Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

with St Agnes and he follows her around and the Cornish bear her image on their flags and so he's coming to London after them.’

      ‘Bolster?’ he sneers. ‘I expect he's that big.’

      ‘Oh, you will see,’ Bet says. ‘Then you won't be so quick with your answers.’

      The women of the district, Morgan says, clucked around his mother pretending concern: what will it be when it's born, she's like the side of a house!

      Then when he came into this world, bawling, with clenched fists and wet black curls, Walter and his friends reeled through Putney, singing. They shouted, ‘Come and get it, girls!’ and ‘Barren wives served here!’

      They never noted the date. He said to Morgan, I don't mind. I don't have a natal chart. So I don't have a fate.

      As fate had it, there was no battle in Putney. For the outriders and escapees, the women were ready with bread knives and razors, the men to bludgeon them with shovels and mattocks, to hollow them with adzes and to spike them on butchers' steels. The big fight was at Blackheath instead: Cornishmen cut up into little pieces, minced by the Tudor in his military mincing machine. All of them safe: except from Walter.

      His sister Bet says, ‘You know that giant, Bolster? He hears that St Agnes is dead. He's cut his arm and in sorrow his blood has flowed into the sea. It's filled up a cave that can never be filled, which goes into a hole, which goes down beneath the bed of the sea and into the centre of the earth and into Hell. So he's dead.’

      ‘Oh, good. Because I was really worried about Bolster.’

      ‘Dead till next time,’ his sister says.

      So on a date unknown, he was born. At three years old, he was collecting kindling for the forge. ‘See my little lad?’ Walter would say, batting him fondly around the head. His fingers smelled of burning, and his palm was solid and black.

      In recent years, of course, scholars have tried to give him a fate; men learned in reading the heavens have tried to work him back from what he is and how he is, to when he was born. Jupiter favourably aspected, indicating prosperity. Mercury rising, offering the faculty of quick and persuasive speech. Kratzer says, if Mars is not in Scorpio, I don't know my trade. His mother was fifty-two and they thought she could neither conceive nor deliver a child. She hid her powers and disguised him under draperies, deep inside her, for as long as she could contrive. He came out and they said, what is it?

      In mid-December, James Bainham, a barrister of the Middle Temple, abjures his heresies before the Bishop of London. He has been tortured, the city says, More himself questioning him while the handle of the rack is turned and asking him to name other infected members of the Inns of Court. A few days later, a former monk and a leather-seller are burned together. The monk had run in consignments of books through the Norfolk ports and then, stupidly enough, through St Katharine's Dock, where the Lord Chancellor was waiting to seize them. The leather-seller had possession of Luther's Liberty of a Christian Man, the text copied out in his own hand. These are men he knows, the disgraced and broken Bainham, the monk Bayfield, John Tewkesbury, who God knows was no doctor of theology. That's how the year goes out, in a puff of smoke, a pall of human ash hanging over Smithfield.

      On New Year's Day, he wakes before dawn to see Gregory at the foot of his bed. ‘You'd better come. Tom Wyatt's been taken up.’

      He is out of bed instantly; his first thought is that More has struck into the heart of Anne's circle. ‘Where is he? They've not taken him to Chelsea?’

      Gregory sounds mystified. ‘Why would they take him to Chelsea?’

      ‘The king cannot allow – it comes too near him – Anne has books, she has shown them to him – he himself has read Tyndale – what next, is More going to arrest the king?’ He reaches for a shirt.

      ‘It's nothing to do with More. It's some fools taken up for making a riot in Westminster, they were in the street leaping over bonfires and took to smashing windows, you know how it goes …’ Gregory's voice is weary. ‘Then they go fighting the watch and they get locked up, and a message comes, will Master Cromwell go down and give the turnkey a New Year present?’

      ‘Christ,’ he says. He sits down on the bed, suddenly conscious of his nakedness, of feet, shins, thighs, cock, his pelt of body hair, bristling chin: and the sweat that has broken out across his shoulders. He pulls on his shirt. ‘They'll have to take me as they find me,’ he says. ‘And I'll have my breakfast first.’

      Gregory says, with light malice, ‘You agreed to be a father to him. This is what being a father means.’

      He stands up. ‘Get Richard.’

      ‘I'll come.’

      ‘Come if you must, but I want Richard in case there's trouble.’

      There is no trouble, only a bit of haggling. Dawn is breaking when the young gentlemen reel out into the air, haggard, battered, their clothes torn and dirty. ‘Francis Weston,’ he says, ‘good morning, sir.’ He thinks, if I'd known you were here, I'd have left you. ‘Why are you not at court?’

      ‘I am,’ the boy says, on an outgust of sour breath. ‘I am at Greenwich. I am not here. Do you understand?’

      ‘Bilocation,’ he says. ‘Right.’

      ‘Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus my Redeemer.’ Thomas Wyatt stands in the bright snowy light, rubbing his head. ‘Never again.’

      ‘Till next year,’ Richard says.

      He turns, to see a last shambling figure fall out into the street. ‘Francis Bryan,’ he says. ‘I should have known this enterprise would not be complete without you. Sir.’

      Exposed to the first chill of the new year, Lady Anne's cousin shakes himself like a wet dog. ‘By the tits of Holy Agnes, it's freezing.’ His doublet is ripped and his shirt collar torn off, and he has only one shoe. He clutches at his hose to keep them up. Five years ago, he lost an eye in the joust; now he has lost his eyepatch, and the livid socket is on view. He looks around, with what ocular equipment remains. ‘Cromwell? I don't remember you were with us last night.’

      ‘I was in my bed and would be glad if I were there still.’

      ‘Why not go back?’ Risking dangerous slippage, he throws his hands out. ‘Which of the city wives is waiting for you? Do you have one for each of the twelve days of Christmas?’ He almost laughs, till Bryan adds, ‘Don't you sectaries hold your women in common?’

      ‘Wyatt,’ he turns away, ‘get him to cover himself, or his parts will be frostbitten. Bad enough to be without an eye.’

      ‘Say thank you.’ Thomas Wyatt bellows, and thumps his companions. ‘Say thank you to Master Cromwell and pay him back what you owe him. Who else would be up so early on a holiday, and with his purse open? We could have been there till tomorrow.’

      They do not look like men who have a shilling between them. ‘Never mind,’ he says. ‘I'll put it on the account.’

       II ‘Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?’ Spring 1532

      Time now to consider the compacts that hold the world together: the compact between ruler and ruled, and that between husband and wife. Both these arrangements rest on a sedulous devotion, the one to the interests of the other. The master and husband protect and provide; the wife and servant obey. Above masters, above husbands, God rules all. He counts up our petty rebellions, our human follies. He reaches out his long arm, hand bunched into a fist.

      Imagine debating these matters with George, Lord Rochford. He is as witty a young man as any in England, polished and well read; but today what fascinates him is the flame-coloured satin that is pulled through his slashed velvet over-sleeve. He keeps coaxing the little puffs of fabric with a fingertip, pleating and nudging them and encouraging them to grow bigger, so that he looks