Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

of St Helena, who was a Briton. Arthur, High King of Britain, was Constantine's grandson. He married up to three women, all called Guinevere, and his tomb is at Glastonbury, but you must understand that he is not really dead, only waiting his time to come again.

      His blessed descendant, Prince Arthur of England, was born in the year 1486, eldest son of Henry, the first Tudor king. This Arthur married Katherine the princess of Aragon, died at fifteen and was buried in Worcester Cathedral. If he were alive now, he would be King of England. His younger brother Henry would likely be Archbishop of Canterbury, and would not (at least, we devoutly hope not) be in pursuit of a woman of whom the cardinal hears nothing good: a woman to whom, several years before the dukes walk in to despoil him, he will need to turn his attention; whose history, before ruin seizes him, he will need to comprehend.

      Beneath every history, another history.

      The lady appeared at court at the Christmas of 1521, dancing in a yellow dress. She was – what? – about twenty years old. Daughter of the diplomat, Thomas Boleyn, she has been brought up since childhood in the Burgundian court at Mechelen and Brussels, and more recently in Paris, moving in Queen Claude's train between the pretty chateaux of the Loire. Now she speaks her native tongue with a slight, unplaceable accent, strewing her sentences with French words when she pretends she can't think of the English. At Shrovetide, she dances in a court masque. The ladies are costumed as Virtues, and she takes the part of Perseverance. She dances gracefully but briskly, with an amused expression on her face, a hard, impersonal touch-me-not smile. Soon she has a little trail of petty gentlemen following her; and one not so petty gentleman. The rumour spreads that she is going to marry Harry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland's heir.

      The cardinal hauls in her father. ‘Sir Thomas Boleyn,’ he says, ‘speak to your daughter, or I will. We brought her back from France to marry her into Ireland, to the Butlers' heir. Why does she tarry?’

      ‘The Butlers …’ Sir Thomas begins, and the cardinal says, ‘Oh yes? The Butlers what? Any problem you have there, I'll fix the Butlers. What I want to know is, did you put her up to it? Conniving in corners with that foolish boy? Because, Sir Thomas, let me make myself plain: I won't have it. The king won't have it. It must be stopped.’

      ‘I have scarcely been in England these last months. Your Grace cannot think that I am party to the scheme.’

      ‘No? You would be surprised what I can think. Is this your best excuse? That you can't govern your own children?’

      Sir Thomas is looking wry and holding out his hands. He's on the verge of saying, young people today … But the cardinal stops him. The cardinal suspects – and has confided his suspicion – that the young woman is not enticed by the prospect of Kilkenny Castle and its frugal amenities, nor by the kind of social life that will be available to her when, on special occasions, she hacks on the poor dirt roads to Dublin.

      ‘Who's that?’ Boleyn says. ‘In the corner there?’

      The cardinal waves a hand. ‘Just one of my legal people.’

      ‘Send him out.’

      The cardinal sighs.

      ‘Is he taking notes of this conversation?’

      ‘Are you, Thomas?’ the cardinal calls. ‘If so, stop it at once.’

      Half the world is called Thomas. Afterwards, Boleyn will never be sure if it was him.

      ‘Look now, my lord,’ he says, his voice playing up and down the diplomat's scales: he is frank, a man of the world, and his smile says, now Wolsey, now Wolsey, you're a man of the world too. ‘They're young.’ He makes a gesture, designed to impersonate frankness. ‘She caught the boy's eye. It's natural. I've had to break it to her. She knows it can't proceed. She knows her place.’

      ‘Good,’ the cardinal says, ‘because it's below a Percy. I mean,’ he adds, ‘below, in the dynastic sense. I am not speaking of what one might do in a haystack on a warm night.’

      ‘He doesn't accept it, the young man. They tell him to marry Mary Talbot, but …’ and Boleyn gives a little careless laugh, ‘he doesn't care to marry Mary Talbot. He believes he is free to choose his wife.’

      ‘Choose his –!’ the cardinal breaks off. ‘I never heard the like. He's not some ploughboy. He's the man who will have to hold the north for us, one of these days, and if he doesn't understand his position in the world then he must learn it or forfeit it. The match already made with Shrewsbury's daughter is a fit match for him, and a match made by me, and agreed by the king. And the Earl of Shrewsbury, I can tell you, doesn't take kindly to this sort of moonstruck clowning by a boy who's promised to his daughter.’

      ‘The difficulty is …’ Boleyn allows a discreet diplomatic pause. ‘I think that, Harry Percy and my daughter, they may have gone a little far in the matter.’

      ‘What? You mean we are speaking of a haystack and a warm night?’

      From the shadows he watches; he thinks Boleyn is the coldest, smoothest man he has ever seen.

      ‘From what they tell me, they have pledged themselves before witnesses. How can it be undone, then?’

      The cardinal smashes his fist on the table. ‘I'll tell you how. I shall get his father down from the borders, and if the prodigal defies him, he will be tossed out of his heirdom on his prodigal snout. The earl has other sons, and better. And if you don't want the Butler marriage called off, and your lady daughter shrivelling unmarriageable down in Sussex and costing you bed and board for the rest of her life, you will forget any talk of pledges, and witnesses – who are they, these witnesses? I know those kind of witnesses who never show their faces when I send for them. So never let me hear it. Pledges. Witnesses. Contracts. God in Heaven!’

      Boleyn is still smiling. He is a poised, slender man; it takes the effort of every finely tuned muscle in his body to keep the smile on his face.

      ‘I do not ask you,’ says Wolsey, relentless, ‘whether in this matter you have sought the advice of your relatives in the Howard family. I should be reluctant to think that it was with their agreement that you launched yourself on this scheme. I should be sorry to hear the Duke of Norfolk was apprised of this: oh, very sorry indeed. So let me not hear it, eh? Go and ask your relatives for some good advice. Marry the girl into Ireland before the Butlers hear any rumour that she's spoiled goods. Not that I'd mention it. But the court does talk.’

      Sir Thomas has two spots of angry red on his cheekbones. He says, ‘Finished, my lord cardinal?’

      ‘Yes. Go.’

      Boleyn turns, in a sweep of dark silks. Are those tears of temper in his eyes? The light is dim, but he, Cromwell, is of very strong sight. ‘Oh, a moment, Sir Thomas …’ the cardinal says. His voice loops across the room and pulls his victim back. ‘Now, Sir Thomas, remember your ancestry. The Percy family comprise, I do think, the noblest in the land. Whereas, notwithstanding your remarkable good fortune in marrying a Howard, the Boleyns were in trade once, were they not? A person of your name was Lord Mayor of London, not so? Or have I mixed up your line with some Boleyns more distinguished?’

      Sir Thomas's face has drained; the scarlet spots have vanished from his cheeks, and he is almost fainting with rage. As he quits the room, he whispers, ‘Butcher's boy.’ And as he passes the clerk – whose beefy hand lies idly on his desk – he sneers, ‘Butcher's dog.’

      The door bangs. The cardinal says, ‘Come out, dog.’ He sits laughing, with his elbows on his desk and his head in his hands. ‘Mark and learn,’ he says. ‘You can never advance your own pedigree – and God knows, Tom, you were born in a more dishonourable estate than me – so the trick is always to keep them scraped up to their own standards. They made the rules; they cannot complain if I am the strictest enforcer. Percys above Boleyns. Who does he think he is?’

      ‘Is it good policy to make people angry?’

      ‘Oh, no. But it amuses me. My life is hard and I find I want amusement.’ The cardinal casts on him a kindly eye; he suspects he