Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

grandmother was Queen of Castile.’

      ‘She cannot lead an army.’

      ‘Isabella did.’

      Says the duke, ‘Cromwell, why are you here? Listening to the talk of gentlemen?’

      ‘My lord, when you shout, the beggars on the street can hear you. In Calais.’

      Gardiner has turned to him; he is interested. ‘So you think Mary can rule?’

      He shrugs. ‘It depends who advises her. It depends who she marries.’

      Norfolk says, ‘We have to act soon. Katherine has half the lawyers of Europe pushing paper for her. This dispensation. That dispensation. The other dispensation with the different bloody wording that they say they've got in Spain. It doesn't matter. This has gone beyond paper.’

      ‘Why?’ Suffolk says. ‘Is your niece in foal?’

      ‘No! More's the pity. Because if she were, he'd have to do something.’

      ‘What?’ Suffolk says.

      ‘I don't know. Grant his own divorce?’

      There is a shuffle, a grunt, a sigh. Some look at the duke; some look at their shoes. There's no man in the room who doesn't want Henry to have what he wants. Their lives and fortunes depend on it. He sees the path ahead: a tortuous path through a flat terrain, the horizon deceptively clear, the country intersected by ditches, and the present Tudor, a certain amount of mud bespattering his person and his face, fished gasping into clear air. He says, ‘That good man who pulled the king out of the ditch, what was his name?’

      Norfolk says, drily, ‘Master Cromwell likes to hear of the deeds of those of low birth.’

      He doesn't suppose any of them will know. But Norris says, ‘I know. His name was Edmund Mody.’

      Muddy, more like, Suffolk says. He yells with laughter. They stare at him.

      It is All Souls' Day: as Norfolk puts it, November again. Alice and Jo have come to speak to him. They are leading Bella – the Bella that is now – on a ribbon of pink silk. He looks up: may I be of service to you two ladies?

      Alice says, ‘Master, it is more than two years since my aunt Elizabeth died, your lady wife. Will you write to the cardinal, and ask him to ask the Pope to let her out of Purgatory?’

      He says, ‘What about your aunt Kat? And your little cousins, my daughters?’

      The children exchange glances. ‘We don't think they have been there so long. Anne Cromwell was proud of her working of numbers and boasted that she was learning Greek. Grace was vain of her hair and used to state that she had wings, this was a lie.

      We think perhaps they must suffer more. But the cardinal could try.’

      Don't ask, don't get, he thinks.

      Alice says, encouragingly, ‘You have been so active in the cardinal's business that he would not refuse. And although the king does not favour the cardinal any more, surely the Pope favours him?’

      ‘And I expect,’ says Jo, ‘that the cardinal writes to the Pope every day. Though I do not know who sews his letters. And I suppose the cardinal might send him a present for his trouble. Some money, I mean. Our aunt Mercy says that the Pope does nothing except on cash terms.’

      ‘Come with me,’ he says. They exchange glances. He sweeps them along before him. Bella's small legs race. Jo drops her lead, but still Bella runs behind.

      Mercy and the elder Johane are sitting together. The silence is not companionable. Mercy is reading, murmuring the words to herself. Johane is staring at the wall, sewing in her lap. Mercy marks her place. ‘What's this, an embassy?’

      ‘Tell her,’ he says. ‘Jo, tell your mother what you have been asking me.’

      Jo starts to cry. It is Alice who speaks up and puts their case. ‘We want our aunt Liz to come out of Purgatory.’

      ‘What have you been teaching them?’ he asks.

      Johane shrugs. ‘Many grown persons believe what they believe.’

      ‘Dear God, what is going on under this roof? These children believe the Pope can go down to the underworld with a bunch of keys. Whereas Richard denies the sacrament –’

      ‘What?’ Johane's mouth falls open. ‘He does what?’

      Mercy says, ‘Richard is right. When the good Lord said, this is my body, he meant, this signifies my body. He did not license priests to be conjurers.’

      ‘But he said, it is. He did not say, this is like my body, he said, it is. Can God lie? No. He is incapable of it.’

      ‘God can do anything,’ Alice says.

      Johane stares at her. ‘You little minx.’

      ‘If my mother were here, she would slap you for that.’

      ‘No fighting,’ he says. ‘Please?’ The Austin Friars is like the world in little. These few years it's been more like a battlefield than a household; or like one of the tented encampments in which the survivors look in despair at their shattered limbs and spoiled expectations. But they are his to direct, these last hardened troops; if they are not to be flattened in the next charge it is he who must teach them the defensive art of facing both ways, faith and works, Pope and new brethren, Katherine and Anne. He looks at Mercy, who is smirking. He looks at Johane, a high colour in her cheeks. He turns away from Johane and his thoughts, which are not precisely theological. He says to the children, ‘You have done nothing wrong.’ But their faces are stricken, and he coaxes them: ‘I shall give you a present, Jo, for sewing the cardinal's letters; and I shall give you a present, Alice, I am sure that we do not need a reason. I shall give you marmosets.’

      They look at each other. Jo is tempted. ‘Do you know where to get them?’

      ‘I think so. I have been to the Lord Chancellor's house, and his wife has such a creature, and it sits on her knee and attends to everything she says.’

      Alice says, ‘They are not the fashion now.’

      ‘Though we thank you,’ says Mercy.

      ‘Though we thank you,’ Alice repeats. ‘But marmosets are not seen at court since Lady Anne came up. To be fashionable, we should like Bella's puppies.’

      ‘In time,’ he says. ‘Perhaps.’ The room is full of undercurrents, some of which he does not understand. He picks up his dog, tucks her under his arm and goes off to see how to provide some more money for brother George Rochford. He sits Bella on his desk, to take a nap among his papers. She has been sucking the end of her ribbon, and attempting subtly to undo the knot at her throat.

      On 1 November 1530, a commission for the cardinal's arrest is given to Harry Percy, the young Earl of Northumberland. The earl arrives at Cawood to arrest him, forty-eight hours before his planned arrival in York for his investiture. He is taken to Pontefract Castle under guard, from there to Doncaster, and from there to Sheffield Park, the home of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Here at Talbot's house he falls ill. On 26 November the Constable of the Tower arrives, with twenty-four men at arms, to escort him south. From there he travels to Leicester Abbey. Three days later he dies.

      What was England, before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold.

      George Cavendish comes to Austin Friars. He cries as he talks. Sometimes he dries his tears and moralises. But mostly he cries. ‘We had not even finished our dinner,’ he says. ‘My lord was taking his dessert when young Harry Percy walked in. He was spattered with mud from the road, and he had the keys in his hands, he had taken them from the porter already, and set sentries on the stairs. My lord rose to his feet, he said, Harry, if I'd known, I'd have waited dinner for you. I fear we've almost finished the fish. Shall I pray for a miracle?

      ‘I whispered to him, my lord, do not blaspheme. Then Harry Percy came forward: my lord, I arrest you for high