‘What can I do? Arm myself with patience and leave the rest to God.’ And hope the end is quick.

‘Your piety does you credit,’ Chapuys says. ‘If fortune turns against you, you will need friends. The Emperor –’

‘The Emperor would not spare a thought for me, Eustache. Or for any common man. No one raised a finger to help the cardinal.’

‘The poor cardinal. I wish I had known him better.’

‘Stop buttering me up,’ he says sharply. ‘Have done.’

Chapuys gives him a searching glance. The fire roars up. Vapours rise from his clothes. The rain patters at the window. He shivers. ‘You are ill?’ Chapuys enquires.

‘No, I am not allowed to be. If I took to my bed the queen would turn me out of it and say I am faking. If you want to cheer me up, get out that Christmas hat of yours. It was a pity you had to put it away for mourning. Easter would be none too soon to see it again.’

‘I think you are making jokes, Thomas, at the expense of my hat. I have heard that while it was in your custody it was derided, not only by your clerks but by your stable boys and dog-keepers.’

‘The reverse is true. There were many applications to try it on. I wish that we may see it at all major feasts of the church.’

‘Once again,’ Chapuys says, ‘your piety does you credit.’

He sends Gregory away to his friend Richard Southwell, to learn the art of speaking in public. It is good for him to get out of London, and to get away from the court, where the atmosphere is tense. All around him there are signs of unease, little huddles of courtiers that disperse at his approach. If he is to place all in hazard, and he thinks he is, then Gregory should not have to go through the pain and doubt, hour by hour. Let him hear the conclusion of events; he does not need to live through them. He has no time now to explain the world to the simple and the young. He has to watch the movements of cavalry and ordnance across Europe, and the ships on the seas, merchantmen and men of war: the influx of gold from the Americas to the treasury of the Emperor. Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart; sometimes these islands look very small. The word from Europe is that Mount Etna has erupted, and brought floods throughout Sicily. In Portugal there is a drought; and everywhere, envy and contention, fear of the future, fear of hunger or the fact of it, fear of God and doubt over how to placate him, and in what language. The news, when he gets it, is always a fortnight out of date: the posts are slow, the tides against him. Just as the work of fortifying Dover is coming to an end, the walls of Calais are falling down; frost has cracked the masonry and opened a fissure between Watergate and Lanterngate.