Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

waited in the forest biding his time, or possibly in a lake. He is several centuries old. Merlin is a wizard. He comes later. You will see. There are twenty-one chapters. If it keeps on raining I mean to read them all. Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.’

      When the king next calls him to court, he wants a message sent to Wolsey. A Breton merchant whose ship was seized by the English eight years ago is complaining he has not had the compensation promised. No one can find the paperwork. It was the cardinal who handled the case – will he remember it? ‘I'm sure he will,’ he says. ‘That will be the ship with powdered pearls for ballast, the hold packed with unicorns' horns?’

      God forbid! says Charles Brandon; but the king laughs and says, ‘That will be the one.’

      ‘If the sums are in doubt, or indeed the whole case, may I look after it?’

      The king hesitates. ‘I'm not sure you have a locus standi in the matter.’

      It is at this moment that Brandon, quite unexpectedly, gives him a testimonial. ‘Harry, let him. When this fellow has finished, the Breton will be paying you.’

      Dukes revolve in their spheres. When they confer, it is not for pleasure in each other's society; they like to be surrounded by their own courts, by men who reflect them and are subservient to them. For pleasure, they are as likely to be found with a kennel-man as another duke; so it is that he spends an amiable hour with Brandon, looking over the king's hounds. It is not yet the season for hunting the hart, so the running dogs are well fed in their kennels; their musical barking rises into the evening air, and the tracking dogs, silent as they are trained to be, rise on their hind legs and watch, dripping saliva, the progress of their suppers. The kennel children are carrying baskets of bread and bones, buckets of offal and basins of pigs'-blood pottage. Charles Brandon inhales, appreciative: like a dowager in a rose garden.

      A huntsman calls forward a favourite bitch, white patched with chestnut, Barbada, four years old. He straddles her and pulls back her head to show her eyes, clouded with a fine film. He will hate to kill her, but he doubts she will be much use this season. He, Cromwell, cups the bitch's jaw in his hand. ‘You can draw off the membrane with a curved needle. I've seen it done. You need a steady hand and to be quick. She doesn't like it, but then she won't like to be blind.’ He runs his hand over her ribs, feels the panicked throb of her little animal heart. ‘The needle must be very fine. And just this length.’ He shows them, between finger and thumb. ‘Let me talk to your smith.’

      Suffolk looks sideways at him. ‘You're a useful sort of man.’

      They walk away. The duke says, ‘Look here. The problem is my wife.’ He waits. ‘I have always wanted Henry to have what he wants, I have always been loyal to him. Even when he was talking about cutting my head off because I'd married his sister. But now, what am I to do? Katherine is the queen. Surely? My wife was always a friend of hers. She's beginning to talk of, I don't know, I'd give my life for the queen, that sort of thing. And for Norfolk's niece to have precedence over my wife, who was Queen of France – we can't live with it. You see?’

      He nods. I see. ‘Besides,’ the duke says, ‘I hear Wyatt is due back from Calais.’ Yes, and? ‘I wonder if I ought to tell him. Tell Henry, I mean. Poor devil.’

      ‘My lord, leave it alone,’ he says. The duke lapses into what, in another man, you would call silent thought.

      Summer: the king is hunting. If he wants him, he has to chase him, and if he is sent for, he goes. Henry visits, on his summer progress, his friends in Wiltshire, in Sussex, in Kent, or stays at his own houses, or the ones he has taken from the cardinal. Sometimes, even now, the queen in her stout little person rides out with a bow, when the king hunts within one of his great parks, or in some lord's park, where the deer are driven to the archers. Lady Anne rides too – on separate occasions – and enjoys the pursuit. But there is a season to leave the ladies at home, and ride into the forest with the trackers and the running hounds; to rise before dawn when the light is clouded like a pearl; to consult with the huntsman, and then unharbour the chosen stag. You do not know where the chase will end, or when.

      Harry Norris says to him, laughing, your turn soon, Master Cromwell, if he continues to favour you as he does. A word of advice: as the day begins, and you ride out, pick a ditch. Picture it in your mind. When he has worn out three good horses, when the horn is blowing for another chase, you will be dreaming of that ditch, you will imagine lying down in it: dead leaves and cool ditch-water will be all you desire.

      He looks at Norris: his charming self-deprecation. He thinks, you were with my cardinal at Putney, when he fell on his knees in the dirt; did you offer the pictures in your head to the court, to the world, to the students of Gray's Inn? For if not you, then who?

      In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or the living Christ, or an old enemy of yours; or a new enemy, one you do not know until you see his face appear between the rustling leaves, and see the glint of his dagger. You may find a woman asleep in a bower of leaves. For a moment, before you don't recognise her, you will think she is someone you know.

      At Austin Friars, there is little chance to be alone, or alone with just one person. Every letter of the alphabet watches you. In the counting house there is young Thomas Avery, whom you are training up to take a grip on your private finances. Midway through the letters comes Marlinspike, strolling in the garden with his observant golden eyes. Towards the end of the alphabet comes Thomas Wriothesley pronounced Risley. He is a bright young man, twenty-five or so and well connected, son of York Herald, nephew to Garter King-at-Arms. In Wolsey's household he worked under your direction, then was carried away by Gardiner, as Master Secretary, to work for him. Now he is sometimes at court, sometimes at Austin Friars. He's Stephen's spy, the children say – Richard and Rafe.

      Master Wriothesley is tall, with red-blond hair, but without the propensity of others of that complexion – the king, let's say – to grow pink when gratified, or mottled when crossed; he is always pale and cool, always his handsome self, always composed. At Trinity Hall he was a great actor in the students' plays, and he has certain affectations, a consciousness of himself, of how he appears; they mimic him behind his back, Richard and Rafe, and say, ‘My name is Wri-oth-es-ley, but as I wish to spare you effort, you can call me Risley.’ They say, he only complicates his name like that so he can come here and sign things, and use up our ink. They say, you know Gardiner, he is too angry to use long names, Gardiner just calls him ‘you’. They are pleased with this joke and for a while, every time Mr W appears, they shout, ‘It's you!’

      Have mercy, he says, on Master Wriothesley. Cambridge men should have our respect.

      He would like to ask them, Richard, Rafe, Master Wriothesley call me Risley: do I look like a murderer? There is a boy who says I do.

      This year, there has been no summer plague. Londoners give thanks on their knees. On St John's Eve, the bonfires burn all night. At dawn, white lilies are carried in from the fields. The city daughters with shivering fingers weave them into drooping wreaths, to pin on the city's gates, and on city doors.

      He thinks about that little girl like a white flower; the girl with Lady Anne, who manoeuvred herself around the door. It would have been easy to find out her name, except he didn't, because he was busy finding out secrets from Mary. Next time he sees her … but what's the use of thinking of it? She will come of some noble house. He had meant to write to Gregory and say, I have seen such a sweet girl, I will find out who she is and, if I steer our family adroitly in the next few years, perhaps you can marry her.

      He has not written this. In his present precarious situation, it would be about as useful as the letters Gregory used to write to him: Dear father, I hope you are well. I hope your dog is well. And now no more for lack of time.

      Lord Chancellor More says, ‘Come and see me, and we'll talk about Wolsey's colleges. I feel sure the king will do something for the poor scholars. Do come. Come and see my roses before the heat spoils them. Come and see my new carpet.’

      It