‘Did they? Well, I am shocked. We cannot have it said of Henry that he is not a man.’

‘A man’ – and Fitzwilliam stresses the word – ‘a man should be governor of his passions. Henry shows much force of will but little wisdom. It harms him. She harms him. The harm will go on.’

It seems he will not name her, Anna Bolena, La Ana, the concubine. So, if she harms the king, would it be the act of a good Englishman to remove her? The possibility lies between them, approached but still unexplored. It is treason, of course, to speak against the present queen and her heirs; a treason from which the king alone is exempt, for he could not violate his own interest. He reminds Fitzwilliam of this: he adds, even if Henry speaks against her, do not be drawn.

‘But what do we look for in a queen?’ Fitzwilliam asks. ‘She should have all the virtues of an ordinary woman, but she must have them to a high degree. She must be more modest, more humble, more discreet and more obedient even than they: so that she sets an example. There are those who ask themselves, is Anne Boleyn any of these things?’

He looks at Master Treasurer: go on.

‘I think I can speak frankly to you, Cromwell,’ Fitz says: and (after checking at the door once again) he does. ‘A queen should be mild and pitiful. She should move the king to mercy – not drive him on to harshness.’

‘You have some particular case in mind?’

Fitz was in Wolsey’s household as a young man. No one knows what part Anne played in the fall of the cardinal; her hand was hidden in her sleeve. Wolsey knew he could hope for no mercy from her, and he received none. But Fitz seems to brush away the cardinal. He says, ‘I hold no brief for Thomas More. He was not the adept in affairs of state that he thought he was. He thought he could sway the king, he thought he could control him, he thought that Henry was still a sweet young prince he could lead by the hand. But Henry is a king and he will be obeyed.’

‘Yes, and?’

‘And I wish that with More it could have ended another way. A scholar, a man who was Lord Chancellor, to drag him out in the rain and cut off his head…’

He says, ‘You know, sometimes I forget he’s gone. There is some piece of news and I think, what will More say to this?’

Fitz glances up. ‘You don’t talk to him, do you?’

He laughs. ‘I don’t go to him for advice.’ Though I do, of course, consult the cardinal: in the privacy of my short hours of sleep.

Fitz says, ‘Thomas More scuttled his chances with Anne when he would not come to see her crowned. She would have seen him dead a year before it happened, if she could have proved treason on him.’