He has prevented my meetings with the ambassadorof Spain. He has put spies in my household – my women are allspies for him.The cardinal says, wearily, I have never favoured the French,nor the Emperor neither: I have favoured peace. I have notstopped her seeing the Spanish ambassador, only made the quitereasonable request that she should not see him alone, so that Imight have some check on what insinuations and lies he presentsto her. The ladies of her household are English gentlewomenwho have a right to wait upon their queen; after almost thirtyyears in England, would she have nothing but Spaniards? As for driving her from the king’s side, how could I do that? For yearshis conversation was, ‘The queen must see this,’ and ‘Katherinewill like to hear of this, we must go to her straight away.’ Therenever was a lady who knew better her husband’s needs.She knows them; for the first time, she doesn’t want to complywith them.Is a woman bound to wifely obedience, when the result will beto turn her out of the estate of wife? He, Cromwell, admiresKatherine: he likes to see her moving about the royal palaces, aswide as she is high, stitched into gowns so bristling withgemstones that they look as if they are designed less for beautythan to withstand blows from a sword. Her auburn hair is fadedand streaked with grey, tucked back under her gable hood likethe modest wings of a city sparrow. Under her gowns she wearsthe habit of a Franciscan nun. Try always, Wolsey says, to findout what people wear under their clothes. At an earlier stage inlife this would have surprised him; he had thought that undertheir clothes people wore their skin.There are many precedents, the cardinal says, that can help theking in his current concerns. King Louis XII was allowed to setaside his first wife. Nearer home, his own sister Margaret, whohad first married the King of Scotland, divorced her secondhusband and remarried. And the king’s great friend CharlesBrandon, who is now married to his youngest sister Mary, had anearlier alliance put aside in circumstances that hardly bearinquiry.But set against that, the fact that the church is not in the business of breaking up established marriages or bastardising children. If the dispensation was technically defective, or in anyother way defective, why can it not be mended with a new one?So Pope Clement may think, Wolsey says.When he says this, the king shouts. He can shrug that off, theshouting; one grows accustomed, and he watches how the cardi nal behaves, as the storm breaks over his head; half-smiling, civil,regretful, he waits for the calm that succeeds it. But Wolsey isbecoming uneasy, waiting for Boleyn’s daughter – not the easyarmful, but the younger girl, the flat-chested one – to drop hercoy negotiations and please the king. If she would do this, theking would take an easier view of life and talk less about hisconscience; after all, how could he, in the middle of an amour?But some people suggest that she is bargaining with the king;some say that she wants to be the new wife; which is laughable,Wolsey says, but then the king is infatuated, so perhaps hedoesn’t demur, not to her face. He has drawn the cardinal’s attention to the emerald ring Lady Anne now wears, and has told himthe provenance and the price. The cardinal looked shocked.After the Harry Percy debacle, the cardinal had got Anne sentdown to her family house at Hever, but she had insinuated herselfback to court somehow, among the queen’s ladies, and now henever knows where she’ll be, and whether Henry will disappearfrom his grasp because he’s chasing her across country. He thinksof calling in her father, Sir Thomas, and telling him off again, but– even without mentioning the old rumour about Henry andLady Boleyn – how can you explain to a man that as his firstdaughter was a whore, so his second one should be too: insinuating that it’s some sort of family business he puts them into?‘Boleyn is not rich,’ he says. ‘I’d get him in. Cost it out forhim. The credit side. The debit side.’‘Ah yes,’ the cardinal says, ‘but you are the master of practicalsolutions, whereas I, as a churchman, have to be careful notactively to recommend that my monarch embark on a studiedcourse of adultery.’ He moves the quills around on his desk,shuffles some papers. ‘Thomas, if you are ever … How shall I putit?’He cannot imagine what the cardinal might say next.‘If you are ever close to the king, if you should find, perhapsafter I am gone …’ It’s not easy to speak of non-existence, even if you’ve already commissioned your tomb. Wolsey cannot imaginea world without Wolsey. ‘Ah well. You know I would prefer youto his service, and never hold you back, but the difficulty is …’Putney, he means. It is the stark fact. And since he’s not achurchman, there are no ecclesiastical titles to soften it, as theyhave softened the stark fact of Ipswich.‘I wonder,’ Wolsey says, ‘would you have patience with oursovereign lord? When it is midnight and he is up drinking andgiggling with Brandon, or singing, and the day’s papers not yetsigned, and when you press him he says, I’m for my bed now,we’re hunting tomorrow … If your chance comes to serve, youwill have to take him as he is, a pleasure-loving prince. And hewill have to take you as you are, which is rather like one of thosesquare-shaped fighting dogs that low men tow about on ropes.Not that you are without a fitful charm, Tom.’The idea that he or anyone else might come to have Wolsey’shold over the king is about as likely as Anne Cromwell becoming Lord Mayor. But he doesn’t altogether discount it. One hasheard of Jeanne d’Arc; and it doesn’t have to end in flames.He goes home and tells Liz about the fighting dogs. She alsothinks it strikingly apt. He doesn’t tell her about the fitful charm,in case it’s something only the cardinal can see.The court of inquiry is just about to break up, leaving the matterfor further advisement, when the news comes from Rome thatthe Emperor’s Spanish and German troops, who have not beenpaid for months, have run wild through the Holy City payingthemselves, plundering the treasuries and stoning the artworks.Dressed satirically in stolen vestments, they have raped the wivesand virgins of Rome. They have tumbled to the ground statuesand nuns, and smashed their heads on the pavements. A commonsoldier has stolen the head of the lance that opened the side ofChrist, and has attached it to the shaft of his own murderousweapon. His comrades have torn up antique tombs and tipped out the human dust, to blow away in the wind. The Tiber brimswith fresh bodies, the stabbed and the strangled bobbing againstthe shore. The most grievous news is that the Pope is taken prisoner. As the young Emperor, Charles, is nominally in charge ofthese troops, and presumably will assert his authority and takeadvantage of the situation, King Henry’s matrimonial cause is setback. Charles is the nephew of Queen Katherine, and while he isin the Emperor’s hands, Pope Clement is not likely to lookfavourably on any appeals passed up from the legate in England.Thomas More says that the imperial troops, for their enjoyment, are roasting live babies on spits. Oh, he would! saysThomas Cromwell. Listen, soldiers don’t do that. They’re toobusy carrying away everything they can turn into ready money.Under his clothes, it is well known, More wears a jerkin ofhorsehair. He beats himself with a small scourge, of the type usedby some religious orders. What lodges in his mind, ThomasCromwell’s, is that somebody makes these instruments of dailytorture. Someone combs the horsehair into coarse tufts, knotsthem and chops the blunt ends, knowing that their purpose is tosnap off under the skin and irritate it into weeping sores. Is itmonks who make them, knotting and snipping in a fury of righteousness, chuckling at the thought of the pain they will cause topersons unknown? Are simple villagers paid – how, by thedozen? – for making flails with waxed knots? Does it keep farmworkers busy during the slow winter months? When the moneyfor their honest labour is put into their hands, do the makersthink of the hands that will pick up the product?We don’t have to invite pain in, he thinks. It’s waiting for us:sooner rather than later. Ask the virgins of Rome.He thinks, also, that people ought to be found better jobs.Let us, says the cardinal at this point, take a step back from thesituation. He suffers some genuine alarm; it has always been clearto him that one of the secrets of stability in Europe is to have the papacy independent, and in the clutches of neither France northe Emperor. But his nimble mind is already skipping towardssome advantage for Henry.Suppose, he says – for in this emergency, it will be to me thatPope Clement looks to hold Christendom together – supposeI were to cross the Channel, stop off in Calais to reassure ourpeople there and suppress any unhelpful rumours, then travelinto France and conduct face-to-face talks with their king,then progress to Avignon, where they know how to host apapal court, and where the butchers and the bakers, the candlestick-makers and the keepers of lodgings and indeed thewhores have lived in hope these many years. I would invite thecardinals to meet me, and set up a council, so that the businessof church government could be carried on while His Holinessis suffering the Emperor’s hospitality. If the business broughtbefore this council were to include the king’s private matter,would we be justified in keeping so Christian a monarchwaiting on the resolution of military events in Italy? Might wenot rule? It ought not to be beyond the wit of men or angels tosend a message to Pope Clement, even in captivity, and thesame men or angels will bring a message back – surely endorsing our ruling, for we will have heard the full facts. And when,of course, in due time – and how we all look for that day –Pope Clement is restored to perfect liberty, he will be so grateful for the good order kept in his absence that any little matterof signatures or seals will be a formality. Voilà – the King ofEngland will be a bachelor.Before this can happen the king has to talk to Katherine; he can’talways be hunting somewhere else, while she waits for him,patient, implacable, his place set for supper in her private apartments. It is June, 1527; well barbered and curled, tall and stilltrim from certain angles, and wearing white silk, the king makeshis way to his wife’s apartments. He moves in a perfumed cloud made of the essence of roses: as if he owns all the roses, owns allthe summer nights.His voice is low, gentle, persuasive, and full of regret. If hewere free, he says, if there were no impediment, it is she, above allwomen, that he would choose for his wife. The lack of sonswouldn’t matter; God’s will be done. He would like nothingbetter than to marry her all over again; lawfully, this time. Butthere it is: it can’t be managed. She was his brother’s wife. Theirunion has offended divine law.You can hear what Katherine says. That wreck of a body, heldtogether by lacing and stays, encloses a voice that you can hear asfar as Calais: it resounds from here to Paris, from here to Madrid,to Rome. She is standing on her status, she is standing on herrights; the windows are rattled, from here to Constantinople.What a woman she is, Thomas Cromwell remarks in Spanish:to no one in particular.By mid-July the cardinal is making his preparations for thevoyage across the Narrow Sea. The warm weather has broughtsweating sickness to London, and the city is emptying. A fewhave gone down already and many more are imagining they haveit, complaining of headaches and pains in their limbs. The gossipin the shops is all about pills and infusions, and friars in thestreets are doing a lucrative trade in holy medals. This plaguecame to us in the year 1485, with the armies that brought us thefirst Henry Tudor. Now every few years it fills the graveyards. Itkills in a day. Merry at breakfast, they say: dead by noon.So the cardinal is relieved to be quitting the city, though hecannot embark without the entourage appropriate for a prince ofthe church. He must persuade King François of the efforts heshould make, in Italy, to free Pope Clement by military action;he must assure François of the King of England’s amity and assistance, but without committing any troops or funds. If God giveshim a following wind, he will bring back not only an annulment, but a treaty of mutual aid between England and France, onewhich will make the young Emperor’s large jaw quiver, and drawa tear from his narrow Habsburg eye.So why is he not more cheerful, as he strides about his privatechamber at York Place? ‘What will I get, Cromwell, if I gaineverything I ask? The queen, who does not like me, will be castoff and, if the king persists in his folly, the Boleyns brought in,who do not like me either; the girl has a spite against me, herfather I’ve made a fool of for years, and her uncle, Norfolk,would see me dead in a ditch. Do you think this plague will beover by the time I return? They say these visitations are all fromGod, but I can’t pretend to know his purposes. While I’m awayyou should get out of the city yourself.’He sighs; is the cardinal his only work? No; he is just thepatron who demands the most constant attendance. Businessalways increases. When he works for the cardinal, in London orelsewhere, he pays his own expenses and those of the staff hesends out on Wolsey business. The cardinal says, reimburseyourself, and trusts him to take a fair percentage on top; hedoesn’t quibble, because what is good for Thomas Cromwell isgood for Thomas Wolsey – and vice versa. His legal practice isthriving, and he is able to lend money at interest, and arrangebigger loans, on the international market, taking a broker’s fee.The market is volatile – the news from Italy is never good twodays together – but as some men have an eye for horseflesh orcattle to be fattened, he has an eye for risk. A number of noblemen are indebted to him, not just for arranging loans, but formaking their estates pay better. It is not a matter of exactionsfrom tenants, but, in the first place, giving the landowner anaccurate survey of land values, crop yield, water supply, builtassets, and then assessing the potential of all these; next, puttingin bright people as estate managers, and with them setting up anaccounting system that makes yearly sense and can be audited.Among the city merchants, he is in demand for his advice on trading partners overseas. He has a sideline in arbitration,commercial disputes mostly, as his ability to assess the facts of acase and give a swift impartial decision is trusted here, in Calaisand in Antwerp. If you and your opponent can at least concur onthe need to save the costs and delays of a court hearing, thenCromwell is, for a fee, your man; and he has the pleasant privilege, often enough, of sending away both sides happy.These are good days for him: every day a fight he can win.‘Still serving your Hebrew God, I see,’ remarks Sir ThomasMore. ‘I mean, your idol Usury.’ But when More, a scholarrevered through Europe, wakes up in Chelsea to the prospect ofmorning prayers in Latin, he wakes up to a creator who speaksthe swift patois of the markets; when More is settling in for asession of self-scourging, he and Rafe are sprinting to LombardStreet to get the day’s exchange rates. Not that he sprints, quite;an old injury drags sometimes, and when he’s tired a foot turnsinward, as if he’s walking back towards himself. People suggest itis the legacy of a summer with Cesare Borgia. He likes the storiesthey tell about him. But where’s Cesare now? He’s dead.‘Thomas Cromwell?’ people say. ‘That is an ingenious man.Do you know he has the whole of the New Testament by heart?’He is the very man if an argument about God breaks out; he isthe very man for telling your tenants twelve good reasons whytheir rents are fair. He is the man to cut through some legalentanglement that’s ensnared you for three generations, or talkyour sniffling little daughter into the marriage she swears she willnever make. With animals, women and timid litigants, hismanner is gentle and easy; but he makes your creditors weep. Hecan converse with you about the Caesars or get you Venetianglassware at a very reasonable rate. Nobody can out-talk him, ifhe wants to talk. Nobody can better keep their head, whenmarkets are falling and weeping men are standing on the streettearing up letters of credit. ‘Liz,’ he says one night, ‘I believe thatin a year or two we’ll be rich.