early. How are you?’

6A sulky shrug.

7‘It must feel strange to be back here at York Place, now the world is so altered. ’

8‘No. ’

9‘You don't miss my lord cardinal? ’

10‘No. ’

11‘You are happy? ’

12‘Yes. ’

13‘My lord will be pleased to know. ’ To himself he says, as he moves away, you may never think of us, Mark, but we think of you. Or at least I do, I think of you calling me a felon and predicting my death. It is true that the cardinal always says, there are no safe places, there are no sealed rooms, you may as well stand on Cheapside shouting out your sins as confess to a priest anywhere in England. But when I spoke to the cardinal of killing, when I saw a shadow on the wall, there was no one to hear; so if Mark reckons I'm a murderer, that's only because he thinks I look like one.

14Eight anterooms: in the last, where the cardinal should be, he finds Anne Boleyn. Look, there are Solomon and Sheba, unrolled again, back on the wall. There is a draught; Sheba eddies towards him, rosy, round, and he acknowledges her: Anselma, lady made of wool, I thought I'd never see you again.

15He had sent word back to Antwerp, applied discreetly for news; Anselma was married, Stephen Vaughan said, and to a younger man, a banker. So if he drowns or anything, he said, let me know. Vaughan writes back: Thomas, come now, isn't England full of widows? And fresh young girls?

16Sheba makes Anne look bad: sallow and sharp. She stands by the window, her fingers tugging and ripping at a sprig of rosemary. When she sees him, she drops it, and her hands dip back into her trailing sleeves.

17In December, the king gave a banquet, to celebrate her father's elevation to be Earl of Wiltshire. The queen was elsewhere, and Anne sat where Katherine should sit. There was frost on the ground, frost in the atmosphere. They only heard of it, in the Wolsey household. The Duchess of Norfolk (who is always furious about something) was furious that her niece should have precedence. The Duchess of Suffolk, Henry's sister, refused to eat. Neither of these great ladies spoke to Boleyn's daughter. Nevertheless, Anne had taken her place as the first lady of the kingdom.

18But now it's the end of Lent, and Henry has gone back to his wife; he hasn't the face to be with his concubine as we move towards the week of Christ's Passion. Her father is abroad, on diplomatic business; so is her brother George, now Lord Rochford; so is Thomas Wyatt, the poet whom she tortures. She's alone and bored at York Place; and she's reduced to sending for Thomas Cromwell, to see if he offers any amusement.

19A flurry of little dogs – three of them – run away from her skirts, yapping, darting towards him. ‘Don't let them out,’ Anne says, and with practised and gentle hands he scoops them up – they are the kind of dogs, Bellas, with ragged ears and tiny wafting tails, that any merchant's wife would keep, across the Narrow Sea. By the time he has given them back to her, they have nibbled his fingers and his coat, licked his face and yearned towards him with goggling eyes: as if he were someone they had so much longed to meet.

20Two of them he sets gently on the floor; the smallest he hands back to Anne. ‘Vous êtes gentil,’ she says, ‘and how my babies like you! I could not love, you know, those apes that Katherine keeps. Les singes enchaînés. Their little hands, their little necks fettered. My babies love me for myself.’

21She's so small. Her bones are so delicate, her waist so narrow; if two law students make one cardinal, two Annes make one Katherine.

22Various women are sitting on low stools, sewing or rather pretending to sew. One of them is Mary Boleyn. She keeps her head down, as well she might. One of them is Mary Shelton, a bold pink-and-white Boleyn cousin, who looks him over, and – quite obviously – says to herself, Mother of God, is that the best Lady Carey thought she could get?

23Back in the shadows there is another girl, who has her face turned away, trying to hide. He does not know who she is, but he understands why she's looking fixedly at the floor. Anne seems to inspire it; now that he's put the dogs down, he's doing the same thing.

24‘Alors,’ Anne says softly, ‘suddenly, everything is about you. The king does not cease to quote Master Cromwell.’ She pronounces it as if she can't manage the English: Cremuel. ‘He is so right, he is at all points correct … Also, let us not forget, Maître Cremuel makes us laugh.’

25‘I see the king does sometimes laugh. But you, madame? In your situation? As you find yourself? ’

26A black glance, over her shoulder. ‘I suppose I seldom. Laugh. If I think. But I had not thought.’

27‘This is what your life has come to. ’

28Dusty fragments, dried leaves and stems, have fallen down her skirts. She stares out at the morning.

29‘Let me put it this way,’ he says. ‘Since my lord cardinal was reduced, how much progress have you seen in your cause?’ ‘None.’

30‘No one knows the workings of Christian countries like my lord cardinal. No one is more intimate with kings. Think how bound to you he would be, Lady Anne, if you were the means of erasing these misunderstandings and restoring him to the king's grace. ’ She doesn't answer.

31‘Think,’ he says. ‘He is the only man in England who can obtain for you what you need.’

32‘Very well. Make his case. You have five minutes. ’ ‘Otherwise, I can see you're really busy.’ Anne looks at him with dislike, and speaks in French. ‘What do you know of how I occupy my hours?’

33‘My lady, are we having this conversation in English or French?

34Your choice entirely. But let's make it one or the other, yes? ’ He sees a movement from the corner of his eye; the half-hidden girl has raised her face. She is plain and pale; she looks shocked.

35‘You are indifferent? ’ Anne says.

36‘Yes. ’

37‘Very well. In French. ’

38He tells her again: the cardinal is the only man who can deliver a good verdict from the Pope. He is the only man who can deliver the king's conscience, and deliver it clean.

39She listens. He will say that for her. He has always wondered how well women can hear, beneath the muffling folds of their veils and hoods, but Anne does give the impression that she is hearing what he has said. She waits him out, at least; she doesn't interrupt, until at last she does: so, she says, if the king wants it, and the cardinal wants it, he who was formerly the chief subject in the kingdom, then I must say, Master Cremuel, it is all taking a marvellous long while to come to pass!

40From her corner her sister adds, barely audible, ‘And she's not getting any younger.’

41Not a stitch have the women added to their sewing since he has been in the room.

42‘One may resume? ’ he asks, persuading her. ‘There is a moment left?’

43‘Oh yes,’ Anne says. ‘But a moment only: in Lent I ration my patience.’

44He tells her to dismiss the slanderers who claim that the cardinal obstructed her cause. He tells her how it distresses the cardinal that the king should not have his heart's desire, which was ever the cardinal's desire too. He tells her how all the king's subjects repose their hopes in her, for an heir to the throne; and how he is sure they are right to do so.

45He reminds her of the many gracious letters she has written to the cardinal in times past: all of which he has on file.

46‘Very nice,’ she says, when he stops. ‘Very nice, Master Cremuel, but try again. One thing. One simple thing we asked of the cardinal, and he would not. One simple thing.’

47‘You know it was not simple. ’

48‘Perhaps I am a simple person,’ Anne says. ‘Do you feel I am?’ ‘You may be. I hardly know you.’

49The reply incenses her. He sees her sister smirk. You may go, Anne says: and Mary jumps up, and follows him out.

50Once again Mary's cheeks are flushed, her lips are parted. She's brought her sewing with her, which he thinks is strange; but perhaps, if she leaves it behind, Anne pulls the stitches out. ‘Out of breath again, Lady Carey?’

51‘We thought she might run up and slap you. Will you come again?

52Shelton and I can't wait. ’

53‘She can stand it,’ he says, and Mary says, indeed, she likes a skirmish with someone on her own level. What are you working there?

54he asks, and she shows him. It is Anne's new coat of arms. On everything, I suppose, he says, and she smiles broadly, oh yes, her petticoats, her handkerchiefs, her coifs and her veils; she has garments that no one ever wore before, just so she can have her arms sewn on, not to mention the wall hangings, the table napkins … ‘And how are you?’

55She looks down, glance swivelling away from him. ‘Worn down.

56Frayed a little, you might say. Christmas was …’ ‘They quarrelled. So one hears.’

57‘First he quarrelled with Katherine. Then he came here for sympathy. Anne said, what! I told you not to argue with Katherine, you know you always lose. If he were not a king,’ she says with relish, ‘one could pity him. For the dog's life they lead him.’ ‘There have been rumours that Anne –’

58‘Yes, but she's not. I would be the first to know. If she thickened by an inch, it would be me who let out her clothes. Besides, she can't, because they don't. They haven't. ’

59‘She'd tell you? ’

60‘Of course – out of spite! ’ Still Mary will not meet his eyes. But she seems to feel she owes him information. ‘When they are alone, she lets him unlace her bodice.’

61‘At least he doesn't call you to do it. ’ ‘He pulls down her shift and kisses her breasts.’ ‘Good man if he can find them.’

62Mary laughs; a boisterous, unsisterly laugh. It must be audible within, because almost at once the door opens and the small hiding girl manoeuvres herself around it. Her face is grave, her reserve complete; her skin is so fine that it is almost translucent. ‘Lady Carey,’ she says, ‘Lady Anne wants you.’

63She speaks their names as if she is making introductions between two cockroaches.

64Mary snaps, oh, by the saints! and turns on her heel, whipping her train behind her with the ease of long practice.

65To his surprise, the small pale girl catches his glance; behind the retreating back of Mary Boleyn, she raises her own eyes to Heaven.

66Walking away – eight antechambers back to the rest of his day – he knows that Anne has stepped forward to a place where he can see her, the morning light lying along the curve of her throat. He sees the thin arch of her eyebrow, her smile, the turn of her head on her long slender neck. He sees her speed, intelligence and rigour. He didn't think she would help the cardinal, but what do you lose by asking? He thinks, it is the first proposition I have put to her; probably not the last.

67There was a moment when Anne gave him all her attention: her skewering dark glance. The king, too, knows how to look; blue eyes, their mildness deceptive. Is this how they look at each other? Or in some other way? For a second he understands it; then he doesn't. He stands by a window. A flock of starlings settles among the tight black buds of a bare tree. Then, like black buds unfolding, they open their wings; they flutter and sing, stirring everything into motion, air, wings, black notes in music. He becomes aware that he is watching them with pleasure: that something almost extinct, some small gesture towards the future, is ready to welcome the spring; in some spare, desperate way, he is looking forward to Easter, the end of Lenten fasting, the end of penitence. There is a world beyond this black world. There is a world of the possible. A world where Anne can be queen is a world where Cromwell can be Cromwell. He sees it; then he doesn't. The moment is fleeting. But insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.

68In Lent, there are butchers who will sell you red meat, if you know where to go. At Austin Friars he goes down to talk to his kitchen staff, and says to his chief man, ‘The cardinal is sick, he is dispensed from Lent.’

69His cook takes off his hat. ‘By the Pope?’ ‘By me.’ He runs his eye along the row of knives in their racks, the cleavers for splitting bones. He picks one up, looks at its edge, decides it needs sharpening and says, ‘Do you think I look like a murderer? In your good opinion?’

70A silence. After a while, Thurston proffers, ‘At this moment, master, I would have to say …’

71‘No, but suppose I were making my way to Gray's Inn … Can you picture to yourself? Carrying a folio of papers and an inkhorn? ’ ‘I do suppose a clerk would be carrying those.’ ‘So you can't picture it?’

72Thurston takes off his hat again, and turns it inside out. He looks at it as if his brains might be inside it, or at least some prompt as to what to say next. ‘I see how you would look like a lawyer. Not like a murderer, no. But if you will forgive me, master, you always look like a man who knows how to cut up a carcase.’ He has the kitchen make beef olives for the cardinal, stuffed with sage and marjoram, neatly trussed and placed side by side in trays, so that the cooks at Richmond need do nothing but bake them. Show me where it says in the Bible, a man shall not eat beef olives in March.

73He thinks of Lady Anne, her unslaked appetite for a fight; the sad ladies about her. He sends those ladies some flat baskets of small tarts, made of preserved oranges and honey. To Anne herself he sends a dish of almond cream. It is flavoured with rose-water and decorated with the preserved petals of roses, and with candied violets. He is above riding across the country, carrying food himself; but not that much above it. It's not so many years since the Frescobaldi kitchen in Florence; or perhaps it is, but his memory is clear, exact. He was clarifying calf's-foot jelly, chatting away in his mixture of French, Tuscan and Putney, when somebody shouted, ‘Tommaso, they want you upstairs.’ His movements were unhurried as he nodded to a kitchen child, who brought him a basin of water. He washed his hands, dried them on a linen cloth. He took off his apron and hung it on a peg.

74For all he knows, it is there still.

75He saw a young boy – younger than him – on hands and knees, scrubbing the steps. He sang as he worked: ‘Scaramella va alla guerra

76Colla lancia et la rotella

77La zombero boro borombetta,

78La boro borombo …’

79‘If you please, Giacomo,’ he said. To let him pass, the boy moved aside, into the curve of the wall. A shift of the light wiped the curiosity from his face, blanking it, fading his past into the past, washing the future clean. Scaramella is off to war … But I've been to war, he thought.

80He had gone upstairs. In his ears the roll and stutter of the song's military drum. He had gone upstairs and never come down again. In a corner of the Frescobaldi counting house, a table was waiting for him.

81Scaramella fa la gala, he hummed. He had taken his place. Sharpened a quill. His thoughts bubbled and swirled, Tuscan, Putney, Castilian oaths. But when he committed his thoughts to paper they came out in Latin and perfectly smooth.

82Even before he walks in from the kitchens at Austin Friars, the women of the house know that he has been to see Anne.

83‘So,’ Johane demands. ‘Tall or short?’

84‘Neither. ’

85‘I'd heard she was very tall. Sallow, is she not? ’ ‘Yes, sallow.’

86‘They say she is graceful. Dances well. ’ ‘We did not dance.’

87Mercy says, ‘But what do you think? A friend to the gospel?’ He shrugs. ‘We did not pray.’

88Alice, his little niece: ‘What was she wearing?’ Ah, I can tell you that; he prices and sources her, hood to hem, foot to fingertip. For her headdress Anne affects the French style, the round hood flattering the fine bones of her face. He explains this, and though his tone is cool, mercantile, the women somehow do not appreciate it.

89‘You don't like her, do you? ’ Alice says, and he says it's not for him to have an opinion; or you either, Alice, he says, hugging her and making her giggle. The child Jo says, our master is in a good mood.

90This squirrel trim, Mercy says, and he says, Calabrian. Alice says, oh, Calabrian, and wrinkles her nose; Johane remarks, I must say, Thomas, it seems you got close.

91‘Are her teeth good? ’ Mercy says.

92‘For God's sake, woman: when she sinks them into me, I'll let you know. ’

93When the cardinal had heard that the Duke of Norfolk was coming out to Richmond to tear him with his teeth, he had laughed and said, ‘Marry, Thomas, time to be going.’

94But to go north, the cardinal needs funding. The problem is put to the king's council, who fall out, and continue the quarrel in his hearing.

95‘After all,’ Charles Brandon says, ‘one can't let an archbishop creep away to his enthronement like a servant who's stolen the spoons.’ ‘He's done more than steal the spoons,’ Norfolk says. ‘He's eaten the dinner that would have fed all England. He's filched the tablecloth, by God, and drunk the cellar dry.’

96The king can be elusive. One day when he thinks he has an appointment to meet Henry, he gets Master Secretary instead. ‘Sit down,’ Gardiner says. ‘Sit down and listen to me. Contain yourself in patience, while I put you straight on a few matters.’ He watches him ranging to and fro, Stephen the noonday devil.

97Gardiner is a man with bones loose-jointed, his lines flowing with menace; he has great hairy hands, and knuckles which crack when he folds his right fist into his left palm.

98He takes away the menace conveyed, and the message. Pausing in the doorway, he says mildly, ‘Your cousin sends greetings.’ Gardiner stares at him. His eyebrows bristle, like a dog's hackles. He thinks that Cromwell presumes –

99‘Not the king,’ he says soothingly. ‘Not His Majesty. I mean your cousin Richard Williams.’

100Aghast, Gardiner says, ‘That old tale!’

101‘Oh, come,’ he says. ‘It's no disgrace to be a royal bastard. Or so we think, in my family.’

102‘In your family? What grasp have they on propriety? I have no interest in this young person, recognise no kinship with him, and I will do nothing for him. ’

103‘Truly, you don't need to. He calls himself Richard Cromwell now. ’ As he is going – really going, this time – he adds, ‘Don't let it keep you awake, Stephen. I have been into the matter. You may be related to Richard, but you are not related to me.’ He smiles. Inside, he is beside himself with rage, running with it, as if his blood were thin and full of dilute venom like the uncoloured blood of a snake. As soon as he gets home to Austin Friars, he hugs Rafe Sadler and makes his hair stand up in spikes. ‘Heaven direct me: boy or hedgehog? Rafe, Richard, I am feeling penitent.’ ‘It is the season,’ Rafe says.

104‘I want,’ he says, ‘to become perfectly calm. I want to be able to get into the coop without ruffling the chickens' feathers. I want to be less like Uncle Norfolk, and more like Marlinspike.’ He has a long soothing talk in Welsh with Richard, who laughs at him because old words are fading from his memory, and he is forever sliding through bits of English, with a sly borderlands intonation. He gives his little nieces the pearl and coral bracelets he bought them weeks ago, but forgot to give. He goes down to the kitchen and makes suggestions, all of them cheerful.

105He calls his household staff together, his clerks. ‘We need to plan it,’ he says, ‘how the cardinal will be made comfortable on the road north.

106He wants to go slowly so the people can admire him. He needs to arrive in Peterborough for Holy Week, and from there shift by stages to Southwell, where he will plan his further progress to York. The archbishop's palace at Southwell has good rooms, but still we may need to get builders in …’

107George Cavendish has told him that the cardinal has taken to spending time in prayer. There are some monks at Richmond whose company he has sought; they spell out to him the value of thorns in the flesh and salt in the wound, the merits of bread and water and the sombre delights of self-flagellation. ‘Oh, that settles it,’ he says, annoyed. ‘We have to get him on the road. He'd be better off in Yorkshire.’

108He says to Norfolk, ‘Well, my lord, how shall we do this? Do you want him gone or not? Yes? Then come to the king with me.’ Norfolk grunts. Messages are sent. A day or so later, they find themselves together in an antechamber. They wait. Norfolk paces. ‘Oh, by St Jude!’ the duke says. ‘Shall we get some fresh air? Or don't you lawyers need it?’

109They stroll in the gardens; or, he strolls, the duke stamps. ‘When do the flowers come out?’ the duke says. ‘When I was a boy, we never had flowers. It was Buckingham, you know, who brought in this knot garden sort of stuff. Oh dear, it was fancy!’ The Duke of Buckingham, keen gardener, had his head cut off for treason. That was 1521: less than ten years ago. It seems sad to mention it now, in the presence of the spring: singing from every bush, every bough.

110A summons is received. As they proceed to their interview, the duke baulks and jibs; his eye rolls and his nostrils distend, his breath comes short. When the duke lays a hand on his shoulder, he is forced to slow his pace, and they scuffle along – he resisting his impulse to pull away – like two war veterans in a beggars' procession. Scaramella va alla guerra … Norfolk's hand is trembling.

111But it is only when they get into the presence that he fully understands how it rattles the old duke to be in a room with Henry Tudor. The gilded ebullience makes him shrink inside his clothes.

112Henry greets them cordially. He says it is a wonderful day and pretty much a wonderful world. He spins around the room, arms wide, reciting some verses of his own composition. He will talk about anything except the cardinal. Frustrated, Norfolk turns a dusky red, and begins to mutter. Dismissed, they are backing out. Henry calls, ‘Oh, Cromwell …’

113He and the duke exchange glances. ‘By the Mass …’ mutters the duke.

114Hand behind his back, he indicates, be gone, my lord Norfolk, I'll catch up with you later.

115Henry stands with arms folded, eyes on the ground. He says nothing till he, Cromwell, has come close. ‘A thousand pounds?’ Henry whispers.

116It is on the tip of his tongue to say, that will be a start on the ten thousand which, to the best of my knowledge and belief, you have owed the Cardinal of York for a decade now.

117He doesn't say it, of course. At such moments, Henry expects you to fall to your knees – duke, earl, commoner, light and heavy, old and young. He does it; scar tissue pulls; few of us, by our forties, are not carrying injuries.

118The king signals, you can get up. He adds, his tone curious, ‘The Duke of Norfolk shows you many marks of friendship and favour.’ The hand on the shoulder, he means: the minute and unexpected vibration of ducal palm against plebeian muscle and bone. ‘The duke is careful to preserve all distinctions of rank.’ Henry seems relieved.

119An unwelcome thought creeps into his head: what if you, Henry Tudor, were to be taken ill and fall at my feet? Am I allowed to pick you up, or must I send for an earl to do it? Or a bishop?

120Henry walks away. He turns and says, in a small voice, ‘Every day I miss the Cardinal of York.’ There is a pause. He whispers, take the money with our blessing. Don't tell the duke. Don't tell anyone. Ask your master to pray for me. Tell him it is the best I can do.

121The thanks he makes, still from his kneeling situation, is eloquent and extensive. Henry looks at him bleakly and says, dear God, Master Cromwell, you can talk, can't you?

122He goes out, face composed, fighting the impulse to smile broadly.

123Scaramella fa la gala … ‘Every day I miss the Cardinal of York.’ Norfolk says, what, what, what did he say? Oh, nothing, he says.

124Just some special hard words he wants me to convey to the cardinal.

125* * *

126The itinerary is drawn up. The cardinal's effects are put on coastal barges, to be taken to Hull and go overland from there. He himself has beaten the bargees down to a reasonable rate.

127He tells Richard, you know, a thousand pounds isn't much when you have a cardinal to move. Richard asks, ‘How much of your own money is sunk in this enterprise?’

128Some debts should never be tallied, he says. ‘I myself, I know what is owed me, but by God I know what I owe.’ To Cavendish he says, ‘How many servants is he taking?’ ‘Only a hundred and sixty.’

129‘Only. ’ He nods. ‘Right.’

130Hendon. Royston. Huntingdon. Peterborough. He has men riding ahead, with precise instructions.

131That last night, Wolsey gives him a package. Inside it is a small and hard object, a seal or ring. ‘Open it when I'm gone.’ People keep walking in and out of the cardinal's private chamber, carrying chests and bundles of papers. Cavendish wanders through, holding a silver monstrance.

132‘You will come north? ’ the cardinal says.

133‘I'll come to fetch you, the minute the king summons you back. ’ He believes and does not believe that this will happen.

134The cardinal gets to his feet. There is a constraint in the air. He, Cromwell, kneels for a blessing. The cardinal holds out a hand to be kissed. His turquoise ring is missing. The fact does not evade him. For a moment, the cardinal's hand rests on his shoulder, fingers spread, thumb in the hollow of his collarbone.

135It is time he was gone. So much has been said between them that it is needless to add a marginal note. It is not for him now to gloss the text of their dealings, nor append a moral. This is not the occasion to embrace. If the cardinal has no more eloquence to offer, he surely has none. Before he has reached the door of the room the cardinal has turned back to the fireplace. He pulls his chair to the blaze, and raises a hand to shield his face; but his hand is not between himself and the fire, it is between himself and the closing door.

136He makes for the courtyard. He falters; in a smoky recess where the light has extinguished itself, he leans against the wall. He is crying. He says to himself, let George Cavendish not come by and see me, and write it down and make it into a play.

137He swears softly, in many languages: at life, at himself for giving way to its demands. Servants walk past, saying, ‘Master Cromwell's horse is here for him! Master Cromwell's escort at the gate!’ He waits till he is in command of himself, and exits, disbursing coins.

138When he gets home, the servants ask him, are we to paint out the cardinal's coat of arms? No, by God, he says. On the contrary, repaint it. He stands back for a look. ‘The choughs could look more lively.

139And we need a better scarlet for the hat. ’ He hardly sleeps. He dreams of Liz. He wonders if she would know him, the man he vows that soon he will be: adamant, mild, a keeper of the king's peace.

140Towards dawn, he dozes; he wakes up thinking, the cardinal just now will be mounting his horse; why am I not with him? It is 5 April.

141Johane meets him on the stairs; chastely, she kisses his cheek.

142‘Why does God test us? ’ she whispers.

143He murmurs, ‘I do not feel we will pass.’ He says, perhaps I should go up to Southwell myself? I'll go for you, Rafe says. He gives him a list. Have the whole of the archbishop's palace scrubbed out. My lord will be bringing his own bed. Draft in kitchen staff from the King's Arms. Check the stabling. Get in musicians. Last time I passed through I noticed some pigsties up against the palace wall. Find out the owner, pay him off and knock them down. Don't drink in the Crown; the ale is worse than my father's.

144Richard says, ‘Sir … it is time to let the cardinal go.’ ‘This is a tactical retreat, not a rout.’ They think he's gone but he's only gone into a back room. He skulks among the files. He hears Richard say, ‘His heart is leading him.’ ‘It is an experienced heart.’

145‘But can a general organise a retreat when he doesn't know where the enemy is? The king is so double in this matter. ’ ‘One could retreat straight into his arms.’ ‘Jesus. You think our master is double too?’ ‘Triple at least,’ Rafe says. ‘Look, there was no profit for him, ever, in deserting the old man – what would he get but the name of deserter?

146Perhaps something is to be got by sticking fast. For all of us. ’ ‘Off you go then, swine-boy. Who else would think about the pigsties? Thomas More, for instance, would never think about them.’ ‘Or he would be exhorting the pig-keeper, my good man, Easter approacheth –’

147‘– hast thou prepared to receive Holy Communion? ’ Rafe laughs.

148‘By the way, Richard, hast thou? ’

149Richard says, ‘I can get a piece of bread any day in the week.’ During Holy Week, reports come in from Peterborough: more people have crowded in to look at Wolsey than have been in that town in living memory. As the cardinal moves north he follows him on the map of these islands he keeps in his head. Stamford, Grantham, Newark; the travelling court arrives in Southwell on 28 April. He, Cromwell, writes to soothe him, he writes to warn him. He is afraid that the Boleyns, or Norfolk, or both, have found some way of implanting a spy in the cardinal's retinue.

150The ambassador Chapuys, hurrying away from an audience with the king, has touched his sleeve, drawn him aside. ‘Monsieur Cremuel, I thought to call at your house. We are neighbours, you know.’ ‘I should like to welcome you.’

151‘But people inform me you are often with the king now, which is pleasant, is it not? Your old master, I hear from him every week. He has become solicitous about the queen's health. He asks if she is in good spirits, and begs her to consider that soon she will be restored to the king's bosom. And bed. ’ Chapuys smiles. He is enjoying himself.

152‘The concubine will not help him. We know you have tried with her and failed. So now he turns back to the queen. ’ He is forced to ask, ‘And the queen says?’ ‘She says, I hope God in his mercy finds it possible to forgive the cardinal, for I never can.’ Chapuys waits. He does not speak. The ambassador resumes: ‘I think you are sensible of the tangle of wreckage that will be left if this divorce is granted, or, shall we say, somehow extorted from His Holiness? The Emperor, in defence of his aunt, may make war on England. Your merchant friends will lose their livelihoods, and many will lose their lives. Your Tudor king may go down, and the old nobility come into their own.’ ‘Why are you telling me this?’

153‘I am telling all Englishmen. ’

154‘Door-to-door? ’

155He is meant to pass to the cardinal this message: that he has come to the end of his credit with the Emperor. What will that do but drive him into an appeal to the French king? Either way, treason lies.

156He imagines the cardinal among the canons at Southwell, in his chair in the chapter house, presiding beneath the high vaulting like a prince at his ease in some forest glade, wreathed by carvings of leaves and flowers. They are so supple that it is as if the columns, the ribs have quickened, as if stone has burst into florid life; the capitals are decked with berries, finials are twisted stems, roses entangle the shafts, flowers and seeds flourish on one stalk; from the foliage, faces peers, the faces of dogs, of hares, of goats. There are human faces, too, so lifelike that perhaps they can change their expression; perhaps they stare down, astonished, at the portly scarlet form of his patron; and perhaps in the silence of the night, when the canons are sleeping, the stone men whistle and sing.

157In Italy he learned a memory system and furnished it with pictures.

158Some are drawn from wood and field, from hedgerow and copse: shy hiding animals, eyes bright in the undergrowth. Some are foxes and deer, some are griffins, dragons. Some are men and women: nuns, warriors, doctors of the church. In their hands he puts unlikely objects, St Ursula a crossbow, St Jerome a scythe, while Plato bears a soup ladle and Achilles a dozen damsons in a wooden bowl. It is no use hoping to remember with the help of common objects, familiar faces.

159One needs startling juxtapositions, images that are more or less peculiar, ridiculous, even indecent. When you have made the images, you place them about the world in locations you choose, each one with its parcel of words, of figures, which they will yield you on demand.

160At Greenwich, a shaven cat may peep at you from behind a cupboard; at the palace of Westminster, a snake may leer down from a beam and hiss your name.

161Some of these images are flat, and you can walk on them. Some are clothed in skin and walk around in a room, but perhaps they are men with their heads on backwards, or with tufted tails like the leopards in coats of arms. Some scowl at you like Norfolk, or gape at you, like my lord Suffolk, with bewilderment. Some speak, some quack. He keeps them, in strict order, in the gallery of his mind's eye.

162Perhaps it is because he is used to making these images that his head is peopled with the cast of a thousand plays, ten thousand interludes. It is because of this practice that he tends to glimpse his dead wife lurking in a stairwell, her white face upturned, or whisking around a corner of the Austin Friars, or the house at Stepney. Now the image is beginning to merge with that of her sister Johane, and everything that belonged to Liz is beginning to belong to her: her half-smile, her questioning glance, her way of being naked. Till he says, enough, and scrubs her out of his mind.

163Rafe rides up the country with messages to Wolsey too secret to put into letters. He would go himself, but though Parliament is prorogued he cannot get away, because he is afraid of what might be said about Wolsey if he is not there to defend him; and at short notice the king might want him, or Lady Anne. ‘And although I am not with you in person,’ he writes, ‘yet be assured I am, and during my life shall be, with your grace in heart, spirit, prayer and service …’ The cardinal replies: he is ‘mine own good, trusty and most assured refuge in this my calamity’. He is ‘mine own entirely beloved Cromwell’.

164He writes to ask for quails. He writes to ask for flower seeds.

165‘Seeds? ’ Johane says. ‘He is planning to take root?’ Twilight finds the king melancholy. Another day of regress, in his campaign to be a married man again; he denies, of course, that he is married to the queen. ‘Cromwell,’ he says, ‘I need to find my way to ownership of those …’ He looks sidelong, not wishing to say what he means. ‘I understand there are legal difficulties. I do not pretend to understand them. And before you begin, I do not want them explained.’

166The cardinal has endowed his Oxford college, as also the school at Ipswich, with land that will produce an income in perpetuity. Henry wants their silver and gold plate, their libraries, their yearly revenues and the land that produces the revenues; and he does not see why he should not have what he wants. The wealth of twenty-nine monasteries has gone into those foundations – suppressed by permission of the Pope, on condition that the proceeds were used for the colleges. But do you know, Henry says, I am beginning to care very little about the Pope and his permissions?

167It is early summer. The evenings are long and the grass, the air, scented. You would think that a man like Henry, on a night like this, could go to whichever bed he pleases. The court is full of eager women. But after this interview he will walk in the garden with Lady Anne, her hand resting on his arm, deep in conversation; then he will go to his empty bed, and she, one presumes, to hers.

168When the king asks him what he hears from the cardinal, he says that he misses the light of His Majesty's countenance; that preparations for his enthronement at York are in hand. ‘Then why doesn't he get to York? It seems to me he delays and delays.’ Henry glares at him. ‘I will say this for you. You stick by your man.’ ‘I have never had anything from the cardinal other than kindness.

169Why would I not? ’

170‘And you have no other master,’ the king says. ‘My lord Suffolk asks me, where does the fellow spring from? I tell him there are Cromwells in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire – landed people, or once they were. I suppose you are from some unfortunate branch of that family?’

171‘No. ’

172‘You may not know your own forebears. I shall ask the heralds to look into it. ’

173‘Your Majesty is kind. But they will have scant success. ’ The king is exasperated. He is failing to take advantage of what is on offer: a pedigree, however meagre. ‘My lord cardinal told me you were an orphan. He told me you were brought up in a monastery.’ ‘Ah. That was one of his little stories.’ ‘He told me little stories?’ Several expressions chase each other across the king's face: annoyance, amusement, a wish to call back times past. ‘I suppose he did. He told me that you had a loathing of those in the religious life. That was why he found you diligent in his work.’

174‘That was not the reason. ’ He looks up. ‘May I speak?’ ‘Oh, for God's sake,’ Henry cries. ‘I wish someone would.’ He is startled. Then he understands. Henry wants a conversation, on any topic. One that's nothing to do with love, or hunting, or war. Now that Wolsey's gone, there's not much scope for it; unless you want to talk to a priest of some stripe. And if you send for a priest, what does it come back to?