But that was long ago and in another country. Now Rafe Sadler is here with a message: he must return suddenly to Greenwich, to this raw morning, the rain just holding off. Where is Karl Heinz today? Dead probably. Since the night he saw the goddess growing on the wall, he has intended to commission one himself, though other purposes – making money and drafting legislation – have taken up his time.

‘Rafe?’

Rafe stands in the doorway and does not speak. He looks up at the young man’s face. His hand lets go his quill and ink splashes the paper. He stands up at once, wrapping his furred robe about him as if it will buffer him from what is to come. He says, ‘Gregory?’ and Rafe shakes his head.

Gregory is intact. He did not run a course.

The tournament is interrupted.

It is the king, Rafe says. It is Henry, he is dead.

Ah, he says.

He dries the ink with dust from the box of bone. Blood everywhere, no doubt, he says.

He keeps at hand a gift he was given once, a Turkish dagger made of iron, the sheath engraved with a pattern of sunflowers. Until now he had always thought of it as an ornament, a curio. He tucks it away amongst his garments.

He will recall, later, how difficult it was to get through the doorway, to turn his steps to the tilting ground. He feels weak, the backwash of the weakness that had made him drop the pen when he thought that Gregory was hurt. He says to himself, it is not Gregory; but his body is dazed, slow to catch up with the news, as if he himself had received a killing blow. Whether, now, to go forward to try to seize command, or to seize this moment, perhaps the last moment, to quit the scene: to make good an escape, before the ports are blocked, and to go where? Perhaps to Germany? Is there any principality, state, in which he would be safe from the reach of Emperor or Pope, or the new ruler of England, whoever that may be?

He has never backed off; or once, perhaps, from Walter when he was seven years old: but Walter came on. Since then: forward, forward, en avant! So his hesitation is not long, but afterwards he will have no recollection of how he arrived in a lofty and gilded tent, embroidered with the arms and devices of England, and standing over the corpse of King Henry VIII. Rafe says, the contests had not begun, he was running at the ring, the point of his lance scooped the eye of the circle. Then the horse stumbled under him, man and rider down, horse rolling with a scream and Henry beneath it. Now Gentle Norris is on his knees by the bier, praying, tears cascading down his cheeks. There is a blur of light on plate armour, helms hiding faces, iron jaws, frog mouths, the slits of visors. Someone says, the beast went down as if its leg were broke, no one was near the king, no one to blame. He seems to hear the appalling noise of it, the horse’s roar of terror as it pitches, the screams from the spectators, the grating clatter of steel and hooves on steel as one huge animal entangles with another, warhorse and king collapsing together, metal driven into flesh, hoof into bone.