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match you might expect, as the queen's sister.’

      ‘I doubt there are many sisters who expect what I receive, nightly.’

      She will get another child by Henry, he thinks. Anne will have it strangled in the cradle. ‘Your friend William Stafford is at court. At least, I think he is still your friend?’

      ‘Imagine how he likes my situation. Still, at least I get a kind word from my father. Monseigneur finds he needs me again. God forbid the king should ride a mare from any other stable.’

      ‘This will end. He will free you. He will give you a settlement. A pension. I'll speak for you.’

      ‘Does a dirty dishcloth get a pension?’ Mary sways on the spot; she seems dazed with misery and fatigue; great tears swell in her eyes. He stands catching them, dabbing them away, whispering to her and soothing her, and wanting to be elsewhere. When he breaks free he gives her a backward glance, as she stands in the doorway, desolate. Something must be done for her, he thinks. She's losing her looks.

      Henry watches from a gallery, high above Westminster Hall, as his queen takes her seat in the place of honour, her ladies around her, the flower of the court and the nobility of England. The king has fortified himself earlier, and is picking at a spice plate, dipping thin slices of apple into cinnamon. In the gallery with him, encore les ambassadeurs, Jean de Dinteville furred against the June chill, and his friend the Bishop of Lavaur, wrapped in a fine brocade gown.

      ‘This has all been most impressive, Cremuel,’ de Selve says; astute brown eyes study him, taking everything in. He takes in everything too: stitching and padding, studding and dyeing; he admires the deep mulberry of the bishop's brocade. They say these two Frenchmen favour the gospel, but favour at François's court extends no further than a small circle of scholars that the king, for his own vanity, wishes to patronise; he has never quite been able to grow his own Thomas More, his own Erasmus, which naturally piques his pride.

      ‘Look at my wife the queen.’ Henry leans over the gallery. He might as well be down there. ‘She is worth the show, is she not?’

      ‘I have had all the windows reglazed,’ he says. ‘The better to see her.’

      ‘Fiat lux,’ de Selve murmurs.

      ‘She has done very well,’ de Dinteville says. ‘She must have been six hours on her feet today. One must congratulate Your Majesty on obtaining a queen who is as strong as a peasant woman. I mean no disrespect, of course.’

      In Paris they are burning Lutherans. He would like to take it up with the envoys, but he cannot while the odour of roast swan and peacock drifts up from below.

      ‘Messieurs,’ he asks (music rising around them like a shallow tide, silver ripples of sound), ‘do you know of the man Guido Camillo? I hear he is at your master's court.’

      De Selve and his friend exchange glances. This has thrown them. ‘The man who builds the wooden box,’ Jean murmurs. ‘Oh yes.’

      ‘It is a theatre,’ he says.

      De Selve nods. ‘In which you yourself are the play.’

      ‘Erasmus has written to us about it,’ Henry says, over his shoulder. ‘He is having the cabinetmakers create him little wooden shelves and drawers, one inside another. It is a memory system for the speeches of Cicero.’

      ‘With your permission, he intends it as more than that. It is a theatre on the ancient Vitruvian plan. But it is not to put on plays. As my lord the bishop says, you as the owner of the theatre are to stand in the centre of it, and look up. Around you there is arrayed a system of human knowledge. Like a library, but as if – can you imagine a library in which each book contains another book, and a smaller book inside that? Yet it is more than that.’

      The king slips into his mouth an aniseed comfit, and snaps down on it. ‘Already there are too many books in the world. There are more every day. One man cannot hope to read them all.’

      ‘I do not see how you understand so much about it,’ de Selve says. ‘All credit to you, Maître Cremuel. Guido will only speak his own Italian dialect, and even in that he stammers.’

      ‘If it pleases your master to spend his money,’ Henry says. ‘He is not a sorcerer, is he, this Guido? I should not like Francis to fall into the hands of a sorcerer. By the way, Cromwell, I am sending Stephen back to France.’

      Stephen Gardiner. So the French do not like doing business with Norferk. Not surprising. ‘His mission will be of some duration?’

      De Selve catches his eye. ‘But who will do Master Secretary's job?’

      ‘Oh, Cromwell will do it. Won't you?’ Henry smiles.

      He is hardly down into the body of the hall before Master Wriothesley intercepts him. This is a big day for the heralds and their officers, their children and their friends; fat fees coming their way. He says so, and Call-Me says, fat fees coming your way. He edges back against the screens, voice low; one could foresee this, he says, because Henry is tired of it, Winchester's grinding opposition to him every step of the way. He is tired of arguing; now he is a married man he looks for a little more douceur. With Anne? he says and Call-Me laughs: you know her better than me, if as they say she is a lady with a sharp tongue, then all the more he needs ministers who are kind to him. So devote yourself to keeping Stephen abroad, and in time he will confirm you in the post.

      Christophe, dressed up for the afternoon, is hovering nearby and making signals to him. You will excuse me, he says, but Wriothesley touches his gown of crimson, as if for luck, and says, you are the master of the house and the master of the revels, you are the origin of the king's happiness, you have done what the cardinal could not, and much more besides. Even this – he gestures around him, to where the nobility of England, having already eaten their words, are working through twenty-three dishes – even this feast has been superbly managed. No one need call for anything, it is all at his hand before he thinks of it.

      He inclines his head, Wriothesley walks away, and he beckons the boy. Christophe says, one tells me to impart nothing of confidence in the hearing of Call-Me, as Rafe says he go trit-trot to Gardineur with anything he can get. Now sir, I have a message, you must go quick to the archbishop. When the feast is done. He glances up to the dais where the archbishop sits beside Anne, under her canopy of state. Neither of them is eating, though Anne is pretending to, both of them are scanning the hall.

      ‘I go trit-trot,’ he says. He is taken with the phrase. ‘Where?’

      ‘His old lodging which he says you know. He wishes you to be secret. He says not to bring any person.’

      ‘Well, you can come, Christophe. You're not a person.’

      The boy grins.

      He is apprehensive; does not quite like the thought of the abbey precincts, the drunken crowds at dusk, without somebody to watch his back. Unfortunately, a man cannot have two fronts.

      They have almost reached Cranmer's lodging when fatigue enwraps his shoulders, an iron cloak. ‘Pause for a moment,’ he says to Christophe. He has hardly slept these last nights. He takes a breath, in shadow; here it is cold, and as he passes into the cloisters he is dipped in night. The rooms around are shuttered, empty, no sound from within. From behind him, an inchoate shouting from the Westminster streets, like the cries of those lost after a battle.

      Cranmer looks up; he is already at his desk. ‘These are days we will never forget,’ he says. ‘No one who has missed it would believe it. The king spoke warm words in your praise today. I think it was intended I should convey them.’

      ‘I wonder why I ever gave any thought to the cost of brick-making for the Tower. It seems such a small item now. And tomorrow the jousts. Will you be there? My boy Richard is listed for the bouts on foot, fighting in single combat.’

      ‘He will prevail,’ Christophe declares. ‘Biff, and one is flat, never to rise again.’

      ‘Hush,’ Cranmer says. ‘You are not

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