Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

opposed, he will come before Parliament himself, both houses if need be, and insist.’

      ‘He may have a fall,’ the duke says. ‘And in public. For God's sake, Cromwell, don't let him do it. He knew More was against him and he let him creep off to Chelsea to coddle his conscience. But it's my niece, I suppose, who wants him brought to book. She takes it personally. Women do.’

      ‘I think the king takes it personally.’

      ‘Which is weak,’ Norfolk says, ‘in my view. Why should he care how More judges him?’

      Audley smiles uncertainly. ‘You call the king weak?’

      ‘Call the king weak?’ The duke lurches forward and squawks into Audley's face, as if he were a talking magpie. ‘What's this, Lord Chancellor, speaking up for yourself? You do usually wait till Cromwell speaks, and then it's chirrup-chirrup, yes-sir-no-sir, whatever you say, Tom Cromwell.’

      The door opens and Call-Me-Risley appears, in part. ‘By God,’ says the duke, ‘if I had a crossbow, I'd shoot your very head off. I said nobody was to come in here.’

      ‘Will Roper is here. He has letters from his father-in-law. More wants to know what you will do for him, sir, as you have admitted that in law he has no case to answer.’

      ‘Tell Will we are just now rehearsing how to beg the king to take More's name out of the bill.’

      The duke knocks back his drink, the one he has poured himself. He bounces his goblet back on the table. ‘Your cardinal used to say, Henry will give half his realm rather than be baulked, he will not be cheated of any part of his will.’

      ‘But I reason … do not you, Lord Chancellor …’

      ‘Oh, he does,’ the duke says. ‘Whatever you reason, Tom, he reasons. Squawk, squawk.’

      Wriothesley looks startled. ‘Could I bring Will in?’

      ‘So we are united? On our knees to beg?’

      ‘I won't do it unless Cranmer will,’ the duke says. ‘Why should a layman wear out his joints?’

      ‘Shall we send for my lord Suffolk too?’ Audley suggests.

      ‘No. His boy is dying. His heir.’ The duke scrubs his hand across his mouth. ‘He wants just a month of his eighteenth birthday.’ His fingers fidget for his holy medals, his relics. ‘Brandon's got the one boy. So have I. So have you, Cromwell. And Thomas More. Just the one boy. God help Charles, he'll have to start breeding again with his new wife; that'll be a hardship to him, I'm sure.’ He gives a bark of laughter. ‘If I could pension my lady wife off, I could get a juicy fifteen-year-old too. But she won't go.’

      It is too much for Audley. His face flushes. ‘My lord, you have been married, and well married, these twenty years.’

      ‘Do I not know it? It's like placing your person in a grizzled leather bag.’ The duke's bony hand descends; he squeezes his shoulder. ‘Get me a divorce, Cromwell, will you? You and my lord archbishop, come up with some grounds. I promise there'll be no murder done over it.’

      ‘Where is murder done?’ Wriothesley says.

      ‘We're preparing to murder Thomas More, aren't we? Old Fisher, we're whetting the knife for him, eh?’

      ‘God forbid.’ The Lord Chancellor rises, sweeping his gown around him. ‘These are not capital charges. More and the Bishop of Rochester, they are only accessories.’

      ‘Which,’ Wriothesley says, ‘in all conscience is grave enough.’

      Norfolk shrugs. ‘Kill them now or later. More won't take your oath. Fisher won't.’

      ‘I am quite sure they will,’ Audley says. ‘We shall use efficacious persuasions. No reasonable man will refuse to swear to the succession, for the safety of this realm.’

      ‘So is Katherine to be sworn,’ the duke says, ‘to uphold the succession of my niece's infant? What about Mary – is she to be sworn? And if they will not, what do you propose? Draw them to Tyburn on a hurdle and hang them up kicking, for their relative the Emperor to see?’

      He and Audley exchange a glance. Audley says, ‘My lord, you shouldn't drink so much wine before noon.’

      ‘Oh, tweet, tweet,’ the duke says.

      A week ago he had been up to Hatfield, to see the two royal ladies: the princess Elizabeth, and Lady Mary the king's daughter. ‘Make sure you get the titles right,’ he had said to Gregory as they rode.

      Gregory had said, ‘Already you are wishing you had brought Richard.’

      He had not wanted to leave London during such a busy parliament, but the king persuaded him: two days and you can be back, I want your eye on things. The route out of the city was running with thaw water, and in copses shielded from the sun the standing pools were still iced. A weak sun blinked at them as they crossed into Hertfordshire, and here and there a ragged blackthorn blossomed, waving at him a petition against the length of winter.

      ‘I used to come here years ago. It was Cardinal Morton's place, you know, and he would leave town when the law term was over and the weather was getting warm, and when I was nine or ten my uncle John used to pack me in a provisions cart with the best cheeses and the pies, in case anybody tried to steal them when we stopped.’

      ‘Did you not have guards?’

      ‘It was the guards he was afraid of.’

      ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’

      ‘Me, evidently.’

      ‘What would you have done?’

      ‘I don't know. Bitten them?’

      The mellow brick frontage is smaller than he remembers, but that is what memory does. These pages and gentlemen running out, these grooms to lead away the horses, the warmed wine that awaits them, the noise and the fuss, it is a different sort of arrival from those of long ago. The portage of wood and water, the firing up the ranges, these tasks were beyond the strength or skill of a child, but he was unwilling to concede them, and worked alongside the men, grubby and hungry, till someone saw that he was about to fall over: or until he actually did.

      Sir John Shelton is head of this strange household, but he has chosen a time when Sir John is from home; talk to the women, is his idea, rather than listen to Shelton after supper on the subjects of horses, dogs and his youthful exploits. But on the threshold, he almost changes his mind; coming downstairs at a rapid, creaking scuttle is Lady Bryan, mother of one-eyed Francis, who is in charge of the tiny princess. She is a woman of nearly seventy, well bedded into grand-maternity, and he can see her mouth moving before she is within range of his hearing: Her Grace slept till eleven, squalled till midnight, exhausted herself, poor little chicken! fell asleep an hour, woke up grizzling, cheeks scarlet, suspicion of fever, Lady Shelton woken, physician aroused, teething already, a treacherous time! soothing draught, settled by sun-up, woke at nine, took a feed … ‘Oh, Master Cromwell,’ Lady Bryan says, ‘this is never your son! Bless him! What a lovely tall young man! What a pretty face he has, he must get it from his mother. What age would he be now?’

      ‘Of an age to talk, I believe.’

      Lady Bryan turns to Gregory, her face aglow as if at the prospect of sharing a nursery rhyme with him. Lady Shelton sweeps in. ‘Give you good day, masters.’ A small hesitation: does the queen's aunt bow to the Master of the Jewel House? On the whole she thinks not. ‘I expect Lady Bryan has given you a full account of her charge?’

      ‘Indeed, and perhaps we could have an account of yours?’

      ‘You will not see Lady Mary for yourself?’

      ‘Yes, but forewarned …’

      ‘Indeed. I do not go armed, though my niece the queen recommends I use my fists on her.’ Her eyes sweep over him, assessing; the air crackles with tension. How do women do that? One could