Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

      At Esher the cardinal takes to his bed. Once he would never have done that, though he looks ill enough to justify it. He says, ‘Nothing will happen while the king and Lady Anne are exchanging their New Year kisses. We are safe from incursions till Twelfth Night.’ He turns his head, against his pillows. Says, vehement, ‘Body of Christ, Cromwell. Go home.’

      The house at the Austin Friars is decorated with wreaths of holly and ivy, of laurel and ribboned yew. The kitchen is busy, feeding the living, but they omit this year their usual songs and Christmas plays. No year has brought such devastation. His sister Kat, her husband Morgan Williams, have been plucked from this life as fast as his daughters were taken, one day walking and talking and next day cold as stones, tumbled into their Thames-side graves and dug in beyond reach of the tide, beyond sight and smell of the river; deaf now to the sound of Putney's cracked church bell, to the smell of wet ink, of hops, of malted barley, and the scent, still animal, of woollen bales; dead to the autumn aroma of pine resin and apple candles, of soul cakes baking. As the year ends two orphans are added to his house, Richard and the child Walter. Morgan Williams, he was a big talker, but he was shrewd in his own way, and he worked hard for his family. And Kat – well, latterly she understood her brother about as well as she understood the motions of the stars: ‘I can never add you up, Thomas,’ she'd say, which was his failure entirely, because who had taught her, except him, to count on her fingers, and puzzle out a tradesman's bill?

      If he were to give himself a piece of advice for Christmas, he'd say, leave the cardinal now or you'll be out on the streets again with the three-card trick. But he only gives advice to those who are likely to take it.

      They have a big gilded star at the Austin Friars, which they hang in their great hall on New Year's Eve. For a week it shines out, to welcome their guests at Epiphany. From summer onwards, he and Liz would be thinking of costumes for the Three Kings, coveting and hoarding scraps of any strange cloth they saw, any new trimmings; then from October, Liz would be sewing in secrecy, improving on last year's robes by patching them over with new shining panels, quilting a shoulder and weighting a hem, and building each year some fantastical new crowns. His part was to think what the gifts would be, that the kings had in their boxes. Once a king had dropped his casket in shock when the gift began to sing.

      This year no one has the heart to hang up the star; but he visits it, in its lightless store room. He slides off the canvas sleeves that protect its rays, and checks that they are unchipped and unfaded. There will be better years, when they will hang it up again; though he cannot imagine them. He eases back the sleeves, pleased at how ingeniously they have been made and how exactly they fit. The Three Kings' robes are packed into a chest, as also the sheepskins for the children who will be sheep. The shepherds' crooks lean in a corner; from a peg hang angel's wings. He touches them. His finger comes away dusty. He shifts his candle out of danger, then lifts them from the peg and gently shakes them. They make a soft sound of hissing, and a faint amber perfume washes into the air. He hangs them back on the peg; passes over them the palm of his hand, to soothe them and still their shiver. He picks up his candle. He backs out and closes the door. He pinches out the light, turns the lock and gives the key to Johane.

      He says to her, ‘I wish we had a baby. It seems such a long time since there was a baby in the house.’

      ‘Don't look at me,’ Johane says.

      He does, of course. He says, ‘Does John Williamson not do his duty by you these days?’

      She says, ‘His duty is not my pleasure.’

      As he walks away he thinks, that's a conversation I shouldn't have had.

      On New Year's Day, when night falls, he is sitting at his writing table; he is writing letters for the cardinal, and sometimes he crosses the room to his counting board and pushes the counters about. It seems that in return for a formal guilty plea to the praemunire charges, the king will allow the cardinal his life, and a measure of liberty; but whatever money is left him, to maintain his state, will be a fraction of his former income. York Place has been taken already, Hampton Court is long gone, and the king is thinking of how to tax and rob the rich bishopric of Winchester.

      Gregory comes in. ‘I brought you lights. My aunt Johane said, go in to your father.’

      Gregory sits. He waits. He fidgets. He sighs. He gets up. He crosses to his father's writing table and hovers in front of him. Then, as if someone had said, ‘Make yourself useful,’ he reaches out timidly and begins to tidy the papers.

      He glances up at his son, while keeping his head down over his task. For the first time, perhaps, since Gregory was a baby, he notices his hands, and he is struck by what they have become: not childish paws, but the large, white untroubled hands of a gentleman's son. What is Gregory doing? He is putting the documents into a stack. On what principle is he doing it? He can't read them, they're the wrong way up. He's not filing them by subject. Is he filing them by date? For God's sake, what is he doing?

      He needs to finish this sentence, with its many vital subclauses. He glances up again, and recognises Gregory's design. It is a system of holy simplicity: big papers on the bottom, small ones on top.

      ‘Father …’ Gregory says. He sighs. He crosses to the counting board. With a forefinger he inches the counters about. Then he scoops them together, picks them up and clicks them into a tidy pile.

      He looks up at last. ‘That was a calculation. It wasn't just where I dropped them.’

      ‘Oh, sorry,’ Gregory says politely. He sits down by the fire and tries not to disturb the air as he breathes.

      The mildest eyes can be commanding; under his son's gaze, he asks, ‘What is it?’

      ‘Do you think you can stop writing?’

      ‘A minute,’ he says, holding up a delaying hand; he signs the letter, his usual form: ‘your assured friend, Thomas Cromwell.’ If Gregory is going to tell him that someone else in the house is mortally ill, or that he, Gregory, has offered himself in marriage to the laundry girl, or that London Bridge has fallen down, he must be ready to take it like a man; but he must sand and seal this. He looks up. ‘Yes?’

      Gregory turns his face away. Is he crying? It would not be surprising, would it, as he has cried himself, and in public? He crosses the room. He sits down opposite his son, by the hearth. He takes off his cap of velvet and runs his hands back through his hair.

      For a long time no one speaks. He looks down at his own thick-fingered hands, scars and burn marks hidden in the palms. He thinks, gentleman? So you call yourself, but who do you hope to mislead? Only the people who have never seen you, or the people you keep distanced with courtesy, legal clients and your fellows in the Commons, colleagues at Gray's Inn, the household servants of courtiers, the courtiers themselves … His mind strays to the next letter he must write. Then Gregory says, his voice small as if he had receded into the past, ‘Do you remember that Christmas, when there was the giant in the pageant?’

      ‘Here in the parish? I remember.’

      ‘He said, “I am a giant, my name is Marlinspike.” They said he was as tall as the Cornhill maypole. What's the Cornhill maypole?’

      ‘They took it down. The year of the riots. Evil May Day, they called it. You were only a baby then.’

      ‘Where's the maypole now?’

      ‘The city has it in store.’

      ‘Shall we have our star again next year?’

      ‘If our fortunes look up.’

      ‘Shall we be poor now the cardinal is down?’

      ‘No.’

      The little flames leap and flare, and Gregory looks into them. ‘You remember the year I had my face dyed black, and I was wrapped in a black calfskin? When I was a devil in the Christmas play?’

      ‘I do.’ His face softens. ‘I remember.’

      Anne had wanted to be dyed, but her mother had said it was not suitable for a little girl. He wishes he had said that Anne