‘But surely not!’ he explodes. ‘Cremuel, you told me that this was a fairy tale! You have expressed yourself a friend of my master, you will not countenance a French match?’

‘Calmly, ambassador, calmly. I do not claim I can govern Henry. And after all, he may decide to continue with his present marriage, or if not, to live chaste.’

‘You are laughing!’ the ambassador accuses. ‘Cremuel! You are laughing behind your hand.’

And so he is. The builders skirt around them, giving them space, rough London craftsmen with tools stuck in their belts. Penitent, he says, ‘Do not get your hopes up. When the king and his woman have one of their reconciliations, it goes hard with anyone who has spoken out against her in the interim.’

‘You would maintain her? You would support her?’ The ambassador’s whole body has stiffened, as if he had really been on that riverbank all day. ‘She may be your co-religionist –’

‘What?’ He opens his eyes wide. ‘My co-religionist? Like my master the king, I am a faithful son of the holy Catholic church. Only just now we are not in communion with the Pope.’

‘Let me put it another way,’ Chapuys says. He squints up at the grey London sky, as if seeking help from above. ‘Let us say your ties to her are material, not spiritual. I understand that you have had preferment from her. I am aware of that.’

‘Do not mistake me. I owe Anne nothing. I have preferment from the king, from no one else.’

‘You have sometimes called her your dear friend. I remember occasions.’

‘I have sometimes called you my dear friend. But you’re not, are you?’

Chapuys digests the point. ‘There is nothing I wish to see more,’ he says, ‘than peace between our nations. What could better mark an ambassador’s success in his post, than a rapprochement after years of trouble? And now we have the opportunity.’

‘Now Katherine is gone.’

Chapuys does not argue with that. He just winds his cloak closer about him. ‘The king has got no good of the concubine, and will get none now. No power in Europe recognises his marriage. Even the heretics do not recognise it, though she has done her best to make friends of them. What profit can there be to you, in keeping matters as they are: the king unhappy, Parliament fretful, the nobility fractious, the whole country revolted by the woman’s pretensions?’

Slow drops of rain have begun to fall: ponderous, icy. Chapuys glances up again irritably, as if God were undermining him at this crucial point. Taking a grip on the ambassador once more, he tows him over the rough ground towards shelter. The builders have put up a canopy, and he turns them out, saying, ‘Give us a minute, boys, will you?’ Chapuys huddles by the brazier, and grows confidential. ‘I hear the king talks of witchcraft,’ he whispers. ‘He says that he was seduced into the marriage by certain charms and false practices. I see he does not confide in you. But he has spoken to his confessor. If this is so, if he entered into the match in a state of entrancement, then he might find he is not married at all, and free to take a new wife.’