1Halloween: the world's edge seeps and bleeds. This is the time when the tally-keepers of Purgatory, its clerks and gaolers, listen in to the living, who are praying for the dead.

2At this time of year, with their parish, he and Liz would keep vigil.

3They would pray for Henry Wykys, her father; for Liz's dead husband, Thomas Williams; for Walter Cromwell, and for distant cousins; for half-forgotten names, long-dead half-sisters and lost step-children.

4Last night he kept the vigil alone. He lay awake, wishing Liz back; waiting for her to come and lie beside him. It's true he is at Esher with the cardinal, not at home at the Austin Friars. But, he thought, she'll know how to find me. She'll look for the cardinal, drawn through the space between worlds by incense and candlelight. Wherever the cardinal is, I will be.

5At some point he must have slept. When daylight came, the room felt so empty it was empty even of him.

6All Hallows Day: grief comes in waves. Now it threatens to capsize him. He doesn't believe that the dead come back; but that doesn't stop him from feeling the brush of their fingertips, wing-tips, against his shoulder. Since last night they have been less individual forms and faces than a solid aggregated mass, their flesh slapping and jostling together, their texture dense like sea creatures, their faces sick with an undersea sheen.

7Now he stands in a window embrasure, Liz's prayer book in hand.

8His daughter Grace liked to look at it, and today he can feel the imprint of her small fingers under his own. These are Our Lady's prayers for the canonical hours, the pages illuminated by a dove, a vase of lilies.

9The office is Matins, and Mary kneels on a floor of chequered tiles.

10The angel greets her, and the words of his greeting are written on a scroll, which unfurls from his clasped hands as if his palms are speaking. His wings are coloured: heaven-blue.

11He turns the page. The office is Lauds. Here is a picture of the Visitation. Mary, with her neat little belly, is greeted by her pregnant cousin, St Elizabeth. Their foreheads are high, their brows plucked, and they look surprised, as indeed they must be; one of them is a virgin, the other advanced in years. Spring flowers grow at their feet, and each of them wears an airy crown, made of gilt wires as fine as blonde hairs.

12He turns a page. Grace, silent and small, turns the page with him.

13The office is Prime. The picture is the Nativity: a tiny white Jesus lies in the folds of his mother's cloak. The office is Sext: the Magi proffer jewelled cups; behind them is a city on a hill, a city in Italy, with its bell tower, its view of rising ground and its misty line of trees. The office is None: Joseph carries a basket of doves to the temple. The office is Vespers: a dagger sent by Herod makes a neat hole in a shocked infant. A woman throws up her hands in protest, or prayer: her eloquent, helpless palms. The infant corpse scatters three drops of blood, each one shaped like a tear. Each bloody tear is a precise vermilion.

14He looks up. Like an after-image, the form of the tears swims in his eyes; the picture blurs. He blinks. Someone is walking towards him. It is George Cavendish. His hands wash together, his face is a mask of concern.

15Let him not speak to me, he prays. Let George pass on.

16‘Master Cromwell,’ he says, ‘I believe you are crying. What is this?

17Is there bad news about our master? ’

18He tries to close Liz's book, but Cavendish reaches out for it. ‘Ah, you are praying.’ He looks amazed.

19Cavendish cannot see his daughter's fingers touching the page, or his wife's hands holding the book. George simply looks at the pictures, upside down. He takes a deep breath and says, ‘Thomas …?’ ‘I am crying for myself,’ he says. ‘I am going to lose everything, everything I have worked for, all my life, because I will go down with the cardinal – no, George, don't interrupt me – because I have done what he asked me to do, and been his friend, and the man at his right hand. If I had stuck to my work in the city, instead of hurtling about the countryside making enemies, I'd be a rich man – and you, George, I'd be inviting you out to my new country house, and asking your advice on furniture and flower beds. But look at me! I'm finished.’ George tries to speak: he utters a consolatory bleat.

20‘Unless,’ he says. ‘Unless, George. What do you think? I've sent my boy Rafe to Westminster.’

21‘What will he do there? ’

22But he is crying again. The ghosts are gathering, he feels cold, his position is irretrievable. In Italy he learned a memory system, so he can remember everything: every stage of how he got here. ‘I think,’ he says, ‘I should go after him.’

23‘Please,’ says Cavendish, ‘not before dinner.’ ‘No?’

24‘Because we need to think how to pay off my lord's servants. ’ A moment passes. He enfolds the prayer book to himself; he holds it in his arms. Cavendish has given him what he needs: an accountancy problem. ‘George,’ he says, ‘you know my lord's chaplains have flocked here after him, all of them earning – what? – a hundred, two hundred pounds a year, out of his liberality? So,I think … we will make the chaplains and the priests pay off the household servants, because what I think is, what I notice is, that his servants love my lord more than his priests do. So, now, let's go to dinner, and after dinner I will make the priests ashamed, and I will make them open their veins and bleed money. We need to give the household a quarter's wages at least, and a retainer. Against the day of my lord's restoration.’ ‘Well,’ says George, ‘if anyone can do it, you can.’ He finds himself smiling. Perhaps it's a grim smile, but he never thought he would smile today. He says, ‘When that's done, I shall leave you. I shall be back as soon as I have made sure of a place in the Parliament.’

25‘But it meets in two days … How will you manage it now? ’ ‘I don't know, but someone must speak for my lord. Or they will kill him.’

26He sees the hurt and shock; he wants to take the words back; but it is true. He says, ‘I can only try. I'll make or mar, before I see you again.’ George almost bows. ‘Make or mar,’ he murmurs. ‘It was ever your common saying.’

27Cavendish walks about the household, saying, Thomas Cromwell was reading a prayer book. Thomas Cromwell was crying. Only now does George realise how bad things are.

28Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called Scopas, and recite a lyric in praise of his host. Poets have strange vagaries, and in his lyric Simonides incorporated verses in praise of Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins. Scopas was sulky, and said he would pay only half the fee: ‘As for the rest, get it from the Twins.’ A little later, a servant came into the hall. He whispered to Simonides; there were two young men outside, asking for him by name.

29He rose and left the banqueting hall. He looked around for the two young men, but he could see no one.

30As he turned back, to go and finish his dinner, he heard a terrible noise, of stone splitting and crumbling. He heard the cries of the dying, as the roof of the hall collapsed. Of all the diners, he was the only one left alive.

31The bodies were so broken and disfigured that the relatives of the dead could not identify them. But Simonides was a remarkable man.

32Whatever he saw was imprinted on his mind. He led each of the relatives through the ruins; and pointing to the crushed remains, he said, there is your man. In linking the dead to their names, he worked from the seating plan in his head.

33It is Cicero who tells us this story. He tells us how, on that day, Simonides invented the art of memory. He remembered the names, the faces, some sour and bloated, some blithe, some bored. He remembered exactly where everyone was sitting, at the moment the roof fell in.