Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

of nature; whether because of the summer heat, or the sound of hunting horns winding into the distance, or the spinning of sparkling dust in empty rooms; or whether it is that the child has lost sleep, while from dawn onwards her father's decamping household was packed up around her; for whatever reason, she is shrunken into herself, and her eyes are the colour of ditchwater. Once, as he is going through the preliminary Latin politenesses, he sees her grip tighten on the back of her mother's chair. ‘Madam, your daughter should sit.’ In case a contest of wills should ensue, he picks up a stool and places it, with a decisive thud, by Katherine's skirts.

      The queen leans back, rigid inside her boned bodice, to whisper to her daughter. The ladies of Italy, seemingly carefree, wore constructions of iron beneath their silks. It took infinite patience, not just in negotiation, to get them out of their clothes.

      Mary drops her head to whisper back; she hints, in Castilian, that it is her woman's disorder. Two pairs of eyes rise to meet his. The girl's glance is almost unfocused; she sees him, he supposes, as a bulky mass of shadow, in a space welling with distress. Stand up straight, Katherine murmurs: like a princess of England. Braced against the chair back, Mary takes a deep breath. She turns to him her plain pinched face: hard as Norfolk's thumbnail.

      It is early afternoon, very hot. The sun casts against the wall shifting squares of lilac and gold. The shrivelled fields of Windsor are laid out below them. The Thames shrinks from its banks.

      The queen speaks in English. ‘Do you know who this is? This is Master Cromwell. Who now writes all the laws.’

      Caught awkwardly between languages, he says, ‘Madam, shall we go on in English, or Latin?’

      ‘Your cardinal would ask the same question. As if I were a stranger here. I will say to you, as I said to him, that I was first addressed as Princess of Wales when I was three years old. I was sixteen when I came here to marry my lord Arthur. I was a virgin and seventeen when he died. I was twenty-four years old when I became Queen of England, and I will say for the avoidance of doubt that I am at present aged forty-six, and still queen, and by now, I believe, a sort of Englishwoman. But I shall not repeat to you everything that I told the cardinal. I imagine he left you notes of these things.’

      He feels he should bow. The queen says, ‘Since the year began they have brought certain bills into Parliament. Until now Master Cromwell's talent was for moneylending, but now he finds he has a talent for legislation too – if you want a new law, just ask him. I hear that at night you take the drafts to your house in – where is your house?’ She makes it sound like ‘your dog-hole’.

      Mary says, ‘These laws are written against the church. I wonder that our lords allow it.’

      ‘You know,’ the queen says, ‘that the Cardinal of York was accused under the praemunire laws of usurping your lord father's jurisdiction as ruler of England. Now Master Cromwell and his friends find all the clergy complicit in that crime, and ask them to pay a fine of more than one hundred thousand pounds.’

      ‘Not a fine. We call it a benevolence.’

      ‘I call it extortion.’ She turns to her daughter. ‘If you ask why the church is not defended, I can only tell you that there are noblemen in this land’ – Suffolk, she means, Norfolk – ‘who have been heard to say they will pull the power of the church down, that never again will they suffer – they use the word – a churchman to grow so great as our late legate. That we need no new Wolsey, I concur. With the attacks on the bishops, I do not concur. Wolsey was to me an enemy. That does not alter my feelings towards our Holy Mother the church.’

      He thinks, Wolsey was to me a father and a friend. That does not alter my feelings towards our Holy Mother the church.

      ‘You and Speaker Audley, you put your heads together by candlelight.’ The queen mentions the Speaker's name as if she were saying ‘your kitchen boy’. ‘And when the morning comes you induce the king to describe himself as head of the church in England.’

      ‘Whereas,’ the child says, ‘the Pope is head of the church everywhere, and from the throne of St Peter flows the lawfulness of all government. From no other source.’

      ‘Lady Mary,’ he says, ‘will you not sit?’ He catches her just as she folds at the knees, and eases her down on to the stool. ‘It is just the heat,’ he says, so she will not be ashamed. She turns up her eyes, shallow and grey, with a look of simple gratitude; and as soon as she is seated the look is replaced by an expression as stony as the wall of a town under siege.

      ‘You say “induce”,’ he tells Katherine. ‘But Your Highness, above anyone, knows that the king cannot be led.’

      ‘But he may be enticed.’ She turns to Mary, whose arms have crept over her belly. ‘So your father the king is named head of the church, and to soothe the conscience of the bishops, they have caused this formula to be inserted: “as far as the law of Christ allows”.’

      ‘What does that mean?’ Mary says. ‘It means nothing.’

      ‘Your Highness, it means everything.’

      ‘Yes. It is very clever.’

      ‘I beg you,’ he says, ‘to consider it in this way, that the king has merely defined a position previously held, one that ancient precedents –’

      ‘– invented these last months –’

      ‘– show as his right.’

      Under her clumsy gable hood, Mary's forehead is slick with sweat. She says, ‘What is defined can be redefined, yes?’

      ‘Indeed,’ her mother says. ‘And redefined in favour of the church – if only I fall in with their wishes, and put myself out of the estate of queen and wife.’

      The princess is right, he thinks. There is room for negotiation. ‘Nothing here is irrevocable.’

      ‘No, you wait to see what I will bring to your treaty table.’ Katherine holds out her hands – little, stubby, puffy hands – to show that they are empty. ‘Only Bishop Fisher defends me. Only he has been constant. Only he is able to tell the truth, which is that the House of Commons is full of heathens.’ She sighs, her hands fall at her sides. ‘And now under what persuasion has my husband ridden off without a farewell? He has not done so before. Never.’

      ‘He means to hunt out of Chertsey for a few days.’

      ‘With the woman,’ Mary says. ‘The person.’

      ‘Then he will ride by way of Guildford to visit Lord Sandys – he wants to see his handsome new gallery at the Vyne.’ His tone is easy, soothing, like the cardinal's; perhaps too much so? ‘From there, depending on the weather, and the game, he will go to William Paulet at Basing.’

      ‘I am to follow, when?’

      ‘He will return in a fortnight, God willing.’

      ‘A fortnight,’ Mary says. ‘Alone with the person.’

      ‘Before then, madam, you are to go to another palace – he has chosen the More, in Hertfordshire, which you know is very comfortable.’

      ‘Being the cardinal's house,’ Mary says, ‘it would be lavish.’

      My own daughters, he thinks, would never have spoken so. ‘Princess,’ he says, ‘will you, of your charity, cease to speak ill of a man who never did you harm?’

      Mary blushes from neckline to hairline. ‘I did not mean to fail in charity.’

      ‘The late cardinal is your godfather. You owe him your prayers.’

      Her eyes flicker towards him; she looks cowed. ‘I pray to shorten his term in Purgatory …’

      Katherine interrupts her. ‘Send a box to Hertfordshire. Send a package. Do not seek to send me.’

      ‘You shall have your whole court. The household is ready for two hundred.’

      ‘I shall write to the king. You may carry the letter.