1Time now to consider the compacts that hold the world together: the compact between ruler and ruled, and that between husband and wife.

2Both these arrangements rest on a sedulous devotion, the one to the interests of the other. The master and husband protect and provide; the wife and servant obey. Above masters, above husbands, God rules all.

3He counts up our petty rebellions, our human follies. He reaches out his long arm, hand bunched into a fist.

4Imagine debating these matters with George, Lord Rochford. He is as witty a young man as any in England, polished and well read; but today what fascinates him is the flame-coloured satin that is pulled through his slashed velvet over-sleeve. He keeps coaxing the little puffs of fabric with a fingertip, pleating and nudging them and encouraging them to grow bigger, so that he looks like one of those jugglers who run balls down their arms.

5It is time to say what England is, her scope and boundaries: not to count and measure her harbour defences and border walls, but to estimate her capacity for self-rule. It is time to say what a king is, and what trust and guardianship he owes his people: what protection from foreign incursions moral or physical, what freedom from the pretensions of those who would like to tell an Englishman how to speak to his God.

6Parliament meets mid-January. The business of the early spring is breaking the resistance of the bishops to Henry's new order, putting in place legislation that – though for now it is held in suspension – will cut revenues to Rome, make his supremacy in the church no mere form of words. The Commons drafts a petition against the church courts, so arbitrary in their proceedings, so presumptuous in their claimed jurisdiction; it questions their jurisdiction, their very existence. The papers pass through many hands, but finally he himself works through the night with Rafe and Call-Me-Risley, scribbling amendments between the lines. He is flushing out the opposition: Gardiner, although he is the king's Secretary, feels obliged to lead his fellow prelates into the charge.

7The king sends for Master Stephen. When he goes in, the hair on his neck is bristling and he is shrinking inside his skin like a mastiff being led towards a bear. The king has a high voice, for a big man, and it rises when he is angry to an ear-throbbing shriek. Are the clergy his subjects, or only half his subjects? Perhaps they are not his subjects at all, for how can they be, if they take an oath to obey and support the Pope? Should they not, he yells, be taking an oath to me?

8When Stephen comes out he leans against the painted panelling. At his back a troupe of painted nymphs are frisking in a glade. He takes out a handkerchief but seems to have forgotten why; he twists it in his great paw, wrapping it around his knuckles like a bandage. Sweat trickles down his face.

9He, Cromwell, calls for assistance. ‘My lord the bishop is ill.’ They bring a stool and Stephen glares at it, glares at him, then sits down with caution, as if he is not able to trust the joinery. ‘I take it you heard him?’

10Every word. ‘If he does lock you up, I'll make sure you have some small comforts.’

11Gardiner says, ‘God damn you, Cromwell. Who are you? What office do you hold? You're nothing. Nothing.’ We have to win the debate, not just knock our enemies down. He has been to see Christopher St German, the aged jurist, whose word is respected all over Europe. The old man entertains him civilly at his house. There is no man in England, he says, who does not believe our church is in need of reform which grows more urgent by the year, and if the church cannot do it, then the king in Parliament must, and can.

12This is the conclusion I have come to, after some decades of studying the subject.

13Of course, the old man says, Thomas More does not agree with me.

14Perhaps his time has passed. Utopia, after all, is not a place one can live.

15When he meets the king, Henry rages about Gardiner: disloyalty, he shouts, ingratitude. Can he remain my Secretary, when he has set himself up in direct opposition to me? (This is the man whom Henry himself praised as a stout controversialist.) He sits quietly, watching Henry, trying by stillness to defuse the situation; to wrap the king in a blanketing silence, so that he, Henry, can listen to himself. It is a great thing, to be able to divert the wrath of the Lion of England. ‘I think …’ he says softly, ‘with Your Majesty's permission, what I think … The Bishop of Winchester, as we know, likes arguing. But not with his king. He would not dare to do that for sport.’ He pauses. ‘So his views, though mistaken, are honestly held.’

16‘Indeed, but –’ The king breaks off. Henry has heard his own voice, the voice he used to the cardinal when he brought him down. Gardiner is not Wolsey – if only in the sense that, if he is sacrificed, few will remember him with regret. And yet it suits him, for the moment, to have the snarling bishop still in his post; he has a care for Henry's reputation in Europe, and he says, ‘Majesty, Stephen has served you as an ambassador to the limit of his powers, and it would be better to reconcile him, by honest persuasion, than to force his hand by the weight of your displeasure. It is the more pleasant course, and there is more honour in it.’

17He watches Henry's face. He is alive to anything that concerns honour.

18‘Is that the advice you would always give? ’ He smiles. ‘No.’

19‘You are not wholly determined I should govern in a spirit of Christian meekness? ’

20‘No. ’

21‘I know you dislike Gardiner. ’

22‘That is why Your Majesty should consider my advice. ’ He thinks, you owe me, Stephen. The bill will come in by and by.

23At his own house he meets with parliamentarians and gentlemen from the Inns of Court and the city livery companies; with Thomas Audley who is Mr Speaker, and his protégé Richard Riche, a golden- haired young man, pretty as a painted angel, who has an active, quick and secular mind; with Rowland Lee, a robust outspoken cleric, the least priestly man you would find in a long day's march. In these months, the ranks of his city friends are thinned by sickness and unnatural death. Thomas Somer, whom he has known for years, has died just after release from the Tower, where he was shut up for distributing the gospel in English; fond of fine clothes and fast horses, Somer was a man of irrepressible spirits, till at last he had his reckoning with the Lord Chancellor. John Petyt has been released but he is too sick to take any more part in the Commons. He visits him; he is confined to his chamber now. It is painful to hear him fighting for breath. The spring of 1532, the year's first warm weather, does nothing to ease him. I feel, he says, as if there is an iron hoop around my chest, and they are drawing it tighter. He says, Thomas, will you look after Luce when I die?

24Sometimes, if he walks in the gardens with the burgesses or with Anne's chaplains, he feels the absence of Dr Cranmer at his right-hand side. He has been away since January, as the king's ambassador to the Emperor; on his travels, he will visit scholars in Germany to canvass support for the king's divorce. He had said to him, ‘What shall I do if, while you are away, the king has a dream?’ Cranmer had smiled. ‘You worked it by yourself, last time. I was only there to nod it through.’

25He sees the animal Marlinspike, his paws hanging as he drapes himself from a black bough. He points him out. ‘Gentlemen, that was the cardinal's cat.’ At the sight of the visitors Marlinspike darts along the boundary wall, and with a whisk of his tail disappears, into the unknown territory beyond.

26Down in the kitchens at Austin Friars, the garzoni are learning to make spiced wafers. The process involves a good eye, exact timing and a steady hand. There are so many points at which it can go wrong.

27The mixture must have the right dropping consistency, the plates of the long-handled irons must be well greased and hot. When you press the plates together there is an animal shriek as they meet, and steam hisses into the air. If you panic and release the pressure you will have a claggy mess to scrape away. You must wait till the steam dies down, and then you start counting. If you miss a beat the smell of scorching permeates the air. A second divides the successes from the failures.

28When he brings into the Commons a bill to suspend the payment of annates to Rome, he suggests a division of the House. This is far from usual, but amid shock and grumbling the members comply: for the bill to this side, against the bill to the other side. The king is present; he watches, he learns who is for him and who against, and at the end of the process he gives his councillor a grim nod of approval. In the Lords this tactic will not serve. The king has to go in person, three times, and argue his own case. The old aristocracy – proud families like the Exeter clan, with their own claim to the throne – are for Pope and Katherine and are not afraid to say so: or not yet. But he is identifying his enemies and, where he can, splitting them.

29Once the kitchen boys have made a single commendable wafer, Thurston has them turn out a hundred more. It becomes second nature, the flick of the wrist with which one rolls the half-set wafer on to the handle of a wooden spoon and then flips it on to the drying rack to crisp. The successes – with time, they should all be successes – are stamped with the badges of the Tudors, and stacked by the dozen in the pretty inlaid boxes in which they will come to the table, each frail golden disk perfumed with rosewater. He sends a batch to Thomas Boleyn.

30As father of the queen-to-be, Wiltshire thinks he deserves some special title, and has let it be known it would not be disagreeable to him to be known as Monseigneur. He confers with him, his son and their friends, then walks to see Anne, through the chambers at Whitehall. Month by month her state is greater, but he goes through with a bow from her people. At court and in the offices of Westminster he dresses not a whit above his gentleman's station, in loose jackets of Lemster wool so fine they flow like water, in purples and indigos so near black that it looks as if the night has bled into them; his cap of black velvet sits on his black hair, so that the only points of light are his darting eyes and the gestures of his solid, fleshy hands; those, and flashes of fire from Wolsey's turquoise ring.

31At Whitehall – York Place, as it was – the builders are still in. For Christmas, the king had given Anne a bedroom. He led her to it himself, to see her gasp at the wall hangings, which were of cloth of silver and cloth of gold, the carved bed hung with crimson satin embroidered with images of flowers and children. Henry Norris had reported to him that Anne had failed to gasp; she had just looked around the room slowly, smiled, blinked. Then she had remembered what she ought to do; she pretended to feel faint at the honour, and it was only when she swayed and the king locked his arms around her that the gasp came. I do devoutly hope, Norris had said, that we shall all at least once in our lives cause a woman to utter that sound.

32When Anne had expressed her thanks, kneeling, Henry had to leave, of course; to leave the shimmering room, trailing her by the hand, and go back to the New Year feast, to the public scrutiny of his expression: in the certainty that news of it would be conveyed all over Europe, by land and sea, in and out of cipher.

33When at the end of his walk through the cardinal's old rooms he finds Anne sitting with her ladies, she already knows, or seems to know, what her father and brother have said. They think they are fixing her tactics, but she is her own best tactician, and able to think back and judge what has gone wrong; he admires anyone who can learn from mistakes. One day, the windows open to the wing-beats of nest- building birds, she says, ‘You once told me that only the cardinal could set the king free. Do you know what I think now? I think Wolsey was the last person to do it. Because he was so proud, because he wanted to be Pope. If he had been more humble, Clement would have obliged him.’

34‘There may be something in that. ’

35‘I suppose we should take a lesson,’ Norris says.

36They turn together. Anne says, ‘Really, should we?’ and he says, ‘What lesson would that be?’

37Norris is at a loss.

38‘None of us are likely to be cardinals,’ Anne says. ‘Even Thomas, who aspires to most things, would not aspire to that.’ ‘Oh? I wouldn't put money on it.’ Norris slouches off, as only a silken gentleman can slouch, and leaves him behind with the women.

39‘So, Lady Anne,’ he says, ‘when you are reflecting on the late cardinal, do you take time to pray for his soul?’ ‘I think God has judged him, and my prayers, if I make them or if I do not, are of no effect.’

40Mary Boleyn says, gently, ‘He is teasing you, Anne.’ ‘If it were not for the cardinal, you would be married to Harry Percy.’

41‘At least,’ she snaps, ‘I would occupy the estate of wife, which is an honourable estate, but now –’

42‘Oh, but cousin,’ Mary Shelton says, ‘Harry Percy has gone mad.

43Everybody knows it. He is spending all his money. ’ Mary Boleyn laughs. ‘So he is, and my sister supposes it is his disappointment over her that is to blame.’ ‘My lady,’ he turns to Anne, ‘you would not like to be in Harry Percy's country. For you know he would do as those northern lords do, and keep you in a freezing turret up a winding stair, and only let you come down for your dinner. And just as you are seated, and they are bringing in a pudding made of oatmeal mixed with the blood of cattle they have got in a raid, my lord comes thundering in, swinging a sack – oh, sweetheart, you say, a present for me? and he says, aye, madam, if it please you, and opens the sack and into your lap rolls the severed head of a Scot.’

44‘Oh, that is horrible,’ Mary Shelton whispers. ‘Is that what they do?’ Anne puts her hand to her mouth, laughing.

45‘And you know,’ he says, ‘that for your dinner you would prefer a lightly poached breast of chicken, sliced into a cream sauce with tarragon. And also a fine aged cheese imported by the ambassador of Spain, which he intended no doubt for the queen, but which somehow found its way to my house.’

46‘How could I be better served? ’ Anne asks. ‘A band of men on the highway, waylaying Katherine's cheese.’

47‘Well, having staged such a coup, I must go …’ he gestures to the lute-player in the corner, ‘and leave you with your goggle-eyed lover.’ Anne darts a look at the boy Mark. ‘He does goggle. True.’ ‘Shall I send him off? The place is full of musicians.’ ‘Leave him,’ Mary says. ‘He's a sweet boy.’ Mary Boleyn stands up. ‘I'll just …’

48‘Now Lady Carey is going to have one of her conferences with Master Cromwell,’ Mary Shelton says, in a tone of giving agreeable information.

49Jane Rochford: ‘She is going to offer him her virtue again.’ ‘Lady Carey, what can you not say before us all?’ But Anne nods.

50He may go. Mary may go. Presumably Mary is to carry messages that she, Anne, is too delicate to convey direct.

51Outside: ‘Sometimes I need to breathe.’ He waits. ‘Jane and our brother George, you know they hate each other? He won't go to bed with her. If he is not with some other woman he sits up at night with Anne in her rooms. They play cards. They play Pope Julius till the dawn comes. Did you know the king pays her gambling debts? She needs more income, and a house of her own, a retreat, not too far from London, somewhere on the river –’

52‘Whose house has she in mind? ’

53‘I don't think she means to turns anyone out. ’ ‘Houses tend to belong to somebody.’ Then a thought strikes him.

54He smiles.

55She says, ‘I told you to stay away from her, once. But now we cannot do without you. Even my father and my uncle say so. Nothing is done, nothing, without the king's favour, without his constant company, and nowadays when you are not with Henry he wants to know where you are.’ She steps back, appraises him for a moment as if he were a stranger. ‘My sister, too.’

56‘I want a job, Lady Carey. It isn't enough to be a councillor. I need an official place in the household. ’

57‘I'll tell her. ’

58‘I want a post in the Jewel House. Or the Exchequer. ’ She nods. ‘She made Tom Wyatt a poet. She made Harry Percy a madman. I'm sure she has some ideas about what to make you.’ A few days before Parliament met, Thomas Wyatt had come to apologise for getting him out of bed before dawn on New Year's Day.

59‘You have every right to be angry with me, but I've come to ask you not to be. You know how it is at New Year. Toasts are drunk, and the bowl goes round, and you must drain the bowl. ’ He watches Wyatt as he walks about the room, too curious and restless and half-shy to sit down and make his amends face-to-face. He turns the painted globe of the world, and rests his forefinger on England. He stops to look at pictures, at a little altarpiece, and he turns, questioning; it was my wife's, he says, I keep it for her sake. Master Wyatt wears a jacket of a stiffened cream brocade trimmed with sables, which he probably cannot afford; he wears a doublet of tawny silk. He has tender blue eyes and a mane of golden hair, thinning now. Sometimes he puts his fingertips to his head, tentative, as if he still has his New Year headache; really, he is checking his hairline, to see if it has receded in the last five minutes. He stops and looks at himself in the mirror; he does this very often. Dear God, he says. Rolling about the streets with that crowd. I'm too old for such behaviour. But too young to lose my hair. Do you think women care about it? Much? Do you think if I grew a beard it would distract … No, probably not. But perhaps I will anyway. The king's beard looks well, does it not?

60He says, ‘Didn't your father give you any advice?’ ‘Oh yes. Drink off a bowl of milk before you go out. Stewed quinces in honey – do you think that works?’ He is trying not to laugh. He wants to take it seriously, his new post as Wyatt's father. He says, ‘I mean, did he never advise you to stay away from women in whom the king is interested?’ ‘I did stay away. You remember I went to Italy? After that I was in Calais for a year. How much staying away can a man do?’ A question from his own life; he recognises it. Wyatt sits down on a small stool. He props his elbows on his knees. He holds his head, fingertips on his temples. He is listening to his own heartbeat; he is thinking; perhaps he is composing a verse? He looks up. ‘My father says that now Wolsey is dead you're the cleverest man in England. So can you understand this, if I say it just once? If Anne is not a virgin, that's none of my doing.’

61He pours him a glass of wine. ‘Strong,’ Wyatt says, after he has downed it. He looks into the depth of the glass, at his own fingers holding it. ‘I must say more, I think.’

62‘If you must, say it here, and just once. ’ ‘Is anyone hiding behind the arras? Somebody told me there are servants at Chelsea who report to you. No one's servants are safe, these days, there are spies everywhere.’

63‘Tell me in what day there were not spies,’ he says. ‘There was a child in More's house, Dick Purser, More took him in out of guilt after he was orphaned – I cannot say More killed the father outright, but he had him in the pillory and in the Tower, and it broke his health. Dick told the other boys he did not believe God was in the Communion host, so More had him whipped before the whole household. Now I have brought him here. What else could I do? I will take in any others he ill-treats.’

64Smiling, Wyatt passes his hand over the Queen of Sheba: that is to say, over Anselma. The king has given him Wolsey's fine tapestry.

65Early in the year, when he went in to speak to him at Greenwich, the king had seen him raise his eyes to her in greeting, and had said, with a sideways smile, do you know this woman? I used to, he said, explaining himself, excusing himself; the king said, no matter, we all have our follies in youth, and you can't marry everyone, can you … He had said in a low voice, I have in mind that this belonged to the Cardinal of York, and then, more briskly, when you go home make a place for her; I think she should come to live with you.

66He gives himself a glass of wine, and another to Wyatt; says, ‘Gardiner has people outside the gate, watching who comes and goes.

67This is a city house, it is not a fortress – but if anybody's here who shouldn't be, my household does enjoy kicking them out. We quite like fighting. I'd prefer to put my past behind me, but I'm not allowed to.

68Uncle Norfolk keeps reminding me I was a common soldier, and not even in his army. ’

69‘You call him that? ’ Wyatt laughs. ‘Uncle Norfolk?’ ‘Between ourselves. But I don't need to remind you of what the Howards think is due to them. And you've grown up Thomas Boleyn's neighbour, so you know not to cross him, whatever you feel about his daughter. I hope you don't feel anything – do you?’ ‘For two years,’ Wyatt says, ‘I was sick to my soul to think of any other man touching her. But what could I offer? I am a married man, and not the duke or prince she was fishing for, either. She liked me, I think, or she liked to have me in thrall to her, it amused her. We would be alone, she would let me kiss her, and I always thought … but that is Anne's tactic, you see, she says yes, yes, yes, then she says no.’ ‘And of course, you are such a gentleman.’ ‘What, I should have raped her? If she says stop she means it – Henry knows that. But then another day would come and again she would let me kiss her. Yes, yes, yes, no. The worst of it is her hinting, her boasting almost, that she says no to me but yes to others –’ ‘Who are?’

70‘Oh, names, names would spoil her pastime. It must be so arranged that every man you see, at court or down in Kent, you think, is he the one? Is it him, or him? So you are continually asking yourself why you've fallen short, why you can never please her, why you never get the chance. ’

71‘I should think you write the best poems. You can comfort yourself there. His Majesty's verses can be a little repetitive, not to say self- centred. ’

72‘That song of his, “Pastime With Good Company.” When I hear it there is something inside me, like a little dog, that wants to howl. ’ ‘True, the king is past forty. It is melancholy to hear him sing of the days when he was young and stupid.’ He watches Wyatt. The young man looks dazed, as if he has a persistent pain between his eyes. He is claiming that Anne no longer torments him, but that's not how it looks.

73He says, brutal as a butcher, ‘So how many lovers do you think she has had?’

74Wyatt looks down at his feet. He looks at the ceiling. He says, ‘A dozen? Or none? Or a hundred? Brandon tried to tell Henry she was soiled goods. But he sent Brandon away from court. Imagine if I tried.

75I doubt I'd get out of the room alive. Brandon forced himself to speak, because he thinks, come the day she gives in to Henry, what then? Will he not know? ’

76‘Give her credit. She must have thought of that. Besides, the king is no judge of maidenheads. He admits as much. With Katherine, it took him twenty years to puzzle out his brother had been there before him. ’ Wyatt laughs. ‘When the day comes, or the night, Anne can hardly say that to him.’

77‘Listen. This is my view of the case. Anne does not concern herself with her wedding night because there is no cause for concern. ’ He wants to say, because Anne is not a carnal being, she is a calculating being, with a cold slick brain at work behind her hungry black eyes. ‘I believe any woman who can say no to the King of England and keep on saying it, has the wit to say no to any number of men, including you, including Harry Percy, including anyone else she may choose to torment for her own sport while she is arranging her career in the way it suits her. So I think, yes, you've been made into a fool, but not quite in the way you thought.’

78‘That is meant as consolation? ’

79‘It should console you. If you'd really been her lover I would fear for you. Henry believes in her virginity. What else can he believe? But he will prove jealous, once they're married. ’ ‘As they will be? Married?’

80‘I am working hard with Parliament, believe me, and I think I can break the bishops. And after that, God knows … Thomas More says that in the reign of King John when England was placed under an interdict by the Pope, the cattle didn't breed, the corn ceased to ripen, the grass stopped growing and birds fell out of the air. But if that starts to happens,’ he smiles, ‘I'm sure we can reverse our policy.’ ‘Anne has asked me: Cromwell, what does he really believe?’ ‘So you have conversations? And about me? Not just yes, yes, yes, no? I'm flattered.’

81Wyatt looks unhappy. ‘You couldn't be wrong? About Anne?’ ‘It's possible. For the moment I take her at her own valuation. It suits me. It suits us both.’

82As Wyatt is leaving: ‘You must come back soon. My girls have heard how handsome you are. You can keep your hat on, if you think they might be disillusioned.’

83Wyatt is the king's regular tennis partner. Therefore he knows about humbled pride. He fetches up a smile.

84‘Your father told us all about the lion. The boys have made a play out of it. Perhaps you would like to come one day and take your own role? ’

85‘Oh, the lion. Nowadays, I think back on it, and it doesn't seem to me like a thing I would do. Stand still, in the open, and draw it on. ’ He pauses. ‘More like something you would do, Master Cromwell.’ Thomas More comes to Austin Friars. He refuses food, he refuses drink, though he looks in need of both.

86The cardinal would not have taken no for an answer. He would have made him sit down and eat syllabub. Or, if it were the season, given him a large plate of strawberries and a very small spoon.

87More says, ‘In these last ten years the Turks have taken Belgrade.

88They have lit their campfires in the great library at Buda. It is only two years since they were at the gates of Vienna. Why would you want to make another breach in the walls of Christendom? ’ ‘The King of England is not an infidel. Nor am I.’ ‘Are you not? I hardly know whether you pray to the god of Luther and the Germans, or some heathen god you met with on your travels, or some English deity of your own invention. Perhaps your faith is for purchase. You would serve the Sultan if the price was right.’ Erasmus says, did nature ever create anything kinder, sweeter or more harmonious than the character of Thomas More?

89He is silent. He sits at his desk – More has caught him at work – with his chin propped on his fists. It is a pose that shows him, probably, to some combative advantage.

90The Lord Chancellor looks as if he might rend his garments: which could only improve them. One could pity him, but he decides not to.

91‘Master Cromwell, you think because you are a councillor you can negotiate with heretics, behind the king's back. You are wrong. I know about your letters that come and go to Stephen Vaughan, I know he has met with Tyndale. ’

92‘Are you threatening me? I'm just interested. ’ ‘Yes,’ More says sadly. ‘Yes, that is precisely what I am doing.’ He sees that the balance of power has shifted between them: not as officers of state, but as men.

93When More leaves, Richard says to him, ‘He ought not. Threaten you, I mean. Today, because of his office, he walks away, but tomorrow, who knows?’

94He thinks, I was a child, nine or so, I ran off into London and saw an old woman suffer for her faith. The memory floods into his body and he walks away as if he sails on its tide, saying over his shoulder, ‘Richard, see if the Lord Chancellor has his proper escort. If not, give him one, and try to put him on a boat back to Chelsea. We cannot have him wandering about London, haranguing anyone at whose gate he may arrive.’

95He says the last bit in French, he does not know why. He thinks of Anne, her hand outstretched, drawing him towards her: Maître Cremuel, à moi.

96He cannot remember the year but he remembers the late April weather, fat raindrops dappling the pale new leaves. He cannot remember the reason for Walter's temper, but he can remember the fear he felt in the pith of his being, and his heart banging against his ribs. In those days if he couldn't hide out with his uncle John at Lambeth he would get himself into the town and see who he could pick up with – see if he could earn a penny by running errands up and down to the quays, by carrying baskets or loading barrows. If you whistled for him, he came; lucky, he knows now, not to have got in with low-lifes who would lead him to be branded or whipped, or to be one of the small corpses fished out of the river. At that age you have no judgement. If somebody said, good sport over there, he followed the pointing finger.

97He had nothing against the old woman, but he had never seen a burning.

98What's her crime? he said, and they said, she is a Loller. That's one who says the God on the altar is a piece of bread. What, he said, bread like the baker bakes? Let this child forward, they said. Let him be instructed, it will do him good to see up close, so he always goes to Mass after this and obeys his priest. They pushed him to the front of the crowd. Come here, sweetheart, stand with me, a woman said. She had a broad smile and wore a clean white cap. You get a pardon for your sins just for watching it, she said. Any that bring faggots to the burning, they get forty days' release from Purgatory.

99When the Loller was led out between the officers the people jeered and shouted. He saw that she was a grandmother, perhaps the oldest person he had ever seen. The officers were nearly carrying her. She had no cap or veil. Her hair seemed to be torn out of her head in patches. People behind him said, no doubt she did that herself, in desperation at her sin. Behind the Loller came two monks, parading like fat grey rats, crosses in their pink paws. The woman in the clean cap squeezed his shoulder: like a mother might do, if you had one.

100Look at her, she said, eighty years old, and steeped in wickedness. A man said, not much fat on her bones, it won't take long unless the wind changes.

101But what's her sin? he said.

102I told you. She says the saints are but wooden posts.

103Like that post they're chaining her to?

104Aye, just like that.

105The post will burn too.

106They can get another next time, the woman said. She took her hand from his shoulder. She balled her two hands into fists and punched them in the air, and from the depth of her belly she let loose a scream, a halloo, in a shrill voice like a demon. The press of people took up the cry. They seethed and pushed forward for a view, they catcalled and whistled and stamped their feet. At the thought of the horrible thing he would see he felt hot and cold. He twisted to look up into the face of the woman who was his mother in this crowd. You watch, she said.

107With the gentlest brush of her fingers she turned his face to the spectacle. Pay attention now. The officers took chains and bound the old person to the stake.

108The stake was on top of a pile of stones, and some gentlemen came, and priests, bishops perhaps, he did not know. They called out to the Loller to put off her heresies. He was close enough to see her lips moving but he could not hear what she said. What if she changes her mind now, will they let her go? Not they, the woman chuckled. Look, she is calling on Satan to help her. The gentlemen withdrew. The officers banked up wood and bales of straw around the Loller. The woman tapped him on the shoulder; let's hope it's damp, eh? This is a good view, last time I was at the back. The rain had stopped, the sun broken through. When the executioner came with a torch, it was pale in the sunshine, barely more than a slick movement, like the movement of eels in a bag. The monks were chanting and holding up a cross to the Loller, and it was only when they skipped backwards, at the first billow of smoke, that the crowd knew the fire was set.

109They surged forward, roaring. Officers made a barrier with staves and shouted in great deep voices, back, back, back, and the crowd shrieked and fell back, and then came on again, roaring and chanting, as if it were a game. Eddies of smoke spoiled their view, and the crowd beat it aside, coughing. Smell her! they cried. Smell the old sow! He had held his breath, not to breathe her in. In the smoke the Loller was screaming. Now she calls on the saints! they said. The woman bent down and said in his ear, do you know that in the fire they bleed?

110Some people think they just shrivel up, but I've seen it before and I know.

111By the time the smoke cleared and they could see again, the old woman was well ablaze. The crowd began cheering. They had said it would not take long but it did take long, or so it seemed to him, before the screaming stopped. Does nobody pray for her, he said, and the woman said, what's the point? Even after there was nothing left to scream, the fire was stoked. The officers trod around the margins, stamping out any wisps of straw that flew off, kicking back anything bigger.

112When the crowd drifted home, chattering, you could tell the ones who'd been on the wrong side of the fire, because their faces were grey with wood-ash. He wanted to go home but again he thought of Walter, who had said that morning he was going to kill him by inches. He watched the officers strike with their iron bars at the human debris that was left. The chains retained the remnants of flesh, sucking and clinging. Approaching the men, he asked, how hot must the fire be, to burn bone? He expected them to have knowledge in the matter. But they didn't understand his question. People who are not smiths think all fires are the same. His father had taught him the colours of red: sunset red, cherry red, the bright yellow-red with no name unless its name is scarlet.

113The Loller's skull was left on the ground, the long bones of her arms and legs. Her broken ribcage was not much bigger than a dog's. A man took an iron bar and thrust it through the hole where the woman's left eye had been. He scooped up the skull and positioned it on the stones, so it was looking at him. Then he hefted his bar and brought it down on the crown. Even before the blow landed he knew it was false, skewed. Shattered bone, like a star, flew away into the dirt, but the most part of the skull was intact. Jesus, the man said. Here, lad, do you want a go? One good swipe will stove her in.

114Usually he said yes to any invitation. But now he backed away, his hands behind his back. God's blood, the man said, I wish I could afford to be choosy. Soon after that it came on to rain. The men wiped their hands, blew their noses and walked off the job. They threw down their iron bars amid what was left of the Loller. It was just splinters of bone now, and thick sludgy ash. He picked up one of the iron bars, in case he needed a weapon. He fingered its tapered end, which was cut like a chisel. He did not know how far he was from home, and whether Walter might come for him. He wondered how you kill a person by inches, whether by burning them or cutting them up. He should have asked the officers while they were here, for being servants of the city they would know.

115The stink of the woman was still in the air. He wondered if she was in Hell now, or still about the streets, but he was not afraid of ghosts.

116They had put up a stand for the gentlemen, and though the canopy was taken down, it was high enough off the ground to crouch underneath for shelter. He prayed for the woman, thinking it could do no harm. He moved his lips as he prayed. Rainwater gathered above him and fell in great drops through the planking. He counted the time between drops and caught them in his cupped hand. He did this just for a pastime.

117Dusk fell. If it were an ordinary day he would have been hungry by now and gone looking for food.

118In the twilight certain men came, and women too; he knew, because there were women, that they were not officers or people who would hurt him. They drew together, making a loose circle around the stake on its pile of stones. He ducked out from under the stand and approached them. You will be wondering what has happened here, he said. But they did not look up or speak to him.

119They fell to their knees and he thought they were praying. I have prayed for her too, he said.

120Have you? Good lad, one of the men said. He didn't even glance up.

121If he looks at me, he thought, he will see that I am not good, but a worthless boy who goes off with his dog and forgets to make the brine bath for the forge, so when Walter shouts where's the fucking slake-tub it's not there. With a sick lurch of his stomach he remembered what he'd not done and why he was to be killed. He almost cried out. As if he were in pain.

122He saw now that the men and women were not praying. They were on their hands and knees. They were friends of the Loller, and they were scraping her up. One of the women knelt, her skirts spread, and held out an earthenware pot. His eyes were sharp even in the gloom, and out of the sludge and muck he picked a fragment of bone. Here's some, he said. The woman held out the bowl. Here's another.

123One of the men stood apart, some way off. Why does he not help us? he said.

124He is the watchman. He will whistle if the officers come.

125Will they take us up?

126Hurry, hurry, another man said.

127When they had got a bowlful, the woman who was holding it said, ‘Give me your hand.’

128Trusting, he held it out to her. She dipped her fingers into the bowl.

129She placed on the back of his hand a smear of mud and grit, fat and ash. ‘Joan Boughton,’ she said.