‘Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?’ Come in, he says, there are fifty people here to see me but theycan wait, come and tell me how is everyone across the sea.Thomas Avery starts talking at once. But inside the doorway ofhis room, he stops. He is looking at the tapestry given by theking. His eyes search it, then turn to his master’s face, and thenback to the tapestry. ‘Who is that lady?’‘You can’t guess?’ He laughs. ‘It is Sheba visiting Solomon.The king gave it to me. It was my lord cardinal’s. He saw I likedit. And he likes to give presents.’‘It must be worth a fair sum.’ Avery looks at it with respect,like the keen young accountant he is.‘Look,’ he says to him, ‘I have another present, what do youthink of this? It is perhaps the only good thing ever to come outof a monastery. Brother Luca Pacioli. It took him thirty years towrite.’The book is bound in deepest green with a tooled border ofgold, and its pages are edged in gilt, so that it blazes in the light.Its clasps are studded with blackish garnets, smooth, translucent.‘I hardly dare open it,’ the boy says.‘Please. You will like it.’It is Summa de Arithmetica. He unclasps it to find a woodcutof the author with a book before him, and a pair of compasses.‘This is a new printing?’‘Not quite, but my friends in Venice have just now remembered me. I was a child, of course, when Luca wrote it, and youwere not even thought of.’ His fingertips barely touch the page.‘Look, here he treats of geometry, do you see the figures? Here iswhere he says you don’t go to bed until the books balance.’‘Master Vaughan quotes that maxim. It has caused me to sit uptill dawn.’‘And I.’ Many nights in many cities. ‘Luca, you know, he wasa poor man. He came out of Sansepulcro. He was a friend ofartists and he became a perfect mathematician in Urbino, whichis a little town up in the mountains, where Count Federigo the great condottiere had his library of over a thousand books. Hewas magister at the university in Perugia, later in Milan. I wonderwhy such a man would remain a monk, but of course there havebeen practitioners of algebra and geometry who have beenthrown into dungeons as magicians, so perhaps he thought thechurch would protect him … I heard him lecture in Venice, it willbe more than twenty years ago now, I was your age, I suppose.He spoke about proportion. Proportion in building, in music, inpaintings, in justice, in the commonwealth, the state; about howrights should be balanced, the power of a prince and his subjects,how the wealthy citizen should keep his books straight and sayhis prayers and serve the poor. He spoke about how a printedpage should look. How a law should read. Or a face, what makesit beautiful.’‘Will he tell me in this book?’ Thomas Avery glances up againat the Queen of Sheba. ‘I suppose they knew, who made thetapestry.’‘How is Jenneke?’The boy turns the leaves with reverent fingers. ‘It is a beautiful book. Your friends in Venice must admire you very much.’So Jenneke is no more, he thinks. She is dead or she is in lovewith someone else. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘my friends in Italysend me new poems, but I think all the poems are in here … Notthat a page of figures is a verse, but anything that is precise isbeautiful, anything that balances in all its parts, anything that isproportionate … do you think so?’He wonders at the power Sheba has to draw the boy’s eyes. Itis impossible he should have seen Anselma, ever met her, heardof 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 heshakes with desire when he thinks of Anne, how he has triedother 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 howhe has failed with them … A strange admission, but he thinks it justifies him, he thinks it verifies the rightness of his pursuit, forI 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 bymyself into the depths of the wood.‘Now,’ he says, ‘we will put this book on your desk. So thatyou 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 somechild who will total the columns and push them under your nose,get them initialled and then lock them in a chest. But what’s thepoint 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 yourneighbour. 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. Hecannot go to the king, not with any hope of a pardon. Long agoHenry was given the title of Defender of the Faith; he is keen toshow he deserves it still.At Smithfield in the stand put up for the dignitaries he meetsthe Venetian ambassador, Carlo Capello. They exchange a bow.‘In what capacity are you here, Cromwell? As friend of thisheretic, 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 nexthave a private talk.’Wrapped in his sheet of flames, the dying man calls out, ‘TheLord forgive Sir Thomas More.’On 15 May, the bishops sign a document of submission to theking. They will not make new church legislation without theking’s licence, and will submit all existing laws to a review by acommission which will include laymen – members of Parliament and the king’s appointees. They will not meet in Convocationwithout the king’s permission.Next day, he stands in a gallery at Whitehall, which looksdown on an inner court, a garden, where the king waits, and theDuke of Norfolk busies to and fro. Anne is in the gallery besidehim. She is wearing a dark red gown of figured damask, so heavythat her tiny white shoulders seem to droop inside it. Sometimes– in a kind of fellowship of the imagination – he imagines restinghis hand upon her shoulder and following with his thumb thescooped hollow between her collarbone and her throat; imagineswith his forefinger tracking the line of her breast as it swellsabove her bodice, as a child follows a line of print.She turns her head and half-smiles. ‘Here he comes. He is notwearing the Lord Chancellor’s chain. What can he have donewith it?’Thomas More looks round-shouldered and despondent.Norfolk looks tense. ‘My uncle has been trying to arrange thisfor 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 inthat leather bag?’When Wolsey gave up the Great Seal, he dragged out theprocess for two days. But now the king, in the private paradisebelow, 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 withoutone.’‘The lawyers will not like that. Somebody must rule thecourts.’‘Then who do you say?’ ‘Put it in his mind to appoint Mr Speaker. Audley will do anhonest job. Let the king try him in the role pro tem, if he will, andthen if he does not like him he need not confirm it. But I think hewill like him. Audley is a good lawyer and he is his own man, buthe 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 fingertipslightly on his arm. In the garden below, nightingales are hung incages. Struck mute, they huddle against the sunlight. A fountainpit-patters into a basin. A scent of thyme rises from the herbbeds. From inside the palace, an unseen someone laughs. Thesound is cut off as if a door had closed. He stoops and picks asprig of the herb, bruises its scent into his palm. It takes him toanother place, far from here. More makes his bow to Anne. Shebarely nods. She curtseys deeply to Henry, and arranges herselfby his side, her eyes on the ground. Henry clutches her wrist; hewants to tell her something, or just be alone with her.‘Sir Thomas?’ He offers his hand. More turns away. Then hethinks better of it; he turns back and takes it. His fingertips areashy cold.‘What will you do now?’‘Write. Pray.’‘My recommendation would be write only a little, and pray alot.’‘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 isardent; in his councillor’s hand, it burns to the touch.He catches Gardiner at Westminster, in one of those smoky backcourts 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 forher.’‘What is that to me?’‘Let me unfold to you,’ he says, ‘the way my thoughtsproceed. It should be somewhere near the river, convenient forHampton Court, and for her barge to Whitehall and Greenwich.Somewhere in good repair, as she has no patience, she will notwait. Somewhere with pretty gardens, well established … Then Ithink, what about Stephen’s manor at Hanworth, that the kingleased him when he became Master Secretary?’Even in the dim light he can see the thoughts chasing eachother through Stephen’s brain. Oh my moat and my littlebridges, my rose gardens and strawberry beds, my herb garden,my beehives, my ponds and orchard, oh my Italianate terracottamedallions, my intarsia, my gilding, my galleries, my seashellfountain, my deer park.‘It would be graceful in you to offer her the lease, before itbecomes a royal command. A good deed to set against thebishops’ stubbornness? Oh, come on, Stephen. You have otherhouses. It isn’t as if you’ll be sleeping under a haystack.’‘If I were,’ the bishop says, ‘I should expect one of your boysalong with a ratting dog, to dig me out of my dreams.’Gardiner’s rodent pulses jump; his wet black eyes gleam. He issqueaking inside with indignation and stifled fury. But part ofhim may be relieved, when he thinks about it, that the bill hascome in so early, and that he can meet its terms.Gardiner is still Master Secretary, but he, Cromwell, now seesthe king almost every day. If Henry wants advice, he can give it,or if the subject is outside his remit, he will find someone elsewho 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 goodhumour he is ready to laugh, and if the king is miserable he isgentle and careful with him. The king has begun a course ofdissimulation, which the Spanish ambassador, sharp-eyed as ever, has not failed to notice. ‘He sees you in private, not in hispresence chamber,’ he says. ‘He prefers if his nobles do not knowhow often he consults with you. If you were a smaller man, youcould be brought in and out in a laundry basket. As it is, I thinkthose so-spiteful privy chamber gentlemen cannot fail to telltheir friends, who will mutter at your success, and circulate slanders against you, and plot to bring you down.’ The ambassadorsmiles and says, ‘If I may proffer an image which will appeal toyou – do I hit the nail on the head?’In a letter from Chapuys to the Emperor, one which happens togo by way of Mr Wriothesley, he learns of his own character. CallMe reads it out to him: ‘He says your antecedents are obscure,your youth reckless and wild, that you are a heretic of long standing, a disgrace to the office of councillor; but personally, he findsyou a man of good cheer, liberal, open-handed, gracious …’‘I knew he liked me. I should ask him for a job.’‘He says that the way you got into the king’s confidence, youpromised you would make him the richest king England has everhad.’He smiles.Late in May, two fish of prodigal size are caught in theThames, or rather they are washed up, dying, on the muddyshore. ‘Am I expected to do something about it?’ he says, whenJohane brings the news in.‘No,’ she says. ‘At least, I don’t think so. It’s a portent, isn’t it?It’s an omen, that’s all.’In late July, he has a letter from Cranmer in Nuremberg. Beforethis he has written from the Low Countries, asking for advice onhis commercial negotiations with the Emperor, matters in whichhe feels out of his depth; from towns along the Rhine, he haswritten hopefully that the Emperor must come to an accommodation with the Lutheran princes, as he needs their help againstthe Turks on the frontier. He writes of how he struggles to become an adept in England’s usual diplomatic game: profferingthe King of England’s friendship, dangling promises of Englishgold, while actually failing to provide any.But this letter is different. It is dictated, written in a clerk’shand. It talks of the workings of the holy spirit in the heart. Rafereads it out to him, and points out, down at the bottom andrunning up the left margin, a few words in Cranmer’s own script:‘Something has occurred. Not to be trusted to a letter. It maymake a stir. Some would say I have been rash. I shall need youradvice. Keep this secret.’‘Well,’ Rafe says, ‘let us run up and down Cheap: “ThomasCranmer has a secret, we don’t know what it is!