Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

will learn statecraft with him, how to write a secretary's hand and deal with translation from abroad, and what books one ought to read to be a courtier. He takes it seriously, the trust placed in him; he takes gently from the hands of these noisy young persons their daggers, their pens, and he talks to them, finding out behind the passion and pride of young men of fifteen or twenty what they are really worth, what they value and would value under duress. You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.

      The boys are astonished by the question, their souls pour out. Perhaps no one has talked to them before. Certainly not their fathers.

      You introduce these boys, violent or unscholarly as they are, to humble occupations. They learn the psalms. They learn the use of a filleting blade and a paring knife; only then, for self-defence and in no formal lesson, they learn the estoc, the killing jerk under the ribs, the simple twist of the wrist that makes you sure. Christophe offers himself as instructor. These messieurs, he says, be sure they are dainty. They are cutting off the head of the stag or the tail of the rat, I know not what, to send home to their dear papa. Only you and me, master, and Richard Cremuel, we know how to stop some little fuckeur in his tracks, so that's the end of him, and he doesn't even squeak.

      Before spring comes, some of the poor men who stand at his gate find their way inside it. The eyes and ears of the unlettered are as sharp as those of the gentry, and you need not be a scholar to have a good wit. Horseboys and kennelmen overhear the confidences of earls. A boy with kindling and bellows hears the sleepy secrets of early morning, when he goes in to light a fire.

      On a day of strong sunlight, sudden and deceptive warmth, Call-Me-Risley strides into Austin Friars. He barks, ‘Give you good morning, sir,’ throws off his jacket, sits down to his desk and scrapes forward his stool. He picks up his quill and looks at the tip of it. ‘Right, what do you have for me?’ His eyes are glittering and the tips of his ears are pink.

      ‘I think Gardiner must be back,’ he says.

      ‘How did you know?’ Call-Me throws down his pen. He jumps up. He strides about. ‘Why is he like he is? All this wrangling and jangling and throwing out questions when he doesn't care about the answers?’

      ‘You liked it well enough when you were at Cambridge.’

      ‘Oh, then,’ Wriothesley says, with contempt for his young self. ‘It's supposed to train our minds. I don't know.’

      ‘My son claims it wore him out, the practice of scholarly disputation. He calls it the practice of futile argument.’

      ‘Perhaps Gregory's not completely stupid.’

      ‘I would be glad to think not.’

      Call-Me blushes a deep red. ‘I mean no offence, sir. You know Gregory's not like us. As the world goes, he is too good. But you don't have to be like Gardiner, either.’

      ‘When the cardinal's advisers met, we would propose plans, there would perhaps be some dispute, but we would talk it through; then we would refine our plans, and implement them. The king's council doesn't work like that.’

      ‘How could it? Norfolk? Charles Brandon? They'll fight you because of who you are. Even if they agree with you, they'll fight you. Even if they know you're right.’

      ‘I suppose Gardiner has been threatening you.’

      ‘With ruin.’ He folds one fist into the other. ‘I don't regard it.’

      ‘But you should. Winchester is a powerful man and if he says he will ruin you that is what he means to do.’

      ‘He calls me disloyal. He says while I was abroad I should have minded his interests, instead of yours.’

      ‘My understanding is, you serve Master Secretary, whoever is acting in that capacity. If I,’ he hesitates, ‘if – Wriothesley, I make you this offer, if I am confirmed in the post, I will put you in charge at the Signet.’

      ‘I will be chief clerk?’ He sees Call-Me adding up the fees.

      ‘So now, go to Gardiner, apologise, and get him to make you a better offer. Hedge your bets.’

      His face alarmed, Call-Me hovers. ‘Run, boy.’ He scoops up his jacket and thrusts it at him. ‘He's still Secretary. He can have his seals back. Only tell him, he has to come here and collect them in person.’

      Call-Me laughs. He rubs his forehead, dazed, as if he's been in a fight. He throws on his coat. ‘We're hopeless, aren't we?’

      Inveterate scrappers. Wolves snapping over a carcase. Lions fighting over Christians.

      The king calls him in, with Gardiner, to look through the bill he proposes to put into Parliament to secure the succession of Anne's children. The queen is with them; many private gentlemen see less of their wives, he thinks, than the king does. He rides, Anne rides. He hunts, Anne hunts. She takes his friends, and makes them into hers.

      She has a habit of reading over Henry's shoulder; she does it now, her exploring hand sliding across his silky bulk, through the layers of his clothing, so that a tiny fingernail hooks itself beneath the embroidered collar of his shirt, and she raises the fabric just a breath, just a fraction, from pale royal skin; Henry's vast hand reaches to caress hers, an absent, dreamy motion, as if they were alone. The draft refers, time and again, and correctly it would seem, to ‘your most dear and entirely beloved wife Queen Anne’.

      The Bishop of Winchester is gaping. As a man, he cannot unglue himself from the spectacle, yet as a bishop, it makes him clear his throat. Anne takes no notice; she carries on doing what she's doing, and reading out the bill, until she looks up, shocked: it mentions my death! ‘If it should happen your said dear and entirely beloved wife Queen Anne to decease …’

      ‘I can't exclude the event,’ he says. ‘Parliament can do anything, madam, except what is against nature.’

      She flushes. ‘I shall not die of the child. I am strong.’

      He doesn't remember that Liz lost her wits when she was carrying a child. If anything, she was ever more sober and frugal, and spent time making store-cupboard inventories. Anne the queen takes the draft out of Henry's hand. She shakes it in a passion. She is angry with the paper, jealous of the ink. She says, ‘This bill provides that if I die, say I die now, say I die of a fever and I die undelivered, then he can put another queen in my place.’

      ‘Sweetheart,’ the king says, ‘I cannot imagine another in your place. It is only notional. He must make provision for it.’

      ‘Madam,’ Gardiner says, ‘if I may defend Cromwell, he envisages only the customary situation. You would not condemn His Majesty to a life as perpetual widower? And we know not the hour, do we?’

      Anne takes no notice, it's as if Winchester had not spoken. ‘And if she has a son, it says, that son will inherit. It says, heirs male lawfully begotten. Then what happens to my daughter and her claim?’

      ‘Well,’ Henry says, ‘she is still a princess of England. If you look further down the paper, it says that …’ He closes his eyes. God give me strength.

      Gardiner springs to supply some: ‘If the king never had a son, not in lawful matrimony with any woman, then your daughter would be queen. That is what Cromwell proposes.’

      ‘But why must it be written like this? And where does it say that Spanish Mary is a bastard?’

      ‘Lady Mary is out of the line of succession,’ he says, ‘so the inference is clear. We don't need to say more. You must forgive any coldness of expression. We try to write laws sparingly. And so that they are not personal.’

      ‘By God,’ Gardiner says with relish, ‘if this isn't personal, what is?’

      The king seems to have invited Stephen to this conference in order to snub him. Tomorrow, of course, it could go the other way; he could arrive to see Henry arm in arm with Winchester and strolling among the snowdrops. He