Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

Master Cromwell’s daughters,’ Weston says. ‘I dare not. I doubt a counting house could contain them. They would be a shrewd hand with a poleaxe, you would think. One look at them and a man’s legs would go from under him. And I do not mean he would be stricken with love.’

      Gregory stirs himself. He is such a dreamer you hardly think he has been following the conversation, but his tone is rippling with hurt. ‘You insult my sisters and their memory, sir, and you never knew them. My sister Grace …’

      He sees Jane Seymour put out her little hand and touch Gregory’s wrist: to save him, she will risk drawing the company’s attention. ‘I have lately,’ she says, ‘got some skill of the French tongue.’

      ‘Have you, Jane?’ Tom Seymour is smiling.

      Jane dips her head. ‘Mary Shelton is teaching me.’

      ‘Mary Shelton is a kindly young woman,’ the king says; and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Weston elbow his neighbour; they say Shelton has been kind to the king in bed.

      ‘So you see,’ Jane says to her brothers, ‘we ladies, we do not spend all our time in idle calumny and scandal. Though God he knows, we have gossip enough to occupy a whole town of women.’

      ‘Have you?’ he says.

      ‘We talk about who is in love with the queen. Who writes her verses.’ She drops her eyes. ‘I mean to say, who is in love with us all. This gentleman or that. We know all our suitors and we make inventory head to toe, they would blush if they knew. We say their acreage and how much they have a year, and then we decide if we will let them write us a sonnet. If we do not think they will keep us in fine style, we scorn their rhymes. It is cruel, I can tell you.’

      He says, a little uneasy, it is no harm to write verses to ladies, even married ones, at court it is usual. Weston says, thank you for that kind word, Master Cromwell, we thought you might try and make us stop.

      Tom Seymour leans forward, laughing. ‘And who are your suitors, Jane?’

      ‘If you want to know that, you must put on a gown, and take up your needlework, and come and join us.’

      ‘Like Achilles among the women,’ the king says. ‘You must shave your fine beard, Seymour, and go and find out their lewd little secrets.’ He is laughing, but he is not happy. ‘Unless we find someone more maidenly for the task. Gregory, you are a pretty fellow, but I fear your great hands will give you away.’

      ‘The blacksmith’s grandson,’ Weston says.

      ‘That child Mark,’ the king says. ‘The musician, you know him? There is a smooth girlish countenance.’

      ‘Oh,’ Jane says, ‘Mark’s with us anyway. He’s always loitering. We barely count him a man. If you want to know our secrets, ask Mark.’

      The conversation canters off in some other direction; he thinks, I have never known Jane have anything to say for herself; he thinks, Weston is goading me, he knows that in Henry’s presence I will not give him a check; he imagines what form the check may take, when he delivers it. Rafe Sadler looks at him out of the tail of his eye.

      ‘So,’ the king says to him, ‘how will tomorrow be better than today?’ To the supper table he explains, ‘Master Cromwell cannot sleep unless he is amending something.’

      ‘I will reform the conduct of Your Majesty’s hat. And those clouds, before noon –’

      ‘We wanted the shower. The rain cooled us.’

      ‘God send Your Majesty no worse a drenching,’ says Edward Seymour.

      Henry rubs his stripe of sunburn. ‘The cardinal, he reckoned he could change the weather. A good enough morning, he would say, but by ten it will be brighter. And it was.’

      Henry does this sometimes; drops Wolsey’s name into conversation, as if it were not he, but some other monarch, who had hounded the cardinal to death.

      ‘Some men have a weather eye,’ Tom Seymour says. ‘That’s all it is, sir. It’s not special to cardinals.’

      Henry nods, smiling. ‘That’s true, Tom. I should never have stood in awe of him, should I?’

      ‘He was too proud, for a subject,’ old Sir John says.

      The king looks down the table at him, Thomas Cromwell. He loved the cardinal. Everyone here knows it. His expression is as carefully blank as a freshly painted wall.

      After supper, old Sir John tells the story of Edgar the Peaceable. He was the ruler in these parts, many hundreds of years ago, before kings had numbers: when all maids were fair maids and all knights were gallant and life was simple and violent and usually brief. Edgar had in mind a bride for himself, and sent one of his earls to appraise her. The earl, who was both false and cunning, sent back word that her beauty had been much exaggerated by poets and painters; seen in real life, he said, she had a limp and a squint. His aim was to have the tender damsel for himself, and so he seduced and married her. Upon discovering the earl’s treachery Edgar ambushed him, in a grove not far from here, and rammed a javelin into him, killing him with one blow.

      ‘What a false knave he was, that earl!’ says the king. ‘He was paid out.’

      ‘Call him rather a churl than an earl,’ Tom Seymour says.

      His brother sighs, as if distancing himself from the remark.

      ‘And what did the lady say?’ he asks; he, Cromwell. ‘When she found the earl skewered?’

      ‘The damsel married Edgar,’ Sir John says. ‘They married in the greenwood, and lived happily ever after.’

      ‘I suppose she had no choice,’ Lady Margery sighs. ‘Women have to adapt themselves.’

      ‘And the country folk say,’ Sir John adds, ‘that the false earl walks the woods still, groaning, and trying to pull the lance out of his belly.’

      ‘Just imagine,’ Jane Seymour says. ‘Any night there is a moon, one might look out of the window and see him, tugging away and complaining all the while. Fortunately I do not believe in ghosts.’

      ‘More fool you, sister,’ Tom Seymour says. ‘They’ll creep up on you, my lass.’

      ‘Still,’ Henry says. He mimes a javelin throw: though in the restrained way one must, at a supper table. ‘One clean blow. He must have had a good throwing arm, King Edgar.’

      He says – he, Cromwell: ‘I should like to know if this tale is written down, and if so, by whom, and was he on oath.’

      The king says, ‘Cromwell would have had the earl before a judge and jury.’

      ‘Bless Your Majesty,’ Sir John chuckles, ‘I don’t think they had them in those days.’

      ‘Cromwell would have found one out.’ Young Weston leans forward to make his point. ‘He would dig out a jury, he would grub one from a mushroom patch. Then it would be all up with the earl, they would try him and march him out and hack off his head. They say that at Thomas More’s trial, Master Secretary here followed the jury to their deliberations, and when they were seated he closed the door behind him and he laid down the law. “Let me put you out of doubt,” he said to the jurymen. “Your task is to find Sir Thomas guilty, and you will have no dinner till you have done it.” Then out he went and shut the door again and stood outside it with a hatchet in his hand, in case they broke out in search of a boiled pudding; and being Londoners, they care about their bellies above all things, and as soon as they felt them rumbling they cried, “Guilty! He is as guilty as guilty can be!”’

      Eyes focus on him, Cromwell. Rafe Sadler, by his side, is tense with displeasure. ‘It is a pretty tale,’ Rafe tells Weston, ‘but I ask you in turn, where is it written down? I think you will find my master is always correct in his dealings with a court of law.’

      ‘You weren’t there,’ Francis Weston says. ‘I heard it from one