knights in the back rooms of brothels, pilgrims forced into stables and outhouses and sleeping out under the stars. Luckily, the weather is mild for October. Any year before this, the king would have gone to pray at Becket's shrine and leave a rich offering. But Becket was a rebel against the Crown, not the sort of archbishop we like to encourage at the moment. In the cathedral the incense is still hanging in the air from Warham's interment, and prayers for his soul are a constant drone like the buzz of a thousand hives. Letters have gone to Cranmer, lying somewhere in Germany at the Emperor's travelling court. Anne has begun to refer to him as the Archbishop-Elect. No one knows how long he'll take getting home. With his secret, Rafe says.
Of course, he says, his secret, written down the side of the page.
Rafe visits the shrine. It is his first time. He comes back wide-eyed, saying it is covered in jewels the size of goose eggs.
‘I know. Are they real, do you think?’
‘They show you a skull, they say it's Becket's, it's smashed up by the knights but it's held together with a silver plate. For ready money, you can kiss it. They have a tray of his finger bones. They have his snotty handkerchief. And a bit of his boot. And a vial they shake up for you, they say it's his blood.’
‘At Walsingham, they have a vial of the Virgin's milk.’
‘Christ, I wonder what that is?’ Rafe looks sick. ‘The blood, you can tell it's water with some red soil in it. It floats about in clumps.’
‘Well, pick up that goose quill, plucked from the pinions of the angel Gabriel, and we will write to Stephen Vaughan. We may have to set him on the road, to bring Thomas Cranmer home.’
‘It can't be soon enough,’ Rafe says. ‘Just wait, master, till I wash Becket off my hands.’
Though he will not go to the shrine, the king wants to show himself to the people, Anne by his side. Leaving Mass, against all advice he walks out among the crowds, his guards standing back, his councillors around him. Anne's head darts, on the slender stem of her neck, turning to catch the comments that come her way. People stretch out their hands to touch the king.
Norfolk, at his elbow, stiff with apprehension, eyes everywhere: ‘I don't care for this proceeding, Master Cromwell.’ He himself, having once been quick with a knife, is alert for movements below the eyeline. But the nearest thing to a weapon is an outsize cross, wielded by a bunch of Franciscan monks. The crowd gives way to them, to a huddle of lay priests in their vestments, a contingent of Benedictines from the abbey, and in the midst of them a young woman in the habit of a Benedictine nun.
‘Majesty?’
Henry turns. ‘By God, this is the Holy Maid,’ he says. The guards move in, but Henry holds up a hand. ‘Let me see her.’ She is a big girl, and not so young, perhaps twenty-eight; plain face, dusky, excited, with an urgent flush. She pushes towards the king, and for a second he sees him through her eyes: a blur of red-gold and flushed skin, a ready, priapic body, a hand like a ham that stretches out to take her by her nunly elbow. ‘Madam, you have something to say to me?’
She tries to curtsey, but his grip won't let her. ‘I am advised by Heaven,’ she says, ‘by the saints with whom I converse, that the heretics around you must be put into a great fire, and if you do not light that fire, then you yourself will burn.’
‘Which heretics? Where are they? I do not keep heretics about my person.’
‘Here is one.’
Anne shrinks against the king; against the scarlet and gold of his jacket she melts like wax.
‘And if you enter into a form of marriage with this unworthy woman, you will not reign seven months.’
‘Come, madam, seven months? Round it off, can you not? What sort of a prophet says “seven months”?’
‘That is what Heaven tells me.’
‘And when the seven months are up, who will replace me? Speak up, say who you would like to be king instead of me.’
The monks and priests are trying to draw her away; this was not part of their plan. ‘Lord Montague, he is of the blood. The Marquis of Exeter, he is blood royal.’ She in turn tries to pull away from the king. ‘I see your lady mother,’ she says, ‘surrounded by pale fires.’
Henry drops her as if her flesh were hot. ‘My mother? Where?’
‘I have been looking for the Cardinal of York. I have searched Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, but the cardinal is not there.’
‘Surely she is mad?’ Anne says. ‘She is mad and must be whipped. If she is not, she must be hanged.’
One of the priests says, ‘Madam, she is a very holy person. Her speech is inspired.’
‘Get her out of my way,’ Anne says.
‘Lightning will strike you,’ the nun tells Henry. He laughs uncertainly.
Norfolk erupts into the group, teeth clenched, fist raised. ‘Drag her back to her whorehouse, before she feels this, by God!’ In the mêlée, one monk hits another with the cross; the Maid is drawn backwards, still prophesying; the noise from the crowd rises, and Henry grasps Anne by the arm and pulls her back the way they came. He himself follows the Maid, sticking close to the back of the group, till the crowd thins and he can tap one of the monks on the arm and ask to speak to her. ‘I was a servant of Wolsey,’ he says. ‘I want to hear her message.’
Some consultation, and they let him through. ‘Sir?’ she says.
‘Could you try again to find the cardinal? If I were to make an offering?’
She shrugs. One of the Franciscans says, ‘It would have to be a substantial offering.’
‘Your name is?’
‘I am Father Risby.’
‘I can no doubt meet your expectations. I am a wealthy man.’
‘Would you want simply to locate the soul, to help your own prayers, or were you thinking in terms of a chantry, perhaps, an endowment?’
‘Whatever you recommend. But of course I'd need to know he wasn't in Hell. There would be no point throwing away good Masses on a hopeless case.’
‘I'll have to talk to Father Bocking,’ the girl says. ‘Father Bocking is this lady's spiritual director.’ He inclines his head. ‘Come again and ask me,’ the girl says. She turns and is lost in the crowd. He parts with some money there and then, to the entourage. For Father Bocking, whoever he may be. As it seems Father Bocking does the price list and keeps the accounts.
The nun has plunged the king into gloom. How would you feel if you were told you'd be struck by lightning? By evening he complains of a headache, a pain in his face and jaw. ‘Go away,’ he tells his doctors. ‘You can never cure it, so why should you now? And you, madam,’ he says to Anne, ‘have your ladies put you to bed, I do not want chatter, I cannot stand piercing voices.’
Norfolk grumbles under his breath: the Tudor, always something the matter with him.
At Austin Friars, if anyone gets a sniffle or a sprain, the boys perform an interlude called ‘If Norfolk were Doctor Butts’. Got a toothache? Pull them out! Trapped your finger? Hack your hand off! Pain in the head? Slice it off, you've got another.
Now Norfolk pauses, in backing out of the presence. ‘Majesty, she didn't say the lightning would in fact kill you.’
‘No more did she,’ Brandon says cheerily.
‘Not dead but dethroned, not dead but stricken and scorched, that's something to look forward to, is it?’ Pitifully indicating his circumstances, the king barks for a servant to bring logs and a page to warm some wine. ‘Am I to sit here, the King of England, with a miserable fire and nothing to drink?’ He does look cold. He says, ‘She saw my lady mother.’
‘Your Majesty,’ he says, cautious, ‘you know that in the