Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

do the deed at fifteen, and more than once a night.’

      ‘It is also your bride's health that we need to think of.’

      ‘Brandon's wife is younger than mine, and he has her.’

      ‘Every time he sees her,’ Lady Rochford says, ‘if I judge by the startled expression on her face.’

      Richmond is digging himself in for a long argument, entrenching himself behind precedent: it is his father's way of arguing. ‘Did not my great-grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, give birth at thirteen years, to the prince who would be Henry Tudor?’

      Bosworth, the tattered standards, the bloody field; the stained sheet of maternity. Where do we all come from, he thinks, but this same hole and corner dealing: sweetheart, yield to me. ‘I never heard it improved her health,’ he says, ‘or her temper. She had no children after.’ Suddenly he is tired of the argument; he cuts it short, his voice tired and flat. ‘Be reasonable, my lord. Once you've done it, you'll want to do it all the time. For about three years. That's the way it goes. And your father has other work in mind for you. He may send you to hold court in Dublin.’

      Jane Rochford says, ‘Be easy, my lamb. There are ways that can be contrived. A man may always meet a woman, if she is willing.’

      ‘May I speak as your friend, Lady Rochford? You risk the king's displeasure if you meddle in this.’

      ‘Oh,’ she says easily, ‘Henry will forgive anything to a pretty woman. They only seek to do what is natural.’

      The boy says, ‘Why should I live like a monk?’

      ‘A monk? They go to it like goats. Master Cromwell here will tell you.’

      ‘Perhaps,’ Richmond says, ‘it is madam the queen who wants to keep us apart. She doesn't mean the king to have a grandson in the cradle, before he has a son of his own.’

      ‘But do you not know?’ Jane Rochford turns to him. ‘Has it not reached your ears that La Ana is enceinte?’

      She gives her the name Chapuys gives her. He sees the boy's face open in blank dismay. Jane says, ‘I fear by summer you will have lost your place, sweetheart. Once he has a son born in wedlock, you may tup to your heart's content. You will never reign, and your offspring will never inherit.’

      It isn't often that you see a princeling's hopes destroyed, in the instant it takes to pinch out a candle flame: and with the same calculated movement, as if born of the neatness of habit. She has not even licked her fingers.

      Richmond says, his face crumpling, ‘It may be another girl.’

      ‘It is almost treason to hope so,’ Lady Rochford says. ‘And if it is, she will have a third child, and a fourth. I thought she would not conceive again but I was wrong, Master Cromwell. She has proved herself now.’

      Cranmer is in Canterbury, walking on a path of sand barefoot to his enthronement as primate of England. The ceremony done, he is sweeping out the priory of Christ Church, whose members gave so much encouragement to the false prophetess. It could be a long job, interviewing each monk, picking their stories apart. Rowland Lee storms into town to put some brawn into the business, and Gregory is in his train; so he sits in London reading a letter from his son, no longer nor more informative than his schoolboy letters: And now no more for lack of time.

      He writes to Cranmer, be merciful to the community there, as nothing worse than misled. Spare the monk who gilded the Magdalene's letter. I suggest they give a present in cash to the king, three hundred pounds will please him. Clean out Christ Church and the whole diocese; Warham was archbishop for thirty years, his family are entrenched, his bastard son is archdeacon, take a new broom to them. Put in people from home: your sad east Midlands clerks, formed under sober skies.

      There is something beneath his desk, under his foot, the nature of which he has avoided thinking about. He pushes his chair back; it is half a shrew, a gift from Marlinspike. He picks it up and thinks of Henry Wyatt, eating vermin in his cell. He thinks of the cardinal, resplendent at Cardinal College. He throws the shrew on the fire. The corpse fizzes and shrivels, bones gone with an empty little pop. He picks up his pen and writes to Cranmer, shake out those Oxford men from your diocese, and put in Cambridge men we know.

      He writes to his son, come home and spend the new year with us.

      December: in her frozen angularity, a blue light behind her cast up from the snow, Margaret Pole looks as if she has stepped from a church window, slivers of glass shaking from her gown; in fact, those splinters are diamonds. He has made her come to him, the countess, and now she looks at him from beneath her heavy lids, she looks at him down her long Plantagenet nose, and her greeting, ice-bright, flies out into the room. ‘Cromwell.’ Just that.

      She comes to business. ‘The Princess Mary. Why must she quit the house in Essex?’

      ‘My lord Rochford wants it for his use. It's good hunting country, you see. Mary is to join her royal sister's household, at Hatfield. She will not need her own attendants there.’

      ‘I offer to support my place in her household at my own expense. You cannot prevent me from serving her.’

      Try me. ‘I am only the minister of the king's wishes, and you, I suppose, are as anxious as I am to carry them out.’

      ‘These are the wishes of the concubine. We do not believe, the princess and I, that they are the king's own wishes.’

      ‘You must stretch your credulity, madam.’

      She looks down at him from her plinth: she is Clarence's daughter, old King Edward's niece. In her time, men like him knelt down to speak to women like her. ‘I was in Katherine the queen's suite on the day she was married. To the princess, I stand as a second mother.’

      ‘Blood of Christ, madam, you think she needs a second? The one she has will kill her.’

      They stare at each other, across an abyss. ‘Lady Margaret, if I may advise you … your family's loyalty is suspect.’

      ‘So you say. This is why you are parting me from Mary, as punishment. If you have matter enough to indict me, then send me to the Tower with Elizabeth Barton.’

      ‘That would be much against the king's wishes. He reveres you, madam. Your ancestry, your great age.’

      ‘He has no evidence.’

      ‘In June last year, just after the queen was crowned, your son Lord Montague and your son Geoffrey Pole dined with Lady Mary. Then a scant two weeks later, Montague dined with her again. I wonder what they discussed?’

      ‘Do you really?’

      ‘No,’ he says, smiling. ‘The boy who carried in the dish of asparagus, that was my boy. The boy who sliced the apricots was mine too. They talked about the Emperor, about the invasion, how he might be brought to it. So you see, Lady Margaret, all your family owes much to my forbearance. I trust they will repay the king with future loyalty.’

      He does not say, I mean to use your sons against their trouble-making brother abroad. He does not say, I have your son Geoffrey on my payroll. Geoffrey Pole is a violent, unstable man. You do not know how he will turn. He has paid him forty pounds this year to turn the Cromwell way.

      The countess curls her lip. ‘The princess will not leave her home quietly.’

      ‘My lord of Norfolk intends to ride to Beaulieu, to tell her of the change in her circumstances. She may defy him, of course.’

      He had advised the king, leave Mary in possession of her style as princess, do not diminish anything. Do not give her cousin the Emperor a reason to make war.

      Henry had shouted, ‘Will you go to the queen, and suggest to her that Mary keep her title? For I tell you, Master Cromwell, I am not going to do it. And if you put her in a great passion, as you will, and she falls ill and miscarries her child, you will be responsible! And I shall not incline to mercy!’

      Outside the door of the presence