that is proportionate … do you think so?’
He wonders at the power Sheba has to draw the boy's eyes. It is impossible he should have seen Anselma, ever met her, heard of her. I told Henry about her, he thinks. One of those afternoons when I told my king a little, and he told me a lot: how he shakes with desire when he thinks of Anne, how he has tried other women, tried them as an expedient to take the edge off lust, so that he can think and talk and act as a reasoning man, but how he has failed with them … A strange admission, but he thinks it justifies him, he thinks it verifies the rightness of his pursuit, for I chase but one hind, he says, one strange deer timid and wild, and she leads me off the paths that other men have trod, and by myself into the depths of the wood.
‘Now,’ he says, ‘we will put this book on your desk. So that you can be consoled by it when nothing seems to add up at all.’
He has great hopes of Thomas Avery. It's easy to employ some child who will total the columns and push them under your nose, get them initialled and then lock them in a chest. But what's the point of that? The page of an accounts book is there for your use, like a love poem. It's not there for you to nod and then dismiss it; it's there to open your heart to possibility. It's like the scriptures: it's there for you to think about, and initiate action. Love your neighbour. Study the market. Increase the spread of benevolence. Bring in better figures next year.
The date of James Bainham's execution is fixed for 30 April. He cannot go to the king, not with any hope of a pardon. Long ago Henry was given the title of Defender of the Faith; he is keen to show he deserves it still.
At Smithfield in the stand put up for the dignitaries he meets the Venetian ambassador, Carlo Capello. They exchange a bow. ‘In what capacity are you here, Cromwell? As friend of this heretic, or by virtue of your position? In fact, what is your position? The devil alone knows.’
‘And I am sure he will tell Your Excellency, when you next have a private talk.’
Wrapped in his sheet of flames, the dying man calls out, ‘The Lord forgive Sir Thomas More.’
On 15 May, the bishops sign a document of submission to the king. They will not make new church legislation without the king's licence, and will submit all existing laws to a review by a commission which will include laymen – members of Parliament and the king's appointees. They will not meet in Convocation without the king's permission.
Next day, he stands in a gallery at Whitehall, which looks down on an inner court, a garden, where the king waits, and the Duke of Norfolk busies to and fro. Anne is in the gallery beside him. She is wearing a dark red gown of figured damask, so heavy that her tiny white shoulders seem to droop inside it. Sometimes – in a kind of fellowship of the imagination – he imagines resting his hand upon her shoulder and following with his thumb the scooped hollow between her collarbone and her throat; imagines with his forefinger tracking the line of her breast as it swells above her bodice, as a child follows a line of print.
She turns her head and half-smiles. ‘Here he comes. He is not wearing the Lord Chancellor's chain. What can he have done with it?’
Thomas More looks round-shouldered and despondent. Norfolk looks tense. ‘My uncle has been trying to arrange this for months,’ Anne says. ‘But the king will not be brought to it. He doesn't want to lose More. He wants to please everybody. You know how it is.’
‘He knew Thomas More when he was young.’
‘When I was young I knew sin.’
They turn, and smile at each other. ‘Look now,’ Anne says. ‘Do you suppose that is the Seal of England, that he has got in that leather bag?’
When Wolsey gave up the Great Seal, he dragged out the process for two days. But now the king, in the private paradise below, is waiting with open hand.
‘So who now?’ Anne says. ‘Last night he said, my Lord Chancellors are nothing but grief to me. Perhaps I shall do without one.’
‘The lawyers will not like that. Somebody must rule the courts.’
‘Then who do you say?’
‘Put it in his mind to appoint Mr Speaker. Audley will do an honest job. Let the king try him in the role pro tem, if he will, and then if he does not like him he need not confirm it. But I think he will like him. Audley is a good lawyer and he is his own man, but he understands how to be useful. And he understands me, I think.’
‘To think that someone does! Shall we go down?’
‘You cannot resist it?’
‘No more can you.’
They go down the inner staircase. Anne places her fingertips lightly on his arm. In the garden below, nightingales are hung in cages. Struck mute, they huddle against the sunlight. A fountain pit-patters into a basin. A scent of thyme rises from the herb-beds. From inside the palace, an unseen someone laughs. The sound is cut off as if a door had closed. He stoops and picks a sprig of the herb, bruises its scent into his palm. It takes him to another place, far from here. More makes his bow to Anne. She barely nods. She curtseys deeply to Henry, and arranges herself by his side, her eyes on the ground. Henry clutches her wrist; he wants to tell her something, or just be alone with her.
‘Sir Thomas?’ He offers his hand. More turns away. Then he thinks better of it; he turns back and takes it. His fingertips are ashy cold.
‘What will you do now?’
‘Write. Pray.’
‘My recommendation would be write only a little, and pray a lot.’
‘Now, is that a threat?’ More is smiling.
‘It may be. My turn, don't you think?’
When the king saw Anne, his face had lit up. His heart is ardent; in his councillor's hand, it burns to the touch.
He catches Gardiner at Westminster, in one of those smoky back courts where the sunlight never reaches. ‘My lord bishop?’
Gardiner draws together his beetle brows.
‘Lady Anne has asked me to think about a country house for her.’
‘What is that to me?’
‘Let me unfold to you,’ he says, ‘the way my thoughts proceed. It should be somewhere near the river, convenient for Hampton Court, and for her barge to Whitehall and Greenwich. Somewhere in good repair, as she has no patience, she will not wait. Somewhere with pretty gardens, well established … Then I think, what about Stephen's manor at Hanworth, that the king leased him when he became Master Secretary?’
Even in the dim light he can see the thoughts chasing each other through Stephen's brain. Oh my moat and my little bridges, my rose gardens and strawberry beds, my herb garden, my beehives, my ponds and orchard, oh my Italianate terracotta medallions, my intarsia, my gilding, my galleries, my seashell fountain, my deer park.
‘It would be graceful in you to offer her the lease, before it becomes a royal command. A good deed to set against the bishops' stubbornness? Oh, come on, Stephen. You have other houses. It isn't as if you'll be sleeping under a haystack.’
‘If I were,’ the bishop says, ‘I should expect one of your boys along with a ratting dog, to dig me out of my dreams.’
Gardiner's rodent pulses jump; his wet black eyes gleam. He is squeaking inside with indignation and stifled fury. But part of him may be relieved, when he thinks about it, that the bill has come in so early, and that he can meet its terms.
Gardiner is still Master Secretary, but he, Cromwell, now sees the king almost every day. If Henry wants advice, he can give it, or if the subject is outside his remit, he will find someone else who can. If the king has a complaint, he will say, leave it with me: if, by your royal favour, I may proceed? If the king is in a good humour he is ready to laugh, and if the king is miserable he is gentle and careful with him. The king has begun a course of dissimulation, which the Spanish ambassador, sharp-eyed as ever, has not failed to notice. ‘He sees you in private, not