Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

out his tongue like a man hanged; it seems he envisages every method of execution.

      ‘An easy majesty would be called for,’ he says.

      Hans beams. ‘I can do it by the yard.’

      The end of the year brings cold and a green aqueous light, washing across the Thames and the city. Letters fall to his desk with a soft shuffle like great snowflakes: doctors of theology from Germany, ambassadors from France, Mary Boleyn from her exile in Kent.

      He breaks the seal. ‘Listen to this,’ he says to Richard. ‘Mary wants money. She says, she knows she should not have been so hasty. She says, love overcame reason.’

      ‘Love, was it?’

      He reads. She does not regret for a minute she has taken on William Stafford. She could have had, she says, other husbands, with titles and wealth. But ‘if I were at liberty and might choose, I ensure you, Master Secretary, I have tried so much honesty to be in him, that I had rather beg my bread with him than to be the greatest Queen christened.’

      She dare not write to her sister the queen. Or her father or her uncle or her brother. They are all so cruel. So she is writing to him … He wonders, did Stafford lean over her shoulder, while she was writing? Did she giggle and say, Thomas Cromwell, I once raised his hopes.

      Richard says, ‘I hardly remember how Mary and I were to be married.’

      ‘That was in other days than these.’ And Richard is happy; see how it has worked out; we can thrive without the Boleyns. But Christendom was overturned for the Boleyn marriage, to put the ginger pig in the cradle; what if it is true, what if Henry is sated, what if the enterprise is cursed? ‘Get Wiltshire in.’

      ‘Here to the Rolls?’

      ‘He will come to the whistle.’

      He will humiliate him – in his genial fashion – and make him give Mary an annuity. The girl worked for him, on her back, and now he must pension her. Richard will sit in the shadows and take notes. It will remind Boleyn of the old days: the old days now being approximately six, seven years back. Last week Chapuys said to him, in this kingdom now you are all the cardinal was, and more.

      It is Christmas Eve when Alice More comes to see him. There is a thin sharp light, like the edge of an old knife, and in this light Alice looks old.

      He greets her like a princess, and leads her into one of the chambers he has had repanelled and painted, where a great fire leaps up a rebuilt chimney. The air smells of pine boughs. ‘You keep the feast here?’ Alice has made an effort for him; pinned her hair back fiercely, under a bonnet sewn with seed pearls. ‘Well! When I came here before it was a musty old place. My husband used to say,’ and he notes the past tense, ‘my husband used to say, lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning, and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks' tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.’

      ‘Did he talk a lot about locking me in dungeons?’

      ‘It was only talk.’ She is uneasy. ‘I thought you might take me to see the king. I know he's always courteous to women, and kind.’

      He shakes his head. If he takes Alice to the king she will talk about when he used to come to Chelsea and walk in the gardens. She will upset him: agitate his mind, make him think about More, which at present he doesn't. ‘He is very busy with the French envoys. He means to keep a large court this season. You will have to trust my judgement.’

      ‘You have been good to us,’ she says, reluctant. ‘I ask myself why. You always have some trick.’

      ‘Born tricky,’ he says. ‘Can't help it. Alice, why is your husband so stubborn?’

      ‘I no more comprehend him than I do the Blessed Trinity.’

      ‘Then what are we to do?’

      ‘I think he'd give the king his reasons. In his private ear. If the king said beforehand that he would take away all penalties from him.’

      ‘You mean, license him for treason? The king can't do it.’

      ‘Holy Agnes! Thomas Cromwell, to tell the king what he can't do! I've seen a cock swagger in a barnyard, master, till a girl comes one day and wrings his neck.’

      ‘It's the law of the land. The custom of the country.’

      ‘I thought Henry was set over the law.’

      ‘We don't live at Constantinople, Dame Alice. Though I say nothing against the Turk. We cheer on the infidels, these days. As long as they keep the Emperor's hands tied.’

      ‘I don't have much money left,’ she says. ‘I have to find fifteen shillings every week for his keep. I worry he'll be cold.’ She sniffs. ‘Still, he could tell me so himself. He doesn't write to me. It's all her, her, his darling Meg. She's not my child. I wish his first wife were here, to tell me if she was born the way she is now. She's close, you know. Keeps her own counsel, and his. She tells me now he gave her his shirts to wash the blood out, that he wore a shirt of hair beneath his linen. He did so when we were married and I begged him to leave it off and I thought he had. But how would I know? He slept alone and drew the bolt on his door. If he had an itch I never knew it, he was perforce to scratch it himself. Well, whatever, it was between the two of them, and me no part of it.’

      ‘Alice –’

      ‘Don't think I have no tenderness for him. He didn't marry me to live like a eunuch. We have had dealings, one time or another.’ She blushes, more angry than shy. ‘And when that is true, you cannot help feeling it, if a man might be cold, if he might be hungry, his flesh being one with yours. You feel to him as you might a child.’

      ‘Fetch him out, Alice, if it is within your power.’

      ‘More in yours than mine.’ She smiles sadly. ‘Is your little man Gregory home for the season? I have sometimes said to my husband, I wish Gregory Cromwell were my boy. I could bake him in a sugar crust and eat him all up.’

      Gregory comes home for Christmas, with a letter from Rowland Lee saying he is a treasure and can come back to his household any time. ‘So must I back,’ Gregory says, ‘or am I finished being educated now?’

      ‘I have a scheme for the new year to improve your French.’

      ‘Rafe says I am being brought up like a prince.’

      ‘For now, you are all I have to practise on.’

      ‘My sweet father …’ Gregory picks up his little dog. He hugs her, and nuzzles the fur at the back of her neck. He waits. ‘Rafe and Richard say that when my education is sufficient you mean to marry me to some old dowager with a great settlement and black teeth, and she will wear me out with lechery and rule me with her whims, and she will leave her estate away from the children she has and they will hate me and scheme against my life and one morning I shall be dead in my bed.’

      The spaniel swivels in his son's arms, turns on him her mild, round, wondering eyes. ‘They are making sport of you, Gregory. If I knew such a woman, I would marry her myself.’

      Gregory nods. ‘She would never rule you, sir. And I dare say she would have a good deer park, which would be convenient to hunt. And the children would be in fear of you, even if they were men grown.’ He appears half-consoled. ‘What's that map? Is it the Indies?’

      ‘This is the Scots border,’ he says gently. ‘Harry Percy's country. Look, let me show you. These are parcels of his estates he has given away to his creditors. We cannot let it continue, because we can't leave our borders to chance.’

      ‘They say he is sick.’

      ‘Sick, or mad.’ His tone is indifferent. ‘He has no heir, and he and his wife never come together, so it is not likely he will. He has fallen out with his brothers, and he owes a deal of money to the king. So it would make sense to name the king his heir, would it not? He will be brought to see it.’

      Gregory