Look, if Katherinewere to withdraw her suit from Rome, if she were to submit tojudgment of her case in England, or if the Pope were to concedeto the king’s wishes, then all this – everything you’ve said, itwon’t happen, it will be just –’ His hand makes a smooth, withdrawing motion, like the rolling up of a parchment. ‘If Clementwere to come to his desk one morning, not quite awake, and signwith his left hand some piece of paper he’s not read, well, whocould blame him? And then I leave him, we leave him, undisturbed, in possession of his revenues, in possession of his authority, because now Henry only wants one thing, and that is Anne in his bed; but time marches on and he is beginning to think,believe me, of other things he might want.’‘Yes. Like his own way.’‘He’s a king. He’s used to it.’‘And if the Pope is still stubborn?’‘He’ll go begging for his revenue.’‘Will the king take the money of Christian people? The king isrich.’‘There you are wrong. The king is poor.’‘Oh. Does he know it?’‘I’m not sure he knows where his money comes from, orwhere it goes. While my lord cardinal was alive, he never wantedfor a jewel in his hat or a horse or a handsome house. HenryNorris keeps his privy purse, but besides that he has too much ofa hand in the revenue for my liking. Henry Norris,’ he tells herbefore she can ask, ‘is the bane of my life.’ He is always, he doesnot add, with Anne when I need to see her alone.‘I suppose if Henry wants his supper, he can come here. Notthis Henry Norris. I mean, Henry our pauper king.’ She stands up;she sees herself in the glass; she ducks, as if shy of her own reflection, and arranges her face into an expression lighter, more curiousand detached, less personal; he sees her do it, lift her eyebrows afraction, curve up her lips at the corner. I could paint her, hethinks; if I had the skill. I have looked at her so long; but lookingdoesn’t bring back the dead, the harder you look the faster and thefurther they go. He had never supposed Liz Wykys was smilingdown from Heaven on what he was doing with her sister. No, hethinks, what I’ve done is push Liz into the dark; and somethingcomes back to him, that Walter once said, that his mother used tosay her prayers to a little carved saint she’d had in her bundle whenshe came down as a young woman from the north, and she used toturn it away before she got into bed with him. Walter had said,dear God, Thomas, it was St fucking Felicity if I’m not mistaken,and her face was to the wall for sure the night I got you. Johane walks about the room. It is a large room and filled withlight. ‘All these things,’ she says, ‘these things we have now. Theclock. That new chest you had Stephen send you from Flanders,the one with the carving of the birds and flowers, I heard withmy own ears you say to Thomas Avery, oh, tell Stephen I want it,I don’t care what it costs. All these painted pictures of people wedon’t know, all these, I don’t know what, lutes and books ofmusic, we never used to have them, when I was a girl I never usedto look at myself in a mirror, but now I look at myself every day.And a comb, you gave me an ivory comb. I never had one of myown. Liz used to plait my hair and push it under my hood, andthen I did hers, and if we didn’t look how we ought to look,somebody soon told us.’Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why arewe so proud of ourselves for having endured our fathers and ourmothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold wintersand the sharp tongues? It’s not as if we had a choice. Even Liz,once when they were young, when she’d seen him early in themorning putting Gregory’s shirt to warm before the fire, evenLiz had said sharply, don’t do that, he’ll expect it every day.He says, ‘Liz – I mean, Johane …’You’ve done that once too often, her face says.‘I want to be good to you. Tell me what I can give you.’He waits for her to shout, as women do, do you think you canbuy me, but she doesn’t, she listens, and he thinks she isentranced, her face intent, her eyes on his, as she learns his theoryabout what money can buy. ‘There was a man in Florence, a friar,Fra Savonarola, he induced all the people to think beauty was asin. Some people think he was a magician and they fell under hisspell for a season, they made fires in the streets and they threw ineverything they liked, everything they had made or worked tobuy, bolts of silk, and linen their mothers had embroidered fortheir marriage beds, books of poems written in the poet’s hand,bonds and wills, rent-rolls, title deeds, dogs and cats, the shirts from their backs, the rings from their fingers, women their veils,and do you know what was worst, Johane – they threw in theirmirrors. So then they couldn’t see their faces and know how theywere different from the beasts in the field and the creaturesscreaming on the pyre. And when they had melted their mirrorsthey went home to their empty houses, and lay on the floorbecause they had burned their beds, and when they got up nextday they were aching from the hard floor and there was no tablefor their breakfast because they’d used the table to feed thebonfire, and no stool to sit on because they’d chopped it intosplinters, and there was no bread to eat because the bakers hadthrown into the flames the basins and the yeast and the flour andthe scales. And you know the worst of it? They were sober. Lastnight they took their wine-skins …’ He turns his arm, in a mimeof a man lobbing something into a fire. ‘So they were sober andtheir heads were clear, but they looked around and they hadnothing to eat, nothing to drink and nothing to sit on.’‘But that wasn’t the worst. You said the mirrors were theworst. Not to be able to look at yourself.’‘Yes. Well, so I think. I hope I can always look myself in theface. And you, Johane, you should always have a fine glass to seeyourself. As you’re a woman worth looking at.’You could write a sonnet, Thomas Wyatt could write her asonnet, and not make this effect … She turns her head away, butthrough the thin film of her veil he can see her skin glow. Becausewomen will coax: tell me, just tell me something, tell me yourthoughts; and this he has done.They part friends. They even manage without one last time forold time’s sake. Not that they are parted, really, but now they areon different terms. Mercy says, ‘Thomas, when you’re cold andunder a stone, you’ll talk yourself out of your grave.’The household is quiet, calm. The turmoil of the city is lockedoutside the gate; he is having the locks renewed, the chains reinforced. Jo brings him an Easter egg. ‘Look, we have saved this one for you.’ It is a white egg with no speckles. It is featureless,but a single curl, the colour of onion-skin, peeps out from undera lopsided crown. You pick your prince and you know what heis: or do you?The child says, ‘My mother sends a message: tell your uncle,for a present, I’d like a drinking cup made of the shell of agriffin’s egg. It’s a lion with the head and wings of a bird; it’s diedout now, so you can’t get them any more.’He says, ‘Ask her what colour she wants.’Jo plants a kiss on his cheek.He looks into the glass and the whole bright room comesbouncing back to him: lutes, portraits, silk hangings. In Romethere was a banker called Agostino Chigi. In Siena, where hecame from, they maintained he was the richest man in the world.When Agostino had the Pope around for dinner he fed him ongold plates. Then he looked at the aftermath – the sprawled, satedcardinals, the mess they left behind, the half-picked bones andfish skeletons, the oyster shells and the orange rinds – and hesaid, stuff it, let’s save the washing-up.The guests tossed their plates out of the open windows andstraight into the Tiber. The soiled table linen flew after them,white napkins unfurling like greedy gulls diving for scraps. Pealsof Roman laughter unfurled into the Roman night.Chigi had netted the banks, and he had divers standing by forwhatever escaped. Some sharp-eyed servant of his upper household stood by the bank when dawn came, and checked off thelist, pricking with a pin each item retrieved as it came up from thedeep.1531: it is the summer of the comet. In the long dusk, beneath thecurve of the rising moon and the light of the strange new star,black-robed gentlemen stroll arm in arm in the garden, speakingof salvation. They are Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, thepriests and clerks of Anne’s household detached and floated to Austin Friars on a breeze of theological chit-chat: where did thechurch go wrong? How can we drift her into the right channelagain? ‘It would be a mistake,’ he says, watching them from thewindow, ‘to think any of those gentlemen agree one with theother on any point of the interpretation of scripture. Give thema season’s respite from Thomas More, and they will fall to persecuting each other.’Gregory is sitting on a cushion and playing with his dog. He iswhisking her nose with a feather and she is sneezing to amusehim. ‘Sir,’ he says, ‘why are your dogs always called Bella andalways so small?’Behind him at an oak table, Nikolaus Kratzer, the king’sastronomer, sits with his astrolabe before him, his paper and ink.He puts down his pen and looks up. ‘Master Cromwell,’ he sayslightly, ‘either my calculations are wrong, or the universe is notas we think it.’He says, ‘Why are comets bad signs? Why not good signs?Why do they prefigure the fall of nations? Why not their rise?’Kratzer is from Munich, a dark man of his own age with a longhumorous mouth. He comes here for the company, for the goodand learned conversation, some of it in his own language. Thecardinal had been his patron, and he had made him a beautiful goldsundial. When he saw it the great man had flushed with pleasure.‘Nine faces, Nikolaus! Seven more than the Duke of Norfolk.’In the year 1456 there was a comet like this one. Scholarsrecorded it, Pope Calixtus excommunicated it, and it may be thatthere are one or two old men alive who saw it. Its tail was noteddown as sabre-shaped, and in that year the Turks laid siege toBelgrade. It is as well to take note of any portents the heavensmay offer; the king seeks the best advice. The alignment of theplanets in Pisces, in the autumn of 1524, was followed by greatwars in Germany, the rise of Luther’s sect, uprisings amongcommon men and the deaths of 100,000 of the Emperor’ssubjects; also, three years of rain. The sack of Rome was foretold, full ten years before the event, by noises of battle in the air andunder the ground: the clash of invisible armies, steel clatteringagainst steel, and the spectral cries of dying men. He himself wasnot in Rome to hear it, but he has met many men who say theyhave a friend who knows a man who was.He says, ‘Well, if you can answer for reading the angles, I cancheck your workings.’Gregory says, ‘Dr Kratzer, where does the comet go, when weare not looking at it?’The sun has declined; birdsong is hushed; the scent of the herbbeds rises through the open window. Kratzer is still, a man transfixed by prayer or Gregory’s question, gazing down at his paperswith his long knuckly fingers joined. Down below in the garden,Dr Latimer glances up and waves to him. ‘Hugh is hungry.Gregory, fetch our guests in.’‘I will run over the figures first.’ Kratzer shakes his head.‘Luther says, God is above mathematics.’Candles are brought in for Kratzer. The wood of the table isblack in the dusk, and the light settles against it in tremblingspheres. The scholar’s lips move, like the lips of a monk atvespers; liquid figures spill from his pen. He, Cromwell, turns inthe doorway and sees them. They flitter from the table, skim andmelt into the corners of the room.Thurston comes stumping up from the kitchens. ‘I sometimeswonder what people think goes on here! Give some dinners, orwe shall be undone. All these hunting gentlemen, and ladies too,they have sent us enough meat to feed an army.’‘Send it to the neighbours.’‘Suffolk is sending us a buck every day.’‘Monsieur Chapuys is our neighbour, he doesn’t get manypresents.’‘And Norfolk –’‘Give it out at the back gate. Ask the parish who’s hungry.’ ‘But it is the butchering! The skinning, the quartering!’‘I’ll come and give you a hand, shall I?’‘You can’t do that!’ Thurston wrings his apron.‘It will be a pleasure.’ He eases off the cardinal’s ring.‘Sit still! Sit still, and be a gentleman, sir. Indict something, canyou not? Write a law! Sir, you must forget you ever knew thesebusinesses.’He sits back down again, with a heavy sigh. ‘Are our benefactors getting letters of thanks? I had better sign them myself.’‘They are thanking and thanking,’ Thurston says. ‘A dozen ofclerks scribbling away.’‘You must take on more kitchen boys.’‘And you more scribblers.’If the king asks for him, he goes out of London to where theking is. August finds him in a group of courtiers watching Anne,standing in a pool of sunlight, dressed as Maid Marian and shooting at a target. ‘William Brereton, good day,’ he says. ‘You are notin Cheshire?’‘Yes. Despite appearances, I am.’I asked for that. ‘Only I thought you would be hunting inyour own country.’Brereton scowls. ‘Must I account to you for my movements?’In her green glade, in her green silks, Anne is fretting andfuming. Her bow is not to her liking. In a temper, she casts it onthe grass.‘She was the same in the nursery.’ He turns to find MaryBoleyn at his side: an inch closer than anyone else would be.‘Where’s Robin Hood?’ His eyes are on Anne. ‘I havedispatches.’‘He won’t look at them till sundown.’‘He will not be occupied then?’‘She is selling herself by the inch. The gentlemen all say youare advising her. She wants a present in cash for every advanceabove her knee.’