1Whether it is through pain or fear, or some defect of nature; whether because of the summer heat, or the sound of hunting horns winding into the distance, or the spinning of sparkling dust in empty rooms; or whether it is that the child has lost sleep, while from dawn onwards her father's decamping household was packed up around her; for whatever reason, she is shrunken into herself, and her eyes are the colour of ditchwater. Once, as he is going through the preliminary Latin politenesses, he sees her grip tighten on the back of her mother's chair.

2‘Madam, your daughter should sit. ’ In case a contest of wills should ensue, he picks up a stool and places it, with a decisive thud, by Katherine's skirts.

3The queen leans back, rigid inside her boned bodice, to whisper to her daughter. The ladies of Italy, seemingly carefree, wore constructions of iron beneath their silks. It took infinite patience, not just in negotiation, to get them out of their clothes.

4Mary drops her head to whisper back; she hints, in Castilian, that it is her woman's disorder. Two pairs of eyes rise to meet his. The girl's glance is almost unfocused; she sees him, he supposes, as a bulky mass of shadow, in a space welling with distress. Stand up straight, Katherine murmurs: like a princess of England. Braced against the chair back, Mary takes a deep breath. She turns to him her plain pinched face: hard as Norfolk's thumbnail.

5It is early afternoon, very hot. The sun casts against the wall shifting squares of lilac and gold. The shrivelled fields of Windsor are laid out below them. The Thames shrinks from its banks.

6The queen speaks in English. ‘Do you know who this is? This is Master Cromwell. Who now writes all the laws.’ Caught awkwardly between languages, he says, ‘Madam, shall we go on in English, or Latin?’

7‘Your cardinal would ask the same question. As if I were a stranger here. I will say to you, as I said to him, that I was first addressed as Princess of Wales when I was three years old. I was sixteen when I came here to marry my lord Arthur. I was a virgin and seventeen when he died. I was twenty-four years old when I became Queen of England, and I will say for the avoidance of doubt that I am at present aged forty-six, and still queen, and by now, I believe, a sort of Englishwoman. But I shall not repeat to you everything that I told the cardinal. I imagine he left you notes of these things. ’ He feels he should bow. The queen says, ‘Since the year began they have brought certain bills into Parliament. Until now Master Cromwell's talent was for moneylending, but now he finds he has a talent for legislation too – if you want a new law, just ask him. I hear that at night you take the drafts to your house in – where is your house?’ She makes it sound like ‘your dog-hole’.

8Mary says, ‘These laws are written against the church. I wonder that our lords allow it.’

9‘You know,’ the queen says, ‘that the Cardinal of York was accused under the praemunire laws of usurping your lord father's jurisdiction as ruler of England. Now Master Cromwell and his friends find all the clergy complicit in that crime, and ask them to pay a fine of more than one hundred thousand pounds.’

10‘Not a fine. We call it a benevolence. ’

11‘I call it extortion. ’ She turns to her daughter. ‘If you ask why the church is not defended, I can only tell you that there are noblemen in this land’ – Suffolk, she means, Norfolk – ‘who have been heard to say they will pull the power of the church down, that never again will they suffer – they use the word – a churchman to grow so great as our late legate. That we need no new Wolsey, I concur. With the attacks on the bishops, I do not concur. Wolsey was to me an enemy. That does not alter my feelings towards our Holy Mother the church.’ He thinks, Wolsey was to me a father and a friend. That does not alter my feelings towards our Holy Mother the church.

12‘You and Speaker Audley, you put your heads together by candlelight. ’ The queen mentions the Speaker's name as if she were saying ‘your kitchen boy’. ‘And when the morning comes you induce the king to describe himself as head of the church in England.’ ‘Whereas,’ the child says, ‘the Pope is head of the church everywhere, and from the throne of St Peter flows the lawfulness of all government. From no other source.’

13‘Lady Mary,’ he says, ‘will you not sit?’ He catches her just as she folds at the knees, and eases her down on to the stool. ‘It is just the heat,’ he says, so she will not be ashamed. She turns up her eyes, shallow and grey, with a look of simple gratitude; and as soon as she is seated the look is replaced by an expression as stony as the wall of a town under siege.

14‘You say “induce”,’ he tells Katherine. ‘But Your Highness, above anyone, knows that the king cannot be led.’ ‘But he may be enticed.’ She turns to Mary, whose arms have crept over her belly. ‘So your father the king is named head of the church, and to soothe the conscience of the bishops, they have caused this formula to be inserted: “as far as the law of Christ allows”.’ ‘What does that mean?’ Mary says. ‘It means nothing.’ ‘Your Highness, it means everything.’

15‘Yes. It is very clever. ’

16‘I beg you,’ he says, ‘to consider it in this way, that the king has merely defined a position previously held, one that ancient precedents –’

17‘– invented these last months –’

18‘– show as his right. ’

19Under her clumsy gable hood, Mary's forehead is slick with sweat.

20She says, ‘What is defined can be redefined, yes?’ ‘Indeed,’ her mother says. ‘And redefined in favour of the church – if only I fall in with their wishes, and put myself out of the estate of queen and wife.’

21The princess is right, he thinks. There is room for negotiation.

22‘Nothing here is irrevocable. ’

23‘No, you wait to see what I will bring to your treaty table. ’ Katherine holds out her hands – little, stubby, puffy hands – to show that they are empty. ‘Only Bishop Fisher defends me. Only he has been constant. Only he is able to tell the truth, which is that the House of Commons is full of heathens.’ She sighs, her hands fall at her sides.

24‘And now under what persuasion has my husband ridden off without a farewell? He has not done so before. Never. ’ ‘He means to hunt out of Chertsey for a few days.’ ‘With the woman,’ Mary says. ‘The person.’ ‘Then he will ride by way of Guildford to visit Lord Sandys – he wants to see his handsome new gallery at the Vyne.’ His tone is easy, soothing, like the cardinal's; perhaps too much so? ‘From there, depending on the weather, and the game, he will go to William Paulet at Basing.’

25‘I am to follow, when? ’

26‘He will return in a fortnight, God willing. ’ ‘A fortnight,’ Mary says. ‘Alone with the person.’ ‘Before then, madam, you are to go to another palace – he has chosen the More, in Hertfordshire, which you know is very comfortable.’

27‘Being the cardinal's house,’ Mary says, ‘it would be lavish.’ My own daughters, he thinks, would never have spoken so.

28‘Princess,’ he says, ‘will you, of your charity, cease to speak ill of a man who never did you harm?’

29Mary blushes from neckline to hairline. ‘I did not mean to fail in charity.’

30‘The late cardinal is your godfather. You owe him your prayers. ’ Her eyes flicker towards him; she looks cowed. ‘I pray to shorten his term in Purgatory …’

31Katherine interrupts her. ‘Send a box to Hertfordshire. Send a package. Do not seek to send me.’

32‘You shall have your whole court. The household is ready for two hundred. ’

33‘I shall write to the king. You may carry the letter. My place is with him. ’

34‘My advice,’ he says, ‘take this gently. Or he may …’ He indicates the princess. His hands join and drift apart. Separate you.

35The child is fighting down pain. Her mother is fighting down grief and anger, and disgust and fear. ‘I expected this,’ she says, ‘but I did not expect he would send a man like you to tell me.’ He frowns: does she think it would come better from Norfolk? ‘They say you had a trade as a blacksmith; is that correct?’ Now she will say, shoe a horse?

36‘It was my father's trade. ’

37‘I begin to understand you. ’ She nods. ‘The blacksmith makes his own tools.’

38Half a mile of chalk walls, a mirror for the glare, bounce at him a white heat. In the shadow of a gateway, Gregory and Rafe are jostling and pushing, insulting each other with culinary insults he has taught them: Sir, you are a fat Fleming, and spread butter on your bread. Sir, you are a Roman pauper, may your offspring eat snails. Master Wriothesley is leaning in the sun and watching them, with a lazy smile; butterflies garland his head.

39‘Oh, it's you,’ he says. Wriothesley looks gratified. ‘You look fit to be painted, Master Wriothesley. A doublet of azure, and a shaft of light precisely placed.’

40‘Sir? Katherine says? ’

41‘She says our precedents are fake. ’

42Rafe: ‘Does she understand that you and Dr Cranmer sat up all night over them?’

43‘Oh, wild times! ’ Gregory says. ‘Seeing the dawn in, with Dr Cranmer!’

44He throws an arm around Rafe's bony little shoulders and squeezes him; it is a liberation to be away from Katherine, from the girl flinching like a whipped bitch. ‘Once I myself, with Giovannino – well, with some boys I knew –’ He stops: what is this? I don't tell stories about myself.

45‘Please …’ Wriothesley says.

46‘Well, we had a statue made, a smirking little god with wings, and then we beat it with hammers and chains to make it antique, and we hired a muleteer and drove it to Rome and sold it to a cardinal.’ Such a hot day, when they were ushered into his presence: hazy, thunder in the distance, and white dust from building sites hanging in the air. ‘I remember he had tears in his eyes when he paid us. “To think that on these charming little feet and these sweet pinions, the gaze of the Emperor Augustus may have rested.” When the Portinari boys set off for Florence they were staggering under the weight of their purses.’ ‘And you?’

47‘I took my cut and stayed on to sell the mules. ’ They head downhill through the inner courts. Emerging into the sun, he shades his eyes as if to see through the tangle of tree-tops that runs into the distance. ‘I told the queen, let Henry go in peace. Or he might not let the princess move with her up-country.’ Wriothesley says, surprised, ‘But it is decided. They are to be separated. Mary is to go to Richmond.’

48He did not know. He hopes his hesitation is not perceptible. ‘Of course. But the queen had not been told, and it was worth a try, yes?’ See how useful Master Wriothesley is. See how he brings us intelligence from Secretary Gardiner. Rafe says, ‘It is harsh. To use the little girl against her mother.’

49‘Harsh, yes … but the question is, have you picked your prince?

50Because that is what you do, you choose him, and you know what he is. And then, when you have chosen, you say yes to him – yes, that is possible, yes, that can be done. If you don't like Henry, you can go abroad and find another prince, but I tell you – if this were Italy, Katherine would be cold in her tomb. ’

51‘But you swore,’ Gregory says, ‘that you respected the queen.’ ‘So I do. And I would respect her corpse.’ ‘You would not work her death, would you?’ He halts. He takes his son's arm, turns him to look into his face.

52‘Retrace our steps through this conversation. ’ Gregory pulls away.

53‘No, listen, Gregory. I said, you give way to the king's requests. You open the way to his desires. That is what a courtier does. Now, understand this: it is impossible that Henry should require me or any other person to harm the queen. What is he, a monster? Even now he has affection for her; how could he not? And he has a soul he hopes may be saved. He confesses every day to one or other of his chaplains.

54Do you think the Emperor does so much, or King Francis? Henry's heart, I assure you, is a heart full of feeling; and Henry's soul, I swear, is the most scrutinised soul in Christendom. ’ Wriothesley says, ‘Master Cromwell, he is your son, not an ambassador.’

55He lets Gregory go. ‘Shall we get on the river? There might be a breeze.’

56In the Lower Ward, six couples of hunting dogs stir and yelp in the cages on wheels which are going to carry them across country. Tails waving, they are clambering over each other, twisting ears and nipping, their yaps and howls adding to the sense of nearpanic that has taken over the castle. It's more like the evacuation of a fort than the start of a summer progress. Sweating porters are heaving the king's furnishings on to carts. Two men with a studded chest have got wedged in a doorway. He thinks of himself on the road, a bruised child, loading wagons to get a lift. He wanders over. ‘How did this happen, boys?’

57He steadies one corner of the chest and backs them off into the shadows; adjusts the degree of rotation with a flip of his hand; a moment's fumbling and slipping, and they burst into the light, shouting ‘Here she goes!’ as if they had thought of it themselves. Be packing for the queen next, he says, for the cardinal's palace at the More, and they say, surprised, is that so, master, and what if the queen won't go?

58He says, then we will roll her up in a carpet and put her on your cart.

59He hands out coins: ease up, it's too hot to work so hard. He saunters back to the boys. A man leads up horses ready for harnessing to the hounds' wagons, and as soon as they catch their scent the dogs set up an excited barking, which can still be heard as they get on the water.

60The river is brown, torpid; on the Eton bank, a group of listless swans glides in and out of the weeds. Their boat bobs beneath them; he says, ‘Is that not Sion Madoc?’

61‘Never forget a face, eh? ’

62‘Not when it's ugly. ’

63‘Have you seen yourself, bach? ’ The boatman has been eating an apple, core and all; fastidious, he flicks the pips over the side.

64‘How's your dad? ’

65‘Dead. ’ Sion spits the stalk out. ‘Any of these yours?’ ‘Me,’ Gregory says.

66‘That's mine. ’ Sion nods to the opposite oar, a lump of a lad who reddens and looks away. ‘Your dad used to shut up shop in this weather. Put the fire out and go fishing.’ ‘Lashing the water with his rod,’ he says, ‘and punching the lights out of the fish. Jump in and drag them gasping out of the green deep.

67Fingers through the gills: “What are you looking at, you scaly whoreson? Are you looking at me?”’

68‘He not being one to sit and enjoy the sunshine,’ Madoc explains. ‘I could tell you stories, about Walter Cromwell.’ Master Wriothesley's face is a study. He does not understand how much you can learn from boatmen, their argot blasphemous and rapid.

69At twelve he spoke it fluently, his mother tongue, and now it flows back into his mouth, something natural, something dirty. There are tags of Greek he has mastered, which he exchanges with Thomas Cranmer, with Call-Me-Risley: early language, unblighted, like tender fruit. But never does a Greek scholar pin back your ears as Sion does now, with Putney's opinion of the fucking Bullens. Henry goes to it with the mother, good luck to him. He goes to it with the sister, what's a king for? But it's got to stop somewhere. We're not beasts of the field. Sion calls Anne an eel, he calls her a slippery dipper from the slime, and he remembers what the cardinal had called her: my serpentine enemy.

70Sion says, she goes to it with her brother; he says, what, her brother George?

71‘Any brother she's got. Those kind keep it in the family. They do filthy French tricks, like –’

72‘Can you keep your voice down? ’ He looks around, as if spies might be swimming by the boat.

73‘– and that's how she trusts herself she don't give in to Henry, because if she lets him do it and she gets a boy he's, thanks very much, now clear off, girl – so she's oh, Your Highness, I never could allow – because she knows that very night her brother's inside her, licking her up to the lungs, and then he's, excuse me, sister, what shall I do with this big package – she says, oh, don't distress yourself, my lord brother, shove it up the back entry, it'll come to no harm there. ’ Thanks, he says, I had no idea how they were managing.

74The boys have got about one word in three. Sion gets a tip. It's worth anything, to be reacquainted with the Putney imagination. He will cherish Sion's simper: very unlike the real Anne.

75Later, at home, Gregory says, ‘Ought people to speak like that? And be paid for it?’

76‘He was speaking his mind. ’ He shrugs. ‘So, if you want to know people's minds …’

77‘Call-Me-Risley is frightened of you. He says that when you were coming from Chelsea with Master Secretary, you threatened to throw him out of his own barge and drown him. ’ That is not precisely his memory of the conversation.

78‘And does Call-Me think I would do it? ’

79‘Yes. He thinks you would do anything. ’

80At New Year he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal. He hopes she will use them to eat with, not to stick in people.

81‘From Venice! ’ She is pleased. She holds them up, so the handles catch and splinter the light.

82He has brought another present, for her to pass on. It is wrapped in a piece of sky-blue silk. ‘It is for the little girl who always cries.’ Anne's mouth opens a little. ‘Don't you know?’ Her eyes brim with black glee. ‘Come, so I can tell you in your ear.’ Her cheek brushes his. Her skin is faintly perfumed: amber, rose. ‘Sir John Seymour?

83Dear Sir John? Old Sir John, as people call him? ’ Sir John is not, perhaps, more than a dozen years older than himself, but amiability can be ageing; with his sons Edward and Tom now the young men about court, he does give the impression of having eased into retirement. ‘Now we understand why we never see him,’ Anne murmurs. ‘Now we know what he does down in the country.’ ‘Hunting, I thought.’

84‘Yes, and he has netted Catherine Fillol, Edward's wife. They were taken in the act, but I cannot find out where, whether in her bed, or his, or in a meadow, a hayloft – yes, cold, to be sure, but they were keeping each other warm. And now Sir John has confessed it all, man to man, telling his son to his face that he's had her every week since the wedding, so that's about two years and, say, six months, so …’ ‘You could round it off to a hundred and twenty times, assuming they abstain at the major feasts …’

85‘Adulterers don't stop for Lent. ’

86‘Oh, and I thought they did. ’

87‘She's had two babies, so allow respite for her lying-in … And they are boys, you know. So Edward is …’ He imagines how Edward is.

88That pure hawk's profile. ‘He is cutting them out of the family. They are to be bastards. She, Catherine Fillol, she's to be put in a convent. I think he should put her in a cage! He is asking for an annulment. As for dear Sir John, I think we will not see him at court soon.’ ‘Why are we whispering? I must be the last person in London to hear.’

89‘The king hasn't heard. And you know how proper he is. So if someone is to come to him joking about it, let it not be me or you. ’ ‘And the daughter? Jane, is it?’

90Anne sniggers. ‘Pasty-face? Gone down to Wiltshire. Her best move would be to follow the sister-in-law into a nunnery. Her sister Lizzie married well, but no one wants Milksop, and now no one will.’ Her eyes fall on his present; she says, suddenly anxious, jealous, ‘What is it?’

91‘Only a book of needlework patterns. ’

92‘As long as it is nothing to tax her wits. Why would you send her a present? ’

93‘I feel sorry for her. ’ More now, of course.

94‘Oh. You don't like her, do you? ’ The correct answer is, no, my lady Anne, I only like you. ‘Because, is it proper for you to send her a present?’

95‘It is not as if it is tales out of Boccaccio. ’ She laughs. ‘They could tell Boccaccio a tale, those sinners at Wolf Hall.’

96* * *

97Thomas Hitton, a priest, was burned just as February went out; taken up by Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, as a smuggler of Tyndale's scriptures. Soon afterwards, rising from the bishop's frugal table, a dozen guests had collapsed, vomiting, rigid with pain, and been taken, pale and almost pulseless, to their beds and the ministrations of the doctors. Dr Butts said the broth had done it; from testimony of the waiting-boys, it was the only dish they had tasted in common.

98There are poisons nature herself brews, and he, before putting the bishop's cook to the torture, would have visited the kitchens and passed a skimmer over the stockpot. But no one else doubts there has been a crime.

99Presently the cook admits to adding to the broth a white powder, which someone gave him. Who? Just a man. A stranger who had said it would be a good joke, to give Fisher and his guests a purge.

100The king is beside himself: rage and fear. He blames heretics. Dr Butts, shaking his head, pulling his lower lip, says that poison is what Henry fears worse than Hell itself.

101Would you put poison in a bishop's dinner because a stranger told you it would be a laugh? The cook won't say more, or perhaps he has reached a stage beyond saying. The interrogation has been mismanaged then, he says to Butts; I wonder why. The doctor, a man who loves the gospel, laughs sourly and says, ‘If they wanted the man to talk, they should have called in Thomas More.’ The word is that the Lord Chancellor has become a master in the twin arts of stretching and compressing the servants of God. When heretics are taken, he stands by at the Tower while the torture is applied. It is reported that in his gatehouse at Chelsea he keeps suspects in the stocks, while he preaches at them and harries them: the name of your printer, the name of the master of the ship that brought these books into England. They say he uses the whip, the manacles and the torment-frame they call Skeffing-ton's Daughter. It is a portable device, into which a man is folded, knees to chest, with a hoop of iron across his back; by means of a screw, the hoop is tightened until his ribs crack. It takes art to make sure the man does not suffocate: for if he does, everything he knows is lost.

102Over the next week, two dinner guests die; Fisher himself rallies. It is possible, he thinks, that the cook did speak, but that what he said was not for the ears of the ordinary subject.

103He goes to see Anne. A thorn between two roses, she is sitting with her cousin Mary Shelton, and her brother's wife Jane, Lady Rochford.

104‘My lady, do you know the king has devised a new form of death for Fisher's cook? He is to be boiled alive. ’ Mary Shelton gives a little gasp, and flushes as if some gallant had pinched her. Jane Rochford drawls, ‘Vere dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare.’ She translates for Mary: ‘Apt.’ Anne's face wears no expression at all. Even a man as literate as he can find nothing there to read. ‘How will they do it?’ ‘I did not ask about the mechanics. Would you like me to enquire? I think it will involve hoisting him up in chains, so that the crowd can see his skin peeling off and hear him screaming.’ To be fair to Anne, if you walked up to her and said, you are to be boiled, she would probably shrug: c'est la vie.

105Fisher is in bed for a month. When he is up and about he looks like a walking corpse. The intercession of angels and saints has not sufficed to heal his sore gut and put the flesh back on his bones.

106These are days of brutal truth from Tyndale. Saints are not your friends and they will not protect you. They cannot help you to salvation. You cannot engage them to your service with prayers and candles, as you might hire a man for the harvest. Christ's sacrifice was done on Calvary; it is not done in the Mass. Priests cannot help you to Heaven; you need no priest to stand between you and your God. No merits of yours can save you: only the merits of the living Christ.

107March: Lucy Petyt, whose husband is a master grocer and a member of the Commons, comes to see him at Austin Friars. She is wearing black lambskin – imported, at a guess – and a modest grey worsted gown; Alice receives her gloves and surreptitiously slides in a finger to appraise the silk lining. He rises from his desk and takes her hands, drawing her to the fire and pressing upon her a cup of warm spiced wine. Her hands shake as she cradles the cup and she says, ‘I wish John had this. This wine. This fire.’

108It was snowing at dawn on the day of the raid on Lion's Quay, but soon a wintery sun was up, scouring windowpanes and casting the panelled rooms of city houses into sharp relief, ravines of shadows and cold floods of light. ‘That is what I cannot get out of my mind,’ Lucy says, ‘the cold.’ And More himself, his face muffled in furs, standing at the door with his officers, ready to search the warehouse and their own rooms. ‘I was the first there,’ she says, ‘and I kept him hovering with pleasantries – I called up, my dear, here is the Lord Chancellor come on parliamentary business.’ The wine floods into her face, loosens her tongue. ‘I kept saying, have you breakfasted, sir, are you sure, and the servants were weaving under his feet, impeding him’ – she gives a little, mirthless, whooping laugh – ‘and all the time John was stowing his papers behind a panel –’ ‘You did well, Lucy.’

109‘When they walked upstairs John was ready for him – oh, Lord Chancellor, welcome to my poor house – but the poor hapless man, he had cast his Testament under his desk, my eye went straight to it, I wonder their eyes didn't follow mine. ’

110An hour's search realised nothing; so are you sure, John, the Chancellor said, that you have none of these new books, because I was informed you had? (And Tyndale lying there, like a poison stain on the tiles.) I don't know who could have told you that, said John Petyt. I was proud of him, Lucy says, holding out her cup for more wine, I was proud that he spoke up. More said, it is true I have found nothing today, but you must go with these men. Mr Lieutenant, will you take him?

111John Petyt is not a young man. At More's direction he sleeps on a pad of straw laid on the flagstones; visitors have been admitted only so that they can take back to his neighbours the news of how ill he looks.

112‘We have sent food and warm clothes,’ Lucy says, ‘and been turned away on the Lord Chancellor's orders.’

113‘There's a tariff for bribes. You pay the gaolers. You need ready money? ’

114‘If I do I shall come to you. ’ She puts the cup down on his desk. ‘He cannot lock us all up.’

115‘He has prisons enough. ’

116‘For bodies, yes. But what are bodies? He can take our goods, but God will prosper us. He can close the booksellers, but still there will be books. They have their old bones, their glass saints in windows, their candles and shrines, but God has given us the printing press. ’ Her cheeks glow. She glances down to the drawings on his desk. ‘What are these, Master Cromwell?’

117‘The plans for my garden. I am hoping to buy some of the houses at the back of here, I want the land. ’

118She smiles. ‘A garden … It is the first pleasant thing I have heard of in a while.’

119‘I hope you and John will come and enjoy it. ’ ‘And this … You are going to build a tennis court?’ ‘If I get the ground. And here, you see, I mean to plant an orchard.’ Tears well into her eyes. ‘Speak to the king. We count on you.’ He hears a footstep: Johane's. Lucy's hand flies to her mouth. ‘God forgive me … For a moment I took you for your sister.’ ‘The mistake is made,’ Johane says. ‘And sometimes persists.

120Mistress Petyt, I am very sorry to hear your husband is in the Tower.

121But you have brought this on yourselves. You people were the first to throw calumnies at the late cardinal. But now I suppose you wish you had him back. ’

122Lucy goes out without a further word, only one long look over her shoulder. Outside he hears Mercy greet her; she will get a more sisterly word there. Johane walks to the fire and warms her hands. ‘What does she think you can do for her?’

123‘Go to the king. Or to Lady Anne. ’

124‘And will you? Do not,’ she says, ‘do not do it.’ She scrubs away a tear with her knuckle; Lucy has upset her. ‘More will not rack him.

125Word will get out, and the city would not have it. But he may die anyway. ’ She glances up at him. ‘She is quite old, you know, Lucy Petyt. She ought not to wear grey. Do you see how her cheeks have fallen in? She won't have any more children.’ ‘I get the point,’ he says.

126Her hand clenches on her skirt. ‘But what if he does? What if he does rack him? And he gives names?’

127‘What's that to me? ’ He turns away. ‘He already knows my name.’ He speaks to Lady Anne. What can I do? she asks, and he says, you know how to please the king, I suppose; she laughs and says, what, my maidenhead for a grocer?

128He speaks to the king when he is able, but the king gives him a blank stare and says the Lord Chancellor knows his business. Anne says, I have tried, I myself as you know have put Tyndale's books into his hand, his royal hand; could Tyndale, do you think, come back into this kingdom? In winter they negotiated, letters crossing the Channel.

129In spring, Stephen Vaughan, his man in Antwerp, set up a meeting: evening, the concealing dusk, a field outside the city walls. Cromwell's letter put into his hand, Tyndale wept: I want to come home, he said, I am sick of this, hunted city to city and house to house. I want to come home and if the king would just say yes, if he would say yes to the scriptures in our mother tongue, he can choose his translator, I will never write more. He can do with me what he pleases, torture me or kill me, but only let the people of England hear the gospel.

130Henry has not said no. He had not said, never. Though Tyndale's translation and any other translation is banned, he may, one day, permit a translation to be made by a scholar he approves. How can he say less? He wants to please Anne.

131But summer comes, and he, Cromwell, knows he has gone to the brink and must feel his way back. Henry is too timid, Tyndale too intransigent. His letters to Stephen sound a note of panic: abandon ship. He does not mean to sacrifice himself to Tyndale's truculence; dear God, he says, More, Tyndale, they deserve each other, these mules that pass for men. Tyndale will not come out in favour of Henry's divorce; nor, for that matter, will the monk Luther. You'd think they'd sacrifice a fine point of principle, to make a friend of the King of England: but no.

132And when Henry demands, ‘Who is Tyndale to judge me?’ Tyndale snaps a message back, quick as word can fly: one Christian man may judge another.

133‘A cat may look at a king,’ he says. He is cradling Marlinspike in his arms, and talking to Thomas Avery, the boy he's teaching his trade.

134Avery has been with Stephen Vaughan, so he can learn the practice among the merchants over there, but any boat may bring him to Austin Friars with his little bag, inside it a woollen jerkin, a few shirts. When he comes clattering in he shouts out for Mercy, for Johane, for the little girls, for whom he brings comfits and novelties from street traders. On Richard, on Rafe, on Gregory if he's about, he lands a few punches by way of saying I'm back, but always he keeps his bag tucked under his arm.

135The boy follows him into his office. ‘Did you never feel homesick, master, when you were on your travels?’

136He shrugs: I suppose if I'd had a home. He puts the cat down, opens the bag. He fishes up on his finger a string of rosary beads; for show, says Avery, and he says, good boy. Marlinspike leaps on to his desk; he peers into the bag, dabbing with a paw. ‘The only mice in there are sugar ones.’ The boy pulls the cat's ears, tussles with him. ‘We don't have any little pets in Master Vaughan's house.’ ‘He's all business, Stephen. And very stern, these days.’ ‘He says, Thomas Avery, what time did you get in last night? Have you written to your master? Been to Mass? As if he cares for the Mass!

137It's all but, how's your bowels? ’

138‘Next spring you can come home. ’

139As they speak he is unrolling the jerkin. With a shake he turns it inside out, and with a small pair of scissors begins to slit open a seam.

140‘Neat stitching … Who did this? ’

141The boy hesitates; he colours. ‘Jenneke.’ He draws out from the lining the thin, folded paper. Unwraps it: ‘She must have good eyes.’

142‘She does. ’

143‘And lovely eyes too? ’ He glances up, smiling. The boy looks him in the face. For a moment he seems startled, and as if he will speak; then he drops his gaze and turns away.

144‘Just tormenting you, Tom, don't take it to heart. ’ He is reading Tyndale's letter. ‘If she is a good girl, and in Stephen's household, what harm?’

145‘What does Tyndale say? ’

146‘You carried it without reading it? ’

147‘I would rather not know. In case. ’

148In case you found yourself Thomas More's guest. He holds the letter in his left hand; his right hand curls loosely into a fist. ‘Let him come near my people. I'll drag him out of his court at Westminster and beat his head on the cobbles till I knock into him some sense of the love of God and what it means.’

149The boy grins and flops down on a stool. He, Cromwell, glances again at the letter. ‘Tyndale says, he thinks he can never come back, even if my lady Anne were queen … a project he does nothing to aid, I must say. He says he would not trust a safe conduct, even if the king himself were to sign it, while Thomas More is alive and in office, because More says you need not keep a promise you have made to a heretic. Here. You may as well read. Our Lord Chancellor respects neither ignorance nor innocence.’

150The boy flinches, but he takes the paper. What a world is this, where promises are not kept. He says gently, ‘Tell me who is Jenneke. Do you want me to write to her father for you?’ ‘No.’ Avery looks up, startled; he is frowning. ‘No, she's an orphan.

151Master Vaughan keeps her at his own charge. We are all teaching her English. ’

152‘No money to bring you, then? ’

153The boy looks confused. ‘I suppose Stephen will give her a dowry.’ The day is too mild for a fire. The hour is too early for a candle. In lieu of burning, he tears up Tyndale's message. Marlin-spike, his ears pricked, chews a fragment of it. ‘Brother cat,’ he says. ‘He ever loved the scriptures.’

154Scriptura sola. Only the gospel will guide and console you. No use praying to a carved post or lighting a candle to a painted face. Tyndale says ‘gospel’ means good news, it means singing, it means dancing: within limits, of course. Thomas Avery says, ‘Can I truly come home next spring?’

155John Petyt at the Tower is to be allowed to sleep in a bed: no chance, though, that he will go home to Lion's Quay.

156Cranmer said to him, when they were talking late one night, St Augustine says we need not ask where our home is, because in the end we all come home to God.

157Lent saps the spirits, as of course it is designed to do. Going in again to Anne, he finds the boy Mark, crouched over his lute and picking at something doleful; he flicks a finger against his head as he breezes past, and says, ‘Cheer it up, can't you?’ Mark almost falls off his stool. It seems to him they are in a daze, these people, vulnerable to being startled, to being ambushed. Anne, waking out of her dream, says, ‘What did you just do?’ ‘Hit Mark. Only,’ he demonstrates, ‘with one finger.’ Anne says, ‘Mark? Who? Oh. Is that his name?’ This spring, 1531, he makes it his business to be cheerful. The cardinal was a great grumbler, but he always grumbled in some entertaining way. The more he complained, the more cheerful his man Cromwell became; that was the arrangement.

158The king is a complainer too. He has a headache. The Duke of Suffolk is stupid. The weather is too warm for the time of year. The country is going to the dogs. He's anxious too; afraid of spells, and of people thinking bad thoughts about him in any specific or unspecific way. The more anxious the king becomes, the more tranquil becomes his new servant, the more hopeful, the more staunch. And the more the king snips and carps, the more do his petitioners seek out the company of Cromwell, so unfailing in his amiable courtesy.

159At home, Jo comes to him looking perplexed. She is a young lady now, with a womanly frown, a soft crinkle of flesh on her forehead, which Johane her mother has too. ‘Sir, how shall we paint our eggs at Easter?’

160‘How did you paint them last year? ’

161‘Every year before this we gave them hats like the cardinal's. ’ She watches his face, to read back the effect of her words; it is his own habit exactly, and he thinks, not only your children are your children.

162‘Was it wrong? ’

163‘Not at all. I wish I'd known. I would have taken him one. He would have liked it. ’

164Jo puts her soft little hand into his. It is still a child's hand, the skin scuffed over the knuckles, the nails bitten. ‘I am of the king's council now,’ he says. ‘You can paint crowns if you like.’ This piece of folly with her mother, this ongoing folly, it has to stop.

165Johane knows it too. She used to make excuses, to be where he was.

166But now, if he's at Austin Friars, she's at the house in Stepney.

167‘Mercy knows,’ she murmurs in passing.

168The surprise is it took her so long, but there is a lesson here; you think people are always watching you, but that is guilt, making you jump at shadows. But finally, Mercy finds she has eyes in her head, and a tongue to speak, and picks a time when they can be alone. ‘They tell me that the king has found a way around at least one of his stumbling blocks. I mean, the difficulty of how he can marry Lady Anne, when her sister Mary has been in his bed.’ ‘We have had all the best advice,’ he says easily. ‘Dr Cranmer at my recommendation sent to Venice, to a learned body of rabbis, to take opinions on the meaning of the ancient texts.’ ‘So it is not incest? Unless you have actually been married to one sister?’